Mizzy as Transhumanist
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I hope you’ll all listen to Paul Kingsnorth’s prophetic speech at the UnHerd Club in London. The question posed to him is, “What is there left to conserve?” And he gives the correct answer: nothing. But he still has about twenty minutes of airtime to fill. So, he launches into this brilliant meditation on the rising technopoly.
He starts by talking about Terasem, a quasi-religious movement founded by Martine Rothblatt, a transgender activist best known as the founder of SiriusXM radio. “The heart of the claim of Terasem,” Kingsnorth reports, “is that God is technological and can be created by humans.”
Rothblatt believes that “we are making God as we are implementing technology that is ever-more all knowing ever present, all powerful, and beneficent. Geoethical nanotechnology will ultimately connect all consciousness and control the cosmos.”
Kingsnorth also gives the example of Ray Kurzweil, Google’s head of engineering. When asked, “Does God exist?” Kurtzweil replied, “I would say, not yet.”
Here’s how Kingsnorth sums it all up:
You could say that transhumanism is the Silicon manifestation of this new faith, the faith of the world. And it aims not so much to eat from the Tree of Life as to genetically engineer a new one and then implant it wherever the hell we like. This is a revolution. And it’s going to make the Enlightenment look like a tea party. The entire basis of reality is being rewritten.
For those who don’t know (God bless you), transhumanism is the belief that human nature can be improved—physically, mentally, and perhaps even spiritually—through deep intergration with advanced technology.
It might be helpful to distinguish between transhumanism and more grandiose movements like Terasem. In fact, you might say that transhumanism is Terasem for conservatives. It wants technology to move at a (relatively) slower pace. Its aims are also more modest. It doesn’t want to create God; it is content merely to recreate Man. Prominent transhumanists include New Right sugar daddy Peter Thiel and Republican kingmaker Elon Musk.
Anyway. My point is this: all of our elites—all of them, across the board—believe in some form of technopoly. All of them prefer the Machine to Creation. All of them prefer the Virtual to Reality. Ultimately, they’re two competing factions vying for control of the Unicomplex. But their ultimate loyalty is to the Borg.
I was mulling this over when I came across an interview between Pierce Morgan and a TikToker known as Mizzy. You’ve probably seen one of Mizzy’s videos before. He’s infamous for his illegal and offensive pranks. He films himself tearing up library books, getting into strangers’ cars, stealing people’s dogs, etc. Recently, Mizzy got in trouble for filming himself breaking into someone’s house. It was a “joke,” though, so he was only fined £365.
In their interview, Morgan brought up another video where Mizzy approaches a Haredi Jew and leaps on top of him, pushing him into the street. But the “influencer” insists he’s not an anti-Semite:
MIZZY: “It was a Jewish person, cool. But there was a trend going around on TikTok called three-oh-oh [sp.?]. I’ve done it to numerous people. Black people, white people, Asian people. I don’t discriminate. So stop saying ‘Orthodox Jewish person’ like I only targeted him.”
MORGAN: “Why are you targeting anybody in that manner?”
MIZZY: “What do you mean, ‘Why am I targeting anybody?’ It was a trend! It was a trend! I just done it for a trend!
There’s something about the way he says “It was a trend!”—as if that explained everything. For him, it probably does.
Folks, this is what technohol does. It changes the way your brain works.
We’ve known that for years, of course. We’ve known for years that “more hours of daily screen time [are] associated with lower psychological well-being, including less curiosity, lower self-control, more distractibility, more difficulty making friends, less emotional stability, being more difficult to care for, and inability to finish tasks.” Technology makes you dumb, weak, sad, and unpleasant to be around.
Yet I don’t think we’ve reckoned with how deeply our minds can meld even with these (relatively) simple technologies. You don’t need a chip in your brain. Just spend enough time on TikTok and you’ll find yourself doing pointless, moronic, evil things. Then, when someone asks you why, you’ll say, “It was a trend!”
In other words, the “suggestions” made by technology will trigger a complusive response—one that doesn’t fully manifest itself in the rational part of your brain. Technology is essentially rewriting your instincts.
Why did you eat that sandwich? “I was hungry!”
Why did you look at that woman? “She was hot!”
Why did you assault that Jewish man? “It was a trend!”
Transhumanists assume they’ll be able to choose which technologies they assimilate into themselves. Even those who oppose transhumanism probably assume that’s how it will start. We’ll all get that chip in our brains, which lets us listen to music without headphones and learn languages without studying them. Then, one day, some evil scientist will flip a switch and turn everyone into zombies.
But that’s wrong. We’re already transhumanists. We’re already assimilating these technologies into ourselves. They’re already controlling our minds. We’re already zombies.
And that’s the other thing. In those movies, the techno-apocalypse always begins with some noble experiment. We tried to engineeer a microscopic robot that can fight cancer cells, but they ended up up latching onto our cerebral cortex or something. Yet what if it begins like this—with urban youffs getting brainwashed by TikTok?
Now, I’m opposed to transhumanism. I’m against the idea of altering human nature, even if it makes us stronger or smarter or healthier. But what if, by “transcending” our humanity, we don’t even become stronger or smarter or healtheir? What if the machines can’t even hold up their end of the bargain? What if they just keep making us dumber, weaker, sadder, and more unpleasant?
I think there’s pretty much a 100% of this playing out. The future will be less I, Robot and more Idiocracy—plus a healthy dose of Clockwork Orange, if Mizzy is anything to go by.
Welcome to the future, everybody.