The Life of the Soul in the Rise of the Noosphere
In the following essay I will address several age-old problems concerning the soul through the lens of Teilhard’s ‘noosphere’. I will also consider whether the emergence of ‘digital nervous system’ (IBM) can be considered in any way a good thing for humanity.
Part One: The Animate and the Inanimate
‘Animate’ is best rendered in our understanding as ‘en-souled being’----‘inanimate’ is taken as being bereft of an internal principle of motion---as is found in minerals and rocks. Note however, that very often that living being depends upon or is constituted with inanimate being. A case in point are vitamins and minerals so vital for nutrition. Paradoxically a bone within a living being is said to ‘live’ as long as the body lives, but when the body dies, the corpse gives proof that the bone is a calcified being which may be used for purposes that enhance life---ex)gardening with bone meal. In this example, the inanimate kingdom is employed to serve the animate ends (telos) of life.*
The modernistic view of life has tended to see the soul first of all as being laid upon the foundation of “simple” inanimate being---yet even in the mineral kingdom we notice that crystals grow! Hence the question of whether a quartz crystal is a simple mineral soul is left unanswered in Aristotle’s psychology, or at least it is left as a kind of semantic debate concerning the classification of being into types of ‘souls’. How one views this matter is important when one considers the rise of living phenomena in the cosmos. Viewed 4 dimensionally, that is in terms of time-space where one instead of seeing beings in space unfolded in time, one sees the entire coming to be of the universe as an emergent cosmic process---this is the view undertaken by the French paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin.
In The Phenomenon of Man Teilhard sketches the development of life as an evolutionary process which dates the mineral and carboniferous eras, indeed the earliest burgeoning of the infant universe in terms of matter that is undifferentiated into animate or inanimate being. And yet, it appears that life forms emerge from that which is pre-life whether animate or not.
Evolution then demarcates the era of plants and grasses and vegetative ‘souls’. This vegetative soul is a kind of life which builds upon mineral being [visualize a seedling with tender roots in mineral rich soil] to emerge as a life form that is capable of growth---movement (heliotropism) and blossoming blooming!
The insect realm is the oldest animal life from found on our planet and is by far the most prolific---the order of hymenoptera---ants, bees, wasps and their kind present yet another kind of soul.
The life of mamals and the warm-blooded animals possesses yet another soul---one that is cumulatively {mineral} vegetative- animal. The animal soul is ‘laid upon’ the vegetative and mineral souls. Additional psychological attributes follow from this “new” level of “biological” organization.
This brings us at last to the question of whether our own soul---the biped social mammal with reason (Aristotle’s definition). The mammal soul brings with it cognitive function such as memory, mobility, socialization---for example in rabbits one finds much of the behavior emerges from the fact of breastfeeding, with the maternal womb as the locus of embryogenesis---these core requirements translate into social practices such as nesting, nurturing, affection, grooming---one sees all of these traits in a rabbit colony. And along with a few other changes one sees these traits (sheltering, nestbuilding) in the human species as well. One also sees sexual differentiation, territorial in-fighting, the hearth, attempt at mastering fire and specialized rituals and cults concerning death. Later on in the human record one sees the emergence of specialized rituals surrounding marriage and child-rearing, and so on and so forth.
Finally one sees entire cultures and civilizations who have elaborated specific rituals for sport, commerce. law, religion, medicine and an ever-increasing sequence of ritual effects, codes, rules and laws governing every conceivable aspect of human existence from cradle to grave. Mysteriously, the farther man develops technic civilization, he begins to transfer all of the analog based learning that his ancestors achieved being translated into a digital binary code which races on silicon fibers and other superconducting minerals which harbor little if any resistance to the light that travels along their miniature networks.
The question now faces us: Can this computing activity be called an ‘artificial intelligence’ or even a soul in any respect? Or at the very least a 'hybrid' interpretation noting as Teilhard does that the crucial essence of soul is complexity-consciousness and whose human 'telos' gives way to a noospheric so-called Smart Planet---but note! the digital framework is as it were laid upon the functioning of the human being---as it were a kind of appendage, a certain lens that builds upon the human function, supplementing it---this is the hybrid view. The non-hybrid views are as follows: a) kind of Kurzweillian singularity---as if it were inevitable, and b) the good old-fashioned view that computing simply re-orders the activities of the globe into a kind Smart Planet hierarchically ordered to the digital nervous system but in a nefarious manner---that is subjugating the animate to the inanimate telos. The instrumental value of the computer cannot match initial soul whose telos is god or its creator.
While we ponder this question, let us consider if mankind is forming a new layer of thinking of global dimensions interconnected via a digital nervous system----or to put this in terms of Teilhard’s philosophy, a global soul or ‘noosphere’. Let us attempt to address this question by looking at Aristotle’s psychology.
The soul of man indeed is anchored in mineral, vegetative and animal functions or properties. The human soul “shines through” these denser and less radically complexified life forms. The enirety of human life and activity may be seen as an organism in itself----unifying all of the trade routes, health practices, legal jurisdiction, etc. The internet may be crudely understood to be a “digital nervous system” of a unified noospheric phenomenon and this being merges toward a solitary conscious life and perception of its own being. Just as all of the kingdoms of life are united in the living soul of man----mineral, vegetative and animal, this human supersoul assumes the entire noosphere as its body. In the same manner that living blood is composed of organic and inorganic materials-----this noospheric body subsumes all living systems---organic and biological as well as the inert systems---machines and electronic technology raising them into a unified global “life”. This mind of the earth is Teilhard’s basic intuition.
Be that as it may, the upshot of the digital transformation of knowledge practices currently enveloping the world’s historical development is to indirectly raise the level of the mineral ---at least insofar as digital networks depend upon this medium and substratum for its transfer of information---hence the image of flow of information as lifeblood. This is the lifeblood of the digital nervous system if you will. Bad metaphor? Perhaps.
A pale distillate, grey, lifeless, not a ruddy vibrant red blood but an insensate machine, neither cold nor hot blooded, neither insect or amphibian---no pretension to call this ‘life’.And yet, reflexively this grey blood then re-orders hierarchically the practices and ethical codes, rituals and activities of man--- and then by altering human practices, goes on to alter all other living systems: animal, vegetable, oceanic, atmospheric. It is as though Aristotle’s great chain of souls, this great transparent pyramid has become inverted. Placing the mineral atop the heap and ordering the ensouled beings at the bottom which is a reversal of the classical aspiration of the soul toward self-realization and knowledge of God.
The spiritual aspiration of man is reversed and ordered by a new world ordering system which steers the direction of the digital nervous system placing man’s soul in an inverted to the spirit---upside down! What are the consequences for ethics? What is good becomes bad, and what is bad becomes good---the digital order trains and commands the higher, more complex orders of en-souled life to lifeless “best practices”.
This is an angelic panzi scheme, but not the type that leads the human soul to the possession of the kingdom of heaven---it is a diabolic panzi scheme which subordinates the more highly developed sentient beings under the hierarchical authority of the Digital Nervous System (DNS). The end goal of this transformation is the entire subjugation of all animate and inanimate systems---both organic and inorganic. To extrapolate the logic of the DNS to the telos or end goal is to see the world entirely and totalistically governed by remote operating systems.
It is no surprise then that the early Christian visionaries such as John of Patmos sees into this future and envisions the Beast as described in the Book of Revelation. The Beast emerges lifeless and grey though somehow animated through the subordination of all souls into this impersonal grid. The Beast wants to subject all living systems and beings into its secure, dusty grey quasi-being. This being, incidentally, emerges, as it were, by necessity, by logic with no hope of earthly revolt as it subjects souls and subverts individual persons to a cog within a wheel, within a great machine (Beast). These individuals gladly forfeit their precious souls, blindly and unconsciously and by way of seduction and when they see at last the full scale of destruction of the machine that they are building, it is too late to realize that it is they who are being trained and programmed to build the beast and hence lose all chance of rebellion to rage against the machine for their autonomy and basic ethical right to be an individual. By the time they see the globalized network it is entirely far too late---the vines have become too firmly entrenched strangling the living blood from mankind and pressing man into this service to do the same in wanton destruction of the animal habitats, the forests, the waters---too late do the frackers realize that they are toxically destroying the groundwaterss and their childrens’ and grandchildrens’ fresh water sources. The aquifers deep in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale formation which are described in the book of Genesis as “the waters of the deep” are crushed, broken pierced capillaries torn, arteries severed---the waters of the deep lose their way and their sacred meaning and cannot find their way to the sources and springs and watersheds. Their vitality has been crushed and severed only too late do the oil and gas engineers realize that this wreckless scheme of wanton environmental abuse against the very wellsprings of life. Ironically the oxymoronic epithet ‘clean energy’ is a well constructed deceit since extraction of gas energy sources from shale is a very destructive and un-clean practice which threatens all levels of biological organization. The very goal that fracking aims to serve is radically undermined at each part of the hydrofracturing process. It is hence, an accelerated form of self-destruction with regard to the life systems on earth.
What is the ethical significance of all of this? Such rapacious and exponential growth which merits the success of one type of life to the exclusion of all others is called cancer in terms of human medicine. This rapid tumorous growth of fracking is literally a cancer of the earth. Ironically, this reckless last ditch effort to extract natural gas from the Marcellus shale in the state of Pennsylvania and elsewhere is touted as a new and renewable clean energy resource which can be valuable in order to foster the growth and desperate hunger of the globalized entity---this digital nervous system requires enormous amounts of energy to keep its data storage facilities, its NSA, surveillance practices, warrantless wiretapping---the argument is flatly stated that such increasing energy consumption required as a kind of global mandate for the DNS to survive. It is truly a Russian Roulette or Catch 22 scenario. Meanwhile the Dow Jones Industrial average hits new peaks---Uber rich profit even more from earth destroying corporate stocks, and the intelligence which underlies the military-industrial complex to implement the use of drones and an ever expanding arsenal of global terrorist and anti-terrorist war technology and intelligence.
The globalists subvert the sovereignty of national and state players, ethnic enclaves whose culture and civilization has the legitimate rule of law since the Renaissance---now those foundations are swept away in a matter of years in real time while the digital sense of time accelerates approximating the speed of light in order to bring about the global new world order and DNS, a global ‘monarchia’ with its self-appointed legitimacy and self-established constituional foundation which proceeds unchecked by any popular check of balance and whose strings are pulled by a very few agenda meisters, those bold enough to lay their hands upon the governance that the new world order demands. Call them Bilderburgers, G8 have eagerly rushed to take up the reins where angels have feared to tred to govern the world in this new state of affairs and world organizations while the honest laborers stand wide-eyed in wonder at the terror these global players command like colossal firework shows as the beast prowls forth from the sweat and toil of their own hands.
*Should the order be reversed---that is, that animate being should be used for the 'telos' (Gk: end, purpose, goal) of inanimate being, would also reverse the valuation [reversed cosmos?]."
