“There is one fundamental difference between humanity and animality — labor. ”
“The illusion of progress mediated by technological advancements is preparing the species for a singularity that renders the human as inhuman and alien to itself. This is an ontological alienation. This ontological alienation is defined by a de-familiarization with one another and a dissolution of what our being reveals about Being.”
There is one fundamental difference between humanity and animality — labor. Although we have failed to define the essence of humanity and its existential properties to a degree of sophistication that allows us to declare such a notion with assuredness, nonetheless we move forward with labor as a differance — springing us forward in our ontological investigation. With confidence we can declare, man works beyond the fulfillment of material needs. Furthermore, The philosophers strivings are always beyond the material; for he is an investor in non-material, metaphysical commodities — which he manages and possesses eternally. Be forewarned, do not allow for the edicts of philosophy to be miscategorized as mere intellectual gossip. We free spirits always go up to the end of times to retrieve the occulted essence of truth.
“nostalgia is a ghastly revenant that limply resides in the present.”
If we accept that absence is secondary to presence, then what do we make of what resides betwixt? We find ourselves in the realm of ghosts — a domain where the dead often don’t know they are dead. Philosophers are, and should always remain, invokers of the spectral. Spectrality encompasses all that parades between the divine and humanity — namely, angels and the essence of technology.
Dialectically, we accept the interconnectedness of all things. Phenomena are not isolated, rather interconnected. To understand the part, we must apprehend the whole — the gestalt. Alienation changes our very nature. Being mindful that quantitative change precedes qualitative change, we must protect ourselves from the doldrums of the mundane, resulting in inconspicuous memetic change first, then substantial change afterwards in cultural, personal, and social domains. The impact of the memetic is an insidious attrition, further disconnecting us from our labor and mis-behavior. Furthermore, the emerging singularity — the point in time where non-human intelligences actively surpass the collective intelligence of the human species — perhaps signifies a qualitative change in the race — a fatal erosion of being and striving.
“When meaning and purpose have been abandoned...man will become the subjects of cruel masters wielding the hammers of technology.”
The ontic of labor requires us to grapple with time. In the best of times, our labor in the present signifies an imagined future of security. What then do we make of a rapidly disappearing future? Stuck between unremembered origins and aborted futures, the present haunts us through the disappearance of meaningful labor. In over-civilized societies, objects of our labor are alien to both us and the societies in which we reside. The objects of labor cannot be claimed nor possessed by the slave — the product is independent of the slave who has fashioned it. This commodity, however, exerts influence over both the slave and the profanum vulgus, who froth at their mouths to lay claim to these consumable goods. This results in the deterioration of labor to simply the fulfillment of material needs and reduces man to animality. We must shake ourselves of the false notion that objects have no sentience. We go on to complicate this conundrum by directing these beast-like stirrings to fulfill artificial needs — through the consumption of goods that are part and parcel of this erected matrix of artifice. Additionally, Ontology has been degraded by a predisposition to consume and categorize knowledge. These artificial needs and superficial commodities replace people as the nexus for social relations. This is alienation proper.
“we remain paralyzed in a dark utopia populated with no-bodies.”
Even when labor persists, we are not only alienated from the products we assemble and create — we are alienated from the self, from the crowds of society, and not only the fruit of our labor, but from labor itself. Our strivings are depersonalized to the degree that the soul withers away — rendering the human ontologically alien to others, itself, and its own labor. Without the noble will to take hold of true labor — work which develops consciousness through individuation — we remain paralyzed in a dark utopia populated with no-bodies.
Here we run the risk of falling prey to nostalgia. For many, nostalgia is a ghastly revenant that limply resides in the present. The unremembered past, bookended by an aborted future, allows for nostalgia to emerge as an animated corpse. The death, or absence, of progress is inherently hauntological. Where progress is absent, the spectral only exists.
Let it be known that alienation is not exclusive to economic systems. We create binding systems that govern us more than we govern them. This tragedy also applies to technology, its many instruments, along with the complications involved with the species' ever-growing contact with non-human, extraterrestrial intelligences — including the angelic.
When meaning and purpose have been abandoned, and progress has withered away, man will become the subjects of cruel masters wielding the hammers of technology. At last, as a final cruel joke, the hammer is replaced with a snare, a net, a hook, a lance — inoculating the species with foreign technologies — enforcing a demonic hybridization, creating a most faithful slave.