“transitional form”
An undated entry from a notebook, probably made in the Spring of 2002.
Are humans a trans-species “transitional form”?
A trans-species “transitional form” is a species that exists for a short time, before it is ultimately replaced by a longer-lived derivative of itself that is better-suited to the world in which it finds itself.
We’ve been around 200,000 years, and still seem ambivalent about our hair.
This is not a very long time, in genetic evolution, based on our reproductive life-spans. This ambivalence about hair implies that perhaps the next species we evolve in to will feel more comfortable in its own skin.
Maybe we are the transitional form between primate ancestors and our post-human progenitors, who conduct natural selection through genetic engineering and memetic competition.
What is the appropriate next step for a species as remarkable as homo homo sapiens? What challenges do we face? I think because we move so fast, that our progenitors will be able to keep up with themselves. I’m not sure how …
And we evolve from post-human in to proto-humanity not without a good amount of ambivalence about the outcome of our half-conscious engineering efforts.
Proto-humanity being a tricky term, where their humanity will be different from our humanity, but the first humanity, proto, that they can really accept as humanity.
We are mostly cautious of the memes we push today. Genetic engineering … what will our hyper-intelligent, post-human grandchildren make of the reason for being?
Maybe they will be able to build the philosophy and social structure necessary to conduct humanity with success in the world we are cooking for them.
If they believe in a God, He will have created these post-humans by our hands, our minds, our consciousness and conscientiousness.
We who give birth to this new species, will be seen as the instruments through which His will acted to create them.
Or if there is no God, no divine plan, to what end will they exist? Will their minds bring us about to a self-realized Nirvana of non-existence, or will existence be their God? The striving for ever “improved” being? By what metric will these Engineerists evaluate improvement?
By what metric can a contemporary human evaluate improvement? What are us non-Theists living for?
The ironic triumph of Humanism comes in the post-human age.
