Normal Human Heroes

December 13th, 2009
Related to my last post, I’m including here a scene from a children’s movie that was a favorite of mine. Fern Gully has a lot of beautiful scenes, but this one in particular always struck me, and to this day this sort of place still holds a greater sense of personal wonder than any other. If we survive to utopia, and then succeed in the difficult task of building something that might be fit to bear that name, I neither expect nor desire that it all feel like one thing. It’s just a matter of time until we’d get bored of that, assuming – quite reasonably – that boredom is something we want to retain. But if utopia were a house of a million rooms, for now, this place would be my favorite.
What’s also interesting is the song that’s playing. While I very seldom thought on this scene since childhood, when I did it often served as a reminder of how good, how beautiful life might be, especially when that was otherwise hard to remember. A few years ago I actually listened to the lyrics of the song, and they describe fairly accurately this very relationship.
It’s unlikely that other people will get that much out of this, but on the off chance they do I’ve included the scene here. Even if this doesn’t do much for you, perhaps you can think back on some similar experience that you had as a child; some really positive vision or impression of the world as it might be. Note: this could be a little cheesy to someone seeing it first as an adult. You may choose to see it with more of the perspective of a less critical mind, or choose to avoid watching it if some cheesiness is a big thing to you. Note also: the element of romance in the scene was lost on me at that age, and beyond friendship it’s quite tertiary and unrelated to the appreciation of which I’ve spoken.

November 27th, 2009
On Thanksgiving my family visits my Aunt and Uncle’s place just across the Wisconsin border. They’ve got this cool old house in the woods, nested by this creek one must drive over, wondering each year how strong that wooden bridge still is. My cousins and I used to spend the afternoon watching movies upstairs, and even more than that I enjoyed the walks we would take along that creek, quiet and still, sometimes blanketed by a little snow. There was one cousin that I got along with especially well, and we were close friends for many years. Both in email correspondence and in person as we walked along that creek, we would talk about all the dreams we had for the future, all the things we were going to go and see, anticipation for our next months and years hung like a piñata above us, ready to burst.
This year was the first that I didn’t hide away watching movies with my cousins and sister. I don’t really mind that; I have less access to the aunts and uncles than I do to movies, and joining the “big people table” was inevitable. This was also the first year I took the walk along the creek on my own. It’s nothing that sinister; my sister is still away on study abroad, and the cousin was having thanksgiving at his parent’s place this year. But there was something wistful about the experience.
My cousin and I have drifted apart in the past several years. We still get along and have some laughs when we meet, but our relationship is more distant and our long-running email correspondence is dead or dormant. I’m not sure how much we have in common these days, but over the years that’s often been the case and I wonder how much was based on that sharing of hopes and dreams. I’m happy to say that I still occasionally feel some wide-eyed wonder, but our relationship is more strongly tinged with memories of all those happy times of the past. Today it occurred to me that if things for me are tinged by old experiences, things may be for him as well, and perhaps that’s part of the reason for the distance. He accomplished more than I did but also had it much rougher, and in the end he lost two people very very close to him, forever. He seems to be doing well these days with a very nice career starting up, but also like a man much more aged and worn than he should be.
My uncle is the oldest of a large family and over 60; he and my aunt are aging and may soon sell this place. It’s not as clean as it used to be, every year a little more overgrown, a few more of the large trees dead and fallen, and the fallen trees a little softer and more rotted. I may love that creek more than anyone and it’s still beautiful out there, but one way or another it’s not going to last. I wish I could have logged my experiences, so that when that creek is no longer there I can at least remember clearly the times we had in it. Without such ability it will eventually fade from recollection, leaving only a deformed imprint, a memory of trees and rocks and an emotional residue of excitement and longing.
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The dream of transhumanism is that we can do so much better than this. We can prevent the dreary crawl of unwanted decay and aging, we can preserve value, and we can live better lives, lives less inclined to suicide, lives less marred by suffering and grief. A good dream is a precious thing, and I’m not letting go.

September 30th, 2009
Living out in the boondocks I’m on a very open stretch of land, sprinkled with a few trees and houses, and the juxtaposition between human edifice and weather seems stronger here. I enjoy that contrast, particularly with inclement weather, as long as I’m not out in it for long. Massive forces and bodies, shifting and colliding over the surface of the planet, and yet these tiny human specks are often not even bothered enough to stop what they’re doing. We’re so fantastically small in comparison, so fragile seeming, and yet with that wonderful spark of intelligence we can shape our world around us to suit our desires. Beyond the strength the house affords I sometimes like to step out under the towering dark clouds, into the thick of the rain and the wind, and feel both the exhilaration of them beating down and their effective powerlessness.
These massive forces also hint at those greater ones beyond the surface of Earth, those that really would kill you in a few seconds, without hatred or compassion. Human beings are wonderfully ecumenical but we cannot survive exposure in our upper atmosphere or under the oceans, on any other known planet or outer space. Even there intelligence has already accomplished amazing feats, taking this soft skinned prairie-dwelling species into the air, through the vacuum of space and onto another astronomical object, something it was ridiculously not evolved for.
Yet intelligence may not be the final victor in its fight with these massive dumb elements. A volcanic eruption already nearly finished us, and future asteroids or gamma ray bursts could end our adventure with all the moral deliberation of an acid neutralizing a base. By including those massive effects less intelligent than us, we might consider the endless march of technological progress, or of evolution – biological, memetic, or upload reproduction. None of these systemic effects have dreams, hopes, loves or joys, and to achieve an appreciable chance of a world we find meaning in we need intelligence to continue its triumphs*. It’s the reigning champions Monkey-Brained Savanna Creatures vs The Universe, final round.
* Of course intelligence won’t always primarily mean human intelligence, but for now we can consider it as Us against the unintelligent march towards creating such beings.