ANOTHER ONE FOR THE TRANSHUMANIST SCRAPBOOK: DRACONIAN PUNISHMENTS
So many people sent me versions of this important and significant development that it was simply a kind of moral imperative that I alert readers here to it, and say something about it. In this case, there are four different articles, each of which reveals, almost immediately, what the new concern is:
Is Biotech Seeking Ways to Make People Suffer Eternally?
Should Biotech Make Life Hellish for Criminals?
Enhanced Punishment: Can Technology Make Life Sentences Longer?
When Dr. de Hart and I were writing Transhumanism: A Grimoire of Alchemical Agendas, one of the questions we were impelled to raise, one which the transhumanist movement itself raises repeatedly, is what does it mean to be "human"? And this, we implied, was not simply a philosophical question. Nor was it a question of biological or chemical "scientism" with its convenient, and largely useless, materialist reductionisms. It was a question of culture, society, jurisprudence, and morality.
Within the transhumanist "vision" there is a common underlying theme, regardless of whether or not one accepts the "heaven scenarios" of such advocates like Ray Kurzweil, or the more sobering assessments of transhumanist researchers like Joel Garreau and their "hell scenarios", for in both cases, the favored transhumanist "GRIN" technologies - genetics, robotics, information processing, and nano-technologies - open both favorable and horrific vistas of the future.
In this case, we are concerned with the horrific ones, for as the articles suggest, what if such technologies made life extension possible as a matter of judicial punishment? This unpleasant prospect, as the articles aver, is actually being not only entertained but its advocacy is even being implied in some circles. What if, in addition to this, other technologies are super-added to life extension, technologies of the "androgynous and alchemical fusion" of man and machine, to implant criminals with chips, to subject them to forms of "virtual torture" and suffering? Some transhumanists have envisioned the downloading and uploading of individual's personal memories as a technique of virtual life extension. But what if such technologies could recover the memories of victims of crimes? Would criminals then be punished by making them relive in some sort of "virtual reality" the horrors of the crimes they committed on their victims? Could criminals of the future be sentenced to "life extension and 'hard reliving' of their crimes from the victim's point of view" for "x" number of years, without hope of parole or reprieve? While such questions sound like science fiction, as the above articles point out, they are already being entertained, and they are being entertained, because the technologies impelling them are already under development.
Indeed, one can envision a state of development where such technologies were so advanced that a sentence of life in prison with "at hard virtual labor" would be so horrific, that the death penalty, far from being a thing to be avoided by defendants, might become a thing sought.
But there are yet other possibilities as well, possibilities that were, in fact, explored in the television science fiction series Babylon Five in the 1990s: the "death of personality." In that series, convicted murderers are subjected to a kind of "death of the ego": the erasure of the personality, memories, and emotions of the perpetrator.
While some may view all of this favorably, and argue that it is "ethical," I incline to the other opinion, and hold that it is barbaric, and a measure of the dehumanizing that such philosophies and technologies are inevitably bringing with them. I submit that such punishments are indeed "cruel and unusual" and little other than a form of torture.
But whatever one's opinion may be, the cultural transformation of culture and society that the transhumanists are championing or, in a few cases, decrying, are indeed hurtling down the tracks toward us and will force each of us to deal with the types of questions these articles are pointing out.
See you on the flip side.
8 Comments
Help the Community Grow
Please understand a donation is a gift and does not confer membership or license to audiobooks. To become a paid member, visit member registration.
This form of virtual torture is already in use through the MK ULTRA program still in progress all over the world. Simulating real life experiences and pain in your mind through the use of hypnosis and direct brain communication systems (in the MILLI-METER wave frequency)DBC , a sort of braindar,reflecting and reading real time thought and implanting cloned thought undistiquishable from the real thing except the subject is totally foreign to the target,trying to emulate confusion. In the military its labelled bio-communications,electronic warfare technology and includes hypersound and microwave technologies as well, but the millimeter wave frequency is the thought reading and simulation technology of choice for the NSA/airforce regime. Prisoners already suffer from this technology,many committing their crimes due to the effects of long term surveillance and hypnosis on the outside. Putting you under hypnosis while your falling asleep is very easily acomplished,especially if you’ve been sleep deprived for any length of time. You should really research what constitutes cruel and UNUSUAL punishment.
Memory implants would be even more dangerous in the hands of US educators. Could you imagine students having to relive the hollywood version of slavery and the holocaust through implanted fabricated memory chips? Maybe Steven Speilberg is working right now on downloading the memories of holocaust survivors onto memory chips just for this purpose? During holocaust month at public school, each student would then have to experience the trauma of virtual Auschwitz (minus the swimming pool). It would be an entirely new generation of holocaust survivors who could keep the memory, the crusade, and the industry alive. But will they too then be eligible for reparations from those beleaguered Germans? Maybe we are looking at another bankster scam to renege on their obligation to return to the Germans their much sought after gold. Surely the Federal Reserve can not return Germany its gold if the Germans are on the criminal end of a trillion dollar lawsuit brought forward by the US Department of Education and the State Department for holocaust crimes against American public school children? The silver lining to this public school dystopia would be the off chance that a student downloading a holocaust survivor’s memories might stumble across some physics and technology that he isn’t being told about in school.
It is noteworthy that with this implanted memory technology we may be witnessing our clever Universe adjusting to the evolution (devolution) of man. It is believed in many cultures and retold by many who have experienced the after life, that upon death, the human soul has to account for his actions while alive. Some say this even involves being confronted by those harmed by the individual’s words or actions while alive. Moreover, for the believers in reincarnation, the soul is destined to return to the physical realm to reap what he or he has sewn, the law of karma, until all stains of unrighteous action on the soul have been cleansed for once and for all. This herculean task in the minefield we call life can take millions of life times, or so it has been said. So what if the Universe is compensating for the prospect of human immortality by giving us a new avenue for karmic retribution and spiritual growth as we escape the judgement of the afterlife through life extension? Through the memory chips of our victims, we don’t have to wait until the afterlife to have a first hand experience of our transgressions. We could learn the errors of our ways in a much shorter time span. Instead of taking millions of lifetimes to free our souls and merge with the Creator, we might be able to do it in just a few, or even one if we are immortal. Not to mention, the whole process of reorienting oneself with new DNA and a new environment every time one commences a new human, animal, or plant incarnation can take a life time in itself, on top of the karmic lessons one is there to learn.
I could envision courts where people would be compelled to accept the memory experience of an individual they have harmed. Your feelings were hurt by the one night stand who snuck out of your apartment before the crack of dawn? Take them to memory court. Let that SOB experience what it is like to be treated like a tramp. Even minor conflicts on the street could be rectified by an instantaneous exchange of memories. A dispute and heated words over a parking space? Exchange memories and discover why you are both so angry. Maybe you will learn that both of you have a lot in common. Maybe you will even share a laugh together as you discover what hopeless, cantankerous misanthropes you both are. The result of all this could be a massive acceleration in spiritual evolution. Who knows, maybe the Universe is getting tired and wants to speed things up so He/She too can finally dissolve into nothingness.
Lastly, I do earnestly believe every American should have to wear for a day the memory chip of the cow that went into his restaurant cheeseburger.
This certainly “keys” into those “Cosmic Parasites” that feasts upon the suffering of mankind’s soul. Perhaps their purpose, has been all along, to engineer a self-perpetuating-crop of good souls to “feast” upon for an eternities to come.
On sale now! While supplies last!
Parasites are expert at causing only harm that is necessary, because evolution has taught them that pointless harm, will ultimately harm themselves. Evolution will eventually teach even malignant cells, that the only way they will succeed in perpetuity themselves, is by –
immortalizing rather than killing their host.
It is hard to understand these morons even thinking about these subjects, I just don’t get it. The world is turning into a world of mad scientists and they all need to be stopped. I just wonder where all this is going, and I hate to think what this world will look like in even 50 years time.
Yet more sad evidence of small groups promoting a deviated “esoteric agenda” behind the scientist facade. And, as with all those various weird implants, drugs and protheses for human engineering, we might invite the “philosopher” mentioned in the article to try it out herself
This brings to my a episode of Star Trek Voyager where a crew member is sentence to relive the murder he supposedly committed on a planet. Also a tv movie White Dwarf where the sentence for a capitol crime was to made immortal before you where imprisoned. Where were the neighbors when this boy was being tortured they are as responsible as the killers, they were hearing the kid screams. Shouldn’t they also be imprison for not calling the police. The problem with torture is you become as bad as the criminals themselves and by torturing them you sanctify their behavior.
it seems as if the transhumanists want to coin a new maxim: “As Below Below, So Below.”