Transhumanism is all the rage these days, whether in the mechanistic, dehumanized perspective of Ray Kurzweil – who happens to be Google’s chief of engineering – or the cybernetic, interconnected human web glimpsed in Herzog’s Lo and Behold – Reveries of the Connected World. Over at the World Economic Forum, the coming transformation of humanity into a race of cyborgs is eagerly predicted – as though we had no choice in the matter.
The visions the mystics has given way to mere technology. Indeed, this is the path of false gods. The lowest specimen of humanity, given money and machinery, can become superhuman…or rather a simulacrum of the superhuman, a peasant in the guise of an aristocrat. This is democracy taken to the level of reductio ad absurdum.
Transformation – in the model of Odin, or for that matter any serious spiritual path – must be earned. It is in the earning that one Becomes.
