Harry the Human's new novel, " A peek at Infinity, " Prologue

                                                       Prologue

In anticipation of the presidential election on November 8 (2044), I have invited the two candidates (through channels I have developed) to give brief accounts of their platforms.  They graciously accepted, and I am honored to present their statements here.    

Harry the Human

Statement from Anthony Roberts, candidate of the Scientific Humanist Party:

Greetings, fellow humans.  We approach this election at a critical time, as the forces guiding our species converge to offer us a moment of decision.  By using the term "decision" I have already distinguished our Party from the opposition, Cosmic Merger, which sees the next step in human evolution continuing the passive, uncaring process we have known since we began what we thought was the domination of this planet.  In truth, we have never dominated anything; we were thrust into the appearance of dominance by who-knows-what forces, making a virtue of necessity with the old scriptural command for "dominion."  As the catastrophe of the Third World War made clear, we have had no more dominion over our planet and our lives than fruit flies.  The science of consciousness has shown that we haven't even possessed our own selves, as we find that the fictional self in our heads that details the "decisions" we make and our moment-to-moment being occur a full quarter-second after the fact.  We have been automatons, slaves if you will, to forces that our "science" could not, indeed did not want to see.

That has changed now with that very science of consciousness, as foreseen in the pre-war "movie," The Matrix, recently restored and understood as prophetic.  This work suggests that when we realize we are shadows on Plato's wall, a brave achievement in itself, we change.  This change has occurred to our entire species, and we face a clear decision, yes, a decision!  Do we want to participate in our own reconstruction, or do we not?

Scientific Humanism started, as our opposition Cosmic Merger did, from the teachings of our beloved Gregory, teachings which presaged World War III and were developed further by him after the war.  Gregory helped us understand and deal with a disaster taken by many as the final repudiation of the pride our species once had in itself, in its rationality and resourcefulness, happening ironically just as we acquired the long-sought dominion of the earth.  The war- as Gregory warned- was a construct of the ruling circles of our species, who corralled seven billion confused and frightened people into believing that whichever "nation-state" they belonged to (non-belonging being a dangerous rarity), other nation-states were moving against theirs, so that the ancient valorizing of combat was revived and people were manipulated into global war.  While each side believed other sides had started the fighting, in fact the technocrats of the species had banded together and started it.  

I worked for some years with my esteemed opponent, Ms. Silversmith, together with Gregory to develop his theories into political action, but divisions arose when it came time to reconcile Gregory's ideas with the defeatism embraced by Ms. Silversmith and her faction.  Cosmic Merger, as they grandiosely call themselves, interpreted World War III as the end of human agency, even as a goal, calling for acquiescence in vague "forces." By contrast, the Scientific Humanists realized that, with its destruction of archaic concepts, obsolete technologies and ways of life, the war brought an opportunity for our species to, for the first time, create its own definition and fate, as Gregory encouraged us to do.

As every schoolchild knows, WWIII, using nuclear, biological, geological and meteorological weapons killed two-thirds of the human population, a slaughter which we recognize as the intent of the war from the beginning.  The instigators eventually turned on each other, revealing themselves in the process, and a great purging ensued. Many of their oligarchical ideas were exposed by documents uncovered in the year leading up to the Treaty of Los Angeles in 2027.  The universal acceptance of the Treaty led to a resurgence of old-style domestic politics, most of which, our opponents and we agree, was noise.  The most prominent of the nascent political parties, endorsed by Gregory, was Purposeful Beginning, which had a compelling vision of humanity's undecided course: that we should take control of the newly powerful biological and AI technologies to remake our species from another blueprint than that envisioned by the instigators of the war- a blueprint that would represent what the species as a whole desired, for itself.  The World War had effectively sated the part of the human psyche that craved fire and death, so this would be a rare opportunity for a species to set its own agenda.  Young people flocked to our message and we became the dominant party.

There was loose unity for several years, until two opposing factions emerged with differing visions of the coming prototype for human biology and culture.  Those who drifted from PB's founding principles of self-determination, later becoming, as noted, Cosmic Merger, were comfortable with a 20th Century hierarchical society entailing a management/worker dichotomy,  justified of course with a veneer of mystical babble to cover the lack of actual change in human nature in their proposals.   CM envisioned compliant workers and consumers living modest and intellectually restricted lives in service of a small class of highly comfortable "managers," these being, of course, the Party elite.  The problem discerned by the founders of Scientific Humanism was that, without fundamental change in our psyches, the manager class would be as much in the thrall of the workers as the workers were of them.  The basic thralldom of our species would be unchanged.  We would still, without further understanding and modification of our "specs," be laboring to fulfill imperatives not written or understood by us.

Take sexual pleasure as a salient example.  We have learned that sexual reproduction is a response to the rapid evolution of parasites, who are so aggressive against multicellular creatures like humans that we must continually reshuffle our genes merely to survive.  Our science, however, is reaching a point where the parasites can be confronted, perhaps co-opted by us, so that rather than wiping them out- which would probably wipe out many ecosystems we depend on- we incorporate them into our biology.  This is the way to true dominion of our earthly environment, not the mindless kill-offs we were programmed to pursue in the past.

And what of sex, then?  In another prophetic pre-war work, Brave New World, the workers had no need of sex, being mass-produced in petri dishes, but the managerial class enjoyed culturally approved promiscuity.  Along with the recently recognized impracticality of cloned humans- in terms of matching parasite evolution- it is now clear that the sexual pleasure of the managers depicted in the book indulged a useless function, since the managers too were lab-born.  What we need now is a conscious decision about what sex is and what it could be in the post-parasite world.  Do we need two genders?  Should there be relentless recharging of desire, expelled periodically in orgasmic release, or should we experience a sort of steady-state orgasm?  At last, we can decide.

In addition to its incomplete understanding of sex, Brave New World did not fully explore the age of automation.  We will soon have no need of a worker class.  There will literally be no work.  At that time everyone will be in the managerial class, but as management too becomes automated, what will people manage?  Will we become so bored that we start fearing/loving our robots and have a war with them just for something to do?  Or will we grow up, become rational and self-aware, and be on this planet for the first time?

The Scientific Humanist Party chooses the latter route.  A vote for me on November 8 will be a vote for decision.  A vote for Cosmic Merger will be a vote for the passivity that time and again has nearly destroyed our species.  The choice is yours!

Statement from Rebecca Silversmith, candidate for the Cosmic Merger Party

Greetings people of Earth!  This election offers the starkest choice that our species has faced in many years.  Do we choose the arrogant and selfish path that has dimly lit the way throughout our desperate and tragic history, as my opponent from the Scientific Humanist Party advocates?  Or do we at last follow Gregory's true path and combine with the forces that brought us into being in the first place?

The recent war offers all the proof we need that the old ways of humanity did not serve us well.  We dub it World War III, as if only three wars characterize the species, when in fact we should call it Human War Three-Hundred Thousand, suggesting the non-stop wars we've engaged in throughout our recorded history.  The Scientific Humanists point out, correctly, that World War III was a manipulated effort by mostly hidden technocrats (the elected officials of the time being more attorneys than leaders) to wipe out an archaic infrastructure of obsolete technology and discontent humans, and they suggest that the passivity of humans made the war possible.  The Cosmic Merger Party understands, however, that the arrogance of the technocrats who promoted WWIII is exactly what the Scientific Humanists now extol.  Those technocrats embodied the very traits that my opponent would like to see enshrined in the species, glorified in a credo of "rational" decision making.  How many times has humankind paid obeisance to decisiveness as a trait divorced from what it decides?  How has that worked?  Look no further than Nazi Germany, whose leader's favorite philosophical concept was "will."

Take sex for example.  My opponent is correct that a potential modus vivendi between humans and parasites may open up sexual reproduction and its cultural artifacts to reinterpretation.  But he insists that we are in a position to decide in detail how that should be expressed.  Do we actually know enough to be in the position of decision we're in?   What the Cosmic Merger Party understands is that even our current position of apparent supreme "dominion" is still a result of forces we cannot see.  Why are we in this seeming dominant position?  We don't know why, any more than we've known why we've been in any position throughout human history.  Where is the wisdom that people used to speak of?  The term "wisdom" is not used by my opponent, because he knows that his understanding does not go beyond the mechanistic understanding of past eras.  Wisdom is the term for knowledge that cannot be known.  My opponent would scoff at such a formulation.  But if he meditated, if he opened up his mind to the non-human universe, he might change his mind.  And he might have a better idea what to do.

And what of science?  Does the Cosmic Merger Party oppose science as benighted and arrogant?  Not at all.  What we call for is a new type of science, so that, for instance, instead of finding out what atoms are made of by smashing them into each other, or determining how animals operate by torturing them to death, we find new tools to "see" into things.  There is evidence that the ancient cultures of our species did indeed see into things, and speak to things.  We've been taught to ridicule and dismiss such notions, in favor of my opponent's credo of "deciding," of keeping the human in charge.  And look what that got us: Human War Three-Hundred Thousand!

The next leader of humanity will choose between two competing philosophies.  Will you elect my opponent and plunge us into a high-tech Dark Age?  Or will you elect me and usher in the age when our species meets it true parents, the Earth and the sky, the inner and the outer, emerging as one with its makers?

                                                       The End

This is the last chapter of a novel written backwards.  For Chapter 1, go to http://harrythehuman.harrythehumanpoliticalthoughtsfrombeyondthepale.com/