Sunday, 3 December 2017
And further
Saturday, 2 December 2017
An ethical perspective on the astronomical
Martin Rees published in Aeon meanders, with brevity if not alacrity, on his repeated consumption of Revelations I wonder?
It is, to my thinking, indisputable that humans are mediated by their inventions. So the problem is not a shortcoming of our brains that will be surmounted by a technological transhumanism, nor is that the yoke by which capitalism or otherwise controls are apprehension. The problem is the persistent accusation that we don't know. "you don't know..." was oft retorted when atheism was reported in the classroom, the schoolyard. Twice over in the twentieth century British schools were staffed by semi PTSD-ed male teachers, the result of two world wars. It wasn't that one didn't know God and they did. Indeed, that's the melancholia desiring problem they had, they didn't want to know whether they did or not have a theological fix, but sure as shit you weren't to write off their frustrations and reliefs on the question by claiming there was nothing. Martin Rees reminds me of them, the pupils cloned of them.
It's not a mystery, that can only be gotten around by God granting technology, what the intricacies of some minutiae manifesting as infection or a brook rock pool biome are. It is no less mysterious that those inhabiting a position of authority craned through their career to gain public recognition and very little contact with the ground, known as Meritocracy, often insist "You don't know". So it goes that discoveries are sublimely dismissed for the habit of a depression the release from which would collapse the encumbent position of morality.