Daily Archives: May 6, 2022

In giving themselves godlike abilities, the technocratic elites are moving towards a transhumanist future powered by their own intelligent design that could give them the divine authority to rewrite human rights as we know them.

Through gene editing, synthetic biology, and the merger of humans and technology, governments and corporations are fundamentally altering what it means to be human.

In a future where humans are no longer considered to be natural humans, what would that mean for human rights?

History began when humans invented gods, and will end when humans become gods Yuval Noah Harari

The American Declaration of Independence holds that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Rights are rights because they are considered to come from the creator they are God-given and therefore, every citizen is born with these natural rights.

Article 1 of the 1948 UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights also says that humans are born free: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Ourintelligent design is going to be the new driving force of the evolution of life Yuval Noah Harari

In the era of transhumanism; however, our technocratic elites are looking to replace God, the creator with their own intelligent design.

In doing so, technocrats become the creator the higher power that endows humanity with certain rights.

In making themselves godlike through their own devices, the cyborg priesthood wouldnt have to answer to anybody.

Rules do not apply to gods. Gods are meant to be worshipped. Gods can be vengeful.

Now, the peoples elected representatives face a fateful choice: restore citizen controls of technology or surrender to the cyborg theocracy James Poulos, 2021

Unless ordinary Americans regain a hands-on mastery of our most powerful digital tools, we will become compliant posthumans or ungovernable psychotics, sacrificing what is left of our civilization and nation to vengeful new gods James Poulos, 2021

In his written testimony to Congress in December, 2021, author James Poulos observed that our technoethical elite believe that we will fully merge with our technology and become as gods.'

He added that unless ordinary Americans regain a hands-on mastery of our most powerful digital tools, we will become compliant posthumans or ungovernable psychotics, sacrificing what is left of our civilization and nation to vengeful new gods.

Pouloss message to lawmakers was clear: restore citizen controls of technology or surrender to the cyborg theocracy.

Putting technocrats in the place of God could give them the unaccountable, divine authority to redefine human rights as they see fit from their position as the creator.

You dont have to be a religious person in order to appreciate the role that the concept of God plays in the construction of human rights.

Can humans be endowed with natural rights without a higher power to endow them?

Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled Hermetic Principle of Polarity, The Kybalion, 1908

The technocrats transhumanism agenda is lined with half-truths, where the promise of superhuman abilities will likely be reserved only for a select chosen class while the programmable plebs exist in a constant state of surveillance and control until they become irrelevant.

For the chosen ones, they could receive human performance enhancement that would give them the ability to never tire, think smarter, move faster, jump higher, see farther, hear better, hit harder, live longer, adapt stronger, and calculate quicker than any other human being on the planet.

For the rest of us programmable plebs, the fourth industrial revolution is already merging our physical, biological, and digital identities in order to monitor, manipulate, and reprogram our behavior.

If and when humans become fully integrated with machines on a large scale, where will the technology end and the human begin?

Eventually, they [our technoethical elite] believe, we will fully merge with our technology and become as gods' James Poulos, 2021

Its like what Obi-Wan Kenobi said about Darth Vader in Star Wars, Hes more machine now than man, twisted and evil.

Technology and bioengineering can blur the lines of who or what is responsible for a persons behavior the human, the technology, or the humans behind the technology.

This concept of who is ultimately calling the shots between humans and technology can be expanded to the notion of public-private partnerships.

For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which is a founding partner of the GAVI vaccine alliance has historically given more money to the World Health Organization (WHO) than every single nation state except the US.

When it comes to WHO policy recommendations that affect billions of people around the world, whos ultimately calling the shots governments elected by the people, or unelected and unaccountable globalists with ulterior motives?

Permittinghuman enhancement could aggravate existing social or economic inequalities World Health Organization, 2021

In July, 2021 the heavily-Gates-funded WHO published a series of reports on human genome editing recommendations and governance frameworks, which acknowledge the profound ethical implications surrounding human performance enhancement.

According to the WHOs Human genome editing: a framework for governance report:

Who will own the technology that resides within us or the genes that were altered synthetically?

Will human performance enhancement be reserved only for soldiers and the elite, or will it be made available to all?

What happens when technology embedded within the human body becomes obsolete?

Can a genetically-modified soldier ever return to a normal, civilian life?

Governments, corporations, and armies are likely to use technology to enhance human skills that they need like intelligence and discipline while neglecting other human skills like compassion, artistic sensitivity, and spirituality Yuval Noah Harari

Militaries around the world are already making some of the biggest strides towards transhumanism because of the advantages their super soldiers would have over their adversaries.

In April, 2022 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) issued a broad agency announcement looking for Human Performance Enhancement solutions for military use that include:

When humans fully integrate with machines, or are otherwise genetically altered through synthetic biology, will we still be able to call ourselves Homo sapiens?

Would our natural rights endowed at birth still apply to us after we are no longer considered natural humans?

The DARPA announcement follows a November, 2021 Pentagon-sponsored RAND report on human performance enhancement that revealed the US Department of Defense was looking into adding reptilian genes that provide the ability to see in infrared, and making humans stronger, more intelligent, or more adapted to extreme environments.

What sort of advantages would a person with godlike abilities have over a natural human being?

According to the RAND report, Technological Approaches to Human Performance Enhancement, modalities for human performance enhancement (HPE) can be grouped into three principal categories:

For the US Defense and Intelligence communities, human performance enhancement offers the potential to increase strength, speed, endurance, intelligence, and tolerance of extreme environments and to reduce sleep needs and reaction timescould aid in the development of better operators.

But what is to become of these super soldiers once their tour of duty has ended?

What happens when I leave the military? Does my implant get removed? Do I get to keep my implant? Does my implant get upgraded? Military Officers concerns about neural implants

According to the session, When Humans Become Cyborgs, at the 2020 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the majority of military officers were primarily concerned about ownership and bodily integrity when it came to neural implants.

These military officers wanted to know:

Hardware may be implanted and removed from the human body without affecting the course of human evolution as long as it isnt passed down to the next generation.

Genetically modifying human biology; however, can indeed forever alter the course of what it means to be human as the alterations can be passed from parents to their children.

The ability to edit biology can be applied to practically any cell type, enabling the creation of genetically modified plants or animals, as well as modifying the cells of adult organisms including humans Klaus Schwab, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, 2017

Humanity can also split into several different species depending on the types of genetic engineering taking place.

Just as human performance enhancement can create indefatigable superhumans with superior immune systems, improved cognitive abilities, and enhanced digestive systems, it can just as well create a weaker class of humans by removing their God-given abilities to defend themselves against viruses, to cognitively think for themselves, or to even break-down certain foods in their bodies.

When WEF founder Klaus Schwab talks about the fourth industrial revolution as not only changing what we are doing, but changes who we are fundamentally, hes not speaking in metaphors.

Schwab is telling us that technology is becoming part of our anatomy, both above and below our skin.

Klaus Schwab, 2015:

"And you see the difference of the #4IR is it doesn't change what you are doing, it changes you. If you take #genetic editing just as an example, it's you who are changed. And, of course, this has a big impact on your identity." #mRNA pic.twitter.com/SV7AmBBjGF

In his 2017 book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Schwab remarked that synthetic biology will provide us with the ability to customize organisms by writing DNA.

Whats more, The ability to edit biology can be applied to practically any cell type, enabling the creation of genetically modified plants or animals, as well as modifying the cells of adult organisms including humans.

Schwab also observed that The list of potential applications is virtually endlessranging from the ability to modify animals so that they can be raised on a diet that is more economical or better suited to local conditions, to creating food crops that are capable of withstanding extreme temperatures or drought.

The science is progressing so fast that the limitations are now less technical than they are legal, regulatory and ethical Klaus Schwab, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, 2017

Following the logic, this means that humans can also be modified to be raised on a diet that is more economical or better suited to local conditions.

When it comes to editing human biology, Schwab argues, the science is progressing so fast that the limitations are now less technical than they are legal, regulatory and ethical.

Seeing how the unelected globalists wish to drastically reduce meat consumption worldwide, the idea of modifying humans to be raised on a steady diet of bugs and lab-grown protein while potentially making people physically ill after consuming meat would definitely help achieve that goal.

In fact, NYU professor Matthew Liao has suggested on numerous occasions that engineering humans to be intolerant or allergic to meat would serve the climate change agenda because it would cut down on greenhouse gases and CO2 emissions.

Just as some people are naturally intolerant to milk or crayfish, like myself, we could artificially induce mild intolerance to meat by stimulating our immune system against common bovine proteins Matthew Liao, TED Talk, 2013

In his 2013 TED Talk, Liao remarked, Just as some people are naturally intolerant to milk or crayfish, like myself, we could artificially induce mild intolerance to meat by stimulating our immune system against common bovine proteins.

The professor has also suggested giving hormone treatments to children, so they dont grow to be so big and tall, because being smaller is environmentally friendly and more energy efficient.

If too much of the data becomes concentrated in too few hands, humanity will split, not into classes, it will split into different species Yuval Noah Harari

Software requires updates from time-to-time.

If there were ever an agenda to normalize software upgrades for a transhumanist future, then incentivizing or coercing the general population into routinely accepting updates to their bodies in the form of booster shots would definitely fit that bill.

In order for technology to give humans godlike abilities, it requires a complete surrender of all bodily autonomy to whomever controls the data.

That same data can also be used to enslave all of humanity.

Whether intentions are noble or nefarious, the ability to hack humans requires massive biological data collection in real-time.

Biological knowledge multiplied by Computing power multiplied by Data equals the Ability to Hack Humans Yuval Noah Harari

Once enough biometric data is collected, all that is needed is a lot of computing power to figure out how to hack human beings, which means governments and corporations know more about you than you know yourself.

On one end of the spectrum, the military and anyone else who is rich and powerful enough to get their hands on the technologies can give themselves superhuman abilities.

On the opposite end, people like you and I end up with human behavior modification instead of human performance enhancement.

How did we get to this point?

Organisms are algorithms Yuval Noah Harari

The road to transhumanism starts with digital identity, which lays the technological framework to monitor and record the personal details of every individual on the planet.

From there, the data stored in interoperable digital wallets can merge with the biometric data collected in real-time from devices connected to the human body via the Internet of Bodies.

Once technology gets in-and-under the skin to collect as much intimate data about you as possible, you are well on the way to transhumanism and the beginning of what could be the worst totalitarian surveillance regime in human history.

After all the genetic editing and the technological manipulation stemming from the fourth industrial revolution, will we still be able to call ourselves human?

How much of our humanity will be left after the synthetic overwrites the organic?

If we are to split into different species, can our rights be split as well?

When the time comes, will you bow down to your technocratic, cyborg priest class in service of their AI god?

Or will you risk being made irrelevant if it means theres even the slightest chance of winning the great battle for the preservation of humankind as we know it?

Original post:
Endowed by their Creator: exploring human rights in the age of transhumanism - The Sociable

Editors note:

TGC reviews media that is not suitable for everyone. To help readers make wise viewing decisions, we recommend reading Should I Watch This? and checking out a content guide.

You can tell a lot about the anxieties of an age by the common themes that show up in its narratives. Art tends to channel cultural preoccupations. In recent years, one theme has shown up again and again in movies and television: technology. From Black Mirror to Bo Burnhams Inside, from The Social Network to The Social Dilemma, theres no shortage of thought-provoking reflections on the moral dimensions and ethical questions arising in a world where technological development often outpaces the cultivation of wisdom. Its not just limited to the science-fiction genre, either. These days, comedies, dramas, and even martial art action films (see below) are also wrestling with technology-related themes.

Theres no shortage of thought-provoking reflections on the moral dimensions and ethical questions arising in a world where technological development often outpaces the cultivation of wisdom.

Christians should be leading the charge in thinking wisely about technology. There are several new books out there to facilitate these discussions: Tony Reinkes God, Technology, and the Christian Life, Felicia Wu Songs Restless Devices, Jason Thackers The Age of AI, Chris Martins Terms of Service, my own book on wisdom in the digital age, and more. If Hollywoods recent output is any indication, our society is conflicted and uncertain about technology. Even secular artists sense the moral complexity of technologys onward march. Consider picking up one of these books to be better equipped to bring Christian wisdom to the sorts of questions being asked in pop culturelike those in the five narratives below.

Kogonadas sublime family drama is the quietest and subtlest film on this list, yet it still raises big questions about the nature of being human. The story follows a family of four, in which each member comes from a different background and the son (Yang) just so happens to be a robot. After Yang malfunctions at the end of the (highly memorable) opening dance scene, the film goes on to explore familial grief as if a human child and brother had been lost. Whats the meaning of human connection when one part of that connection isnt human? Can a nonhuman being help humans rediscover the weird wonder and texture of lifefrom butterflies to tea to Chinese fun facts? If a nonhuman like Yang can experience friendship and love, work and leisure, happiness and pain, and social membership in a family and culture, what about the human experience does it lack? The film asks more questions than it answers, which is the type of science-fiction drama I like. Watch on Showtime. Rated PG.

As its very apt title suggests, theres a ton going on in this multiverse-hopping, maximalist martial arts film starring the brilliant Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan. Directed by the filmmaking duo Daniels (Swiss Army Man), EEAAO is rife with philosophical ideas and theological implications. While the films ideas are all over the map and ultimately land in a rather vacuous place (We can do whatever we want, nothing mattersbut be kind to one another anyway), its the form of the gonzo experience that rings true to life in the internet age. The film is more or less a microcosm of your average day onlinescrolling through feeds of random information, seeing context-less fragments of peoples lives, and generally feeling overwhelmed by the limitless drama unfolding at any given time, all over the world. The films three-part structure (I. Everything, II. Everywhere, III. All at Once) also captures the overwhelming chaos of perceptual life in the smartphone agewhere we literally have access to everything, everywhere, all at once. The internet has overcome the old constraints of space, time, and geographyrendering to humans the closest approximation of god-like powers (omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence) theyve yet experienced. Its no wonder the films protagonist is a nod to Eve (Evelyn). Her choice is the same one Eve faced in Eden and the same one we face any time we open Google: Do we take the bait of infinite knowledge and timeline-shifting, we can do whatever we want metaverse fantasy? Or do we rest content in our limitations, happy that we can know some things, be somewhere, and live in some time, even if we cant do it all? Now in theaters. Rated R.

Steven Soderberghs KIMI is a taut, brisk-paced thriller that essentially reworks Hitchcocks Rear Window for the age of Alexa and COVID-19. Zo Kravitz shines as a (rightly, it turns out) techno-paranoid data analyst for a tech company whose home assistant (Kimi, basically Siri or Google Home) doubles as a surveillance juggernaut. Anyone leery of Big Techs data-mining capabilities should probably avoid this film, which frighteningly plays out the implications of a world where the tech in your home (or hand) records your every movement and decision. Yet the film also ponders the potentially good implications of technology that makes sin and injustice harder to hide. Are the trade-offs worth it? If surveillance technology can expose crime and lead perpetrators to justice, are we willing to let go of our privacy? And is the truth-telling nature of objective technology really reliable when its owned by profit-motivated, often morally compromised corporations? The filma good supplement to reading Shoshana Zuboffs The Age of Surveillance Capitalismleaves us unsettled about these questions. Watch on HBO Max. Rated R.

This acclaimed new workplace drama on AppleTV+ has a fascinating premise. Mysterious corporation Lumon Industries pioneers a medical procedure called severance in which select employees can opt to sever their work and nonwork memories, such that they functionally live two lives with two perceptual realities. For severed employees, their innie (workplace self) only knows life within Lumonthey literally never get to sleep or leave, only toil (the parallel to hell is doubtless intentional). Meanwhile, their outie self has no idea what their innie does in the workplace, and most dont seem to care. The concept displays in exaggerated relief aspects of our lives we already experience: digital technology that allows us to fragment and compartmentalize multiple selves (e.g., our projected Instagram self vs. our real self, our Zoom self vs. our camera-off self); the struggle of increasingly fluid work-life boundaries (who wouldnt want a cleaner break between the two?); the temptation to escape stress and other unpleasantries, like death, if technology allows (A life at Lumon is protected from such things). The showjust renewed for a second seasonis incredibly thought-provoking on the nature of consciousness and the dangers of the dis-integrated self. We need to be thinking through these questions as Web3, the metaverse, and virtual reality grow in prominence. Watch on AppleTV+. Rated TV-MA.

Mahershala Ali shines in this 2021 sci-fi drama, which plays like a more tender episode of Black Mirror. Directed by Benjamin Cleary, the film (set in the near future) centers on an ethical dilemma posed by technology that allows a terminally ill human to secretly undergo a procedure where a clone version of themselves is created, complete with all their memories and personality, yet without the sickness. Would your loved ones know any different if one day a healthy replicant version of their husband or father was subbed in, while the old one went away to die in secret convalescence? Is sparing people trauma and grief always a worthwhile goal for technology, regardless of the cost? This seems like a key question in technological ethics. If a technology helps us avoid pain, does that automatically make it worth it? What about technology that creates a semblance of immortality, where some version of you is reproduced in perpetuity (the goal of transhumanism)? Or is humanitys beauty irrevocably tied to its contingency and potential for real loss and suffering? Swan Song helps us think through these questions in a moving, life-affirming way. Watch on AppleTV+. Rated R.

Link:
5 Screen Narratives Reckoning with Technology - The Gospel Coalition