Category Archives: Transhuman

Many governments are increasingly approaching artificial intelligence with an almost religious zeal. By 2018 at least 22 countries around the world, and also the EU, had launched grand national strategies for making AI part of their business development, while many more had announced ethical frameworks for how it should be allowed to develop. The EU documents more than 290 AI policy initiatives in individual EU member states between 2016 and 2020.

The latest is Ireland, which has just announced its national AI strategy, AI Here for Good. It aims to become an international leader in using AI to benefit our economy and society, through a people-centred, ethical approach to its development, adoption and use.

This is to be obtained via eight policy commandments, including increasing trust in and understanding of AI by using an AI ambassador - a veritable AI high priest to spread the message around the country. Another aspect is to promote AI adoption by Irish businesses and the government within a special moral and ethical framework. There are several shortcomings in this strategy, which it shares with similar efforts by other countries (leaving aside more obviously bad AI strategies, such as that underlying Chinas surveillance state).

Such strategies uncritically share the hype and hysteria surrounding AI. A typical example would be the chief executive of Googles owner Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, claiming in 2016 that AI is one of the most important things humanity is working on. It is more profound than, I dunno, electricity or fire.

He would say this, as his companys business model critically depends on AI, and on people trusting the technology. Irelands strategy goes precisely along with such hype by repeating the claim that AI could double Irish economic growth by 2035. It doesnt detail whose growth, or how.

The strategy lauds various useful existing AI-based apps which, for instance, improve cycling infrastructure in Dublin, provide Irish language tools, save energy, and comfort dementia suffers but it is hard to see how more of these could double economic growth.

Most notably, AI is central to a few digital platform firms such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Alibaba - GAFAA for short. They enjoy winner-takes-most benefits due to the fact that current AI requires large amounts of data. As more people use your platform, the profitability of the data grows exponentially.

This has given a huge first-mover advantage to those companies that got it right, turning them into monopolists and gatekeepers. Digital platform firms disrupt existing businesses by out-competing them every time - a good example being how Google, basically an online search-engine, disrupted the advertisement-driven business model of newspapers, or how Apple is selling more watches than the centuries-old Swiss watch industry.

These platforms also depress the start-up of new firms, for instance by buying up all potential new competitors. This stifles innovation.

And increasingly, entrepreneurs have to compete on these platforms for example, Amazon Marketplace. They can be at the mercy of abuses such as fake product reviews by competitors; rulings on such issues by the gatekeepers that are unpredictable and opaque; and sudden algorithm changes that can affect their business by making them, for example, less visible to potential customers. Then there is the phenomenon of digital subsistence entrepreneurs online sellers who barely earn a living wage.

This radically different (anti-) competition landscape sometimes labelled platform capitalism has caused regulators and antitrust authorities substantial headaches. The EU recently adopted proposals for a Digital Markets Act (DMA) and a Digital Services Act (DSA), which try to rein in the actual and potential abuses on large AI-based digital platforms.

If AI and automation had been a force to reckon with, we would have seen skyrocketing labour-productivity growth and rising unemployment. Instead, we see stagnating productivity growth for example, the UKs is the lowest in 200 years - and some of the lowest unemployment rates in western economies in decades.

Irelands AI strategy ignores the above problems with platform capitalism. The name Google appears only once in the entire document, and Amazon and Facebook not at all. There is no reference to digital platforms, platform capitalism, the DMA, DSA or the EUs many antitrust actions against Google. The omission is like Hamlet without the Prince.

Irelands AI strategy should have specified how and when AI will achieve the economic benefits it mentions and who will reap them. It also should have offered a vision of how to make sure that the nation does not suffer from the GAFAAs or become a mere agent of them.

The strategy also assumes that a lack of trust in AI is due to people not understanding the technology well enough. So voil, teaching people data science and having an AI ambassador, like a modern-day prophet, is the answer. One may expect precisely the opposite outcome: the better people understand AI, the less they will trust it.

This would actually be desirable, of course. In the US, where understanding of AI is fairly advanced, adoption rates of AI are in fact meagre. A recent US Census Bureau survey of more than 800,000 US firms found that only 2.9% were using machine learning as recently as 2018. A 2020 survey by the European Commission also pointed to very low adoption levels.

Many other surveys confirm the low adoption rate of AI. Firms do not adopt it, not because they dont trust it, but because it makes little business sense. It is too expensive, usually with paltry returns, and comes with an exorbitant environmental price tag and all that before you factor in the domination of the incumbents.

Irelands AI - Here for Good, like many similar national strategies, seems to believe in miracles, for instance that various circles can be squared. These include enabling access to large volumes of relevant data for all firms while protecting everyones privacy, and turning the country into a powerhouse for training sizeable deep-learning models and massive data centres while cutting CO emissions. It admits no trade-offs.

The implied message is that Ireland can pluck wonderful fruits from a thicket of thorns, just so long as it trusts in AI and adheres to its particular ethical commandments. Transhumanists, GAFAA, and other winners-takes-all in the digital economy will approve wholeheartedly.

More here:
Artificial intelligence: governments see huge business potential, but ignore the downsides - The Conversation UK

CONTENT WARNING: This story contains details that might be triggering to some readers.

Six words could hold the key to guiding someone out of the irrational, impulsive mental state that puts them at dangerously high risk of taking their own life.

People considering suicide generally lose their ability to rationalise, and see the act as a short sharp solution to their pain, clinical psychologist and clinical neuropsychologist Dr Roy Sugarman told news.com.au.

To help pull them away from such a state, asking one specific question could be critical, particularly if the person has expressed feeling as though nothing they do makes a difference.

Asking someone, what is important to you now? could be crucial to their survival, Dr Sugarman said.

Its saying, whatever is going to make a difference, where you feel that what you do does make a difference, Ill do it with you and Ill help you, he said.

The biggest driver is going to be this avoidance of thinking nothing I do makes a difference so I might as well avoid the pain by creating a very short sharp solution to the pain.

People in the grips of such a dire mental state have got there most likely as a result of a collapse in their values and meaningful aspects of their life, Dr Sugarman said.

So when youre asking the question, its in the here and now, and finding out who or what is critical to them at that moment in time, he said.

What to do after asking the question

After getting an answer, Dr Sugarman recommended staying with the person and beginning the process of helping them problem solve, step by step.

Make it manageable and give them a sense that what they do now makes a difference, he said.

Stay with them and help them plan. Help them solve problems.

If we can get people to not look at the big picture, and instead look at things that make a big difference like smaller micro goals, you start to get some movement and progress.

Dr Sugarman stressed that while posing the question may help, it was more important that a warm relationship was maintained over an extended period of time.

Its like anything else, to avoid a terrible event, youve got to maintain your relationship with a person. Its not about weaving some amazing web of speech. Your best chance of keeping someone alive is a warm relationship, he said.

The thing about suicide is that you cant use a rational speech to help a person who has got there by being irrational. The inspiring speech is not going to address the fact that at this stage, there is cognitive depletion. Theyre not going to respond to rationalisation.

Phone app to prevent suicide

Dr Sugarman is the co-founder of suicide prevention app Be A Looper developed alongside Transhuman Inc CEO Amanda Johnstone.

The app, released in 2017, allows users to rate areas of their mental health daily and share their score with four other people they trust.

Ms Johnstone worked closely with RUOK? in the development of the app, and used the same framework, called ALEC, in digitising is at an efficient and practical support tool.

The concept of Be A Looper was largely an extension of Ms Johnstones previous efforts to support her friends. For years she set alarms on their phones and requested they send her an emoji indicating their mental health every day at 4pm.

Ms Johnstone, who was named CEO magazines 2020 Start-up Executive of the Year, independently supported dozens of people for about 12 years before adapting her idea into an app.

I knew that system worked really well and that people would do it, she told news.com.au.

Were all on our phones so often with Instagram and everything, if theres one swipe each day that will make us more connected, it can save lives.

Countless users have contacted Ms Johnstone sharing instances of how an alert from the app which notifies others if someone records a low rating has saved theirs or a loved ones life.

Dr Sugarman said it was no surprise the app had been so effective in preventing suicide, given it harnessed already familiar concepts of swiping and using the 1-10 rating system.

It works because you establish as a routine the sharing of how you feel, so if you are a person who needs to use it, it gets you into the habit of expressing yourself as a number to four other people, he said.

Its very simple, concrete and non verbal, and you will be able to express how you feel when your logic has escaped you and youre a bundle of hot mess an emotions.

The app can be downloaded for free via the Apple app store.

Read more from the original source:
The critical question you need to ask someone if they express a desire to take their own life - NEWS.com.au

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This new reprint article by David M. Calabro appeared just a few minutes ago in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:

Early Christian Temples and Baptism for the Dead: Defining Sacred Space in the Late Antique Near East

Abstract:This paper examines similarities between the account of the sacrifice and epiphany of the first parents in Moses 5:115 and analogous accounts found in apocryphal literature of the late antique and medieval periods. Apocryphal texts considered include primarily theGreek Life of Adam and Eve(also known as theApocalypse of Moses) and secondarily theConflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, theCave of Treasures, the medieval Jewish Sefer Raziel, and Islamic collections of Qisas al-Anbiya (Stories of the Prophets). The focus is not only on the content of the narratives, but also on structural elements such as voice and narrative flow. Based on this examination, David argues that some of these texts have a common type of origin, being both revelatory and oriented to a ritual context, while others belong to different types associated with different historical contexts. He shows how this typological approach could inform dialogue between scholars of Restoration scripture and those researching the origins of other traditions sacred texts.

[Editors Note:Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the Latter-day Saint community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.

See David Calabro, Early Christian Temples and Baptism for the Dead: Defining Sacred Space in the Late Antique Near East, inThe Temple: Symbols, Sermons, and Settings, Proceedings of the Fourth InterpreterFoundation Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference, 10 November 2018,ed. Stephen D. Ricks and Jeffrey M. Bradshaw (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2021), page numbers forthcoming. Further information athttps://interpreterfoundation.org/books/the-temple-symbols-sermons-and-settings/.]

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In this connection, you might also enjoy an article by Professor Hans A. Pohlsander, who passed away on 26 June 2021, slightly more than a week ago:

A Rescue for the Dead: The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity

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I think that I may have failed to call attention to this short piece, which went up on the Interpreter Foundation website on Saturday, while I was driving home from Jackson Hole, Wyoming:

Book of Moses Essays #62: Moses Witnesses the Fall: (Moses 4): What Was the Nature of Satans Premortal Proposal? (Moses 4:14)

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And, just in case the three pieces listed above arent quite enough to keep you occupied and entertained while youre waiting for grilling time this evening or while you sit there, bobbing up and down, hoping to get a chance to take your ski boat out of the lake, here are links to some articles from a previous volume of Interpreter:

Noel B. Reynolds, The Gospel According to Mormon

Abstract:Although scholarly investigation of the Book of Mormon has increased significantly over the last three decades, only a tiny portion of that effort has been focused on the theological or doctrinal content of this central volume of LDS scripture. This paper identifies threeinclusiosthat promise definitions of the doctrine or gospel of Jesus Christ and proposes a cumulative methodology to explain how these definitions work. This approach reveals a consistently presented, six-part formula defining the way by which mankind can qualify for eternal life. In this way the paper provides a starting point for scholarly examinations of the theological content of this increasingly influential religious text. While the names of the six elements featured in Mormons gospel will sound familiar to students of the New Testament, the meanings he assigns to these may differ substantially from traditional Christian discourse in ways that make Mormons characterization of the gospel or doctrine of Christ unique. The overall pattern suggested is a dialog between man and God, who initially invites all people to trust in Christ and repent. Those who respond by repenting and seeking baptism will be visited by fire and by the Holy Ghost, which initiates a lifelong interaction, leading the convert day by day in preparation for the judgment, at which she may finally be invited to enter the kingdom of God.

Editors Note:This article was published originally in an international theological journal and is reprinted here as a service to the LDS community with minor revisions, updates, and edits included. See Noel B. Reynolds, The Gospel according to Mormon,Scottish Journal of Theology68:2 (2015), 218-34. doi: 10.1017/S003693061500006X

Jeff Lindsay, Joseph Smiths Universe vs. Some Wonders of Chinese Science Fiction

Abstract:Chinese science fiction works recently have received increasing attention and acclaim, most notably Liu CixinsThe Three Body Problem. Lius epic trilogy, available in Chinese and English, has received international honors and recognition for its vision, its daring application of advanced physics in a novel, and its highly original ideas about our life in the cosmos. Another Chinese physicist and science fiction author, Jiang Bo, also explores related issues but in a much more distant and wide-ranging trilogy,The Heart of the Milky Wayseries. Both works have interesting treatments of concepts relevant to Gospel perspectives, particularly the cosmic implications and teachings in the revelations given through the ProphetJoseph Smith. In the end, the questions they raise and the possibilities they present raise cosmic questions worthy of consideration by seekers of truth and urge us to consider what this cosmos is and where it is going. There are two ultimate possibilities: Darkness, everything darkness from the tragic dark forest model of Liu Cixin or the model of a benign universe crafted by a loving Heavenly Father. The latter, the cosmos of light, eternal progress, and endless joy is the universe of Joseph Smith and is profound enough to be seriously pitted against the alternative offered by Chinas brilliant physicists. Their writings treat the physics and metaphysics of the cosmos from a materialist perspective; if materialism rules, then it is tooth and claw, everything darkness in the end (though Jiang Bo offers hope of renewal and progress for some after his chaos and final grand calamity at the heart of the galaxy). Joseph Smiths cosmology gives us compelling reasons to see it otherwise and rejoice in the miracle of the actual universe we are in. Along the way, he offers some profound insights that should at least raise eyebrows and stimulate thinking among the physicists and philosophers of our age. These insights, contrary to claims of some critics, are not simply plagiarism or[Page 106]crude reworkings of common ideas from his day, but represent profound and original breakthroughs in thought, solving significant problems in the worlds views on life and the cosmos.

[Editors Note:As stated in the formal mission statement of the Interpreter Foundation, we try to draw upon a wide range of ancillary disciplines (including literature and culture) to help illustrate the truths of the gospel and the reality of the Restoration. Even so, some may never have considered how one particular literary genre science fiction can fit into such an effort. Indeed, some may scoff at the genre entirely and presume it has no place in academic discourse. Owing to the fact that science fiction attempts to create future worlds and that those worlds necessarily reflect a world view consistent with the cultural views of the authors, it can be helpful to at least consider those views. When you further consider that Joseph Smith described and promoted a future world that he credited to revelation and interaction with the divine, we can learn new insights by comparing the man-made views of our potential future with the revealed views of our future. In this paper, author Jeff Lindsay does just that, comparing our place in the universe as viewed through the lens of cutting-edge science fiction with our place in the universe as viewed through the lens of the founding prophet of the Restoration. We found this effort both intriguing and interesting. My hope is that you will consider this somewhat out of the box approach both enjoyable and worthwhile.]

Kent P. Jackson, Dehumanization and Peace

Abstract:Those who follow world events are painfully aware that peace in the Middle East and particularly in the Holy Land seems eternally elusive. From a distance we watch events unfold which we are not able to fully comprehend because of that very distance. There are individuals who are burdened with the devastating reality of living with war and perpetual turmoil in the Holy Land. One of those is Sahar Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian Arab Latter-day Saint who grew up in the West Bank near Bethlehem. Her story of how she converted to Mormonism and learned how to find peace in a troubled world is recommended reading for every Latter-day Saint.

Review of Sahar Qumsiyeh,Peace for a Palestinian: One Womans Story of Faith Amidst War in the Holy Land(Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2018). 176 pp. $15.99.

Shirley S. Ricks, Peace in the Holy Land

Abstract:Living in the Holy Land as a Palestinian Latter-day Saint has created unique challenges and perspective for Sahar Qumsiyeh. In order to attend church meetings in Jerusalem from her home near Bethlehem, Sahar was required to travel under unsafe and stressful circumstances for hours through military checkpoints to cover the few miles distance (as the crow flies). Sahars story,Peace for a Palestinian, varies dramatically from our own and reminds us that true discipleship requires sacrifice, which in turn brings blessings.

Personal response to Sahar Qumsiyeh,Peace for a Palestinian: One Womans Story of Faith amidst War in the Holy Land(Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2018). 176 pp. $15.99.

Gregory L. Smith, What is Mormon Transhumanism? And is it Mormon?

Abstract:Some sources have described Mormonism as the faith most friendly to the intellectual movement known as Transhumanism. This paper reviews an introductory paper by the past President of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. A syllogism that purports to show that Mormonism is compatible with or even requires Transhumanism is analyzed. The syllogisms premises are shown to misunderstand or misrepresent LDS scripture and doctrine. The proffered Transhumanist conception of human nature and the perspective offered by LDS scripture are compared and found to be incompatible. Additional discrepancies between the Transhumanist articles representation of LDS doctrine and the actual teachings of LDS scripture and leaders on doctrinal matters (the Premortal Council in Heaven, the relationship between substance dualism and LDS thought, and the possibility of engineering or controlling spiritual experiences) are examined. The article does not accurately reflect LDS teachings, and thus has not demonstrated that Transhumanism is congenial to LDS scripture or doctrine.

Tarik D. LaCour, Race: Always Complicated, Never Simple

Abstract:The concept that race has evolved rather than remaining static is not well understood, both outside and within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. InReligion of a Different Color, W. Paul Reeve shows how the concept of race evolved from painting Mormons as nonwhite in the 19th century to too white by the beginning of the 21st century.

Review of W. Paul Reeve,Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness(New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). 352 pp. $36.95 (hardcover), $24.95 (paperback).

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And, finally, some general religion news that you might find interesting:

Faith leaders say religious liberty is not synonymous with discrimination: My plea today is that all religions work together to defend faith and religious freedom in a manner that protects people of diverse faith as well as those of no faith, said Elder Quentin L. Cook.

Scouting membership numbers collapse: AP totally ignores role of religion in this drama

Read the original here:
Early Christian Temples and Baptism for the Dead - Patheos

In the late 19th century, a society called X-Club was founded by a group of scientists in England. The "X" in the title of the club, where Charles Darwin gave lectures from time to time, symbolized change and evolution according to his esoteric beliefs. The most famous members of the club, also known as X-men, were social Darwinist Herbert Spencer and biologist Thomas Henry Huxley. In fact, Huxley was the one who asked Darwin to pen the theory of evolution he had shaped in his mind for years.

Along with the theory of evolution, Darwin introduced the notion of kabbalah that the human mind would develop into a god as a result of evolution to the world of science and he built the infrastructure of this belief among scientists. The club, supported by capitalists with very strong connections, chose the scientists of the time who believed in creation and ensured that the theory of evolution was accepted by the public. The theory of evolution began to appear in textbooks in England. Huxley was the member who demonstrated the most effort in the lectures and conferences he gave.

Inspired by Darwin and examinations of his ideas, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche introduced the idea of bermensch, or superman, taking humanity to the next stage in evolution in the eugenic sense. Hitler, who was a fan of Nietzsche and saw himself as a superman, began to work toward creating a superior race. The scientists who carried out these studies in Germany moved to the U.S. following World War II and established the Cybernetics Group under the control of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Research would no longer be focused on race but on medicine and technology.

Big brother

The Fabian Society in England wanted to establish the socialist New World Order under the control of the capitalists. However, they did not want to do it the same way as in Soviet Russia; instead, they sought to carry out revolutions using an evolutionist approach. The members of the society did not remove Nietzsche's works from their bedside. This society, which involved Huxley's science fiction student H. G. Wells, included two famous writers. These writers, who put forward two dystopias, that is two visions of the future of the world, were George Orwell and Huxley's grandson Aldous Huxley. In both Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, the world is ruled by a certain party, a certain class. The concept of family disappears and a socialist order dominates society. The main difference between the two novels is that people in 1984 are forcibly enslaved by the party while the characters love slavery in Brave New World. Huxley not only wrote the novel but also went to the U.S. and participated in the work to create a superman with the team there.

While Aldous Huxley was conducting research on LSD to control the human mind in the U.S., his brother Julian Huxley introduced the term transhumanism to the literature in his book Religion Without Revelation. Transhumanism (humanity+) is a term used to describe people going beyond their current physical and mental limits through science and technology. According to transhumanists, since human evolution had stopped, it was necessary to push it forward using machines and drugs. One of Julian's favorite friends, who was also the first UNESCO director, was the Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard was known as the Catholic Darwin. He was a leading actor in the Piltdown Man fraud, in which the human skull and orangutan jaw were combined to demonstrate the transitional form in evolution, a development that went down in history as a scandal. De Chardin believed that the minds of all people would unite at a higher level of consciousness, which he called the "noosphere," meaning "mind sphere."

Internet

Studies in the U.S. bore fruit in a short time. Personal computers brought the internet into our lives and the ubiquitous "www," which can read as three waws, meaning 666 in Hebrew (and according to the abjad), which is also the sign of the Antichrist according to the Bible. PCs have replaced the drug LSD. The network, which the Jesuit de Chardin called noosphere and H. G. Wells called the world brain, was thus brought to life through computers and other electronic devices.

Now, all the conversations we have over the internet, all the messages and pictures we send, all the preferences we click, that is, all the information that introduces us better than ourselves is collected in the background and this is called Big Data. When a sufficient level of knowledge and technology is reached, the plan is for Big Data to turn into Big Brother thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), the god of transhumanists that will take its place at the top of the pyramid and take control from human hands.

Transhumanists

Although they have esoteric beliefs, transhumanists do not believe in the soul and instead see the human brain as a machine. They believe immortality will be possible by transferring the human mind to servers or other bodies/machines. There are agnostics in this community, as well as atheists like Max More, the head of the Alcor society, who deals with cryonics in order to resurrect people in the future through technology. In his article entitled "In Praise of the Devil," More says: "Lucifer means light-bringer ... The story is that God threw Lucifer out of heaven because Lucifer had started to question God ... Lucifer is the embodiment of reason, of intelligence, of critical thought. He stands against the dogma of God and all other dogmas. He stands for the exploration of new ideas ... God also hates it when we enjoy ourselves. If we let ourselves experience too much pleasure then we might lose interest in obeying him. Join me, join Lucifer, and join Extropy in fighting God and his entropic forces with our minds, our wills and our courage.

Cyborgs

Today, many projects are carried out by transhumanists with the aim of transforming people. Since there are still places in the world that do not have internet and electricity, Google's X Company and Facebook are spending millions to ensure that those who do not even have water to drink can benefit from the blessing that is the internet.

Former X employee Mary Lou Jepsen is striving to develop an MRI machine that can be worn as a beanie and read minds; Elon Musk, the owner of SpaceX, is working on a Neuralink project, in which chips and electrodes will be added to the brain and body to connect us to the network like computers. DARPA research and development agency, which serves the U.S. Army, is experimenting with cyborg soldiers with chips in their brains. The X Prize Foundation of Transhumanists also organizes competitions in the hopes of reaching the New World as soon as possible.

Brave new world order

We have stepped into the new world with new advents like robots, genetic engineering, virtual reality (VR), brain and space exploration, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, cybernetics and synthetic biology to name a few developments. Esoterics, who were unable to evolve spiritually due to being on the wrong path, are realizing it physically and synthetically through technology, almost like a magician. Well, what will we do when the day comes that a chip is implanted into our brain like in "The Matrix," or when drugs in the movies Lucy and Limitless are introduced into the market? Will we resist or will we form queues in front of stores like when a new phone model comes out? I belive the second possibility will become a reality. After all, we live in a Brave New World, one where we are unwilling to give up our phones and internet, even after reading this article, and slavery is relished. As Elon Musk said, we have already turned into cyborgs thanks to computers and smartphones, which we cannot drop or operate without. All that remains is to install these technologies beneath the skin's surface.

Read the rest here:
Transhumanism and future of humanity towards digital slavery | Daily Sabah - Daily Sabah

WITH the expected release this month of the United States Department of Defenses report on unidentified aerial phenomenon, or UAPs, the question of intelligent life beyond Earths solar system is back in the limelight.

The long-sought answer to Are we alone in the universe? has been contemplated by many, especially those who are curious about its scientific and theological implications.

In an interview in 2015, several months after the discovery of Kepler-452b a so-called super-Earth located approximately 1,400 light years away in the habitable zone of its star Pope Francis was asked for his thoughts on the possibility of intelligent life existing on other planets.

Honestly, I wouldnt know how to answer, he told French news magazine, Paris Match.

Until America was discovered, we thought it didnt exist, and instead it existed.

But in every case I think that we should stick to what the scientists tell us, still aware that the Creator is infinitely greater than our knowledge.

While science and religion were often pitted against each other as separate and irreconcilable camps, St John Paul II saw the benefit of a synergistic relationship that could lead humanity toward a greater understanding of the unknown.

Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes, he wrote in a 1988 letter to the late Jesuit Father George Coyne, former director of the Vatican Observatory.

Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.

This explains why so many Catholic scientists are active in the study of the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life.

Among them is Jesuit Father Jos Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and former director of the Vatican Observatory, who leads Project OTHER, a Spanish acronym that stands for Otros mundos, Tierra, Humanidad y Espacio Remoto (Other worlds, Earth, Humanity and Remote Space).

Fr Funes warned that while the subject of intelligent extraterrestrial life could spur interesting and exciting conversations, it also could veer into the realm of conspiracy theories that departed from true science.

We need to address the topic in a professional way. And by professional, I mean in an academic way, Fr Funes said.

Project OTHER, he said, brings together astronomers, biologists, philosophers and theologians at the Catholic University of Cordoba to not only study the possible existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life, but also the impact its potential discovery could have on the scientific, philosophical and religious comprehension of humanity.

Their possible existence raises religious questions, including questions involving the mystery of the Incarnation, in which the Word assumed human nature and thus, as described by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Jesus is both true God and true man.

Whether the Incarnation is exclusive to Earth or repeated in other planets with intelligent life, Fr Funes said, has been pondered for decades by theologians.

Nevertheless, Fr Funes said, the incarnation of Christ was and remains a unique event.

Im not a theologian, but my conclusion is that one Incarnation is more than enough, he said.

We dont need to complicate things more than they are.

Its already difficult to understand one Incarnation, but this is my way of thinking.

Dominican Fr Thomas OMeara, a retired theology professor at the University of Notre Dame and author of Vast Universe: Extraterrestrials and Christian Revelation, echoed Fr Funes sentiment on the Incarnation, arguing that the Incarnation doesnt require that Jesus also be incarnate on other planets.

Regarding the existence of extraterrestrial life, Fr OMeara said the fact there are billions of planets increases the likelihood of planets with both life and intelligent life.

That belief, he added, would probably be supported by one of the churchs greatest scholars St Thomas Aquinas.

(St) Thomas Aquinas view of the world is that God has made a world that is quite vast and quite diverse, Fr OMeara said.

Now, of course, he had no idea how vast and diverse it was, but thats what he sees just from plants and flowers and fish and stars and things like that.

And he thinks that because the point of the universe is to show the richness and diversity of God.

The belief in the likelihood of extraterrestrial life is also shared by nonbelievers as well, including Anders Sandberg, senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford.

Dr Sandberg said it is easy to believe that the existence of life on Earth is just a one-time miracle.

However, much like Fr OMeara, the Swedish transhumanist researcher said the probability that earthlings were alone in the cosmos was low.

Were probably not alone because the universe looks like its actually infinite, he said.

We havent found any evidence that there is any kind of edge on it or that its curving together.

However, with many seeing the upcoming Pentagon report as proof of alien life, Dr Sandberg told CNS that to immediately base a conclusion on inconclusive evidence, such as blurry images, is a mistake, and that the constant flood of information regarding unexplained phenomenon should be taken with a bit of caution.

The world is large, so one-in-a-trillion chances happen monthly and are reported globally, he said.

Instead of assuming that a weird blob in the sky was evidence of alien life, Dr Sandberg suggested people instead maybe say, There are more weird things in the world than I expected.

Intellectual humility is a very useful thing, he said.

Read this article:
UFOs and the Incarnation the possibility of life among the stars fascinates astronomer priests - Catholic Leader

Im sitting in the semi-dark in the main hall at Arts House in North Melbourne, watching a development day of SYSTEM_ERROR. Its a new Chamber Made work being created by artistic director Tamara Saulwick and dancer, sound designer and choreographer Alisdair Macindoe. Other collaborators include data visualisation artist Melanie Huang, choreographer Lucy Guerin, and me. Right now, in the dark, I am scribbling in my red notebook:

Watching the problem-solving is key to this process.It is a system creating itself.The sequence about what to do with the tables.How to collapse them.What is the motivation for collapsing them (this is a joke, off-hand, convivial)?Can we have a bit of light while they play with this? (Lucy asks Bec, the production manager).I make note of the text that is being projected on the gigantic screen, now, in this moment:

activity within that network. We can send in different patterns of stimulation and look at how the network changes as a result.

This is how I have observed the building of this work: as different patterns of stimulation from each collaborating artist interacting to create the network, which is the work itself.

It began with a seed of an idea, in a conversation between Saulwick and Macindoe. The name of the investigation was always SYSTEM_ERROR. The idea was to explore bodies, sound and technology. That was as much as they knew. Slowly over a few years, in short bursts of development that brought in other collaborators at different stages, they built a work of performance.

This particular development took place in March 2021. As I write now, the show is a few weeks away from its world premiere season at Arts House in July. Keen to get a sense of what the collaboration process has been like, I have been talking via email to the key artists.

I hadnt worked with any of these artists previously, says Saulwick. Ive really loved the process of finding points of connection and shared preoccupations. In some ways our practices are quite disparate, but there are also these lovely rich veins of overlapping interest.

I find this so compelling. Saulwick is an established artist with more than 20 years experience. Of course, she does at times collaborate with artists with whom she has an existing creative relationship. But her keenness to explore new relationships and possibilities and to make a work with artists from different artforms and disciplines demonstrates a genuine desire to explore what collaboration is and how it works.

This colliding of artistic process is something that has interested Saulwick for a long time. Over many years she has built a practice that invites artists to meet the boundaries of their artform as it comes into direct contact with another, to see what new processes and forms might emerge.

For data visualisation artist Melanie Huang, this is her first performance project. She reflects on what it has been like to come into collaboration with Saulwick and Macindoe, highlighting that the process has been open rather than prescriptive.

Huang created visual elements in response to the sound design and the physical world of the piece. I found it super beneficial to create the visuals as we discussed each new scene that was unfolding. This is different to what Im used to as a designer or coder, she says. Ill be honest, it was a little bit terrifying at first the ambiguity. However [it was] ultimately liberating to be able to explore concepts and visual directions untethered from a client brief or style guide.

Expanding networks of collaborators is a crucial part of the Chamber Made ethos. I enjoy having someone in the room who comes from a completely different scene, Saulwick says. They can bring a different way of thinking into the process and tend not to follow the expected pathways. This has definitely been the case with Mel and I really love what shes brought to the piece.

Huang agrees that this taking a chance on an outsider has great benefits. It is not only a great opportunity for individuals to explore what their craft/talent can provide a new space but also what a new area has to gain from looking outside the usual talent pool to create something unique to that team and that performance.

Working on this project, Ive been struck by how all the artists are able to hold ambiguity. I recall an early conversation with Saulwick and Macindoe, eating noodles at a North Melbourne caf, as they talked in and around the themes of the work. Was it about bodies? Their bodies? About their frailties or obsessions? Both spoke of past and present vulnerabilities as I took furious notes.

The text went through a number of iterations. For the most part it is based on found texts sourced by Saulwick and Macindoe, interviews and documentaries about questions of what it is to be human and what the urge towards transhumanism might be. As a collective we generated more texts, digging into other areas of inquiry about systems and personal relationships, testing the poetic boundaries of language as it related to these themes. Ultimately, much of this has dropped away. The process of deliberation and selection, as text slots in as one element among sound, vision, body and space, has been fascinating.

Macindoe reflects on how this collaboration has stretched him beyond his usual approaches: Working with Tam exposed me to a process in which materials are formed predominantly through discussion, research, thinking, transcribing, collating and writing, he says. Coming from dance and music, where concept and ideation are generally a starting point that are explored through physicalisation and musical play, this was new to me. At first it was jarring and unfamiliar, but I got a lot out of it, and I cant imagine how we could have made the piece without said processes.

This colliding of artistic process is something that has interested Saulwick for a long time. Over many years she has built a practice that invites artists to meet the boundaries of their artform as it comes into direct contact with another, to see what new processes and forms might emerge. I think if you want the various modalities/threads/disciplines to be genuinely integrated with one another then you need to allow time for that to occur, she says. Its one thing to abut elements up against one another, but allowing them to become a new combined language can be a slow process.

Macindoe concurs that creating work in this way takes time and patience: The greatest challenge of this piece has been clarification and crystallisation of the intent, theme and creative rationale of the work, he says. I have really enjoyed the musical challenges of this work and where they have taken me both technically and creatively. Trying to whittle down the entire work into 36 discrete cc channels has forced me to explore how to compress complex musical ideas into a streamlined instrument interface.

As Saulwick observes, one of the main complexities of both making and performing the work is that need to navigate being inside and outside the work, moving between those two modes and perspectives. This is why it has been great to be joined by Lucy in the latter stages of the process, she says. Her presence has allowed us to an extent to hand over that outside perspective and focus more on the performance component.

Watching Lucy Guerin work with the performers in crafting the shape of the piece provides another layer of insight. From my personal experience as a playwright, its unusual for a director to come late into the development and building of a work, not be there from its genesis.

The process with Tam and Alisdair was really unique, says Guerin. Working with two artists who were so deeply embedded in the ideas for the work and the creation of the machine that they used to deliver the ideas meant there was immediately so much to work with. The fact that they built, operated and became part of this circuitry spoke so clearly to the content of the piece.

Guerin has great skill in looking at the mechanics and structure of the work, identifying what is there and how each part relates to the next. I can see that she is not taking overall responsibility for the artistic drive of the piece, but rather using her expertise to help Saulwick and Macindoe craft a cohesive work. My role was really as an outside eye for Tam and Alisdair, so that we could thread together the content and strip back a bit the complex layering of multipleideas that had emerged in their previous developments.

Touch is now such a triggering action and seems very relevant. It offersreassurance and connection but is also threatening and powerful. I have always felt quite disturbed by the radical futures proposedby technology, but this work made it seem intriguing, rather than a dark and scary fiction.

Guerins role was crucial, as Macindoe observes. Bringing Lucy in as an outside eye and to direct the work really clarified a lot for me about the work, he says Also, Lucy is just amazing and somehowmanaged to clarify and streamline our creative chaos in a really engagingand thoughtful way.

Opening out the process generates a richness. Guerin says that working on the project had positive flow-on effects for her broader practice. Its a great way to question your own position on ideas and creativeprocess, she says. It can be time consuming but its so worth listening and working through. I find it really fulfilling and it shifts and re-forms my practice, which keeps me interested and engaged.

Many aspects of the project intrigued her, The correlation between the human biological system and technological systems and how they overlap, prompts me to wonder if humans design these systems based on their own bodies andminds, she says. They seem to reinforceyet confound each other. The fact of touch itself which is used to activate the instrument can produce an onslaught of sound or a delicate static. Touch is now such a triggering action and seems very relevant. It offersreassurance and connection but is also threatening and powerful. I have always felt quite disturbed by the radical futures proposedby technology, but this work made it seem intriguing, rather than a dark and scary fiction.

I return to my scribbled notes from the development, seeking connections, the trail of evidence that has led to what is now a pretty much final version of the work. My involvement has been light and minimal. Mostly I have provided another perspective, offered thoughts on how the text of the work is functioning, or acted as a sounding board as the artists worked through their own questions, their ambiguities.

A series of absurd machinations to keep life going.

How do you avoid the system (should you want to).

Why and when does language emerge.

The word years really jumps out, should it be: Its been as long as I can remember?

Take it out of this endless present into something more quotidian.

I watch a full run of the show and the sense of fragmentation dissolves. What emerges is a whole system, one both strange and compelling, where I am reminded of all that is odd about being human, and all that is possible.

Chamber Mades SYSTEM_ERROR premieres at Arts House July 7-11. Bookings and information

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Patterns of stimulation Witness Performance - Witness

Failure, mishap, and defeat cannot be excluded from the program of those who are dissatisfied with the inventory of the past and the present, but everyone tends to fall down differently, in a direction in which they walked. Radoslav Putar, new tendencies 1, 1961

To the whole, we oppose the parts. As parts taken out of their whole or a togetherness of several wholes that is of ourselves, individuals being in common. Communismthis word again.

when I say we, I am counting you in when I say we, I am talking about you too and also you when I say we, I am speaking from this space We were one and more than one before. Marko Guti Miimakov, Karen Nhea Nielsen, and LilySlava8 & AmpersandG8, Thank You for Being Here with Me, 2020

Old utopias have sobered up. Our collective body is tired and fragmented. How can it be recovered, reconstructed? One way, I think, is to approach the collective body as one might an actual body: through metaphors of the collectives bones, muscles, and connective tissues. In this essay I trace examples of collective practices from WWII to the contemporary moment in the post-Yugoslav context, where collectivity is no longer defined by the essentialist determinism that communist ideology used to supposedly fostered the inherent collectivism of the East. I follow a specific line of forms and structures of artistic productionseparate from mainstream discoursesthat sought to redefine arts social position, its role as a medium of social relations. I highlight paradigm shifts and trace the methodological and political connections between different generations that shared similar problems.

The Yugoslav partisan anti-fascist struggle during WWII was a foundational act in forming the new, postwar, socialist society. The Yugoslav Peoples Liberation Struggle (NOB)1 was characterized by a massive response from cultural workers, who employed artistic production as agitation and propaganda, but also as educational empowerment.

Through the visual articulation of war trauma, partisan art, with its participatory and activist character, involved heterogeneous artistic production, disseminated through partisan exhibitions and congresses of cultural workers during the war.

In the collective body of the Yugoslav region, the historical anti-fascist partisan struggle functions as the bones. In the upright human body, bones are the support structure, the scaffolding. Protecting and supporting the body, bones are the most permanent part of the body, its invisible infrastructure, its foundation, and this is the role played by the historical partisan struggle in the Yugoslav collective body.

The partisan legacy can be also considered a kind of ancestral knowledge: transmitted not only through official history, but also through cultural and social osmosis, directly, peer to peer. The partisans transformative knowledge accumulated in the bones of the collective body of postwar generations. The groundbreaking historical experience of political and cultural revolution achieved through this struggle was assimilated by the generations that followed.

Emancipatory artistic projects today still draw inspiration from the legacy of the social institutions established through the partisan strugglefree health care, education, and housing. The diverse cultural practices that accompanied the partisan struggle, many of which were collectivist and anonymous, played an integral role in constructing the new identity of socialist Yugoslavia.

The heterogeneity of partisan artwhich sought, according to poet and writer Miklav Komelj, to construct a new revolutionary subjectivityreconfigured the boundaries between art and society. Komelj describes partisan cultural production as a breakthrough through the impossible, a structural change, a discontinuation, caused by revolution in the field of art.2

Yugoslav partisan art can to some extent be seen as an actualization of leftist cultural ideas circulating in the 1920s (e.g., the Dadaist magazine Zenit, the Belgrade surrealist groups) and the 1930s. It also created an entirely new cultural situation: a melting pot that mixed high culture and popular culture, bringing together a wide range of participants from different classes, generations, and genres who would not cross paths in normal circumstances.

The association of artists called Zemlja (Earth) was active from 1929 until 1935, when their work was officially banned.3 They initially came together to oppose and reflect on the effects of the economic crisis of 1929 and the growing threat of fascism. They exhibited in Zagreb, Paris, and Belgrade. In addition to educated artists, Zemlja included peasants and workers. In the groups 1929 manifesto, a fervent polemic about art and revolution, they called for urgent collectivization and the fusion of life and art. The group continued its radical artistic activity into the 1930s, and then in the 1940s several members became partisan militants. With this shift, art and life became one. Zemlja members Marijan Detoni, Franjo Mraz, and Antun Augustini fought alongside numerous younger artists; one of them, Vlado Kristl, later joined the group EXAT 51, which included painters and architects. In 1950s, EXAT 51 developed an experimental artistic synthesis of art and architecture. In addition to members of Zemlja, a circle of Belgrade surrealists also joined the partisan struggle. Poet and writer Koa Popovi became the commander of the First Proletarian Brigade and was later made the chief of the general staff of the Yugoslav National Army. As Komelj notes, Never before or after has a Surrealist poet had such an influential post in a Socialist revolution.4

If the partisan struggle constitutes the bones of the Yugoslav collective body, we can also say that bones play a revolutionary role in the body, by enabling movement. The project of building socialist Yugoslavia through partisan struggle redefined the classes and introduced class mobility, based on the idea of social progress. Bones are also the locus of muscle production, since stem cells from bone marrow can be used to generate more muscle. From a different perspective, bones also symbolize the necropolitics of armed struggle and warthink mass graves and ossuaries. Marked by the tension between utopia and grim reality, the partisan struggle shaped future generations and helped construct the beginning of the Yugoslav collective body.

IRWIN,NSK Panorama,1997. Photo: Michael Shuster.

Ideological disputes on the left seemed to be temporarily silenced during WWII, when all hands were on deck. But in the postwar year, the debates resumed. This period also witnessed a surge in artistic collectivity focused on the task of rebuilding society. If the partisan struggle built the bones of the collective body, the postwar years built the musculature.

The aforementioned EXAT 51 group was active in Zagreb from 1950 to 1956.5 The group positioned itself against outdated ideas and types of production within the field of visual arts, and aligned itself with the social reality and social forces aspiring to attain progress within all fields of human activity.6 Its strategy was based on the re-actualization of historical avant-garde movements, predominantly from the constructivist tradition. Although EXAT 51 members each signed their works individually, the group acted collectively to build a platform dedicated to the synthesis of all artistic forms and the abolition of the boundary between fine and applied art. It should be remembered that in early 1950s Yugoslavia, abstract art was considered controversial by official ideology. Following the publication of its first manifesto in 1951, the group and its work received harsh criticism.

Despite this criticism, EXAT 51 remained active, publishing texts and designing Yugoslav pavilions at world exposlike the yearly expo of the Croatian Association of Applied Arts in Zagreb. This latter example in particular shows the groups commitment to fusing art and life. Although EXATs abstract artistic language is the opposite of the figurative directness of Zemlja and other partisan artists, the work of both groups illustrates, in different ways, what a synthesis between art and life can look like.

This way of looking at these art collectives is influenced by art historian Jea Denegris concept of the other line. He describes this as a mentality, and a reaction of certain artists and artists groups to the existing cultural and social circumstances. It was, in fact, a way of shrinking back from being integrated into those very circumstances and, thus, of searching for an independent artistic attitude.7

In the 1960s and 70s many groups withdrew from the political arena in order to produce alternative spaces of togetherness and collective determination, as happened in many other parts of the world during this time. Artist groups like Gorgona, OHO, and the Group of Six Artists were informal collectives that searched for more poetic and anti-systemic approaches to producing art, often at the margins of society and the official art system. These groups were concerned with creating refuges from common spaces and examining their own internal relations on a micro scale. If the partisan artists were the bones of the collective body, and the 1950s artist the muscles, the groups of the 1960s and 70s zeroed in on individual parts of that body.

The Gorgona group was active in Zagreb from 1959 to 1966. It consisted of artists and cultural workers who shared affinities but not a stylistic program.8 The groups activities were shaped by principles of anti-art, dematerialization, humor, and irony. Instead of a fixed program or manifesto, Gorgonas work involved transient and processual formats such as mail art, artistic walks in nature, and self-organized exhibitions. Between 1961 and 1966 the group also published the anti-magazine Gorgona, which lasted for eleven issues, and which included collaborations with Op artist Victor Vasarely, playwright Harold Pinter, and conceptual artist Dieter Rot.

In 1966, when the members of Gorgona voted to terminate the group, another group came together in Ljubljana: OHO.9 Though OHO was only a loose collective, its founding gesture is considered to be the publication of its manifesto in 1966. Whereas Gorgona ironically deployed the bureaucratic language of socialism to examine collective dynamics within society, OHOs telepathic Intercontinental group projects (at one point there were two members based in the US) explored micro-relations within the group itself. OHO worked with what they called reismsconceptual strategies that blended the ideas of Fluxus, land art, and body art. OHO members created artist books, objects, and situations that they claimed were liberated from primary functions.10 As for the groups name, the website Monoskop explains its origin: The term OHO refers to the observation of forms (with the eye, oko, and ear, uho) in their immediate presence, and is also an exclamation of astonishment, said Marko Poganik, the groups leader: Because when we uncover the essence of a thing, that is when we exclaim oho.11

In the 1980s, with the impending disintegration of Yugoslavia, art collectives turned again to the realm of politics, engaging in intense discussions about the political implications of artistic production. IRWIN proposed the retro principle concept, which highlights the emancipatory effects of repetitionthe restaging or reconstruction of historical avant-garde narratives.12 Rather than embracing the postmodernism that was all the rage at the time, IRWIN turned back to conceptualisma part of the collective body of the past.

IRWIN employed strategies of self-historicization and historical reappropriation to question the relations between art objects, exhibitions, museums, collectives, and states. The group constructed its self-narrative around a refusal to take up passive and powerless artistic positions. The larger collective that IRWIN helped found, Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK), created innovative (para)institutional forms that paralleled and counterbalanced existing social and state institutions. This was not just about the appropriation or mimicry of existing social forms; it was about creating a space of autonomous action. One such (para)institution, NSK STATE IN TIME (created by the groups IRWIN, Laibach, and the Noordung Cosmocinetic Cabinet), functions as an abstract organism, a suprematist body, installed in a real social and political space as a sculpture comprising the concrete body warmth, spirit and work of its members. NSK confers the status of a state not to territory but to mind, whose borders are in a state of flux, in accordance with the movements and changes of its symbolic and physical collective body.13

By the 1970s and 80s, as the collective body disintegrated, artists began to see the cultural production and revolutionary activity of the partisans as anachronistic, as something better left in the past. After a series of officially organized exhibitions of partisan art, some even regarded the work as merely serving the interest of reproducing the state. However, by the 2000s, a younger generation recuperated this history. After the breakup of Yugoslavia and the emergence of neoliberal capitalism, the history and collective values of the partisan struggle became relevant again.

The Group of Six Artists,14 active in Zagreb from 1975 to 1984, introduced the tactic of the exhibition action to bypassed mainstream art institutions. Exhibition actions took place in alternative locationson the grass, in the streetwhere the group showed their works and projected slides and films on the outside walls of houses. Group member Mladen Stilinovi once pointed out the difference between the groups of the seventies, which sought joy in collective work, and the groups of today. The collectives from the past dissolved when the enjoyment started to fade, whereas today, this enjoyment has given way to the attempt to bureaucratize pleasure through administrative structures and organizational protocols.

For decades these collectives were dominated by men. But beginning in the 2000s, many new female-dominated collectives formed, focused particularly on curatorial practices: BLOK; Institute for Duration, Location, and Variables (Delve); Kontejner (Bureau for Contemporary Artistic Practice); and WHW, among others. Numerous other independent groups and collectives came together in the former Yugoslavia in the 2000s: BADco., kuda.org, Prelom, How to Think Partisan Art?, Rena Rdle & Vladan Jeremi, KURS. Many of these groups looked to the emancipatory projects of socialist Yugoslavia to inform their own ideas about collectivity, socially engaged art, and progressive exhibition practices. Self-organized and extra-institutional, these collectives positioned themselves in opposition to the representational model that dominated local culture.

The most important muscle of the collective body is the heart. In the former Yugoslavia, recent years have brought new challenges that threaten the very corethe heartof many collective initiatives and groups. There is a growing fatigue with collective work, stemming from the pressure to sustain productivity in precarious labor conditions. Working as a collective body over the long term is made even more difficult by ongoing economic and political crises, from cuts to cultural funding to the rise of right-wing politics.

This breakdown in the historical continuity of the collective body is examined in the performance The Labour of Panic (2020) by the Zagreb collective BADco.15 The work can be seen as a metaphor for the collective bodys struggle to survive amidst hostile conditionsnot only austerity and nationalist politics, but Covid-19 and the ecological crisis. Since its formation in 2000, and until its recent dissolution after twenty years of working together, BADco. explored the protocols of performing, presenting, and observing. The Labour of Panic is the third part of their Trilogy of Labour, Utopias and Impossibilities (201820). It reflects on the uncertainty around beginnings and endings. As the group has stated, To allow something to end and something new to begin, the infrastructural space itself must allow the possibility of change. That is the terrain where one outlines the contours and excavates the remains of that which cannot come to be and that which may yet occur.16 Performed outdoors at night in extreme conditionsharsh wind, heat, mosquitosThe Labour of Panic shows how the collective body confronts external catastrophes and internal turmoil.

Nea Knez, Danilo Milovanovi, Toni Poljanec, and Luka Erdani,Y?(still),2019ongoing. Multimedia.Photo:Toni Poljanec. Project updates:.

For more than a half century, the Yugoslav collective body performed enormous ideological and metabolic work, and became exhausted. Rescued from the dustbin of history, it was turned into an ur collective body that neoliberal capitalism and the twenty-first century tore limb from limbdismembering the collective body. Everyone took a piecemuseums, galleries, archives, books. Where that collective body once stood is now an empty stagewhich also means that new beginnings are possible. How can we build our collective body anew?

In addition to bones and muscle, the collective body is held together by connective tissueligaments, fascia, blood vessels, and so forth, linking all the parts of the body. This connective tissue plays a crucial role in the care of the body.

The generation of artists born in the early 1990s, when the former Yugoslavia was riven by genocidal nationalist wars, will probably be the last generation to be touched by the legacy of socialismnot through personal memory, but through remnants and traces of socialist architecture, history, and political values.

Y? (2019ongoing), a project by artists Nea Knez, Danilo Milovanovi, Toni Poljanec, and Luka Erdani, uses a literal remnant of the Yugoslav pastthe Yugo carto map new geopolitical terrains. In the 1980s, the Yogu was produced in the same factory that, a decade later, would produce arms used in the Yugoslav civil war. In its heyday the car was imported into Reagans America and, due to its extremely cheap price, sold in massive numbers. At the same time, the American media denounced it as communist and proclaimed it to be the worst car in history.17 The artists behind Y? drove a Yugo from the city in Serbia where the factory was located, through Europe, to the UK, and then took it by boat to New York, meeting with Yugoslav expats along the way. Travelling this route in a car named after a country that no longer exists was a poignant symbol of unfulfilled narratives of progress and modernization.

A series of collective performances spearheaded by Marko Guti Miimakov shows how collaborations that are loosely organized can still be affectively intense.18 The project centers on interactions between performers and their digital counterpartskitschy animated figures called affective clones. This cloning points to the need to duplicate ourselves in order to fulfill the requirements imposed on us by capital. The project thus addresses the reality of precarious labor conditions, but also solidarity between human and transhuman communities, by creating an interspace where we can be (with) others.

The partisan art of the WWII period contributed to imagining a world that did not yet exist. The new generation of artists has inherited fragments of this emancipatory past, which they use to sketch out a new vision of collectivity. Like the bodys connective tissue, this new collectivity is flexible and fluid, but no less intense. Even within conditions of social and ecological collapse, the desire for collectivity continues to drive the formation of creative and affective communities inside and outside the art field. The tissue that connects body parts is the softest tissue, but also the most resilient.

A member of the curatorial collective What, How & for Whom (WHW), Ana Devi is a curator and educator living in Zagreb. On behalf of the collective, she currently runs two WHW programs: the WHW Akademija and Gallery Nova. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Zadar, where she researches partisan artistic production and anti-fascist resistance during WWII. She teaches at the MA program in Visual Art and Curatorial Studies at NABA, Milan.

2021 e-flux and the author

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Bones, Muscles, and Connective Tissue: Tales of Collectivity - E-Flux

Human beings and other primates all inevitably age at fixed rates, according to a new study in Nature Communications. "Human death is inevitable," one of the researchers concludes gloomily in the accompanying press release. "No matter how many vitamins we take, how healthy our environment is or how much we exercise, we will eventually age and die."

The study aims to test the "invariant rate of aging" hypothesis, which posits that the rate of aging is relatively fixed within species. Bodies break down as their tissue and genetic repair mechanisms fail at species-typical rates, leading inevitably to death. The researchers explore this hypothesis by comparing patterns of births and deaths in nine human populations and 30 non-human primate populations, including gorillas, chimpanzees, and baboons living in the wild and in zoos. Their results, they report, imply the existence of "biological constraints on how much the human rate of ageing can be slowed."

To reach this conclusion, Fernando Colchero of the University of Southern Denmark and his team looked at the relationship between life expectancythat is, the average age at which individuals die in a populationand lifespan equality, which measures how concentrated deaths are around older ages.

If deaths are evenly distributed across age groups, the researchers explain, "the result is high lifespan variation and low lifespan equality. If however, deaths are concentrated at the tail-end of the lifespan distribution (as in most developed nations), the result is low lifespan variance and high lifespan equality."

Human life expectancy has been increasing at the rate of about three months per year since the 19th century. The researchers report that most of that increase has been "driven largely by changes in pre-adult mortality." In the accompanying press release, Colchero notes that "not only humans, but also other primate species exposed to different environments, succeed in living longer by reducing infant and juvenile mortality. However, this relationship only holds if we reduce early mortality, and not by reducing the rate of ageing."

Historically, about 1 in 4 children died before their first birthdays and nearly half died before reaching adulthood. Globally, only 1 out 35 children today don't make it to their first birthday. The reduction of early adult deaths from accidents, natural disasters, and infectious diseases has also contributed to longer life expectancies. Consequently, global average life expectancy has more than doubled from just 31 years in 1900 to around73 years now. Since more people are now dying at older ages, global lifespan equality has been increasing.

In the United States, average life expectancy at birth was 47 years in 1900; back then, only 12 percent of people could expect to live past age 65. Over the past 12 decades, life expectancy at birth in the U.S. has increased by 30 years; life expectancy at age 60 has risen by only 7 years. In 2014, U.S. life expectancy reached a high of 78.9 yearsbefore stalling out due to the rising deaths from despair among middle-aged whites and then from the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly 88 percent of Americans can expect to reach 65 years of age.

Why do all animals, including human beings, age? One popular theory for how species-typical rates of aging emerge is that individuals are selected by nature so that they can keep their health long enough to reproduce and get the next generation up to reproductive snuff. If a body invests a lot of energy in repairing itself, it will reduce the amount of energy it can devote to reproduction. Thus, natural selection favors reproduction over individual longevity.

"Understanding the nature and extent of biological constraints on the rate of ageing and other aspects of age-specific mortality patterns is critical for identifying possible targets of intervention to extend human lifespans," the researchers note. Colchero optimistically adds: "Not all is lost. Medical science has advanced at an unprecedented pace, so maybe science might succeed in achieving what evolution could not: to reduce the rate of ageing."

The good news is that a lot of promising research on anti-aging and age-reversal interventions is advancing rapidly. In December, researchers at the University of San Francisco reported that a small molecule drug achieved rapid restoration of youthful cognitive abilities in aged mice, accompanied by a rejuvenation of brain and immune cells. Another December study found that dosing aged mice with amolecule called prostaglandin E2 can activate muscle stem cells to repair damaged muscle fibers, making the mice 20 percent stronger after one month of treatment. As we age, senescent cells accumulate and secrete molecules that cause various age-related diseases. Researchers are working on senolytic compounds that would help restore youthful vigor by clearing out these senescent cells.

The transhumanist biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey, co-founder of the SENS Research Foundation, argues that anti-aging research is on the trajectory to achieve that he calls "longevity escape velocity." That's when the annual rate of increase in life expectancy exceeds 12 months for every year that passes. De Grey recently tweeted that he thinks that there is a 50 percent chance that humanity will reach longevity escape velocity by 2036. If so, our species may finally be able to cheat aging and death.

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We Can't Cheat Aging and Death, Claims New Study - Reason

About three years ago, the poet Jack Underwood became a father for the first time. The responsibility weighed heavily: he recalls feeling that there should have been more paperwork. We signed a form or two and then they just sort of let us take you away. A human child. A few months later, he started having panic attacks his love for his daughter had rendered him utterly fucked with worry. He decided to write about it, which helped: my breathing regulated, my thoughts took shape, giving direction to my feelings; finding my thinking voice was like opening an enormous valve. The resulting book is a thoughtful essay-memoir on parenthood, in which Underwood recounts how he learned to manage his angst to live within the fear by embracing uncertainty.

Not Even This takes its title from the ancient philosopher Carneades of Cyrene, who remarked that Nothing can be known; not even this. It is a hybrid work, alternating between two distinct modes of writing: an epistolary memoir in the second person, addressed to the authors daughter; and a freewheeling meditation on the theme of uncertainty, touching on assorted matters of quantum physics, neuroscience, etymology, history, economics and technology. These include, among other things, the disagreement between Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson as to whether time exists independently of human beings; the biomedical ethics of transhumanism; the prospect of the technological singularity, when digital superintelligence will transcend the human intellect; the way time seems to slow down when were doing something interesting; the anomalousness of wave-particles; the reality behind the myth of Joan of Arc.

The gist? Knowledge is inherently tenuous, mutable renegotiable, political and socialised, and the craving for certainty is at the root of many societal ills. The financial system, for example, is wedded to certain rigid orthodoxies that are periodically disproved, with disastrous consequences: When we mistake the power of finance for certainty in its workings, then we only hand it more power, more confidence, and so permit it to act less and less reasonably. Fallibility is integral to human progress, so its best to go with the flow: a parent has little choice but to learn to trust a child to become themselves, and such trust is a kind of love.

The idea of trust also informs his approach to creative writing. Underwood, whose first poetry collection, Happiness, was published by Faber in 2015, sees poetry as a form of dissonant, unruly, uncertain knowledge, in which language is provisional, equivocal, interpretable. The process of composition is built on two-way trust: trusting the reader to get it, and trusting yourself, as a writer, to make yourself understood. Unlike many poets, Underwood doesnt save multiple drafts of his poems, but restricts himself to a single document and if I ruin it well, never mind Maybe I need the fear, the slight risk, to force myself to take responsibility for the poem in my care I have to move forwards in one vulnerable, resolute trajectory.

Underwood rejects the platitudinous notion that having kids turns you into a better person If anything parenthood has made us more selfish, more insular, always directing our hearts resources inwards. But he is, by his own account, a sentimental sort (I find old batteries funereal. I thank cash machines and postboxes), and this is what gives this book its charm. He reminisces fondly about his daughters first unaided steps, and sympathetically recalls how, during the first few months of her life, she would become extremely unsettled a neurotic, crotchety recluse whenever he had guests round: A roomful of strangers bursting out laughing must have been a grotesque, hyperreal tableau of teeth and gums. He believes silliness is intrinsic to intimacy, and encourages her to feast, you daft little cherub. There is practically nothing in life better than being incredibly silly. Elsewhere, overcome with love, he gushes endearments: My bag of fish. My cuddling gammon. Look at you go! Jesus Christ. Let me count the ways.

This is Underwoods first book of nonfiction prose and, like most debuts, it has its flaws. The central argument is somewhat woolly almost any subject might be obliquely tethered to uncertainty and Underwoods rhapsodic lyricism sails dangerously close to feyness at times. But he is a lucid and engaging companion. The voice that comes through in these pages is immensely likable humble, conscientious and emotionally intelligent. The books format flitting back and forth between disquisition and memoir every few pages serves the reader well: the essayistic meanderings are kept in check, and the autobiographical candour doesnt cloy.

A number of recent books on fatherhood have examined the subject through the prism of masculinity. These include Charlie Gilmours Featherhood (2020), Caleb Klaces Fatherhood (2019), Toby Litts Wrestliana (2018), Howard Cunnells Fathers and Sons (2017) and William Giraldis The Heros Body (2017). Though Not Even This also touches questions of gender, the scope of its existential inquiry is broader: Underwoods overarching theme is fear and fear, as he rightly points out, is what underpins the less savoury aspects of conventional masculinity. For all his fretfulness, this is an upbeat book. Underwoods dread gave way to a sanguine sense of purpose and self-sacrifice: Ive experienced a shift in my personhood, he writes, and acquired this sense of my body as happy collateral, a buffer of meat. Im not the important one in my life any more.

Not Even This: Poetry, Parenthood & Living Uncertainly by Jack Underwood is published by Corsair (14.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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Not Even This by Jack Underwood review fatherhood, philosophy and fear - The Guardian

DC Comics published Batman #108, with James Tynion IV, Jorge Jimenez and Tomeu Morey providing one of the best-looking superhero comic books on the stand right now. Not that you'll see Batman in the suit this week, he's a couple of levels deeper into disguises as he meets up with Miracle Molly, who has been running a bunch of urban tech terrorists, The Unsanity Collective, under a Mr Wyze, causing panic across Gotham. Of course, one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter as the story goes, it's all about the brand. and we get a brand new location as their home base, hiding in plain sight. You just have to look up.

Of course, this isn't Metropolis, this is Gotham. Look up and you might not spot someone about to stab you.

So we have a Gotham underground overground. Well, Batman has all the sewers sewn up. And it tied in directly to when James Tynion IV launched the series and had Wayne Enterprises trying to build a better Gotham, solving its problems through architecture. And, in a way, he has. By giving Gotham a new wealth-redistributive form of justice.

With some lessons that Batman could learn himself.

While he seems to have an eye for recruiting Miracle Molly himself. Always handy to have another Lucius Fox, now that the current one is busy setting up a Future State.

Though he might have to knock some of the Marxist-Leninist communist social analysis out of her.

But that's the problem with Robin Hoods. They don't fit into the usual neo-con status quo that superheroes whatever their stripes seem to want to maintain.

And have rather non-Bruce Wayne ways of looking at the world while they're about it.

Look forward to more economic and political debates in the Batcaves, above or below, going forwards.

BATMAN #108 CVR A JORGE JIMENEZ(W) James Tynion IV (A) Jorge Jimenez, Ricardo Lopez Ortiz (CA) Jorge JimenezBatman goes undercover to infiltrate the transhumanist gang known as the Unsanity Collective and learn more about their sudden appearance in Gotham. And what nefarious plans does Simon Saint have for Arkham Day survivor Sean Mahoney? How does it connect to the Magistrate? And in part two of the action-packed, bone-rattling Ghost-Maker backup storycan our hero stand up to the horror of Kid Kawaii? Plus, don't miss the debut of the mysterious Miracle Molly!Retail: $4.99 In-Store Date: 5/4/2021

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Welcome To Gotham Two Where The Rich Aren't Even People - Batman #108 - Bleeding Cool News