123. Transhumanism 1/28: What Kind of Life Do We Want?

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In the 20th century, we still thought and saw that we could decide our own moral behaviour. We were the authors and masters of our own morality, which was regulated, for example, by the civil code. The consequences of our decisions concerned the autonomous well-being of our smaller local communities and our nation. In the liberal, globalist, surveillance communism of the 21st century, however, it seems that our moral behaviour is determined by others—for instance, by the algorithms of social media and the engineers who program them, or by the expectations of company owners like Facebook (Meta), Instagram, Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc.

How did we sink so deep in our ignorance? Why do we allow this manipulation? Why do we serve the old and new "self-elected" elites? Our thoughts, spoken words, and actions are influenced by people we do not even know. What connects the manipulating despots and us is profit-generating data—information that we, in our ignorance, voluntarily offer to data fishers. We should realize that we sustain these digital slaveholders through our ignorance, because we allow them to once again successfully apply the eternal principle of "divide and rule." High-capacity algorithms and "big data" companies complicate and direct global trade and the flow of assets to such an extent and with such a speed that, as we outside observers, can no longer even follow them.

With similar speed, they are creating digital "classes" that, fuel alienation, can manifest the well-known Marxist class struggle between those whom algorithmic decisions judge to be "good" (system-followers) or "bad" (those who oppose the system). Through algorithm-driven digital facial recognition, voice recognition, iris recognition, unalterable biometric systems, surveillance cameras, mobile phone and computer cameras, etc., the powers are able to categorize everyone into "digital classes"—for example, classifying them as creditworthy or ineligible, criminal or non-criminal, good or bad, orderly or disorderly consumers, and so on.

Just as in communism, classification will be the new morality. The only problem is that we, the digitally vulnerable, will not be asked whether we agree with the classification or the new moral requirements—such as those already formulated by the BlackRock-"owned" WEF (World Economic Forum): "You will own nothing and be happy." Nor will we be asked our opinion on digital surveillance, the arbitrary use of our data by algorithms and search engines, or the tyranny of the old and new self-elected elites.

How do we want to live? For example, should we accept or reject robotics, artificial intelligence capable of manipulation, genetic engineering capable of transforming the human body, new social communication technologies, surveillance capitalism, and all those new developments capable of radically changing our individual and social behaviour in our families, workplaces, and human relationships? What is it that makes us still count as human, and will ensure the generations after us also count as human?

What lifestyle should we choose? For example, total submission and the worship of machines—which means the complete surrender of our human qualities and total ignorance—or partial submission, conditionality, and lesser ignorance? Whichever option we choose, the determining factor should be how we can preserve, to the greatest extent possible, our autonomy, self-determination, and universality, through which we can perform the tasks entrusted to us and thus remain the image and identity of the One. In other words: how can we be wise enough not to risk our very existence with the way we live our lives?

According to Hajdu, our decisions will be able to influence the consciousness of future generations to an unprecedented degree. This is because our material prosperity, comfort, laziness, and the loosening of moral ties and responsibility, we are increasingly prone to lean back and choose inaction with folded arms. We accept the pseudo-reality projected by transhumanism and believe we have nothing left to do. As our daily lives are increasingly defined by digital technologies, we are becoming less able to decide to what extent the morals governing our social behaviour will be determined by us or by machines. If we succeed in incorporating more provisions into the requirements of digital morality that are capable of expressing human universality—for example, by teaching artificial intelligence—then we can hope that future societies will also behave in a human manner; otherwise, the artificial, profit-oriented moral requirements established by machines may dismantle those universal virtues—such as courage, honesty, and humility—that allow us to call ourselves human.

It is no coincidence that the materialistic Western thinking in which we were raised distinguished the eras of human development based on the tools used, such as the Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. It never occurred to this mindset that in the use of tools, it is not the tool that defines a given age, but rather the thinking—specifically, the degree of wisdom. In other words, the essence of each era (its character and identity) was determined by how man thought, spoke, and acted in his universality. For example, with the bright wisdom corresponding to the gold attributed to the gods, with less bright wisdom, with even less wisdom, or perhaps in ignorance. It is no accident that in Eastern traditions, people were also distinguished according to their consciousness, e.g., Brahmin (gold), Kshatriya (silver), Vaishya (bronze), Shudra (iron). The Western equivalent of this—which was also included in the Gospel of John—is the king, the warrior, the merchant, and the peasant. This fourfold division is also found in the cyclical nature of the four ages of human wisdom applied in Hindu traditions, where the bright golden age of wisdom is the Krta, the less bright age is the Treta (Silver Age), the even less bright age is the Dvapara (Bronze Age), and finally, the age of darkness is the Kali Yuga, or Iron Age. Some believe we are currently in the Kali Yuga, while others believe we have already entered the age of rising wisdom, the Krta era. Eastern traditions link the cycle of human eras with the creator's cyclical (Kalpa) eras, where one creator cycle corresponds to a thousand human eras.

Transhumanism—the drama of man becoming one with matter—is nothing other than the devolution of man; it is the religion of the new digital materialism, which practically misuses the created nature and sacredness (divinity) of life, time, and man. Transhumanism destroys the image and identity of the One because it views it only as matter, a marketable source of profit, a spare part, a mere unit, a product. For man, as a "little god" who represents the above and the below, the vertical and horizontal planes, and who carries the cross of space-time, only the crosshairs remain. The owners of transhumanist profit companies are likely unfamiliar with Béla Hamvas's message that "matter is not the basis of human existence. Matter is the ultimate consequence of a ruined life, the lowest stage of fallen existence." In other words, what manipulating transhumanism does is nothing other than a new form of leading man into sin, which we might call "digital falling." And in this case, too, sin is nothing other than the denial of ourselves, our universality, and the image and identity of the One; put another way: when we maintain distance from the creator One. Digital falling can only occur because we have accepted external manipulation, just as in the first fall: then the manipulator was called the serpent, and today it is called transhumanism. In both cases, the fall is individualization: our renunciation of our universal self, of the "I am" status. One of the questions arising in transhumanism regarding sin, for example, is how religion in the 21st century will resolve the issue of original sin and digital sin.