Meliorism or Melancholia

Meliorism will change the universe. It's seldom that I make many claims, here or elsewhere. I am sort of possibilities kind of person -- I like the options left open. In fact, the moment I feel someone trying to box me in I start swinging, rhetorically speaking. But I am convinced of the first sentence of this post.

I mentioned transhumanism before in various posts. I suppose tonight just felt like the right time to start laying some things out. After all, I am still on vacation. I've got the time to at least dabble. :)

I should say that nothing here confirms or denies my own personal Christian faith. It is a philosophical rambling about things that haven't been fully determined. I will also say that nothing can really be denied from a material standpoint either, or the view of a naturalist. In fact, it is more likely true that materialism confirms these presuppositions than denies them. Maybe I'll get around to defending that statement, maybe I won't. It's a teleological world view that until the end of it all, remains just a theory.

I'd like to begin with something as common as a stone. Stones are literally scattered everywhere. I'd suggest that the majority of readers are within reach of naturally occurring stone within a few paces of the place they happen to be sitting. Those who are not could easily obtain one, or a dozen, in under a half hour. Stones come in a variety of shapes and sizes, even compositions. Stones can be used for a variety of different things: they can break apart other materials; they can be thrown at people or prey; they can used to construct buildings and bridges; and as Aesop remind us, they can even be used to raise the level of water in a jug.

Naturally occurring stones do a few things on their own too. They can redirect rivers or even block the natural flow of water; they can stand against wind or serve as rooftops for slugs and worms. On their own, stones have some potential to direct the course of Nature and they undoubtedly played a part in the shared history of this planet and beyond. Suffice to say, we are living on a pretty big one.

Somewhere along the way, the ancestors of the modern human figured out stones could be useful. That through a force of volition, stones could be carved into tools; and later, into entire abodes offering protection and shelter from the elements. Imagine walking in the woods and finding a structure of stones, maybe four stone walls comprised of many smaller stones. You'd instantly recognize that something or someone was taking the naturally occurring sporadic spread of rocks and doing something with them.

Welcome to humanity. And not just humanity, all of Life. It just happens that humanity uses stones most efficiently. The development of mankind is undeniably attached to the ability to use stones -- and not instinctively either. Sometimes we exerted our will upon stones just for fun, or for worship, or for aesthetics, or even for murder (ask Cain).

Ok, I'm stopping on the stone thing because you're bored. Here's the law of meliorism at work: the presence of Life, particularly human life, makes Nature work 'better.' Now I recognize that 'better' is a tautology here at this stage of the definition, but it won't always be. You see stones weren't the beginning, they weren't the end, and they don't even put in a dent in the way in which mankind has already and will continue to mold matter.

Replace the word 'stone' and add in the words copper circuit and you've got conductivity and and the potential for a re-organization of matter in something as complex as a computer. Take away the word 'stone' and add in the word 'DNA' or 'photon' and you start to the picture of what we as human beings are capable of doing to matter.

We are re-organizing it. In most cases, and I believe history proves this, we are 'better' organizing it. And we've really only just begun. Provided we don't kill each other in the next 10,000 years it won't be stones we are moving around -- it will be the very fabric of space time, or our own quantum biology.

Nature has already begun giving herself a face-lift and she's using us to do it. The cosmos will follow suit. It seems inevitable -- again, provided we don't kill ourselves in the process. This is what transhumanism is, more or less. Meliorism, contrary to the wiki definition linked above, is more than a metaphysical concept. It's a recorded process. What this so-called 'process' of transformation looks like at the end of the game is a question of teleology.

This is the philosophical position I accept, because it seems to me that the alternative is melancholia. We are fully capable of thinking less than ourselves than we ought, just ask Richard Dawkins. He will give you an answer to the above and when he speaks, he will really meme it. God isn't real, and when he says that, he memes it.

I'll blog that later, but for now either we have some say in our destiny, or we do not. And if we have some say our personal destiny then we have some say in collective destiny; and if our collective destiny, then global destiny, and if global destiny, then cosmic destiny, and if cosmic destiny then perhaps we had some part to play in that original scattering of loose, unorganized stone.

But that too is another day.

For now, the choice seems to me to be a melancholy acceptance of our proverbial lot as a human beings, or a blatant and intentional meliorism to be determined as the teleology of the universe unfolds and Nature begins to see herself as she really is -- through our own eyes, her own eyes.