Author: Rob Shearer

When I was 17 I was head over heels in love.  

All the adults around me told me that I was not old enough or mature enough to feel love.  

I thought I was the one young person who knew better. 

Neither of us were right. 

I was in love, there is no doubt. 

What we sometimes fail to admit is that love is not a quantifiable thing. Nor can it be contained. 

Why have so many writers and poets struggled to describe it? Because no one can. 

It grows and changes and evolves in each of us. 

When I was 17 I knew how to feel love, but I did not have the maturity and capacity to understand it and manage it. 

I am 40 now.  

I have more capacity for love than I had at 17. I have more capacity for love than I had at 30. 

There is not some magic age at which we finally understand love. 

As we grow and learn, our capacity to love increases. 

To my children: 

Love. 

Love with all you have. 

Let that love go when it does not align with your life goals. 

Feel the pain and grow from it. 

Then love again. 

Let that love grow, and know that what you feel now will grow into something larger. 

I have written before that I am an architect of the future. 

Technically, we all are. 

We work on a team. 

Some of us have a vision and drive to bring that vision to life. 

Some are underperformers, viruses, wrenches in the machine. 

It is like working at a job where everyone gets hired, and no one can get fired. 

Sometimes it can be exhausting, depressing, and hard to see the path to the goal. 

“Whenever I get sad, I just stop being sad and be awesome instead.”  -Barney Stinson. 

We got this. It is no different than any other job. There are obstacles in our path, but with determination we will clear them in time. They will slow us down, and throw off our projections with their negativity. This will not deter us. I am not committed to a timeline, I am committed to the goal. 

We must all do our part, and my part is an architect. 

I am not the guy who is going to perfect gene therapy. 

I am not going to build a robot replacement body for you. 

I am not going to perfect quantum teleportation. 

I am going to bring it all together. 

I am going to drive the vision. 

I am going to tie together the hardware, software, business, and people. 

I am going to document and analyses the options, patterns, and risks. 

I am going to identify the things that will work, and find workarounds for the things that do not work. 

I collect countless requirements, targets, goals, wish lists, dreams, and science fiction ideas. Then I consume them. I digest them, and then I press them into one well formed plan. Then I polish that plan until it shines.  

That was the ugliest analogy I have ever come up with, but not the ugliest I ever will. 

Mythbusters proved that you can in fact polish a turd. 

Sometimes, the best plans are nothing more than a polished turd that models the goal until you can get there. 

I don’t have to repeat all the research on the health benefits of wine 

Just do a search and you will find countless studies and articles on how drinking wine will reduce your risk of heart attack, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and cataracts.  

It will make you smarter, live longer, more attractive, and calm your nerves.  

Wine is grain free, and full of vitamins. It is made from grapes so you can count it as one of your servings of fruit.  

Wine will make you a better dancer so that you can get more primal dancing around the fire. Wine will also indisputably improve your sex life – and there is nothing more primal than sex.  

Of all the things that we rationalize in our house, wine is the most common and the most creatively justified. We love our wine. 

I am committed to my transhumanist agenda. It may sometimes appear that everything that I do is committed to that mission. This is clearly not always true. I am even more committed to balance. I seek balance in every part of my life. If I do not enjoy each day, then why would I want to live forever? I like wine, and I will drink wine. I do consider it the lesser of many evils. I enjoy beer too, but my gut tells me that it is not as good for me. Literally, my gut reacts to beer the same way it reacts to other grains. If I am going to consume grains, a good stout or porter is my favorite way to do so, but I still tend to reach for a good Cab instead. 

Pop a cork my primal friends, and lets toast to our lengthy futures. 

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”  

― Hippocrates  

One of my primary responsibilities in life is to provide for my family’s needs. My primal side derives great pleasure in ensuring that my clan is well fed so that they have the energy to attack their day, and the nourishment to improve themselves. We have it incredibly easy in the United States today. Food is very readily available at a very low price. For a historically small fraction of the average US wage earners salary, an entire family can be fed. People still try to push that fraction lower and lower. Most of us are on a fixed budget, so reducing any part of that budget will free up financial resources for other “things.”  

Let’s step back a moment and analyze what we are really spending our money on. If you take each line item in your budget and assign an inverse weighting factor to its value with respect to your health and longevity, how much value are you really getting out of your money? Let’s look at an example budget with some weighting factors applied.  

In this example, the most important items to your health and longevity are shelter and sustenance.  I am using a scale where ‘1’ is critical to your longevity and future-self development; a ’10’ is detracting from your potential, and a ‘5’ is neutral.  

Your cable TV bill ensures that you catch the very latest episode of The Biggest Loser and rates a ’10’ because it is not contributing to your longevity, it is actually detracting from your ability to improve yourself.  

Entertainment is stress relieving and contributes to life enjoyment; a good book, a pass to a state park, or tickets to a stimulating concert. 

Some of you will argue the exact weighting factors that I have used here. You are missing the point. Each individual value could be a topic of an entirely different post and discussion. Suffice it to write: these are my ratings, make your own ratings, but be sensible and realistic. 

Item	Cost($)	Weight	Real Cost($)
Rent	1000	1	1000
Cell phone	100	5	500
Cable TV	100	10	1000
Food	300	1	300
Entertainment	100	4	400
Alcohol	100	8	800
Savings	500	2	1000
Gym Membership	150	2	300
Eating out	100	7	700

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that it is hard to give up the other “things.” I understand that money is tight. It is always easiest to look at the biggest items in a budget and try to reduce them to save money, that is where you can make the most financial impact. My argument is that approach may be short-sighted. The financial analyst in me struggles with making that statement. If we focus on long term financial gain, then every dollar we can save as early in our lives as possible will have a significant impact further down the road. My point here is to consider if saving that dollar now so that you will have more money down the road is the right decision, even if it is going to adversely affect your health. At age 65, would you rather have a million dollars and perfect health to enjoy it with; or have 1.2 million dollars with a failing body and mind? How much extra money will you need to deal with your failing health? Are you actually financially better off in the latter case, or do you have more money and a lot more expenses along with that failing body? 

Next time you are at the grocery store and you think that the fresh food costs too much compared to a boxed dinner that will fill you up for the day. Look at the ingredients in that boxed dinner and compare it to the ingredients in the fresh vegetables in the produce isle. Which one is going to protect and enhance your body for the long term? Which one will poison you?  

Yes, eating healthy will cost you more. Yes, many of you struggle with you finances already. I respect your right to make the decision that works for you. Make a conscious, informed, decision though – don’t fall into a trap. There are more variables involved in your budget that just dollars. Think about the value and cost of health. 

Disclaimer: Some people would consider me in the “Have” class. I have the resources to ensure that my family’s needs are all met, and to provide for most of their “Wants” too. I have also lived a life of pinched pennies. I know what it takes to carefully budget each week, and I recognize the physiological games that we play with ourselves at those times. I see so many people making horrible financial choices that keep them crippled and prevent them from breaking out of their own situations.  

I am struggling to understand the arguments in the “haves” vs. “have nots” case.  

I think it really comes down to protection and envy.  

Those who have the resources at their disposal to “Have” most of what they want just want to keep what they have. Some of them go to great and unconscionable lengths to do so, and to attain more; but in general, most of them have earned what they have and just want to live an honest life driving for more.  

Those who do not have the resources to “Have” most of what they want are the “Have Nots.”  

Most of these people have made choices in their lives to get there where they are. Some of them were intentional choices; some were based on lack of experience, information, or intelligence; some were just unlucky and fell on unfortunate circumstances. Some of these people seem overcome with Envy, desiring what other people have. I think this is where the entire movement spawns from.  

Envy. It is an ugly thing. It is not based on any real tangible human need. The fact that someone else has something, does not appreciably impact you. 

This is becoming more and more common in our current economy. Scarcity is becoming a thing of the past. In the next twenty years scarcity in a developed part of the world will cease to exist. Without scarcity, is there any reason to Envy another’s belongings. No. Will that stop people’s Envy? I fear not.  

Great article: 

On a few occasions Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the Uebermensch (over-human) has been mistakenly identified with the Transhumanist concept of the Posthuman. This mistake largely stems from the following quote from Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment…”  

From <http://aspieplus.blogspot.com/2009/06/difference-between-nietzsche-and.html>  

I wanted to respond a few topics in the post I liked above. 

First, he notion that a post-scarcity based economy will lead to a population of lazy post-humans. 

I think there will be a transitionary period, whose length will depend on the overlap between our ability to enhance the human mind and body, and our ability to fulfill all people’s material needs and desires. 

There are going to be lazy people. There always have been, and this is not going to change right away. Those people will cease to contribute to the future of humans. They will consume resources, but when those resources are not scarce they will be free to do so.  

There have also always been people with ambition. That ambition is not going to disappear. Ambition does not exist as a means to material gain. Ambition is a deeper driving factor in the human psyche. It is also a human trait that can be enhanced just like any other. I believe that we will have the ability to enhance our intelligence, focus, ambition, compassion, or any other human trait. There is no reason to believe that we will evolve into something less than human. We are the masters of our own evolution now. We can enhance everything that we value in ourselves now, and overpower everything that we to not desire. 

I will tolerate all the “Last Men” as described by Nietzsche.

When I read Slaughterhouse-Five in high school, it rung a loud chord for me. 

Sometimes, I also feel that I am unstuck in time.  

I can still remember when it hit me, in class. I remember the seat I was in, the light in the window, the spring time air. The revelation. 

I am still unstuck 

I am the product of the choices I have made. 

Sometimes I don’t know where those choices came from, but I know that they are right for me. 

I am unstuck in time 

I travel back and influence my own mind 

I continually remake myself and advance myself, doesn’t everyone else do the same? 

Am I that different? 

I see so much in the world, and so much significance 

The detail and the interrelationships 

Every person, and every event make me who I am, but it is I who filter those events and add significance to them. How I chose that significance comes  from a level of wisdom that I do not yet possess, it comes from some future me,  here to help me become the perfect being. 

I will love you the rest of my life 

Do you know what that means to me? 

The magnitude may be different than you expect. 

This is not the same love of our parents time 

I am a transhumanist. 

I believe that we will have the technology in our lifetimes to make us live forever. 

When I say I will love you the rest of my life, I am not talking about the next fifty years. 

I am talking about all eternity. 

I commit my heart to you, until after our sun is gone 

until we have moved beyond the stars 

Until we can travel inward and outward 

Through every transition that we go through 

We will change physically 

And metaphysically 

We can not comprehend what we will become 

But I do know that I will still be myself 

At least in some form 

And I will still love you. 

I will live forever, and I will truly love you forever. 

That love will keep a part of me human no matter what we become. 

A transhumanist primary mission is to stay alive long enough to be a part of this transition 

But I will die for you 

If there is ever a time when I can save you by giving my life 

I will, without a second thought 

I will not give up years of old age 

I will give up eternity and omnipotence 

To give you a chance to attain it 

I wrote this last year to my wife: 

I have been thinking about how I could show you or tell you how much I love you. 

I started writing it down, and the following is all the further I got because there was nothing left to say. 

When I breath, I think of Laura. 

. 

. 

. 

Looking back, I realize now that someday, when I no longer need to breath. I will still think of her. Logically, this translates to: 

When I breath, I think of you. AND When I don’t breath, I think of you.  

Therefore: 

I think of Laura 

Furthermore, thought never stops and as the value of ‘I think’ approaches 100%, this just leaves: 

Laura 

There it is. Pure, unpolluted. When I read that one word, I finally feel the full impact of my love. When you read that word, do you think of me? When you read that word, do you feel the full force of your love for me? That is it. That is what I am describing. In as few words as I can pen. 

The following post was inspired by this quote: 

“We are a nation of physical animals who have forgotten how much we enjoy being that. We are cushioned by this kind of make-believe, unreal world and we have no idea what we can survive because we are never challenged or tested.”  Chuck Palahniuk 

At our core we have a hunger. 

A hunger to achieve. 

We are animals,  

but animals who want more than food and shelter. 

Insatiable. 

When we achieve what we were after, we leap for the next ring. 

Those who fall into a pattern of basic survival feel a loss. 

Their nature fighting their lifestyle. 

In a constant state of subconscious conflict – they can find no peace. 

Strengthen your body 

and when strengthening your body push it harder than you think possible. 

Broaden your mind  

and while broadening your mind explore avenues that are dark and scary. 

Sleep deep 

and when sleeping, rest the body and rejuvenate the mind. 

Laugh uncontrollably 

and when laughing, let go of petty concerns. 

Take time to balance your life. 

In all aspects of your life, give due attention. 

It is only through non-biased self examination can we improve. 

Ask yourself hard questions 

and be honest with yourself when you answer.