The Psychedelic Transhumanists. Courtesy of Leary – Philip H Bailey, McKenna – Courtesy of Erowid, Mark Pesce – Mark Pesce, Erik Davis – Andy Miah. Background photo by Paul Downey
Blind faith in technological progress as salvation is called into question, especially as regards the illusion of, and desire for, absolute control.
By Michael Garfield
Transhumanism in a fortune cookie: the familiar human world is just one point along a continuum of evolution, and we have an unprecedented capacity to participate in that process. And yet, the future being as slippery as it is, there are as many visions for how this might occur as there are visionaries to guess at it. Computer scientists tend to have one transhumanism; genetic engineers, another. However, coherent themes emerge for those who have taken it upon themselves to make a sweeping survey of human inquiry, integrating a keen reading of the vectors of our technology with postmodern insight into the nature of mind.
Some of these thinkers have been catalyzed by the psychedelic experience — in a way, the most informative window into a world beyond the human that we have yet discovered. They understand the message of psychedelics and the message of technology to converge on the horizon of a deeper reading of reality that recognizes mind and matter as dimensions of the same truth — a truth for which language has ill-prepared us.
Among the ranks of these “psychedelic transhumanists” are legendary rebels like Timothy Leary, wise fools like Terence McKenna, cultural commentators like Erik Davis and Mark Pesce and avantpsychopharmacologists like David Pearce. Hailing from disparate knowledge domains, they all share a hyperliterate intelligence that is, in its own way, rigorous. Their arguments are not necessarily subject to the conventional scientific method, but they are not so easily refuted.
Their common vision shares much with the rest of the transhuman community, including an embrace of technology and science as both potent and inevitable; an evolutionary model of the universe and humanity; a sense of the human organism as something that can be tinkered with and expanded; a recognition of drugs as a technology that can dramatically reinvent identity, and a playful challenging of fixed boundaries. In many ways they demonstrate the seed of transhumanism in this moment by exemplifying self-revision and the reevaluation of assumptions as an open ended and ongoing process. And along the way, they tatter the mechanistic control fantasies we have held onto in spite of our most sophisticated inquiries.
Among these visionaries, we find a general agreement on the emergence of machine intelligence, but from a less dualistic perspective than most in the transhuman sphere — leaning towards a deeper and more balanced recognition of both inner and outer realities. They tend to critique philosophies that consider mind a mere epiphenomenon, or that fail to recognize the role of the speculator in speculation.
They see technology as ideas, and ideas as technology. They question our fanatical efforts at control via the runaway complexity of progress, and remind us of the stubborn persistence of the unconscious, the body and the other. They remind us to see the evolution of humanity and beyond as much in terms of qualia as quanta, and paint the future as more sensitive to psychological, spiritual, ethical, and biological concerns than those on the hardboiled tech edge.
The distinctions between this vision and the more common idea of a technological singularity are easily distilled. In their own words, presented as a “virtual conversation” of transcripts and correspondences, here are the core messages of a transhumanist vision informed by the psychedelic experience.
6 responses so far ↓
wil // October 5, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Expanded? Down a rabbit hole of distraction and potential abuse. It strips away your normal defenses and/or controls. And you can’t keep what you really think in, or keep possible abuse or evil out. And without barriers–one can be defenseless, or joyously cruel. It turns the usual order of the mind inside out/upside down. Usually the rational mind manages or controls the senses. Under psychedelia–the senses such as they are in that state dominate the rational mind. Which depending on the situation–could be wonderful, or could be traumatic.
pjwalker911 // October 6, 2009 at 9:48 am
The senses do dominate the mind depending on the substance like LSD (heightened and distorted sensation, smelling sounds, hearing tastes etc). Transhumanist Terence McKenna, influenced by Aldous Huxley, was a big promoter of DMT. He spoke of “self-transforming machine elves” seen in DMT visions which serve as inspirations for the ultimate wet dream of transhumanists, to become literal “transformer” robots who can morph their shape in any desired form.
From what I have read about DMT (never tried it) it is more like an out of body visionary trance experience where the senses are practically left behind and the body shuts down, but only for a short time. The DMT user feels he has accessed a higher realm and when he comes down to earth again he feels that this world is overrated, thus the DMT user is led to look down on this Earth and believe it needs “improving”. Alex Jones’ buddy Joe Rogan uses DMT, is a Satanist and claims humanity is a disease on the Earth that needs to be culled. This is an attitude that is compatible with transhumanism which is ultimately based on the eugenics philosophy of the Huxley aristocratic bloodline. Julian Huxley coined the term “transhumanism” back in the 50s.
george // October 7, 2009 at 6:16 am
hey pj based on your own judgment, what do you think of Alex Jones role as a freedom fighter in the whole movement? Some people say he is fake some people says he exaggerates and spins. I know he can sound like a hot headed Christian sometimes but from what Ive heard from his shows, I believe he is pretty righteous at the least. Let me know your thoughts please.
pjwalker911 // October 7, 2009 at 7:27 am
George,
I hope you don’t think this presumptuous, but it seems to me the very fact of you asking this question means you have some doubts about him yourself. That’s how it starts. I listened to him almost religiously from 2000 to 2007, less religiously as time went on and as my own doubts grew about him. I will just make a couple of quick points about him.
First is, the defacto leader of the patriot/freedom movement was a man named William Cooper. He did his own thing for years before AJ came along. Then out of the blue comes this blazing star onto the patriot scene and he is acting like a wildman, a sterotypical crazed conspiracy theorist, quite unlike the calm thoughtful researcher that Cooper was. Then around 2000, Cooper starts to have his own doubts about AJ. He makes several increasingly condemnatory comments about AJ mostly as being a fear-monger and an agent provocateur basically. Not long after he started making these statements, he ended up dead. Cooper was the one who predicted 9/11. Jones stole this mantle from Cooper claiming that no, it was HE who predicted it. You can research and confirm this for yourself.
Another important distinction between these two. William Cooper had no limitations on what he would discuss. Everything was fair game. He spoke in the harshest terms about the powerful Knights of Malta, one of the first to do so. But AJ on the other hand, refuses to talk about them. Why? Think about it.
Meerkat- // October 7, 2009 at 9:28 am
If it’s worth anything, on the mtsar forum a while back, someone even found his site to be on CIA servers. :))
pjwalker911 // October 8, 2009 at 2:24 am
Well, we are all in the Matrix here, so it doesn’t really matter what intel agency is monitoring you. It’s all the same, all-encompassing Big Brother, all-seeing eye of Total Information. We are all in it, except those who still live deep in the jungles untouched by the modern world.