Interesting / disturbing free online conference this weekend, "Stepping Into the Future" (w/ session on "Moral Enhancement"). From the "Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies".
Sharing for FYI, I'm not affiliated with the group, nor do I know anything about them, just somehow on their mailing list.
I can believe there's (some) people, working on "posthumanism" with good intentions, who don't see these lines being crossed as violations of life itself ... who think they're the wisest ones to build the inevitable. . . Who don't understand how horrifically this can be misused, or who don't want others to understand that ...
From IEET -"This coming weekend, the Stepping Into the Future conference has session on "Moral Enhancement" - Are we fit for the future?
Arguably high degrees of moral fortitude are required for humans to coordinate through some potentially rough times ahead and avoid existential crises.
This session discusses enhancing human morality to achieve civilizational resilience, while considering freedom & autonomy.
It consists of 2 talks and a panel: Pramod K. Nayer (Hyderabad University) - Posthumanism and it's Moral Imperatives
James Hughes (IEET) - Cyborg Virtues: Using BCIs for Moral Enhancement
Panelists: James Hughes, PJ Manney and Pramod K. Nayer -
Panel: Are we fit for the future?
The three other sessions are “Engineering a Better Future”, “AI Safety & Longtermism” and “AGI Architectures & Agency”
(In this 2010 article, J. Hughes, executive director of IEET (& author of Citizen Cyborg), says -
"If the imaginary moral community of humanity is flexible enough to expand beyond white male property-owners to all human beings surely it can expand a little further to include gorillas, cyborgs and mutants.")
“neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.”...
so then to avoid the legitimate suffering of the tension of the opposites we can disempower ourselves by embracing a mindset which avoids this...
this leading into the observation of how concept of the tension of the opposites tends to lead into a rabbit hole of incoherence, a rabbit hole where the notion that everything has polarity is delegitimized/demonized by the festering fear of the word duality...
that while the concept of a false duality, a false either/or duality makes sense, that it pushes us outside of our serves us well nature to the degree we engage in a destruction of the natural opposites within the tension of the opposites by embracing a false either/or absolute as the default good/bad absolute...
like if we consider Iain McGilchrist and his book "The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World" with Jung's concept of Logos and Eros then we have a good/dominant left hemisphere/Logos and a bad/disempowered right hemisphere/Eros...
or in medicine the good/accepted germ theory and the bad/discouraged terrain theory, like we have the actors/germs/virus without the setting/microbiome/virome, so either/or we focus on the actors without a setting or contrary focus on the setting while delegitimizing the actors...
or like in physics where we embrace atomism as the good absolute yet would contend have engaged in a strawman logical fallacy, based on the Michelson–Morley experiment, to delegitimize the concept of a modern version of an aether-based perspective of physics...
so here within psychology, medicine, physics we engage in these topics from a false duality perspective which avoids consideration from within the weave of what i would contend are their natural opposites...
like might an example of the natural opposites be reductionism from the perspective of what is the highest possible known resolution, Planck's constant vs reductionism from the perspective starting with everything has yin/yang polarity, then consider it from a quaternary perspective of a 4-way reductionistic differentiation...
therefor embracing “It is a natural process, a manifestation of the energy that springs from the tension of opposites.”...
This piece is not all that accessible, due to its high level of abstraction. Another piece focused on the emotions that create separation and the duality of the Other might speak to more people. (The discussion of humiliation and fear was gripping.) Nonetheless, it has caused me to ponder the legal work I do, which is a win-lose paradigm. I draw a blank when trying to think of ways to not humiliate the malefactors we are trying to stop.
For vivid added context, these two recent pieces of writing are superb:
I loved this parallel: functional medicine being about causes, while allopathy as being all about symptoms, implying a completely different level of mental processing.
I always appreciate your feedback. These 2 articles were excellent. With family now, more later on the other points, agreed, it is challenging. Prevention obviously is easier.
“The antidote to DMA is HDT, Holism-Dialectics-Transcendence (HDT). It requires consciousness.”
Might it be that DMA is the natural expression of the high-functioning Dark-Triad, and HDT the natural expression of the Light-Triad?
If so, might it reasonable to say that the problems we continually face are a natural result of the of Dark-Triad being allowed to consolidate power, wealth, and influence to themselves?
(I’m new to DMA and HDT, so my comment might be null and void from the get-go.)
Your intuition and instincts are pretty good. Thanks for that thought. I sort of challenge "natural expression" but not entirely. Jung said consciousness is a work against nature - meaning automatic, unconsciousness. Aldo I don't think people are born evil but are seduced into it or traumatized. HDT s a work of consciousness to overcome it. It is not necessarily fixed. That said, we face a daunting challenge and the DMA people are far more organized, coordinated, and working in lockstep and we have wonderful brilliant people who are mostly acting randomly, not organized enough and not coordinated - lots inventing different wheels. We are bringing knives and a microscope to a nuclear war. We have tons of great ideas and no grand strategy or central clearing house. I am looking for people who are tuned into this level.
“I don't think people are born evil but are seduced into it or traumatized”
100% in agreement.
“When good people turn dark” - Seduced I would suggest is “conscious choice”, it starts with logical fallacies, then lies to cover their tracks, then wealth, power and influence to provide a “buffer from reality and consequence”.
I think “trauma” comes in so many forms, social, economic, familial, physical, visual... and I would suggest we do in fact create the next generation of “dark triads” both high and low function while they are still minors, while they are still developing psychologically and while they are still establishing their “worldview” roots.
Diane - thank you for so clearly describing the Wise Power Paradigm of Transcend. Had not before heard of the Slits but makes perfect sense. A leaf may fall off a tree and appear separate until one recalls that it was attached to the tree that had roots in the earth and received energy from the sun. The Transcend perspective clearly recognizes the Oneness of it All and thus the inherent Unity in which the dialectic is embedded. I also understand it from my training as a transpersonal psychotherapist (psychosynthesis.) Is there a team of Transcend people working on the Ukraine conflict?
Transcend is a network of people in the field conflict transformation. It is not "organized" so doesn't have a team. But Transcend Media Service, an amazing collection edited by Antonio deZ Rosa, is published ever Monday and has many transcendent articles on many subjects. Thanks for the image.
Interesting / disturbing free online conference this weekend, "Stepping Into the Future" (w/ session on "Moral Enhancement"). From the "Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies".
Sharing for FYI, I'm not affiliated with the group, nor do I know anything about them, just somehow on their mailing list.
I can believe there's (some) people, working on "posthumanism" with good intentions, who don't see these lines being crossed as violations of life itself ... who think they're the wisest ones to build the inevitable. . . Who don't understand how horrifically this can be misused, or who don't want others to understand that ...
From IEET -"This coming weekend, the Stepping Into the Future conference has session on "Moral Enhancement" - Are we fit for the future?
Arguably high degrees of moral fortitude are required for humans to coordinate through some potentially rough times ahead and avoid existential crises.
This session discusses enhancing human morality to achieve civilizational resilience, while considering freedom & autonomy.
It consists of 2 talks and a panel: Pramod K. Nayer (Hyderabad University) - Posthumanism and it's Moral Imperatives
James Hughes (IEET) - Cyborg Virtues: Using BCIs for Moral Enhancement
Panelists: James Hughes, PJ Manney and Pramod K. Nayer -
Panel: Are we fit for the future?
The three other sessions are “Engineering a Better Future”, “AI Safety & Longtermism” and “AGI Architectures & Agency”
See more: http://www.scifuture.org/events/stepping-into-the-future/#agenda "
~~~~
(In this 2010 article, J. Hughes, executive director of IEET (& author of Citizen Cyborg), says -
"If the imaginary moral community of humanity is flexible enough to expand beyond white male property-owners to all human beings surely it can expand a little further to include gorillas, cyborgs and mutants.")
https://gizmodo.com/beyond-the-human-race-and-human-racism-5534623
Thanks much for that connection. I was not aware of it. I will check it out.
“neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.”...
so then to avoid the legitimate suffering of the tension of the opposites we can disempower ourselves by embracing a mindset which avoids this...
this leading into the observation of how concept of the tension of the opposites tends to lead into a rabbit hole of incoherence, a rabbit hole where the notion that everything has polarity is delegitimized/demonized by the festering fear of the word duality...
that while the concept of a false duality, a false either/or duality makes sense, that it pushes us outside of our serves us well nature to the degree we engage in a destruction of the natural opposites within the tension of the opposites by embracing a false either/or absolute as the default good/bad absolute...
like if we consider Iain McGilchrist and his book "The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World" with Jung's concept of Logos and Eros then we have a good/dominant left hemisphere/Logos and a bad/disempowered right hemisphere/Eros...
or in medicine the good/accepted germ theory and the bad/discouraged terrain theory, like we have the actors/germs/virus without the setting/microbiome/virome, so either/or we focus on the actors without a setting or contrary focus on the setting while delegitimizing the actors...
or like in physics where we embrace atomism as the good absolute yet would contend have engaged in a strawman logical fallacy, based on the Michelson–Morley experiment, to delegitimize the concept of a modern version of an aether-based perspective of physics...
so here within psychology, medicine, physics we engage in these topics from a false duality perspective which avoids consideration from within the weave of what i would contend are their natural opposites...
like might an example of the natural opposites be reductionism from the perspective of what is the highest possible known resolution, Planck's constant vs reductionism from the perspective starting with everything has yin/yang polarity, then consider it from a quaternary perspective of a 4-way reductionistic differentiation...
therefor embracing “It is a natural process, a manifestation of the energy that springs from the tension of opposites.”...
This piece is not all that accessible, due to its high level of abstraction. Another piece focused on the emotions that create separation and the duality of the Other might speak to more people. (The discussion of humiliation and fear was gripping.) Nonetheless, it has caused me to ponder the legal work I do, which is a win-lose paradigm. I draw a blank when trying to think of ways to not humiliate the malefactors we are trying to stop.
For vivid added context, these two recent pieces of writing are superb:
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/give-war-a-chance
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-pimps-of-war
I loved this parallel: functional medicine being about causes, while allopathy as being all about symptoms, implying a completely different level of mental processing.
Typo alert: Young's double **slit** experiment.
I always appreciate your feedback. These 2 articles were excellent. With family now, more later on the other points, agreed, it is challenging. Prevention obviously is easier.
“The antidote to DMA is HDT, Holism-Dialectics-Transcendence (HDT). It requires consciousness.”
Might it be that DMA is the natural expression of the high-functioning Dark-Triad, and HDT the natural expression of the Light-Triad?
If so, might it reasonable to say that the problems we continually face are a natural result of the of Dark-Triad being allowed to consolidate power, wealth, and influence to themselves?
(I’m new to DMA and HDT, so my comment might be null and void from the get-go.)
Your intuition and instincts are pretty good. Thanks for that thought. I sort of challenge "natural expression" but not entirely. Jung said consciousness is a work against nature - meaning automatic, unconsciousness. Aldo I don't think people are born evil but are seduced into it or traumatized. HDT s a work of consciousness to overcome it. It is not necessarily fixed. That said, we face a daunting challenge and the DMA people are far more organized, coordinated, and working in lockstep and we have wonderful brilliant people who are mostly acting randomly, not organized enough and not coordinated - lots inventing different wheels. We are bringing knives and a microscope to a nuclear war. We have tons of great ideas and no grand strategy or central clearing house. I am looking for people who are tuned into this level.
“I don't think people are born evil but are seduced into it or traumatized”
100% in agreement.
“When good people turn dark” - Seduced I would suggest is “conscious choice”, it starts with logical fallacies, then lies to cover their tracks, then wealth, power and influence to provide a “buffer from reality and consequence”.
I think “trauma” comes in so many forms, social, economic, familial, physical, visual... and I would suggest we do in fact create the next generation of “dark triads” both high and low function while they are still minors, while they are still developing psychologically and while they are still establishing their “worldview” roots.
Everyone is fighting the succession.
Diane - thank you for so clearly describing the Wise Power Paradigm of Transcend. Had not before heard of the Slits but makes perfect sense. A leaf may fall off a tree and appear separate until one recalls that it was attached to the tree that had roots in the earth and received energy from the sun. The Transcend perspective clearly recognizes the Oneness of it All and thus the inherent Unity in which the dialectic is embedded. I also understand it from my training as a transpersonal psychotherapist (psychosynthesis.) Is there a team of Transcend people working on the Ukraine conflict?
Transcend is a network of people in the field conflict transformation. It is not "organized" so doesn't have a team. But Transcend Media Service, an amazing collection edited by Antonio deZ Rosa, is published ever Monday and has many transcendent articles on many subjects. Thanks for the image.