The recent discovery of a possibly Earth-like planet, Gliese 581g, had me thinking about exo-/xeno-/astro-anthropology again and about the possibility of studying cultures on other planets.  Since the early 90s when I started my undergraduate education in biology and philosophy, I’ve been interested in the relatively easy acceptance of the ”hard sciences” approach to studying theoretical life on other planets. The astrobiology field has some internal debates about their own nomenclature, some arguing that xenobiology should refer to the study of life unlike that on Earth, and astrobiology be reserved for the study of carbon based life on Earth-like planets, including Earth. Either way, it’s considered a legitimate field in biology and astrophysics, NASA even has an astrobiology institute. So why not anthropology and religious studies?

I would propose, for now, that exoanthropology refer to the study of culture on other worlds (or other non-terran environments), including the interactions of terran and non-terran cultures – whereas astroanthropology refer to the study of terran culture as it moves into space.  I realize this delineation calls on some problematic othering, but I think it’s useful for now as the exo field is theoretical and speculative, while the astro field has some more concrete examples to work from, such as the existing space station projects and the study of UFO religions. One might ask if it’s premature to talk about how we would approach a study of culture (and especially the religions) in extra-solar civilizations. And without a “subject” to look at, we might wonder: what’s the point in even naming the field yet?  But these questions haven’t stopped astrobiologists from spending a great deal of time and energy looking at how life might form on other planets, especially in the theoretical consideration of what shape it might take given variation in environment. Why not apply this approach to religion and culture as well?  In many ways this is exactly what speculative fiction has done for a century, authors writing about alien civilizations often include detailed accounts of religions.  Some especially well crafted examples include Robert Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land,” and Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series.  And of course, Philip K. Dick has his own special way of bringing the the exo into religion.

These authors’ approaches aren’t far off from what exoanthropologists might do, especially exoethnographers – using what we know about Earth cultures and our own species to imagine how changes might result in differentiation and variation. So, for example, how different would Earth cultures be if our day was 225 hours long, as it is on Pluto. What if one half of our planet was always dark, facing away from the sun?  What if gravity was lower, atmospheric pressure higher, the sun closer?  What if our civilization was entirely underwater, how different would our concept be of the “sky?”

I’m not proposing we use the methods or epistemology of the astrobiological sciences. Lévi-Strauss’s periodical chart of cultural elements, or anything similar, need not apply here. But if, as Geertz suggested, part of the process of our exploration of culture is trying to understand as many “imaginative universes” as possible, isn’t a speculative, theoretical, exoanthropology a valuable tool in that endeavor? There is also an argument to be made for the role that this kind of imaginative “play” has in formulating new theory about culture and religion here on Earth.

I suggest that we start imagining sooner rather than later.  There is a long history here on planet Earth of failed first-encounters, which we would certainly do over and do better if given the chance. Anthropology, and the precursors to religious studies have a long history of being put to work for the project of colonialism, starting with linguistics and continuing as anthropologists, theologians and missionaries provided imperialist powers with the information they needed to manipulate, control and commit genocide against indigenous people. The sooner we start considering how to prevent this from happening “next time,” the better. It seems inevitable that one day, maybe not for a while but eventually, scholars of religion and culture will be called on to interpret the elaborate religious significance of a welcoming ceremony staged by visitors from the Gliese system. Perhaps it will be up to us to mediate the beginnings of a respectful relationship and prevent interstellar conflict. And if we aren’t preparing for that day, who will be there in our place? Guy Consolmagno, an astronomer at the vatican, might be. “Any entity” he says,”no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul.”

“The forms of knowledge that technologies mediate is integral to both a society’s cultural information pool, and to the extramental reality in which they live. Technology itself constitutes an alteration of that relationship — especially as it intervenes in the experiential aspects of that relationship . . . Technologies are in a sense ‘artifacts of knowledge’ (Laughlin 1988b) — they are alterations in material reality that, accompanied by meaning in peoples’ minds, facilitate intentional acts. As such technologies become part of the extramental reality in which we are embedded and to which we must adapt.” (p. 158)

“We would suggest that a society’s technical knowledge is precisely that aspect of their information pool that facilitates an alteration of the relationship between experience and extramental reality through the mediation of techniques and artifacts. In other words, technologies combine information from the culture pool (as meaning) with material and energy in extramental reality that have been purposefully altered in order to afford novel intentional acts.” (p. 159)

OGMA releases his his first album. His ecstatic music can be heard on myspace.

One year ago I blogged about Pogo’s youtube video “Alice” – here’s an insightful post about his music on Poemocracy thanks to Our Future Environment for sending this to me.

You can download Pogo’s amazing creations on last.fm.

A post on _Augmentology 1[L]0[L]1_ titled “_Emily is Not Real_: Uncanny Valley vs The Digital Übermensch” refers to my paper “Mapping the Temples of Cyborgism” and uses the graphic I created to illustrate an expansion of Mori’s map of the uncanny valley. The post is a RICH mine of links – so check it out.

_Augmentology 1[L]0[L]1_ is a blog seeking to “dissect post-geophysically defined notions of reality” and is sponsored by the Ars Virtua Foundation via the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.

“Ars Virtua is a New Media Center and Gallery located in the synthetic world of Second Life, World of Warcraft and the World Wide Web. It is a new type of space that leverages the tension between 3-D rendered game space and terrestrial reality, between simulated and simulation. The Ars Virtua Foundation is a locus of research around the issues of reality within simulated environments.”

Some thoughts tonight after spending the day studying Astronomy.

We kill, destroy, imprison, control, conquer. Why don’t we build, share, teach, grow, explore?

If there are gods and other forms of non-terrestrial life, conscious as we are or even more so, we must seem like violent, angry, ruthless children to them. Destroying our own home and each other and the life forms we share this planet with.

Playing tonight, here:
The Wild Project, 195 East 3rd St., New York, NY
(Doors 7p, screening 8p sharp, $10)

via Elizabeth Housley

Story from North America (FULL VERSION!) from Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo.

Via Discerning Brute, Erin Pavlina tells her story of running the vegan spirituality software:

I grew up on burgers, fries and milkshakes. I ate the Standard American Diet my entire life.

Around the time I started college, I told the spirits that I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to save the planet. And I told them if they would just see fit to grant me superhuman powers that I would use them for good. I also told them I wanted to be a healer and asked for the power to heal people with touch.

They laughed and told me I wasn’t ready for such a thing. So I asked them what I had to do to get ready.

They told me to go vegetarian. They told me that in order to heal people and to have ”superhuman” powers and abilities that I would need to raise my vibration, my energy, and that one powerful way of doing that was to stop eating meat. They explained to me that an animal carries its torture and death with it when it is slaughtered, and that when we humans eat that energy, it lowers ours. That made a lot of sense, so I immediately told the spirits to go take a flying leap. There wasn’t any way I was going to go vegetarian! Give up my Big Macs? Pfft. Wasn’t there some other way? I asked them hopefully.

Nope, they said. You gotta stop making your body a graveyard for suffering, torture, and cruelty. I ignored their advice for years. But it always niggled in the back of my mind. How could I expect to live with compassion when I was allowing other people to murder an animal and feed it to me. Oh, the hypocrisy.

When I met Steve, he was a vegetarian. I remember being annoyed that he couldn’t eat at certain restaurants and was always trying to get me to go vegetarian too. I was always getting food poisoning and very ill when I ate animal products, so one day I decided to try going vegetarian for 30 days. I didn’t tell anyone, I just did it. And it was easy! Much much easier than I thought it would be.

I went back to the spirits and said, “Now can I have super powers?” They said, “You’re headed in the right direction, but eating eggs and milk and cheese is just as cruel as eating the animal’s flesh. Look into it and you’ll see.” I promptly ignored them again. I figured I had done quite enough! They thought differently. But I did notice that my
psychic abilities increased as a vegetarian and it did make me curious.

One day Steve told me he wanted to go vegan and raise our future children as vegans. It nearly broke us apart because I had NO intention of doing anything SO drastic! But once again, I decided to give it a try for 30 days and see for myself if it was something I wanted to do or not. Oh my goodness! The difference was amazing. I lost tons of weight, I felt great, 95% of my chronic health problems just magically vanished, and my psychic abilities increased massively. How could I possibly go back to eating ice cream and cheese? That would be like putting poison back into my body.

I starting reading and learning more about how food animals are treated and I could no longer be a part of their suffering. When I realized that I could live quite easily and happily without harming animals I made the firm decision to continue to be vegan. Not only did this increase my compassion, it increased my connection to the spirits. I was able to hear them more easily, and I started having more precognitive dreams. I started being able to “read” people and know what was going to happen to them. I guess you could say I became vastly more psychic. And they started giving me tasks and assignments to carry out. I felt like a first level hero.

So, that’s how I went from eating fast food to plant food. Even though the spirits were right all along, I just wasn’t ready to listen. And they understood that too. Free will and all.

From this experience, I learned that having superhuman powers doesn’t mean flying around and using x-ray vision. It means moving towards a higher vibration and moving closer to Source. And it’s that kind of “superhuman” power that will save our planet. Of course, that doesn’t stop me from trying to fly occasionally, and I do still have that cape tucked away somewhere … just in case.

I always expect scientists to be agnostic – but this is faith, this is a deep belief in evolution that rejects any possibility that another idea could take its place. But science is always overturning history and rewriting truth, so shouldn’t the argument still be “this is the best idea we have today”?

“These weaknesses that they bring forward are decades old, and they have been refuted many, many times over,” Kevin Fisher, a past president of the Science Teachers Association of Texas, said after testifying. “It’s an attempt to bring false weaknesses into the classroom in an attempt to get students to reject evolution.”

Read more…