Words&Dirt

“What could Marilyn Monroe’s death ever have to do with me?

‘IT HAS TO DO WITH ALL OF US,’ said Owen Meany, when I called him that night. ‘SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY––NOT QUITE YOUNG ANYMORE, BUT NOT OLD EITHER; A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID, MAYBE A LOT SMARTER THAN SHE SEEMED. AND SHE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING––I THINK SHE WANTED TO BE GOOD. LOOK AT THE MEN IN HER LIFE––JOE DIMAGGIO, ARTHUR MILLER, MAYBE THE KENNEDYS. LOOK AT HOW GOOD THEY SEEM! LOOK AT HOW DESIRABLE SHE WAS! THAT’S WHAT SHE WAS: SHE WAS DESIRABLE. SHE WAS FUNNY AND SEXY––AND SHE WAS VULNERABLE, TOO. SHE WAS NEVER QUITE HAPPY, SHE WAS ALWAYS A LITTLE OVERWEIGHT. SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY.’”

––A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving, pg. 429-30

“For several decades, it has been fashionable in some circles (especially the postmodernists and poststructuralists) to sneer at Enlightenment ideas, to declare that they are outdated, human-centric, or naive. Transhumanism continues to champion the core of the Enlightenment ideas and ideals––rationality and scientific method, individual rights, the possibility and desirability of progress, the overcoming of superstition and authoritarianism, and the search for new forms of governance––while revising and refining them in the light of new knowledge. The search for absolute foundations for reason, for instance, has given way to a more sophisticated, uncertain, and self-critical form of critical rationalism. The simple, unified self has been replaced by the far more complex and puzzling self revealed by the neurosciences. The utterly unique status of human beings has been superseded by an understanding that we are part of a spectrum of biological organisms and possible non-biological species of the future.”

–– “The Philosophy of Transhumanism,” by Max More, The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, eds. Max More and Natasha Vita-More, pg. 10