Upgraded Humanity

 [WARNING: There may be spoilers for the Doctor Who Season 2 episodes "Rise of the Cybermen" and "Age of Steel" in this post.]

Humankind does not like to stay the way it is: in general, it wants to improve itself and make progress.  The urge to improve oneself is a healthy one, for it can stop us from becoming slothful and complacent.  However, sometimes this urge can get out of hand.  One of the greatest ways this is done is in trying to "upgrade humanity" to a new level of being.

While this idea is found often in science fiction, the example I've recently encountered is the Cybermen from Doctor Who.  The following video provides a primer on them, although watching only the first minute should provide enough information:



In short, the Cybermen's goal is to "upgrade humanity," to create "Humanity 2.0."  This is done by encasing a living human brain into a cybernetic body of steel that includes an emotional inhibitor.  They think that emotions hold back humanity from becoming its greatest self, and they think that their design will make the human race immortal.  However, emotions are a key component of humanity.  Without emotions, the Cybermen are no longer human but something entirely different.  As the Doctor responds when offered a life without emotions, "You might as well kill me," for he would no longer be human (we'll skip over the fact that the Doctor isn't human to begin with).  The Doctor brilliantly sums up what a world of Cybermen, supposedly immortal creatures devoid of emotion, would be like:

"The Cybermen won't advance.  You'll just stop.  You'll stay like this forever.  A metal Earth with metal men and metal thoughts, lacking the one thing that makes this planet so alive: people.  Ordinary, stupid, brilliant people!"

The Cybermen's response to ordinary people...and all other people

The Cybermen's goal is similar to transhumanistic philosophy, especially that surrounding "the Singularity," when men will become one with machines.  The problem is the "trans-" part: people with this philosophy aren't trying to improve humanity but to move beyond it, to get rid of humanity altogether.  The soul plays no part in it, for it is rejected or suppressed in this view: when the Doctor breaks the emotional inhibitor in the Cybermen, he says he is giving back their souls (I'd say he's more freeing their souls from suppression, since only God has the power to give a soul), and when he does so, they die from sheer horror at their inhuman condition.

Thankfully, God offers us a different way to "upgrade humanity," one that retains our true humanity:  He allows us to be "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pt 1:4).  This is one of the reasons Christ became Incarnate: as St. Athanasius famously said, "God became man so that man might become God" (cf. CCC #460).  The Eastern Church uses the Greek term θεοσις (usually translated into English as "deification") to describe this mystery.  The Transfiguration is the event that Eastern theologians often focus on in regards to this mystery.  Humanity's final end is to have God dwelling within us and to be dwelling within Him, to be taken up to be with Him: "The final end of creation is its transfiguration," as Leonid Ouspensky wrote (I:156).  Humanity is not destroyed in this, for "grace builds on nature," to use St. Thomas Aquinas' famous dictum.  This will all be fully accomplished in the next life, in Heaven with God.  This θεοσις is "the definitive fulfillment of the human race," where men will participate in "a wholly new state of human life itself," as Pope Bl. John Paul II wrote (TOB 66:2,3).

 The Transfiguration, attributed to Theophanes the Greek (c. 1403)

This is the true "upgraded humanity": θεοσις.  While its fulfillment will come in the afterlife, we can strive for it on earth.  We can strive to live the life of God, and we can pray that He flood our souls with His Spirit and His grace.  This is the greatest thing that we can aim for: as St. Gregory Palamas wrote,

"Nothing surpasses the indwelling and manifestation of God in us, nothing equals it, nothing approaches it" (D.II.iii.17).

Let us thus strive for the true upgraded humanity: not the emotionless metal world of the Cybermen, but the heavenly world flooded with divine light.  Let us strive for θεοσις.

St. Gregory Palamas, pray for us!

Nota Bene: The video is from the YouTube channel Planet Who News TV.  The Doctor Who quotes are from Season 2, Episode 6, "The Age of Steel," as found on tv.com.  The quote from Leonid Ouspensky is from his work Theology of Icon, published by St. Vladimir's Seminary Press in 1992.  The quotes from Pope Bl. John Paul II's Theology of the Body (TOB) are from Michael Waldstein's translation published by Pauline Books & Media.  The quote from St. Gregory Palamas is from the edition of his Triads published in Paulist Press' Classics of Western Spirituality Series.

"That Strange Wild Man": Vincent Van Gogh

 Tony Curran as Vincent van Gogh, compared to a self-potrait by the artist, in "Vincent and the Doctor"

I have just finished watching an episode of the wildly popular and long-running British series Doctor Who entitled "Vincent and the Doctor" (Series 5, Episode 10).  In this episode, everyone's favorite time-traveling humanoid alien notices a strange creature in Vincent van Gogh's The Church at Auvers at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.  What could the Doctor do but go back in time to team up with Vincent to fight a violent alien?  (If you mind spoilers, skip to the next paragraph.  If not, one epic phrase sums this episode up perfectly: Vincent van Gogh vs. a giant, merciless, bloodthirsty, invisible space chicken.)

This episode fascinated me for its portrayal of the depressed artist.  While my mental health major friend noticed the way the episode depicted van Gogh's depression (though without his aural self-mutilation), I was entranced by the description of the artist's worldview.  I don't know how accurate it is, but I'm planning to read his letters to help find out.  

My favorite scene in the episode (which I could not find a clip of on-line, no matter how hard I could try: there are only music videos to a Don McLean song instead) involves the Doctor, his companion (kind of a strange term, but it's the one they use) Amy, and Vincent van Gogh staring up at the night sky as the artist explains his worldview.  While I can't find a clip, here is Vincent's brief soliloquy and a series of pictures showing how the sky transforms into van Gogh's The Starry Night during the scene:

"Try to see what I see.  We're so lucky we're still alive to see this beautiful world.  Look at the sky.  It's not dark and black and without character.  The black is in fact deep blue.  And over there!  Lighter blue.  And blowing through the blueness and blackness, the winds swirling through the air.  And there shining, burning, bursting through, the stars!  Can you see how they roll their light?  Everywhere we look, complex magic of nature blazes before our eyes."

I had never really thought much about Vincent van Gogh, "that strange wild man," as the curator of the Musée d'Orsay calls him in the episode, but he fascinates me now.  There is no big reason for this post besides spreading knowledge about this wonderful episode and explaining why I might have more posts on Vincent van Gogh in the future.  The faith of this man may not be laudable (he seems to agree with Gandhi's quote, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians": his version is "I am no friend of present-day Christianity, though its Founder was sublime"), but I think there are some seeds of truth hidden in his worldview.  For now, I will end up some quotes of his that seem beautifully indicative of his artistic worldview:

"Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it."

"Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.  I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners.  And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum."

"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."

Let us end by saying a prayer for the repose of the soul of Vincent van Gogh, who in the struggle with his depression took his own life: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on the soul of Vincent van Gogh and on the souls of all the departed, and, if they so desire, bring them to Your home, where there is no suffering, sighing, or grief, but ever-lasting life.  Eternal memory, eternal memory: blessed repose grant to Your servants, O Lord Jesus Christ, and eternal memory.

  Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night (1889)

Nota Bene: The quote from the Doctor Who episode is found on Wikiquote's page for Vincent van Gogh, as are most of the quotes by him.  The quote by Gandhi was found here, and the last quote by van Gogh was found here.