Ivácson András Áron

The Identity-Zombie And a proposal to overcoming it within a field of infinite immanence

2-12-2016

“Discipline can make up where Nature is lacking.”

- Niccoló Machiavelli -

1. First contact

There are two monolithic factions in our contemporary fiction who’s both bodies and

identities are so riddled with all sorts of impurities, contaminations, autoimmunities and

infections, that they simply beg analysis. There are a number of ways in which these two factions

of de- and reterritorialized humans resemble one another, then again a whole lot more aspects in

which they are complete opposites and this is one of the reasons I found it interesting to set them

up as positive and negative examples of a philosophical problem – well, various problems really,

of which I will only be able to elaborate on a few. Without further ado, it’s time to introduce

these two factions who will help us deal with some aspects tied to transhumanism, both in its

philosophical and cultural senses of the word: the monolithic swarm of the Borg Collective with

a vast, potentially infinite amount of knowledge, a vast field of immanence within a

mechanosphere on the one hand (with their supposed mindlessness and lack of will I shall deal in

its own time, contrasted with their polar opposite) and the shambling, moaning, jostling hordes

of the walking dead, the truly mindless zombies on the other. For some it will be surprising, and

even disquieting, that I will hold up at least some aspects of the Collective as a successful form

of transhumanism, but all throughout these pages I will argue that today’s western man is that

destitute zombie into which the zoon politikon has decayed and that the technologically

advanced Borg is that middle stage of transhumanism into which this decayed zombie ought to

evolve.

Both of these factions show a number of impurities, contaminations, autoimmunities and

infections in a number of interpretable ways. For instance the Borg are in a way (self-) infected

with various technologies, which improve their autoimmunities, both physical and mental

(discipline), they seemingly consider their individuality to be a contamination to be eradicated,

and simple natural life to be an impurity to be improved upon. They consider transcendence,

although not in the religious sense, to be perfection and absolute purity, epitomized in a

completely disembodied consciousness, which they seek to reach through technological

manipulation of their ranks, their bodies and their minds, thus for them, the ultimate goal is the

acquisition of knowledge through assimilation without a definite end. For the zombie, the

absolute antithesis: they exist for solely one purpose, that of satiating their “hunger”, they

consider everything else to be an impurity in the way of total desire, total consumption, on the

contrary to the Borg, who consider their individuality to be a contamination, the zombie has no

individuality, but are contaminated by the singular purpose of a fulfillment-machine and their

desire-driven autoimmunity singles out everything that might divert them from this cause –

singular, relentless and insatiably hungry to consume, the zombie horde is a terrifying mess of

shuffling bio-automatons.

Throughout this essay, when I use the term “transhumanism” I don’t simply mean that strand

of posthumanism that seeks the mental and physical improvement of the human species through

the means of technology (although my choice for the Borg was obvious for this same reason),

but all currents of thought within the posthumanist paradigm that seek to both mentally,

physically and technologically transcend everything and all things that are and can be considered

“human” in any sort of way (this will become apparent when I will later contrast the Borg

“drone” with the “philosophizing zombie”).

2. Unimatrix 0: introducing The Collective

In the universe of Star Trek the Borg are a pseudo-race of different species enhanced into

cybernetic beings – cy-borgs, from where they got their name – assimilated into the Collective, a

mass of countless different beings all linked into a hive mind, thanks to which no truly individual

exists within the Collective, with the sole exception of the Borg Queen, which was a sad turn in

their conception in my eyes, but more on this aspect later. The sole purpose of the Borg is to

attain their conception of perfection through the assimilation of the technologies and knowledge

of different races (in effect becoming transracial and transnational), and integrating them into

their more than Spartan culture becoming one of the strongest forces in the Star Trek universe

without really being a species, but rather a “trans-species”, something above and beyond the

narrow conception of “a species”, not to mention “nations”. Their only unifying trait that is

universally shared by all of them and makes them instantly recognizable is their hive mind and

their cyborg nature. Physiologically speaking each Borg drone varies according to which species

it originally belonged to before assimilation and according to what function it provides within the

collective, i.e.: a simple laborer receives different enhancements and implants compared to a

maintenance unit – the Borg do not have foot soldiers with explicitly offensive capabilities, since

their main focus is assimilation of new and useful knowledge and technology1. (M. Okuda, D.

Okuda, Mirek, 2011) This can be clearly seen in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode

entitled “Q Who” in which the Borg drones completely disregard the crew of the Enterprise and

simply inspect their ships’ systems, only engaging them physically after they were attacked by

the humans and even more so after these same humans and their technology was deemed useful

for assimilation. Normally one eye is replaced with an eye-piece to improve visual perception,

with the signifying trait of the red laser targeting system and one arm is amputated altogether

from the elbow to make room for a functional, specialized and highly advanced prosthetic,

among other implants, some even completely replacing vital organs, that allow drones to

function without shelter, food, water or even air, simply “taking a stroll in the vacuum of space”,

as seen in First Contact. A drone’s only requirement of nourishment is an energy outlet to

maintain its implants which in turn maintain its few remaining biological functions, this specific

trait being demonstrated in another Star Trek TNG episode “I, Borg”, in which a solitary drone is

rescued by the Enterprise crew and is “fed” in his cell only by installing an electric outlet into

which he can plug in a specific tool located on his arm. Other than this neither he, nor other

drones need any other form of sustenance, which is in and of itself a remarkable feat. Other than

this, there are several other technological implants most drones have and a set of implants all of

them share regardless of their function (bear in mind that most of the Borg’s technology is

fictional, but they pose rather difficult transhumanistic and philosophical challenges which are

worthy of elaboration): first and foremost a so-called “neural transceiver”, which kept a constant

link between a drones consciousness and the collective hive mind, which operated through

“subspace” frequencies (the digitalization of consciousness, “technological telepathy”, digital

control of someone else’s movements and so on), a personal force-field to protect each drone

from most energy-based attacks (this force-field could infinitely adapt and change its frequency

depending on the type of energy used in the attack, against physical attack, the drone simply uses

its blunt force, since thanks to its technology-ridden body, its strength is way above an average

non-Borg’s capabilities), each drone regardless of function possesses a pair of “assimilation

tubules” embedded in one hand, which they use to inject nanoprobes that facilitate the first step

1 The Borg don’t have an altogether set aside caste or rank of soldier, but each drone is capable of various forms of offense and

defense should the necessity arise and these capabilities, being based on an ever evolving potentially infinite amount of

knowledge and hyper-fast real-time adaptability, are quite formidable, although only used as a last resort.

of assimilation into the Collective by attaching themselves to red blood cells and starting the

slow shut down of those organs which will later be useless to the future drone (nanotechnology,

biotechnology, nanomedicine), a cortical processor which allows the rapid processing of visual

information and a neural processor to keep an organized record of all the instructions the hive

mind sends to that particular drone as well as for heightened capabilities of information

processing (one of transhumanism’s many goals is the optimization and upgrade of the mental

capabilities of humanity), complete chemical vaporization after incapacitation of the drone

ensured that the assailing force had no way to exploit the corpse’s highly advanced technology.

Most people, both fictional to the ST universe and real-life fans of it consider the Borg

reprehensible for a number or reasons: 1.) their supposed submission of all individuality (against

which I will argue in due time), 2.) their disregard of a drone’s life (after a drone is incapacitated

it is transported back to their nearest ship and either “repaired” or if that is impossible, it is

disassembled for reusable parts and its consciousness lives on in the collective hive mind

completely disembodied (this would be a very important aspect of transhumanism), 3.) their lack

of empathy for either anyone, this including themselves or for even their own young (leaving

aside the fact that this argument is nonsensical to begin with, since the Borg being a trans-species

composed of several species, they don’t have “their own young”, this objection comes from the

fact that whenever the Collective assimilates either infants, children or adolescents, they are put

in so-called “maturation chambers” which harms them not in any substantial way, only speeds up

their mental and physical growth, but apparently “robs them of their childhood”), 4.) their

technological implants making them “less human” or “not even human anymore” (which should

not be our concern since transhumanism and posthumanism explicitly means something that is

beyond being “human”), 5.) their unilateral philosophy guided only by the primary directive to

assimilate and integrate biological and technological distinctiveness to their own as a means of

reaching biological and technological, i.e.: mental perfection, all other pursuits being deemed

irrelevant, therefore: the drones (seemingly) do not engage in any other activities besides their

functions and regeneration.

In a two-part episode of “Star Trek: Voyager” entitled “Unimatirx 0” we are confronted with

a tremendously interesting proposition, one which requires a bit of backstory to be fully

understandable. When the Borg Collective was conceived and made their first appearances one

of their defining traits was the hive mind, a seemingly faceless mass of drones who speak in

unison without one voice overpowering any other, both literally and metaphorically – it almost

seems as though there always was and has been a consensus of trillions of voices speaking in

unison, almost a post-modern technologically infused version of direct, albeit a bit extreme

technocracy. To many Star Trek fans, proudly counting myself upon them, their biggest appeal –

or horror, what have you – was their total and absolute facelessness, a trillion or more strong

mass of technologically and scientifically enhanced beings who all work for a laudable goal:

perfection2. They are relentless, unstoppable to the point of one character in a “Voyager” episode

referring to them as simply a force of nature rather than a faction of conscious beings, implying

that there is no reasoning with a natural force, i.e.: deeming the Borg inflexible in the extreme,

but as I shall demonstrate below, they could be held up as a definition of scientific (and other

kinds of) flexibility. For instance, in one of the most revered, and rightly so, episodes of “The

Next Generation”, “The Best of Both Worlds, pt. 1”, the Borg themselves state that humanity

(Species 5618) is still bound by archaic organizational forms, this explicitly implying that the

Borg have no hierarchy whatsoever, which truly would be useless in the presence of a real

collective hive mind. When the “Borg Queen” was introduced way after the two parts of “The

Best of Both Worlds”, her presence created a continuity error as well as a philosophical

challenge: the error being that her character negated the hive mind, since she was the one

controlling the Borg (although there are theories stating that there are more than one of these

Queen-characters, they none the less create a hierarchical structure3, which was denigrated by the

Borg themselves earlier and the well-known behavior pattern of the Borg makes it irrelevant for

them to lie, since they can easily overpower almost anyone: one of their most terrifying aspect is

exactly their cold, violently direct demeanor towards anything and anyone, simply stating facts

and occurrences that are about to happen, like “You will be assimilated” and “We will add your

biological and technological distinctiveness to our own” or “You culture will adapt to service us”

and so on). After this short backstory, I shall return to my example which will help us deal with

the philosophical challenge the Queen-character raises4.

2 Let’s leave aside in this essay the philosophical difficulties of (the definition of) perfection, since such a complex theme would

require an essay of its own. 3 In my opinion, this is already too close to the organizational structure of a bee- or ant hive, thereby stripping the Borg of their

truly alien never-before-seen absolute and total facelessness, connecting them to something familiar, if uncomfortable to us. 4 Not to mention her overall behavior being anything, but Borg, going as far as showing emotions and employing deception,

psychological games, manipulation and the like. All in all for me, as well as for many other Star Trek and Borg fans, the Queen-

character was quite a disappointment and there have been numerous suggestions as to how the Borg could have been developed

further without compromising their central concept. The counter-argument stating “well, some form of hierarchy is a natural

requirement” is problematic (not to mention politically and ideologically suspicious), since it might just be humanity’s narrow

In “Unimatrix 0” we see that when the Borg go into their regeneration cycle, true, not all, but

some and even most5, go into a sort of background programming universally called by the

inhabitants Unimatrix 0, since the central Hub of the Borg in the Delta Quadrant is Unimatrix 01.

This background programming shows a kind of oasis in which all the drones live as their pre-

assimilation selves, they talk, they eat, and they make love and form friendships and so on and so

on. Basically, they live a life as if their assimilation never took place. This is important on many

levels and concerning many aspects of the Borg. As we stated earlier, before the Queen-character

was introduced, the Borg seemed like an extreme technocracy without any one voice

overpowering any other, whereas the introduction of the Queen ruined that aspect and degraded

it into a techno-fascist/techno-fetishist muddling. When this virtual background program is

mentioned on the series, we only get the Queen’s vision on it, who, of course, despises it,

especially the resistance movement the drones amass against her dominating will(!). What if this

background program is not a sickness, as the Queen makes it out to be, but an integral part of the

Borg assimilation that was overruled by her introduction into the Collective? What if it was

something the Borg universally and naturally integrated into their programming? If this could be

true, then the whole argument, that the Borg eradicates desire, emotion, sentimentality and so on

– as the Queen really wants to – falls flat on its face, since it simply is not true. If the premise I

set out is true however, the following is taking place within the Collective: the Borg do not

eradicate emotion, desire, sentimentality and so on, merely relegate it to a purely conscious level,

without it interfering with the day-to-day functions of the drones, i.e.: does not eradicate, but

focus these aspects of the assimilated species. Now, I know that this raises some concerns, that

the experiences in this background programming that runs while the drones regenerate (a form of

vision concerning what is “natural” (the ideology of nature) and – especially in Star Trek terms – other more advanced species

might have really developed societies completely lacking any form of hierarchy. There is, however, one more aspect to this we

need to tackle briefly before going further: the gender issue the Queen-character raises. On their first introduction in „Q Who”,

the Q character notes of a Borg drone that it is neither a she, nor a he, i.e.: IT is genderless, since in the „real world” (we’ll get to

its opposite below) the Borg have no need for neither sex, nor gender, since they do not reproduce, and do not live romantic lives

in „reality”, they merely assimilate new communities into the Collective. This is important because on the contrary to what most

people believe, a genderless society is far from being a sexless or asexual society, as some of our sexual orientations clearly

demonstrate, sexuality has little to do with gender, or even our biological sex, on a fundamental level (for instance bisexuality,

pansexuality and so on, which both go beyond predefined genders and biological sexes, as well as rigid behavioral norms). The

introduction of the Queen-character, as well as later that of Seven of Nine (no matter how much I liked her as a distinct

character), was a huge and sad step back from the Borg’s all around completely alien „trans-everything” concept, pushing them

back to the all so familiar petty power-squabbles of the archaic gender roles of today’s primitive societies. It would be interesting

to explore this further, sadly there is neither time, nor place for it here. Let’s just note for now, concerning the Borg’s vision, that

any first step of transhumanism, even before the implementation of technology into the human body, has to start with the

destruction of all archaic concepts, especially that colonial idiotism of the ideology of gender roles. 5 This could simply mean, that this programming has been dormant for “some” reason, for this see below, or that this program is

presently being developed and implemented as an autoimmunity, against what, again: see below.

“sleep”, but still not unconscious since they tap into the central system and still perform various

functions) are “virtual” or “are not real”6. This is problematic, since all experience is on a

conscious level and furthermore as phantom pain or more generally any form of phantom

sensation or perception demonstrates, a purely conscious experience, one without a physical or

bodily basis, is no less of an experience or no less valuable as an experience as the ones un-

philosophically and banally, not to mention ideologically called “real” or “natural”7. If they were

any less valuable, we could throw the whole of mythology or literature, and any form of art for

that matter, out the window. If we go on further along this line of reasoning, even a political

thread can be distilled: we can propose that prior to the introduction of the Queen-characters into

the Collective, if this wasn’t always this way, the Borg used to be a technocracy without any one

opinion or voice overpowering any other within the hive mind, which, if nothing else, is an

incredibly powerful method to calculate and eliminate any mistaken hypothesis, but was later

hijacked by the Queen characters who turned the collective into a hierarchy ridden throng of

techno-fascist slaves – concerning the Borg, the Queen-characters are a disease, a contamination,

an infection, an impurity, the one true impurity to which the background programming of the

Unimatrix 0 is the real autoimmunity the Collective musters and must muster (alliteration is

irrelevant).

This is precisely the point where the question of the Borg goal of perfection through the

assimilation of potentially infinite knowledge overlaps with the problem whether this goal is

consensual or merely integrated technologically into the hive mind. If the first is true, than the

Collective is a consensual technocracy where all beings strive towards this perfection and the

Queen-character was a later and highly mistaken addition, or even a hijack by unwanted agents,

however if the latter is true, than the Collective is truly a techno-fascist ant hive-like society

under the yoke of the Queen(s). The first incarnation as a technocracy based on consensus and

technologically focused “mental” or “spiritual” life is that intermediary level of transhumanism

before truly reaching a “posthuman dignity” (Bostrom, 2005), into which the other faction, the

“philosophizing zombie” ought to evolve.

6 If we consider Leonard Süsskind’s “holographic universe” theorem, to which he himself gave a strict string theory

argumentation, that our “reality” is merely a 3D projection of a 2D universe (Susskind, 1995), than the term “reality” itself

becomes almost comical. Imagine, if “reality” is “virtual”, then what of what is unreal even in our “virtual” “reality”, like for

instance religions? 7 Regarding this point, the works of Vilayanur Ramachandran are a recommended must, especially “Phantoms in the Brain:

Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind”, William Morrow Paperbacks, NY, 1999

There is, however, another aspect why this background programming is very relevant to our

discourse: the Borg view complete disembodiment as absolute perfection – O, how „spiritual” of

these supposedly „mindless” and „soulless” beings! In this regard the difference between a

drone’s day-to-day reality and virtual, background „spiritual” life could be seen as a form of

downloading its own consciousness and recreating and experiencing itself within a virtual

matrix, a virtual mainframe within a machine – plans within plans, minds within minds, to

reference Frank Herbert’s „Dune Chronicles”. Let’s suppose that even the separation of a drone’s

consciousness from its body could be achieved: if so, one of transhumanism’s greatest goal,

technological and virtual immortality could be achieved, since this disembodied – and hence

from a Borg’s point of view perfected – consciousness would be freely down- and uploadable

from and to any carrier medium, which allows it to survive beyond the limits of our ever

decaying, limited and mortal biological zombie-forms.

Let’s get to know this zombie-form as well, since it too presents various problems and

challenges that should be addressed with the outmost gravity, even solemnity.

3. Axolotl tanks as final happiness: into the zombified flesh vats of desire

Now that I introduced the Borg, let’s turn our attention to what I mean by philosophizing

zombie. I will depart from the notion of the philosophical zombie, but I will reinterpret it half-

way in a different light, which in a later part of the essay will show just how very different they

are from the supposed mindlessness of the Collective. As a terminus technicus, a philosophical

zombie is a hypothetical entity that is quite indistinguishable from a normal human being, save

for three aspects of the utmost importance: they lack 1.) conscious experience, 2.) qualia and

finally 3.) sentience. (Kirk, 2009) Hence, I was a bit misleading when I equated the zombie with

its film counterpart, the rotting undead, although one could say that the philosophical zombie is

rotting on an abstract level, existing only in a physical realm, all conceptual activity reduced to

the bare minimum, or even non-existence. However, there is one important aspect I shall borrow

from the “film zombie” and incorporate it into my conception of the “philosophical zombie”.

In George A. Romero’s “Living Dead” films it is theorized very early on, that because the

zombies are undead creatures, beings that literally died, but keep on going, as a consequence of

the brain damage suffered after death due to the oxygen deprivation, their abstract thinking is

severely reduced to the bare minimum of motor functions and basic instincts of going after

anything that might constitute nourishment (mostly human flesh, there is no example of a

vegetarian zombie, which is in and of itself a commentary on humanity (homo homini lupus),

Romero going as far as having a flesh devouring Krishna-follower zombie, whom naturally are

vegetarians). Zombies, being already dead in this fictional world, can go on indefinitely until the

point of complete decay of either the brain tissue or the muscles, tendons and so on. In the

second film of the “Living Dead” series, “Dawn of the Dead”, the plot takes place – mostly – in

an abandoned shopping mall filled with zombies mindlessly and endlessly shuffling, pushing,

shoving around the empty corridors, moaning and attacking anything that might be considered

edible flesh. The setting is not coincidental since “Dawn of the Dead” is meant to be a social

commentary on consumerism, but there is a much deeper underlying aspect to the character of

the mindless zombie8. In “Dawn of the Dead” seeing the zombies, the main characters (since the

zombies are not conscious beings, they cannot be called antagonists, which disposition requires a

consciously acting agent, the main characters cannot be called protagonists either) theorize that

the zombies, having lost most of their higher mental functions and abstract reasoning, are merely

reenacting their last emotional impulses and memories that used to make them happy when they

were alive – i.e.: shopping in the movie, but I say this can be separated from shopping and

applied to a number of other activities as well, but the particulars are of little interest to us: what

matters is the reason for their acting so.

This is where I shall leave the standard technical sense of the philosophical zombie behind,

since we are getting into something altogether different. If I translate “philosophical zombie”

into my Hungarian native language, two different possibilities arise: 1.) either “filozófiai zombi”

i.e.: a zombie within the framework and jargon of a philosophical discipline (the standard notion

used in the philosophy of mind) and 2.) “filozófikus zombi”, i.e.: a zombie that he/she

himself/herself engages in some form of severely reduced philosophizing, or pseudo-philosophy.

This latter interpretation is the one where the standard notion of the philosophical zombie and the

film zombie converge and mutate to retch out of their fetid cocoon the horror of what I shall

henceforth call the “philosophizing zombie”, the modern man that reduced itself to a bare

minimum of abstract, conceptual thought. What does this modicum of philosophy concern itself

8 Romero’s other “Living Dead” films address the following themes: “Night of the Living Dead” satirizes the ethnic hatred of the

60’s, as mentioned above “Dawn of the Dead” is a commentary on consumerism, “Day of the Dead” elaborates on the most of

the times dubious relation of science and the military and finally “Land of the Dead” is a dead-on dissection of class conflict.

with? In one sentence: within the character of the philosophizing zombie, the philosophical

zombie tries to legitimize the maximizing of the pleasure principle of the relentlessly hungry film

zombie, in other words: this philosophizing that this zombie engages in is explicitly reduced to a

few basic notions because the creature itself and its singular thought circles are severely reduced

to the single-minded endeavor of fulfilling the pleasure principle and nothing but the pleasure

principle. One could even argue that the philosophizing zombie is the locus or the focal point of

all ideology in the modern era. The reason for this is simple: this creature in itself is a focal point

of everything that it considers to make it happy, “fulfilled”, but this same principle is the focal

point and locus of each and all ideologies, since first and foremost each and every ideology

promises happiness and fulfillment to those that it subjectifies (this is the reason Foucault

theorized that the notion of “subjectivity” in and of itself must be cast aside once and for all,

since it denotes nothing else, but being submissive towards one or another strategy of one or

another form of power (Foucault, 1982), just as Deleuze and Guattari theorized the

“schizophrenization” of the “I” as an absolute necessary undertaking (Deleuze, Guattari, 1972),

and as various other theoreticians explored: there is never anything outside of ideology (Žižek,

2012)). This can be easily identified by the reductionist and circular reasoning and vocabulary of

this mumbling brute: “I just want a little happiness” (a “little”, but constantly, like SOMA-

addicts in Huxley’s Brave New World), “I just want to be happy” (a vision so narrow that

compared to it the technological and epistemological “single mindedness” of the Borg Collective

is an open field of possibilities), “I cannot function/live without x/y/z”, where x, y or z can be

substituted for whatever that might make the zombie “happy”, “feel alive” or “functional” and so

on and so on. Two basic assumption can be drawn from this: first, that this creature is desire and

want made manifest in itself, it has no other principle, no other goal, nothing, simply the singular

purpose of a bio-automaton that constantly and relentlessly lives out its most basic urges and

desires, without a thought to or about anything else and second that it has no other concepts or

notions to describe its existence and its surroundings but those that take it closer to living out its

most basic urges, instincts and desires, i.e.: a hopelessly and helplessly reduced vocabulary of

trivialities of happiness and evidences of supposed “everyday knowledge” or “street-cred” about

one form or another of laughable “anti-theory” “real life” nonsense.9 It is also worth noting, that

9 In recent decades this cropped up even in social scientific circles which most of the time take one form or another of statistical

fetishism, meaning: take two statistics, derive a superficial correlation, base on it a conclusion that is such a truism that any

this being is incapable of conceiving existence outside the strains of desire that it is willfully

subject to and it is a true or pure subject, in that it is something that is below (sub-) the flows of

desire, it is par excellence the walking embodiment of the Body without Organs (Deleuze,

Guattari, 1972), i.e.: in our case a body without conceptual thought, however, it is not incapable

of conceiving existence outside its boundaries because there is no existence outside the limits its

vague pursuit of undefined happiness bestows upon the zombie, but simply because it has no

abstract, conceptual tools to realize the framework necessary to – so to say – climb above the

flows of desire upon the surface of the BwO.

To summarize: these philosophizing zombies are not literally living dead, they merely exhibit

the traits of the living dead – mindlessness, absence of higher mental functions (in a way, since

the rarely used frontal lobe of the beings is structurally higher in the brain than the thalamus),

complete lack of will and so on. They are what I would say hedonists are: barely living

legitimizers of complete and pure desire, without any form of capable strategy of resistance and a

complete and utter lack of any self-discipline to counter their urges. Bear in mind: when I mean

hedonists, I do not mean the colloquial “everyman”, that hypothetical being, who is always

derided – even by these hedonists – for living without having any other goals, but their desires,

since only a small difference can be delimited: the hedonists consider their desires to be above

the desires of these “everymen in pubs, bars, always drinking, partying, having sex, ‘having a

life’”. In this paradigm I set out, there is no difference between these two categories: whoever

sets desire and the pleasure derived from fulfilling this desire above and before any other goal he

or she may have, is a hedonist10. The difference is small, but meaningful: the “everyman”

supposed by the hedonists, has no other goal, but living out his or her desires, while the hedonist

per se, has other goals, but sets living his or her desires as a goal before any other goal – singular

versus multiplicity subdued to a singular, as I said: small, but meaningful difference. As I see it,

both are zombies, the only difference is, that only the hedonists are philosophizing – i.e.

legitimizing their conduct – while the “everyman” simply carries out what his or her desire

demanding person would shy away from it, write an article showcasing more truisms and BOOM: you got “real life”, “street-

cred”, “pragmatic” “anti-theory”. For “the people” of course, who else? 10 Some people might consider the outdated „every living being strives for happiness” nonsense worthy of discussion, I however

find it not only trivial, but false on many counts into which I will not delve here since it is not our aim in this essay. I shall only

give one example: most people consider sex and reproduction to be „natural urges”, while those with a minimum of self-

discipline consider these to be merely „natural possibilites, eventualities, or even contingencies”. Much the same is true of

happiness, of which’s pursuit can be merely eventual if one’s goals lead them into suffering, sacrifice and destitution. Also: my

contrasting of sexual pleasure and self-discipline has nothing to do with religion, or „religious ascetism”. In this regard see Žižek:

„Why be happy when you could be interesting?”: http://www.lacan.com/thesymptom/?page_id=2699

necessitates and in this regard the philosophizing zombies are way worse than the “everyday

zombies”. Both are pure desire and helplessness in the face of desire made manifest, only

difference is that the philosophizing zombies try – and sadly most of the times manage – to

verbally swindle themselves out of a paradoxical state that should be overcome (let us not go so

far as to delve upon Nietzsche’s axiom of “Man is something that shall be overcome”, lest we

will have to go back as far as Diogenes and Socrates to see that the overcoming of man, through

whatever means possible and necessary is hardly a (post)modern current of thought, not to

mention the amount of information needed for deliberating the connection between the

philosophical overcoming of man and tekhne, i.e.: technology, art, craft, in other words: the

whole of culture at man’s disposal for his own betterment) (Nietzsche, 1961; Plato, 1989, 2013;

Diogenes, 2012).

As another take or departure, let’s recount what Axolotl Tanks (or “flesh vats”) are in Frank

Herbert’s “Dune Chronicles” – this will be a minor digression, since these entities are not

zombies in the sense we have been using the term up until now, but they can be considered

zombies on numerous levels and from various points of view, and they also pose a very

interesting analogy for desiring-production in the deleuzian sense. In the Dune universe the

fictional race of highly advanced, but unscrupulous bioengineers of Bene Tleilax, the Tleilaxu,

use these flesh vats, living vat-like organisms for creating “gholas”, their form of cloning a living

human being from the cells of a dead one: the dead cells are introduced into this creature, which

in turn nurses and grows it as a kind of disconnected, but living uterus11. In a sense the Tleilaxu

are cold and calculating merchants, replicating anyone, from a deceased lover for a grieving

widow to an emperor replica for a scheming politician and it is precisely at this point that we can

tie them into our elaboration. The Tleilaxu are merchants of desire, who can be analogous to any

form of economic system whereby there is a demand (desire) and supply (conditioned and

external satisfaction of desire), while the Axolotl flesh vats are themselves desiring-production,

11 Two interesting references can be made here: first, the fact that axolotl amphibians can regenerate most of their limbs and other

bodyparts (Weird Creatures with Nick Baker (Television series). Dartmoor, England, U.K.: The Science Channel. 2009-11-11.

Event occurs at 00:25.), and second, the aztec creation myth, according to which, the world was created and annihilated several

times over. When the current world was brought into being, Quetzalcoatl needed the bones of the previous race of humans in

order to create the current form of humanity. In one version of the myth, Xolotl helps Quetzalcoatl trick Mictlantecuhtli, ruler of

the land of the dead, into giving up the bones. Quetzalcoatl uses these bones to create the present generation of humanity

(Douglas, David (2009). The Altlas of Lost Cults and mystery religions. Godsfield Press. pp. 34–35.). This can be seen as

analogous to the way the Tleilaxu use the axolotl tanks and gholas to cheat death and achieve a kind of immortality by implant a

consciousness into newer and newer bodies, over and over again, which is a main theme of almost all currents of transhumanist

thought.

“who” not only supply the desired person, but through this also reinforce desire/demand, since

the applications of cloning and even creating distinct beings is close to limitless. These flesh vats

are – so to say – a hedonist zombie’s best friend for they can endlessly (re)supply them with

desire (re)produced on an economic and (bio) industrial scale. One more item of information

needs our attention, albeit a somewhat controversial, but none the less important one.

In „Heretics of Dune”, the Bene Gesserit Lady Janet notes to her son Miles Teg that "No one

outside of the Tleilaxu planets has ever reported seeing a Tleilaxu female." (Herbert, 1984, pp.

67) Wondering whether the Tleilaxu breed or simply rely on the tanks to reproduce, Miles asks,

"Do they exist or is it just the tanks?" Janet confirms that females do indeed exist. Later in

Heretics, Teg's own daughter, Reverend Mother Darwi Odrade, theorizes that the axlotl tanks

may be, in fact, "surrogate mothers" — Tleilaxu females somehow transformed through

unspeakable political and technological oppression. Soon, the „current” Duncan Idaho ghola,

who was reborn countless times during Leto II’s 3500 years of reign, recalls his repeated "births"

from the tanks: "The axolotl tanks! He remembered emerging time after time: bright lights and

padded mechanical hands. The hands rotated him and, in the unfocused blurs of the newborn, he

saw a great mound of female flesh — monstrous in her almost immobile grossness ... a maze of

dark tubes linked her body to giant metal containers". (Herbert, 1984, pp. 426.) This, instead of

being viewed as misogynist on Herbert’s part, is clearly on one hand a criticism of

(ultra)conservative views that relegate women to role of nothing more, but the reproductive

organ of the state and its subjects, and on the other a criticism of women who endorse their own

oppression for whatever reason: the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, a religious order with a

membership exclusively of women, full knowing the nature of the axolotl tanks, still maintain

and use a number of these for furthering their own ends.

The zombie is not unlike these flesh vats, they too are desiring-production made manifest, the

only real difference is, that the zombies are not universally female, and that the zombies are

capable of movement, while the Tleilaxu females have been technologically reduced to an

amorphous opening, remiscent of a vagina and a uterus beyond that, all the while, as it is clearly

declared by the Honored Matres, remaining fully conscious of their state12. It is a horrifying

dystopia to say the least, an extreme overabundance of desiring-production infused with the most

12 The return of the „Honored Matres”, liberated axolotl tanks gradually re-evolved into Tleilaxu females and their crusade

against the Tleilaxu males, „the Masters”, is an analogy of the feminist movements of Herbert’s times.

reactionary and grossly sickening politics taken to their farthest possible conclusions, especially

if we take into context, that the flesh vats are exclusively female and their masters are

exclusively male, thereby Herbert signifying that the female, the woman herself is both the

object and the reproducer of the male’s, the man’s desire, as Bataille noted in so far as she is

attractive, a woman is always the object of man’s desire (Bataille, 2012) – in this case, the flesh

vats are not generally speaking beautiful, but this is Herbert’s greatest point, for precisely

through this he shows us, that in desire, not the desired person is central and important, but desire

itself, the process of desiring desire, i.e. „desiring-production”, or (re)producing desire on an

industrial scale (Deleuze and Guattari, 2009).

4. Flesh vats in the Unimatrix: ravenous hunger and logical consumption

These two factions represent diametrically opposing forms of consumption. Though there are

some similarities in the way they consume their chosen sustenance, there are far more

differences in not just their methods, but their aim as well, than common elements.

Both factions consume some type of sustenance and information. The Borg consume

electricity as sustenance and information as a goal, while the philosophizing zombie – remember:

this is not the undead zombie from the horror movies – consumes whatever it regards as a

fulfillment of its desire, that being not its main, but one and only, single goal. Second, and here

the similarities end, both factions have a total and absolute goal: for the Borg, it is perfection

through absolute disembodiment, for the philosophizing zombie, it is the fulfillment of its

absolute desire through whatever means necessary, over and over again, but mostly biological,

culinary and/or recreational activities, without any conceptual, higher reasoning.

First and foremost there is a radical demarcation line between Borg assimilation and zombie

consumption – the difference here is not coincidental: assimilation presupposes a logic, a clearly

delineated methodology, aim and attitude towards both the process of assimilation on and what is

to be assimilated, while simple consumption only presupposes the consumption of anything and

everything that might temporarily satiate the zombie’s relentless and uncompromising desire-

hunger. This difference can be clearly seen in the two aspects of the Borg: first, they do not

assimilate any life-form which is considered either technologically, or culturally unsophisticated,

and second, the Borg do not engage anyone with aggression who they do not perceive as a threat,

in other words: assimilation is a clearly conceptualized, highly sophisticated method of only

“consuming” that which is necessary for the continued evolution of the Borg, while the

philosophizing, hedonist zombie truly mindlessly consumes everything and anything from which

it can derive pleasure, the satisfaction of desire and so on, without a further aim, a goal beyond

that of living from one pleasure or desire to the next, without any purpose of recreating oneself in

a better form, without any evolution proposed to overcome oneself, both physically, mentally,

technologically or any way conceivable. Now some of our more unsophisticated brethren might

say that the Borg act as such since they desire to be perfect, but I argue desire has nothing to do

with anything regarding the Borg. For this to be true, that the Borg desire anything, let alone

perfection, it would mean that they are sado-masochistic, since as it is amply demonstrated

through various examples assimilation can be tremendously painful and overwhelmingly

traumatizing13. Two examples: when one is assimilated into the Collective normally, almost

universally, one eye and one upper limb are replaced with implants, not to mention the internal

organs. In Star Trek: First Contact, but also in The Best of Both Worlds I-II we see that this

procedure is carried out while the subject is conscious and without any pain suppressant method

or medication. Another example and a very illuminating one comes from Best of Both Worlds,

especially part two, in which we see that after assimilating Captain Picard, the Borg use his

knowledge to account for any attack or defense the Federation attempts, and thus Picard is

responsible for the deaths of more than 11.000 men and women, a whole fleet of Federation

ships. After he is liberated, the crew asks how much he remembers, to which he replies:

everything. This clearly shows that Borg perfection does not work on the structural level of

desire, since they do not have the desire for pleasure, nor for avoiding any pain or hardship (i.e.

the opposites of desire for pleasure) in attaining their goal – yes, attaining perfection could be

painful, could be even traumatizing, but it is worth it and knowing the Borg, they could be even

doing this for “future generations” of Borg who will not have to endure the hardships of today’s

Borg since by then, thanks for today’s sacrifices which lead to a potentially infinite knowledge,

the methods might become completely benign – but in and of itself, this is completely marginal,

the goal lies elsewhere for them.

13 Not to mention that sado-masochism is a level of desire so amplified to its most radical extreme that it could never be

associated with the calculated techno-scientific pursuits of the Borg. The philosophizing zombies on the other hand...well, their

actions speak for themselves and you need not look further than a „normal”, „everyday” realtionship. This is not saying that sado-

masochism does not have a logic of its own, but it is nowhere near to what the Borg exhibit. On this note, see: Gilles Deleuze and

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch: „Masochism: coldness and cruelty and Venus in Furs”, Zone Books, Cambridge, 1991.

Regarding flexibility and single mindedness, it is well known that within the Star Trek

universe the Borg are the most versatile adapters, who are capable to adapt to almost any

circumstance within seconds, but at the most: a few minutes. From the “simple” task of adapting

their shields to the frequency of an assailant’s energy weapons, up to the point, as mentioned

above, to being able to survive in the vacuum of space, as it can be seen in First Contact, when

they modify Enterprise’s “deflector dish” to contact the Collective, this high adaptability is a

direct consequence of the Borg’s main goal of assimilating all technology and knowledge, since

as this potentially infinite knowledge is being amassed, it yields a potentially infinite

understanding of all existing phenomena and thus a potentially infinite adaptability to all and

every circumstance. The philosophizing zombie is the complete opposite of this: it only adapts

and evolves to the point it needs to reach to satisfy its relentless hunger, its ravenous desire and

once it is satisfied it lapses back into a state of mindless apathy until its desire is riled up again –

a cycle of feeding, a few hours at best. The Borg do not give in to such apathy, as it is well

known that even when regenerating, and even within Unimatrix 0, they still perform both

maintenance and regenerative functions outside in the “real world”. They are relentless – and this

might be their only common trait with the zombie – but they are relentless in the pursuit of

knowledge, information, techno-scientific and mental evolution14, but not in the satisfaction of

chtonic desires and instincts. There is a further distinction: through all their flexibility, the Borg

are inflexible in their goal, they hold out until the end, only sacrificing drones when it is

absolutely necessary15 – they could be careless since whatever a drone learns it is instantly

uploaded into the hive mind, thus as long as at least one Borg exists (what a contradiction: “one”

Borg), their infinite knowledge is not lost and is transferable to a sophisticated enough of a

medium. As opposed to this, the zombie is a mindless, spineless shambler, going in all directions

at once and wherever its desire and hunger leads it, without any concise evolutionary direction,

without a shred of conceptualized goal or a modicum of self-discipline and without a thought

14 Emotions – both „normally” as we live them now and as the Borg might live them purely consciously in Unimatrix 0 – are

mental phenomena, so no matter how strongly some would want to separate emotions from mental capabilities (for instance

rationality and logic most of the time), and associate them with the well known “just feel it” or “not utterable” non-sense, they

have only to do with the mind, and thus the brain (and language!). But nothing with the heart, or any other organ for that matter. 15 Note the ending of „The Best of Both Worlds” where the hive mind destructs the Cube only when it realizes that an external,

malware command has been introduced into the drones’ background programming in that particular Cube. This can also mean

that any one or more sections of the hive mind, meaning as few as one („Hugh”, in „I, Borg”) up to as much as 130.000 drones,

the standard crew compliment of a Cube, can be isolated, as a form of autoimmunity, to counter-effect any infection or

contamination.

sacrifices everything and everyone – even friends and family – to attain the satisfaction of its

desire.

Because the zombie gives in to its most base desires and instincts and the Borg does not, it is

said, of course not of zombies and Borgs, but about people resembling them or their attitudes,

that the world of the Borg is bleak, “colorless”, bitter and so on. Due to their mental flexibility,

I’d say that the opposite is true: for the potentially infinite knowledge the Borg strive to acquire

deepens their comprehension and appreciation of all existing phenomena, their world is more

colorful than anybody else’s16, while the world of the desire-zombie, subjected to the single-

mindedness of pleasure, satisfying desire is truly bleak, since whenever this pleasure, this desire

fails to be satisfied, such a grey and apathetic melancholy or even depression sets in, that it

incapacitates it for weeks, month or even years to come17 and even if it is satisfied, it can be

argued that the potentially infinite knowledge of the Borg ensures them an unimaginable variety

far beyond anything a philosophizing zombie could ever even begin to dream of, not to mention

understand. Furthermore: the discipline of the Borg-like attitude, being able to control and focus

one’s urges could be read as a form of absolute freedom insofar as it breaks “Nature’s” singular

purpose of reproduction through the overriding tool of linking this reproduction with desire.

Whenever one speaks of desire and does not specify its precise meaning, simply because of

the perceptions of today’s overly libidinal society, it is automatically assumed that one is

speaking or erotic or sexual desire, although there are hundreds upon hundreds of other forms

desire may take. In „Erotism: Death & Sensuality” George Bataille notes the following: „I do

not think that man has much chance of throwing light on the things that terrify him before he has

dominated them. Not that he should hope for a world in which there would be no cause for fear,

where eroticism and death would be on the level of a mechanical process. But man can surmount

the things that frighten him and face them squarely.” (Bataille, 1986, pp. 7) This quote is crucial

for us in a number of ways. To begin with, the first and second sentences both show the fears

16 Note Richard Feynman’s opinion that scientific understanding not impoversihes, but on the contrary: enriches human

consciousness, giving the example that when you look at a flower, without scientific knowledge you only have a superficial

aesthetic view, while if you are scientifically literate, while still being capable of truly appreciating aesthetics, can look beyond it

as well, reaching a far deeper, far richer, far more complex experience of all existing things, which include both aesthetics and

techno-scientific information (Richard Feynman: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, Perseus Books, NY ,1999). Many a times I

heard this „explanations take away something from the explained” excuse from many people, but whenever questioned, they fail

to give an answer as to what this something might be, most of the times it boils down into some more „just felt”, „not

explainable” Coelho-level non-sense. Although I respect Feynman very much, all the while talking of the pleasure of finding

things out, his disdain for anything the „analytic community” might label „humanities” was disappointing. 17 If we mentioned relationships above, consider how a break up – i.e., the impossibility of further satisfying sexual and social

desire – incapacitates most of those who are involved, yes, in some cases for years to come.

people have regarding the Borg: that their world is bleak, mechanical, „colorless” (whatever that

means if you are not truly colorblind), they are inflexible, cannot be reasoned with and all other

excuses I took ample time to dismantle. The Unimatrix 0 background program guarantees as

colorful a world as a drone can imagine, whatever, wherever in any condition or circumstance

supplemented by the complexity their ever growing and potentially infinite understanding

guarantees, and we are at the core of what they learned from assimilated Vulcans: infinite

diversity in infinite combinations. Interestingly enough, the third, and last, sentence accurately

describes the attitude of the Borg, since it is the Collective who dauntlessly and head on face

everything they might encounter, fearful or not, regardless of pleasure and pain, only having

knowledge and collective evolution (which, of course, explicitly contains within itself personal

evolution as well) set as the goal. One could even go as far as saying that in this regard, the Borg,

of all (pseudo)species, has an ethical standpoint – self-betterment which is an integral part of a

collective betterment18 without any form of tribal or sectarian non-sense, the Borg being

transspecies, i.e. transnational and transpolitical as well, undoubtedly is a huge evolutionary step

compared to our current state of affairs – the whole goal of transhumanist ethics is ending pain,

war, suffering, disease and so on: all things that the Borg have achieved at some point at least

within their own culture19.

As a closing statement, I wish to include a small passage from Jacques Derrida’s „The

Politics of Friendship”. Referencing this work is not coincidental, since in the „Unimatrix 0”

episode the Borg Queen tells a child drone: „Assimilation makes us all friends” and Derrida’s

complex analyses of the connections between friendship and love, friend-ethos, knowledge,

philosophy, truth and politics greatly resounds with transhumanism and in my view with some

aspects of the Borg as well. It is a passage about Nietzsche’s „philosophers of the future”, yes,

those into which we all must evolve, still after all these years after the death of Nietzsche.

Thinkers and philosophers of the future, into which the presently erotic-desiring-philosophizing

zombie, must evolve: „These philosophers of the future (diese Philosophen der Zukunft) that

18 Locutus of Borg, the assimilated Jean-Luc Picard, even states it to Lt. Commander Worf in „The Best of Both Worlds” after

examining him: „Why do you resist? We only want to raise quality of life for all species.”, Worf snaps back: „I like my species

the way it is!”, to which Locutus/Picard rightfully and laconically replies: „A narrow vision.” (This could be the depletive form

of debate between a trans/posthumanist and a luddite.) 19 Not to mention the fact – which will be elaborated in another essay – that the Borg, using their collective hive mind, are

capable of both healing the organic wounds of their drones and repairing their damaged mechanical parts, since it is not simply a

transfer of thought, but a transfer of energy as well, realized and amplified by their “neural processor”. A horizon with

tremendous possibilities.

Nietzsche says are coming will also be free spirits, 'very free' spirits (freie, sehr freie Geister).

But through this superlative or surplus of freedom, they will also be something greater and

other, something altogether other, fundamentally other (Grundlich-Anders). As for what will be

fundamentally other, I will say that the philosophers of the future will be at once both its figure

and its responsibility (although Nietzsche does not put it in this way). Not because they will

come, if they do, in the future, but because these philosophers of the future already are

philosophers capable of thinking the future, or carrying and sustaining the future - which is to

say, for the metaphysician allergic to the 'perhaps', they will be capable of enduring the

intolerable, the undecidable and the terrifying." (Derrida, 2005, pp. 36-37).

This passage, my friends (there are no friends!), bears witness to the Borg as a whole:

absolutely and purely conscious and conceptual, philosophers to the utmost logical conclusion

that term entails, fundamentally „other” and alien to both present day people, but to present day

philosophers (and even scientists) as well, none the less unimaginably greater on a potentially

infinite scale, bearing the responsibility of both collective and personal evolution, progress,

betterment and raising the quality of life for all encountered cultures and species by displacing

and deterritorializing pain, suffering, sadness, war, disease and so on and finally because through

acquiring a potentially infinite amount of knowledge, they can both think the future and sustain

it. Derrida allows a „perhaps” to figure into his calculations („if they come”) and now I shall

propose a new one: if we are incapable still to become the Borg, when something like the Borg

come, if they come, we should all be on the frontlines – though not in fighting, but allowing

ourselves to be assimilated into an endless pursuit of mental, physical and technological

evolution and perfection. Alas, I say: we should not be waiting for the Borg, or anything like the

Borg, since they are – sadly and obviously – fictional. No, we ourselves, as a species must

become the Borg through technological and psychological evolution.

Resistance, thus, is not merely futile, but also illogical and childish. We are nothing, but raw

material for the possibility – and responsibility – of a posthuman future to be created for those

who will follow in our steps: let this be our Collective Ethics – the sooner we adapt to this

thought, the better. And what of humanity’s and especially the desire-zombie’s most revered trait

of individuality, especially one that does not exist to begin with?20 Compared to an ever

expanding amount of knowledge towards the infinite: individuality is irrelevant.

20 Regarding this, see among many others, but most prominently: Michel Foucault: „The Subject and Power”, in: Critical Inquiry,

Vol. 8, No. 4. (Summer, 1982), pp. 777-795., but also his work on subjectivity in general, and also: Gilles Deleuze/Félix Guattari:

„Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia I”, Penguin Books, London, 2009, Gilles Deleuze/Félix Guattari: “A Thousand

Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia II”, Bloomsbury, London, 2013, Gilles Deleuze: “Logic of Sense”, Bloomsbury, London,

2015, Manuel DeLanda: “A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History”, Zone Books, NY, 2000, Manuel DeLanda: “Intensive

Science and Virtual Philosophy”, Bloomsbury, London, 2013, Tony D Sampson: “The Assemblage Brain: Sense Making in

Times of Neurocapitalism”, Minnesota University Press, MN, 2016. Furthermore: it would be interesting to delve upon the fate,

or even state of the individual artistic practice, for instance, as it is known to us now, within a Borg-like society, but we have

neither the time, nor the space here. Another time perhaps, another “perhaps”.

Bibliography:

1. George Bataille: „Eroticism”, Penguin Modern Classics, London, 2012

2. George Bataille: “Erotism: Death & Sensuality”, City Light Books, CA, 1986

3. Nick Bostrom: “In Defence of Posthuman Dignity”, in: Bioethics, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp.

202-214

4. Manuel DeLanda: “A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History”, Zone Books, NY, 2000

5. Manuel DeLanda: “Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy”, Bloomsbury, London,

2013,

6. Diogenes: „Diogenes the Cynic: Sayings and Anecdotes, with other popular moralists”,

Oxford University Press, CA, 2012

7. Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari: “Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia”, Penguin

Classics, London, 2009

8. Gilles Deleuze and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch: „Masochism: coldness and cruelty and

Venus in Furs”, Zone Books, Cambridge, 1991.

9. Gilles Deleuze: “Logic of Sense”, Bloomsbury, London, 2015,

10. Jacques Derrida: „The Politics of Friendship”, Verso, London, 2005

11. David Douglas: “The Atlas of Lost Cults and mystery religions”, Godsfiled Press,

London, 2009

12. Michel Foucault: “The Subject and Power”, in: Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow:

“Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics”, Chicago: U of Chicago P,

1982. pp. 208-226.

13. Frank Herbert: “Heretics of Dune”, Ace Books, NY, 1984

14. Robert Kirk: “Zombies”, in: Edward N. Zalta: “The Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy”, 2009 edition: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/

15. Friedrich Nietzsche: „Thus spoke Zarathustra: A book for Everyone and No One”,

Penguin Classics, London, 1961

16. Michael Okuda, Denise Okuda, Debbie Mirek: “The Star Trek Encyclopdia”, Pocket

Books/Star Trek Original, 2011

17. Plato: “Symposium”, Hackett Publishing Co., Indianapolis, 1989

18. Plato: “Apology, Crito and Phaedo of Socrates”, CreateSpace Independent Publishing

Platform, 2013

19. Leonard Susskind: “The World as Holograph”, Journal of Mathematical Physics 36 (11):

6377–6396.,1995

20. Salvoj Žižek (editor): “Mapping Ideology”, Verso Books, London, 2012