transhuman

Reproductive Sex Gets More Abnormal Every Day

Editor’s Note: Periodically we have fun delving into our archives to bring you still relevant items. This one was written in 2011 by our co-founder Dan Massey that puts reproductive sex in its place. Comments welcome, as always.

Last Wednesday night (8/3) we hosted a meet-the-author event for the launch of Gloria Brame’s new book, The Truth About Sex: Volume 1. More than 30 fans of kink and more showed up, many from the Alternative Sexualities conference the same day in DC. There was a lot of Q&A and raunchy banter leading to some observations of how “non-reproductive sex” had come to be widely accepted in the last 50 years as an important part of the total sexual experience.

Adam and Eve

When confronted by an assumption that does not seem warranted, I try reversing my perspective, looking through the opposite end of the telescope so to speak, and often find my altered viewpoint enlightening. In this case, I felt the discussion was overburdened with the millennially long uphill climb of humanity from the pit of obligatory reproduction. No sooner did we figure out what caused children than all the usual scolds came out of the woodwork to try to force us to do it anyway, even when we didn’t want to.

So I spoke up to say that I thought, when you considered all the possible varieties of sex, orientation, affinity, gender identity, and gender orientation, the so-called “normal” (i.e., cisnormative heteronormative) reproductive sex act becomes a mere footnote to this multidimensional space in which we can all freely express our joy in life.

By now it should be clear that reproductive sex (without any form of intentional fertilization control) is something to be avoided unless one is fully prepared to deal with the consequences, namely the birth of a child, with sufficient preparation and capability to safely oversee eir formative life period. No child should ever be born into a situation where they are not desired and respected as the highest good to their parents. No potentially fertile couple should ever consider (or even be allowed to consider) reproduction without having attained some maturity that qualifies them to raise and educate a child.

In short, there is nothing more unusual, abnormal, and potentially self-destructive in the entire domain of sexuality and eroticism than the actual act of breeding. How could anyone possibly have thought masturbation was dangerous relative to actual reproduction? Was nobody paying attention to anything real at all? Even if masturbation really did grow hair on your palms, wouldn’t that be obviously preferable to creating an unwanted child, a child that would suffer endless personal abuse and humiliation until one day he might take vengeance on his tormentors?

Sex is about joy, pleasure, happiness, and personal sanity. Breeding is not about any of these. It is a unique and different aspect of life that, while extremely important to many people, is just one tiny and extremely dangerous corner of the universe of sex. Reproduction is an act in and of itself, which has nothing to do with erotic sex, except for the physical association in the wiring of human body. But the wires that give joy and delight actually don’t have much to do with operating the plumbing that makes babies. For the beast, the erotic senses drive behavior towards reproductive sex; however, for observant and rational humans, they actually have nothing to do with reproduction.

We are not animals. We are human, even transhuman beings, able to orient ourselves in the world, to observe the events and activities of our environment, to decide on the most appropriate next action to take ourselves, and to take such condign action in a timely way. And when we thus become fully, rationally conscious of what is really happening and our role from moment to moment in making things happen, it is easy to see the optimal choice—to finally dispose of the delusion of reproduction as the whole of sex and raise our eyes to the vast opening sky of possibilities.

Planetary society is entering a new and fabulous age of sex and gender freedom, when the range and domain of such experience and exploration is no longer defined by the mechanics of reproduction. At last the challenges of uncontrolled reproduction can be addressed, as all are educated to a life of sexual experience beyond simple interhuman bestiality. The making of babies is separate and secondary to the desires and actions of the lover to do good to the beloved. Fulfill your lovers in every way from the sensory to the transcendent, according to each individual’s sensitivities, and put reproductive sex in its place.

—Dan Massey

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

Transreligion for Athiests and Non-Athiests Alike

Religious myth has only degraded and inhibited human progress. Essentially all contemporary religions are myth based. Christianity fails the test of worth when it relies on Hebrew racial myth (the old testament) and Greek philosophical myth (the concept of the Christos and related ideas) as absolute truths. We know that nothing that draws on such ancient Sci-Fi can be either true, good, or beautiful, except by accident, and thus stands forever opposed to the power of love in the world.

There are, fortunately, many people (now and in the past 2000 years) who love others, serve others, do good to others, and make our world more beautiful by their efforts. Some of these people call themselves Christians or Jews or Muslims or Atheists or something else, which is their choice, but their lives have taken inspiration from the universal powers of love and truth in the human mind, not from religious myth or dogma.

Eddi van W Flickr/creative commons

Eddi van W
Flickr/creative commons

Transhumanists continue to debate the appropriateness of any kind of religious faith or behavior as a component of Transhuman life. My own post-transition perspective illuminates many ethical and moral concerns of the Transhumanists. Foremost, if we are to foster the emergence of a genuine Transhuman philosophy of life, we need to create an inspirational framework that justifies and motivates rational behavior. We should evaluate candidate inspirational frameworks according to their individual ability to satisfy essential requirements that must be met by any proposed framework.

In my view, a satisfactory transhuman rationally religious world view ought to address five basic requirements that bridge the gaps of sex and gender and merge the physical, psychic, and inspirational elements of joy into a total personal and socially transforming experience of reality. At the same time, we recognize that a genuinely operational inspirational framework, a true transreligion, can only emerge from the collective unification of individual joyful experience. This list is just a starting point for further thought and discussion.

1) Assure complete freedom from reliance on any myth or backstory. Our beliefs are based on plain observational knowledge and insights of personal wisdom.

2) Demonstrate open and informed attitudes, viewpoints, and experiential training for all of the many dimensions of sex and gender.

3) Practice group communion for collective psychic inspiration and empowerment, through the exploration and experience of sex and gender as acts of communion.

4) Fellowship every transhuman living on this planet. Empower them to know the joy of living, showing how love finds expression in true service to others by doing good and making beauty.

5) Be open to alliance with any cosmic government that may make its presence or influence felt in human affairs, with a willingness to facilitate transhuman emergence. In the meantime dedicate your life to the highest principles of love, truth, goodness, and beauty.

To summarize, we help one another by starting with baldfaced mythless truth and showing each other the joy that is really important and gives meaning to life. A universal acknowledgment of the possibility that some external force will intervene keeps us mutually focused on progression towards our ideals of truth and love, regardless of what the future brings. And our intent to combine free and open acceptance of all forms of sex and gender expression with equally free and open communion, joy, and fellowship guarantees our ability to lead the destined evolution of human affairs.

Transhumans may find something like this just fine as the basis for a way of life and be finally able to leave the god talk to the past. But a religion, the social expression of a community of individuals who share common ideals, is not designed, so much as grown through the social customs of the community. Setting aside old, incorrect beliefs, the inherent truth of principles like these will emerge and cause focused will actions. Through trial and error, the community will gradually discover convenient and innovative ways of serving these principles to more and more people. And that will be the emergence of true Transreligion.

Now is the time for a new inspirational framework to replace the outdated and overly interpreted ideas of our pastfathers. I do not know what will emerge, but I trust that it will necessarily be true to ideals and principles such as those stated here.

Editor’s note: This was published a few years ago to offer a framework for a new non-religion incorporating the ideas of sex and gender freedom. It is re-issued today to help spur the coming together of many diverse points-0f-view who are striving for a humane world unified with shared ideals. 

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

Transhumans Transform the World

by Alice Popcorn Flickr/creative commons

by Alice Popcorn
Flickr/creative commons

Transhumanism has a very simple definition, so you may be a transhuman without realizing it: Transhumans translate their ideal visions of what the world can become into actions they can accomplish in the here and now. For example, transhumans envisioned new technology for driverless cars, decades ago. What was once considered fanciful is now recognized as inevitable as we now see some of these cars on our highways and local streets. It began with an idea a long time ago and then brought into reality.

It is the same with social issues such as civil rights, economic justice, and free immigration. The radicalization that gives birth to an activist takes place suddenly, when their vision of how things should be reaches critical mass in both the heart and mind. A transhuman point of view is what propels progress because the vision of a better future never fades, even though human society is intentionally organized and maintained to inhibit such growth and allows social bullies who manipulate unearned privilege to enslave the masses through religious hierarchies, governments, and corporations.

Becoming Transhuman carries with it the personal assumption of responsibility for the consequences of your actions. It implies that you love and serve every person as you are (or wish to be) loved and served by others. It implies that you are committed to vigorous development and ethical exploitation of human technical and artifactual ingenuity on all levels of literal reality—physical, mental, and motivational.

Transhumans serve humanity in this way because their reasons for being and acting are completely removed from typical human concerns. The characteristic difference between a human and a Transhuman viewpoint is that, in contrast to the human, whose behavior is based on mythic memes imparted by family and society, the Transhuman sets aside all such myth in favor of direct engagement with reality guided by personal dedication to the realization of love.

Humans who increasingly dedicate themselves to the honest demonstration of loyalty to the idea and values of a better possible future for our world transition to a Transhuman state, and fundamentally connects each of us to  become part of the emerging collective consciousness of a joyful universe.

Ultimately, people will be distinguished by who is for improvements to the whole versus those who still cling to their very pedestrian and entirely self-centered attitudes, notable only for their complete lack of compassion, and (fortunately) destined for extinction.

So, are you transitioning to be a transhuman? The future hopes you are.

For more: Can I transition to be transhuman

 

 

 

 

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.

 

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

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

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.

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0.9 That’s What It’s All About!

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The erotic is the universal foundation of personal growth in Love.

If you play by the rules, is there any sense in which you can “win the game of life?”

Were you someone who is hopeless, thinking that the game ends with all the players dead and buried in the ground, you might value yourself in terms what you did while you were alive, though that is only relevant while you yet live.

You may have amassed a great fortune, built huge companies, accomplished visionary philanthropies, made great discoveries, or had thousands of friends, but your body is still dead, apparently along with everyone else’s.

Nothing can have any personal meaning for you dead. Your deceased biohost will not be aware of or remember anything.

Meaning comes from the values and ideals you have experienced and affirmed in mortal life, which define your immortal super-consciousness.

But if essentially everyone has the opportunity for immortality, can’t everyone win the game?

To answer this, you must ask what it means to win.

Since all have the opportunity for immortality, becoming immortal is NOT winning the game.

Understanding and embracing your own immortality is required if you are to play the game at all.

Given that, at the end of life of the biohost of your super-consciousness, does it make sense to speak of winners?

Yes, but there are no real losers, since all who will themselves to survive will do so.

Believing in immortality doesn’t make you immortal—nor is it necessary for you to be immortal—but once having desired immortality you have imported a lasting new meaning into your life.

Your ability to conceive of and desire immortality makes you a potential immortal—choosing to become what you desire—and demonstrating this choice by continuing to live, grow, and serve.

And you already know that the worshipful pursuit of erotic joy is the thread that unites the infinitude of events in your eternal quest.

In a very real sense, you have a score in the game of life at every occasion—before and after biohost separation.

Your score is based on your contribution to the four supreme ideals—Love, Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

Beauty is disclosed in your ability and effort to create harmonious arrangements that work together for expression of a common ideal.

Goodness reflects the value of your service to Love and Truth, expressed as service to your fellow humans—to serve another as you would be served yourself.

Truth is the will that directs your actions for the accomplishment of Good and the satisfaction of the desires of Love.

Love is the desire to do Good to others.

These four measures sum up the growth your super-consciousness has achieved at any time.

The experience of worshipful erotic joy is available to you at all times, so that you may better discern the light of Truth.

So do your personal scores have any bearing on your personal future experience?

Not surprisingly, they have a big effect on your immediate experience of continuing life after separation from your biohost.

To learn to be a better person, with greater value to the universe, you must socialize your experience in a community containing some people from whom you can learn and other people whom you can inspire.

The proof of your continuing growth is your success in showing the way to others.

Everyone moves on to more spiritual levels of socialization, so initial differences, no matter how great, are all erased in time.

No matter where you find yourself, your task remains the same—to continue developing your ability to function in service to supreme values.

And in all places throughout the cosmos, forms of erotic joy illuminate the experience of worshipful meditation wherein all choices are made.

Thus, in time, all advance toward perfection, regardless of their starting level—some will progress rapidly, others slowly, but all in the certainty that they who desire personal immortality are indeed immortal in universe service.

Our pastfathers had no knowledge of the cosmos and imagined a heaven of stationary values, but the real universe is complex, adaptive, and dynamic—a vast school dedicated to teaching all beings the art of Love.

You need only choose to persist in your quest for immortality to finally attain perfection, become absolutely immortal, and function as a personality of the emerging deity of time and space that comprises the super-consciousness of all universe beings—the Supreme Being.

Worship Love in all its manifestations and you will always find Truth.

At each step the erotic provides a way to express and experience Love through literal action.

Though we may personally traverse a billion worlds enroute to final perfection, we know that the joy of Love is made literally manifest at every level of experience.

The erotic is the universal foundation of personal growth in Love.

Join me today and forever in the worship of the power of erotic joy.

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The erotic is the universal foundation of personal growth in Love.

Through increasingly wise worship of the power of erotic joy you have been saved from uncertainty; apprised of your immortality; harmonized with the absolute realities of Love, Truth, Goodness, and Beauty; and, begun to grasp the personal meaning of your cosmic immortality.

You are awake and joyfully alive—perhaps as though inhabiting an entirely new biohost.

And your biohost is still alive and frisky—and ever ready to worship erotic joy.

Although you have envisioned and understood your immortality, you have not yet experienced mortal death, which finally frees your soul from the negative entanglements of life.

How are you to live in this material world, now that you no longer are of this material world?

Objectively, nothing has changed—same body, same brain, same needs, same voice, same friends, same home, same gear—and same desire for erotic joy.

But you certainly are not the same you!

Although you have not yet embraced biohost separation, permanently freeing your better self from the encumbrances of past limitations, while preserving every true goodness, you already know some of what that state will be.

The immortal you is awake and cosmically alive, seeking the satisfaction of Love.

Now you see your human life from the viewpoint of a parallel universe—you have gained a new set of values, which has clarified your priorities.

But your immortal super-conscious still must act to maintain the well-being of your biohost.

You may have conceptually transcended the needs of the flesh; however, all aspects of that experience, including the erotic, remain open to you.

You need no longer fear for your personal immortality, but you also need not suffer from indecision concerning the path of true goodness.

The worship of erotic joy that freed you first from the prison of indecision—that power of salvation on which your transcendent understanding is built—still shows you the way to your salvation.

But now, as a super-conscious person, the same worship in erotic experience powers and guides your life.

Guides your life in the pathways of an unrevealed destiny.

Accelerates the pace of oncoming goodness.

Why?

Because in the climax of erotic joy one’s nervous system tastes the full outpouring of Love.

And those moments, when embraced in partnership with Truth, raise your vitality, heal your deficiencies, broaden your insight, and ever guide you onward.

And all these shifts of attitude and viewpoint are inspired by the joy of your erotic communion with Truth.

Now each such experience further prepares you to be a living example of your new understanding and to demonstrate it to others.

By opening the path of erotic communion to others, you empower yourself to experience it ever more deeply.

The avenues of truth affirming erotic exploration in the flesh are numerous and fully open to you.

And you certainly need not fear anything—especially boredom, since a universe of possibilities lies open before you.

After grasping the reality of your immortality and cosmic citizenship your further task is to help others discover what you have learned.

And that is the most basic Truth:

The erotic is the universal foundation of personal growth in Love.

Join me today and forever in the worship of the power of erotic joy.

Click here for 0.9 That’s What It’s All About!