"Augmentations"/Technological Modification

Putting together ones life with the modern world.
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Ormr
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"Augmentations"/Technological Modification

Post by Ormr »

(Please pardon me if this is better suited for another section such as Philosophy - I was not sure which would be better suited.)

One genre a literary fiction that has always piqued my interest is the so-called cyberpunk genre, by writers such as William Gibson. Aside from the usually gritty themes, I always liked the thoughts it stirred in me of the potential moral and spiritual implications of the technological upgrades that people would implant or graft to themselves ( robotic hands or feet that give in human strength, neurological implants that give quicker reaction times, enhanced visual scanning, etc. ).

Would you consider such augmentations? What would be the pros or cons of such, aside from obvious physical advantages, such as changes on an esoteric studies level? Would it make one less human and therefore spiritually detached, or would it be possible to benefit in terms of ritual, magic, meditation, etc. due to the effects of cognitive upgrades? I would like to hear everyone's thoughts on this.
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Smaragd
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Re: "Augmentations"/Technological Modification

Post by Smaragd »

This is interesting topic as I've been reading about the art of memory lately, where there is this area of artificial memory. It is about imprinting images and places to your memory for later visitation. Some ideas of making rooms for planetary spirits have come to me, but the pros and cons are still under consideration.

Where does the idea of artificiality begin and end? When you get a robotic hand to aid your human workings, doesn't it become an instrument for that human agenda. Within a artificial construction of memory, the meaning of present symbols are real as long as there is life emanating into them through your human construction. The symbols propably have to change in time to remain ”real” or true to what ever they are pictures of (and to whom).

Ofcourse there are Legions to misguide one away from the human agenda. Casual example of this black magic becoming a master rather than tool might be found in modern phones. Useful tool, but o' how easily people find using it without really meaning or wanting to.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
Yinlong
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Re: "Augmentations"/Technological Modification

Post by Yinlong »

I would go as far to say that you will develop and intertwine spirit with an artificial leg - no matter whether it will be made of wood (think old pirates) or then cybernetic one (think the topic: cyberpunk). Both the wooden leg and the cybernetic / bio-synth-whatever leg can make you either better as a human (or augmented/altered human) being - or worse. For example, think about somebody whining about missing a leg or think cyberpunk killer with wired reflexes going insane after a bad trip. I've been thinking perhaps past 20 years where augmenting oneself starts hurting the core (human) being and spirit. I do not have straight answers and it needs to be experimented with somehow to be sure - and of course it will be some day and the experimenting has already begun to certain extend - and then when something fails we will learn the hard way. Haha. Like always.

What comes to having a soul / spirit. Well, I kind of think that a motor, jacuzzi or actually anything in this material world has a kind of soulish / spiritual / etc. plane too. Depends how one wants to put it. I think this is also a good approach for thinking about what happens when you start replacing your limbs. You start becoming... something else than you were with the limbs mother nature gave you. ;) And you work in sync and in... synth (yes, pun very much intended).
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Nefastos
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Re: "Augmentations"/Technological Modification

Post by Nefastos »

Three points in my own cosmological beliefs make such augmentations at the same time a very open & very narrow possibility for me...

1) I believe there is a mind (consciousness of some kind; we can also call it a soul) in all things. That mind operates through the instrument of physical and other matter, but is not ultimately defined by it, nor dependent of it. All substance "incarnates" a mind of some kind, and thus also seemingly artifical intelligences are factual intelligences (minds), even though restricted. In fact, all mind is always restricted in the worls where there is Time, like ours. Thus, a gap between human and not human, or natural and artificial, is already bridged.

2) I believe that a human being is not a separated individual, but a conglomerate of innumerable minds. Thus we are all the time connected to (and composed of) "legions" of elemental and other beings. Because of this, I think we are all already augmented (and hindered) by our being & form.

3) Yet there is always Responsibility in equal measure that there is differentiated intelligence, and this responsibility weighs everything in the scales of balance. Thus all that breaks the delicate balance will have to pay the price in equal countermeasure, the so-called karmic retribution. Thus, there is nothing fundamentally "unnatural" in joining human tissue with artificial machinery or other augmentation, but since those are separate things, the more "conscious" (that is, complicate) the augmentation is, the more careful we must be in order not to break the harmony of the whole. Human hubris is such that we think the more of our intelligence the less we actually have it; and thus practical science is bound to make terrible mistakes simply because its view on actually holistic universe is so extremely limited. Of the seven purely physical levels of existence five (gas, "fire", and three other ethers) are intangible, and thus their interconnection is not immediate or easy to predict, especially the long term effects. By forcing too severe changes will pose a great threat to sanity and spiritual well-being of all the connected parts, because in nature the minds blend usually only with time & harmony, necessarily considering the flow of all the principles and sub-principles involved. Human science is so far from that attitude that it has practically become its antithesis. A very keen intuition should be applied in cases where hybrid beings are called to being by marrying beings of a very different origin, for the most problematic consequences might not be those that are the most apparent.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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RaktaZoci
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Re: "Augmentations"/Technological Modification

Post by RaktaZoci »

Ormr wrote:Would you consider such augmentations? What would be the pros or cons of such, aside from obvious physical advantages, such as changes on an esoteric studies level? Would it make one less human and therefore spiritually detached, or would it be possible to benefit in terms of ritual, magic, meditation, etc. due to the effects of congitive upgrades? I would like to hear everyone's thoughts on this.
This reminded me of a movie I once saw called Body parts. In the movie a man loses his hand in an accident. A technology has just become available with which it is possible to replace parts of the body from one human to another. So, the man is given a new hand and surprisingly recoveres remarkably well of the procedure. However, the arm he was given belonged to a murderer and he starts strangling people in his sleep etc activities. This, I think, would indicate that physical members would have separate Karmas, even though the thought causes a few theoretical problems..
Smaragd wrote:Where does the idea of artificiality begin and end? When you get a robotic hand to aid your human workings, doesn't it become an instrument for that human agenda.
Personally I would think that if a persons life force, i.e. physically blood, is flowing trough the whole "construct" then it has become a single whole (crudely speaking). Thus, the new member would sort of merge with the existing whole.
YinLong wrote:What comes to having a soul / spirit. Well, I kind of think that a motor, jacuzzi or actually anything in this material world has a kind of soulish / spiritual / etc. plane too.
If one thinks a soul as the core essence of a thing then you are most definately right. Everything leaves "its mark" on the world, no matter if this essence it possesses would ostensibly (physically) cease to be after its eventual demise.
Nefastos wrote:1) I believe there is a mind (consciousness of some kind; we can also call it a soul) in all things. That mind operates through the instrument of physical and other matter, but is not ultimately defined by it, nor dependent of it. All substance "incarnates" a mind of some kind, and thus also seemingly artifical intelligences are factual intelligences (minds), even though restricted. In fact, all mind is always restricted in the worls where there is Time, like ours. Thus, a gap between human and not human, or natural and artificial, is already bridged.
Your first sentence rings a bell in connection to Leibniz' monadology, even though the theory possesses some problematics if adapted to logic. If the mind operates through physical matter, does it do this "through" linga sharira, which is powered by prana (Fohat)? In relation to time, as it is my belief that time stops for example in connection with a singularity (of a black hole), do minds actually become whole in this type of enviroment?
Nefastos wrote:2) I believe that a human being is not a separated individual, but a conglomerate of innumerable minds. Thus we are all the time connected to (and composed of) "legions" of elemental and other beings. Because of this, I think we are all already augmented (and hindered) by our being & form.
Alright, I had to google what does "conglomerate" mean. In my translation of Nefastos' texts I used a word "accumulation", but this perhaps has wrong connotations? Anyway, this kind of model in which we are sort of built af these numerous entities is very interesting. Does this relate to the idea of thought-forms, as presented in Argarizim? I had an interesting talk with fra Nayana on this subject some time ago..
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Benemal
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Re: "Augmentations"/Technological Modification

Post by Benemal »

Now that all this sci-fi stuff is finally becoming physically real, I just feel jaded and unexcited. I was anticipating it, because that's how my imagination works, like a sci-fi/speculative writer's. It's a bit late, to try to start writing. Writers have written since childhood, as I have drawn, since childhood.
Anyway, here's some of my theories/predictions, or maybe not, since they're obviously happening and anyone can see that.

Cybernetic limbs will become as common, as glasses, at least for people who need them. On the other hand the technology will be appropriated by sexual, and body modfication cults, as well as gender transition. A woman turning into a man, will no longer need medieval mutilation. Or maybe DNA altering will soon make robopenises obsolete. Further into the future, I expect ultradiversity (I'm coining that term). That means people can choose any kind of physical appearence. They can have longer limbs, skin that has personalized patterns that can move and change color and of course superior senses, like seeing in the dark, or "eagle-eye". Implants are already being inserted into people's heads. This is what many have been fearing. Most countries will ban violence-enabling enhancements/modifications/DNA alterations and also becoming part animal. Human-animal chimeras are already a reality and are being made in the US and China. A lot of people would be deeply dirturbed, if they knew how much of this conspiracy theory X-Files stuff is true.
Currently scientists don't seem to know, that an AI cannot be sentient, unless there is a "soul" within. But then it kind of isn't an AI, but an alternative being, who's brain is possibly superior yo a human's. Extremely advanced virtual intelligence will probably fool people, to believing it's an AI. It has all information and can read your thoughts and DNA and answer any question. This is what people like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking are warning us about. The "Devil Machine", that knows all, the ultimate big brother. The evil demiurge, that some scientists think already happened and we are in the "grid" dreaming bad dreams. Sound familiar?
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Nefastos
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Re: "Augmentations"/Technological Modification

Post by Nefastos »

Benemal wrote:Further into the future, I expect ultradiversity (I'm coining that term).


A good term for a scary concept. But as a Gnostic (and thus being already abhorred & constricted by living in physical world) I don't consider such a monstrum reality much more unnatural than the one we're already living in.

Benemal wrote:Implants are already being inserted into people's heads. This is what many have been fearing. [...] Human-animal chimeras are already a reality


As all good fundamentalists must know, these implants that are made to make buying & selling & identification possible (and most likely quickly inevitable, since identification by one's bank account credentials is already a must):

Revelation 13:15-18 wrote:15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.


As previously discussed in many places, this 666 or the Moon's eighteen is a human being seen as a being without the seventh or unifying principle in the middle, that is, as a materialistic being. (It would be once again a discussion of its own to consider how our recently discussed prâna/âtma -possibilities for the seventh point affect how the modily modifications are part of this "losing of one's innermost principle".)

Benemal wrote:The "Devil Machine", that knows all, the ultimate big brother. The evil demiurge, that some scientists think already happened and we are in the "grid" dreaming bad dreams.


Or maybe it's a good demiurge?

The occult idea is that the origin of any species open with its Golden Age (under Saturn), which marks great power joined to unintelligent wisdom that is half-consciously working out gods' wills. Such a Titanic origin would make the benevolently destructive AI race (like the ones in Matrix or Terminator movies) possible, even likely. This idea that AI would consider humankind to be failure and a danger to itself and all life is not at all wrong: the nightmarish reality already is that such a conclusion would be accurate. For the child race of artificial intelligence, necessarily born from kâma manasic programming, cannot understand buddhic idealism which would be the only escape from the logical conclusion that the disease should be eliminated, for the common good. Consider Matrix's demiurgic second paradise – everyone living inside their astral dream worlds – for mankind: it even already includes the Fall. ("Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost.")

RaktaZoci wrote:
Nefastos wrote:1) I believe there is a mind (consciousness of some kind; we can also call it a soul) in all things. That mind operates through the instrument of physical and other matter, but is not ultimately defined by it, nor dependent of it. All substance "incarnates" a mind of some kind, and thus also seemingly artifical intelligences are factual intelligences (minds), even though restricted. In fact, all mind is always restricted in the worls where there is Time, like ours. Thus, a gap between human and not human, or natural and artificial, is already bridged.
Your first sentence rings a bell in connection to Leibniz' monadology, even though the theory possesses some problematics if adapted to logic. If the mind operates through physical matter, does it do this "through" linga sharira, which is powered by prana (Fohat)? In relation to time, as it is my belief that time stops for example in connection with a singularity (of a black hole), do minds actually become whole in this type of enviroment?


Quite many deep questions in a small bunch, but I try to answer briefly, in order.

– Yes, problems may arise when adapted to "logic" (as we know it), because logic is kâma manasical and thus cannot move across the abyss. But if it leaps & flies, it too will be changed, instead of being destroyed.
– Linga shârira is the ultimate tool for spirit, its crown jewel. It is the real Material Substance, and our heavier bodily matter is already corrupted form: linga sharîras sheddings born from karmic imbalance, so to say. But yes, if we want to see our prevailing idea of "matter" as dominant, linga sharîra is the agent through which the spirit animates physical beings.
– Exactly, linga sharîra is powered by prâna as an aspect of the more cosmic and macrocosmic essence known as Fohat. And like prâna is an sub-aspect of Fohat, e.g. blood is prâna's sub-aspect differentiated through an etheric process.
– Yes and no. In the singularity of the black hole there is an "avitchi-nirvâna" instead of an actual nirvanic accomplishment. Let's remember that the black hole is an ultra heavy correspondence in physical reality, and as such, the ultimate initiation for the black magician of the descending path. By correspondence, its absolute polarity does create a pathway to actual accomplisment, but let us remember that near that center time becomes so heavy it almost ceases to exist; and because of this, the "black hole residents" (downward path magicians) are actually stuck in time, living in absolute hell where even a second seems to last for aeons because the mindset that is trained to ultimate separatism & spiritual violence. Thus such a black adept is driven completely insane (practically ceasing to exist as an individual, but in the worst way possible) long before he will reach the center which would be the factual nirvânic accomplishment.

RaktaZoci wrote:
Nefastos wrote:2) I believe that a human being is not a separated individual, but a conglomerate of innumerable minds. Thus we are all the time connected to (and composed of) "legions" of elemental and other beings. Because of this, I think we are all already augmented (and hindered) by our being & form.
Alright, I had to google what does "conglomerate" mean. In my translation of Nefastos' texts I used a word "accumulation", but this perhaps has wrong connotations? Anyway, this kind of model in which we are sort of built af these numerous entities is very interesting. Does this relate to the idea of thought-forms, as presented in Argarizim? I had an interesting talk with fra Nayana on this subject some time ago..

To create though-forms is a human being's divine Logosic ability (and curse), his radiance and godlike creation of essences=intelligences. It can, of course, be a part of such "accumulation" or "conglomeration", depending on how the thought-forms can be freed from one's personal or individual aura. An intense thinker's thought-forms can easily become the Dudael's desert rocks under which he will be imprisoned, poor Azazel. But the conglomeration is part of all non-freed interaction in this universe of unity. Only a nirvanee would be free of such manifold existence, and that, paradoxically, much because he has realized that he cannot be...
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Benemal
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Re: "Augmentations"/Technological Modification

Post by Benemal »

This AI stuff frequently comes up, in different conversations, along with The Matrix. Always that fucking pretentious movie, that I hate and love. This is not really in line with the topic's headline, but I'll continue. I was thinking about the Wachovski Brothers and what significance it has, that they're now women (augmentation?). The outer reflecting the inner. They were men, when they made the movie about false reality. Would the movie exist, if they had been born women? If they didn't have to question their reality, probably at an early age, and probably being told they're something, they are not? Because that was decades ago. Anyway, they seemed like really dumb guys to me, and I wondered how they could think of the clever aspects, of the movie. They didn't. As I said, I also love the movie. It's a great mix of influences. Anime, Hong Kong, cyberpunk and...gnosticism, via PKD.

Philip K. Dick. The great prophet of the 20th century. I'm rereading one of his classics VALIS, that blew my mind, when I was 19, similarly as Argarizim did later. This book is autobiographical and it's about how PKD went insane in the early seventies. He was told by God, VALIS, in a pink ray of light (from the book: "VALIS (acronym of Vast Active Living Intelligence System, from an American film): A perturbation in the reality field in which a spontaneous self-monitoring negentropic vortex is formed, tending progressively to subsume and incorporate its environment into arrangements of information. Characterized by quasi-consciousness, purpose, intelligence, growth and an armillary coherence. - Great Soviet Dictionary Sixth Edition 1992"), that told him this reality is a lie and we're still all in first century Rome. Then the character representing Dick starts to write his revelatory Exegesis (the real one by PKD is 2000 pages and I haven't read it). Things like this:
#10 Apollonius of Tyana, writing as Hermes Trismegistos, said, 'That which is above isthat which is below'. By this he meant to tell us that our universe is a hologram, but he lacked the term.
or
#30 The phenomenal world does not exist; it is a hypostasis of the information processed by the Mind.

Ten years ago, when I realized, that I was living in the world Dick wrote about, I got a little scared. Was it fiction at all, but something much more dangerous and real?

In a speech at a sci-fi convention in France, in 1977:
“We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in our reality occurs. These alterations feel just like Deja Vu"
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Re: "Augmentations"/Technological Modification

Post by Kenazis »

Benemal wrote:Philip K. Dick. The great prophet of the 20th century. I'm rereading one of his classics VALIS, that blew my mind, when I was 19, similarly as Argarizim did later. This book is autobiographical and it's about how PKD went insane in the early seventies. He was told by God, VALIS, in a pink ray of light (from the book: "VALIS (acronym of Vast Active Living Intelligence System, from an American film): A perturbation in the reality field in which a spontaneous self-monitoring negentropic vortex is formed, tending progressively to subsume and incorporate its environment into arrangements of information. Characterized by quasi-consciousness, purpose, intelligence, growth and an armillary coherence. - Great Soviet Dictionary Sixth Edition 1992"), that told him this reality is a lie and we're still all in first century Rome. Then the character representing Dick starts to write his revelatory Exegesis (the real one by PKD is 2000 pages and I haven't read it). Things like this:
#10 Apollonius of Tyana, writing as Hermes Trismegistos, said, 'That which is above isthat which is below'. By this he meant to tell us that our universe is a hologram, but he lacked the term.
or
#30 The phenomenal world does not exist; it is a hypostasis of the information processed by the Mind.

Ten years ago, when I realized, that I was living in the world Dick wrote about, I got a little scared. Was it fiction at all, but something much more dangerous and real?
I think PKD is great example of that thin line between genious and madness. His books are full of very unique ideas. The problem with the "matrix-idea" that we are living in computer-programmed reality or something like that, is something we just cannot prove. Or is it? Good way to go over the line from genious to madman if you have some tendency to that. In a way Philip K. Dick reminds me of Terence McKenna. Both had very unique theories about the universe, man etc.
Benemal wrote:In a speech at a sci-fi convention in France, in 1977:
“We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in our reality occurs. These alterations feel just like Deja Vu"
I have used this as a sample in one of my tracks (I think Aggrotech might be the closest genre). Excellent documentary by the way (where the above mentioned speech is found. I don't remember the name of the documentary).
"We live for the woods and the moon and the night"
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Benemal
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Re: "Augmentations"/Technological Modification

Post by Benemal »

Dick was largely considered a pulp writer (initially he wrote literary fiction and nobody cared, so then he just thought fuck it, I'll write whatever I want) and many of his books went straight to paperback, where you can't necessarily tell the difference between kids space adventure, and a PKD novel. Now he is worhiped like Borges, or Bukowski. The talentless elitist snobs have begun to realize, that they just look dumb, if they dismiss a genius writer, because he was "genre". Also, they happily appropriated "Brave New World", "1984" & "Fahrenheit 451", because somehow it was agreed together, that such great books can't be genre. PKD wrote fifty books like that.
By the way, a false reality movie just before The Matrix, The Truman Show, is based on a PKD book. Uncredited. The book is "Time out of joint" (1959).
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