[p2p-research] posthuman destinies (Towards an integral, p2p approach to posthuman destinies)

[Michel Bauwens]

Dear Rich,


thank you so much for your excellent explanation, I'm publishing it on the
6th,

with some intro words, see


http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/towards-an-integral-p2p-approach-to-posthuman-destinies/2010/01/06


(with follow up on the 7th:
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/relational-technologies-vs-inner-technologies/2010/01/07
)



we focus on inner technologies of self knowledge and self-governance and
their co-evolution with ethical stances appropriate to the ubiquitous
technological environments we increasingly populate.

For me an integral approach is an approach that refuses reductionism in any
form and that combines an understanding of both (inter)subjective and
(inter)objective aspects of any reality. Peer to peer on the other hand,
adds the ethical requirement that we should treat each other as
equipotential beings who all have something to contribute to the world, and
that we need social systems that allow the full expression of those
possibilities for every human being.

While both the integral and p2p approaches are growing separately, it is
still rare to find them combined. The better known integral approaches, such
as those of Ken Wilber, take a strong pro-hierarchy stance and align
themselves with neoconservative values.

There is one exception that I’d like to bring to our readers attention and
that is the site maintained by Rich Carlson and friends, called “Science,
Culture, Integral Yoga <http://www.sciy.org/>“, and which attempts to bring
the work and insights of Aurobindo into the 21st century. It’s a site that
consistently brings high quality thinking and it has started focusing on
posthuman destinies lately.

A recent example of a blog item to give you a flavour of the site:

* Bernard Stiegler and the Question of
Technics<http://www.sciy.org/2009/12/30/culture-industry-redux-stiegler-and-derrida-on-technics-and-cultural-politics-by-robert-sinnerbrink/>

But especially look at this four part
series<http://www.sciy.org/2009/03/11/techno-capitalism-and-post-human-destinies-i-by-debashish-banerji/>
:

* *Techno-Capitalism and Post-human Destinies – by Debashish Banerji*

I asked SCIY editor Rich Carlson to explain the motivation of the site and
their focus on the posthuman theme.

It is undoubtedly heady stuff but for those willing to do their theoretical
homework, this site really rocks. Really one of the few places where the
history of the future is being written, and that has got its emancipatory
heart in the right place.

*Rich Carlson:*

*“Much like P2P, Posthuman Destinies contemplates emerging global networks,
technology and culture. Additionally, perennial matters of identity and
difference, being and becoming etc.. are foregrounded through articles and
discussions that concern posthumanism.*

*Philosophically posthumanism assumes an existential stance that
interrogates the claims of Humanism, a view of humanity derived from the
European Enlightenment. Humanism assumes that human nature is constituted by
possessive individuals intrinsically unified around a free willing rational
essence that expresses its agency in a world in which social relationships
are determined by a liberal political economy.*

*The premises of Humanism has been challenged for perhaps at least a hundred
years or more when representational art began its abstract expressionist
turn in the first decades of the last century, at a time when the most
cherished assumptions that Humanism held about rationality and human nature
were shattered by the First World War. For the past several decades the
premises of philosophical humanism have been thoroughly challenged by
postmodern theorist. Most recently assumptions underlying what we think of
as the “liberal humanist subject” (Hayles 2005) have been challenged through
advances in cognitive, neural, information and complexity sciences that
conceive human nature as resultant from the emergence of multiple autonomous
biological programs running in complex parallel sequences. Rather than
imbuing it with the quality of individual personality these new sciences
quantify human nature in terms of cybernetic information or reduce it to
Darwinian algorithms.*

*Coupled with the cybernetic perspective that the new sciences view human
nature through, our understanding of cultural history has radically shifted.
In the dromospheric vision of philosopher Paul Virilio “we are passing from
the extensive time of history to the intensive time of an instantaneity
without history made possible by the technologies of the hour”. (Virilio
2000)*

*The compression of time through exponential processing advances in
transferring data at light speed is disorientating for those who have
historically conceived identity in reference to a spatial environment fixed
in time. As time accelerates along with is it evolutionary co-efficient of
increasing virtual space we find ourselves inhabiting mental environments
that serve to erase traditional referents for constructing identity. *

*The advent of the posthuman is also facilitated by the desiring machines of
the global market place whose technological will works us over constantly by
harvesting our attention for the consumption of its ever increasing digital
commodity forms.*

*The posthuman condition is therefore predicated not only on a new
cybernetic view of the human but also is a product of economic subjectivity
in the early 21st century as well as resultant from the collapse of human
identity as something rooted in nature and separate from the machine,
network or circuit.*

*Another genealogy of the posthuman that is central to our concerns we trace
back to the last pages of Michel Foucault’s Order of Things (1970), in which
he proclaims the death of man and the discursive vanishing of the
rational/irrational trace under the sign of reflexivity.*

*Foucault’s late discourse on the technologies of the self also serves as an
organizing principle for posthuman destinies in that we focus on inner
technologies of self knowledge and self-governance and their co-evolution
with ethical stances appropriate to the ubiquitous technological
environments we increasingly populate. *

*In cultivating an awareness of these technologies of self we follow another
trail along the cross-cultural trajectory of the post human that leads to
Sri Aurobindo the philosopher, seer and resistance fighter of colonialist
Empire in early 20th century India. His visionary works conceive the
potential for post human consciousness to integrate its physical, vital and
mental dimensions of being through meditational techniques that facilitate
inner quietude and self-awareness in order to stabilize mutations of
consciousness that serve to open the human to new ranges of experience and
to fix these “supramental” realities (1949) into the very cells of its
evolving embodiment. The dialog with Foucault and Aurobindo is often
mediated through an understanding of the posthuman as if envisaged in the
Zarathustraian parables of Friedrich Nietszche in terms of the last man or
the overman.*

*Posthuman Destinies also conspires to explore the creative tension between
the remotely utopian vision of the evolution of consciousness held by such
early and mid 20th century philosophers from both East and West, as
Aurobindo, Tagore, James, Bergson, Whitehead, de Chardin, McLuhan and
juxtapose these discourses with contemporary dystopian accounts of humanity
as its co-evolves with the relational technologies of networks as theorized
by philosophers such as Deleuze, Baudrillard, Virilio and represented in the
fiction of writers such as Pynchon, Dick, Gibson, whose works recognize the
radical global inequalities that destabilize any universal claims of
progress that maybe couched within evolutionary narratives of consciousness
or of the future. In this spirit we also attempt to engage with matters of
global inequality, subjugation and alternate modernities posited in the
post-colonial scholarship of theorist such as Said, Guha, Bhabha. Finally,
our articles and discussions are all backgrounded by the realization that
contemplating the uncertain fate of the future be it in humanity or nature
can only lead to aporia.”*

*References*

* Hayles, K. My Mother was a Computer, Chicago University of Chicago Press,
2005

* Virilio, P. Polar Inertia. London: Sage Publications, 2000.

* Foucault, M. The Order of Things, New York Random House Press, 1970

* Aurobindo Sri, The Life Divine Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press,
1949


On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 2:16 AM, Richard Carlson <rcarlson at olypen.com> wrote:

> Michel
>
> Here is a description of posthuman destinies. Its about a page and a half
> (as I needed to define our terms as well to those who may not know them) I
> will attach it in a word doc and post below here if you have any trouble
> opening. thanks again for posting this.
>
>
>
>
>
> regards,
> Rich
>
>
> ................
>
> Much like P2P, Posthuman Destinies contemplates emerging global networks,
> technology and culture. Additionally, perennial matters of identity and
> difference, being and becoming etc.. are foregrounded through articles and
> discussions that concern posthumanism.
>
> Philosophically posthumanism assumes an existential stance that
> interrogates the claims of Humanism, a view of humanity derived from the
> European Enlightenment.  Humanism assumes that human nature is constituted
> by possessive individuals intrinsically unified around a free willing
> rational essence that expresses its agency in a world in which social
> relationships are determined by a liberal political economy.
>
> The premises of Humanism has been challenged for perhaps at least a hundred
> years or more when representational art began its abstract expressionist
> turn in the first decades of the last century, at a time when the most
> cherished assumptions that Humanism held about rationality and human nature
> were shattered by the First World War. For the past several decades the
> premises of philosophical humanism have been thoroughly challenged by
> postmodern theorist. Most recently assumptions underlying what we think of
> as the “liberal humanist subject” (Hayles 2005) have been challenged through
> advances in cognitive, neural, information and complexity sciences that
> conceive human nature as resultant from the emergence of multiple autonomous
> biological programs running in complex parallel sequences.  Rather than
> imbuing it with the quality of individual personality these new sciences
> quantify human nature in terms of cybernetic information or reduce it to
> Darwinian algorithms.
>
> Coupled with the cybernetic perspective that the new sciences view human
> nature through, our understanding of cultural history has radically shifted.
> In the dromospheric vision of philosopher Paul Virilio  "we are passing
> from the extensive time of history to the intensive time of an instantaneity
> without history made possible by the technologies of the hour". (Virilio
> 2000)
>
> The compression of time through exponential processing advances in
> transferring data at light speed is disorientating for those who have
> historically conceived identity in reference to a spatial environment fixed
> in time.  As time accelerates along with is it evolutionary co-efficient
> of increasing virtual space we find ourselves inhabiting mental environments
> that serve to erase traditional referents for constructing identity.
>
>
>
> The advent of the posthuman is also facilitated by the desiring machines of
> the global market place whose technological will works us over constantly by
> harvesting our attention for the consumption of its ever increasing digital
> commodity forms.
>
>
>
> The posthuman condition is therefore predicated not only on a new
> cybernetic view of the human but also is a product of economic subjectivity
> in the early 21st century as well as resultant from the collapse of human
> identity as something rooted in nature and separate from the machine,
> network or circuit.
>
>
>
> Another genealogy of the posthuman that is central to our concerns we trace
> back to the last pages of Michel Foucault’s Order of Things (1970), in which
> he proclaims the death of man and the discursive vanishing of the
> rational/irrational trace under the sign of reflexivity.
>
> Foucault’s late discourse on the technologies of the self also serves as an
> organizing principle for posthuman destinies in that we focus on inner
> technologies of self knowledge and self-governance and their co-evolution
> with ethical stances appropriate to the ubiquitous technological
> environments we increasingly populate.
>
> In cultivating an awareness of these technologies of self we follow another
> trail along the cross-cultural trajectory of the post human that leads to
> Sri Aurobindo the philosopher, seer and resistance fighter of colonialist
> Empire in early 20th century India.  His visionary works conceive the
> potential for post human consciousness to integrate its physical, vital and
> mental dimensions of being through meditational techniques that facilitate
> inner quietude and self-awareness in order to stabilize mutations of
> consciousness that serve to open the human to new ranges of experience and
> to fix these “supramental” realities (1949) into the very cells of its
> evolving embodiment. The dialog with Foucault and Aurobindo is often
> mediated through an understanding of the posthuman as if envisaged in the
> Zarathustraian parables of Friedrich Nietszche in terms of the last man or
> the overman.
>
> Posthuman Destinies also conspires to explore the creative tension between
> the remotely utopian vision of the evolution of consciousness held by such
> early and mid 20th century philosophers from both East and West, as
> Aurobindo, Tagore, James, Bergson, Whitehead, de Chardin, McLuhan and
> juxtapose these discourses with contemporary dystopian accounts of humanity
> as its co-evolves with the relational technologies of networks as theorized
> by philosophers such as Deleuze, Baudrillard, Virilio and represented in the
> fiction of writers such as Pynchon, Dick, Gibson, whose works recognize the
> radical global inequalities that destabilize any universal claims of
> progress that maybe couched within evolutionary narratives of consciousness
> or of the future. In this spirit we also attempt to engage with matters of
> global inequality, subjugation and alternate modernities posited in the
> post-colonial scholarship of theorist such as Said, Guha, Bhabha. Finally,
> our articles and discussions are all backgrounded by the realization that
> contemplating the uncertain fate of the future be it in humanity or nature
> can only lead to aporia.
>
> References
>
> Hayles, K. My Mother was a Computer, Chicago University of Chicago Press,
> 2005
>
> Virilio, P. Polar Inertia. London: Sage Publications, 2000.
>
> Foucault, M. The Order of Things, New York Random House Press, 1970
>
> Aurobindo Sri, The Life Divine Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press,
> 1949
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Jan 1, 2010, at 3:46 AM, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>
> best wishes to you as well,
>
> I will presenting the foucault piece on Jan 7,
>
> but I'm wondering: could you perhaps present the Techne series to our
> audience?
>
> Michel
>
> On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 1:32 AM, Richard Carlson <rcarlson at olypen.com>wrote:
>
>> Hi Michel
>>
>> I wanted to share the deconstruction and reconstruction of our blogzine
>> science culture integral yoga into posthuman destines
>> http://www.sciy.org/
>> 1001 blessing to you in the New Year
>>
>> best
>> Rich
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
> thank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>
> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
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>
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>
>
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

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