Transhumanism: What Is It?
"A philosophical movement that advocates for the transformation of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellect and physiology."
Those of us who are paying attention cannot fail to be horrified by some prominent people excited by the possibility of transhumanism, those thinking that they are shortly to become a superrace (with prior testing of methodology on lesser mortals), positioned above the people who have remained simply human.
There is prima facie a lot inherently wrong with the idea of transhumanism. It is likely to make those tampering with their genes and body cells very ill. It is likely to be irreversible and have huge repercussions on other life on our planet. It is likely to affect future generations, whether by limiting fertility or by passing on disastrously faulty genes - both are possible. The RNA-DNA-altering Covid-19 vaccine on the horizon has necessitated a terrifying plandemic in order for enough people to consider the future DNA-altering vaccine a viable measure. Even so, and despite the fact that most people do believe that CV-19 is extremely dangerous for everyone, approximately a third of people surveyed said they would not initially accept the vaccine. Vaccination is at the best of times the injecting of animal cells, mercury, aluminium and other horrible components into humans, including small babies. There are worries that decades of vaccination and bottle-feeding with cows' milk mixed with microplastics has already changed the composition of what it is to be human.
Those we see on video who are fired up by the possibility of becoming transhuman are - only generalising slightly - unempathetic, physically unattractive, nerdy men (mostly) of little moral vision, who in other times would have lived out their small lives without having access to the money and power that our current economic system gives to the least ideal members of our society. They bring to mind the creators of all the great superheroes following WWII, the talented Jewish men who, following the Holocaust, channeled their trauma into stories of unassuming, mistreated men who could suddenly assume supernatural powers and literally right the world's wrongs. But this vision brought in its own new paranoia: the nemesis, the unstoppable villain.
The added problem is that huge money brings great power over others, especially political power, and power exacerbates sociopathic tendencies. It is hard to look at Bill Gates, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, for example, and see them as the sort of people you would want in your life. And no amount of money can stop Melinda Gates looking like a reject from The Stepford Wives set.
Binary
But there is another angle on all this. A culture of computer and other devices use has left us very influenced by how algorithms work. Computers are, of course, binary; and randomness is in fact impossible to exactly replicate in a computer, which is why the IT term is 'pseudo-random'. Any programmer knows that you have to think like a machine to programme effectively. The rest of people, the users of the machines, their reactions to content on the screen, whether it be social media, information (or disinformation) sites, etc, is to either click or not click. This is in fact a very masculine way of seeing the world: window open or closed, feeling fine or not feeling fine, take the dog out (for hours) or not take the dog out...
Most will agree that our societies have become polarised and that, worse still, there is a horrible simplicity to everything. You are either with us or against us. If you were against the Iraq War you were for Saddam Hussein. If you thought the Twin Towers was a set-up, you were for Osama bin Laden. You either love everything about Trump or you hate it all. If you do not like Trump, you must like Biden. You either believe in climate breakdown or you do not. And if you do believe it is happening, then you must agree with everything Extinction Rebellion says. If you do not want to be locked-down and do not think it is necessary, then you must be a Trump supporter. If you say that Obama laid the foundations for someone like Trump (while dancing and singing beautifully), you are a Trump-loving racist and misogynist. If you are worried about where neoliberalism is taking us, you must be a raving communist.
Schools constantly test their pupils with on-line yes-or-no quizzes. You either repeat everything you have been told, or you fail. On-line learning is inherently one-directional, allowing for very little debate or behind-the-scenes critiquing of the class content by the pupils.
The tendency is that there are always only two ways of looking at everything.
There is no nuance, no analysis, no holistic understanding about how the planetary ecosystem works; or indeed how politics and the economic system really works, how the financial and electoral political bases, which are very often incompatible, determine what will actually be done and why it will be at such variance with the rhetoric. There is no time nor interest to study information on paper and take detailed notes. The flickering screen beckons with other content notifications and its likes and dislikes.
The badly-named Right Wing of the political spectrum (those who gain by rampant capitalism) are currently using the Shock Doctrine to ramp up the confusion and lies, making sure that there is literally no time nor inclination to check on facts, so that 'facts' have become a type of triggered opinion. The Left Wing can counter with facts or outrage, but this is not how the game is currently being played; and taking time to take apart one huge lie is useless if the adversary is now onto the next one. In times of aggression, fear and fury, nuanced argument about how capitalism cannot end well, how this is a logical impossibility. finds no receptive audience among those who specifically need a bit of theory in order to understand the world.
We have already become machine-like and, worse still, others are doing the programming.
