What has really let loose the Machine in the world, and for good, is that it both facilitates and indefinitely multiplies our activities. Not only does it relieve us mechanically of a crushing weight of physical and mental labour; but by the miraculous enhancing of our senses, through its powers of enlargement, penetration, and exact measurement, it constantly increases the scope and clarity of our perceptions. It fulfils the dream of all living creatures by satisfying our instinctive craving for the maximum of consciousness with a minimum of effort! Having embarked upon so profitable a path, how can Mankind fail to pursue it?

From the emergence of human beings our history has been a history of surviving. Now the time is close, hopefully, when due to science and technology the whole human world is integrated, peaceful, and thriving in the bounds set by biology. Then what? What great purpose will the human being set for itself? To overstep those bounds, of course!

We are seeking another basic outlook—the world as organization. This claim—if it can be verified—would profoundly change the categories of our thinking and influence our practical attitudes.

To go to the grave without a psychedelic experience is like going to the grave without ever having sex. It means that a major portion of what it is to be a human being—you just missed the point.

Democritus introduces the intellect (διάνοια) having an argument with the senses (αίσθήσεις) about what is ‘real.’ The former says: ‘Ostensibly there is colour, ostensibly sweetness, ostensibly bitterness, actually only atoms and the void,’ to which the senses retort: ‘Poor intellect, do you hope to defeat us while from us you borrow your evidence? Your victory is your defeat.’

Stifle it! The ego is much too large. I mean, we need an ego, yes—that’s so that, if you take somebody to dinner, you know whose mouth to put food in. That’s having an ego. But above and beyond that it becomes sort of superfluous.

What is now? How do you experience right now? What is the nature of that experience?

“Minds” come in degrees and many group entities approximate or approach hivemind status.

See, a philosopher is a sort of intellectual yokel who gawks at things that sensible people take for granted.

Moths navigate using moonlight, and in the world they were programmed to live in, that system worked fine. The issue for today’s moths is that their environment has changed but their programming has not, so now they spend their nights doing pointless circles around your porch light. I’m pretty sure this is our situation, too. Human nature is a specific software program optimized for a specific purpose: survival in a small tribe, a long time ago. The modern world is nothing like the environment we were made for.

Properly educated, the resulting robots will become quite formidable. In fact, I am sure they will outperform us in any conceivable area of endeavor, intellectual or physical. Inevitably, such a development will lead to a fundamental restructuring of our society. Entire corporations will exist without any human employees or investors at all.

Currently humans are whole systems, with their own autonomy and intelligence, and human societies display a far lesser degree of organization and self-steering behavior. But, according to Turchin, a transition is coming, and in the future there will be more and more intelligent memory, perception and action taking place on the level of society as a whole.

Some people couldn’t possibly accept this theory. It would destroy their whole lives; unnerve them. But at the same time it is actually no different in principle—as a theory of human nature, as a theory of identity—it is no different in principle whatsoever from seeing and being able to understand that all the cells in your body function together as a single organism.

Nine million computers a month are being hooked into communications systems, and most of these are for the networking purposes of small management groups. This is the new organism which is taking shape that is the organism which survives: our electronically linked groups of like-minded people who have clearly defined their goals and are working together to achieve them.

Economic life, not in its content but in its direction, will henceforth entirely elude popular control. No democracy is possible in the face of a perfected economic technique. the decisions of the voters, and even of the elected, are oversimplified, incoherent, and technically inadmissible. It is a grave illusion to believe that democratic control or decision-making can be reconciled with economic technique.

I realized that it was within my power to select and play almost any game, or even to deal myself out of games entirely. I decided at that time that the game I wanted to play was to become the holiest and wisest man of my generation—specifically, to expand and elevate the consciousness of the entire human race. Now, this may sound like a surprising ambition, but I don’t see why. If you can select any game, why not pick the most exciting and challenging game around? With full knowledge, of course—the knowledge that comes from a contemplative series of LSD sessions—that all human games end in a tie, and that the chances of succeeding in any human game are always statistically dubious.

Shall I buy a glass or a pottery bowl for my flowers? I turn to the occupational mortality statistics, and find that, though the mortality of glass workers is above the average, that of potters is still higher. Other things being equal, I ought to buy glass. If we knew enough no choice would be trivial, and it is our duty to acquire the knowledge which will enable us to moralize our everyday actions, both by the study of available statistics and by encouraging statistical inquiry elsewhere.

Mind has erected the objective outside world of the natural philosopher out of its own stuff. Mind could not cope with this gigantic task otherwise than by the simplifying device of excluding itself—withdrawing from its conceptual creation. Hence the latter does not contain its creator.

The brains of the users themselves would become nodes in the Web, which can be consulted by other users of the Web itself. Eventually, the individual brains may become so strongly integrated with the Web that the Web would literally become a ‘brain of brains’: a super-brain.

If, in fact, what the universe is is a novelty-producing and -conserving engine—and if we define novelty as density of connectedness—then guess what: the human neocortex becomes the center of the cosmic drama, because the human neocortex is the most densely ramified and connected material object known to exist in the universe.

We are, each of us, literally connected to the tree stump and to these other things.

What is ahead of us is true high adventure. The essence of it is its unknowability. Its promise is transformation. Its theater of occurrence is the here and now. We are not waiting for it to begin, it has already happened for us, and our job is to understand how that can be so.

If you hold the right identity from an early age, if it’s brought into us that your identity is with the entire cosmos—because nothing happens here without everything’s involvement in you. We are sitting on this round planet which is spinning and moving at a great speed in the middle of nowhere. You don’t know where it begins, where it ends, this thing. And look at us sitting here and talking. How many forces, how many forces in the existence are keeping you and me in place on this chair? So there is no way we can exist without the involvement of all this.

In the details of our universe there are some differences that may be described as non-human, but not in their essence. The bones are different from the muscles, but they are organically one in the body. Our feeling of joy, our imagination, realizes a profound organic unity with the universe comprehended by the human mind.