transhumanism | Re-public: re-imagining democracy

Transhumanism? – part II

At first, I stumbled upon the term “transhumanism” by chance. I then searched for many months the web for this word. Since, I limited at the beginning, my searches to the french-speaking internet I encountered no contradictions. Transhumanism seemed like a wide movement of ideas with an abstract and fluid outline, it seemed like a movement of a certain dynamism. It represented the materialization of many thoughts and questions pertaining to the social field that had occurred to me during the past fifteen years: that of primary role of conscience in relation to the meaning of existence, of humanity as a transitional process rather than an outcome, of the agony of death as the driving force of every development/the continuous search of an unreachable immortality…

Riccardo Campa – Toward a transhumanist politics

The central transhumanist idea of self-directed evolution can be coupled with different political, philosophical and religious opinions. Accordingly, we have observed individuals and groups joining the movement from very different persuasions. On one hand such diversity may be an asset in terms of ideas and stimuli, but on the other hand it may involve a practical paralysis, especially when members give priority to their existing affiliations over their belonging to organized transhumanism.

Dale Carrico – Superlative futurology

Where I see people discovering things and applying these discoveries to the solution of shared problems (and usually creating new problems as they go along) some self-described “futurologists” seem to see instead the unfolding of “trends.” And among these are certain sub(cult)ures of futurological fandom who go further still, who see in some such trends luminous paths to idealized technodevelopmental outcomes in which they have invested highly idiosyncratic hopes for personal transcendence.

James Hughes – On democratic transhumanism

James Hughes argues for a social-democratic version of transhumanism, “democratic transhumanism,” as the natural product of the egalitarian Enlightenment and a uniter of disparate contemporary Enlightenment political projects, where cognitive enhancement and electronic democracy make possible increasingly participatory and decentralized governance.

Rémi Sussan – Transhumanism and hermetism

To become immortal! To be close enough to the stars and speak to them! To surpass the boundaries of our individuality, to be the ones we want to be, just like a God! Many assurances of transhumanism remind the promises of religions around the globe. For many, they present proof that transhumanism is nothing but a mythology of the rags of science in disguise. Others, those who feel more sympathetic to this ideology, think that it answers, indeed, some questions of metaphysical origin, giving though solutions that belong to the rationality department. Some, do not hesitate to say that this vicinity should be taken into account rather than being rejected.[1]

Stéphanie Lambert – Shall we transcend the question ‘what’s wrong with the world?!’

‘What is transhumanism? Let’s evaluate risks/ advantages, because time is running out!’

Each one of us is sunk in an ocean of radical and exponential changes. Like the pupil who becomes better than the teacher, many of us have the vertiginous sensation that a huge, moving scientific bio technological wheel is overstepping us.

Alberto Masala – Transhumanism and biological human nature

Historically, the transhumanist movement has been skeptical about the concept of biological human nature. While the idea that human beings share important non-biologically defined properties such as intelligence or sensibility goes hand in hand with the project of modifying the biological substratum of these features (and create new kinds of beings who display them even better), reference to our shared biological heritage has been seen as a rhetorical strategy used by opponents (Unesco 1997; Fukuyama 2003).

John Stewart – The Übermensch

A central theme of Friedrich Nietzsche’s

Thus Spake Zarathustra is that humanity in its current form is temporary. He notes that if we are to take evolution seriously, we must accept that humanity will be replaced by something that surpasses and goes beyond us. This is what has happened to every type of living process that preceded us, and must also surely be the fate of humanity.

Andy Miah – Human enhancement and the accumulation of biocultural capital

There is no single answer that can apply to the whole of humanity as to why we should live longer, why we should be more enhanced, why we should lead any particular kind of life at all, argues Andy Miah. Instead, he urges us to appeal to the idea that people spend their lives trying to accumulate various kinds of capital: we educate ourselves, we undertake physical activity, we develop relationships with each other, and we might also wish to self-modify our bodies because we think that these activities enrich our lives.

Kathleen Richardson – Transhumanist musings

Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is, for me, a transhumanist narrative. Directed by Stanley Kubrick Space Odyssey is a story of consciousness. It begins at the Dawn of Man, with apes jumping around and swaying their arms at each other. One group of apes competes with another for resources, but are sadly overwrought by their enemies. However, after the apes see a black monolith, they are no longer in the submissive role against their competitors, but through this exposure to the black enigma, they start to use tools as weapons and beat their enemies.

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