Greer goes on to talk about biophobia and it may well be that we have some kind of repulsion to our own skins - the term "meat suit" is an almost pornographic denigration of the human body but I think it's the way many of us imagine ourselves...
I think this is a great point. And it's not just the Kurzweilians that are transhumanists, but the Christians, Buddists, Islamists, etc., psychedelic McKennites, and spiritualists as well. The general idea seems to be that the human "soul" is trapped in the Meat Suit biding its time until it is set free into the real, hyper reality beyond.
Call me gloomy, but I think the species peaked long ago and is in decline. Our fascination with technology and our assumption that we are "advancing" the human condition rather than mucking it all up, says absolutely nothing about the "static condition" of our own biological evolution. Biologically and behaviorally we have not advanced one iota since the beginnings of recorded history. In fact, it can be argued we have degenerated biologically in a wholesale fashion through our recorded history.
Absolutely. I would guess the "devolution" began right about the time man began "working smarter, not harder." And by that I mean began using fire, clothes, tools, and other technology. The devolution really picked up steam when we began manipulating the landscape on a large scale and became sedentary due to farming and agriculture. Not only did this new diet begin to wreak havoc on our physiology, but the new way of life - sedentary, property ownership (houses, animals, food, and, yes, other people), materialism, skill specialization, and free time - began to wreak havoc with our psychology.
With all this free time on our hands, and no longer having to worry about getting eaten by a tiger or where our next meal was coming from every second of the day, we began to wonder about the meaning of life. And because we gained a new understanding of time due to the passing down of property and the long term occupation of settlements, we began to wonder from whence we came.
As far as our nature, I don't think we are qualitatively different from the other animals. I've heard stories of wolves eating the hind quarters of living cattle and then leaving them to die, killer whales tossing penquins and seals around like toys as the eat them, cats torturing and maiming mice and chipmunks and then leaving them to die, and tigers that kill more prey than the can eat, viruses wreak havoc and misery on the animal kingdom, and animals exploit the Earth in other ways as well.
Typically, what happens is that nature has a way of balancing itself out, with one organism benefitting from and nullifying the otherwise destructive nature of another. However, with humans, because of our use of "artificial" technology and the sheer size of our operations, nature is unable to nullify our exploitive nature.
And this, perhaps, is when humans began to think of themselves - and our meat suits and "animal nature" - as evil. Concepts like atonement, sin, and karma entered the culture.
