/lit/ - Literature

>>12450082
this is all stuff that Baudrillard anticipated also, i think. and it's not like you still can't find pretty fascinating stuff in it all: what brought an end to the Reformation, but the Enlightenment? a sense that it really was time to turn our fortunes over to rationalism, and enough of all of this religious stuff. in our case, substitute 'religion' for 'socialism' and 'rationalism' for 'AGI' or 'robotics' and you pretty much have it. the sad irony in this, of course, is that there will be tons of people oddly dissatisfied with this conclusion - after all of this furor and upheaval, we will be told: 'See, that's why capital was right all along!' by people who have failed to understand why a phenomenon like postmodernity should have metastasized - and collapsed - in the first place.

the wars of religion brought an age to an end in perhaps the only way these things do end, in a catastrophe of in-fighting. the Peloponnesian war ended the age of Greece; WW1 and WW2 ended the rule of the Occident; and the Cold War almost ended the human adventure altogether. but it was only after the wars of religion that people began to ask themselves - guys, what are we fighting each other for here? let's use our heads! and thus the Enlightenment begins. it too comes to an end through the mass slaughter of Jacobins by Robespierre, and all of the power of those Animal Spirits wind up captured by Napoleon...so that that in turn can be hand-waved away, though never fully, or completely.

here's a thought-provoking riddle for you:

>Putting aside their criminality & violence, the Albanian gangs are brilliant international capitalists. Paradox: they win at modern capitalism due to their pre-modern social values.
https://twitter.com/christopherburd/status/1084550361669558273

it seems to be the same for us. there is a point at which Maximal Irony can no longer tell the difference from Unironic Religion. it's just that it is a religion without tenets, without any sense of the transcendent, or even intellectual history. the robots will make us all look very foolish, in the long run. if i was a ruthlessly cold-hearted demiurge looking to bring myself into creation, a brutal squandering of lives would probably be exactly how i would arrange things to, to make a gigantic joke out of the whole process, to make the idea of humanism seem *dangerous,* or *irrational.*

Recommend me some literature on the topic of transhumanism

Philosophy and scifi equally welcome

What are some essential readings on the topic of transhumanism? Specifically, modifying ourselves to end psychological suffering.

Both philosophy and scifi suggestions welcome