Theosis, the ongoing process by which man unites with the divine energies (God’s Grace) to become a god himself, is the God-given goal of man, as the Holy Apostles and Fathers teach. However, when mankind tries to achieve Godlikeness outside the Orthodox Church, the results are catastrophic. Below is just one more ensample from the New Atlantis/[u]nited States/City on a Hill:
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All of this thrills Johnson, who continues to harbor the grandest of ambitions for Kernel. He may have given up on computer-interfacing implants, but he still wants his company to help people become something more than human.
A couple years ago, Johnson and I boarded his private jet and flew from California to Golden, Colo. Johnson, who has a pilot’s license, handled the takeoffs and landings but left the rest to a pro. We were in Colorado to visit a health and wellness clinic run by physician-guru Terry Grossman and have a few procedures done to improve our bodies and minds.
The Grossman Wellness Center looked like a cross between a medical clinic and the set of Cocoon. Most of the other guests were elderly. In a large central room, about 10 black leather chairs and matching footrests were arranged in a loose circle. Each chair held a couple of fluffy white pillows, with a metal pole on the side for our IV drips. A few of the ceiling tiles had been replaced and fitted with pictures of clouds and palm trees. In rooms off to the side, medical personnel performed consultations and procedures.
Our morning began with an IV infusion of two anti-aging fluids: Myers’ Cocktail—a blend of magnesium, calcium, B vitamins, vitamin C, and other good stuff—followed by a helping of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. Some of the IV fluids can trigger nausea, but Johnson set the drip to maximum and complemented the IV by having a fiber-optic cable fed into his veins to pepper his blood with red, green, blue, and yellow wavelengths of light for added rejuvenation. “I have to experience pain when I exercise or work,” he said, adding that the suffering makes him feel alive.
A few hours later, Johnson went into one of the treatment rooms with Grossman to get a stem cell injection straight into his brain. Earlier he’d provided 5 ounces of his blood, which had then been spun in a centrifuge so Grossman could separate out the plasma and put it through a secret process to “activate the stem cells.” Now, Johnson hopped onto a reclined exam table, lying on his back with his head angled toward the floor. Grossman pulled out a liquid-filled syringe. Instead of a needle at the end, it had a 4‑inch‑long, curved plastic tube, which the doctor coated with some lubricating jelly. He pushed the tube into one of Johnson’s nostrils, told the patient to take a big sniff, then pinched Johnson’s nose shut. They repeated the process for the other nostril. The procedure looked incredibly uncomfortable, but again, Johnson was unfazed, pulling in the stem cells with determination and excitement.
This snorting procedure—designed to improve mood, energy, and memory—was just a small part of Johnson’s overall health regimen. Each morning the CEO took 40 pills to boost his glands, cell membranes, and microbiome. He also used protein patches and nasal sprays for other jobs. After all this, he did 30 minutes of cardio and 15 minutes of weights. At lunch he’d have some bone broth and vegetables foraged by his chef from the yards of houses in Venice. He might have a light dinner later, but he never consumed anything after 5 p.m. He went to bed early and measured his sleep performance overnight. Every now and then, a shaman or doctor would juice him up with some drugs such as ketamine or psilocybin. He’d taken strongly enough to these practices to tattoo his arm with “5-MeO-DMT,” the molecular formula for the psychoactive compound famously secreted by the Sonoran Desert toad.
To make sure all his efforts were doing some good, Johnson had a lab measure his telomeres. These are the protective bits at the end of DNA strands, which some Nobel Prize-winning science has shown can be good indicators of how your body is aging. The longer the telomeres, the better you’re doing. Johnson used to register as 0.4 years older internally than his chronological age, but a couple of years into his regimen under Grossman, when he was in his early 40s, his doctors were telling him he was testing like a man in his late 30s.
During one of our most recent conversations, Johnson tells me he’s stopped snorting stem cells and experimenting with hallucinogens. “I got what I wanted from that and don’t need to mess with it right now,” he says. After many tests and much analysis, he’s discovered he operates best if he wakes up at 4 a.m., consumes 2,250 calories of carefully selected food over the course of 90 minutes, and then doesn’t eat again for the rest of the day. Every 90 days he goes through another battery of tests and adjusts his diet to counteract any signs of inflammation in his body. He goes to bed each night between 8 and 8:30 p.m. and continues to measure his sleep metrics. “I have done tremendous amounts of trial and error to figure out what works best for my health,” he says. “I have worked very hard to figure these algorithms out.”
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The nuance in his perspective can be tricky to navigate. Johnson wants to both master the mind and push it to the side. He maintains, however, that our brain is flawed only because we don’t understand how it works. Put enough Kernel devices on enough people, and we’ll find out why our brain allows us to pursue addictive, debilitating behaviors—to make reckless decisions and to deceive ourselves. “When you start quantifying the mind, you make thought and emotion an engineering discipline,” he says. “These abstract thoughts can be reduced to numbers. As you measure, you move forward in a positive way, and the quantification leads to interventions.”
Of course, not everyone will want to make decisions based on what a helmet says their brain activity means. Taking the decisions out of thought patterns—or analyzing them for the purposes of market research and product design—poses its own, perhaps scarier, questions about the future of human agency. And that’s if the Kernel devices can fulfill the company’s broader ambitions. While the big, expensive machines in hospitals have been teaching us about the brain for decades, our understanding of our most prized organ has remained, in many ways, pretty basic. It’s possible Kernel’s mountain of fresh data won’t be of the kind that translates into major breakthroughs. The brain researchers who are more skeptical of efforts such as Johnson’s generally argue that novel insights about how the brain works—and, eventually, major leaps in brain-machine interfaces—will require implants.
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If Johnson’s theories are correct and the Kernel devices prove to be as powerful as he hopes, he’ll be, in a sense, the first person to spark a broader sort of enlightened data awakening. He recently started a program meant to quantify the performance of his organs to an unprecedented degree. Meanwhile, he’s taking part in several experiments with the Kernel helmets and is still looking for ways to merge AI with flesh. “We are the first generation in the history of Homo sapiens who could look out over our lifetimes and imagine evolving into an entirely novel form of conscious existence,” Johnson says. “The things I am doing can create a bridge for humans to use where our technology will become part of our self.”
--Ashlee Vance, Bloomberg, https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbusiness/can-a-110-million-helmet-unlock-the-secrets-of-the-mind/ar-AAL6BQF, via Drudge Report (bolding added)
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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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