UP-WINGERS

by F. M. ESFANDIARY

  * * * *

  But first we must dare to think and act cosmically. We must dare to want to overcome.

  We must never again be resigned to the human condition.

  Never again resigned to suffering. All suffering is wasteful and diminishes the human.

  To think and act cosmically means to proceed from entirely new premises, aim for entirely new goals.

  Socialism capitalism democracy psychotherapy—all these deal with housekeeping chores. They have no answers to our fundamental situation, no transcendent programs.

  Psychotherapy can help allay some social loneliness but can it in any way allay the more basic biological loneliness?

  Socialism can help reduce economic inequalities but can it in any way reduce the more insidious injustices of inherited inequalities?

  Democracy can help reduce social alienation but can it in any way reduce the more basic alienation from our fragile bodies and terminal existences?

  Even the planetary movement I outlined earlier in this tract is finally a dead end. It cannot reverse our basic situation.

  We need a new concept of revolution, a new concept of progress. A Cosmic Upheaval.

  We need Visionaries, Up-Wingers to launch this Upheaval. To bring this Time/Space dimension into the open.

  This emerging potential to transcend our situation is the basis for the new Optimism. I am optimistic because I am supremely confident that if we mobilized our enormous resources we could at the beginning of the twenty-first century upwing to a higher evolution—become free in Time and Space.

  * * * *

  How do we mount this Upheaval? How do we overcome the limitations of our human condition?

  As I have already reminded you the two basic determinants of life—all animal/human life—are Time and Space (Biology and Environment). So long as we are at the mercy of these twin forces the human condition will remain tragic—Time-bound and Space-bound.

  Our Cosmic Upheaval therefore must be aimed at these two primary forces. We must free ourselves within them by extending ourselves through them.

  This Upheaval then is comprised of two fronts—Space and Time (Environment and Biology).

  1 Quoted in Time magazine, February 1971.

  * * *

  the space dimension

  How do we defuse the pressures of the environment? How do we break out of the limitations of Space?

  —The 1970s will be remembered as the decade Earth-people established the first world environmental monitoring systems. United Nations Conference on the Human Environment comprised of 114 countries met at Stockholm and issued an international declaration on the Human Environment. It also set up the United Nations Environmental Agency. U.N.E.A. is now creating Earth Watch—the first worldwide system for monitoring the quality of this planet's atmosphere—soil—oceans. This is a global system interconnecting satellites and ground stations.

  Environmental satellites now scan every part of this planet's surface relaying 200 billion bits of information on the environment every single day. The information is passed on to all nations through the United Nations. Information on agriculture—forestry—geology—metallurgy—oceanography—global weather and environment. These satellites also:

  Help predict drought and soil conditions.

  Help predict volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

  Help predict potentially destructive floods and storms.

  Measure growth and decline of glaciers.

  Show snow levels.

  Measure precipitation—soil moisture and wind action (all helping prevent forest fires).

  Scan the oceans which cover 71 percent of this planet and where much of the earth's weather is formed.

  Help provide accurate global long-range weather forecasting.

  Space stations provide additional monitoring and Earth-scanning experiments. Then too supercomputers ten times more powerful than today's most sophisticated computers are now designed to predict broader climatic changes years even decades in advance.

  All these projects not only help us forecast weather and predict natural disasters. What is infinitely more important they will help modify the weather and actually prevent natural disasters.

  Experiments are now advancing in weather modification. We have had some success in cloud seeding to produce or increase rain and snow—cloud growth and fog dispersal—control of hailstorms—small dissipation of hurricanes...

  International conferences are studying ways to predict—weaken and prevent earthquakes. Plans are developing to establish national and international agencies for collecting and regularly updating all seismic information. Lasers and other seismic detecting instruments are now in use in some areas of the world to measure earth pressures. More are planned, more are urgently needed. Plans are also under consideration for injecting fluids or arranging underground nuclear explosions to weaken and even to prevent earthquakes.

  Discussions and projects are developing on Controlled or Total Environments as protection from the rapacities of nature. The use of artificial moons or satellites to control tides and floods. Extensive weather changes through nuclear projects to alter cold ocean currents—dam straits—melt some icebergs etc....

  Weather forecasting and modification, though still in its infancy, is already helping save tens of thousands of lives every year and diminishing damage to crops and property. For instance it is estimated that were it not for an early satellite warning Hurricane Camille would have killed over 50,000 people in the United States in 1969.

  But nature is still terrorizing life on this planet: floods—fires—earthquakes—hailstorms—tidal waves—hurricanes—tornadoes—typhoons ... We must stop this carnage. Every single decade several million humans die in such disasters. We must learn to regulate the weather in our communities and across the entire planet just as easily as with the turn of a dial we now regulate the temperature in our homes stadiums shopping malls.

  —We must also learn to manipulate natural cycles such as seasons—night and day—instead of being manipulated by them. We must decide what kind of seasons we want in what order and frequency. We must also have the freedom to decide the cycles of day and night rather than be programmed by their arbitrariness. We will continue to extend our influences over these cycles as we become less and less dependent on conventional agriculture and develop new technologies.

  We must launch a global program orbiting solar satellites to relay sunlight any time night or day. An entire community or parts of a community can turn on instant daylight or sunshine at any hour the way we now turn on electricity or communication satellites. These solar satellites will enable us also to control the degree of daylight or darkness. If for instance we want everyone on the continent or on the planet to participate in some event such as a global referendum or a global holiday we can turn on daylight over the whole world.

  —We must launch a crash program to green the entire planet. At present we occupy less than one-fifth of our planet's land mass. For ages we have been barred from vast hostile areas of this planet. Even the friendlier areas we inhabit have shoved and pushed us around, mauled and crushed and drowned and buried us at will. The violence of animals and humans is ample evidence of the cruelties of the environment.

  Thanks to modern technology we are now turning deserts—jungles—ice continents into habitable areas. The Russians have diverted the course of a gigantic river to reclaim vast steppes—the Dutch have reclaimed extensive lands from the sea—the Saudis the Egyptians and the Israelis have converted deserts into gardens—others have created islands lakes rivers hills ... Multinational explorations of the oceans are now going on with the intention of establishing extensive undersea communities.

  The United Nations Environmental Agency must undertake a crash program to study and plan extensive geological changes and global gardening to transform the entire planet from the brutal jungle it has been to a friendly beautiful paradise.

  —It is not enough to redo the planet. We must extend ourselv
es beyond this planet. To limit ourselves to this infinitesimal speck in space is to limit our potential for cosmic growth. To transcend to a higher evolution we must transcend our Earth-habitat.

  We have already taken the first steps. We are at the beginning of the Space Age. We have repeatedly visited the moon—sent spacecrafts to Venus Mars Jupiter and into interstellar space—are planning tours to the outer planets—have already set up space stations and more are planned. In the coming years hundreds then thousands of people will live in Earth orbit. Still later we will inhabit other planets, other solar systems and galaxies...

  In transcending new dimensions in Space we are transcending new dimensions of existence.

  Precisely because of its magnitude many people have had difficulty comprehending the Space dimension. Unable to cope they rationalize—we should spend the money on more important things. Why do we want to go out there anyway? And so on.

  The protests are understandable. It takes relatively strong psyches to accept a perturbation of such magnitude. It also takes imagination.

  The fact is that the Space Breakthrough is revolutionizing every aspect of life on Earth. All our social—medical—educational—economic—political systems—technologies—life styles—philosophies—self-image—are shifting massively to the Space Age.

  Directly and indirectly every aspect of human life is benefitting from the Space Breakthrough.

  Nevertheless the resistances will persist for a while. In a way this is an old story. Through the ages the more timid of our species have always warned against moving out and up to new stages. First it was —

  Don't leave the cave.

  Then —

  Don't leave the tribe.

  Don't leave the home.

  Don't leave the village.

  Don't leave the homeland.

  Now —

  Don't leave the planet.

  Another reason compounding these resistances is that people think of Space as dark and cold. This is chiefly because Space is most conspicuous at night when we can see the moon the stars the galaxies. Space is therefore darkness and darkness frightening. Of course darkness need not be frightening. When we have overcome our primitive fears of darkness we will find security mystery and beauty in darkness. Moreover as we continue moving out into Space we will develop the ability to see through darkness more easily than we now see in daylight. Darkness will be irrelevant.

  Finally Space is not all darkness and cold. There are suns in the universe billions of times larger than our small sun. Regions in the universe brighter and more congenial than our solar neighborhood. Areas in the universe that never know darkness—bathed in perpetual sunlight and galaxy light of fantastic brilliance and beautiful colors the like of which we do not have here.

  * * *

  the time dimension

  Of the two-pronged Upheaval against our primary human limitations the Time (Biological) Dimension is the more immediately important. In altering the human biology we alter our situation in Space, setting the human organism free.

  From here on we must work toward an entirely new concept of the human—the posthuman.

  We must redo the human.

  To redo the human we must begin by redoing the human body.

  The body has been our greatest hang-up. Our most serious obstacle to a higher evolution.

  Too helpless to do anything about our primitive body, we have brainwashed ourselves to regard it as a marvelous invention of nature. Biological purists even romanticize the human body.

  They are content with very little.

  They refuse to see the human body as it really is—a primitive mechanism inherited from our animal origins—defective fragile limited perishable.

  Even the most powerful young man is highly fragile. A prick of a pin makes him bleed. A wrong step and he falls, breaking his leg. A blow on the head and the whole robust body collapses.

  One hundred and twenty boys and girls playing happily in a dance hall are suddenly trapped in a fire and burn to death.

  Three hundred thousand men women and children drown in a tidal wave.

  Yesterday at a summer resort five young people were frolicking in the surf. Suddenly one of them drowned. One moment he was a human being full of life and laughter. Minutes later he was reduced to nothing—a lifeless mass of flesh.

  I know a beautiful eighty-year-old man full of vision and hope. In spirit and idealism he is as youthful as the most dynamic youngster. Yet his body is old and withering. One day soon his body will die of old age, dragging down with it his youthful mind and spirit...

  All this makes no sense. It makes no sense at all.

  We must rebel against the vulnerability of the human body.

  We are all too exposed, too fragile. At any instant we may be crippled or maimed for life. At any instant we may suddenly cease to exist.

  We all go through life on the edge of a precipice. One misstep—just one misstep—and we cease to exist forever.

  It is outrageous that such a beautiful phenomenon as life should be encased in such a fragile thing as the body.

  Life is now too precious, too full of fantastic potentials to be at the mercy of such a precarious thing as our primitive body.

  * * * *

  Is all this a negation of the human body?

  Yes. Absolutely yes. I am negating this animal/human body. This body so programmed and robot-like. This body so alone and unfree. So susceptible to pain and violence. This body so fragile and vulnerable.

  My spirit—this human spirit of mine—soars into the heavens free unprogrammed unafraid reaching out to all my fellow humans, reaching out into infinity and eternity—but this body of mine Space-bound and Time-bound drags it back.

  Why then accept this limited body? So long as we are confined to our archaic bodies we will remain trapped at a primitive level of evolution.

  * * * *

  We must not accept the human body. Never again be content with it.

  We must modify the body redesign and redo it completely.

  We must de-animalize ourselves.

  We did not choose our body. We had nothing to say about it. It has been imposed on us by evolution, itself influenced by the hostile environment.

  But we can now remake the human body into something beautiful varied fluid durable. Into something expressing our new visions.

  The human body is now obsolete. We already have human-made systems which can do very nearly everything that the body can do. Soon we will even reproduce human life outside the body.

  Except for the human brain everything having to do with the body is primitive—belonging to the animal stage in our evolution. Eating drinking defecating reproducing sleeping walking dying—all these are animal/human.

  The body itself has hardly changed in the last two or three million years. Only the human mind has been evolving.

  I am no longer my body. This body is simply a physical extension of me. The organs in my body the flesh the liquid the waste the limbs and bones—all these are becoming incidental to my existence. They are all part of the animal-me, the primitive-me. At one time indispensable to my survival, they are now increasingly superfluous.

  Only my mind has transcended the animal. My mind alone is exclusively human. My body is part of the Past, my mind alone part of the Future.

  Perhaps the Future will divide human evolution into two major ages.

  Age One: The animal/human stage at which life was encased in animal/human body and therefore limited by nature and by Time and Space.

  Age Two: The postanimal/human stage at which we evolved beyond the animal/human and therefore Free in Time and in Space.

  We are now reaching the end of Age One and beginning to move into Age Two.

  * * * *

  We have already begun to alter the human body. The body is no longer what purists imagine it to be.

  How are we beginning to redo the human body? What are some of the potentials for more extensive biological changes?

&n
bsp; —Reconstructive Surgery. We are now making extensive permanent physiological changes. Altering the architecture of the head: face-lifts and hair transplants—redesigning eyes—ears—noses—lips—cheekbones—jaws—chins. Obliterating wrinkles—blemishes—clefts. Surgeons are also performing extensive body sculpture: breast augmentation and reduction—stomach tightening—thigh trimming—recontouring of the buttocks—redoing the shape of feet.

  Sex-alterations are leading to increased transsexuality. Penises and testicles are now constructed or removed—vaginas and breasts created or removed—hysterectomies performed.

  It is estimated that in the United States alone every year nearly one million people undergo cosmetic or prosthetic surgery. Such reconstructions and reshapings of face and body are also widespread in Europe—Asia—Latin America and elsewhere.

  Plastic surgeons are confident that in the Near Future they will be able to make more total changes such as redoing the entire size and shape of the body—redoing the whole face—altering the color of skin...

  As we make more extensive changes biological identity will have less and less meaning. How tall are you? What is your race? Your gender? The color of your skin and hair? All these become irrelevant. You are transracial transsexual transphysical.

  How old are you? That too is irrelevant. I was born forty-two years ago. My new face is four years old. My hairpiece two years old. My kidney eighteen months. My Dacron arteries seven months...

  —Genetic Engineering. Every year the mysteries of the human cell are decoded—the DNA created—techniques developed for genetic surgery gene manipulation gene grafting gene switching gene deletion. Such extensive genetic interventions will not only enable us to correct genetic or hereditary problems. What is infinitely more transcendent they will enable us for the first time to create entirely new kinds and forms and shapes of life—posthuman life.

  Biologists geneticists space scientists are now discussing and planning the creation of new mutants—people with larger heads to accommodate larger brains. Smaller bodies for greater adaptability. Slower aging processes. Specific modifications for space travel and extraterrestrial colonization. Skins with different colors patterns and designs. Grafted or implanted membranes enabling the individual to live under water and to fly. Superhumans with genetically programmed knowledge superior intelligences and bodies etc....