What if humans went extinct next Friday?

Humans are the dominant species on a dying planet, and we're still clinging to the idea that we can think our way out, invent our way out, maybe even upload our way out. And isn't that the entire problem right there? If there is a trait that is decidedly, definitely human, it's that we think of ourselves as individuals, as separate from everything around us. It's the trait that helped us take over the world. And if we can't figure out a way to change it, it might also destroy us.

But what if the solution isn't more mastery, more control? What if the only way to survive is to become something else entirely? I'm Sean Elling, and this is the gray area. My guest today is Mark C. Taylor.

He's a philosopher, a cultural critic, and the author of a book called After the Human. It's a sweeping, sometimes dizzying book, one that moves from Hegel to quantum physics to the ethics of soil and fungi. It's packed with hand drawn diagrams and photos of dirt, and discussions of philosophy and the history of technology, and day to day dilemmas like the problem of having too many books for your number of shelves, and somehow all this coalesces into a uniquely ambitious attempt to explain what it is to be human and what it could mean, about the myths that shaped us, the ideas that trapped us, and the need for a new story, a new self, and really a whole new way of thinking and being in the world.

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