Customer Reviews

Humanity Sucks: Zen & the Art of Transhuman Evolution, or Darwin Meets the Buddha at Woodstock

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sex, drugs, & Rock 'n' Roll, plus Buddha, Darwin, jokes, cartoons, videos, and movies. It's a sometimes confusing mix, but always interesting and guaranteed to challenge all your ideas about the purpose of human life.

This is a book written for people of the future. The last cartoon gives this away. But for people of today who are interested in the far future, this is a fascinating speculation.

This book presents an interesting alternate view to transhumanist and bioconservative agendas. It shows why "humanity sucks" and why our species, at the current form and whatever path we choose to follow in the near future, is doomed to extinction. The idea 'If we are doomed anyway let's do something good before that' is a compelling one. It is a good intro to the concept of a future united consciouness that will be formed by all life forms, if we somehow manage to not destroy ourselves before some few first steps in that direction.

Unfortunately it have some flaws that are annoying:

- The liberal, leftist sin that so many authors make: if you agree to my hippie, 60's views on sex, drugs, whatever you are a enlightened human being (you still sucks, but a little less than the norm) if you not agree with them, you are a primiteive, non-evolved neandhertal.

- Human personalities are extremely diverse. His Darwinian explanations of behavior ignores this fact.

- His continuous religion bashing. He have some good points about it and it is his opinion but I, as a reader, got the point the first time it was mentioned, no need to talk about it every two pages. Not that I am a very religious man but such repetition gets boring.

Besides that the cartoons are entertaining and the list of books and sites at the end of the book is very good. Three stars.

There are other books that make the argument for a Planetary Superorganism better, for example, Peter Russell's The Global Brain Awakens and Gregory Stock's Metaman, but this one makes the argument in the most entertaining manner.

Almost Brilliant. The tone is sometimes annoying, shifting between serious issues concerning the future of humankind and then making cute little jokes and using funny cartoons, but in the end, it makes a fascinating argument that is hard to rebut.

I disagreed with about 80% of this book, but it was interesting, entertaining, and thought-provoking. It will force you to think about the future of the human race and consider the question: What are humans for?