The Kurzwell Follies: The Fallacy of Technological Salvation

In the Business Section of the New York Times (June 13, 2010) an article caught my attention. Entitled “Merely Human? So Yesterday:  The Singularity Movements Sees a Merger of Technology and the Mine,” the article describes this movement’s pretention to offer a way to what they consider to be a new stage of humanity.  “They believe that technology may be the only way to solve the world’s ills, while also allowing people to seize control of the evolutionary process.”  

They envision a “time, possibly just a couple decades from now, when a superior intelligence will dominate and live will take on an altered form that we can’t predict or comprehend in our current, limited state.”

The Breakout Creative Project also envisions some kind of species-level transformation; so how do the two visions compare?

Here I will note three points where the Breakout Creative Project emphatically diverges from the Singularity movement’s core conceptions (as described in this extensive article).

Three Fallacies:

First: Its “Utopian” nature.  I define “utopianism” as a mental exercise that  deploys instruments of one kind or another (scientific, political, religious) to implement one overriding idea that purports to “solve” humanity’s ills.  Human history is replete with such monomaniacal dreams and at least since the 17^th Century, these dreams have relied on the wonders of technology and science, in addition to religious fantasies to accomplish human redemption. In this case, the “quasi-religious answers to the fountain of youth” have to do with ameliorating the ills of the body and mortality.  Other utopian ideas have focused on race or class as indicators of superiority.  In all cases, they end up creating distinctions between have’s and have-not’s, and privileging one group over another.  

One commentator remarks, “It is rich people building a lifeboat and getting off the ship.”  The danger of such a thing happening permeates all utopian notions.  (In another article, in the Book Review section, for example, Justin Vaïsse describes the decline and increasingly rigid and nationalistic course of the “neo-conservative” movement – a fate of all utopian schemes, we believe.)

Second: “We will transcend all of the limitations of our biology,” says Raymond Kurzwell, the ingenious and peripatetic icon of the movement. Such a vision betrays its mechanistic core.  Biology consists of a complex and integrated assemblage of mechanisms in organisms, which both stabilize and repeat certain processes, and also evolve and adapt to changing circumstances, within a range prescribed by the constituents of the mechanisms.  The movement’s idea is to extend the operational range of these mechanisms with nanotechnologies, genetic manipulations and pharmaceuticals.  

One movement avatar expects to live to 700.  We ask, why stop there?

In the Breakout Creative world, the envisioned transformation does not occur on the level of the biological, but on the level of the total psychic/somatic mode of engagement humans (at least, but not exclusively) have with all of occurrences that burst and sparkle around, amid and through us.  That is, the Breakout Creative project entails the development of new faculties that more closely approach moments of pure emergence that are not yet resolved into any mode, biological or other and yet give rise to all such modes. 

No mechanism suffices here; what we envision does, however entail a wider grasp of what we call “thought.”  Thought is not calculation and mechanization, but real open and opening engagement of one’s whole being, that touches upon how the language of nature and the cosmos “write out” what cannot be anticipated or expected at all.

The facile notion of biological extension simply exploits the fantastically rich and varied means by which combinations of existing entities in nature can endure and be affective.  But in the mode of “thought” (and not mere calculation and rationalization) we have already opened a non-biological dimension.  Thought places the human in contact with moments of emergence that have not been comprehended, no less translated into a biological form.  The drive toward art and new modes of science, such as self-organization and quantum physics did not originate in the biological realm, but in thought.

I love the comment cited in the Book Review section of the Times (also June 13, 2010) in an article entitled, “Random Acts of Science” (I love that title) by Paul Dirac, a true Breakout Creative figure and a founder of modern quantum physics: “quantum mechanics was the first mathematical theory in science in which the discoverers did not fully understand the meaning of the terms in their own equations (p. 25).” Welcome to the world of the Breakout Creatives Project.

And that goes to the third concern:  Its notion of exponentialism.  This is another version of 17^th century science fictions of gigantism and Frankenstein, but now tamed and put to the service of human… something.  This is an idea whose time really has to go away. Exponentialism means that change along an already defined and identified trajectory increases by multiplying by factors of itself, rather than by an external and constant multiplier. 

Nature and the cosmos do not work this way.  

Nature works by accumulations of factors accreting to the constitution of an entity to the point where its structures are no longer sufficient to sustain its own weight, density and meliorating, complicated contrivances.  At a certain point, the increasing complexity of the entity gives way to a symmetry-break occurs, and the first entity (from atoms to galaxies and organisms) completely disperses.  Under the right conditions, some components of the old entity mix with and encompass (completely foreign) new, freely available energies from the surrounding milieus and may even self-organize into a new entity.  The factors from the previous entity may carry forward into the new structure, and so some manner of continuity is maintained from one side of the symmetry-break to the other – or not. 

Thus the movement even misappropriates the idea of “singularity.”  This is a notion that comes not from exponential accumulation, but from symmetry-breaking.  It envisions an “event” as comprising a moment of dispersion, loss and epochal division, not the establishment of a process we control or guide. 

The hubris of this mal-appropriation of the idea dazzles me.

In the Breakout Creative Project we envision humans as a species that drives toward instigating its own symmetry-breaking – and most decidedly not its own biological preservation. Humans are willing to die to strike out toward uncharted frontiers. We envision a drive that is not oriented toward immortality, but one that embraces mortality as a model for giving way to more expansive and encompassing ways of engaging cosmic, natural and earth-generated energies.  We take our cue from the earth, as in the notion of “humility.”  The idea of continuing human biology flies in the face of such a reverence for the mortality that gives rise to any and all modes of singularized beings throughout the universe.  

Again, their arrogance amazes me.

Wrong-Headed 

As I see it, this is just another example of the pre-mature and wrong-headed appropriation of the great mystic notion of humans as direct expressions of cosmic potencies. In this case, the still-alluring 17^th Century conceits of the omnipotence of Reason, the Mind, and Science is rushing to the solutions it is capable of, and not doing the longer, harder, more patient and expansive work of discerning what a great cosmic impetus really demands of us, offers us and may portend as a path.

The notion the Breakout Creatives Project envisions is one in which humans develop new faculties, new orientations, new manners of engaging what occurs.  Technology may, indeed will, abet this effort.  But the end point is obscured and left open:  we envision a symmetry-break occurring that forbids prediction, or even remembrance of a former way of being human (just as we now have no way to relate to the minds of our forebears of a millennium ago). 

We sense that the drive of being human has nothing to do with immortality but has everything to do with ever more approaching that moment when actuality itself emerges and we open whatever we have been in order to embrace, celebrate the occurrence of what comes forth.

 

No Apologies; But Deep Gratitude

Readers comment about the difficulty of following some of the ideas presented here.  They are abstract or conceptual or philosophical.  Lay readers -- mentors, creative types, friends of the project -- find the notions here strange and hard to follow.
I cannot apologize, and I have to ask readers to do the work, follow what they can, and/or ask me to do a better job clarifying the ideas.  But I can't do away with these ideas.
Why?  Because breakout creative figures are about aspiration, and such a mindset and lifeway has to be appreciated on its own level.  Aspiration is about what is coming and doesn't exist yet, and still commands the decisions and values of people who hold them.
The breakout creative project intends to do a these things:
1.  Inform and train mentors to support these aspiring people.
2. Foster conversation among the creative types, and so increase communication and amplify the potential reception and effect of their work.
3.  Provide each type with a defining picture of their "mindsets," such that they experience the difficulties they do, and they are able to envision the breakout worlds they do.
4.  Provide each type with a sense of how their mindset connects with the larger human endeavor;  and that is, to grasp how this kind of creativity came to have around it the expectations and preferences it does -- as a matter of evolution and history.
5.  Most importantly, to help these figures and those who care for them and support them to see how this work is generative, making more alive and acting closer to the heart of what makes the human endeavor the difficult and yet commanding way it is.
To do this, we are forced to consider how it is that breakout creatives' values and life choices and needs do not track with the mainstream -- and how those who aspire to be "creative" need to deviate from the norming, leveling, dulling routines, prescriptions and "common sense" notions that prevail.
And so our ideas have to be "out there," and then get difficult to explain.
Our ideas cannot rely on common sensical, technical and managerial notions, but they do rely on deep research into what great thinkers and creative people are envisioning for a more expansive and encompassing human endeavor.  Nothing presented in this project is a matter of pure speculation, but comes from a deep study of people worth studying.
Self-organization and generativity underly all our work -- and so departs from cause and effect logic, or theological ideas of "presence" or mechanistic notions of "personal development."  Instead, we have to see how we grow through a process of gathering recollections that accrete and amass until a "symmetry break," a new frame of openness to life exerts itself.
Then contemporary work in philosophy, literary criticism, social thought, biology and neuroanatomy, new research in history all come into play.
I attempt to synthesize these influences into a narrative about each figure that accomplishes the objectives listed above.  This narrative is difficult because it uses new ideas not yet taught in schools in order to give substance and veracity to the feelings and drives that constitute aspiration.
This blog will focus on some of the seminal ideas used in the project in hopes of providing another stab at clarity.  The rest is up to the reader.
My deep respect and admiration, and deeper appreciation and gratitude is offered to each and every one of you who does try to stay with me.  My deepest respect and care is offered to all those who want to join with all of us who share the need to firm our aspirations into thoughts an actions that will open the human endeavor to the new horizons it craves, at the core of its being.
Please tell me what ideas you would like to know more about.
Please read the drafts of work published in the public folder (see www.breakoutcreatives.net.
Work with me.

Entrusting, Breakout Creative Style

The philosopher Heidegger proclaimed "we are only what we entrust ourselves to be." (The Essence of Truth, p. 58). 

I thought about this statement during a recent conversation with a friend and colleague in our "breakout creative"  project.  She felt that it was important to acknowledge where a person was in their lives and probe for what that present state of things offered.  I countered that it was the role of the breakout creative project to  help people to get beyond where they are now, to appeal to their aspirations, and to show them their readiness, the readiness they now embrace, for taking their next bold steps. 

The breakout creative is that kind of person who never settles into the everyday, and instead takes up on their yen and yearning for a more vital, encompassing, expansive and generative human endeavor. And our job in this project is to help people entrust themselves in order to live that way to the fullest extent they can.

I have met many such people in my professional mentoring work.  They aren't famous and they aren't all brilliant or even competent in all aspects of their lives.  Most don't write books and many have failed relationships in their pasts.  But they all exhibit one thing: an indomitable faith-for the generativity of life. They feel this so strongly that they risk success and fortune so that more people can be freed from their fears and self-limiting stories.  And they realize that to make such a risk pay off, they have to do the work of a breakout creative every day:  study in their fields, labor hard to expand their grammars and vocabularies to reach the new and touch the old, find new avenues of expression and new friends for support.

This is such hard work.  And yet breakout creatives entrust themselves with such a task.  

What is it like to entrust yourself with such a mission in life?  You have to feel in your bones that something else has to happen in the human endeavor if it is going to survive at all.  You have to feel that in some way, no matter what the outcome, something has to be ventured.  And there has to be the backbone to stand in this vision so that what you do can be seen, heard, touched, encountered.  Somehow you have to both entrust yourself with the talents, energies, interests and values you hold, and simultaneously you have to let go of yourself, laugh a bit at your own earnestness and let loose of what you want to give.

Then comes the scary part: You have to be willing to go public with these orientations.  Without going public, you aren't trusting yourself, you aren't entrusting what that life of yours is offering.  And you have to go public with what it is that your work, your heart and your sense of what generative brings you to.  Settling for old slogans, ideologies, religions, institutional glorifications won't do.  You have to take responsibility for putting something into play, into the public arena that can open up beyond what anyone has yet comprehended.  And take the consequences.

That is why for  breakout creatives their status quo states -- who they are, what their identities and affiliations have always been -- are not sufficient.  They entrust themselves, and look for others who do likewise, to what can only be enacted by living in the faith-for what is generative, what surpasses even them. And so they have to entrust themselves to being able to step into and grow into what is yet to be brought forth; and then they have to entrust to themselves the task of doing so, to bring forth what is to come, by their own hands.  

And for all those who do not consider themselves to be breakout creatives, but choose to stand with them, to learn from them, we see what we must make ourselves more awake to, and we learn how to do so. Maybe we can't learn to write poetry like Holderlin, or philosophy like Heidegger or Nancy or Deleuze;  maybe we can't paint like Picasso does or compose music the way Messiaen does.  But we can learn how to entrust ourselves to that faith-for the generative and we can learn how to entrust ourselves to a great task.  

Breakout creatives are just like you and me, except in one regard: they are never satisfied with where they are, who they are or what their identity and "selves" are.  They are not even curious about such things. They live to learn. 


The breakout creative project is dedicated to such learning:  learning to become awake to the living we are, the living all around us, and the call to entrust ourselves to bring forth the generativity that sustains it all.