art

“Post Human”

The tentative term of "Post Modern" is probably the most appropriate to describe our present intermediate state of consciousness that constitutes the transition between the modern model and the new model of reality we are building. The possibility of multiple realities inspires a widespread desire to break with the older constraining models of personality. Our current post-modern era can be characterized as a transitional period of the disintegration of the self. Perhaps the coming "post-human" period can be characterized by the reconstruction of the self. Our children's generation may very well be the last generation of "pure" humans. There have been many revolutionary changes in human behavior over the centuries but perhaps the most significant since the Renaissance took place in the sixties. The long excepted male-dominated, Eurocentric worldview of the Western power structure began to be punctured. A greater consciousness of the world's multiculturalism and Feminism played a large role in changing social structure. The new construction of the self is conceptual rather than natural. The inner and outer self need not be tied neither to each other nor to a structure of the family. People will have the sense of inventing their own lives to lead. The decentered television reality will help deepen the sense that there is absolutely no "correct " or "true" model of the self. People will alter rather than cure the self with little sense of past or future but only present disconnecting from traditional family history. Self-identity is becoming more dependent on how one is perceived by others opposed to a deeply rooted sense of inner direction. The true self will be replaced by the constant scanning for new alternatives. The world has become a mirror. Social attitudes are becoming ready for the truly radical technologies soon to come. Reproduction and sex is taking distance of human contact as well as general human interaction that is more likely to take place through use of machines than real people. The real world we react to has become in fact artificial.

Displaced urges and dislocated emotions may not be as easy to re-locate or re-mold as a pair of flabby thighs or sagging breasts. The post-human era will bear witness to the emotional wreckage that festers below the plastic surface or perhaps emotions will no longer exist? I can't deny that our society is heading towards Post- Humanism but I don't think the future is very predictable at the moment. I do have my own theories about Post- Barbarianism, which is an imbalance between people able to have instinctive reactions, and people who are only able to have learned or conditioned reactions. Post-Barbarianism is becoming more apparent and with the fall of the iron curtain, not to mention September 11 and other world events, there are a lot of people willing to fight for a place in the World. I think films like Blade Runner, Mad Max and Star Wars are not at all far fetched. They are a mixture of both theories simultaneously. I think Post-Humanism is only part of the future Post -Barbarianism. I will continue following "Eve" in her "Lost Paradise".