Psychological Immortality

This appears to be a state of consciousness found more in Americans in the U.S. than in most other nations. My theory is that it comes from the fact that no nation since the war of 1812 has succeeded in an attack against us and even the war of 1812 we eventually won even though Washington DC was destroyed pretty much.

But, I think after the British left after that war we only had one big war in the U.S. continent which was the Civil War. This sort of being untouched by invading armies so long I think made Americans feel sort of immortal at least in regard to our country remaining untouched by anyone but ourselves.

When I look back to people like Emerson and Thoreau and Emerson's Transcendentalism I also see it sort of dovetail directly or indirectly to Mary Baker Eddie's Christian Science. I also see this type of thinking leading towards Norman Vincent Peale and positive thinking and psychopsybernetics and other methods of pulling oneself up by one's own bootstraps through positive thinking.

When I look at America today, mostly what I see is us in transition. Some people have figured out s way forward by getting jobs in other countries. And some people start companies like Amazon.com that grows 20% a year and I wonder how many storefronts will still be in business next year?

So, our positive thinking paradigm is still working for us even though we can't make things to sell to other countries anymore cheap enough for them to buy them. So, we as a country are going to have to rethink what we do. We can be as positive as we want to be but we still have to find a way to pay for it all.

So, where are we going with our psychological immortality? I was thinking about that today and started thinking about the Singularity and realized it likely will occur one or both of two places. The likeliest place is likely in the Silicon Valley area because of all the Servers, Stanford University, and all the Internet companies based there. But the Singularity could also begin on a U.S military base somewhere just like Skynet did in "The Terminator".

So, is the Singularity going to be a good thing or a bad thing? I think the best answer is asking the question differently. The best question would be: "Is childbirth a good thing or a bad thing?"

A father might say, "Oh. It's wonderful. I cried when I watched my child be born."
A mother might say, "Oh God! It was so painful I thought I was going to die. But after I recovered being a mother is the most wonderful experience of my life."
A father whose wife died in childbirth might say, "My wife died and I was left alone with a little baby to raise all by myself."

I could go on this way but, like I said, "The singularity has more in common with a child being born than anything else I can think of. Because the child being born will be a new consciousness and technology that will be both human and technologically based at the same time. It won't really look like anything else we have ever seen before. So, all the reactions above and more that I quoted are perfectly appropriate for a theoretical child like this born from both humans and the technology they are creating together.

Maybe a better question would be: "Will the human race survive the birth?" Either way expect it within 10 to 30 years depending upon many different factors.

Will you know when it happens? Not necessarily. Sometimes it takes a long time for most people to realize just how much something has changed. The change may not announce itself, instead it might just start changing things that you wouldn't know the cause of or expect those things to be a part of a Singularity.