Aurobindian definition of the human

[Observing the very young child it is difficult to escape the impression– and perhaps here I suffer from an essentialist view of human beings –that by nature we are tinkerers. Children seem to have an innate facility with buttons, levers, blocks, etc., and seem to take an endless delight in building and creating. As Bergson observed during the last century, we are no so much homo rationalis as we are homo fabricans. This delight in fabricating, discovering, making, inventing strikes me as a far greater motive for innovation than any supposed use our creations might have or any financial benefit we might gain from these inventions or discoveries. Other Political Pet Peeves– Accumulation as Our Prime Motive
Mar 31, 2009 from Larval Subjects by larvalsubjects]

[The hubris of cybernetics moving towards the creation of self-organizing systems brings us close to a new definition of man, homo faber in engagement with his own unpredictable freedom, but it is this basis in the unknowable, which yet is the self, the paradox of being a finite representation of the Infinite One, towards which the definition of Nietzsche and his children moves in its posthuman ideal. Thu 23 Apr 2009 01:59 PM PDT Re: Cybernetics Is An Antihumanism: Advanced Technologies and the Rebellion Against the Human Condition: Metnexus (Global Spiral) Debashish]

[That which is free knows the measure of its freedom in mastery; that of which it is not master invites a higher status of freedom. This is the perpetually transitional nature of purusha, what may be called the Aurobindian definition of the human. The posthuman in this sense is the crossing of the barrier of Ignorance into Knowledge, the arrival of the purusha at a freedom which is not only master of cosmos but its creator. The hubris of the post-Enlightenment Nietzschean superman converges here with the Aurobindian superman. Thu 23 Apr 2009 02:52 PM PDT Re: Cybernetics Is An Antihumanism: Advanced Technologies and the Rebellion Against the Human Condition: Metnexus (Global Spiral) Debashish]

[Nonetheless, much to my delight this afternoon I saw, with jaw dropping wonder (why should I have been so surprised), the leaves of spinach, romaine, and cucumbers tentatively beginning to poke up from the earth as if by magic. How is such a thing possible? Why does it fill me with so much surprise? Why do I feel the bizarre desire to now sit beside the garden and watch as these tender young plants grow? As if I could actually see their cells “popping”– pop, pop, pop –as they divide and organize themselves, undergoing their miraculous adventure of emergence and self-organization. The garden does not look like much yet, I know. In weeks to come I hope to surround it with flat, irregularly shaped rocks. I fear that I will never get all of the hardy Texas grass out of it. Nonetheless, this is a strange and simple form of satisfaction. How delightful to deal with something real, with something that isn’t a theory, signifier, or a concept. How wonderful to escape into the dirt and muck and watch life come into being.
Apr 1, 2009 Gardening
from Larval Subjects by larvalsubjects]

[An unshaped consciousness desired light
And a blank prescience yearned towards distant change.
As if a childlike finger laid on a cheek
Reminded of the endless need in things
The heedless Mother of the universe,
An infant longing clutched the sombre Vast.
(Savitri, by Sri Aurobindo, Book One: The Book of Beginnings.)]

The master creator is also a slave of his own whims and rules, loves to walk blindfolded and falter and stumble. [TNM]