Transhuman Erotic Freedom

Gospel According to Goldilocks

Gregor Roffalski via Wikimedia Commons

Gregor Roffalski via Wikimedia Commons

Earlier this week, we released another excerpt of our upcoming book, The Unseen Journey (working title) about the unification of eros and agape, only possible by stripping away thousands of years of disinformation and human superstition about the sexual basis for all spirituality.

Our book is a declaration that eros and agape are one with unified Love, and that the erotic is a major component of cosmic Love, physical and spiritual. By unpacking and dispensing with the social stagnation and oppressive belief systems that characterize human society today, the erotic’s functional purpose in any vitology (way of living in dedication to destiny) asserts its reality.

A small bit of bad poetry makes this clear. We call it the “Gospel According to Goldilocks” for obvious reasons:
Eros without agape is too hot
Agape without eros is too cold
Eros and agape together is “just right.”

 © VenusPlusX, 2013. All rights reserved.

Stay tuned for more on the unification of eros and agape, and in the meantime, let us know what you think of these ideas.

Already available now as a companion reference, A Course in Immortality (and in Spanish, Un Curso En Inmortalidad), which will be published as an included Appendix in the new book.

 

 

 

 

Eros and Agape are One, another excerpt from The Unseen Journey (working title)

The primary reason we created VenusPlusX a few years ago was to establish a repository of our solutions for freeing humanity of its many misconceptions about an individual’s direct connection to cosmic technology. It is also the reason we decided to capture the essential premise of our work in book form. Here is another excerpt of our upcoming book, tentatively entitled, The Unseen Journey, that may prompt some comments and criticism, both of which we crave and adore.

Anira/WikiCommons Fair Use/Educational

Anira/WikiCommons
Fair Use/Educational

We declare that eros and agape are one with unified Love. We declare that the erotic is a major component of cosmic Love. We declare that the ability to experience Love, either as physical or spiritual, is one and the same gift of the Supreme to all creatures. We declare that the erotic has a functional purpose in any vitology (way of living in dedication to destiny) and that failure to acknowledge this underlies the social stagnation and oppressive belief systems that characterize human society today.

© VenusPlusX, 2013, All Rights Reserved.

What we are talking about here is a non-religion, transhuman in nature. There’s more about these ideas in our Library and all over this website, including a preliminary reference that will become an Appendix to our new book, A Course in Immortality (and in Spanish, Un Curso En Inmortalidad). And, in connection with the relaunch of VenusPlusX last week, we’ve added A Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom.

In order for humankind to fully explore and manifest its destiny, we start by accepting everyone where they are, as they are, of course, but that doesn’t stop us from railing against the coercive systems established by governments, religious hierarchies, and corporations that enslave us to false values and principles and interfere greatly with happiness, both individual and collective. Immediately important to this cause is sexual freedom, global equality rights, the end of racism, and tangentially things like net neutrality. In connection with the relaunch of VenusPlusX this month, we have published A Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom, which covers these matters further.

Right now, there is so much garbage and senseless noise all over the globe, piled higher and deeper with each succeeding generation of misinformation, all of it interfering with all good will efforts to recreate a world where every human retains from birth the inherited and inherent freedom of self-expression and is mutually respected, even revered, as a cosmic citizen, a living vessel of love from, and part of, this cosmic reality.

Like the agrarians, marxists, and feminists that paved the way, we aim to preserve that which is old and good, and disappear that which is old and bad, sometimes very bad, and build on or create new and better systems, voluntary associations, that uplift humanity within an atmosphere of mutual support where no one is enslaved to another.

 

Introducing our upcoming book, The Unseen Journey (working title)

Photo courtesy of Larry D. Moore  Wikimedia Commons

Photo courtesy of Larry D. Moore
Wikimedia Commons

This is a newly carved out space to periodically share excerpts
from our new book prior to its publication later this year.
We welcome (we crave) your comments, suggestions, and critiques.

Shortly before Dan Massey hung up his keyboard and departed for cosmic shores, he and I had more or less finished the manuscript of what we had only referred to during the previous 30 months as the book. But it is also something that has been in the making through our entire 40-year relationship.

Technologists and teachers by trade, we two strode through decades, hand and hand as close as two souls could be, looking at the cosmos and all its possibilities. We ruthlessly stripped away millennia of mysticism and superstition, and as much as possible applied the scientific method, measurement, and experimentation to evaluate the social consequences of our personal experiences with the interacting personalities and systems that we refer to as cosmic technology.

Like everyone else, we seek enhanced living, a state of being that is transhuman and surpasses, or cures, the stagnation of homo sapien man. By unpacking cosmic technology, we uncover an energy and connection to the entire universe, a living state of joyful immortality in the here and now, and can at last uncover the spiritual basis of all things erotic.

There are no tricks or gimmicks, no religion or even an order of doing this or that, but rather the direct access to the secrets of the universe though a built-in physical connection. This human aspect to cosmic technology is so deeply embedded  and available to each individual that it is a wonder civilization isn’t already further along because of it.

Although known or variously ignored though the ages, a relative few have yet realized that our erotic senses (our love senses) are the conduit of this cosmic knowledge and new energy, whether asexual, as in your friend’s comforting hand upon your shoulder when you needed it the most, any simple act of doing good to others, or the rush of sexually explicit touch sometimes leading to ecstatic orgasm, and practically every bio-chemical and -electrical feeling in between.

It’s all about Love actualized as Truth (consistent realities), Beauty (orchestrated or accidental harmony), and Goodness (motivation to do good to others). No matter what your station or situation in life, true freedom and immediate enhanced living are here for the taking, if you let nothing but Love rule your heart. 

From The Unseen Journey . . . (all rights reserved).

The underlying fundamental absolute of the universe in which we live is the power we recognize in the desire to do good to others, which we properly name Love. Love is expressed in and bestowed upon every level of universe reality, from the most perfected, absolute, or final, qWa to the most primitive human-like person able to make moral decisions.

Love is expressed and perceived differently at each level of progressive maturation and perfection, in a manner uniquely significant and appealing to the esthetics and values of each level.
If divine love is manifest on every level of being, then it must be apparent in our direct, sensory, physical world, and not be limited to the domain of the super consciousness.

Where is this?
The most direct, basic, physical manifestation of the reality of Love is experienced in erotic joy, in the intense experience of neurological orgasm, or even the warm feeling of pleasure of a friend’s hand on your arm when you need comforting. Sexual or not, pleasure activates the very same erotic senses. In any case, the stimulated sensorium explodes with joy as the individual consciousness briefly impinges on the reality of absolute Love.

And what should be our attitude towards this experience of momentary contact 9O’ with maximum joy? Certainly not fear, though that is the reaction of far too many who have been told and/or come to believe that they are unworthy of pleasure.

What is the appropriate action of any person confronted with a vast goodness beyond any other human sensory experience? There can be only one answer.

Worship.
Worship erotic joy.
Worship the living experience of orgasm and every simple pleasure.
Worship the most basic sensory experience of Love.
Worship is the conscious act of surrendering one’s mind, one’s will, to the object of worship. Worship makes the worshiper more like that which is worshiped.
Worship of the orgasmic spirit of Love defeats barriers to interpersonal expression of Love through service. Worship opens the door of the mind to Truth, which directs our action.
Through erotic worship the human spirit is progressively attracted to higher levels of understanding, enjoyment, and service.
Those who would deny this first great step, this open and personal acceptance of a physical gift of Love, place a barrier between the human state and the progressive expression and experience of Love.
When worship of Love is only invoked in the abstract or in deep meditative states, extreme focus is required to experience enlightenment. By comparison, when the first step in the path of Love recognition and worship is taken in the erotic, growth of the consciousness to experience greater enlightenment is simplified and expedited for most people.
All humanity knows erotic joy. The time has come for all humanity to acknowledge the supremacy of erotic joy and join in worship of this amazing, far too long ignored, gift of Love to humanity.
Join me today and forever in the worship of the power of erotic joy.

 

 © VenusPlusX, 2013. All rights reserved.
Already available now as a companion reference, A Course in Immortality (and in Spanish, Un Curso En Inmortalidad), which will be published as an included Appendix in the new book.

Transgender Transhumans! Are you headed to Venus Plus X?

También en español Depending on how you space it, VenusPlusX or Venus Plus X, it’s no accident that you may have stumbled over a novel by Theodore Sturgeon of the same name. Since first reading Venus Plus X in 1960, it has invoked a strong resonance with my own inner truth even though it was Sturgeon’s creative imagination, a perhaps fantasy. It is our namesake because it stands as the earliest and still clearest exposition of the world’s essential ideas and ideals in the world of sex and gender, and guides the our work as advocates, educators, and activists.

In the novel, a 1950’s human male, Charlie, is transported through time to a distant future where the surviving population of earth is a people called the Ledom (that’s model spelled backwards). The Ledom are fully functional androgynes, being capable of mutual impregnation and of resulting individual pregnancy. Most of the novel is focused on exploring the emotional and dramatic situational differences between normative human bi-gender society (envisioned through time flashbacks) and the behaviors of the Ledom, who are free of all sex and gender inequalities and limitations.

Throughout most of the novel the reader is led to think that the Ledom are some natural product of human evolution or genetic reengineering. Near the end, after Charlie has become friends with some Ledom and given them some feedback on their society vs. primitive human society (1950s), they give him a rather detailed explanation of how they view the society from which he came and how that view has come to shape their own. This is Philo’s Manifesto, which is an authoritative debunking of human history, philosophy, religion, and pretty much everything else, while showing the way to a vastly higher and transcendent body of truth. This short statement it is a must read for every person on earth.

Although Philo’s Manifesto is surely one of the most remarkable and complete syntheses of rational human knowledge of a subject normally considered too exotic to be open to intelligent, unbigoted, unbiased discussion, the final reality of the Ledom is even more remarkable. While the directed biological redesign of the human race into the Ledom is surely enough to be called Transhuman, in the final chapters of the story it is revealed that Ledom reproduction is not entirely biological, but involves a complex symbiosis from conception to adulthood with elaborate medical machinery that continually reshapes the “natural” human biology of development into a series of stages that lead to reproductively mature Ledom. That is truly a Transhumanist idea and far ahead of its time!

Without the medical machines, Ledom infants would be ordinary human infants. The creation of the Ledom is a deliberate act of human creativity, expressed in biomedical technology. This is a transformation of a very basic human character as all members of society enter into this reproductive symbiosis with the machine as a way to perfect their society. They have diagnosed the problems of humanity and conclude they all begin with sexual dimorphism and the resulting bi-genderism that rises from ignorance and refusal to examine reality carefully. Their reproductive symbiosis with the machines allows each to mature into androgynes indistinguishable in hermaphroditic sexual function and completely without gender.

Like Sturgeon’s Ledom, we examine many of the problems of humanity. Like Sturgeon, we feel many of the problems would not exist if humans were perfectly androgynous; however, we see many technological alternatives to the “brute force” approach in the novel (remember that DNA had been discovered only a few years before the novel was written, and nothing was known of its detailed structure and function). For example, a simple reduction in the expression of secondary sexual characteristics and the adoption of extracorporeal fertilization and gestation could achieve similar objectives.

Thus, unlike the Ledom, we do not expect to abolish sexual dimorphism. Rather, we seek to encourage health and longevity by discouraging extreme dimorphism that causes the incorrect and unproductive bi-gender model, and encourage either biosex to develop as symmetrically as possible to enjoy the full range of psychosexual and gender experience available to the human nervous system.

Extracorporeal gestation remains a distant technological objective, although planned fertilization is now part of the culture.

Today, as we learn to accommodate the needs of consciously transgender pre-pubescent children, we know that even crude pharmacological intervention at puberty can greatly enhance the experience of androgyny for the matured adult.

The technology foreseen by Venus Plus X is still in the distant future and may never be developed as an option for directed human reproductive evolution. On the other hand, the social changes envisioned in the novel are ready to move ahead today, since they depend only on changing human hearts and minds, and that means education and socialization, not biology. At VenusPlusX.org, we know how quickly such changes can occur in individuals and in groups, once a successful meme has been sufficiently distributed. While we support research into the technology of androgyny, we understand that the time is here today to empower the Transgender Transhuman community to assume leadership in the revolution for full sex and gender freedom and equality.

Editor’s Note: This originally appeared in July 2011, and is one of several posts being reprinted here in connection with the relaunch of VenusPlusX after a year’s hiatus because they are especially elemental in our thinking.

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

More on Giulio Prisco’s Sex and the Art of Cosmic Governance (Part 3)

 

Giulio Prisco

Giulio Prisco

This is the third installment about Giulio Prisco’s upcoming book entitled, tentatively, Tales of The Turing Church. A draft of his chapter, “Sex and the Art of Cosmic Governance,” that includes recollections of his many interactions with VenusPlusX Co-founder Dan Massey.  Part 1 included an excerpt from Dan’s talk at the Transvision conference where we met Giulio for the first time, and Part 2 focuses on ensuing interactions.

Giulio is a physicist and computer scientist, and former senior manager in the European space administration. Giulio works as a consultant and contributes to several science and technology magazines. In 2002-2008 he served on the Board of Directors of Humanity Plus, of which he was Executive Director, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Italian Transhumanist Association. He is often in Hungary, Italy and Spain. You can find more about Giulio at Turing Church and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET).  

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Participating in the August 2012 Discussion Group of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, Dan described very eloquently the idea that other civilizations in the universe may have already developed resurrection technologies and may be already “providing resurrection services” to less advanced civilizations like ours. If this is the case, we and everyone else in the universe will be resurrected by the Cosmic Government.

Here is a (slightly edited, but almost literal) transcript of Dan’s words:

“I think you start out realizing that the universe is vastly older than the little area within the light sphere that we can see from this planet on the backwater of the Milky Way galaxy.

Let’s say just for the sake of argument that it is not merely a few billion years old, but it is a few trillion years old, maybe even quadrillion years old, I have no idea obviously, no way to find out, really, right now anyway, but I feel that there is a well organized cosmic government and civilization, that populates literally millions and millions, I really should say billions and billions (Carl Sagan) of planets scattered throughout this part of the universe, and they are all, you know, most part of them are in some degree of communication with each other, there is some sort of coordinated sense of purpose in this community, and they have been at it for a very long time by our standards.

So during this time, you expect that this kinds of things, life extension, and mind uploading, and all these other technologies that we speculate about, would have been long explored, analyzed, built on, other things developed. Frankly, I think the promises of many religions of personal immortality on some terms, sometimes the terms are absurd, but the idea of personal immortality is not absurd at all, because just as we think that we could resurrect our dead, and we might go out and help other people to resurrect their dead, well, rather than being at the front-end of that process, we are at the back-end of that process, we are the clients, not the service company for the project.

Why? Because there is some really big project going on in the universe, and it’s bringing about the universe in unity and harmony. It has really long ways to go, but on this planet it has incredibly long ways to go, because, you know, whether you call it the fall of man or the planetary rebellion or any of these things that are written down in some garbled form in the myth books of world religions, the fact is that something very bad happened here a long time ago, and we have been pretty much in the backwater, cut off from cosmic civilization ever since.”

I hope an alien “service company” has taken good care of Dan, and he is now a happy and productive part of the cosmic mind at the end of space and time. But even if at this moment there are no alien service companies providing resurrection services to the little people of infant backwater civilizations, we will become the service company ourselves, if we progress in the New Age. From his subjective point of view, Dan is still with us, out there.

See also my longer video interview with Dan and Alison on sexual freedom, the occupy movement, transhumanism, the singularity, physics, religion and spirituality, and their forthcoming book. LGBT rights, quantum entanglement, and new cosmic religions in the same talk, it’s really awesome.

For more, see Part 1 and Part 2.

 

Giulio Prisco discusses Sex and the Art of Cosmic Governance (Part 2)

Giulio Prisco

Giulio Prisco

This is the second installment about Giulio Prisco’s upcoming book entitled, tentatively, Tales of The Turing Church. A draft of his chapter, “Sex and the Art of Cosmic Governance,” that includes recollections of his many interactions with VenusPlusX Co-founder Dan Massey.  Part 1 included an excerpt from Dan’s talk at the Transvision conference where we met Giulio for the first time, and Part 3 recollects Dan’s remarks from one of his interactions with the Mormon Transhumanist Association in 2012.

Giulio is a physicist and computer scientist, and former senior manager in the European space administration. Giulio works as a consultant and contributes to several science and technology magazines. In 2002-2008 he served on the Board of Directors of Humanity Plus, of which he was Executive Director, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Italian Transhumanist Association.  He is often in Hungary, Italy and Spain.
You can find more about Giulio at Turing Church and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET).  

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 In a letter following Dan’s talk at TransvisionDan wrote . . .

“When Martine [Rothblatt] suggested I submit a paper, I knew very little about Transhumanism beyond the superficial elements (live forever, upload your mind, freeze your DNA, etc.). My paper was a total shot-in-the-dark to present to some Transhumanists viewpoints I had previously shared with Martine that were related to sex and gender freedom. I had not thought of these ideas being related to Transhumanism until she suggested it.

I scrubbed all references to GOD and/or DEITY from the talk, because I knew that a significant part of the audience were self declared ‘atheists’ who would have been very distracted by these words, even though I am not sure they understood what they did not believe in. Therefore, even though these words might connote useful concepts to me, they did not mean the same thing to the audience, many of whom suffered from overexposure to the extremely bad public relations of nominally Judaeo-Christian cults for the past 4000 years. There was no need to wade into that quagmire.”

At the conference and after, I had frequent opportunities to discuss religions, mythologies and cosmologies with Dan, among many other things. He was a frequent participant in online discussions hosted by my Turing Church group, Martine Rothblatt’s Terasem, and the Mormon Transhumanist Association. Dan wasn’t a Mormon or a sympathizer, if anything he was very strongly critical of some aspects of Mormon society, in particular their attitude to LGBT persons, but he appreciated the progressive scientific theology promoted by Mormon transhumanists.

In one of my fondest memories with Dan, one day in Manhattan after a Singularity Summit, we realized that my religion of technology and his religion of love are really one and the same, in a relation analogous to the particle-wave complementarity of quantum physics. An electron appears sometimes as a particle, other times as a wave, which seem not only different but incompatible things. But how the electron appears in a specific case doesn’t reflect the intrinsic nature of the electron (which is neither one nor the other) but the configuration of the experiment – in other words, the question that we have chosen to ask. Similarly, technological transcendence and universal love are apparently different but complementary aspects of our shared religion.

Dan used to drop intriguing hints about a “Cosmic Government” – a confraternity of natural Gods and advanced galactic civilizations. Perhaps we will join the Cosmic Government when the time is right, and perhaps the Cosmic Government is benevolently interested in in our world here and now, and may give some help now and then. Dan explained his ideas in more detail in a letter:

“I’ve given a lot of thought to the idea of a religion that would sustain Transhumanist ideals without introducing irrational or mythic ideas. When I finally got around to reading Martine [Rothblatt]’s Truths of Terasem I was surprised to see that the concepts she had assembled at the outset, as she set out to define Terasem, were nearly congruent with a concept I had come to know quite well in a totally different setting, specifically, The Urantia Book. In fact, she was going quite a bit further, trying to anticipate what it would be like for Terasem to be actual.

You see, my decision to take up the cause of sex and gender freedom stems directly from some 30 years of very deep involvement with this nearly occult text and the small group of people who take it seriously. Since the book is 2100 pages, about 1.2 million words, I cannot expect people to have or want to read it, although I think it is well worth reading, even if you don’t take it seriously. Sex and gender freedom are not directly addressed in the book. Rather, from the book one takes certain approaches to very open minded but very rational thinking about all manner of subjects, all more or less explained in terms of what educated middle-class Americans in the 1930s would understand. Since I had long cared about sex and gender issues, it was natural that at some time I would become active in actually applying the ideas and ideals I had adapted/adopted from my familiarity with the book.

For example, the comprehensive structure of our activism program is intended to put spiritual pressure on society for change toward higher ideals and superior social practices. We think the most rapid progress can be made when development proceeds synchronously across the dimensions of value – truth, beauty, goodness, and love – corresponding generally to intellectual, physical, motivational, and personal realizations. This approach to structuring activity is based on concepts from the book, though not specified there. Because of what we have learned from the book about the structure of reality, we are confident that, by examining the four basic values, we will get a reasonably comprehensive view of all the issues and connections. At the same time, you will see us trying to subtly teach readers these same ideas, so you will find these themes used repeatedly in our writings.

To explain further, this four dimensional world of ideals comes from The Urantia Book, in which it is said to be the foundation upon which we, as individual persons, are participating in the development of the Supreme Being, an incompletely realized deity of finite space and time, which even now shapes events (I often use the term force of destiny) to assure its final emergence. At this occasion, the ‘finality,’ all persons will have become elements of a complete cosmic consciousness. But long before this final event many ordinary people will have learned to participate in an integrated, orderly life, in which everything and everyone work together better if you give them a chance.

So, when I suggested that a reasonable rational Transreligion fit for genuine Transhumans would be open to acknowledging and working with a cosmic government, I was basically thinking some of us already are, so to speak. That is, we are actively dedicated to the realization of values in answer to common ideals that are what we sincerely imagine a cosmic government would care about. And by so doing, our combined effort to realize supreme values makes our society better and makes us participants in and contributors to the final emergence of the fully integrated Supreme Being.

I kept hinting (or more) at the idea of accepting or even theoretically admitting the possibility of some sort of intervention as a component of a Transreligion framework. The Urantia Book itself claims to be one such intervention, and, if you accept its statements that we are actually living in a universe populated by diverse, non-hostile beings, some like ourselves and some vastly superior in physical, mental, or motivational endowments, the possibility of some intervention cannot be discarded for want of confirming evidence. The book specifically describes four previous interventions, several of which, according to the book, did not go well for the people of this planet and have led to many of our current problems of uniting to solve major social problems. I believe we are currently in the middle of an intervention on an extensive, planet-wide scale that is gradually becoming apparent.

What sort of vision can illuminate the path to a meaningful and worthwhile future? It must recognize the potential of humans to become ‘as gods.’ The Terasem notion of a technodeity, constructed through human action and culminating at ‘the end of time,’ or some other definite but undefined occasion in the future, with the power to reach back through time and across space to force the actions that finally lead to its full emergence, constructed from the collective consciousness of all universe creatures, is certainly a good start. This provides a vision that we shall all then become fully functioning personalities of a supreme, finite deity.”

I find Dan’s vision of the supreme consciousness, God, emerging from the community of advanced forms of life and civilizations in the universe, able to influence space-time events anywhere, anytime, perhaps even here and now, very beautiful and illuminating. I think this is what all great religions really said, in the form and language of their times, and new religions try to say in the language of our times. But what does this cosmic vision have to do with social activism, LGBT issues, and sexual love? Dan continues:

“I demand that society place no limitation on the individual or collective exploration of joy and pleasure, which necessarily begins with the liberation of Transhumankind from the universal social oppression of long denied sex and gender freedom. To me it seems reasonable to recognize the Transgender as Transhuman; to me Transhuman is the great umbrella under which all who embrace in their own lives and persons the exploration of transformed physical bodies, human minds, and personal superconsciousnesses may be welcome.

I see the framework as an enabling structure for the elaboration of more specific and overtly religious practices that work for different communities. It basically reminds us of our common will to shape the world, regardless of our specific approach, and thus can accommodate erotic mystics (like myself) at one extreme and cyronic speculators at the other.

Obviously, the suggested requirements framework is reaching far beyond the material aspects of current Transhumanism. Specifically, to me, it is the transmaterial aspects that are far more important to the overall future of Transhumans and their destined leadership of planetary society into a new age that answers the longings of the past with a result that is unclogged by myth and chaotic group thinking, is better than anyone could have expected, and opens the doors to achievement of destiny on physical, intellectual, motivational, and personal levels as well.”

The religion of love includes both Agape, the spiritual and ethereal aspect of love, and Eros, the physical and passionate one. Some people are more inclined to one or the other, but Eros and Agape, like love and science, are complementary aspects of one and the same thing. Western religions exclude erotic mysticism and limit individual or collective exploration of joy and pleasure, but other religions are much more open. The supreme consciousness at the end of space and time encourages thousands, billions, uncountable transfinities of flowers to bloom – new religious practices based on the erotic mysticism of Eros may play an important role in our progress to join the cosmic community of Gods.

For more, see Part 1  and Part 3.

 

 

Giulio Prisco’s incoming book examines Sex and the Art of Cosmic Governance (Part 1)

Giulio Prisco

Giulio Prisco

Our dear friend, Giulio Prisco, is writing a book entitled, tentatively, Tales of The Turing Church, and sent us this draft chapter, “Sex and the Art of Cosmic Governance,” that includes recollections of his many interactions with VenusPlusX Co-founder Dan Massey. (This post continues in Part 2 and Part 3.)  

Giulio is a physicist and computer scientist, and former senior manager in the European space administration. Giulio works as a consultant and contributes to several science and technology magazines. In 2002-2008 he served on the Board of Directors of Humanity Plus, of which he was Executive Director, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Italian Transhumanist Association.  He is often in Hungary, Italy and Spain. You can find more about Giulio at Turing Church and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET).  

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Dan Masseya Renaissance man interested in everything under the stars, a visionary thinker, a relentless social activist, a scientist, a teacher, and a friend, passed away on January 28, 2012. He was persuaded that death is not the end, and expected to go on an eternal, infinite journey after death. I hope the eternal cosmic winds will be fair and wonderful to Dan, and I hope to see him again out there.

I first met Dan and his life partner Alison Gardner at Transvision, an itinerant transhumanist conference that I organized in Milan in October 2010. We became good friends and met often after the conference, both online and face to face.

I guess Dan’s talk at the conference shocked many people, used to the often aseptic tone of transhumanist talks. Here was a white-haired hippie, with a New Age messianic look, a benevolent guru of times gone by and times yet to come, proposing a new spirituality founded on transhumanist science and unbounded love including, of all things, sexual love! Quite a shock for “conventional” transhumanists from the straight and narrow path of science and engineering! Dan was an engineer himself, an MIT and Harvard graduate with a distinguished scientific career, but he didn’t walk straight and narrow paths. He and Alison founded an activist organization to create a New Age of liberty, freedom, justice, and equality for all people, centered on the intrinsic value of sex and gender expression, of personal erotic freedom, to replace millennia of unreasoned ignorance, fear, and hatred with the true joy of Love.

Here is the summary of Dan’s talk at Transvision 2010. Thanks to wonderful communication age that his work helped to come into being, the full talk is available online.

“There necessarily exists a divinely determined order throughout the universe. This order pervades and defines three levels of experiential existence – the spiritual, the mental/emotional, and the physical/sensory. The failure of humans and human associations to recognize the love of god pervasive in the sensory level of experience is the principal obstacle to individual and collective human progress, which is essential to the realization of our diverse ambitions for increasing human happiness.

This situation can be corrected by inspiring and educating all humanity to appreciate sex and gender freedom and equality as sacred gifts of god and by training individuals to appreciate the joy of their own freedom of sex and gender, enabling them to inspire, educate, and train others. The power of divine love, expressed through the physical and sensory, is sufficient to seduce humanity into a new way of living, loving, and being that will open wide the doors to our true planetary future.

We are now beginning public discussion of how life is lived in this new age, through all levels and in all areas of inspiration, education, and training. From these discussions a spiritual vision, a social agenda, and a technological program will be established to fashion a transhuman future on which we can begin work today to bring truth, beauty, goodness, and love to our worldwide life experience, building towards the full future fruition of a broad human commitment to universal freedom, justice, equality, and liberty.

The specific issue to be briefly examined is the necessary and sufficient requirements for an artificial object, one created by human vision, thought, and deed, to support the hosting of a human identity equivalent to, but apart from a human body. Even if everyone agrees that the new me is just like the old me, how do I know that I will continue to experience a continuous personal sense of consciousness as the new me?

The answer is that, as a biological human, I know that ‘I am’ by virtue of knowing that I have a personal relationship to god, though I may not consciously admit that I know this. Our bodies and brains evolved to enable this connection, which is what makes us a potentially permanent part of the universe. We can know god and know that god also knows us. While we have rational evidence of human spiritual immortality extending beyond physical life, the creation of physical immortality by artificial means requires an artifice that can, in effect, talk to god. Our brains and bodies are finite and can be fully modeled as finite-state systems; therefore, the creation of such an artifice could be possible. That does not mean it will be easy. This is something we will eventually achieve if we work on it long and hard enough, but when it comes it will surely be the crowning final achievement of human artifice. Our universe will hail this accomplishment, so great will it be, for any people that can build a machine able to know god will have finally taken up the reins of creation itself.”

Part 2 continues with a follow-up letter after this conference, and others, and  Part 3 covers Dan’s related presentation to the Mormon Transhumanist Association.

 

 

Three Basic Ideas of VenusPlusX

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The work of VenusPlusX is to explain to humanity a few basic ideas that can be applied to address weaknesses in the evolved human social order. These ideas  have the power to shape the path of human social evolution.

These concepts are fundamental to all of our work and help us understand and explain how humanity can escape from the constraints imposed by fear and ignorance that presently interfere with human progress.

  1. the universe is populated and has an organized government, one branch of which is responsible for the conditions of prior mismanagement present on this planet and ongoing efforts to expedite their remediation.
  2. there is a simple supreme law of behavior that defines for each individual how they may best contribute to the expression of love and the healing of evil for their fellows.
  3. the human concept and phenomenon of transgender is the emerging direct experience of cosmic joy and play in human social and recreational activities.

First, we are in no way alone in the universe. Not only is our galaxy necessarily populated by beings much like ourselves in different stages of social development, but the large-scale operation of the affairs of the peoples of that galaxy is necessarily coordinated by some sort of cosmic government that deals with human affairs on a scale that no single people can address themselves.

In this and many other comments on this blog we will speak of something as “necessary.” By this we mean that some aspect of destiny cannot be fulfilled unless it is true. This form of argument in terms of potentialities rather than actualities belongs to the world of “modal logic,” especially developed by the great logician Kurt Goedel. In the paragraph above, we basically mean, “Why the hell would you think the universe isn’t populated? If it could happen here it must have happened all over the place. Don’t be a heliocentic homocentric fool.” As for the government, it basically comes down to, “Considering the human propensity to invent rules of living for everybody, how can you imagine an entire galaxy wouldn’t develop systems of administration and adjudication? Just because you can’t imagine what the issues would be for a group of planets separated by light-years, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Your imagination isn’t that great.” Grow some humility, monkey-son.

Second, there is a supreme law of behavior that determines what actions of each person contribute to the individual’s development as a loving person and make a permanent impact on the expression of Love in the universe. We state them here and will return to their explanation in a later blog:

  • Become Love
  • Live Truth
  • Do Good
  • Make Beauty

We do not say “tell the Truth,” although a decision to do so might be entirely correct. To us, Truth is not just words, but the direction in which our will shapes our actions of Love to achieve Good and Beauty as results. Thus, we say “live Truth,” because, to us, Truth is a living reality. Similarly, we say “make Beauty,” not “seek Beauty,” though the latter may be entirely appropriate in a given situation. In each case, the prescribed action is particular to the Supreme value being enacted.

Third, except for areas in which biological reproduction is employed for the creation of new human personalities, all transcendent beings exist in state one might call intergender or omnigender; however, since such beings have no need for sex for reproduction, but are widely exploring all forms of gender expression and behaviors provided by their transphysical bodies, the term “transgender” will be used in these blogs, in the sense of omnigender or intergender. We see the transgender phenomenon as increasingly manifest in human society to stem from the natural human responsiveness to the true transgender nature of the developing human personality. You will find an initial exploration of these ideas in my paper Why We Are All Transgender.

Español:  http://espanol.venusplusx.org/?p=11056

 

What Causes Terminal Transphobia?

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También en español The degree of antipathy that a large segment of society bears towards transgender and gender non-conforming folk is arguably among the most extreme of any systematic persecution of a minority population.

Transphobia arises and is very difficult to cure because the person affected senses a threat to his or her own self-concept of sexual identity. For them it is not possible to consciously acknowledge that a new kind of human is emerging, with superior insight, courage, and adaptability.

Transfolk are the incoming and long-awaited wave of social change for this new age.

Only the fear of one species for extinction and replacement by a superior species can summon such extravagant hatred as we have seen, from Main Street hooligans to the political power brokers who institutionalize transphobia in our laws and policies.

There are many factors that cause whole parts of society to fear knowledge of the transgender and gender non-conforming person. These factors also cause them to fear any new knowledge and push them inward in many other areas of life.

Some people have been so abused by their families and society that they fear to imagine the most pleasurable elements of human existence entirely, and become tragically fixated on cisgender heterosexuality, rejecting a vast range of healthy erotic activities. A relatively small number of people in the world are exclusively feminine or masculine, yet most people in the modern world remain ignorant of this fact, worship the binary, and hold extreme notions, inhuman at best, about how other people, including intersex people, must perform in society to avoid destroying civilization. In fact society is most certainly crumbling today wherever we fail to learn that breaking boundaries of gender in exploration of androgyny is necessary for any future harmony or human progress.

Many among us (and you know who you are) are so insecure in their own sexual identity that they cannot bear to contemplate changing genders or having sex reassignment surgery (SRS), even though only a small percentage of transgender people ever seek surgery.

No doubt there is something very different about androgyny. It can be at once confusing and terrifying to the superficial thinker.

Transgender folk are either in the process of addressing their personal androgyny or have personally traversed that territory to become the people they are today. It is the same look at androgyny that inspires someone to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual (GLB), although they find this a frightening and threatening topic often productive of hidden or overt transphobia.

The life experience of transgender and gender non-conforming people enables them to understand the terrain of sexual orientation and gender identity to a degree largely unknown, even in the so-called GLB community.

Although no two transgender or gender non-conforming folk may agree on detailed personal perspectives, they understand the issues, the alternatives, and the depth of their own nature better than anyone else.

This constellation of attributes, whittled down through the most extreme forms of social oppression, defines a community of individuals of truly awesome personal capabilities.

Only the most extreme and vile forms of social oppression keep these personalities from developing their powers of understanding and leadership, which would be of enormous benefit to society.

Transgender and gender non-conforming folk who have successfully navigated the wasteland of social ignorance face continuing opposition from fearful, ignorant bigots, who force asinine non-issues to the forefront of public discourse, dividing and diverting attention to ridiculous concerns, such as bathroom rape.

The transidentity’s unique responsiveness to the vitological influence of the androgyne cosmos further aligns these individuals with the force of destiny, inspiring them to persevere in spite of overwhelming opposition.

The unenlightened homo-sapiens see and fear people equipped with a seemingly superhuman understanding of most of life’s perplexing personal problems. Rather than perceiving an opportunity to be led from darkness to embrace their own androgyne destiny, they retreat in fear.

They hate that which would advance them immensely, if only they could abandon fear.

Transfolk are truly the incoming wave of social change for this new age.

No longer will we hide our transpowers (and recognition of our androgyny) in shame and fear.

We are your natural-born leaders in the world of the erotic and the vitological.

We are here to show humanity a better way.

Trust and rejoice!

Creative commons image by TransGriot, WipeOutTransphobia

Religion: Real and Fake

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Society suffers from a severe misunderstanding of the nature and role of religion. Nowhere is this more apparent than in ongoing arguments about the “separation of church and state.” Blame the Puritans.

The basic idea in the U.S. Constitution is one of freedom FROM religion, expressed as “freedom of religion.” The tenets of any religion may not be imposed on its citizens who disagree. This concept is fundamental to the unalienable human right to absolute privacy of person, and pillar of sexual freedom and the bedrock of all other freedoms.

The pilgrims who came to Plymouth imagined that they could impose their concept of the divine will upon everyone who opposed them, that the free exercise of their religion meant forcing the world into compliance with their beliefs, a severe misdirection victimizing all sincere people. A few years later, Puritan fanaticism swept England herself into a great civil war. Such foolishness has characterized many fanatical conflicts throughout history, and can be seen today in the demands and schemes of theocratic groups worldwide, including today’s America.

A real religion is world religion. One could say there are as many religions in the world as there are people. Even atheists and agnostics objectify “god” and choose to exclude these hobbled, uninspired notions. World religion is superstition- and mythology-free and an immediately accessible and consistent guide to living in tune with the rhythms of cosmic destiny. This vitology—our urge to persist—gives each person a vision of immortality, an unending, improving, and harmonizing ecology of living.

Our faith is one of loving—desiring to do good to one another. This perpetual cycle of love shared is powered by all kinds of love, especially including the erotic, and it gives us a unified power for progress the world has yet to see. Our inherent and inherited capability for sexual pleasure and orgasm (erotic joy) is the living and loving communion that matures us individually to the service of Love and its destiny, and unites us as a team in shared fellowship—a loving siblinghood.

Editor’s note: This is one of a series of position papers Dan Massey and I are creating and will soon index on our home page. They briefly explore the evolution of our points of view about a range of issues related to sex, gender, and racial freedom. Your feedback is always welcome.