Poetic Parloir Post- and Transhumanism: When man 'lego' the building blocks of life - what of its essence and ego?

The poet:

Danish writer, critic and artist

Scholar, graduate of the universities of Aarhus, Odense and Copenhagen, Denmark.

He has conducted extensive studies in the field of medical science as well as the Humanities – the liberal arts of aesthetics, literature and philosophy. A cross-disciplinary fusion that characterizes the poet’s sharp pen and inciting style.

Le Berthélaine

Fields of interests and core competences:

Medical Science

Literature

Aesthetics

Philosophy

Soul-and-body

Existentialism

Post- and transhumanism

Reality

Political correctness is of no concern to Le Berthélaine; he has an ardent devotion for free reflection and speech – la parole libre!

Attentio: this Poetic Parloir is part II in a trilogy addressing post- and transhumanism; each volume focusing specific topics.

Volume II: themes in regard to the created future beings. The question of …

Existential risks

Essence

naturalness vs. uncanniness

Identity

Prudence and moral

Redemption or perdition

Table of Contents

Poetic Parloir

Prologue: The interrogative pronoun »who«

Post- and transhumanism: art intro

Dystopia: perdition of man and art

Utopia: glory to man and art

Post- and transhumanism: thematics

Existential risks

The first angel to go: Boström and »existential risk«

Essence

The second angel to go: The Little Mermaid

Oscillating between essentialism and antiessentialism

Naturalness vs. uncanniness

The third angel to go: Freud and the Uncanny

The fourth angel to go: Darwin and evolution

Creationism vs. non-creationism?

En cachette, hidden or lost being and way of being?

Identity

The fifth angle to go: Giddens and radicalised modernity

Prudence and moral

The sixth angle to go: tale and myth – Ali Baba and Prometheus.

The seventh angle to go: Aristotle’s Poetics and fairy tales

Redemption or perdition

The eighth angle to go: Babel and the Old testament

The ninth angle to go: William Blake – Innocence and Experience

Outline: responsibility and moral

References

who (pron.) Old English hwa who, sometimes what; anyone, someone; each; whosoever, from Proto-Germanic *hwas (source also of Old Saxon hwe, Danish hvo, Swedish vem, Old Frisian hwa, Dutch wie, Old High German hwer, German wer, Gothic hvo (fem.) who), from PIE root *kwo-, stem of relative and interrogative pronouns.

etymonline.com

Proloque: the interrogative pronoun »who«

Sometimes one little word says what it is all about. In the context of post- and transhumanism, »who« is such a word. Interrogatively, it searches answers, it wants to know: Who is the coming living individual, living in the post- and transhumanistic era, living out the possibilities of the anticipated future or abstaining here from; revelling in the underlying post- and transhumanistic subject, or refraining from it. What will characterise this human?

∫ I tell you; this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.

Luc.18.14.

∫ Who doesn’t dare, doesn’t win.

PalM.IL.II.426(jf. Mau. 11786)

∫ He, who too soon wants to be master, long stays a servant.

(see I. Herre 2.1 ending.)

i

Post- and transhumanism: art intro

When the topic is post- and transhumanism, Parloir is in the favourable situation that the critique may take an interesting point of departure in two famous Danish artists. As both the writer H.C. Andersen (1805-75), whose authorship has my highest esteem, as well as Bjørn Nørgaard (f. 1947), whose artistic works I sincerely have come to regret – both, knowingly or not, grapple with the questions of post- and transhumanism.

Fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen; (1914) Garden City, N.Y.

In 1837, inspired by legends of mermaids and submarine kingdoms, H.C. Andersen writes the fairy tale, The Little Mermaid; in 1909, the master brewer and patron of the arts, Carl Jacobsen attends the Royale Theatre’s ballet of the tale, and captivated by the figure and solo dancer, he commissions a gift to the city of Copenhagen; in 1913, on Langelinie, Edvard Eriksen reveals his sculpture, The Little Mermaid, inspired by the real ballerina, Ellen Price; through the years, the loveliness sits lovelily – becoming the love of tourists; in 1964 decapitated, later on amputated, defaced in pink and newly smeared RACiST FiSH; perpetually and shamelessly photographed by the Copenhagen tourist-griffin.¹ – Look! I was here! proclaims the photo; in the album of paper and parchment; on the screen of ones and zeros, site Flick, Tumblr and TubeYou, today’s self-promoting tabernacle. An instant-gram-grim epoch, knowing no taboo; an on-the-spot epoch where representation has become self-presentation; an epoch subjecting all imagery to the ego. – See! my-selfie-sh! shouts the picture in silence. Too bad, for art and fairy tales.

Early 20th c. signs of: Look! I was here!

"Unidentified couple posing in front of the Mermaid sculpture, Copenhagen, Denmark ... revealing the joys and trials of the heyday of cruising."

Yet, the state of affairs can worsen: Art can disdain art itself. In year 2000, Bjørn Nørgaard creates his paraphrase, The Genetically Modified Little Mermaid, an anti-beauty, a fricassé².ii, iii Thus, in remembering the trilogy part I, we are anew rendered conscious about the fact that post- and transhumanism is a topic ever oscillating between utopia and dystopia.

Dystopia: mankind’s posthuman downfall and ruin

When man 'lego' the building blocks of life; When man plays God …

The Genetically Modified Little Mermaid (2000), Bjørn Nørgaard

Dystopia: perdition of man and art

As witnessed, regrettable tendencies happen and there are oceans of differences between Eriksen’s classical beauty and the debilitating disorder Nørgaard thrusts at us.

In its beauty ideal and aesthetics, the Little Mermaid (1913) relates to the academic tradition of the Fine Arts in the 19th c. The beaux-arts when art still was an agreeable, even pleasant, object for the eye to take delight in. Then, from ca. 1870 and onwards, this academic tradition is challenged by modernist art. At first by realism, then impressionism;iv a modernism and artistic liberty which is taken further in the avantgardes of the early 20th c., viz Futurism, Expressionism, Surrealism and Dadaism – artistic movements that radically change the concepts of aesthetics and art. Yet – and this is important – in a way that upholds beauty and the sublime, these notions continue to be legitimate in the vocabulary of art. Beauty now springs from other sources and the traditional motif circle of idyllic pastural scenes, mythological heroes, divine figures and goddess like men and women,