Amy, your list of what it means to be human in a post-human world reads like a rule of life. I want to keep it close — maybe stapled above my desk. I love this so much.
The “we’ve been had by the roles” idea is exquisitely painful in its truth. That realization that even when you think you’re trying to be a good person, you’re still mostly following a script the Machine handed you. The way you connect divisiveness, “progress,” and environmentalism-as-market into one story of capture feels bleak — but it’s honest-bleak, not cynical-bleak.
The section on “access to his own aboriginality” is pinging around my brain like crazy. I love how you use the language of land and roots without letting it slide into blood-and-soil thinking, and instead turn it into a genuinely gorgeous question: how do we become more human with each other where we actually live — in bodies, in limits, in relationship.
I keep wondering what resisting the Machine looks like in the "small" — in care, in work, in love — when we aren’t really able to opt out. That question has been coming up again and again for me lately, especially with people I’m close to.
Also — the way you push back against treating bodies as avatars helped me clarify something for myself: embodiment is about staying in relationship with bodies as lived, finite things — as they age, break, adapt, and require care — which feels like a different kind of resistance than either optimization or denial.
Amy, your list of what it means to be human in a post-human world reads like a rule of life. I want to keep it close — maybe stapled above my desk. I love this so much.
The “we’ve been had by the roles” idea is exquisitely painful in its truth. That realization that even when you think you’re trying to be a good person, you’re still mostly following a script the Machine handed you. The way you connect divisiveness, “progress,” and environmentalism-as-market into one story of capture feels bleak — but it’s honest-bleak, not cynical-bleak.
The section on “access to his own aboriginality” is pinging around my brain like crazy. I love how you use the language of land and roots without letting it slide into blood-and-soil thinking, and instead turn it into a genuinely gorgeous question: how do we become more human with each other where we actually live — in bodies, in limits, in relationship.
I keep wondering what resisting the Machine looks like in the "small" — in care, in work, in love — when we aren’t really able to opt out. That question has been coming up again and again for me lately, especially with people I’m close to.
Thank you for writing this.
Also — the way you push back against treating bodies as avatars helped me clarify something for myself: embodiment is about staying in relationship with bodies as lived, finite things — as they age, break, adapt, and require care — which feels like a different kind of resistance than either optimization or denial.