Monthly Archives: May 2023

Julie Reeder

Publisher

Life as we know it is changing, probably more quickly than any time in history. That is just a hunch, based on how quickly technology is advancing and how culturally we seem to be more distracted by controversies and entertainment on our phones and less concerned and informed about important issues that actually have great consequences to our culture, our future, and our very existence.

We dont want to be political or religious so ignorance is bliss as to how corrupt our national political system, agencies and leaders are. We suspect something isnt right and we are uninformed about things like regulatory capture (industry controlling and funding government agencies that used to be objective and for the public good) which actually brings harm to our people.

We were tested during COVID and found to be willing to give up our freedom of speech out of fear of being exposed to disinformation, as well as other Constitutional freedoms.

We are fighting for medical freedom over our own bodies and our doctors are losing their licenses for having educated, yet differing, politically incorrect opinions from what the state and federal government have mandated as truth. Now the U.S. is considering giving away our freedom to the World Health Organization when another pandemic happens.

We would all be under the governance and control of the WHO, whose leader was placed in his position by China and is not even a medical doctor. Regardless of who the leader is or who put him in the position, we should be in control of our own country with people who we vote into office, because at the root its always about control. And very often the end justifies the means.

As things move quickly and leaders from the President and Congress to the WHO and the World Economic Forum scramble to control people, how much easier would it be in a world where we are all transhuman?

Soon the fight may extend past freedom of speech and personal medical freedom into transhumanism, artificial intelligence (AI), and singularity. These are hot complex topics that have been at the forefront of scientific and philosophical discussions for decades but more so right now. The idea of using technology to enhance human abilities and create intelligent machines has both advantages and dangers.

Have you ever heard of Human 2.0? Some believe it is the next phase of evolution, where we create machines that are more intelligent than we are. Elon Musk has repeatedly warned against AI, as he invests in it, that it could literally end our civilization and humanity.

Advantages of transhumanism and AI

Transhumanism is the belief that humans can and should use technology to enhance their physical, intellectual, and emotional capabilities. This philosophy promotes the use of genetic engineering, cybernetics, and other technologies to improve human lives. One of the primary advantages of transhumanism is the potential for increased lifespan and improved health. By using technology to enhance the human body, scientists could potentially eliminate many of the diseases and conditions that shorten human lifespans.

Similarly, the development of AI has the potential to revolutionize virtually every aspect of our lives. AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data and identify patterns that humans would not be able to detect. This technology can be used to improve healthcare, education, and many other industries. For example, AI-powered healthcare could help doctors diagnose and treat diseases more accurately and efficiently, potentially saving countless lives.

Dangers of transhumanism and AI

However, there are also many dangers. One of the most significant risks is that the development of these technologies could exacerbate existing social inequalities. For example, if only wealthy individuals have access to life-extending technologies, it could widen the gap between the rich and poor. Similarly, if AI-powered systems are primarily used by corporations and governments, it could lead to further concentration of power and decreased accountability.

There are also concerns about the potential for AI to become too intelligent and out of control. This scenario, known as "superintelligence," is often portrayed in science fiction as a catastrophic event that could lead to the extinction of humanity. While many experts believe that this outcome is unlikely, there is still a significant risk that AI could be used to carry out harmful actions, intentionally or unintentionally.

It makes me think of the Matrix movies where almost all the humans are hooked up to a pod living in a dream reality while serving as batteries for the matrix. Civilization and humanity are destroyed when humans no longer have the freedom to be human, to make decisions, to love, to travel, to experience our world, to serve and work for each other rather than a centralized power, and when we lose the ability to have a soul. Its one thing we believe separates us from machines and animals. We have a soul. We are creative, spiritual beings and sometimes unpredictable.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil, author of the book Age of Spiritual Machines, predicted in 1999 that machines with human-level intelligence would be available from affordable computing devices within a couple of decades, revolutionizing most aspects of life. He says nanotechnology will augment our bodies and cure cancer even as humans connect to computers via direct neural interfaces or live full-time in virtual reality.

Kurzweil predicts the machines "will appear to have their own free will" and even "spiritual experiences." He says humans will essentially live forever as humanity and its machinery become one and the same. He predicts that intelligence will expand outward from earth until it grows powerful enough to influence the fate of the universe, and goes on to say that Singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human, but that transcends our biological roots. There is disagreement on whether computers will one day be conscious.

Others believe that transhumanism, AI, singularity, and Human 2.0 are the dreams and inventions of wealthy men who want to find a way to cheat death, live forever and be their own God. Its also feared that while there could be some advantages, people may also be able to be controlled by the internet, electricity or other means.

How far is too far? We already have the knowledge of the world at our fingertips on our mobile devices. We already have the ability to have technology aid our hearing, eyesight, movement, etc. Neurolink takes things even further. We have to consider how far can we go before we are someone or something else entirely? And how easily can we be controlled? How compliant will we become by choice? What would be the implications to our society and our freedoms? What does it mean to be human?

There are complex issues that need to be researched and debated. People would do well to unhook from the matrix, ask questions, and be cautious of who is in control as we shape our technological future.

Visit link:

Transhumanism, AI, Singularity - How far is too far? - Fallbrook / Bonsall Villlage News

We're living in an age of what Mary Harrington calls cyborg feminism. This feminism, Harrington explains, is a vision of what freedom is thats inseparable from the technologies that make it possible.

The author of the recently released book Feminism Against Progress, Harrington argues that by turning women into simulacrums of their real selves, todays feminism isnt really as empowering as it likes to think. I sat down with Harrington during her recent trip to Washington to discuss cyborg feminism, why first-wave feminism got memory-holed, and the relationship between transhumanism and the transgender movement.

FEMINISM FOR THE ELITE

Thanks to the advent of birth control, a transhumanist technology leading to the availability of abortion and even the popularity of the transgender movement, were told we no longer have to worry about the particulars of our bodies because we can transcend them, Harrington explained. This isnt true, of course, but it is the prevailing cultural message that imbues everything from our media to our textbooks.

This all means that womens personhood and participation in society are now predicated on the ability to alter the natural functioning of their own bodies, a message that, despite its hostility to women, has ironically been pushed by mainstream feminism.

If you believe that your participation in society and your personhood as such are structurally predicated on your access to birth control and legal abortion, then you are in a sense inseparable from the machine, she explained. You dont exist as a person except through your integration with these technologies.

This perspective underlies the pro-abortion movement, which, according to this logic, makes abortion a necessary prerequisite for a womans full personhood. And yet, pro-life principles actually undergirded much of first-wave feminism, but that part of history has been erased by the winners of the feminist movement, the ones who valued freedom over care.

First-wave feminism has been almost completely memory-holed because its problematic from the point of view of the feminism we now have, Harrington said. (Not only is early feminists' stance on abortion hopelessly archaic, but so is their support for the domestic sphere as a bulwark against the atomization of modernity.)

If cyborg feminism has won and it has freed women from their own bodies and their obligations to their children, why shouldnt it also free them from their gender? For young people whove grown up with the internet, this logic is easy to follow. Yet Harrington, who describes herself as extremely online, isn't anti-technology. Technology can be used for good, provided were intentional about orienting it to how people are and not how we think people ought to be, she said.

She gave the example of Keeper, a new dating service aimed at producing marriages that describes itself as driven by AI and relationship science, guided by human care. There are also a variety of natural family planning apps that serve as a digital alternative to hormonal birth control. And then theres remote work, which can help families return to the preindustrial standard of the household as its own economy.

But most new technologies seem to want to transcend the natural desires and designs of our bodies. Harrington warns against this disembodying effect of digital technologies, which we see in the rise of the transhumanist juggernaut.

Despite pushing the transgender movement, this school of thought doesnt actually care that much about transgender people, she argues. The celebration lasts only as long as a man is becoming a woman, or vice versa. But if that person chooses to detransition, the support evaporates.

What that suggests to me, she said, is that really theyre the cute mascots for something which is much bigger than trans identity and is much more about delegitimizing the idea of human nature as such and opening it up to commerce.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Gender identity crises are good business. The sex reassignment industry is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And the only thing holding it back, as with the other excesses of modern feminism, is the anti-cyborgs.

Theres still broad cultural support for the idea that there are some things which are sacred. You cant touch them, Harrington said. That intuitive sense still exists for a great many people, and theres no way you can deregulate human nature unless you can get rid of that first, or at least make it deplorable. The point where it becomes low status is the point where big biotech can really take off.

Read more:

How 'cyborg feminism' confuses technology with women's progress - Washington Examiner

Xavier Hamon (right) pictured during the Rural Resilience gathering organised by ARC2020 and partners in Pless, France, October 2022. Also pictured (from left): Katrina Idu (Forum Synergies), Czech farmer Terezie Dakov, and Louise Kelleher (ARC2020). Photo: Adle Violette

If we all agree to take back the power over our food, what do we need?

On Saturday 22nd April, the Global Bean network, including ARC2020 and its projects Rural Resilience and Seeds4All, invited its members to organise in-person events to celebrate the diversity of pulses in Europe and beyond (Albania, Austria, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Greece, USA). These leguminous celebrations then connected online for the Global Bean Seed Festival to talk about their initiatives and showcase their varieties.

Helping to frame the discussion, Xavier Hamon, artisan cook, president of the Alliance of Free Tables (formerly Alliance des cuisinier.e.s, a partner of the Rural Resilience project) and director of the Universit des Sciences et des Pratiques Gastronomiques (another partner of the project). His political statement encourages us to take the power back over our food, by re-cultivating of hundreds of varieties of grains and pulses, taking back land, winning political mandates, and most of all, support to those who work for the living world, day after day. Below is the full text of Xaviers presentation.

Words by Xavier Hamon

Lire cette tribune politique en franais

Dear Partners,

I was asked to present a political angle on the question of seeds and beans. I am very proud that a cook has been asked for political comments: it means that the view of our profession is starting to change, and the vision of the Alliance des Tables Libres et Vivantes is starting to be understood. We are no longer only tools for territorial promotion. I measure the road travelled and I thank the organisers for their trust.

Before I begin, to be clear, the cooks that I represent are all fighting for better food, better use of pulses and cereals, more plant-based food, the end of industrial livestock, and support for sustainable extensive livestock farming.

Sorry to keep referring to the French example, but it is what I know best. Perhaps it can offer the biggest gap between completed transition projects and the horror of agribusiness and poor quality food.

In France, in the world of cuisine, in a country that calls itself the capital of gastronomy, only certain people are allowed to talk about the professions that feed us.

And so we all are subject to the dominant discourse. Cultural hegemony, as Antonio Gramsci described it. Behind this dominant discourse are vested interests.

The cultural hegemony does not correspond to the reality. This vision of chefs represents less than 1% of the food services sector in France. The rest is left to the agri-food industry and fast food, which brings low quality jobs and the loss of professions that work with the living world.

All this translates into a desertion of personnel from kitchens and restaurants because in addition, the reality of working conditions is so terrible that no-one wants to do these jobs. As they say: Business as usual.

And thats the solution: Agribusiness is a perfect match for the Food Business, with the historical complicity of the great French chefs who were part of the development of the agri-food industry.

The parallel with agriculture is evident. There is also a hegemonic discourse that leaves little place for what all of you do, every day. Questions of farming and food are managed in the offices of the ministry of agriculture or at the general assembly of the biggest agricultural union in the country. Sensing that deep changes in society are questioning their ecocidal and socially unacceptable models, the agricultural hegemony deploys fiction, storytelling, greenwashing, corporate social responsibility, the media and politicians, to reassure consumers, so that they continue to be fed by the big food retailers.

In both gastronomy and agriculture, we see the same losses:

Bean growing has always mixed beliefs, pagan and religious, agronomic conditions, histories of migration, food needs, to constitute shared living cultures

This shared culture allows for the kind of social intelligence embodied by community festivals.

Without this relationship to the living world, without these relationships to each other and a shared culture, there is no life in society. Beans also carry this cultural responsibility.

We have the knowledge. We know how to do the transition. But its still a long road to find the means to move from activism to a real development of the sector.

If we all agree to take back the power over our food, what do we need?

Lets admit it: if we take our heads out of our nice stories, we dont live in a world that is concerned with the common good. Its a capitalist world that co-opts our arguments in a relationship that is closer to transhumanism than to the living world.

Our resistance in opposing this system shows an important trait of the human character. We still have a survival instinct, a trace of our reptile brain that invites us to resist. We inherit the history of past struggles and social victories.

History is repeating itself on the sides of the dominants: transhumanism echoes the futurist movement of the 1920s. On our side we also inherit past resistance movements to anchor us in the living world and to put humans back in a position of deciding for ourselves. The political movements after World War Two, and the social victories that followed until the 1980s, show that other ways are possible.

To quit the existing model, we need to have bigger ambitions, collectively. We need more of us. Alone, small-scale models will only save themselves they will not save the common good, or the damage done to food.

Two recent events show us that there is still a long road ahead:

We saw the same elements of cultural hegemonic discourse. As in the Netherlands, the power of productivist agricultural unions translates into the strong presence of these farmers in decision-making spaces: municipalities, regions, the boards of banks and insurance companies, chambers of agriculture and agricultural colleges.

To develop better food, a better relationship with the living world, we can no longer leave the power to these influencers. The representative bodies of our republics can no longer be personified by only the capitalist and technological model.

Our discourse is not enough. Our advocacy is not enough. We have to find the means to campaign, to win mandates, to be where the decisions are made. None of us can do it alone. Which is why my final message is to invite you to build the means of our ambitions for fairer food systems:

.. the number one element of our mental and physical health: food.

Lets pay with dignity the people who work for the living world every day, and take back the power over our plates by means of mandates, not our bank cards.

Thank you very much.

Watch Xavier Hamons presentation at the Global Bean Seed Festival here.

Visit the Rural Resilience project page

Read ARC2020s findings from the field in France, 2020-2022

Rural Resilience | A Collective Adventure

France | Cooking Up Fairer Food & Farming Part 1

France | Cooking Up Fairer Food & Farming Part 2

Rural Realities | Succession Passing It (All) On To The Next Generation

Rural Realities | Feet on the Ground in the Battle for Land

Rural Realities | Testing Grounds for Wellbeing

Cultivating The Future Together ARCs Rural Resilience Gathering in France

France | Meet The Farmer-Bakers Proving Their Skills

France | Meet The Farmer-Bakers Proving Their Skills part 2

Cross-Pollinating Resilience From Portugal: Nos Campagnes en Resilience in Pless

France | Growing Vegetables, Seeding Values Part 1

France | Growing Vegetables, Seeding Values Part 2

What France Can Teach Us About Rural Resilience

France | Farming by Numbers part 1

France | Farming by Numbers part 2

Continue reading here:

Reconnecting With Beans To Take The Power Back Over Our Food ... - ARC2020