By Ljubodrag Simonovic, Belgrade, Serbia *
The theory of “the obsolescence of man” has become one of the most aggressive social and anthropological theories in the contemporary world, reckoning with man as a human and natural being. The established ideological sphere of capitalism produces an anthropological model that becomes the basis of man’s self-understanding. Instead of arriving at the idea of man as a specific and unique cosmic being based on the historical development of humanity and the creative powers of man, the concept of the “human nature” is approached from the nature of capitalism and cosmological mysticism. Man is not viewed as a historical being and as such a specific and unique cosmic being; instead, the essence of man as a cosmic being is reached by starting from the “structure of matter.” The capitalist degeneration of the world and man through technology is the foundation of transhumanism. Capitalism transforms natural laws into a means of destroying man as a natural and human being and turning him into a technical means for reproduction of capitalism.
The prevailing cosmology severs the existential connection between nature and man, thereby abolishing man as a natural being. The survival of man is not conditioned by the survival of the living world on Earth. In the technocratic vision of the future, life is possible without the living world. Humans are “obtained” through technical processes, while technological innovations are to make man “immortal.” It is no longer priests who are the masters of life and death; instead, it is scientists. “Immortality” is transferred from the heavens to scientific laboratories. Simultaneously, man is not only robbed of his natural vitality but also of the planet Earth – his cosmic home. Earth and the living world are written off. Man no longer exists in the universe as an organic part of living nature, but rather finds himself in an artificial technical space, and his relationship to the universe is mediated by life within it. In order to survive, man must adapt to a new living environment, which implies suppressing his natural being. The natural life-creating ability is no longer a condition of life; it is replaced by the technical functionality of an organism reduced to a robot.
The “space futurists” scare people by claiming that Earth will soon “perish” and that migration to other planets is necessary for humanity’s survival. This becomes a pretext for the destruction of people as humane and natural beings and for transforming them into technical abominations. The capitalist propaganda machinery fabricates reality and creates a virtual world in people’s minds, thereby destroying critical and visionary thinking. At the same time, capitalism degenerates man as a social being and turns him into an atomized wretch. The creation of a “consumer society,” representing the final phase in the development of capitalism, has led to the transformation of man into a destructive being and thus an accomplice in the destruction of life on Earth. “Consumer standard” has become the most devastating tool of capitalism for destroying the true living standard of man, which means destroying man as a humane and natural being. The relationship of man to his body, which is his immediate nature, has become a reflection of the relationship of man to the natural environment.
By becoming a totalitarian order of destruction that increasingly devastates life on Earth, capitalism imposes the idea of the “obsolescence of traditional humanity,” which is existentially and essentially tied to the Earth, and the need to create a “new humanity” capable of venturing into space. Man must mentally and physically adapt to the challenges imposed by the “cosmic saga.” This is not just a message for man to give up on Earth as his cosmic home, but also a call to adapt to the technically degenerated world and to accept his own disappearance as a humane and natural being.
The technocratic approach to space only seemingly implies the transformation of people into technical means for “conquering space.” In actuality, “space conquest” becomes a way to legitimize the ruling class’s endeavor to abolish “traditional humanity” and create a new ruling race of “cyborgs” capable not only of “competing” with “intelligent machines” but also of dominating the world. This is a modern form of racism based on capitalistically degenerated science and technology. The “world’s demise” and “colonizing other planets” become excuses for establishing a modern fascism with an ecocidal and genocidal nature. This is why scientists can talk about “androids” and “artificial intelligence” with such an ease. The affirmative attitude towards robots is based on a derogatory attitude towards humans. “Space visionaries” speak of a “future world” as a world of robots because they have deprived man of the qualities that make him a unique and unrepeatable cosmic being. Man is abolished as an emotional, erotic, moral, libertarian, social, historical, visionary being… The difference between humans and robots is diminishing because capitalism turns humans into robotized freaks. Depriving people of the need to have a humane relationship with other people leads to an increasing number of people embracing the idea of man-robot.
Through technology, capitalism abolishes man as a humane and natural being, thus negating historical materialism and the dialectic of nature, and regressing man to the level of mechanicistic materialism. This includes the quantum theory. Capitalism abolishes man as a humane being and reduces him to a mechanical part of cosmic processes. People are not unique and unrepeatable personalities; instead, they are reduced to energy waves and quantum particles. In this way, scientists abolish both man as a specific cosmic being and the humane cosmos.
It is not the quantum structure of the human organism that makes man human. Man is a material being, but he is also a social, historical, and creative being – and as such, a specific and unique cosmic being. The self-awareness of man, his way of thinking, his understanding of human society and his relationship to the future… – all have social and historical conditioning. Man doesn’t become a cosmic being by becoming an embodiment of cosmic processes, but by developing his creative being, interpersonal relationships, visionary imagination… A song or an embrace speak more about the specific essence of man as a cosmic being than all cosmic processes combined. Ultimately, the creative sociability based on the human need for one another constitutes the foundation of the true universe.
According to quantum physics, the universe has a holographic structure. This understanding is also present in ancient religions. Every part of the universe contains within itself the image of the whole. As a tiny part of the universe, man is a manifest form of the multidimensional hologram that is the paradigm of the universe. We exist in the universe, and the universe exists within us. Man does not exist as a specific libertarian and creative being that as such relates to the universe based on humanistic criteria; he is rather reduced to the universe in the form of quantum particles. Here we return to the cosmology of Parmenides and Zeno. Everything that exists in the cosmos is located in one point. Motion is an illusion.
If man is the universe and the universe is man, how did man become a unique human being, and how did the world become a human world? How can man have self-awareness as an authentic personality? What makes people different from one another and what makes them have their own understandings, beliefs, experiences…? What is the meaning of life? What is beauty? What is freedom? What is goodness? What is truth? What led people from believing in spirits, totems, and pagan gods to start believing in one god? Is this the result of the action of cosmic processes or is it about social processes with historical nature?
Historically, the way in which man secures his existence conditions social relations and a value horizon on which the self-conception of man, his relationship to nature, and to other people are based. Peoples engaged in agriculture had one kind, while those engaged in hunting had a different kind of gods. This is the basis of matriarchy and patriarchy. Marx’s view that “it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness” remains an unsurpassed methodological guideline for the historical shaping of human self-awareness.
Guided by technocratic imagination, scientists are unable to comprehend the nature of the universe. This is because they lack respect for man. Instead of envisioning a humane world in harmony with nature, a vision of a “technical world” with a totalitarian and anti-human character is offered. Instead of developing interpersonal relationships and the creative essence of man, technical mastery of space and technologized existential processes are offered. Capitalistically degenerated science is based on mechanicistic materialism, which aims to deal with naturalistic and historical materialism. Science and technology view man in an extra-historical and extra-social context. The closer science gets to the “essence of matter,” the further it gets from the essence of man. Man is abolished as a libertarian, historical, creative, and visionary being and reduced to a material dimension. Mechanicistic materialism is the deadliest form of abolishing man as a natural and human being. The essence of man as a cosmic being is derived from the structure of matter and in this context, from the structure of the universe, rather than from the nature of the living world and human society. Man becomes a cosmic hologram.
Scientists do not view man as a natural and human being who, as such, has specific capabilities and limitations, but rather reduce man to a technical being and instrumentalize him in the context of creating a technical world and “conquering space.” Man is reduced to an object of technical processing and in this context has become a mutating being that can fulfill whatever his masters demand of him. The model of the man of the future is a cyborg, which is a mechanical symbiosis of dehumanized intelligence and technology. Scientists reduce man to a technical thing and therefore have no problem declaring robots as human beings. The pathology of the capitalistically degenerated man becomes the “nature” of robots. Robots become “evil” and have a need to destroy humans. Indicative is the film “2001 Space Odyssey”, which was based on the futuristic ideas of Arthur Clarke. In fact, it is not about the destructive nature of technology and man’s fear of it, but about the destructive nature of capitalism which has instrumentalized technology to make profit by destroying nature and man, as well as about the destructive nature of the capitalistically degenerated man.
Scientific knowledge is growing, but it is a privilege of scientists who have become tools of capitalism for destroying the world. The more advanced science becomes, the more it grows distant from “ordinary” people. It has become the exclusive means of the ruling class to control people and destroy nature. Instead of people becoming more educated and smarter, they are becoming more uneducated and dumber. An entertainment industry has been created for them, turning them into idiots. This is the Coca-Cola “culture”. The poison that symbolizes the “new (American) world order” has become “The Real Thing!” Similarly, there is no money for education and environmental projects aimed at preventing the destruction of life on Earth, while hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested in military projects every year…
Robotization points to the future of capitalism. Robots and holograms are capitalism’s response to the existential and the general social crisis it creates. The increasingly diverse offer of technical aids and robots becomes the most important means of capitalist reproduction. The extermination of humans and the production of robots is becoming an increasingly realistic projection of capitalist future. At the same time, capitalism produces spectacular virtual worlds where everything will be possible. Humans will become immortal. The dead will be able to “come to life” in the form of robots and holograms. People will be able to have sexual relations with Cleopatra, as well as with Pharaoh Ramses and his favorite crocodile. Sex with “aliens,” corpses, and vampires will also be possible… Technology will abolish the difference between the real and virtual worlds. Capitalism will create a “paradise” on Earth.
Robotization of man has reached its highest level in sports. Athletes have become self-destructive mechanical beings. “Elite sport” is a spectacular advertising for technocratic degeneration of man. As such, it is the ultimate mimetic and value challenge for youth. Instead of teaching humanistic pedagogy of the body on sports faculties, which implies the development of man’s playful being and interpersonal relationships, students become slave-driving coaches and body technicians. “Sports pedagogy” embodies the social-Darwinist (bellum omnium contra omnes) and destructive-progressistic (citius, altius, fortius) spirit of capitalism in its purest sense. At the same time, sport is the most important and effective way to erase people’s historical self-awareness. Sporting events acquire “historical” significance so that true historical events, meaning libertarian and cultural history of the people, are erased from people’s memory. Thus, historical self-awareness is destroyed, and a mondialist barbarism is created – the most important ideological tool of capitalist “progress” that increasingly destroys life on Earth.
The most dramatic truth is this: capitalism can survive the death of man as a human and biological being. For capitalism, the “traditional” man is only a temporary means for its reproduction. The “consumer-man” represents a transitional phase in the process of capitalist-induced mutation of man into the “highest” form of capitalist man: the man-robot. “Terminators” and other robotic freaks, which are products of the Hollywood entertainment industry that creates a capitalistically degenerated “vision of the future”, are the embodiment of alienated creative powers of man that become a means of destroying man and life. A new “ruling race” of robotic humanoids is being created to deal with “traditional humanity,” meaning with people who are able to love, to think, to dream, to fight for freedom and existence – and to dominate the Earth. Instead of a new world, a “new man” is created who is reduced to that “measure of human” which cannot threaten the ruling order.
Translated from Serbian by Igor Barjaktarevic, English translation supervisor Vanja Zakanji.
* Lubodrag Simonovic (72) was a member of the Yugoslav national basketball team, which won the world championship in 1970. Several times he played for the national team along with Sergei and Alexander Belov. He was a participant in the Olympic Games in Munich. In protest against the cover-up of a doping scam with Puerto Rico, he left the Games, after which he was expelled from the national team. The author is a Master of Laws and a Doctor of Philosophy. He has published ten books in the fields of philosophy, sociology and historiography. His texts have been translated into English, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Turkish. He taught at domestic and foreign universities. He is married and has three children and six grandchildren. Simonovic lives in Belgrade.