"The Internet is not something we use, it is a limb of our body we are constantly aware of." -CJ The X
We are already cyborgs. CJ The X slams you in the face with this concept, that we are
already literally part machine, we are all humans who have gained superhuman abilities
through the use of the internet and our phones. They make the case stronger by pointing
out just how much of who we are is indeed formed and saved online, on our phone.
Relationships, thoughts, experiences, actions, all things that one considers a part of
their being and part of what makes you "You", are all through your phones and internet.
This idea and concept are sound. They make a claim and then support it, and drive it home.
It rests indisputably in your head.
But
I wonder, do they slip in that they find it necessary to ensure a certain part of that
definition is indisputable. "Technological modifications". What does that MEAN? Certainly
we aren't modifying our bodies with our phones. They aren't brain chips, yet here we sit
indisputably, PART of the internet, and it a part of us. Their claim argues that a part of
us that we can consider modified is intangible, but no less real for it. "The… self
doesn't understand the difference between your eyes being the wall through which you
hallucinate the universe, and your phone screen being the wall through which you hallucinate
the universe." our superhuman ability to experience things beyond what we can without it.
You can watch someone in Japan build a house from your bed in kansas. You can instantly
acquire any and all knowledge you desire. You can read what someone a million miles away
thinks about things without ever needing to meet them. You can be surrounded by a thousand
people all without leaving your room. These are superhuman abilities.
But
Isn't ANY ability we as humans gain through technology that surpasses our body's limits
giving us superhuman abilities? You cannot hammer a nail in with your fist, nor cut through
the hide of many animals with your teeth. Are not the hammer and knife technology? Are we
not modifying our abilities with it? Is not the blacksmith a human, whose ability to shape
metal with fire and hammer a superhuman ability? Do they not modify their human abilities
with their hammer and their fire? Is the hammer not a technological modification made to
themselves?
Does not the Inuit gain the superhuman ability to withstand the deadly temperatures of their
home through the use of clothing? Is not clothing technology?
We have been cyborgs since the first blacksmith hammered out a sheer, since the first human
used a sharpened rock to slice open an antelope, since we first made sandals with which to
walk across the hot sands, and since we first used fire to scare off the lion. All abilities
beyond that of a human without such tools. We have been inexorably melded with our technology
from the moment we created it. Humans have always been cyborgs, simply finding new ways to
gain new abilities beyond our flesh, and minds, limitations.
The issue is not that we are cyborgs, that we are modified humans with superhuman abilities.
The ISSUE is that we are alienated from even that which we modify ourselves with. We
no longer control how we are modified, what abilities we gain, and how we may use these
abilities. It's all directed and decided by those who answer to no one but themselves, whose
motives are personal gain and profit for themselves, over that of the wellbeing of those they
are augmenting and directing.
We need not be concerned with brain chips or artificial wombs, but with who is creating them,
and WHY they are deciding we should use them.
Remember you are human, and no amount of hammers or brain chips will change the simple fact;
You have value and worth beyond how wealth and profit can be extracted from you. Your life,
your time, your body, is for more than increasing the profits and power of those who desire
those things. You exist to experience the universe, and you owe it to the universe that bore
you to bring into it more pleasure and joy than was there before.
