Hegel in A Wired Brain

by Slavoj Žižek

Technological posthumanists, whether wittingly or unwittingly, draw upon the long-standing Christian discourse of “theosis,” according to which humans are capable of being God or god-like. From St. Paul and Luther to Hegel and Kurzweil, the idea of human self-deification plays a prominent role.

One often hears that, in order to confront appropriately the threat of an ecological catastrophe, we have to renounce “anthropocentrism” and to conceive of ourselves (humanity) as a subordinated element in the great chain of Being: we are just one species on our planet, but through our ruthless exploitation of its resources, we (humanity) are posing a threat to our mother Earth, and that Earth is punishing us through global warming and other ecological threats … One cannot but laugh at this vision: not Earth, but we are in trouble, Earth is indifferent, it has survived much worse disasters than the possible self-destruction of one of its species. What is under threat is our environment, our habitat, the only one in which we can live. From the imagined standpoint of Earth it would be much better for its global ecosystem if we (humanity) disappeared, so what is under threat in “ecological crisis” is our survival, the survival of our society. And therein resides the hidden anthropocentrism of such anti-anthropocentric visions: in spite of all the babble about privileging Earth over our interests, what we are after is (an environment that would befit) our survival and well-being. This is also why the true stakes of ecology are socio-political: ecology is not about caring for Nature, it is about a social reorganization to maximize the conditions of our well-being. Greta Thunberg is fully aware of this: when she refers to science (admonishing politicians to listen to science), s...