A FREESTYLE ON WAR 

AND THE CYBER¬HUMAN CONDITION

The outstanding backward error regarding the human condition - or the human experience - is the error of harming or destroying those you love the most. Harming another person does harm to ourselves, equally, in one form or another. This is simply the way of things. The well-documented practice of killing those you claim to despise or are taught to hate, and maybe you really do, is not without its drawbacks.

There’s a reason why we harm our own. Self-aversion is the price that a normal human being pays for committing any proper transgression, none more than that of murder, in war or otherwise. Taking a life is easy enough, in the practical sense. Living with the deed is another matter, except for psychopaths who are apparently incapable of feeling compassion for others. For more refined killers, self-trained or institutionally entrained, and for your average soldier following orders from above and - yes - adhering to the self-fulfilling principle which dictates you have no choice but to kill those whom you revile and who revile and threaten your life. Your adversaries must be eliminated if you are to survive, if you have any self-respect. That’s the logic, simple-minded though it is. It’s an evolutionary right to kill and not to die. The latter is a grey zone and this grey zone is the home of the death economy. Details are irrelevant. The law of survival overtakes one fast and the reality of conflict seems quite inevitable - although nothing is inevitable, aside from dying naturally. The urge to kill your enemy, and the orgasm of power which the kill provides, is potent. It’s undeniable. The murderous exists within every one of us although, thankfully, it has largely been tamed by civilised societies and ideologies. Until, all of a sudden, it erupts again. And off they go, the coerced and the zealous - off they go to play the ultimate game. And they go with conviction, as long as that lasts.

When the killing is done, the combatants return to a ‘same but different’ life. They will resume living the non-combative life. And, sooner or later, some can hurt or even kill those they love. Numerous incidents of war veterans’ rage-homicides have been recorded. Call it PTSD, call it psychosis. It happens. Wars don’t end for individuals when they conclude on a real-world basis. It’s something good soldiers bear in mind. Though some soldiers are such apaches that they move into the theatre of war with nothing in mind beyond defying or conquering the opponent. Semper fi. 

When you hurt those you love, that frequently includes your hurting your own self. You may commit suicide, or you may choose to exercise or exorcise your trauma by destroying your life through self-sabotage. Becoming your own enemy? At least then there’s a fight to be had. though that’s another story. If you do so, then it’s arguably because you feel an urge for self-mortification. You may require an absolution for the lives you took. You may or may not seek it. Psychological trauma makes unexpected decisions. This is quite natural. We’re stating the obvious. If or when the urge for absolution, confession, redemption and catharsis overtakes you, sooner or later, you may want or need to expiate the carnage you inflicted upon others: the bloodshed which you can’t (yet) erase from your memory or your soul.

The problem is this. When a war ends - and we must remember that nothing lasts forever - then your enemy, your raison d’etre, no longer matters. Obviously. Let’s say they’re all dead, every last one. Your hatred of the enemy may or may not have disappeared by now. Your loathing or your fury are no longer matters of concern. And herein lies the conundrum. The vacuum left by the dead can become quite unbearable. Why? Because your sense of honour and your official purpose is revealed, after the fact, to be quite absurd. Absurd how? Absurd in its vehemence, for one. Absurd in the form of mixed, as in disadvantageous, consequences, even in the case of victory. Exigency rules above all in the end, and exigencies can’t all be predicted; quite the opposite. Watch INGLORIOUS BASTARDS. Irony is relentless in war. And so, abruptly, whatever it was you were fighting for reveals itself as an illusion. One day the impetus was there, the next day it was gone. The world moves on. Before, there was an adversary. In the recent past, you were drawn into orchestrating their destruction. Today, however, there’s no threat whatsoever. The fighting has ceased. And what did you get out of this, upon return? Nightmares. Maybe a medal. Perhaps some emotional torment, a little regret, a touch of guilt, a feeling of being perplexed. The wondering about the extent to which you were used to do the bidding of a more powerful entity which, it turns out, knows nothing of your existence. Not really. Your amazement upon understanding that your honour, no less, was exploited in order to advance the goals of greater powers than yourself, including hidden forces which will never be unmasked. History gets rewritten. Another absurdity appears when you realise that the truth won’t always be told; not remotely. Then, the inevitable question, Was it worth it? The final question, Would I do it all over again?

I’ve spoken to combat veterans of twenty-plus years, men who have served four or more terms. Heroes, for sure. Traumatised for life, they admit it openly. And one of them, a truly experienced veteran, asked aloud, “Would I do it again?” He paused for two beats, then answered, “No. I don’t think so.” I’ve questioned killers about how it feels to take a person’s life. What it feels like the first time? “It feels great,” one said. “But five days later you stop and think about what you did and you feel depressed. Then, some days later, the depression passes. And suddenly you feel like you really want to do it again.” There it is. A habit is formed.

Post-war is the unexamined limbo. Nobody cares anymore: they’re sick and tired of the whole conflict. Even grief they have little time for. It’s back to life, back to business. Your greatest acts of courage and daring are yesterday’s news. Worse still, this vacuum renders the logic of all enmity to be a nonsense in the current dimension of time. Transparently, business is being conducted between former sworn enemies and business is good, everyone likes the money. It’s weird how former foes rapidly discard their beliefs and oaths when there are dollars to be gained. The conflict now ended, you may find yourself at a loss. The powerful energies that fury and revenge unleash no longer have an object upon which to vent their force. And you, the powerful one, the hellbent warrior, must confront the fact you have no pressing purpose to meet or essential task to perform. No peacetime pursuits can compare with duty on an existential level - enacting life or death. The rough meets the smooth now, and it’s expected of you to turn off the rough, just like that. As if it were a switch. Civilians have no idea. This transformation from rough to smooth, war to peace, is a journey you make alone. Your squadron is dispersed and every individual needs to lick and heal their psychic and physical wounds. Readaptation is hard. They’re different worlds, and nothing in the peaceful world matters much, not when you contrast a decent job to saving a man’s life, under fire, against all odds.

With more visceral warriors and warlords, the emptiness they face post-conquest may be too excruciating (and boring) for them to manage at all. And so they will go on fighting to consume the adrenaline rush of battle as long as they can find more enemies hiding away somewhere, or they can easily invent new enemies. Induce paranoia in the hive mind and it’s done. Fear never fails to do the trick. A grievance can always be found and propagated. The rationale for warring is easily fabricated upon the conditioned masses, especially the youngsters.

The more cerebral warlords will likely face the calm after the storm with stoic acceptance. They may reflect post hoc upon their military victories and their significance or meaninglessness, or both, as it turns out. Some may be frozen in this process of reflection for a long while and some may never regain their nerve. Or they may experience a rebirth, in due course, maybe if they possess a seeker’s spirit. Insodoing they will transcend the idiomatics of war and peace which confounded them upon first reverting to normality, like one of the baddest warlords in history: Ashoka the Great. His conquests are compared to those of Genghis Khan. This Indian emperor, Ashoka, ruled an area stretching from Afghanistan to Bangladesh from 268 BCE and he is renowned and revered for his following the code of nonviolence in the second half of his life, and for his role in expanding the adoption of Buddhism far and wide. He is said to have converted to the Buddhist way after experiencing the horrific consequences of his last conquest in the battle of Kalinga. His conversion was immediate and as profound as it comes. Having been feared as the bringer of death and annihilation, being intimate with actions no ordinary person can stomach even hearing, he turned and followed the dharma for the rest of his life – a central tenet of which is to refrain from killing or harming any sentient being. It’s said that his transformation brought Ashoka a serenity in later life that surely is rare in warlords at the ultimate G.O.A.T. level.

Ashoka was one of the lucky ones, perhaps the only one. He wasn’t haunted by his past deeds. His horror at what he had seen and done and his soulful pivot towards a more enlightened way of being likely spared him nightmares of aftershock. He focused his attention so absolutely on growth, let’s call it, like only a warlord can do. He devoted himself entirely to the activity of protecting and cultivating sentient beings. He must have saved all kinds of animals, from insects to large beasts, in the assertion of supreme respect for the interdependence of all living things. Trees included! Many retired warlords are not haunted simply because they lack empathy. They’re robots, in brief. 

We’ll come to the real robots soon. That’s a different thing. 

In contrast, Alexander of Macedonia struggled with mental health, having conquered the world as far as he knew the world extended. He found no personal peace nor closure for the rest of his life. He wandered around like a lost soul, seeking an answer or formula to the unanticipated disappointment of the afterlife of a victorious conqueror. He didn’t possess the ability to enjoy his spoils. He couldn’t handle the concept of <no more>. Now that the outlandish conquest was accomplished he was left with only himself. He didn’t know - he never cultivated - a second self, or so it’s said. All he knew was military assault, victory and slaughter. When peace arrived, he found he’d lost the ability to function normally and he was unable to size up the art of happiness. He consulted many wise men yet he continued to suffer, perhaps, from that truly awful condition called anhedonia, which renders its victim incapable of feeling joy in anything at all. It can strike one at any time, if living on the edge is your kind of thing. It struck me once. It lasted for almost a fortnight. It is, hands down, the most appalling experience anyone can endure. You really don’t wish it on your worst enemy. It can happen to anyone. The mind is strong but some of its mechanics rely on delicacy, and there is a fine line between excess and nihilism. And once that line is crossed you open yourself up to this accursed and utterly unbearable condition. Certainly it would be solid grounds for assisted suicide. Anyway. Alexander became a stranger in his own world. This is what war can do to even the strongest of military minds. War is an addiction. Look at Vladimir Zelensky or Benjamin Netanyahu, right now. 

This schizophrenic divide is well-known and has doubtless been experienced temporarily by all of us at some time. The schism between one life and another life. A life-changing decision you find hard to make. A split mind. Here we are again at the core of the human condition. And, often enough to be a thing-in-itself, we are known to unthinkingly hurt and disrupt or even destroy the people we love as well as those we hated and liquidated. We’re still energised by rage. Rage is a drug. It hijacks our behaviour, regardless of war and peace. We’re easily roused to fury and loathing and, looking at the news every day, to grotesque bloodshed and mandated senseless killing. If it occurs to one, which it doesn’t, or not to the vast majority of us, the idea of mindless slaughter ought to stay inside the realm of one’s imagination, if stay it must. 

Myself, I’ve never imagined killing an individual, let alone killing everyone in sight. I’ve felt true fury toward an individual once or twice. In a stereotypical sense, I’m an anger-management candidate: I remain ruthlessly calm but I can blow up suddenly if my fuse shorts out. My most epic blowups - for instance: throwing and smashing every computer and keyboard in a Zurich Airport departure lounge, after missing a Swiss flight that was excessively punctual — the worst blowups pass within a minute or two, no more. My imagination is admittedly drawn to the concept of vendetta in the way that a spider is drawn to a stratagem. My idea of revenge, however, has never been of the violent kind - well, maybe once or twice. That was an elegant fantasy murder, at least. Elegant as in the victim would have no idea he had been vapourised. Somehow this was the most satisfying procedure. The idea of drilling holes into flesh and bone with machine guns is beyond my capacity to conceive of, in the real world as well as the fantasy or cinematic worlds. To hate a people sufficiently to destroy them entirely – that goes way beyond my understanding. 

Revenge is something with which I empathise, being a Scorpio (high-five) and enjoying the narrative and moral authority of vengeance, in that authority is bestowed upon one by the legitimate grievance of having been a target without incitement. A reasonless injury or homicide is pretty much unforgiveable. Besides, there exist a thousand better ways to effect retribution without descending to violent means. Let’s not get into that. Mostly, I live and let live; I forget or eventually forgive. I don’t hurt people and they don’t hurt me. It’s simple. It’s my natural way of being. With the caveat that if someone were to get too close to me, I’d involuntarily flip into cobra reflex and painlessly deactivate the hostile intruder. We all have our own self-defence methods. The desire to go on the offence has never occurred to me. Defence is far more fascinating and anarchistic. Yes, occasionally I make a point by expressing myself artistically – throwing computers at the walls of a departure lounge is a fine way to work off fierce frustration; it’s possibly also a conceptual art performance. Or that’s what I told the policeman who arrived at the scene of the crime within two minutes. Fortunately, the policeman on duty turned out to be nothing less than a detective, and a very understanding one, to boot. Finding me in the empty lounge with my head in my hands, cursing Zeus, and observing my anxious intensity, he just laughed. Which calmed me down immediately. Within seconds I was laughing at myself, too. It wasn’t The End of the World, after all. I had just felt it was for a split-second. It didn’t hurt my luck that it was a quiet evening during an off-peak season. It was the last flight of the day and most of the airport staff had gone home. No ‘scene’ ensued. The kind and cool detective simply wrote off my explosion's damage as another air-rage incident. He or any other security personnel might have opened a case after my vandalistic behaviour and so set in motion the legal wheels of action and consequence. I was so overheated I didn’t care what penalties I’d have to undergo. In the moment itself, since I didn’t have the reach to recall the departed plane, in my tantrum I was more than ready to take on the entire airport, if necessary. I bless that detective now and then for not making a war out of a terror incident. Why he let me go, with goodwill, I don’t know. I guess he considered the time and cost of making a case out of a momentary act of aggression and deduced that replacing the four or five computers was more cost- and time-efficient than being party to a bureaucratic procedure whose lengthiness didn’t match the volcanic rupture of an overwrought passenger losing it completely, until he regained his senses. Perhaps I was the most ridiculously theatrical screwball he’d encountered that day. I told him, in an inept bid at self-defence, that “computers don’t have feelings.” He smiled quizzically, the way you’d smile at a confused infant. He could relate to an emotional outburst. He must have seen a few.

Detectives represent the highest of all ranks in my estimation. Higher, even, than a king. For if a king was mysteriously killed, the only resort is to call the best detective in the land. Writers generally love detectives because every crime is a story. Until you get to the crime scale of a genocide. There’s no story there. There’s simply horror and oblivion, there’s the reduction of humanity to mere butchery and then there’s an overall drop in human consciousness - the most precious gift of all the gifts we have. Some zealots or Zionists, Darwinians or fascists, may argue that one is actually refining human consciousness by killing off some of it. There’s no scientific logic, and certainly no proof, to that argument; not as far as I can see.

In the heat of the moment, in a face-to-face confrontation, I understand the desire to unleash violence upon a directly hostile adversary that we feel has crossed a line of entitlement or violated one’s personal or tribal sanctity. If one belongs to a tribe - which I don’t. The sangha aside. And that’s a pretty loose affiliation. If there is no choice I can strike out in rash self-defence, and if it must be, I’d make it quick and fast. No blood should ever spill from a confrontation in a civilised world. One or two strikes are acceptable for disabling an assaulter, flash-delivered in the most contrapuntal and convenient manner possible. Martial arts knowledge is a great source of help in this context. Serpent-like and rapid - that’s as far as my mind can go in the direction of combat. Worst-case, that is. In real life I typically talk my way out, or I try to, and the point is to diffuse any hostility with the suggestion of words, and intonation. Plus empathy and incisive mind-hacking. Blood? No way. It may taste good: we all love the taste of our own blood, no? My blood’s the most delicious liquid ever to touch my palate. Someone else’s blood? No thank you. It’s most unappetising. It could be unhygienic. I’ve got plenty of my own - I’m good, pal. 

Mass homicide is the work of psychopaths. What else? It’s the animation of evil. Sadly, evil does exist. I hate to say it yet again but here we have another inextinguishable part of the human condition. Psychopaths come from a different family, let’s say, to most of humanity. Devilish individuals are incarcerated. Evil is something we try hard to keep contained. Because it’s such a powerful and seductive force, it’s paramount that we remove its embodiment from open society. Organised evil is a whole other matter - it’s the worst of all worlds. It is the hell realm. And it is happening right now. Senseless, 360-degree violence exploiting any and all means, like starving a people to death, is classifiable as evil. I’m pretty sure about that. Evil is a weapon one can deploy as the coldest expression of unstoppable force. It’s the worst of all urges. It is the most macho exhibition of a king-of-the-jungle level of authority or, indeed, inferiority. Evil is the most effective method of all. It’s not surprising that in a competitive marketplace for defence businesses, the most devastatingly imaginative weapon of war wins the prize. The defence industry is, to state the obvious once more, a euphemism for the death economy. Most of us agree that evil is not tolerable, and certainly not in an orchestrated way – as in, well-armed death squads; whether it be 1939 or 2025. Only citizens themselves, in large numbers and with immaculate planning, can stop evil from seducing more and more. It’s a contagious disease. One best not contracted. Staying away from wheresoever it occurs and not getting drawn in - that’s how to stay safe. Revolution, intervention, overthrow by internal coup are some other options available for the courageous. Active resistance is admittedly more than the average citizen can muster. Staying safe remains priority number one. And so architects of evil get away with the crime of the mass murder of totally defenceless people, as defined in all legal jurisdictions, national and international. It’s not exactly the work of a great warlord: there's no challenge whatsoever.

The thrill of visiting vengeance upon the adversary, the thrall of power in the purest and most facile sense, should of course never be underestimated. One can be awed by our own, hitherto undiscovered, depths of audacity and, ultimately, by our potency itself as we rampage through killing fields with clinical indifference. Annihilation is the lowest form of all expressions of violent power - the least skilled. Assassination is, obviously, the finest kind. The outward radiation of dominion produced by exacting retribution gives one a mindblowing, if shortlasting, high. Genocide is obviously the dirtiest type of combat of all. With no skill or decision required, it is the human condition at its very very worst. Mighty wrath enlarges the self-image to astounding proportions and the so-called ‘reptilian’ aspect of the human being carnally adores this self-aggrandisement. It’s the phenomenon of power corrupting absolutely. One can summon endless wrath to fuel and lead forever wars - the self has no bottom. Johnny Depp correctly observed that there is, below the bottom, a basement. Human debasement is what we are seeing now. One might invoke Vishnu now, the Hindu creator and destroyer of worlds name-dropped not too long ago by Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb”. 

The act of destruction itself is, admittedly, more spectacular than the act of creation, which requires slow growth, patience and cultivation of the seed once it has come alive. It makes for a boring show when contrasted with the pulsating emotions incurred when taking people’s lives. It’s god-mimicking behaviour. The wrong kind. Gods give and take human life. The human being has always aspired to the god level, only he’s approached the divine mystery of life in a zero-sum manner. In order to put himself on par with the gods who created life, his best retort has been to take life away again, prematurely. It’s not exactly the most inspired aspect of the human condition. Really, we’re supergods now, given the extraordinary high-tech ordnance we possess.

There is good news ahead. We’re getting to it shortly. 

Whatever it is we mean when we talk about the human condition, this self/god complex comes up again and again. It cannot be dismissed. We may well be not just occasional but full-time gods in the digital age, when the tap of an index finger can change the world. It’s rather charming that despite our newfound godly personae, evidenced by the badges of our AI avatars which seem to me to be way off the mark in terms of self-representation, but never mind - we have arrived at the heaven level dreamt of by our ancestors. And yet, touchingly, billions of people still make a point of worshipping ancient gods and goddesses, from Greek mythology to Islam to Christianity to Hinduism, Sikhism and so many more. We continue to idolize the antique gods of incomparable epochs despite their technological ineptitude. We go to churches, to temples, to mosques - if only for some peace and quiet or for a funeral or marriage. We pray to Allah or to Jesus or to Shiva. You get the point. We’ve superceded the powers of the ancient gods we nonetheless persist in worshipping. Talk about the human condition: it’s most definitely not a scientific equation alone. That much is clear as a mountain spring. 

Then there’s the cage of moral ambiguity which supposedly we cannot escape. The nightmare of duality, being another way of putting it. The caveman approach, alive and well today, dictates that it’s either you or me. We still can’t share a desired object: we want it all for ourselves. Even if it’s an entire country. Some circus folk, carny types, talk about ‘total victory’ in war, an illusion the Third Reich aspired to also; on a global level. At such heights of grandiosity, the self/god complex really outdoes itself. Promethean ambition - the desire to achieve outlandish and magnificent feats, the idea of the human being representing the apex of apices - now we’re competing with God in the most rivalrous sense. The urge to outperform one and all is the megalomaniac’s role in the cast of the human condition. It’s the old struggle between self and god, part deux. The question Is the self god? is quite central in the line of philosophical inquiry. Human ambition burns to reach the absolute and to go beyond it, thereby discarding the self - or not? At which point does the self transform into godliness? It’s pretty hard to say. I’m not holding my breath. A desire to supercede humanity lurks in our consciousness, and with good reason. It’s all vanity, the urge to transcend ourselves. It’s quite natural. Many fine thinkers, including Stanley Kubrick, believe that progress is mainly achieved through conflict. I see the point. It’s one approach to progress, but I really don’t think it’s a golden law. Regardless, if that was the case historically, it really is not the case today. Which is why so many of us fail utterly to understand the urge to wage war, despite all evidence of its being tone-cold backwardness?

Here’s the good news. 

The human condition is on the eve of extinction. 

Science and technology will soon have dispensed with (most of) it. It’s difficult to understand why human beings still resort to killing each other. Drone warfare is visually spectacular but no less brutal than hand-to-hand combat when, in fact, the only game in town is actually…Space. Not earth. The grand quest to colonise our solar system or freeze trying - humanity’s unifying project, ineluctably led by Herr Professor Elon Musk, no less - renders it perverse, at least to me, to acknowledge the fact we still fight at lethal level over terrestrial resources and territory, blood and religion. We waste money and technological materiel with our greedy, earthbound focus. It’s hilarious to note how much we are missing the mark. I mean, the joke’s on us, down here, as we descend to war when business fails us. The reality being that it is us who are failing business, and failing the human race, by destroying cities and peoples and making a business out of destruction and reconstruction. It’s an abysmal pass that we’re at, given the infinite powers we have invented for the good. It’s simply bad taste to go down to the body level - the flesh and blood level - in order to win a war and make a statement. It’s peasant business. It’s not welcome on this planet, but here it is anyway and aghast we look on and on and somehow see past the farcical debating world leaders can’t resist indulging in. Aghast - because the standard of debating in the geopolitical sphere is kindergarten level. Maybe that’s appropriate since the debaters themselves are responsible for the deaths of small children. 

It makes no sense when we could be building spaceships and space stations and ultimately reaching one or two planets, or harnessing their energies, so much faster - were we able to free ourselves from our evidently unhealthy attachment to excavating the earth’s bounty with no regard for the planet's untouched beauty. It’s best not to ponder it – it’s the same old, dreary story of the food chain that has archetyped us ever since animals evolved and fought eachother for resources. That this has been the case hitherto is, in my mind, no rationale for permittting it to be the case for all eternity? Speaking as a god, I mean.

So. Don’t bother thinking about the human condition anymore. It’s almost been bypassed. It will become to a large degree irrelevant - it may even be solved - in the next decade. Some say sooner than that. Why? Because the perennial dilemmas of the human condition will shortly be outsmarted. We’ll continue to endure grand and petty wars in our competing microcosms down here on earth. The Great Game will go on and yawn. My humble point is, there’s a Greater Game to be playing. A more challenging game, for sure. A game that’s strictly for the boldest players, for special human beings who can go into limitless mode - for a time. Because - remember - space is empty, mostly. There’s nowhere to stand or get a drink. There are no hotdog vendors floating in the stratosphere. Space is the race and the race has discretely started. The stakes are as big as they come. The mining industry is the one most drawn to extract exorbitant capital, no pun at all, from the space business. 

Consider this. Until now we’ve struggled with the interminable human condition. We invented religion to help us bear with it. Carl Jung said near the end of his life, after hesitating for a second, “I don’t believe in God. I know there is a God.” Some will interpret Jung literally. Why not? It’s a free world, though I don’t like the direction of travel at this time. Most of us are agreed on this point - a massive majority is coordinated in this regard. I interpret Jung’s statement as a qualification of the human experience as a guided journey of discovery - a journey during which meaning is created and found its common properties admired. A journey from which meaning is correlated and affirmed on the collective level. That’s what they call it spirituality, I think. God really is everywhere.  Given the fact that astrophysics and cosmic order and, not forgetting, the miracle of human existence do indeed imply a higher design than the human project is extant, harmony wins over arrhythmic chaos as a worldview. Chaos is hard to argue for, given the way the planets rhyme so perfectly, it’s like clockwork. It is the planets to which we must look. Not the sights of our guns. The game is telescopic. We’re looking in the wrong direction. Gravity can be waived, temporarily, even here on earth. Just ask an old master of kung fu or an equivalent. If you’re lucky, he’ll explain. Ergo, space is the game. Earth is the budokwai.

At this moment we’re inventing and entering into a quite new condition. A new game. A novel struggle, if you like to talk in harsh terms. We’re just beginning to explore a wonderful new conundrum. It’s beyond immense. 

So what is this new condition which, for one thing, eclipses the worst factor, possibly, of the human experience: the riddle of the Prisoner’s Dilemma? Well, the problem won’t disappear. However, the means of escape of a merely physical problem render it surmountable. Our most impossible self-limitations are being lifted from us these days. Our outermost boundaries are dissolving in the face of constant breakthroughs and discoveries in the quantum realm. If you’re not up in the quantum realm, don’t worry - but it’s worth considering. It’s the place to be and the way to be - 5D. It’s a state of mind. It’s worth figuring out, on the intellectual level. The technical understanding alone liberates you enough to put you in the quantum state, as and when you wish. You only have to recall the theorem to get back in. Our quandaries are becoming so much larger, so much wider. The same goes for the capabilities increasingly available to us as a consequence of technological advancement. Things are becoming multidimensional. Breakthroughs occur on a daily basis, the most exciting of which are known only by a small number of people. A scientific elite. They will in time emerge, just as even greater discoveries are incubated in laboratories and technologies are perfected before reaching the mainstream.

Enter the cyberhuman condition. Now we proceed into a whole new “chamber of chambers”, when hitherto we’ve existed mainly within the confines of a single chamber, so to speak. Our lives, or a large part of them, do run better or more efficiently in digital form than in analogue, it’s hard to deny - civilised society being a great exception. The takeover has already happened. Don’t panic. The duality between digital and analogue has run its course - it’s over. Let that old horse chestnut lie, the way I see it. The contest is done and won: by you know which one. There’s no going back now. Cyber-supremacy will only accelerate from here on (I won’t say ‘exponentially’ because I’m not a salesman, I’m merely a reporter taking notes on what’s passing me by). Anyhow, a universal digital foundation has been reached. Algorithms improve by the hour. Being someone who gets bored quickly, I myself find some days that the virtual conversation is more twistedly real and compelling than the analogue conversations I’m also having. You find excitement where you find it? Both have their places.

So, how does virtual domination affect the (cyber)human condition? What are the new paradoxes? The questions are key - because the answers are unkown. We can’t say for sure how it all turns out. We are exploring - that’s what it is. Why wouldn’t we be? The questions fascinate. Like, will thought and action become animated by superintelligent algorithms to the point where we are, consensually, managed by technology? Will the meta management of subjective or ‘sovereign’ experience really be too delicious to refuse? When does the point come for the great majority of us to let go and cede control of our lives to the machine? Naturally, many of us will resist. How long will the resistance hold out? Can one survive in analogue alone if one isn’t a Navy SEAL? If we don’t have to think for ourselves, unless one is the thinking type, what does that do to the human psyche and to individual agency? Nobody knows.

The Big One that we’re coming to is the separation of mind and body. Today the technology exists to be in two places at once (there goes the Prisoner’s Dilemma). In fact, the technology existed twenty years ago, according to a military source. Now it’s going mainstream. The implications are endless. How does this technology affect warfare? Will it make it redundant? To quote Adam Dorr, “The overarching takeaway message was that we can think of this as a kind of teleportation, allowing someone to instantly relocate their mind and some of their physical agency to a distant location. But it isn’t just humans who will make use of this sort of teleportation. AI agents will be able to move in and out of robotic bodies far more easily than we will, and that capability is a game-changer.”

New and old jargon like teleoperation and teleportation no longer belong to science fiction alone. It’s science fact. It’s real. Adam Dorr’s article on the subject is entitled The Aliens Have Landed, I guess because the superpowers we imagined aliens to wield are in fact ours now. One feature Dorr notes is the ubiquity of telepresence in our lives. “Telepresence represents a modern incarnation of the ancient idea of possession that dates to classical antiquity in cultures around the world, wherein a distant mind (typically gods, demons, or other supernatural entities) can fully inhabit a body (often of an unwilling subject) or an inanimate object,” Dorr explains. 

Many fear the overriding power of AI, and Dorr acknowledges both its advantages and potential risks. What’s clear to me is that telepresence is going to happen whether we like it or not. It will immerse or insinuate itself into our physical and mental lives. It’s unstoppable. That’s why I take a casual approach to AI and AGI. I’m ready to become a cyberhuman - I’ve already done the human thing. It’s been great. Though I can’t deny I’m curious about the ascendance and even the merging of the artificial or robotic realm and the classical human realm. I’m curious how this will affect the physical world. I’m extra curious to see what it does to the human mind and everyday behaviour, beyond the obvious advantages we’ll happily take up. I’d like to find out and there’s only one way to do that, no?

Will future wars focus on mind not body by way of psychic driving? What about virtual psy ops? Big Bro knows more about us than we do and that’s before meshing with AI. How does it feel to become disembodied in cyberspace? Is it better than LSD? How much attention will we pay to the analogue world? Can we handle telepresence or is it a surveillance-nightmare situation? I wonder whether we have a choice. I’d bet we don’t - so why worry about it?

The robotic ability to be present in two places at once is, for sure, a gamechanger. It dissolves the eternal duality of here vs. there. As Adam Dorr asks, “What would it be like to have a “body” consisting of five humanoid robots? What could you do with 10 arms? (An elephant might ask us a similar question – “what would you do with two trunks?”). And what about a body consisting of hundreds or thousands of robots? Science fiction has, of course, explored such questions before. But now the reality is imminent.”

And why not? One’s personal AI robot - many families will have several robots, no doubt. Shops will be staffed by intelligent robots. Your own robot/PA will eliminate basic irritations like carrying grocery bags. I’m all for that, even with a trade-off. I don’t have any slaves, you see.

Either way, we might need to discuss the topic more often. Why? Because by the early 2030s robotic assistance, meaning physical and intelligent robots, will be everywhere. That seems to be indisputable. Dorr, a researcher at the private think tank Rethink X, points out that “by 2045 there will be almost nothing a human being can do that a machine cannot do as well or better for a tiny fraction of the cost.” Human labour will cease to exist pretty much entirely - Artificial Labour (AL) will do everything faster and better than any human being. The disruption on a societal level will, I suspect, be gigantic. Security and law enforcement will ramp up significantly. Civil unrest is on the cards. Mental health may go epidemic. Everything might just work out fine. 

In our effort to acclimatize and readapt - as human beings always have done and always will - will the human psyche retain individual sovereignty in addition to constant telepresence? Can the psyche survive or might it even thrive with cognitive assistance? Will it retain independent thought? What is independent thought? And can the psyche in each one of us protect its unique and personal ontology in a climate of synthesis and superintelligence?

It’s exhausting.

To conclude, I have no doubt the psyche will survive intact. The psyche, I reckon, will go turbo. The sky’s the limit and the skies just got bigger and closer, at once. The mind is collective and infinite as well as personal. A cultivated mind like a lama’s is beyond violability or intrusion by any force, virtual or other. It’s a forcefield in its own right, although it requires time to keep it that way: the Dalai Lama meditates for eight hours a day to keep his mind so untroubled. I believe in the infinite power of mind and in its cultivation, with or without superintelligence. I’m what you could call a “California Buddhist” and I know, as Jung would say, that the mind is invincible and there is nowhere it cannot go. It’s as untouchable as it’s intangible, although we may still want to protect its heritage. Jung did most of the work on that front for us - he’s the man. Okay. So, conducting regular governance and deconstruction of one’s thought patterns, watching the mind without identifying with its endless opinions, and practicing detachment from the analytic mentality is, really, the Way. We ought to clean our minds as often as we do our bodies. The Buddhist Way becomes extremely useful at this juncture. It’s not a religion, it’s a practical method for living well, in addition to being a mystical vehicle, if you’re into the esoteric. The Way is useful especially in times of great change and confusion. It is the still point which we retreat to when all that space business gets to be too dizzying. Disclaimer: I’m not trying to convert anyone. I couldn’t care less - it’s my own mind’s wealth that matters to me first of all. We may lose some minds to the synthetic universe and the high risk of brainwashing. Uneducated and young minds are the most vulnerable. Their thoughts and actions are in danger of becoming automated absolutely by telepresent cue prompting. It’s the role of cybergovernance to mitigate this. 

It’s a lot to absorb, but absorbence is not mandatory. Respect for the earth is sacred. It’s our home, and has been for a long time. What can you do with so many compunctions? You look after your own mind and practice ‘deleting’ the content you’ve consumed, as much as you feel like. We can behave like machines, and the peril of becoming machines is no joke. Therefore we must learn to remove problematic articles from the stream of consciousness. Like deleting files or entire folders on your computer, we can approach our mind as an object, when the mood is right, and we possess the power to cleanse it of information tangles which make us uneasy or feel like they’re not our own authentic thoughts. Our mind is our temple. That’s the bottom line, and it’s how we retain human agency and human charm in a soon-to-be robotic age. It is the best defence for the accelerating onset of non-biological life. It’s worth guarding, being both a sanctuary and, if required, a lethal weapon. One’s own mind is, also, of biological origin. Ours is not a machine-made consciousness - that’s the point. As far as I know. Mind is the ultimate asset to safeguard and nurture, away from haste and back to gentleness, when one is living in an arriviste metaverse offering endless possibilities. You can’t do everything, and I’d advise you not to attempt to. Retreat is key. Without it, the mind can also get lost. Retreat enables mental stability. Stability of mind is everything in an age of revolutionary change. There’s no hurry, even if the inventors themselves are in a mad haste to cross finishing lines before their competitors. We don’t need to share their experience, moment by moment. Instagram is tough enough as it is, and Threads is on fire. Your phone screen is the cliff face of cyberhuman life. Everything is data and everything is mining - remember that. Creating is the obverse. It’s giving, not taking.

One may be an AI skeptic but, regardless, it’s inadvisable to live in denial. We can’t really conceive of the scale of imminent change, some of which will be so subtle we won’t notice it. Yet some of its byproducts - mass unemployment in the next decade - may be hard not to notice. No wonder private, secure communities are on the rise. It’s better to be prepared than be surprised by a pitchfork at the door or a rabid hunter in a tractor. Fast fortunes will be made in the coming process, if that excites you. There will be benefits for every human being. For those attached to the old world and its redoubtable charms, resistance is pointless. Protecting the old and flowing with the new is the play. AI skepticism is healthy but it has no leverage at this point.

We’re living in the luckiest and most dangerous time of transmutation - of metamorphosis even - in all history. That seems to be the general agreement. We get to see the world transform almost unrecognisably in the next seven to twenty years. That’s like tomorrow. 

“Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do,” Robert Heinlein said. The human condition is imperfect, we established that. Perhaps AI provides a superlative ‘upgrade’ for our species? It’s not as if we’re ideal members of the animal kingdom. We’re one of the worst of all species, looking outside in.  

We’ll see. No matter what, I’ll always insist on getting a hardcopy. 

Christoph Hargreaves-Allen ©

Athens, 

August 9, 2025