transhumanism

Transhumanism: Building a Better Reincarnation

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In this blog I’ve expressed skepticism about transhumanism despite being something of a transhumanist myself. I’ve been skeptical about ideas of immortality, about the risks, and that some transhumanism is really just a hope for a kind of techno-secular heaven.

My concern roughly is that transhumanism too often becomes a race to preserve a limited sense of identity, when that limited sense of identity may actually be what we need to transcend. I take this inspiration both from observation, and my studies of oft-referred-to, little-understood thinking by Buddhists and Taoists.

Or to be blunt, a lot of deep thought about human identity is that the human identity, that is identifying with a transitory mind and ego, is the core of most of our problems, and maybe we ought to seek to deal with that first. Uploading our brains to computers and such can kind of wait because this “us” we want to preserve is part of the problem.

The ultimate question of transhumanism is one of identity – and how we deal with that.

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Transhumanism And The Hell Of Heaven

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“If it came down to a choice, I would rather be mortal and decent, and thus have the chance to leave behind things of real lasting importance, than be immortal but also be an asshole.“

Serdar’s rather pithy statement is made on his observations that far too much of transhumanism is way too focused on leaving the human race behind. It becomes a race to “get up and get out” that really comes off as an attempt to coddle or deify one’s own ego.

Frankly, I have to agree with him. A lot of transhumanism I see thrown around casually (note casually) really seems to be nothing more than the idea of getting to a kind of technical heaven. Saint Peter may not be there, it may be an upload or a cyborg body, it it’s still all about “me” getting away. In a few cases getting away from all those “others.”

Some of this sounds the absolute same when I hear people talk about an afterlife of Heaven. Too often when I hear such an afterlife discussed, it’s always about pleasure and reward. Too often when I hear hell discussed, there’s a satisfaction those “others” will be in it.

I’ve discussed Buddhist concepts of the afterlife here before due to the many psychological insights they provide. One of them is that Heaven, the God Realm of Buddhist cosmology, isn’t all its cracked up to be.

The problem is with Heaven, with a realm of pleasure, you loose touch. You don’t feel compassion for others. You don’t feel empathy for others. In fact you don’t really “life” since life is far richer than whatever rewards or spoils you want to get. Heaven sounds vaguely addictive.

The problem with Heaven is that you can’t take a fall. In Buddhist cosmology even gods die, so if you’re reborn in the god realm one day you’ll die and probably will end up in another. As a god, you’ll even see it coming.  Hopefully you’ll reach the human realm, where things are well balanced enough for you to achieve enlightenment, but either way a painful fall.

In short, the desire for a real of perfect pleasure and escape makes you addicted, distant, un-empathetic, unprepared for change. It also probably risks you being kind of an ass as Serdar notes.

I’d even add the desire for a Heaven risks this as well. The desire to get away from people, from life, just deceives you and separates you. I’d say this may explain Jesus oft-forgotten note that all things done for those in need are for him in Matthew 25:31-46 – as a way to build empathy.

The transhuman desire for transcendence as a way to get away really misses what humanity is about. It’s a desire to cut ourselves off, to wrap ourselves in pleasure, to get distance, to “win.” It just makes us less human. It’s not transhumanism – it’s inhumanism.

As I noted, before we can improve who we are we better know what we are.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

 

Transhumanism, The “Saw” Films and The Need For Testing

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I’m not a person who’s seen the “Saw” movie series, in which a psychopath sets people up in torturous death traps to teach them lessons about life. I don’t see much point when I can see horror stories in the real world.

However, there’s something that always stuck with me about the “Saw” films and most other Complex Deathtrap Themes. How the hell does your psycho, dungeon trap-a-teer, or whatever test this stuff? It’s got to be expensive to test, potentially deadly, and not testing it kind of destroys the attempts at a result.

Really, your average Complex Trap Psycho should be dead early on by one of their own creations backfiring or ending up with them found out.

This brings me, rather roundly, to Transhumanism, which I discussed awhile ago.

Though I’m all for human improvement, far too much talk I see about Transhumanism, and far too much fiction ignores how people are going to test transhuman techniques and technologies.

I mean those cybernetic limbs are going to take a lot of testing. Intelligence increase drugs could have all sorts of side effects. I rather imagine that attempts to upload our brains to computers is going to result in several people accidentally lobotomizing themselves.

I figure any attempts at Transhuman development will result in some painful, deadly, and publicly embarrassing backfires. Such activities are going to decrease enthusiasm for such endeavors, perhaps understandably.

Worse, the idea that the inventors of transhumance technologies will try it on themselves misses the fact that these geniuses who may invest such stuff would probably kill, cripple, and harm themselves terribly merely by the odds. I’d rather not have some genius who might help us upload our brains into computers fry his synapses trying.

(And I rather imagine when self-preservation kicks in, not as many will be willing to be their own test subjects).

As noted, I’m for Transhumanism. I’m just careful to be realistic and skeptical.  Transhuman technologies, poorly tested, will be like a horror movie.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.