The Future History of Individualism (Pt.1)
Project: Polytopia

“In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference.”

Douglas R. Hofstadter (I Am a Strange Loop)

This is part 2 of the new series, "Forays in Philotopia - exploring the possible Philosophy of a Polytopia"

1.Abstract

The premise presented is that the concept of individualism, as we know it today is a passing stage in the evolution of conceptual representation and is due for overhaul.
Putting it simply, I believe we are passing through a transit stage in the evolution of the concept of the individual.
This period appears to be closing and will soon come to an end.

The idea I am exploring is that the very concept of individualism, a signifier of uniqueness and particularity, lacks the basics of mindfulness needed to comprehend itself in a virtual mind universe.
The thesis is that the transformation of the concept of individualism will allow a transformation of the meta-narrative of our modern civilization as we proceed to undo and eliminate the restrictions imposed pell-mell by natural selection.

—

As my readers would know I am a great fan of Albert Camus, especially his “The Myth of Sisyphus “, and for one particular reason, for in this short and enlightening essay, Camus, in front of meaninglessness and irrationality claims boldly that the absurd requires a revolt, and not just any revolt, a revolt of personal liberation:

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

(A. Camus)

The revolt Camus advocates ends in the form of: ‘we must imagine Sisyphus happy’, meaning that we must take pride and happiness from the struggle itself and in this I strongly disagree with Camus, not only that I do not accept happiness born of the acceptance Camus advocates, I advocate the contrary, namely: happiness can be born if at all only from rebelling (like Sisyphus himself) against the actual bondage of so called ‘natural acceptance’.



As a specie we have never accepted nature’s constraints, we have developed modes and manners, tools and technologies, to bypass that which is natural, complex as it may be. Modern medicine for example, though far from it’s desirable state and potential has nevertheless, cured and cared for an immense number of illnesses and ‘natural’ occurrences and the future in this respect looks bright and shiny, bumps and obstacles on the road notwithstanding. We take enormous pains to overcome and surmount ‘natural limitations’; we invented air flight because we had no wings, and smart phones because we cannot shout across the Atlantic. Our current civilization with all its defaults and pitfalls has given us a world unlike any other in our short history, and though our minds are still Neolithic in their conceptualization we are in fact in a better state of affairs than ever before.

Despite the latest controversy to shake and rattle the infosphere regarding reverse engineering of the human brain in the next two decades (read this “Neither Ray Kurzweil nor PZ Myers Understand the Brain” for a full coverage), it is patently clear that given the noticeable advances of the numerous groups actively researching the issue (such as the Markram group Blue Brain project), we shall get there.

Whether within the next two decades or the next century, it is fundamentally a non-issue since the prospect itself of a full brain emulation and if so, simulation, is wrecking havoc with our age old philosophies of individualism, mind, self and conscious awareness.

“People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself.
But the self is not something that one finds. It is something that one creates.”

(Thomas Szazz)

2.Inhabiting the concept of individuality

Individuality is a concept unlike any other; it is a concept that presently carries a wide array of implications. Implications that hint at our worldviews and perspectives in more ways than one, in fact it will not be untrue to state that the very concept of individualism we inhabit, is actually the reflection of our epistemic profile.
Our epistemic profile or the structure of the epistemic phase space we call our own can be described as the actual architecture of the concept of individualism, in which and by which we self define.
We have inherited a sort of continuum of existential times all coagulated under the same name and signified by the same body, a coagulation of habits both of thought and of action, behavior and attitudes. We presently regard ourselves as self-contained systems, decision makers and value assessors, as if in some unfathomable way we are or became somehow separated from the larger entities of the biosphere and the noosphere.
Of course no such separation exists, we are as much a part of nature as the next bacteria or planet, we are as much a flow within a flow as a particular current in the ocean. However, we differ in a particular fashion, we differ in our conscious awareness, specifically in our historicity of self-reflection, in our memories.
Memories, which are vivid and unclear, bright and fuzzy simultaneously, memories embedded in a complex and highly vulnerable wetware we call our embodied brains.
This apparent encapsulation of our memories (and by consequence the continuum of our identity) is the grand illusion of individuality, an illusion being perpetuated by the hodgepodge language we use to refer to the individual we call ‘I’.

The modern language of individualism, celebrating the stoic assumption of the so-called ‘natural self’ is as obsolete and as archaic as the antiquated views of teleology.

“Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.”

Roland Barthes



3. The modern individual is everywhere at once

In the modern world we inhabit, we play a multiplicity of roles, simultaneously and consecutively; we operate a rapid succession of selves and identities on multiple platforms all correlated by the infocology we have co-created. The platforms we use however carry a new role, a role that once was relegated to our brains only and now extends into the infosphere.
I speak of course of our memories, some of which as of now reside with Google, or FB, or Myspace or any other platform of what is rapidly becoming a real life streaming process having its core online. These memories, embedded as photos or comments, blog posts or clicks of like, or tweet and retweets, have a very large impact on our conceptualization of individuation. The reason for that is that whilst a few years back, not being online meant that my existence is mine alone and therefore the self reflection on myself as an individual was fairly simple, at present not being online does in no way diminish the access of others to me. In other words, part of me, let us call it the disembodied infosphere me, keeps on thriving automatically and without my conscious awareness.

This has tremendous ramifications. For it implies that the modern concept of the individual is everywhere and at once.
This I call: ‘simultaneous everywhereness’ a new state of affairs we have never before found ourselves in.

The apparent ‘simultaneous everywhereness’ of our individuality is actually a reflection of the manner by which our minds operate, it is the narrative of self-representation extended across times and spaces. Constructing maps within maps, interacting with other maps, continuously update and evolve our meta-narratives.

See what noted neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has to say in The Brain: A Story We Tell Ourselves

“Gene networks organize themselves to produce complex organisms whose brains permit behavior; further evolution enriches the complexity of those brains so that they can create sensory and motor maps that represent the environments they interact with; additional evolutionary complexity allows parts of the brain to talk to each other (figuratively speaking) and generate maps of the organism interacting with its environment. Within the frame of those interactions, the conversation among the maps spontaneously and continuously tells the "story" of our organism responding to and being modified by the environment. (The story is first told without words and is later translated into language when language becomes available, both in biological evolution and in every one of us.)”

The work of Antonio Damasio notwithstanding, we do not as of yet have a complete picture of the transition from the neuronal to the mental, we have some kind of narrative, partial and open to revision, and yet we can imply a number of significant clues.
It is clear that whatever the final narrative of the process of creating minds will be, a few fundamentals will be insisted upon.
These in no particular order include: Flexibility and Plasticity, Complexity and ambiguity, Uncertainty and volatility.
What all these terms have in common is one particular mode of thought that runs contrary to the common thought of hierarchy and stability. What these terms imply is that our very own neuron network combines and recombines, forms and reforms, fashions and refashions, the structure of the brain and by consequence the mind.

It is clear that our individualism is a work in progress, ever expanding and ever increasing in both complexity and narrative. We operate as a multiplicity in a multiplicity, and this very multiplicity of our world requires of us to operate on the basis of multiple selves.

We have multiple networks inside our brains extending into multiple external networks mediated by electronics. Multiple networks in multiple networks, nested and co-evolving, mutually and inter-subjectively co-adapting to allow a multiple form of individuation process in which eventually no particular point of reference will be the original nexus of beingness. To describe such a situation, new in our civilizations evolution, we need reformulate the concept of the individual so as to better be adapted to the world we actually inhabit.

shortly to be continued..

Sat, Aug 28, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: culture, polytopia, collective intelligence, Hyperconnectivity, cyber civilization, Web, Rhizomatic
Sent to project: Polytopia

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