COLE GRAY
“To be more than human is to be human.” From what I have come to understand of the Transhumanist movement, its primary objective is nothing less than the complete liberation of the human race from its biological constraints through technology. It is an ideal that looks toward biotechnologies and other emergent technologies as potential catalysts for human enhancement that could eventually lead to a Technological Singularity. This Technological Singularity is a point in time in which technology would allow humanity to finally transcend the limitations of organic life such as age, disease or even death and achieve almost limitless advancements in intellect and civilization. In short, it is perhaps the next step in the evolutionary history of our species.
2.14 “My hobby: Extrapolating.” xkcd: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. July 3, 2009. xkcd is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNoncommercial 2.5 License.
Given the current rate of humanity’s technological expansion, it is not completely unrealistic to guess that the Technological Singularity could happen sometime in the near future. However, such insubstantial speculations on the future accommodate a number of wild assumptions and are ultimately futile. The “future” holds an infinite number of possibilities and trying to guess which course it will take is absolutely impossible. If it does happen in the near future then good for us. If it doesn’t happen, humanity has the rest of eternity to reach it assuming we don’t wipe each other out first. There is a wide array of ethical concerns in regard to the Transhumanism movement, ranging from religious and social issues to political problems. One such claim against Transhumanism involves the religious/secular hubris argument in which the attempt to modify the human body to gain godlike power is seen as a spiritual affront to a real god as an unacceptable risk to artificially guide the course of human evolution considering that we are products of predominantly biological functions. Another argument is the possibility of eugenics wars wrought from notions of genetic/technological superiority between countries or even individuals that could ultimately lead to massive genocide campaigns to cleanse the genetic pool. Finally, there is the perceived threat of dehumanization in which genetic engineering and other human enhancement technologies could produce races of genetic slaves or objectified sub-humans that exist to serve the master genetic race. There are many more arguments against Transhumanism than the three I have just listed but these are the basic contentions against it. As an existentialist I am reluctant to accept any ideals which extol the future. Anything that detracts from the present in hope of something better in the future is just another way of trying to find meaning externally from one’s self that ultimately leads to a dearth in social and individual will power.
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Reality Hackers : Transhuman : Reflections on the transhuman movement