Thoughts On A Real Life Grinder

[wolven7]

So, over at Grinding.be, we have a link to a Wired.com article about Lepht Anonym, a real-life grinder who has done various mods on herself, ranging from small to serious, and is planning many, many more.

My main concern, here, is the comments section. As has been noted elsewhere, there are two things wrong with the majority of the attempted rebuttals, in that place, and I'll elucidate, as follows:

1) It's entirely possible that, without some serious changes, this iteration of our species won't live long enough to take advantage of so-called natural evolution, if by that you mean waiting a long damn time for the selection pressures of our choices and changes to our environments feedback into our growth and development, and particular traits become the standard among members of our species, except oh wait

2) THIS IS HOW WE EVOLVE. Evolution is about feedback loops of adaptation; we change our environment, and our environment changes us. This process has given us a capacity for pattern sensing in conceptual modeling, which we try to use to predict our futures (we're generally still pretty bad at it). With this, we make changes to ourselves to try to to get a jump on what the future will look like, and what it will hold for us. We adapt to the world we've created, before it has the chance to screw us over.

We are, as far as we know, the only species with the ability to recognise that we adapt and evolve, let alone to be able begin modeling how we do so. If seeking to get ahead of that curve, to more fully fit with the world as it exists-- which is also partly the world that we have created-- is not a function of our evolution, then I don't know what is.

We can modify ourselves. We can think about how our modifications will change things, down the line. We can put safeguards in place to try to forestall any major catastrophes. How is this worse than continuing to bumble along at the pace of adaptation minus the aid of human-agent intervention?

Comments

[moonandserpent.livejournal.com]

You should say that over there.

Me? I don't have the patience to :)

If you can't see the beauty in being able to feel electronics and touch North, then I don't find myself with the desire to educate you.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Oh I did; it's "Awaiting Moderation." All of this is a slightly prettier version of what I said, there.

And I can understand that... I just think we have to at least live that beauty clearly enough to make it unmistakable.

[moonandserpent.livejournal.com]

Agreed. The only way to change minds is to show how things work when used in a human life.

Hm. As Grinders are real, wikipedia needs a better link than to the Dok.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Going to take care of that?

[moonandserpent.livejournal.com]

Nah. It'd feel weirdly self-promoting in a way I'm not comfortable with.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

I can definitely understand that. I've never written a wikipedia article. Have no idea what it would take to do so. Might find out, though...

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

That fifth paragraph is rather Zen.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

If you mean mine, then it also pretty much encapsulates how I understand existence.

[moonandserpent.livejournal.com]

From WIRED:

As Bill Gibson once said, “The street finds its own uses for things.”

Yes, there are a lot of wonderful people doing groundbreaking transhumanist work in labs and think-tanks while tossing money at projects like Singularity University.

And then there are the rest of us. All movements born in a lab mutate when they make contact with the street, and its the height of arrogance to think that transhumanism is any different. It is also the height of arrogance and presumptuousness to broadly proclaim what “transhumanisim” is for other people – when it is a movement deeply rooted in the apparently heretical belief that *human beings own their own bodies*.

Grinders try and improve themselves using the tools they have available because technology doesn’t interface with our lives when it is rolled out by Apple. Grinders, by and large, aren’t interested in the upload fairy. We, as a society, praise people who push their bodies to the limits – athletes who ruin their bodies for max performance or have surgeries to perform at better-than-baseline-human. Grinders are doing the same thing, leveling up in their environments. (The term “Grinding” has its roots in video game terminology.)

Lepht and others like hir want to feel EM fields like most of us feel the breeze. She wants to *touch North*. Imagine being able to never get lost or to feel your SO’s heartbeat in the palm of your hand when you’re divided by a continent of space.

Some of us perform kitchen surgeries to try and push our bodies towards new directions. Some of us work with meditation and hardcore physical activity. Some of us work with drugs and DIYBio to try and find answers to problems that pharmaceutical companies don’t want to address or address specific community needs.

*Transhumanism is the philosophy that we can and should develop to higher levels, physically, mentally and socially using rational methods.” – Dr. Anders Sandburg*

Grinding is simply a ragged edge of the area of frisson where the ethos of Transhumanism intersects with the realities of human life. We testbed ideas in our own bodies – always very, very aware of the risks of failure and completely willing to accept it. Why? We’re willing to take those risks in order to touch the world in ways the people before us couldn’t. To see the world in new ways, to find new tools out on the edge and bring them back and say “hey, a finer/different/wilder world is possible – and I can show you how to get there.” Why are we willing to take these risks? Because that’s how important we think this work is. What would you risk to touch the invisible, to know your limits, to have a better-fitting body, to do the improbable, to help devise new desperately-needed ways of relating to our technologies and tools?

[wolven.livejournal.com]

FUCK. YES. That is BEAUTIFUL.

[spiritualmonkey.livejournal.com]

Lo-tek monkey sneers and can't wait to see precisely how this whole project is going to tragically wrong. I see her ending up like that surgery junkie in Brazil.



'Scuse me while I go eat some raw vegetables and do some push-ups. ;-)

[wolven.livejournal.com]

You both want to be strong and healthy and Better in all the ways you define those terms.

I say the universe is big enough for different modes of adaptive strategy. ;)

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

amen

[spiritualmonkey.livejournal.com]

Come the Butlerian Jihad, the grinders will go down under the hammers with the thinking machines. Human or machine, children. Time has come to choose.

Srsly tho, this whole transhumanist fantasy is so much social masturbation in the face of peak oil. This hi-tek, petroleum intensive, indutrial wizardry so much of our society is enthralled with is an artifact of a high-energy lifestyle that is ending. Whatever we think about it, MOTHER NATURE AND HER PHYSICS POSSE HAVE OTHER IDEAS.



I'm seeing a very different future coming down the pike.



Back to the 'dreads compound for this monkey. We've got gardens to tend and pull-ups to do. Sorry grinder, not enough soup for everyone. Carve those fucking electrodes out of your skull and we'll open the gates.

;-)

[wolven.livejournal.com]

A few things:

1) Tool around Grinding.Be for a while, and you'll run across technologies being made with plant matter, and other organic materials, specifically to combat the prevalence of petroleum-based plastics and other components, in materials sciences.

2) Lepht, and others in the Grinder "community" want to make themselves capable of feeling and doing More, with their bodies, not disconnecting them from the world, as it exists around them.

3) Check out the later video I posted of her talk. It's called "Cybernetics For The Masses," and it talks exactly about the fact that she is shit poor, but that her body isn't capable of doing the things she wants it to do. So she Makes A Way.

Ever wanted to go to Alaska? What if you could not only hear and see the Aurora Borealis, but also Feel it? What if you could feel the changes in the Earth's EMF, like birds do, and know when changes were coming, and how to better prepare for them?

Thought about correctly, there is no reason that this can't be one of the MANY ways we begin to truly work WITH nature, rather than trying to roundly impose our will on it. We've done so much damage to our Environment that we are going to have to make some major changes to Ourselves, in order to sustainably, realistically, fix it.

[spiritualmonkey.livejournal.com]

I think I will poke around a little more. Because I am viscerally repulsed by people who want to be some sort of Locutus Austin. Part of it is a rebellion against corporatism and it's hellspawn Taylorism. Bad enough to treat people like machines, but you want to be a machine?

Thought about correctly, there is no reason that this can't be one of the MANY ways we begin to truly work WITH nature, rather than trying to roundly impose our will on it.

If there isn't yet an "Icarus Award", there should be.

And once they can taste the Aurora, they will wonder what art they can create with it...

I've got a TV-B-Gone. I now feel I need to research some sort of cyborg-b-gone that generates a filed that causes them discomfort and wear it like an anting-anting.

I will love it, and change it's batteries, and make it waterproof, and call it "Steeplejack".

I don't see evolution, I see techno-fetishism born of an industrial age that is coming to an end. Worse than arranging deck chairs, this 'borg is designing newer, fancier ones that recline.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

"Machine" is just a conceptual schema that allows us to think about the interactions of parts, in a certain way. To limit our thinking to only that, and not to think about the fact of integrating this with our environment... well that's just unrealistic.

I will love it, and change it's batteries, and make it waterproof, and call it "Steeplejack".

Which is just using a cybernetic feedback loop to combat other cybernetic feedback loops...

I still say that in an infinite universe, there is plenty of room for different approaches to living well and making a better world.

I'm probably not going to be able to change your mind, on this, so good luck.