Transcendent Meh

So I watched "Transcendent Man" tonight. The documentary about Ray Kurzweil. It was fascinating for many reasons.

The most interesting part to me is not the notion of being able to reverse aging or creating a super computer that will solve all problems for us. It's not Kurzweil's naivety about how one day we will all link hands and roll up our sleeves and make the world a beautiful place. As a Jew, you'd think he'd have had the holocaust lessons instilled in his psyche and p.s. no computer fixed that shit. It's not even the fact that some of his predictions will most probably come to fruition.

What does it for me is this:

Kurzweil comes across at once as being a cocky dick who is so highly evolved he's never heard of the concept called hubris. And secondly, the fact he was seemingly motivated by his father's death and guilt over not being able to save him is fundamentally a primal quality.

Hell, elephants will stick around their dead relatives and "mourn" them.  Kurzweil's reflections on his father are no different. His musing on losing someone you love, is so deeply emotional, so humanly primeval, that his stated "mission to not die," is the greatest irony of the documentary.

The giant mind scientist, motivated by the very emotions we've had for a very very long time.

And that factor alone makes me have more empathy for him than I normally would for a mind that while smart, is extremely condescending with anyone who might disagree with what he does or believes.

A fascinating documentary anyway. In some ways, too it feels like a science fiction film. Perhaps it's the way it was shot and edited.

Before this, tonight I dropped Å off at the airport. It was gut wrenching. I then spent 45 minutes on the phone with a guy in advertising I mentored for a bit. It was a great conversation but it was only staving off the inevitable pain which is going to come from watching someone you care about board a plane for an unknown tomorrow.