Post-transhumanistic call for better introspective Shamans

The post-spiritual alan-watts-inspired-ish jobless phase is nearing its end today as I sit typing this facing the Sorbonne University in Paris after receiving a best experimental short film award through an overly indulging experience at the Cannes Film Festival. All these mixed feelings and contrasts intensify my fish-in-a-sea feeling that varies between owning the see with ineffable freedom, and the ephemeral transient feeling of no anchors or points or reference that challenge time, memory and even existence. Finding the perfect balance between these two extremes has been a life challenge.

In the meantime and at shorter introspective patterns of existence, when I consult google auto-complete for existential questions that I have not thought of asking, I wonder how much have we lost through the confidence we have given to the machine and its artificial intelligence that is a collective but not necessarily additive or adequate form of intelligence.

I often find myself praising my preYoutube and preGoogle creativity and the sense of satisfaction it offered. It now feels as if I have become aware of a box that I must think outside of it when there has never been a box.

Those who had the privilege of good schooling, traveling and did not have to worry much about anything to do whatever they wished, will one day find themselves in a midlife crisis asking existential questions about who they are and what keeps them going...

Terrence McKenna and Jason Silva (among others) refer to technology  and transhumanism as some kind of a shamanic entheogenic drug that could guide us spiritually to answer and ask more questions. But our very confidence in the machine of a collective artificial intelligence  with oracle predictive powers hinders our introspective soul-seeking explorations leaving us with a few voiced choices that we get to compare and choose from. In the long run, fewer and fewer media-imposed approximations dominate the fast-responding Oracles for impatient soul-seekers until one day we will become so impatiently eager to know about ourselves that we will be getting the same ever converging answer, that is we are one network of selves consisting a higher self of a collective intelligence interfaced through our big-brothers: google, facebook, amazon, microsoft, apple.

I wonder, I wonder, when this becomes known to everyone, what kind of questions will we be curious to ask and answer in the future. Will we continue to play hide and seek with reality to keep us entertained and surprised?

Inhabiting other bodies

I have given quite some time to the thought of what does it feel like to suddenly and consciously inhabit somebody else's body. Does it feel like our vision has been altered with a different white balance, sharpness or even angles of view, the sounds have a different equalization with the new ears, the smells we might suddenly become aware of, the odors from our guts to our skin now perceived raw with no filtering. Our new hair reacting to the wind in a new way perhaps making us feel like we might be wearing a peruke and perhaps even our skin might feel implanted and of a notable texture that we can describe in all sorts of details. Does that influence our language and the words we use to describe the same things such as an apple being less red but more pink?

Now consider with a stretch of your imagination, what would it feel like to suddenly become embodied in an animal, say a feline not to exaggerate. Do we feel all the now noticeable hair follicles, the warmth,  the new vision, the new instincts and basic feline desires, the flexibility, agility and lightness. Perhaps the need to test all of these new features by walking around, stretching, purring, running, miao-ing and other feline activities?

Now that we have gone that far, why not imagine being a bird, a fruit fly and perhaps if bacteria and even unicellular organisms had a non collective consciousness I would suggest imagining that as a bonus exercise.

Now imagination aside, how far are we scientifically from simulating such a feeling. I can tell that VR combined with AR headsets offer us an outsider's vision but what about taste, smell, touch and somehow the modified perception of ones own voice (e.g. gas masks or software) in real time? Are there any psychedelic drugs or lucid dreaming techniques that allow for such an experience while we wait for technological gadgets to make us body surf in a way?