From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Thu Jan 31 2002 - 23:05:19 MST
> >To create is to be fully human. To create life is surely a
> subset of that.
> >For some reason I feel that to equate us with gods, or to strive for
> >perceived godhood, is somehow missing the fullness of what
> it is that we
> >are.
>
> an interesting point.
> just thought of this analogy:
> any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Not to the technologist
> vs
> any sufficiently advanced (post)human is indistinguishable from a god.
>
Not to the posthuman
> the vast majority of us here, i imagine, would deny the
> existence of "magic" or "god" in
> the sense that most people take them. (even i would, and i'm
> my own god and happen to
> be quite fond of magick :) ), but how many of us would
> flat-out deny that we don't want
> technology that is indistinguishable from magic?
I want to be able to understand it better than that.
>
> both magic and god are creations of humanity, but both, imho,
> are things to be stroven
> towards. (is stroven a word?)
You can't strive toward magic; it is in essence indefinable, and thus
untargetable. It contains the set of all (or some?) things that we cannot
comprehend. By definition, as we come to comprehend them, they cease to be
magical, and become part of the toolkit.
Off the top of my head, striving for "God" has a couple of interpretations.
It can mean striving for potence and control... I can agree with that (gee,
what a blokey definition!). But I would not label it God.
Or, it could mean striving to somehow become closer to that which is greater
than/beyond us, and on that score, who really gives a rat's? If this concept
even makes sense, I suspect that the closer we get to "god", the less
interesting it will become. It wont become any less pointless, of course,
having started at the maximum on that scale.
Emlyn
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