# My human blind spot

- Link: https://www.andreidraganescu.info/2016/10/10/my-human-blind-spot/
- Published: 2016-10-10T12:19:30+03:00
- Author: Andrei Draganescu

![](https://draganescu.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/39c8d-0dlkiulzfagwlbg3f.jpg)

**Larme d’or**, Anne Marie Silberman

#### there is only one goal in evolution, to develop time resilient beings.

I woke up this morning and I stepped into my bathroom, eager to freshen up and start
my new day with aplomb. Flowing from the ceiling, my newly set up naturally yellow
light was swiping softly on my face and hands. You see, just yesterday I’ve spent
half the day perched on a not tall enough stair, fiddling wires to install a new
Phillips lighting system promising perfect daylight hues. And behold, this new light
is awesome, daylight hues and all. I should feel awesome. Yet I don’t. The natural
tones, well, toned down the brightness of the previous filaments. With less photons
crowding the room, darkness does its artistry better. The dark has its soft brush
painting details and depth just enough for my mirror to reflect my ageing skin straight
into my retina, who pipes the sudden acknowledgement to my amygdala, who wakes up
from the catacombs of the hippocampus my deepest fear of wasted potential brought
by the inevitable death, a death that is currently meticulously busy breaking the
collagen in me.

Do you ever feel like this? Like, I don’t fear death. Death after all is just that
time before I was born, I’ve been there before so there is nothing to fear. Like
this, I mean like a sorry filled anguish that all this construction which you are
has no accurate and precise use, and that at some random and dimensionless point
in time you’ll cease to exist. Such a waste of potential. All the potential in this
entangled circuitry inside that pretty decorated skull doing its best to remain 
sane, all the potential of this virtuous orchestra of a body doing its best to remain
whole.

![](https://draganescu.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/74b3d-08qgf5yd5ka4ooyjy.jpg)

**_Sphinx Embedded in the Sand_**_, Dali_

> I find the hardest is to let go of my scars and scratches, of my bruises, of the
> blood spilled, of the bumps and hurts, of the tears and screams, of the revelations,
> epiphanies and amazing laughs, of the look in my eyes, that look in my eyes which
> changes every year, getting deeper, farther and more detached. What were all they
> for? As my body is to be returned to the countless armies of molecules roaming
> reality, what is the me in I for?

What am _I_ for? That is easy. I am a domino piece that falls only to advance the
plot of a four billion saga between life and its nemesis time. Once I grasped this,
a swath of new hidden doors clicked open. Yet, lacking time, I did not open them
all, yet. Not even enough. But I have this permanent sensation that they’re just
waiting for my gentle push.

Nevertheless, I still live forgetting this, I live for the me in I. I live to conserve
this sum of experiences that defines me. Separation embraces me firmly and just 
like Temple Grandin’s cows my I feels safe enough to wait for the slaughter. I submit
in the ecstasy of my subspace to the domination of master time, tied to teleomeres
whose length is the length of the rope around my neck.

But there are no safe words. No matter what I cry out, no matter my intonation, 
master time has its way with me, just as the newly revealed details of age, brought
forth by the light in my bathroom this morning, reminded me.

> what is the me in I for?

**The me helps the I face the torture of its slow death.**

![](https://draganescu.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/a4cb2-0ia6savhpmcgcb54d.png)

**_The Garden of Earthly Delights, _**Hieronymus Bosch

You see, the embedded evolutionary meaning to build time resilience is our blind
spot, a blind spot of awareness caused by the illusion of free will.

Do you know the worst part about your eye’s blind spot? It is not that it renders
invisible a part of reality, but the fact your brain will fill in the missing patch
of reality with _the most probable input. _While for dodging obstacles and fending
predators this behavior works great, when the blind spot is higher up in the layers
of abstract consciousness it wrecks havoc. Briefly, we forget we’re dying, and, 
only if we’re at some particular condition, we catch a glimpse of the monster chipping
away at us, in all other times we fill in the specter of death with the most probable
input of consciousness: **illusion**. Illusions of grandeur towards nature, illusions
of eternity towards other humans, illusions of superiority towards our flesh and
blood bodies, illusions of separation from our very own life support, illusions 
of cleanliness towards the dirty and foul billions of cells hosting our illusions,
and the relentless desire of twisting ourselves into something else.

That is why, I believe anyone who wants to scale back is not really a a progressive.
They may have a progressive agenda but if your focus is humans, you will by default
give progress a step back. You see, it depends on what is your responsibility: humans
or humanity. If your concern are humans, then this concern can only grow, while 
if your concern is humanity, the size of the preoccupation and the scope is constant.

Indeed, if the problem is technology, then the solution is more technology. If you
are one worried about “too much technology”, you might be in the wrong.

> There have been plenty of centuries far worse for 99% of humans than for the current
> 99%.

This is the main argument for technology and its focus on humanity. We’re a species
that keeps building on previous milestones. For the 1% there has been only some 
little benefit from humanity’s progress, in fact for every bump in the comfort of
the 99%, there was a dimple in the safety of the 1%, hence there is no economic 
drive in making up technological progress.

**Technological progress builds on our embedded azimuth of immortality.**

![](https://draganescu.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/c92ab-00mrnz8dedvzuxzk5.jpg)

**_The Great Wave off Kanagawa, _**Hokusai

There are in fact two factors describing progress for humanity: life expectancy 
and population growth. These factors are intertwined and help each other out: the
more folk the more genome health, the longer the life the more folk. I think these
two should be the greatest focus of our collective technological effort. Actually,
it doesn’t matter what I think. At all. What you think doesn’t matter either. Overall
the domino keeps falling, and that awakening all priests like to mesmerize egos 
with is about making death a choice of the human, not a whim of the universe.

I have no idea if that exponential curve you keep seeing whenever someone touches
that dreadful idea of “singularity”, sorry [Peter Diamandis](https://medium.com/u/deedc76c1c2)
but this word is so bombastic, that curve where suddenly the computing power reaches
that of all human brains, no idea if that curve means anything other than a random
factoid found by future generations in some footnote. I have no idea if futurologists
like Ray Kurzweil or transhumanism as a philosophy mean more than hubris and the
desperation facet of hope. It is actually something I deeply want not: a hopeful
future, as I believe hope does only one thing, hope gives birth to disillusionment.

Yet, a technology driven future is the best use I can think of for all this complexity
we’re made of, the true use of the me in I. It is the expression of the evolutionary
goal of time resilience. We accrue knowledge, an ever more fine interpretation of
it, so that each domino sits higher, standing on the previously fallen dominoes,
all for the glorious moment when one domino will make that crucial sidestep and 
end the war with the insistence of life winning on the persistence of time.

Hence, in my mind, anyone who wants to scale back is not really a a progressive,
even if progressive otherwise. Back to working the fields with bare hands? No, thank
you. Back to housing made of clay? No, thank you. Dismantle global trade and reinstate
the mind boggling mesh of economic borders in all its painful glory? No, thank you,
no.

Does this sound like blasphemy to you, the praise of globalization in particular?
Well, nothing in particular is neither good, nor bad. Good is stability and certainty
and bad is instability and uncertainty. Right and wrong are interpretative and custom
to every culture. That is why we have people on moral high ground claiming life 
extension is immoral, while silently waiting for your random disappearance is morally
sharp — in reality, all faulty interpretation of the comfort instilled by a tight
leash held strongly at the other end.

![](https://draganescu.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/0ac10-0mzrdtshthzo8j6od.jpg)

**The tree of life**, Gustav Klimt

You want to stall progress because something is not “natural”? Well, I say nature
is not progressive enough. Does this mean I have fallen into the matter? That I 
deny my divine making or maker? No, worry not, I am still a spiritual being, just
like you. It’s just that I’ve found out that we both contain a me sculpted on the
inner walls of our I. And it is my belief that this me will eventually rip through
the I and, like the butterfly out of its cocoon, or the alien embryo who made it,
who knows, it will become the eternal being which the me is meant to be, the me 
in I, the me in you becoming all those beings who will bless this plane of existence
with the grace of true, complete and ultimate freedom: the freedom from death.

All of my scars and scratches, of my bruises, of the blood spilled, of the bumps
and hurts, of the tears and screams, of the revelations, epiphanies and amazing 
laughs, and the look in my eyes, that look in my eyes which changes every year, 
getting deeper, farther and more detached, as my body is to be returned to the countless
armies of molecules roaming reality, will have served to nudge life closer to beating
time at its own game, and yours as well shall have done the same thing, and all 
ours together yet even more, piles of bodies feeding the cycle and armies of souls
returning to their far home, all for some distant me to finally descend into a perfect
homeostasis which doesn’t decay, in spite of time’s arrow relentlessly trying to
pierce it, a me free from decay, a me free from death, a me that can finally use
time to help the I transcend to whatever it used to call home.

![](https://draganescu.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/cdd82-0zfn0xja4qwxekp7p.png)

Love me, I still dare you,
A