What Exactly, Is a Human Being? Analog, Digital, and Transcendental

by Sky Shields

A review of the development of the human species—in particular, the radical steps forward taken during the period of Franklin Roosevelt’s economic recovery policies—provides us with a unique angle from which to approach the disease represented by the modern “post-human” hoaxes being pushed today. Rather than twirl ’round and ’round, attempting to parry every sophistry in the arguments underlying the cybernetics fraud, we ought to ask ourselves the obvious question:

What, exactly, is a human being?



The reductionist’s argument on this point hangs on a single sophistry, which is the same sophistry he wields when asked the question, “What is life?” He proceeds to examine everything about the human being which is not characteristically human, and then to conclude from that, that the human being is simply a rather sophisticated animal. The silly reduction of the uniqueness of the human species to physiological differences such as cranial capacity, posture, physiology of the throat, or an opposable thumb, is an intentional evading of the issue. It is no less silly than trying to define life from the standpoint of organic chemistry or molecular biology: The reductionist reduces the living organism to its non-living parts, before asking what makes it alive. This is akin to attempting to understand the idea underlying a great poem by analyzing the letters of the alphabet used, and how they interact with one another. At this point in the dissection, the idea under consideration ceases to exist.

As we will see below, there is an infinitessimal—a unit building block—in language, but these are not the letters, any more than the fundamental elements of a living process are its atoms—at least not atoms as they are currently understood. Similarly, once you reduce the analysis of human activity to its animal functions, it is no longer possible to discuss what a human being actually is at all.

We will take the opposite approach, and view the human being as any great composition ought properly to be considered: as a coherent whole. Taking our cue from Plato in The Republic, we will examine the human individual as that which takes part in the organization of human economy.

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http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2008/2008_1-9/2008-1/pdf/59-63_3501.pdf

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