Teilhard's Omega
"Teilhard & Omega" yields 2300 hits. I have to take issue with Teilhard de Chardin's (1888-1955) mind-matter dualism. At the Omega Point the transcending human spirit leaves the earth behind, rather like a used-up cinder. His spiritual Omega was simply appended to the scientific cosmology without regard for coherence, and so we are left with this unfortunate disposal or perhaps recycling problem. Nonetheless, half an eschaton is probably better than no eschaton at all. Let us see how well the word has gotten out.
All too well, it might seem! It appears that Teilhard's Omega has been hijacked by the technophiles, not a very difficult feat considering Teilhard's infatuation (or was it just a flirtation?) with matter and cosmic evolution. Dualism always threatens to revert to materialism.
The theme of accelerating biological and technological evolution converging on a singularity of some kind is widely entertained: Frank Tipler, Ray Kurzweil, Terrance McKenna, transhumanism, etc.
Just to give you a flavor of our coming attractions I quote from one of my favorite singularity sites:
"We are at far more of a "turning point" than even the one Capra envisions; in possession of far more of a "web of reinforcement" than Baines could hope for; the morphogenetic-field potential is far higher than Sheldrake predicts; the groundswell documented by Ferguson is about to become a tsunami, with a capability to take the planet off hold and close the "vision gap" in a way that is perhaps more comprehensive than conceived by Barbara Marx Hubbard."
It is Terrance's view that the singularity involves the spawning of the psychedelic mushrooms who just use our brains to help them build intergalactic transportation for their own fungal genes, a decidedly comic twist of fate from Dawkin's selfish gene. No doubt the fungi have a more generous complement of DNA than do our own, recently discovered to be, impoverished chromosomes.
Our technotopians have less sense of humor. These cosmic Spinmeisters have taken our worst dystopian nightmare of a mechanized future and given it a sugar, or is that a silicon, coating. Our computers steal our souls and take off for the big Omega in the sky. Quite frankly I would prefer to have my DNA hijacked by a toadstool, than to have my soul stolen by an adding machine on steroids. The former is much more romantic, not to say, psychedelic. The mushrooms are more likely to keep us around for company, and at least we share a carboniferous ancestry.
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7/24/02