“If you’d told me that we’d be moving in the direction we did, with our face- and eye-obscuring virtual reality helmets, our obsession with the replacement of flesh with steel, our overwhelming desire to consume all the available data, our desire to transcend… because you see, it’s transcendence that we’re after, isn’t it? To somehow free ourselves from the fleshy bondage we were born into and become something else. And we don’t know, really, if it’s something more, or something greater. Only capital-N Nature would know that for certain, and It’s sure as hell not going to tell us outright. No, we’re giving rein to our innate pioneer spirit, that ephemeral phantom lantern that leads us ever deeper into the dark, uncharted swamp of the future, not knowing if we’re going to our deaths or solid ground. What you see as dehumanization, as something inherently ‘unhuman’, we see as advancement. I’d ask you this: what’s so great about being human, anyway? Objectively, our existence sucks: we live short lives, filled with fear and in soft bodies that are so weak when compared to the other wondrous creatures around us that it’s as if Nature is playing a cruel joke. We have inventive minds that can conceive of realms that none but ourselves might perceive, and then we craft the methods of exploring them. We dream of immortality through a symbiosis with the artificial, to thumb our noses back at Nature, to shout defiantly that we will not accept our shortcomings, we will not accept our mortality, and we will not stand for anything less than godhood. That’s our legacy, that’s our dream, and if we must reject what you call humanity to pursue it, then so be it. You’ll find, if you take the time to examine the issue closely enough—you know, really do your homework—that you’ll find that what we have is a difference of opinion where neither of us may be right, but one of us wants to restrict the freedom of the other. In matters of liberty, I must insist that, so long as I’m not interfering with your rights, you allow me mine. And if that should produce two disparate cultures that will, given a long enough period of growth and development, come to a bloody head, then so be it. At that time, we’ll discover who’s right, and who’s wrong.
“You live long enough, child, you’ll find that Nature works in mysterious ways, which are often counter to your desires.”
First draft: 150311
Published: 231004