It is highly probable, almost to the point of certainty, that humans originated from animals, a mammal that we can integrate into the family tree of animals as Homo sapiens sapiens. (We may derive such certainty from numerous skeletal discoveries from the Tertiary and Quaternary periods.) We must therefore deem the present nervous human (“Homo immaterialis”) as a type of being that was extracted from this original creature. Here, we will attempt to trace this breed stock, to reconstruct it from the fog of the past.

Animal husbandry probably commences in the twentieth century because back then reality was envisioned for the first time as a network of relationships (as a relational field), and such a worldview is a prerequisite for animal husbandry. Previously, the world appeared as a context of hard lumps (objects)—a perspective we cannot fully comprehend anymore. The primitive, “objective” world view that likely relied on the concrete experience of creatures colliding with creatures and noncreatures, that is, on an objectification of relationships, could no longer be sustained in the twentieth century. Strangely enough, it was the science of bodies, that is, physics, that first manifested the untenability of an objective worldview. In physics, the bodies proved to be relatively densely scattered regions within fields of dispersion. For example, the celestial bodies turned out to be dense scatterings (protrusions, curvatures) in the gravitational field, and the hydrogen atom turned out to be a compaction (groove) in crisscrossing fields of the “strong” and the “weak” force and of electromagnetism. As a result, the objects turned out to be agglomerations of energy, and matter concentrated energy. It was also technically possible to dissolve matter into energy and to concentrate energy into matter. This discovery forced the elimination of the primitive ideological concept object in other areas as well. A few examples will suffice to demonstrate:

Biology (the science of creatures and greenstuff) always contended that its task was to examine organisms (living bodies) as representing biological reality. Then it recognized protrusions (epiphenomena) from the biomass in these organisms, which is to be considered as a field of relations that transmits genetic information. At the same time, it recognized that the organisms themselves function within relational fields (ecosystems) and are not to be considered individual bodies. That allowed for the biomass to be manipulated (to synthesize previously nonexistent organisms from the genetic information), to produce identical organisms (clones), and to program previously nonexistent ecosystems.

Neurophysiology freed itself from the obligation to localize some kind of thought-, sensory-, or decision-making centers in the nervous system (and especially in the brain), and it recognized in the nervous system a relational field in which information (data) gets processed into feelings, thoughts, desires, and decisions. That allowed not only for the disciplined control of mental processes (for example by means of electrodes in the brain), but also and especially for the production of types of artificial intelligence.

Psychology, which long believed that it was dealing with individual psyches, began to discover that the “I” (or “self” or “identity”) is to be viewed as the tip of an iceberg that is constructed out of collective psychic processes, that is, from processes that are transspecific and relate to all living creatures, and not just the human species. It thus recognized in the human “I” (in the “subject”) an epiphenomenal protrusion from a universal field of psychic relations.

Philosophy began to liberate itself from “eternal” problems that had emerged by necessity from the ideology of the “object,” on the one hand, and the human “subject,” on the other, and it recognized in object and subject extrapolated abstractions from the concrete field of relations that Husserl called the lifeworld (Lebenswelt). This facilitated a philosophical perspective of looking closely at the “things themselves,” that is, looking at the network of relationships.

Once the ideology of objects and bodies had made way for a perspective of fields, it became possible to deal with animal husbandry. It was clear from the outset that the human body (this creaturely protrusion from the biomass) is badly constructed (consider disease, pain, death; consider also the limitations of the physical senses and of brain competency). Equally obvious was the fact that one could not be freed from the contingency of the environment as long as the body is dependent on the environment (consider nutrition, clothing), and that it would be a fallacy to expect freedom by manipulating the environment. And it also became obvious that all involvement with “culture” (e.g., storing, processing, and distributing acquired information) is brought into question by the body because acquired information cannot be biologically inherited. Therefore, the decision was soon made to shed the body and become removed from that which is animal, in particular because machines had already taken on most bodily functions anyway, and most experiences (from imagination to orgasm) could be simulated without mediation by the body (for example, by drugs).

A significant challenge was the shedding of individuality, this “I-core,” once considered solid and called the soul. Clinging to this corporeal remnant seemed prudent (for reasons unclear today), even though existential analysis had already demonstrated that the “I” is that node in the social network which we address with “you” (because you can only identify yourself in relation to others), and even though telematic technology had already analyzed this interconnectedness. But, in the end, this “self”-ideology was left behind as well, and animal husbandry was under way. Now things appear as follows:

A network of nerve fibers surrounds the Earth and Mars. It swims in a nutrient solution, constantly synthesizing new information in its synapses. And we are the undulations of the network swaying in harmony: nervous humans, Homines immateriales—movements of love bred from animals.