Cyborg Buddha

[camerata]

Cyborg Buddha

Is what we are born with enough or could we use a little help? A conversation with Transhumanist James Hughes

So we might someday live for hundreds of years? Is that good? Accepting the inevitability of death doesn’t mean accepting death at any given moment. So if there’s some medicine that allows you to live longer, that’s up to us. I want to live until I’m so enlightened I don’t really care about continuing my life. And that’s probably going to take me a long time.

But isn’t it greedy to want to live so long? The Australian philosopher Peter Singer suggested that every dollar you spend—beyond the absolute minimum you need to survive— instead of sending it to starving people is a greedy dollar. But if we don’t shoot ourselves and send the money to the Third World, we’ve decided to live and spend. Then why not another year? And if you’re committed to serving others, why not live another hundred years to serve them even more?

Last year, on the popular television show Britain’s Got Talent, contestant Susan Boyle emerged from village life in Scotland to become an overnight worldwide singing sensation. A plain woman by conventional standards, she reportedly wanted a beauty makeover. Many objected, fearing she’d become “inauthentic.” Yet isn’t this a metaphor for Transhumanism? Why shouldn’t Susan Boyle look however she wants to look? Or do you think something “authentic” is lost?

This is one contribution Buddhism can make to the debate. Buddhism rejects the notion of “authenticity.” The core idea of anatta is that there is no permanent and abiding or “authentic” self. There is only change and your own conscious process of self-creation. The Abrahamic faiths believe in a soul, which is carried into secular ideas of “authentic self.” But Buddhism doesn’t.

A lot of people don’t want to take psychiatric medications because they don’t think they are “themselves” on drugs. But when we talk to people who have severe depression or ADD, many of them say, “I’m not my true self until I take the drug.” A Buddhist perspective might be “Well, I’m glad you feel that way, but in fact you’re not your ‘true self’ either time.”

There’s research that suggests cosmetic surgery has a more lasting positive effect on subjective well-being and day-to-day happiness than almost any other intervention. And it turns out to be quite lasting.

Isn’t this really a Transhumanist question playing out in the culture? Yes. A Western Buddhist may have complete disdain for plastic surgery, and they have a point. There are better ways to be happy than having plastic surgery or tweaking your brain chemistry. But at the same time, too often we’ve carried this concern to a Puritan extreme.

Full interview.

[Joop50]

“I’m not my true self until I take the drug.” A Buddhist perspective might be “Well, I’m glad you feel that way, but in fact you’re not your ‘true self’ either time.”

How can you ever be something else than your "true self"? People only think they are not.

[Xangsamhua]

"I'm not my true self until I take the drug." A Buddhist perspective might be "Well, I'm glad you feel that way, but in fact you're not your 'true self' either time."

How can you ever be something else than your "true self"? People only think they are not.

OK, let's accept there's no "true self" in the absolute, fixed, objective sense - at least none locatable and discoverable. There's nothing to which someone could point and say "Ah, here it is, tucked in between Broca's area and the pineal gland. Let's zap it and this person will be a complete zombie."

However, in the relative sense, in the daily round of change and appearances, we have a sense of self and we may have a sense of what we could be, but are not being at this moment, or most moments for that matter. This is the "self" to which we aspire and which we might think of as our "true self". And if we really aspire to it and work hard to attain it, maybe we will. But what have we really attained? Better dispositions, better responses, more worthwhile goals, better behaviours; do these constitute a "self"?

I would suggest that you are what you are - an aggregation of aggregates, governed by the laws of causation, linear and interdependent. Ignorance may lead to suffering, our own or others, which we might ascribe to the self being untrue to itself, but if there is in fact no identifiable self, then terms like "true" and "authentic do not apply - they are meaningless.

And yet, it seems there is something in each of us that wants to reach out, that is not simply governed by reason, and this something generates the many acts of uncalculating kindness, sympathy, helpfulness, responsibility, attention to duty and fairness that we experience among people every day of our lives and that make living worthwhile. We can call these things instances of metta-karuna, graciousness, hesed, bismillah, naam-jai, or whatever, but they all seem to flow from a drive to give of ourselves in some way, as in the Christian term kenosis, an emptying in which the act of emptying does not in any way diminish the source.

I'm not sure what, in Buddhist, terms the source of this disposition towards kindness is called. Is it an aspect of Buddha-nature, simply a given? Is this the Buddhist equivalent of "true self" - not something with which we identify in a relationship of mutual attachment, but an endless source that empties itself and is replenished thereby?

[Joop50]

My first responce was quit short, sorry about that. What is confusing is, the Bhudda used to talk about self and means many times the mind or ego. When we talk about the "true self" we are no longer talking about the mind as self . In the tradition of Non-Duality and Advaita, there is writen the Self with a capture as it means true self. Altough this Self cannot be touched and is not locatable, we can discover it and experience what we really are. Even though we cannot discribe this experience, we try to find words for it but every effort to that is insufficient. But infact it is what we really are.( Consciousness, Awareness)..

Another point is, most people do not except who they are as human being. Given by influences of the daily life they want to be better more beautiful, more (ore less) kind-hearted etc. Many people want to change themselves, infact they do not love themselves. By the inner acceptance of yourself is situated the peace and love you will share with the world we live in. Also this you can see as true self wich is not excepted.

I hope I made myself clear,