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Surpassing Man - Part VI

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 5/25/2006

Dear Sam,

I almost agree with your arguments. The trouble lies, as ever, in that we are both the observer and the observed. This, at least, is what defines "humans". This strange property of observing and the communication of our observations to others - language- is what sets us apart.

Whenever we talk about surpassing, evolution, it is, as Nietzsche stated, a kind of valuing, a kind of statement we make about the world, a weltanschauung. We are measuring from our own point of view. As an individual statement, human valuing - and by extension, human evolution and surpassing - can be achieved from many - 6000 million - private points of view.

Examining it from a wider view, Darwinian evolution, it seems that the evolution of "homo" is a dialectical, eliminating one. This evolution is, as it seems, all encompassing and surpassing - there is no Homo Australopithecus, no Neanderthals, it rests only upon Homo Sapiens. Wherever we look at human beings they are the same - "all humans are brothers". They smile, cry and have a - more or less complex - language. Every child- from the Inuits to Australian aborigines, having been educated in the same environment would display similar qualities.

But, as you have well pointed, we cannot eliminate the possibility of co-habitation. There are a lot of different ants - some can even fly (a great difference), but they co-exist. In a contemporary sci-fi film, Blade - in which there is a mixture of two great post-modern myths: of Conspiracy and the SuperMan (the script is filled with Nietzschean echoes) - the vampires ( supermen) live among humans, disguised, in secrecy... and control the world behind the cover of mega-corporations.

What if we were to think, as the pre-Socratics have, that limits, the logos is what defines a presence. Which are the limits of human beings? In the pre- McLuhan era, these limits where clearly defined, the limits of the human body, of its physis. If one is not a dualist, he must conclude that any surpassing of man should be, also, a surpassing of its body-cum-mind. In our age (the McLuhan one:-), the limits are blurred - could this be a symptom of an actual change? Technology is invading the human body - the fashion of piercing is nothing but an experiment with human adaptability to metals and plastics. In my opinion this is a prejudice: whether or not a man in an F-18 actually does outweigh (in a raw Darwinian sense) masses of dessert nomads - it is conceivable that one of those Arab children that is being surpassed by the manned aircraft above, can learn to fly and pilot an F-111 over New York - or Jerusalem. Once a person with a microchip has a night-X-vision, anyone will be able to equal (or surpass) him by using the same chip. If we want to be consistent, tools are just that, tools.

So, the real change must appear abruptly, inborn in the human being, from the inside. It should happen at its birth, in a seminal way, and this leads us to genetics. Every new-born is a possibility, a novelty. The Greeks called the neonates NEOS, the new ones. What, in the past, we did with our body-heart-mind engaged in sexual love, that alchemy, we now try to replicate in a technical way.

"In a technical way" means in a purely rational-causal way. This is, in my opinion an error. Focused on the Apolinean side, while ignoring the Dionysean, the technician cannot avoid his own blindness. This excess of form, of control, will produce an eruption of the elementary side of life - as it is related in Euripides' "The Bacchanals".

But the pure technician has no dreams (this is one of his characteristics), he cannot envisage what to do. He is like Aladdin, he has the Uranium Lamp, but he doesn´t know what words he has to say to its genie. So, where can we look to - to see these myths? To the techno-artists. Comics books, for instance, have been studying the technical possibilities of surpassing man a long time now. Indeed, all those experiments arouse human limits as we know them. The technicians maintain these ways like steers under a yoke. If we were to make a study of books read by technicians in their infancy we will surely have discovered the names of Jules Verne, A.C. Clarke, Carl Sagan and others of the Sci-fi genre. The very _expression "science- fiction" is revealing. Technology explores the surpassing of body-and-mind limitations: tele-pathy, tele-vision, tele-kinetics, tele-control and all teles and omnis, increased energy, power, etc. If one wants to learn the essence of technology it is better to take a look at mangas ,comics and animation. What other superman is even better known than Nietzsche's?:-)

So, a man that with his own body-and-mind will perform some of these tele-surpassings will be, without doubt, a superman. It is interesting to note that this is nothing new - some cultures, Zen, or the Chinese Taoist Nei-Gong techniques have searched for these potentialities. The Nei-Gong practitioner can, so they say, travel long distances with his spirit. We have heard similar thoughts from the alchemists in search of the philosophers' stone. We also know of Yogi experiments of surpassing human limits.

Well, this is just a possibility. As we have already said, there are many forms of surpassing, at least one for each human being. It is interesting to note that from a higher point of view, there are basically two types of surpassing depending on whether we regard perfection (limits) as vested in the past or in the future. The former (tribal, circular cultures) try to surpass man in a mythical way (the hero is a semi-god, a superman), the latter ( progressive cultures) in a technological one.

There are also, some people who, as you have well suggested, looks for a mixture of the two. This is the case of Sri Aurobindo. His theories are quite complex so I recommend to study his lectures in a deep way - those interested can read a complete summary of his doctrine of future evolution on the internet (fans of the "information society" and the "new age" will find Aurobindo's writings very suggestive:-)

Aurobindo links all evolutions, moral, biological and mental. He applies to them Indian metaphysics. The progressive states of Nature, form, matter and spirit - similar to that classic Taoist scale that goes from jing to chi to shen and to the universal (void?). Aurobindo uses these traditions to build an ultra-historic theory - in this particular sense he is giving Darwin a direction, a sense, not just an eternal fight, a polemos, an adaptative war but also a development.

(continued)