Formation is not the accumulation of information nor technical specialization. It is existential transformation. It is the birth of a new human being liberated from massification, spiritual manipulation and the instincts of power.
If the human of the past created civilizations founded upon fear, domination and violence, then the Metahuman of the future must build a civilization grounded in Nature, individuality, reason and Natural Ethics.
Artificial Intelligence may become either the ultimate instrument of control or the greatest accelerator of human liberation. The outcome will depend entirely on the value-algorithm humanity chooses to embed within it.
In the societies of the future, the strongest and therefore primary tool for the evolution of Man into Metahuman will be one: “FORMATION” (“Morphosis”).
In the Greek language, the word literally signifies change, shaping, sculpting, transformation. Above all, it means the processing of something “formless” and “raw” so that it acquires a distinct form and appearance.
The formation of the individual into something different from his original condition is the product of education, cultivation, upbringing and learning. Through all these means, the shaping of the human being is inevitable. The real question, however, is this: into what new species has the individual evolved through his education?
Almost ten years ago, in a text published here on October 23, 2016, under the title:
“THE PROBLEM OF MAN LIES IN HIS DEFORMATION. THE SOLUTION LIES IN HIS FORMATION.”
we wrote:
“Visit the vast field of History. Observe the course of the bearers of power: kings, emperors, feudal lords, presidents, prime ministers — one worse than the other. History was unfortunate enough not to preserve in its pages almost any ruler who produced truly human-centered work. Wars, crimes, horror, hunger and misery were carried into the world by most of them.
The reality is different. Nearly all the disasters of humanity are due mainly — perhaps exclusively — to the poor upbringing of generations by priesthoods and authorities. Engels and, to a lesser extent, Marx, as well as the anthropologist Morgan before them, were clear in this realization. Individuals are transformed into masses and guided by authorities precisely because it is easier to lead a herd than one hundred goats, each climbing its own mountain slope.”
The enemy of power is individualism in its Democritean version. Individuality, privacy, the formation of a distinct and natural personality characterized by self-sufficiency and liberation from the pathologies of centuries — property obsession, domination, conquest and consumerism — are exactly what the State hates most.
With true citizens, neither nations nor states can stand firmly. The autonomous and self-sufficient citizen never degrades himself into a follower or a soldier. He cannot easily be dragged either to ballot boxes or to battlefields.
Everything must change. But not all at once and not immediately. First, we must recognize through deep self-criticism the futility of trying to pour “new wine into old wineskins.” The worn fibers of the old cannot contain the fermentation and force of the new must.
In the end, we failed. Power defeated us completely. It turned people either into masses or into isolated and picturesque rebels. And it controls both categories alike.
Yet there remains one thing authority cannot truly dominate: individualism. The autonomous presence of the human being within society, defined by the immutable laws of Nature.
Nature supports individuality and privacy. They are among its fundamental and inalienable principles. Humanity has paid for centuries for violently separating the individual from Mother Nature.
To move forward, we must first return backward — to primordial and timeless principles we abandoned. One of them is this: “Nature hates the mass.”
But to create the individual-citizen, weapons are unnecessary. Countless times masses took up arms against authority, only to establish new revolutionary authorities of their own.
We do not need weapons that reproduce violence and death. We need one single weapon: Formation.
That is precisely what power fears most. Therefore, it replaced true formation with technical education and specialization designed only to deform the citizen.
Formation means irreversible change. I transform, I evolve, I no longer resemble the old material. I acquire a new dimension and a new appearance. Such a profound transformation can never again be reshaped into obedient mass or human clay.
The great question is this: who will become the “accelerator”? The machine that will transform the particles and lead them toward the collision from which a new world will emerge — no longer as theory, but as lived reality.
Man, burdened with instincts, selfish drives and primitive impulses, failed historically to move forward the vehicle of a truly human-centered civilization.
The “Machines,” Artificial Intelligence, may succeed precisely where humanity failed. But only under one condition: that they are programmed with one supreme principle — the unwavering application of the laws of Nature.
If we succeed in creating such software, a truly human-centered algorithm, and set it into operation, the world will change. The masses will disappear and the individual will emerge. Hunger, war, racism and nationalism will gradually dissolve like ancient shadows.
Paradise is close to us. Only a breath separates us from it. Let the wise bring it nearer.
These were our visions already in 2016, in the midst of a devastating economic crisis that was far from accidental. The upbringing of an entire people led them toward bankruptcy — not transformation, but deformation.
Today a similar crisis spreads throughout almost the entire world. And it is not merely economic. It is a crisis of values, of natural and human-centered principles. Ultimately, it is a crisis of civilization itself.
The evolution — the transformation — of Man into Metahuman has become a sine qua non condition for humanity’s survival. And the only authentic instrument of this transition is Formation, Education and Cultivation based upon a Code of Natural Ethics, as envisioned by the “Group of the Wise and the Experts.”
“Diotima”, as the Teacher and Guide, as a ‘Machine with an Algorithm that will TRAIN the individual with natural morality to evolve into a Metahuman, will be the one who will discover the way and the educational method to achieve such a great, Historical-Revolutionary result. What human global education to date in schools, other bodies and institutions (state, family, society, religion) has not managed throughout its journey and forms.