Self-replicating Machine Elves to the Rescue?

The late Terence McKenna (1946-2000), an inveterate American ‘psychonaut’, and user of various hallucinogens, mostly – though not exclusively – of the naturally occurring variety, describes in The Archaic Revival (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), making the acquaintance of creatures he describes as ‘self-replicating machine elves’ during the course of his ‘trips’ under the influence of the psychedelic, N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a substance produced in the body, and found in various plants and fungi, including the South American shrubs, Psychotria viridis and Mimosa tenuiflora (the root bark of the latter contains 1% DMT).

Dr Rick Strassman, in his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule (2001), describing his research with the drug conducted whilst Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM, also gives details of subjects’ hallucinogenic experiences of ‘alien beings’, and of speaking with them, or even being experimented on by them, like the alleged victims of ‘alien abductions’. In one case, a subject reported being anally raped by one that appeared similar to a crocodile! As with McKenna’s experiences, these hallucinations were often extremely complex, and seemed to take place in some sort of ‘parallel world’, or alternate dimension.

Many of the experiences recorded by the psychotropic drug-users in The Vaults of Erowid are in similar vein. One ‘alien entity’ experienced by a DMT user calling himself ‘RogDog’, an obviously talented artist, even if his work might not be to everyone’s taste, is shown here: http://rogdog.deviantart.com/art/DMT-Dimethyltryptamine-Entity-14046221.

My question is, are any of these ‘aliens’ real? That might well seem a foolish question. Of course they’re not real – they’re the product of hallucinations! In which case, why do so many people experience them?

Of course, no experience, not even an hallucinatory one, is unmediated. Since Kant, we have known that a naïve realism will not do. But whereas Kant was able to distinguish between the noumenal and phenomenal world, and argued, in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, that our perception of phenomena took place solely within the framework of the Categories, what he did not do was what later philosophers, as diverse as Marx and Nietzsche did, which was to understand that our view of the world is shaped by the cultural, social and historical milieu in which we live.

Aliens, UFOs, and alien abductions play a role that fairies and elves once did in the folklore of Europe and the British Isles, as one noted ‘ufologist’, Jacques Vallée, was happy to point out, in his remarkable book, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers (1969).

Vallée is an advocate, with the late J Allen Hynek (1910-86), of the so-called Inter-dimensional (or Extra-dimensional) Hypothesis (IDH/EDH) regarding UFOs and aliens (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdimensional_hypothesis).

In the book he co-wrote with Hynek, The Edge of Reality: A Progress Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (1975), and his own book, Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults (1980), it is made clear that neither man has much faith in the conventional view of UFO-believers that these aerial phenomena are spacecraft of extra-terrestrial origin, occupied by intelligent beings from outwith our Solar System. Rather, they prefer to believe that UFOs are from some other reality, and the beings inside them – if there are any – are denizens of that ‘other realm’.

It is an intriguing idea, and one I shall return to ere long. What connection might there be between the Mayan Long Count Calendar, McKenna’s ‘novelty theory’, and these aliens? For one view of matters, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon; for another (by John Major Jenkins), see: http://alignment2012.com/mc2012summary.html.

The Human Crisis.

By 2050, if the demographers have got their sums right, the world's human population will be over 9 billion. About 120 million of them will be suffering from some form of senile dementia, because we will all be living longer.

These people will need feeding, watering, housing, and clothing - at a bare minimum. Most of them will want rather more than that. They will want the lifestyle that goes with the material prosperity that advanced industrial society can give them, if they are smart enough, and work hard enough.

All of this will take energy, and lots of it. There will still be plenty of coal to burn - at least another 90 years' worth, but the oil and natural gas will have run out. There may still be some in the ground, but it will not be accessible for economic, technological and/or geopolitical reasons.

The burning of all that fossil fuel will have added an enormous amount of CO2 to the atmosphere. It is already over 387 ppmv, and is expected to reach 400 ppmv inside a decade. That level of atmospheric carbon dioxide hasn't been seen for the last 20 million years - not since the Miocene Period, when there were no Polar ice-caps, and sea-levels were 24.384 metres (80ft) higher than they are today.

In addition to the problem of climate change, will be that of loss of drinking water supplies and food shortages, for example caused by de-salination and acidification of oceans and seas destroying fish stocks, or droughts and floods destroying grazing land and crops. Over-population will itself mean an excess of demand over supply, and if the poor cannot afford higher prices, then they will starve.

The easiest way to solve all of the problems confronting us is to reduce our population. The fact is, there are too many people on this planet now. There are 6.79 billion of us, and we are generating 28.4 billion tonnes of CO2 annually (2006 figure, IEA), or 4.18 tonnes each. That is quite apart from all the other long-term greehouse gases we are putting into the atmosphere, such as methane (110 million tonnes annually, from all sources, including non-human) and nitrous oxide (22 million tonnes annually).

Earth's total land area is 148 million square kilometres - which includes the Himalayas, the Sahara, and the Antarctic, among other inhospitable places. Our current population density is ~45.88/sq.km. If the population reaches 9 billion, it will be 60.81/sq.km. In fact, it will be higher - because there will be a loss of land surface to the sea, as global warming causes sea levels to rise. Already, the densely populated country of Bangladesh - one of the poorest countries in the world - is under threat.

We have to act soon, or it will be too late. But will the politicians heed the scientists' warnings, or will they prefer to do nothing, or take half-baked half-measures, just to appease public opinion? I fear they will do the latter, and then too late, in any event. So what is to be done?

The Children of Earth.

The great French Jesuit geologist and palaeontologist, Pierre Tielhard de Chardin (1881-1955), famously distinguished between the Biosphere - the whole world of living beings on this planet - and the Noösphere, what he believed to be the organic unity formed by all the minds of every human being, a collective unconscious mind (an idea similar to that proposed by Carl Jung), which Teilhard regarded as the penultimate stage of evolution.

The ultimate stage would, he believed, be reached when this collective mind became fully conscious, and entered into full communion, and union, with God. He called this stage the 'Omega Point'.

Teilhard's Jesuit superiors were somewhat dubious about his Catholic orthodoxy, and they were probably right. This reader regards his theories as logically incoherent and uncomfortably close to the collectivist thinking of social philosophers as various as Marx, Tönnies, Durkheim and Croce.

That, however, is a relatively trivial concern. Of much greater importance is the fact that the Noösphere, insofar as it can be said to exist, is in conflict with the Biosphere. It may not be an unconscious 'Mind' as such, but our collective acts and omissions are damaging life on this planet, and will cause further damage, unless drastic change occurs. This is a conflict the Biosphere must win, or every species loses.