Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, added that the noosphere is growing towards an even greater integration and unification, culminating in the Omega Point—which he saw as the goal of history
There is no doubt, there are some parallels with T.d.Chardin however my main issue with his predications involve the very concept of the so-called ‘goal of history’. I do not think that history has a goal as such and though we might reach certain thresholds of complexity, no Omega point looms over the horizon.
Au contraire, it is my view that given that there is no goal to evolution but ever-increasing complexity (and even that one may question) the freedom to re-describe our horizon is ever widening in its freedom
spaceweaver:
The whole complex story of our species can be told in the succession of images that we carried, the way we envisioned ourselves and the way we envisioned our future. Most influential of all was and still is, is the way we answered, mostly implicitly and rarely explicitly, the question: What is a human? What is the essential meaning of being human?
I could not agree more that this is THE question ‘par excellence’, however it may be the case that the window into human nature manifested by language and exemplified by the concept ‘self’ is the fulcrum of this question. Thus, a human, in its self recognition, self reflective apparatus, is fundamentally the very vision of his own self reflection. This of course will lead to the infoverse becoming more and more like us, as we are now, yet distributed.
Here come the questions: shouldn’t we, take it as a given that we are those self reflective beings that have finally in their own hands the possibility/capability to create a mind habitat according to our dreams and not according to what we already are? So the final point is, what are the characteristics that we wish to invest our habitat with? How would we like our future to be? Are dreams and visions powerful as they are acknowledged to be, sufficient?
And last but not least, human nature is being redefined as we speak, in what fashion are we contributing to the direction the new definition/s take?
(as an aside note let me state that for my understanding this is a crucial question)
spaceweaver :
There is no doubt, there are some parallels with T.d.Chardin however my main issue with his predications involve the very concept of the so-called ‘goal of history’. I do not think that history has a goal as such and though we might reach certain thresholds of complexity, no Omega point looms over the horizon.
Au contraire, it is my view that given that there is no goal to evolution but ever-increasing complexity (and even that one may question) the freedom to re-describe our horizon is ever widening in its freedom
spaceweaver:
I could not agree more that this is THE question ‘par excellence’, however it may be the case that the window into human nature manifested by language and exemplified by the concept ‘self’ is the fulcrum of this question. Thus, a human, in its self recognition, self reflective apparatus, is fundamentally the very vision of his own self reflection. This of course will lead to the infoverse becoming more and more like us, as we are now, yet distributed.
Here come the questions: shouldn’t we, take it as a given that we are those self reflective beings that have finally in their own hands the possibility/capability to create a mind habitat according to our dreams and not according to what we already are? So the final point is, what are the characteristics that we wish to invest our habitat with? How would we like our future to be? Are dreams and visions powerful as they are acknowledged to be, sufficient?
And last but not least, human nature is being redefined as we speak, in what fashion are we contributing to the direction the new definition/s take?
(as an aside note let me state that for my understanding this is a crucial question)