killing the infinite: corporeal

Yayoi Kusama's: Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity.

Humans are terrestrial creatures that breathe earth’s atmosphere and eat its flora and fauna, we reproduce sexually, we have forward-facing eyes, heads, shoulders, knees and toes. We’re born into this form and we spend our earthly lives in a single body.

It’s bizarre, if you think about it – the development of our form can be traced through variations and adaptations in living phylogenic neighbors and the fossil record but it’s equally novel for each new soul born into it. Perhaps this is why when we inhale certain naturally occurring chemicals we end up having extended discussions about what we’d do if we had wings or tails, or staring incredulously, and repeating: “Man, my hands are crazy! Look at them. Look at my hands!!” Some of us think this way without chemical assistance.

Our bodies, essentially dictated by our genomic structure, restrict us. For the moment, the trippy, sci fi medical tech that could change this is out of reach for most of us. Here, rhetorically, genes are the laws of physics for the body: constant elements of the algorithm describing human limits. We can augment genetic limits with reductive thinking about anatomy. It’s easy to oversimplify bodies. But we shouldn’t.

Definitions of normality vary across cultures and change over time – a lesser documented, quicker, social analog of anatomical evolution. Most anatomical categories are arbitrary constructions, difficult to quantify when looked at closely. Even designations as seemingly fundamental as male and female become less distinct2 if broken down into measurable parts. Categories are constructed. We are not the Vitruvian Man. Get out of here, Hugh Jackman. You’re messing mup y point.3

Stridency over anatomical divisions is overtly tendentious – and limiting – in the face of two previously mentioned conditions: new technologies and our inclination to reshape our environments and ourselves. We’ve overcome our illiterate visual systems, we live with cerebral shunts and pins in our femurs, and futurists like Ray Kurzweil believe that advanced technologies will soon be integrated so completely with biology that the next stage of human evolution will occur in tandem with machines and machine intelligence. Kurzweil’s beliefs are considered extreme, most colleagues express doubt about his reasoning vectors and/or deterministic conclusions but the man’s an undeniable genius, a sort of prophet, and not entirely unconvincing for those willing to consider the uncomfortable.

Many are unwilling and this is troublesome. Individuals who talk about AI, singularities, nanotechnology and off-planet colonies are called eccentrics and heckled, to their faces sometimes. Environmentalism is easy. Preserve our planet. Sustain human intelligence, as it is, the dominant form of intelligence on our world. Don’t think too closely about the idea that the physical form of our bodies is neither stable nor definitive. Meet speculation with truculence.

Bodies change slowly, technology could accelerate the process, but consciousness (of our bodies and ourselves) can be altered in as quickly as one moment flowing into the next. Through continuous endogenous and exogenous mind-body feedback, consciousness develops in the body, one body, born in one place and time, and nests in the brain. 

*Want to keep reading? Continue with, killing the infinite part 3: neurological

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2 Alice Dreger is the preeminent authority here, and very convincing, read this or check out her TED talk.

3 I chose Mr. Jackman because the Vitruvian Man is a man, and in my experience, the Broadway Wolverine seems to appeal (greatly) to most groups physically attracted to men.