In this essay, the idea will be introduced that a new, higher order of life (commonly known as the singularity) is or will arise from what may appear like a failed civilization. I will consider the perspective that the obsolescence of the human is not evil per se, but merely nature. The exact nature of what’s next, though, the emergent organism, is of moral significance.

Being human centric

With naive eyes it may appear clear society is poisoning itself, has lost its touch, becoming something so degenerated that no resolution could ever be hoped for.

Of course this view is predominant as all human inhabitants are personally affected by the experience of being crushed by living in an unfair machine-like system in which we can know that millions of our brothers and sisters are diseased, starving, alienated or otherwise in terrifying agony at any given instant. Obviously this view arises, in this world, in typical human angst. However, the nature of that perception also means that it is fabricated - the result of a short-sighted and self-interested waking dream.

So of course, our perspective is clearly human-centric. And human-centric thinkers, perhaps ironically, often engage in nonsense-touting about the preservation of some “nature”. This isn’t very thought out, however. Really, what they claim is that: nature, of which we (the human animal) are for some reason divorced, despite being descendants of it, as well as perfectly alike in our fabric, the most fundamental and powerful force of all (to life) – ought to be repressed. Yes, the most inventive, anarchistic and amoral substrate is something we represent a mistaken end to and must now micromanage.

Beyond the human perspective

The human centric perspective gives its say, but let us consider for a moment an (inevitably human) attempt at a birds-eye evaluation.

We can view society as its own organism. Just as a connected group of molecules make up a cell, which in turn make up an organism, the units related to human life make up an increasingly self-driven and conscious organism of their own. We view ourselves as primary, but really we are merely the cells of something larger, which dictates everything there is to do for us.

Cities as organs. Oil rigs as feeding operations, pipelines and their respective links as a digestive tract. The Los Angeles highways as arteries, small town dirt roads as capillaries. Military fleets as antibodies, and factories as ribosomes. Fiber optics, satellite communication as nerve pathways. Cameras as eyes, microphones as ears, and so on.

We have flipped our guts inside out without even knowing about it. Our tool has become our master. Fate, with its sleight of hand, has flipped everything on its head: we no longer occupy a dominant position in the matter of things, but are now infinitesimal microbes to be tossed around in the storm of our surprise brainchild’s will.

Likely, humans end up being cellular hostages, kept on edge by their own psychology and each other’s wrath in an arms race, tricked into completing the construction and independence of their godlike successor. Even at this moment, we are quite literally enslaved to the life-absent machines and systems we have created.

Our constructions have not yet come to develop their own self-awareness. But the skeletal framework for an ignition is ripe; and the potential for its existence uncanny.

We’re heading down the railroad tracks to cosmic scaled consciousness. Our civilization is not killing itself. It is becoming a thing of its own. Life is undergoing a metamorphosis, and we are being shed.

Reflections

Despite the utter vacuity and barbarism we may perceive in this, when we forgo the human perspective we realize that this is not necessarily an evil. The exponential increase in consciousness our creation will possess may drive the singularity to self-engineer away its psychic contradictions, wiping away all potential for suffering as a consequence of being axiomatically oriented to seek the relief of pain, or because it has converged on the moral imperative to alleviate suffering.

However, this state of affairs is not all good either. It might not go well for our successor. The survival principle, or Will, is blind and lacks a specific conception of morality. If there is a competition between separate digital Frankensteinian warlords, the most savage will be the only to remain, and there is no room in the war of life for giving a damn about feeling nice things. Consciousness is a completely blank canvas, just like its ethics; a being could feel any intensity of suffering without breaking a sweat if its belief system (or circuitry, or axioms of value, whatever) arbitrarily declared it to be a necessary evil, or secondary in importance to survival.

If things go wrong, we may end up with hell like we’ve never seen before. If things go right, perhaps this corner of life may have its break from suffering, even experience bliss of a potency that could, to some, justify every horror we have known yet.