Braving the New World Order
'By means of ever more effective methods of mind manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms - elections, parliaments, supreme courts, and all the rest - will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the shows as they see fit'. —Aldous Huxley, 1958 (quoted by Mattias Desmet)
Are we already posthuman?
According to Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, we have already entered the future where humanity embraces "the fusion of our physical, our digital, and our biological identities.”
On the other hand—since it’s all relative—maybe we’re still prehuman.
‘This is the weirdest era in human history. By far. Nothing else even comes close. Billionaires trying to kill everyone. Civil society unable to form a coherent thought. Institutions lie in smoldering ruins. Poisons handed out like candy. We are Neanderthals with iPhones.’ —Toby Rogers
Either way, we’ve moved far along a spectrum, and our speed on that ride is accelerating exponentially.
Let’s try on each costume and see how it fits.
First, the nom du jour, post (or trans) humanism. What is it to be posthuman? At the outermost extreme, its elite advocates profess faith in their immortality through disembodied, computer-cloud based consciousness. On a mass population level, its about a technological merger between brain and computer, for influencing and tracking behavior, thought, emotion, even genetics… all for safety and convenience, of course.
What, control? That’s a crazy conspiracy theory. And it goes on your record now, you realize.
What’s left of the human in that equation? Gone forever.
Looking back down the road we’ve come, human evolution can be redefined as an evolution of what humans are and what we depend on for our survival. First the cane, then the eyeglasses. First the rifle, then the skidoo and ATV. First the athlete’s amphetamine, then the ligament replacement surgery, platelet-rich plasma and stem cell therapy. First the peg leg, then the artificial heart. First the shaman’s medicine plant, then the mRNA bioweapon.
Vaccines aren’t seat belts.
Vaccines are car accidents.
—Toby Rogers
First the bronze breastplate, then the robotic exoskeleton of the super soldier.
So let’s retreat awhile to the haunts of the prehuman. Do we look to our three-foot-tall cousins who survived until fifty thousand years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores? Or to the Neanderthal brutes who battled us for Eurasia at the same time, following Homo sapiens’ exodus from Africa? Not exactly a model of sustainability (except those cousin lineages managed okay for a million years until we came around and said, “Hi. You’re squatting on land we want. Now get lost.”
What about the undisputed prehumans, the chimps and bonobos and the rest, right down to the first primates, the first mammals to prance over the footprints of dinosaurs? Yes, they have their advantages and faults too; but anyway, we’re clearly better than that.
So much better, we claim we are the chosen ones—and if that means all the rest must die, it is God’s will.
That’s a hell of a justification. Why not just admit, we’re a bunch of murthering savages?
No, we must be civilized about it… like the British, shouldering their pasty-faced “white man’s burden” to remake the world in their image.
Are we so talented and wise, smart and gifted, that truly we are chosen to reign supreme, our achievements evidence aplenty that we deserved it, gifted Dominion by the very Word of God?
Let us pause to reconsider. Compared to Homo transhumanus, we’re still at the prehuman stage. Compared to the ape-men of our historical conquests, we clearly a notch ahead, a quantum leap to at least halfway there, wherever there is.
So wise and civilized, so technologically savvy and clever, so super fit for survival over all competition that it's not remotely funny. Yet, so backward in our prejudices and habits, our clinging to creature comforts, our primitive communication modes and primal motivations: acting to replace fear with status and power, by aggressive name-calling, and brandishing crude weapons of destruction.
Has the human possibility vanished altogether, with only our prehuman and posthuman proclivities left to battle it out, fighting over the spoils, jealous to claim the brandname legacy?
Three Compelling Overviews
Paul Cudenec – The world out of kilter: occupation and zombification
Toby Rogers – This really is World War III: It's Team Tyranny vs. Team Freedom in the fight of our lives
N. S. Lyons – The Right’s Future Must be Parallel, and Counter-Revolutionary