For those of you who still have an open mind, I offer Ken Wilber's website.
Ken Wilber's Website
Wilber is working on a post-postmodernist system. Yes, system. Postmodernism hates all systems, except it's own system.
The Integral system of Wilber, incorporates the best aspects (?) of post-modernism, within a larger framework.
Of all the "foundational" anchoring systems I have seen, Wilber's is the best, by far, and the most inclusive, and compassionate. Science, and Religion, can both work together in Wilber's framework.
Wilber is correct in his assertion that downloading the totality of human consciousness into a machine/computer is ludicrous, and that the most that can be downloaded is a skimmed off surface layer of human consciousness.
AI research will continue to flounder, as it has in the last 20 years, ( where is Hal?) until it broadens it's understanding of the immense depth, and height, of human conciousness, and not just a narrow flatland, materialistic, version of consciousness.
I am not as optimistic as Wilber, that the excessive damage done to Western culture, by lunatic fringe feminism, and nihilistic post modernism can be repaired and return us to sanity, and lost greatness.
But without hope, there is nothing; so I applaud Wilbers's efforts to salvage what greatness remains in the post-modernist rubble.
The sad results of plularism:
Almost all the best movies, ever made, worldwide, were made before 1965, when the Me generation began it's barbaric onslaught.
The best music ever is still Classical Music, and much of it is over 150 years old.
The results of pluralism, in my opinion, is the creation of a kind of United Nations mush, of mediocrity. It's everywhere, now.
As Chricton said somewhere; the global village will end up being a global homoginzation of mediocrity.
The Japanese film indistry made some of the world's greatest films, in the 1950s, before the global village took over, and they have gone downhill ever since. The same applies to Europe.
But what is the alternative? It could be, as I believe, that the best in art has already been created, and that from here on, (post 1970s) it's all downhill for humanity.
Maybe the reason we are seriously considering human/machine merger, is because we have already died as a species. We have been the walking dead for thirty years, with the word "Post-Modernism" etched onto our collective tombstone.
I hope I am wrong, and that Wilber is correct in his optimistic view that we can still pull ourselves out of the mud.
Edited by Casanova, 04 July 2003 - 12:22 AM.