Hey Mark,
Thanks for posting this. I wonder how you found my old wordpress site. It's
hard to find. My new site is moralapex.wordpress.com

I wrote a draft for a book two years ago, and it's posted in blog form on
both wordpress sites. I decided that I wanted to continue researching.

1) I don't think I described consciousness in the best way in that book,
and I wanted to do more research
2) I don't want theology to be the main focus of the book, as it was in
that one. I'm looking to come up with more serious arguments. I only want
to introduce the reader to the various works that already exist because
they all have a very similar trajectory. (Hegel, Teilhard De Chardin,
Kurzweil, Sri Aurobindo, Henriques)
3) I want to do more research to come up with how different types of memes
are selected in order to make general predictions.

On Wed, Jul 25, 2018 at 5:58 AM, Mark Stahlman <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> ToKers:
>
> Apparently Jamie has written a long essay (or short book) with this title,
> with this at the core of the Introduction --
>
> "We will introduce the main antagonist of this book, Peter Wessel Zapffe
> and his philosophy of despair and then attempt to overcome Zapffe’s despair
> through the hopeful ideas in Transhumanism and other related visions of
> hope. One of the main goals of this book is to overcome the pessimistic
> views of Peter Zapffe, exposited in his essay The Last Messiah.
>
> "Zapffe is my favorite philosopher for showing me the dark enlightenment
> that explained so much of how I’ve always felt the world to be, but must be
> defeated for their to be a hopeful future for both humanity and myself. My
> main counter against Zapffe’s philosophy of despair is the optimistic
> philosophy of Transhumanism . . .
>
> "From the views of various hard scientists, philosophers, theologians and
> mystics, I will offer a glimmer of hope that the world is accelerating
> towards a future that will be both the salvation of all sentient life, as
> well as the redemption of all the suffering and injustice in the past.
>
> "I will argue that while Zapffe is correct in saying that the world is
> objectively tragic, he forgot to admit that the world is also objectively
> heroic, and that the ongoing, everyday heroism of life in this universe is
> intrinsically meaningful and that love will be our ultimate salvation and
> redemption as our civilization grows increasingly powerful and capable of
> both immense destruction and creation."
>
> And this as the book's acknowledgements --
>
> "Much of this paper is informed by Dr. Gregg Henriques’ Tree of Knowledge
> System and the Theoretical Unification of Psychology (TOK), which includes
> Behavioral Investment Theory (BIT) to describe the evolution of mind and
> the Justification Hypothesis (JH) to describe the evolution of culture.
>
> "Dr. Gregg Henriques has formulated a brilliant unification of psychology
> based on the central insights of Sigmund Freud and B.F. Skinner. Not only
> than that it offers a grand, sweeping narrative of the evolution of
> consciousness that puts academic Psychology in it’s place. Henriques’
> unification of Psychology helped me to understand basic Psychology better,
> like Freud, and I have a Psychology BA! Henriques’ unification of
> Psychology gives us direction in how culture will continue, or should
> continue to evolve beyond today’s pinnacle of evolution: The Institution of
> Science. His model fits analogously well with other ideas such as
> Transhumanism and the Technological Singularity. Hid Justification
> Hypothesis also enlightens us to realize that our minds are still going
> through a rapid process of memetic evolution by selection for fitness in an
> epistemic or belief environment.
>
> "Peter Zapffe and Albert Camus opened my eyes to existential horror and
> the philosophical problem of whether or not to end consciousness. Zapffe
> really showed me a depth of horror that I will never forget, and since much
> of that horror is based on the human condition, created from the blind
> forces of natural selection, I thank Zapffe for deepening my understanding
> and empathy for humanity’s collective pain.
>
> "Zapffe will turn out to be wrong in his solution to the salvation of
> consciousness. He had never learned of Transhumanism and it probably
> wouldn’t have made sense in his time. Even today with the apparent
> acceleration of technology and machine learning, sadly few more, but novel
> seekers, are drawn to transhumanism. It will have to take game-changing
> technologies like Telepathy, Mind-uploading, Anti-aging tech, mind
> uploading, teletransportation, Intelligence Augmentation and sentient
> Artificial Intelligence for Transhumanism to become a real player in the
> world. Most people would happily distract themselves from these ideas that
> contradict their simple basis of meaning in life that gets them through the
> day.
>
> "Having a mental illness myself, I can say that Ernest Becker’s The Birth
> and Death of Meaning, gave me a great deal of hope that people with my
> condition would find redemption in a near future that better understands
> mental illness from a sociological point of view. So far, the
> understanding of mental illness is tragically lacking in most people. The
> mentally ill have a great deal to teach us along the way to Transhumanism,
> like “how the brain works so we can make it persist longer in higher states
> of well-being”. With regards to Cultural Evolution, Henriques’ ideas can be
> closely connected to Becker’s ideas to come up with some novel insights.
> According to Becker, culture evolves through a cascade of Birth and Death
> of Meaning as the meaning in old fictions goes extinct and new meanings are
> discovered to help us endure and go on. His other works, such as The Denial
> of Death and “Terror Management Theory” are hair-raisingly similar to
> Zapffe’s Philosophy of Despair and techniques of repression.
>
> "I thank Ray Kurzweil for sparking in me the hope that has been the fire
> that keeps me going. His vision of the future is extraordinary and it comes
> with extraordinary evidence. Some people have called it “gold mixed with
> shit”, and while I don’t think Kurzweil will be right about everything, I
> sure hope he is, and I’m increasingly confident that he will end up right
> as the months go by, and new technologies of near magic powers emerge on a
> regular basis.
>
> "Also, special thanks to the community of Transhumanists and their hard
> work waking the public up to the rapid transformation that humanity is
> about to enter, aided by exponentially growing Artificial Intelligence.
>
> "A special thanks also goes out to Josiah Royce for offering the first
> concept of God that doesn’t contradict all that I know and even includes me
> as an instance of the “All within All” which seems like a more perfect God
> than other representations given by ignorant fundamentalists.
>
> "Lastly, I must thank the following thinkers whose views, however
> imperfect, have converged on concepts of Identity and “The Absolute” in
> ways I would have never imagined given my philosophical trajectory in life.
> I will list those thinker and their basic ideas that converge around
> Transhumanism and an open view of Individuality in which we are all
> evolving to increasingly internalize the world around us and the inner
> lives of other people as we, in tern are internalized bu others. The
> ultimate goal is somewhere around the ideas of Josiah Royce’s Absolute
> Self, Teilhard De Chardin’s Omega Point, and Ray Kurzweil’s Technological
> Singularity and “Awakened Universe”, any many more similarities to consider.
>
> "1. Discovering that each of us is a momentary instance of the Universe or
> “Absolute” representing itself while being represented by itself in a
> continual stream of consciousness opens up my identity to heavenly
> possibilities:
>
> "a. It also increasingly reveals that while there’s such thing as basic
> human dignity for our suffering and alienation, human identities are
> ultimately unjustified for how we represent ourselves as autonomous,
> individuated agents “inside” a foreign natural environment, and
> conceptually separate from one another and the Absolute.
>
> "a. Each of us is little more than the experience within the “specious
> present” while the universe represents a bit of itself and is in turn
> represented in part by the other instance of the universe I just reflected.
>
> "a. There is no evidence of a persisting self that survives the passage of
> time; I am no longer who I was yesterday because the universe slowly took
> apart that “me” and put “me” back together in a new one today.
>
> "b. In each moment, during our day-to-day experience, it’s probably no
> different than being tele-transported or uploaded into our very next bodily
> instance, leaving the old person to pass into memory, and that we might as
> well be teleporting or uploading very slowly from instant to instant, as
> our material and Psychological substrate always changes.
>
> "a. What is the basis of who and what we are besides the experience we
> endure and behaviors we cause in the present moment?
>
> "a. That everything’s existence is defined by its relation to everything
> else. We are made out of each other. We create each other and are in turn
> created by each other.
>
> "a. That I contain within myself an imperfect model of myself and the
> natural world, both of which have possibly forever to improve upon, all
> while I exist both in the natural world and on the minds of people who know
> me gives credence to Josiah Royce’s Absolute Self.
>
> "1. Discovering that each of us is a continual present instance of the
> “All in All” will be the transformation of our identities that defines the
> transhumanist movement and leads to our salvation. The following ideas
> support this, and there are too many similarities for thereto be a
> coincidence between them. It is to the following that I give thanks for
> providing  me a worldview I can endure and keep expanding on
>
>
> "a. Hegel’s concept of dialectical progress towards the Absolute
> b. Gregg Henriquez’ concept of cultural evolution through the
> justification hypothesis
> c. Ernest Becker’s The Birth and Death of Meaning; culture as progressing
> as sources of meaning die out and new ones come to take their place.
> d. Alfred North Whitehead’s concept of God and “Process Philosophy”
> e. Josiah Royce’s “Absolute Self” as England containing perfect maps of
> England
> f. Sri Aurobindo’s “Gnostic Being” evolving towards the Supermind
> g. Teilhard De Chardin’s Internet-like Noosphere and Singularity-like
> Omega Point as “All in All”
> h. Ray Kurzweil’s Technological Singularity and “the Awakened Universe”
> i. Open and Empty Individualistic concepts of Identity
> j. Identity in thought-experiments of teleportation and mind-uploading
> k. Identity in Psychology and Neuroscience and heroic cases of damaged
> neural functioning.
> l. Identity in Mysticism Buddhism, Hinduism, etc."
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__transhu
> manities.wordpress.com_acknowledgements_&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpn
> zycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-
> UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=tN2dnCDEieGQaPEoIeI-45QNjudsqV
> KttBRIvydoQ2I&s=8QLqtgV0paDxEIQURce7hxVcI-LwfTfAQLLQRhCWAps&e=
>
> Mark
>
> P.S. Peter Zapffe's 1933 essay "The Last Messiah" (echoing Max Weber's
> 1917 observation about the world being "dis-enchanted," which McLuhan would
> describe as an *effect* of ELECTRIC media technology, with some
> Spenglerian/Nietzschean gloom thrown in), can be found here --
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__transhu
> manities.wordpress.com_2017_04_09_the-2Dlast-2Dmessiah-
> 2Dby-2Dpeter-2Dzapffe_&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4
> uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgj
> O2gOz4-A&m=tN2dnCDEieGQaPEoIeI-45QNjudsqVKttBRIvydoQ2I&s=RQs
> Mim5c6qUn9BK8Dn72mc-PyzrYZGsRXCGW7vVvY9E&e=
>
> It ends this way --
>
> "If we continue these considerations to the bitter end, then the
> conclusion is not in doubt. As long as humankind recklessly proceeds in the
> fateful delusion of being biologically fated for triumph, nothing essential
> will change. As its numbers mount and the spiritual atmosphere thickens,
> the techniques of protection must assume an increasingly brutal character.
>
> "And humans will persist in dreaming of salvation and affirmation and a
> new Messiah. Yet when many saviours have been nailed to trees and stoned on
> the city squares, then the last Messiah shall come.
>
> "Then will appear the man who, as the first of all, has dared strip his
> soul naked and submit it alive to the outmost thought of the lineage, the
> very idea of doom. A man who has fathomed life and its cosmic ground, and
> whose pain is the Earth’s collective pain. With what furious screams shall
> not mobs of all nations cry out for his thousandfold death, when like a
> cloth his voice encloses the globe, and the strange message has resounded
> for the first and last time:
>
> “– The life of the worlds is a roaring river, but Earth’s is a pond and a
> backwater.
>
> – The sign of doom is written on your brows – how long will ye kick
> against the pin-pricks?
>
> – But there is one conquest and one crown, one redemption and one solution.
>
> – Know yourselves – be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye.”
>
> "And when he has spoken, they will pour themselves over him, led by the
> pacifier makers and the midwives, and bury him in their fingernails.
>
> "He is the last Messiah. As son from father, he stems from the archer by
> the waterhole.
>
> Peter Wessel Zapffe, 1933
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wiki
> pedia.org_wiki_Peter-5FWessel-5FZapffe&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzy
> cBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-
> UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=tN2dnCDEieGQaPEoIeI-45QNjudsqV
> KttBRIvydoQ2I&s=dDdNPyD0JuhFRqXactZQpM2MjeuoKFI3IN0Bc1xzGLQ&e=
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wiki
> pedia.org_wiki_The-5FLast-5FMessiah&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBC
> gmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-
> UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=tN2dnCDEieGQaPEoIeI-45QNjudsqV
> KttBRIvydoQ2I&s=3fBOsu3FGuTaHgNRoxiSDMgQmoW8slaGp8hGMy3NIuU&e=
>
> ############################
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