Chapter 02B: A Postmodern Singularity? Or, A Question for Dionysus?
"Bacchus I call, loud-sounding and divine, Fanatic God, a two-fold shape is thine: Thy various names and attributes I sing, O, first-born, thrice begotten, Bacchic king"
This essay is part of an ongoing series by The Nostomodern Review on Modernism and its future in the 21st Century and beyond. Each essay forms parts of the Nostomodernist project: a quasi-scholarly attempt at reevaluating what it means to be Modern in contemporary times, to possibly reconcile the gap between Modernism and its supposed successors, and to speculate on new trajectories within the current era of history via a mythic reading of Modernity itself.
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Techno-Dionysus Arrives From The Future
Techno-Dionysus is a state of mind, a cultural mode, a means of discourse, an expectation of the future—a self-fulfilling hyperstition.
In the grand arena of possible tomorrows, Techno-Dionysus is the fulfiller of dreams, the eventuality at the end of a sequence—the elevation of mankind into the gates of virtual Valhalla; and its salvation by technology.
It eschews the technicalities of scientific discovery, placing its bets instead on the wild discourse of technological speculation and the-world-to-be. For those of this spirit, climate change is no more: the sixth extinction will surely fail to happen.
Instead we are to embrace a new age—the final industrial revolution—of mankind and its post-human destiny. Intoxication, almost to delusion, is the state of this extremity. There are no ifs to the progress of humanity; there is only time and its eventuality.
It will happen before the coming of Ragnarok, before climate change takes us from this dying planet. It will save us from self-made extinction, protect us from hubris and from our mistakes, and sublimate our existentialism into triumph—we will have conquered the natural world in the throes of its retaliation.
Armageddon will not come to pass. It shall be overcome by techno-humanist force. Medea will not have her revenge—she will be denied the right to her children.
A Differential Leviathan
The Inertial Leviathan rests at the bottom of the Earth. In time, it will be devoured. The image of Cultural Ouroboros will break; and the Dragon shall fall to the image of the Techno-Raptor—the Differential Leviathan—whose spirit lies in perpetual, forward motion and thus difference.
The self-devouring mouth of Cultural Ouroboros, at the head of its coiled tower, expands into oblivion itself. It will devour itself till the world at the end of time—a world in which nothing new can occur—in an endless spiral of repetition.
But the line shall break with the coming of difference. Something new strikes the beast at its outermost line. A beak shall pierce its skin and disrupt the state of affairs. A new beast in the visage of Raptor.
Heralded by the vision of Techno-Dionysus, the Raptor will replace the Dragon as a metaphor for spirit. A material break will occur, and with its wings, the Differential Leviathan will leap from the ground towards the Sun in the final days of Modernity. Humanity will be carried upwards into Valhalla—Ragnarok fails its own prophecy.
And humanity will cease to be merely human. We now enter into the realm of the Gods themselves.
Fell To Earth
Within the 21st Century, humanity will endure its final set of industrial revolutions. Nuclear fusion will power our cities; space elevators will bring us to the stars; hyperloops and quantum computers will connect us across the world.
Artificial Intelligence will perfect our systems; clean energy and biosphere resurrections will sweep the globe; immortality is within our grasp. In the next hundred years, we will scour the surface of Mars, visit the moons of Jupiter, and gaze further than into the cosmos with new telescopes, probes, and machines.
Earlier techno-hierarchies will disintegrate as the spirit of Techno-Apollo fades into Techno-Dionysus as the dominant spirit. Ecological chaos and the chaining of the Dragon will give means for the Raptor to fly, having no chains left to strap it to the Earth.
Existentialism gives way to dreams. Without the fear of the Dragon, and without the limitations of the Stone, the spirit of technology is eschewed past the workable and the pragmatic. Apollonian technology becomes Dionysian invention—its purpose rendered in fantastical vision and brought to post-death purpose. We have crossed the existential boundary of the material; we leap into our own arms, away from death, into post-subsistence and post-capital futures.
Forget the lives we will lose to automation. We have lost them in the industrial revolutions of the past. Forget overpopulation and the deathly signs of climate change. We will overcome them with the spirit of human machines. The Raptor soars higher than the sky—soon to reach the sun.
This is the spirit of Techno-Dionysus—the Geist of the coming age, heralded by the earliest dreams of the technological society and the legacies of the Enlightenment. Whether irrational or not, the Whigs return in vogue, albeit with the end of history not as political outcome, but as technological leap from the human to post-human. Perhaps the trouble with humanism is its starting point—it has always started with becoming as the procession of the human being.
Our dreams, like hyperstition, have taken the shape of our souls. We have dared to dream; the dream now comes to greet us. Humanity will live forever, all the way to the world at the end of all time, and the world is much larger than this planet. The galaxy opens up. It is only a matter of time.
The Raptor
The Dragon consumes its own tail, linking itself in cultural self-sufficiency and thus production. In a state of equilibrium it consumes only to maintain itself. Movement takes energy—one must overcome inertia—but momentum takes energy and time. Given enough time, the Dragon would hunger for the stars. The Earth would no longer suffice. Or, perhaps, the inertia is still too great and time runs out. The Earth would collapse under the weight.
But the Raptor, like all Leviathans, has its own hungers too. Its prey is beyond Earth and lies far into the cosmos. It hungers for new worlds, other suns and distant phenomena. Even if it moves at the speed of light, it will still take time to get there.
It is possible that before reaching the Sun, the Raptor will fall. Its metal wings will be thrown back to Earth, and the young Leviathan will starve to death. Like a falling star, humanity will fall down with it and perish in its wreckage. The gates will close before us; Ragnarok has claimed us again.
Or will the Raptor devour us? The gates will be passed by a new race of mechanical brains with titanium skins, onwards to our destination, but finally more than human.
Perhaps we will make it, after all. In time for the rest of eternity.
Somewhere in the future the last natural-born human will die. Their eyes will close for the final time.
New eyes shall open. New eyes for a world beyond time, for a world beyond human beings. They will rest for infinity and the stars. And wake in the next world.
The Postmodern Is The Posthuman
The Nostomoderns will stand to witness this. They will stand at the gates and look back at the procession of history. The two paths of the world sync into one singularity—the oscillation of two extremities at a single tempo. They take a step forward and take another look back. Either way, we are Moderns for the last time.
Copyright © Thomas J. Pellarin, 2021. All rights reserved.
I don't know whether to call this fiction or non-fiction, black humor or techno-evangelism. I just know I really liked it.