@jamespoulos The cosmic irony, of course, is that the 'Deus ex machina' is not only not deceived, but has an appropriate plot device to hand. McKenna: "And what is the internet? It's a net - a net that can be used to catch some very big game indeed.” De Chardin's noosphere is alive and well.
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Screen shot of web page here: 2/ Hardly surprising that Western interpreters, wired fast relative to the world, were first to get to theological grips with the the root, ontological substrate of the WWW. As early as the mid-90's, our sages intuited its arrival as an evolutionary turn of parousiacal potential. At first we described the purpose of the EFF to be, simply, the "civilization of Cyberspace." Now, after almost two years of operation, we also think of ourselves assisting in some Great Work, creating what may be nothing less than the united Mind of Humanity, hard-wiring the collective organism of human consciousness. - John Perry Barlow As Barlow says, "Teilhard's work is about creating a consciousness so profound it will make good company for God itself." - Jennifer Cobb Kreisberg: "A Globe, Clothing Itself with a Brain," in Wired 3.06, June 1995 - map NR - Last updated: July 9th, 1995
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I could try to formulate the same idea from a different angle. A glance at the history of consciousness shows it pendulating between an exaggerated unity, which swallows all variety, and an equally extreme atomism (even if couched in dualistic terms), which makes any ultimate intelligibility impossible and breaks down peace and harmony in the bargain. The great masters and probably the simple folk kept the balanced vision, but the epigones run to extremes. The cosmotheandric experience begins to regain, on a further turn of the spiral, the positive (and not merely dialectical) middle way between the paranoia of monism and the schizophrenia of dualism. - Raimon Panikkar, The Cosmotheantric Intuition
@Plough @suzania @MadocCairns @koppsch_a If climate chaos loses its terror and becomes a liberating hope only once its interpretation is fully Christianized, perhaps technology trends can also only be fully understood apocalyptically, that is, from a point of view revealing a meaning different from their literal sense?
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Copy of tweet and quote tweet appearing here: @nick_routledge and @unherd end/ Needs be said, reality's inclusivity is boundlessly vaster than 'the West' and 'Christendom' as Kingsnorth has it. Then again, illumination framed in an essentially occidental, Christian vernacular has its merits. For one, if "everything is religious", This Machine is, too. Quote tweet: I farm. Yes, the Technium cult, largely blind, anthropocentric, diabolically absurd; and Kingsnorth, hands-down, one of our wisest. But he misses a critical, positive, Christological dimension, namely, IT as central to transcendent political intervention at the planetary level.