#USTE: All immortal? (Transhumanism and philosophy)

[Ahmed]

I do not think that "May 68 was a coup d'etat whose aim was to convert France", etc ...
No, but this event was used by the system to reform what was holding it back.
Another example would be the Popular Front which, aimed at the emancipation of the workers and therefore very badly seen by the ruling classes, objectively served the first beneficiaries of the system (against their conscious will!) By laying the foundations of what would become more later the consumer society (thus offering a vast field of new productions allowing the valorization of the value).

This reveals the dual nature of the system: capable of extreme rationality to persevere in its being and, at the same time, completely subject to an irrational and biocidal purpose ...
The same thing is observed, fractally, at the level of a company or various institutions: rationality of means, irrationality of goals.

[sen-no-sen]

I do not think that "May 68 was a coup d'etat whose aim was to convert France", etc ...

There are many elements that go in the direction of a coup organized by the United States.
Moreover, the color revolutions or the Arab Spring remind us of this.
In 1966 France is endowed with the H bomb, which propels it into the very selective clan of apocalypse makers.
The same year De Gaulle decided to leave France from the integrated military command of NATO, this was hardly appreciated in the Atlantic ...
Struggle movements have strangely hatched in student circles, which is almost always the case in attempts to overthrow power, to infuse change nothing better than malleable young brains.

[Janic]

sen no sen hello
I have intentionally mentioned Christian in the sense that the core values ​​of Christianity are fundamentally opposed to ultra-liberalism ("the temple merchants").
The mention of temple merchants and ultra-liberalism is not wise. Indeed the reproach made to the merchant is not their trade (quite licit) but confusion between spirituality and materialism
"Matthew 21:13 And he said to them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer. But you have made it a den of bandits.
Mark 11: 17 He instructed them and said: Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations? But you made it a cave of bandits.
Luke 19: 46 saying to them, It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer. But you have made it a cave of bandits.

[sen-no-sen]

The mention of temple merchants and ultra-liberalism is not wise. Indeed the reproach made to the merchant is not their trade (quite licit) but confusion between spirituality and materialism
"Matthew 21:13 And he said unto them, It is written: My house shall be called the house of prayer. But you make it one. Cave of bandits.
Mark 11: 17 He instructed them and said: Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations? But you made it a cave of bandits.
Luke 19: 46 saying to them, It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer. But you have made it a cave of bandits.

On the contrary, it is perfectly judicious, the merchants of the temple have simply "evolved" and are now located on Wall Street.
One example among many others: "I am just a banker doing the work of God".
dixit Lloyd Blankfein... Director General of Goldman Sachs!
Doing business is perfectly legal, but making it a totalizing religion is it moral?
Do a little research on ultra-liberal thinkers and their obedience and you will understand the full dimension of Jesus' quote ...
Some names to help you:Ludwig von Mises,Henry Hazlitt,Milton Friedman,Alan Greenspan ,Guy Sorman.
You will also see the links between his thinkers and transhumanism.

Ultra-liberalism favors competition and ruthless selection of the fittest (if any corrupt), which seems to me to be in total contradiction with the values ​​of Christianity and many other spirituality ...

[Janic]

sen no sen hello
On the contrary, it is perfectly judicious, the merchants of the temple have simply "evolved" and are now located on Wall Street.
I doubt Wall Street is a house of prayer turned to god, the creator of life.

One example among many others: "I am only a banker doing the work of God".
Anyone can recommend anything, it does not cost anything. Just look at the current terrorism that does the same.

Doing business is perfectly legal, but making it a totalizing religion is it moral?
There, you touch on what a "true" religion should be and its moral dimension, but what are they in reality?

[sen-no-sen]

I doubt Wall Street is a house of prayer turned to god, the creator of life.

Oh yeah,wall street is the world temple of finance religion and the god of money, the priests simply changed their cassocks and called themselves traders.
And money (god) allows the system (life) to work, cqfd.
The concepts change relatively little over time, they simply put on new clothes.
The reference to an abstract power is very much in the economic logic.
Why does the whole political class swear by the return of growth (messiah), while the sciences demonstrate the impossibility of such a project?
Answer: Politicians are believers, and he does not base his ideas on reason, but on a religion.
And if this religion endures it is because it puts at the service of its irrationality a scientific rationalism.
The same is true of transhumanism, of course.

Transhumanism is a desire for all power, a completely irrational desire that can not be realized by nature as a tutor to techno-science.
God does not exist, life after death is just a fable, no matter it's just a matter of time!

[Janic]

Oh yes, Wall Street is the world temple of finance religion and the god of money, the priests simply changed their cassocks and called themselves traders.
And money (god) allows the system (life) to work, cqfd.
Of course, anything can take the "form" of a religion, be it money, sex, politics, etc. For all that, comparison is not right and, theologically, this comparison is not right.
The concepts change relatively little over time, they simply put on new clothes.
The reference to an abstract power is very much in the economic logic.
That's right, that's what I said elsewhere about atheism that has become the substitute for the traditional religion of which it has taken the place since nature hates emptiness.

Answer: Politicians are believers, and he does not base his ideas on reason, but on a religion.
It is still true, but it is the lot of any system instituted that it is religious or other.

And if this religion endures it is because it puts at the service of its irrationality a scientific rationalism.
Scientific rationalism? We could say a lot on the subject! Only a machine (excluding any form of subjectivity, and again) could be considered rational, but humans are subject to subjectivity, beliefs, sociological behavior and of course money and honors.

The same is true of transhumanism, of course.
Which is only the consequence of the above.

Transhumanism is a desire for all power, a completely irrational desire that can not be realized by nature as a tutor to techno-science.
However "we" are very happy that this techno science exists (example this computer, the Web, the electricity that we use to do this, plus all the other sophisticated machines like MRI, transplants, etc ...

God does not exist, life after death is just a fable, no matter it's just a matter of time!
This is a philosophical point of view, not a scientific one.

[Ahmed]

The Arab revolutions took place in a specific context: openly autocratic regimes (thus easily identifiable adversaries), an established opposition (even if clandestine) and a very weak "comfort pressure" (in short, people who had no not much to lose).

May 68 was born from the conjunction of several factors: massive access to education and university for large classes resulting from the baby boom and therefore the existence of a population in an indeterminate in-between, between childhood and active life, therefore very available (and not only "influenced"; rise of the consumer society within psychic frameworks in contradiction with this tendency and perceived as hypocrites, decline of traditional religious values ​​and more generally of transcendent values, leading to a consumerist void without an ideal.
Partly recovered by political leaders perfectly overwhelmed by events, May 68 was the last "emotion" to shake France.
It could not lead to a change of regime, because "the imagination in power" is not the imagination of power and if the hypocrisy of old morality was to be brushed aside, it was only for the benefit of cynicism.
Finally, it was the last jolt before the rallying to the company of the spectacle which contemplated itself complacently in its kitsch comfort what finished concealing the contradictions and quenching the protests.
If the Americans wanted to influence these events, they probably did not understand the real potential of the revolt and a coup was unrealistic, not because the intensity was too low, but because it didn’t was just not headed in that direction.
If this movement directed against the consumerist could not go to the end of its protesting possibilities, it is because it was itself inhabited by the contradictions which it denounced and that, among its members (as follows shown) very few were willing to waive the material conditions which had been both the cause and the condition of the dispute.
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The disenchantment of the world, the dechristianization and more generally the loss of ideals can appear as a total secularization and if one can speak of a religion of money in a relevant way, it must be by taking the precaution to specify that this cannot be under the same register.
Indeed, if the cult of Value can easily transpose old religious practices with its institutions, its priests, its rites and its transcendence, essential differences remain.
Any spirituality worthy of the name aims to go beyond the individual, to link him (religere => religion) with the community thanks to overhanging values ​​which establish sacred limits.
Certainly, we find some features of this in capitalism: Value is the foundation of social relations, but if the individual is exalted it is only in the isolation of universal competition and the only thing sacred is the absence of limits. Often accused of being materialistic, this ideology is as far as spirituality, since it is not the accumulation of commodities that is the goal, nor real wealth (otherwise it would be a great failure!), No, its purpose. supreme is the accumulation of abstract value * which, by definition, has no meaning. It is not, however, a spirituality either, since each believer abandons a growing part of his humanity in the service of the idol. Of course this idol is only a hypostasis, a fantasized projection of a power which is only the result of the efforts of men, but which nevertheless functions in the reverse, empowering itself to impose its implacable will on its people. subjects and get them to work day after day at their loss, pushing them to deploy ever greater ingenuity to build the trap that will not only sign (if we dare say it!) the loss of their humanity, but their total disappearance. and physical, ultimate resemblance and difference with sacrificial religions.
Indeed, where the latter limited the sacrifice to the minimum required to spare the whole, the cult of Value institutes the universal and irremediable potlatch: only the apocalypse suits its excess.
Yet this word too and too badly used must not create an illusion: its Greek etymology designates an unveiling, a final revelation of what was previously hidden, therefore an eminently positive event; here, none of that and the apocalypse is hopeless annihilation.

Ahmed, Apocalypticien-prophylactique, to serve you!

* More exactly it is a real-abstraction, according to the formulation of Marx, since if its essence is abstract and results from a simple belief, its effects are very real.

[Janic]

Ahmed hello
+1000

[sen-no-sen]

May 68 was born from the conjunction of several factors: massive access to education and university for large classes resulting from the baby boom (...)

Your retrospective on 68 is excellent as usual, however you only describe here the terrain of events.
However, we cannot omit a certain number of elements over the period preceding 68.
De Gaulle quickly angered the Americans: the development of the H-bomb, the exit of the integrated command of NATO, the famous speech of Phnom Penh criticizing the intervention of the USA in Vietnam, then is nuclear project east / west, putting de facto American and Russian on the same pedestal.
Besides the general Ailleret responsible for implementing this policy, died in a plane crash in March 68 ...
But the icing on the cake was economic, since De Gaulle wanted to question the supremacy of the dollars (and yes already at the time!).
The list would be too long to list, but it appears clearly that the fall of De Gaulle is not the simple fact of chance and that the social terrain was particularly favorable to the change of regime.

Regarding religions:
You write:

Indeed, if the cult of Value can easily transpose old religious practices with its institutions, its priests, its rites and its transcendence, essential differences remain.
Any spirituality worthy of the name aims to go beyond the individual, to link him (religere => religion) with the community thanks to overhanging values ​​which establish sacred limits.

But precisely, we must not confuse religions and spirituality.
Religions are thought systems whose goal is to connect individuals through a founding myth.
It occupies a political role and are therefore forced to impose itself in the face of another competing system.
Their role is to channel the desires and existential fears of the crowds.
Spirituality, for its part, is above all an individual's intimate journey towards its essence, its being.
If indeed the latter uses as a skeleton a thought system, it is above all a means of overcoming it.

It is clear that despite the billions of believers, very few are really turned to an authentically spiritual practice!

Hence my comparison between economic religion and classical religion, the foundations which constitute them are the memes (sic): a societal organization, a founding myth, an abstract omnipotence, and a promise of a better world.
For the rest, many ultra-liberals will say that the economy has done more for humanity in a few centuries than the whole of religions in millennia ....