This shift seems to have happened from the mid-90s on, arguably, but it is very noticeable since maybe the mid-2000s. And you see it in everything, from kids’ shows to adult series to films.
What I mean is, in classical literature and fairy tales, generally supernatural beings want to become human. Gods and demigods don’t, I guess, but most other beings, and indeed most anthropomorphic animals, do.
This carries over into most early and mid-Disney stuff, from The Jungle Book through to Tarzan and The Little Mermaid. Obviously most of that is based on earlier stories. And then..? Shit went the opposite way.
First we had Felix the Cat and Brother Bear, and obviously “mutants” in comic series, and it seems to have ever-expanded from there, to the point where vampirism and lycanthropy for example are seen as less a curse or punishment, and more “a gaining of powers”…
One good example, perhaps, is to compare the original Grimm fairytales to the ridiculous tv show they made, supposedly “based” on those stories. Or Supernatural, similarly. Or Prometheus vs Alien. Or, for another slant, Bicentennial Man and AI vs something like Humans or Deus Ex Machina…
To me, at least, this is a very noticeable trend, across both fantasy (in particular) and sci fi, and it seems to carry with how obsessed people are now with mutilating their bodies, “transcending” gender and race and all that sort of shit…
Also noteworthy that we’ve gone from curing disabilities, in fiction, to portraying becoming disabled as a positive thing, and a form of “superpower”, rather than the thoroughly net-negative experience it usually is…
They even do that shit in kids’ programming, now, too…
So yeah, just something else be noticed and have been thinking about…
Bran Stoker be rolling in his grave…
I guess you could argue this all ties back in to our desire, now, as a society, to feel “special” and “different”, and to be “recognized”, but I do not see it as the sign of a healthy, self-respecting civilization, imho…
The elite in charge hate humanity. Every action they take and the media they promote and consume suggests this.
Take Jewish author, Yuval Harari, who wrote the book Sapiens. That book is promoted everywhere and Yuval has been invited out to speak at very significant events including the UN and WEF, etc... if you've read the book, it's clear that Yuval has a total and complete disdain for humanity. I have never read something more soulless in my life. Yet our elite celebrate this.
Another great example of the total disdain for humanity is the theology surrounding the Frankfurt School whose ideas were mostly founded by Carl Grünberg, a Jewish man, which was that the forefather of modern Social Justice and Critical Theory. The ideas at the core essentially being that all differences among humans is due to oppression from one group to another thereby ignoring all innate differences between groups of humans and pitting all humans against one another as oppressor or oppressed. This ideology is seen by our elites as ideal who've enshrined it into law by way of "Human Rights" which makes it illegal to make decisions to your own benefit which considers differences between groups of humans as being due to the nature of humans rather than due to oppression. The elite absolutely despise the fact that there are differences between humans because that is what being human means and they push this ideology on everyone that essentially makes it illegal to recognize differences as anything different than being caused by oppression. So when people point out what it truly means to be human, the elite get angry because they dislike humanity.
It would seem the elite have an ideal of what they want humanity to be that is actually in opposition to what humans truly are and because of this the elite hate humanity and anything that recognizes the truth of what humans are.
Is this just not due to technocracy transhumanist agenda? Supported by the hatred from the depopulation agenda.
I think this is more about the victim status and the need to signal rather than transhumanist.
But yes the modern story telling is going towards that humanity is lacking the spark or whatever you want to call it and towards transcending it.
The Omnissiah wills it, haha
I don't hate Alex Jones or anything, but I wish it had been someone else that had really popularized the term "anti-human agenda."
Because there absolutely fucking is an anti-human agenda, but now it's tainted by being an "insane conspiracy theory."
I think a lot of that has to do with how we have elevated non-human existences into Godlike perfection. Even the concept of a God that is amazingly perfect is part of that issue, as it used to be that their perfection and power is what made Gods envy or want to be humans in stories. The flaws and weakness is what made humanity enviable, because it represented freedom to learn and grow and become more.
Now non-humans are constantly presented as superior because they lack those flaws. Animals are "closer to nature" which means they are more "pure" and thereby good. Creatures aren't saddled with the capacity for evil like humans are because they are "acting on instinct" or just not interested in the things that make humans "bad" like money or rapey sex (as compared to the beauty of no-strings hippy type sex). And lesser races don't get involved in capitalism and landlords so thereby they are just overall better and we should aspire to be like them.
And while you can see a lot of the obvious politics at play in it, I think most of it is organically grown. Because people are so plugged into themselves and others, because we don't need to spend 16 hours a day working just to survive anymore, that they are constantly staring at their flaws until they become pronounced and unignorable. The same way if you spend all fucking day with your girl you'll start to notice her little annoying imperfections until they begin to legitimately bother you for no good reason.
So once they have become obsessed with the failings of their own humanity, they can only think about the alternatives and the desire to escape them. Think the meme speech from the Mechanicus boys in 40k. But that's a problem basically the world over now. Its why isekai is the biggest genre in Japan, its why both sides of the political spectrum are obsessed with going off grid and living like the older civilizations did.
Which of course means that its ripe for being exploited by people with legitimate hate of humanity and desire to manipulate it for evil.
It’s notable that in many of these shows and movies, being human is portrayed as “a weakness”.
That seems to be a recurring theme in children’s programming now, too. But obviously it’s there in everything from X-Men to Grimm to the Australian show Glitch (about people coming back from the dead, lol). And instead of humans proving their worth by fighting back, and overcoming the supposedly “superior” others, the characters turn themselves into the monsters, instead, to gain “powers”…
I would be fairly confident this is a deliberate, if not necessarily always conscious, trend…
And also the portrayal of the humans is always some innuendo for racism. X-Men is the most obvious example. Oh no, they hate us because they're racist. But the same goes for True blood and numerous other IPs.
In Greek mythology many Gods did envy humans. Same is implied in Christianity, with Lucifer being jealous of the love God has for humans, his favorite creation. Or how angels/gods desired humans so badly they mated with them and created nephilim/ demigods.
In Pinocchio he wanted to be a real boy and the evil powers tried to pervert him and the other boys into animals.
So historically yes, the narrative was that being human was good. Now the trend has reversed in media as well as in real life. Furries for example. Or being a human is so bad you should kill unborn babies to spare them the curse of human existence. Or kill yourself.
I won't pretend to know the explanation for the shift, but a couple observations:
My dad got a hip replacement a few years ago, and the doctors told him it would outlive him. Got me thinking if at some point we'll just start pro-actively replacing certain high-wear joints with sturdier artificial versions.
Also possibly relevant: the left kinda lost their shit with George W Bush (particularly his re-election) and the Wars. Less than Trump certainly, but it did result in an attitude of general disappointment in humanity for "dumb" people existing in large enough numbers to elect him.
... support Covid lockdowns, mask mandates, socialist distancing, and "vaccine" mandates?
Faith in humanity destroyed.
Yeah so far this has been a bad millennium to be a Classical Humanist.
Gen Z and future generations will be very confused as to how we could have been so naïve. Had to have been there.
The elite want everyone else to be Mechanicus Adeptus.
As a side-note, I hate how the delusional fad of tannyism got mixed in with sci-fi inspired transhumanism. With New Age, we got ritualistic women with make-believe magic beads. Right now, we got some severe cognitive dissonance and willful ignorance going on with the physical realities of genital mutilation. We've got to accept it, else be charged with the high treason of bigotry. The real societal upheaval when we have the biomedical technology, or AI+robotics, to transcend modern humanity has no substantial relation to the barbaric, pseudo-scientific fad Western society entertains today. To repeat for emphasis, sci-fi or fairy-tale sex-changes thoroughly alter the body's composition to actually change the person's sex.