1.

Many philosophers argue that humans are a distinctive kind of creature and that some capacities that distinguish humans from nonhumans give us a moral dignity denied to nonhumans. This status supposedly merits special protections that are not extended to nonhumans and special claims on the resources to cultivate those capacities reserved for humans alone.

However, I will argue that if we are committed to developing human capacities and welfare using advanced (NBIC) technologies (see below) our commitment to other humans and our interest in remaining human cannot be overriding. This is because such policies could engender posthumans and the prospect of a posthuman dispensation should, be properly evaluated rather than discounted. I will argue that evaluation (accounting) is not liable to be achievable without posthumans. Thus transhumanists who justify the technological enhancement and redesigning of humans on humanist grounds have a moral interest in making posthumans or becoming posthuman that is not reconcilable with the priority humanists have traditionally attached to human welfare and the cultivation of human capacities.

2.

To motivate this claim, I need to distinguish three related philosophical positions: Humanism, Transhumanism and Posthumanism and explain how they are related.

Humanism (H)

For the purposes of this argument, a philosophical humanist is anyone who believes that humans are importantly distinct from non-humans.

For example, many humanists have claimed that humans are distinguished by their reasoning prowess from nonhuman animals. One traditional view common to Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Rousseau, Kant and others is that humans are responsive to reasons while animals respond only to sensory stimuli and feeling. Being rational allows humans to bypass or suppress emotions such as fear or anger and (for better or worse) cultivate normatively sanctioned forms of action and affection.

Responsiveness to reasons is both a cognitive and a moral capacity. The fact that I can distinguish between principles like equality and freedom, for example, allows me to see these as alternative principles of conduct: The power to set an end any end whatsoever is the characteristic of humanity (as distinguished from animality) (Kant 1948, 51).

Most humanists claim that the capacities such as rationality or sociability that distinguish us from cats, dogs and chimps also single us out for special treatment.[1]

For Kant, this capacity to choose the reasons for our actions to form a will, as he puts it, is the only thing that is good in an unqualified way (Kant 1948, 62).

Even thinkers who allow that the human capacity for self-shaping is just one good among a plurality of equivalent but competing goods claim that autonomy confers a dignity on humans that should be protected by laws and cultivated by the providing the means to exercise it.

Thus most humanists hold some conception of what makes a distinctively human life a valuable one and have developed precepts and methods for protecting and developing these valuable attributes.

At the risk of oversimplifying, the generic humanist techniques for achieving this are politics and education.

For example, in Politics 1 Aristotle claimed that virtues like justice, courage or generosity need a political organization to provide the leisure, training, opportunities and resources to develop and exercise these valuable traits:

Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, andthat man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and notby mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity;he is like the

Tribeless, lawless, hearthless one,

whom Homer denounces- the natural outcast is forthwith a lover of war; he may be compared to an isolated piece at draughts

Rousseau and Marx, likewise see the political as the setting in which humans become fully human. Liberal political philosophers may be more wary of attributing intrinsic value to politics but most see the social goods secured by it as thesine qua non of a decent existence.

Transhumanism (H+)

Transhumanists share core humanist values and aspiration. They think that human-distinctive attributes like rationality and autonomy are good, as are human social emotions and human aesthetic sensibilities.

They also think that these capacities should be cultivated where possible and protected: e.g. by ensuring basic liberties and providing the resources for their fullest possible development.

However, they believe that the traditional methods that humanists have used to develop human capacities are limited in their scope by the material constraints of human biology and that of nature more generally.

Our biological and material substrate was not a political issue until relatively recently because we lacked the technological means to alter it. Although philosophers like Aristotle, Hume and Kant proposed theories of human nature, this nature was essentially an encapsulated black box. One could know what it did and why it did it, but not how it did it. Thus a basic cognitive function, such as imagination is described by Kant as ahidden art in the depths of the human soul, whose true operations we can divine from nature and lay unveiled before our eyes only with difficulty (Kant 1978, A1412/B1801).

Transhumanists believes that prospective developments in a suite of technologies called the NBIC technologies and sciences will at last allow humans unprecedented control over their own and morphology.

NBIC stands for Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, and Cognitive Science.

The smarter we are the more effectively we can develop techniques for developing human capacities: e.g. by eliminating starvation or scarcity with new agricultural and manufacturing techniques, finding cures for diseases or by becoming better democratic deliberators.

Thus if advancing human welfare is a moral priority, and extending human cognitive capacities is the best way of achieving this, we should extend our cognitive capacities using NBIC technologies all other things being equal (A supplementary argument for a transhuman politics assumes that certain capacities are necessarily characterized in terms of some end or fulfilment. Thus they are exercised appropriately when their possessor strives to refine and improve them See Mulhall 1998).

The exercise of rationality requires many cognitive aptitudes: perception, working and long-term memory, general intelligence and the capacity to acquire cultural tools such as languages and reasoning methods. There appear to have been significant increases the level of general intelligence in industrialized countries during the twentieth century particularly at the lower end of the scale. These may be explained by public health initiatives such as the removal of organic lead from paints and petrol, improved nutrition and free public education.

These increases, if real, are a clear social good. However, there seems to be a limit to the effect of environmental factors upon cognition because the efficiency of our brains is constrained by the speed, interconnectedness, noisiness and density of the neurons packed into our skulls.

Thus the best scientists, philosophers or artists currently alive are no more intelligent or creative than Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz or Kant. There are far more thinkers on the planet than in Aristotles time and they are better equipped than ever before but their minds, it seems, are no more able than those of previous artists, scientists and philosophers.

For transhumanist thinkers like Nick Bostrom and Ray Kurzweil, this suggests that many major improvements of intelligence will require us to escape our biology by outsourcing our thinking to non-biological platforms such as computing devices. The components of the fastest computers operate tens of millions times faster than the spiking frequency of the fastest human nerve cell (neuron) so this suggests an obvious way in which humans transcend the biological limitations on our brains.[2]

Many early 21st century humans offload the tedious tasks like arithmetic, memorizing character strings like phone numbers or searching for the local 24-hour dry cleaner to computing devices. Transhumanists claim that the process of outsourcing biologically based cognition onto non-biological platforms is liable to accelerate as our artificially intelligent devices get more intelligent and as we devise smarter ways of integrating computing hardware into our neurocomputational wetware. Here the convergence of nanotechnology, information technology and biotechnology is liable to be key.

Brain Computer Interfaces like the BrainGate BCI show that it is possible to directly interface computer operated systems with neural tissue, allowing tetraplegic patients to control devices such as robotic arms with their thoughts.

Transhumanists see future humans becoming ever more intimate with responsive computer systems that can extend physical functions using robotic limbs or arms well as cognitive functions such as perception or working memory.

Thus it seems quite possible that future humans or transhumans will be increasingly indistinguishable from their technology. Humans will become cyborgs or cybernetic organisms like the Borg in the TV series Star Trek with many of the functions associated with thinking, perception and even consciousness subserved by increasingly fast and subtle computing devices.

As Star Trek aficionados will be aware, the Borg do not seem to represent an attractive ideal for the humanist who values individual autonomy and reason. The Borg area technological swarm intelligence like an ant or termite colony whose individual members are slaved to goals of the Collective.

Collectively the Borg possesses great cognitive powers and considerable technical prowess though these powers emerge from the interactions of highly networked drones, each of which has its human rationality, agency and sociability violently suppressed.

However, many argue that it is nave to associate the status of the cyborg with that of dehumanized machines.

The cognitive scientist and philosopher Andy Clark has argued that the integration of technology into biology is a historical process that has defined human beings since the development of flint tools, writing and architecture. We are, in Clarks words, Natural Born Cyborgs whose mental life has always extruded into culturally constructed niches such as languages and archives:

The promise, or perhaps threatened, transition to a world of wired humans and semi-intelligent gadgets is just one more move in an ancient game. . . We are already masters at incorporating nonbiological stuff and structure deep into our physical and cognitive routines. To appreciate this is to cease to believe in any post-human future and to resist the temptation to define ourselves in brutal opposition to the very worlds in which so many of us now live, love and work (Clark 2003, 142).

If this is the case, then perhaps the wired, transhuman future that I am sketching here will still be inhabited by beings whose aspirations and values will be recognizable to humanists like Aristotle, Rousseau and Kant.

These transhuman descendants might still value autonomy, sociability and artistic expression. They will just be much better at being rational, sensitive and expressive. Perhaps, also, these skills will repose in bodies that are technologically modified by advanced biotechnologies to be healthier and far more resistant to ageing or damage than ours. But the capacities that define that humanist tradition here are not obviously dependent on a particular kind of physical form.

For this reason transhumanists believe that we should add morphological freedom the freedom of physical form to the traditional liberal rights of freedom of movement and freedom of expression. We should be free do discover new forms of embodiment e.g. new ways of integrating ourselves with cognitive technologies in order to improve on the results of traditional humanizing techniques like liberal arts education or public health legislation.

Posthumanism (SP)

As someone who shares many of the humanist values and aspirations that Ive described, Ill admit to finding the transhuman itinerary for our future attractive. Perhaps some version of it will also be an ecological and economic necessity as we assume responsibility for a planetary ecosystem populated by nine billion humans.

However, there is a catch. While the technological prospectus Ive given may result in beings that are recognizably like us: only immeasurably smarter, nicer, weller and more capable. It might produce beings that are not human at all in some salient respect.

Such technologically engendered nonhumans or posthumans may not be the kinds of beings to which humanist values apply. They may still be immeasurably smarter and more robust than we are, but also alien ways that we cannot easily understand.

I call the position according to which there might be posthumans Speculative Posthumanism to distinguish it from posthuman philosophies not directly relevant to this discussion.

The speculative posthumanist is committed to the following claim:

(SP) Descendants of current humans could cease to be human by virtue of a history of technical alteration.

Clearly, this is a very schematic statement and needs some unpacking.

For example, it does not explain what ceasing to be human could involve. If Clark and the transhumanists are right, then ceasing to be human is not just a matter of altering ones hardware or wetware. A human cyborg modified to live in hostile environments like the depths of the sea or space might look strange to us but might use a natural language whose morphology and syntax is learnable unmodified humans, value her autonomy and have characteristic human social emotions such as exclusive feelings towards other family members or amour-propre.[3] Thus many of the traits with which we pick out humans from nonhumans could well generalize beyond morphology.

Some argue that the self-shaping, reflective rationality that Kant thought distinguished humanity from animality is an obvious constituent of a human essence. An essential property of a kind is a property that no member of that kind can lack. If this is right, then losing the capacity for practical rationality by some technological process (as with the Borg) is a decisive, if unappealing, path to posthumanity.

It can be objected of course that members of the human species (very young children) lack the capacity to exercise reflective rationality while other humans (individuals with severe mental disabilities) are not able to acquire it. Thus that it cannot be a necessary condition for humanity. Being rational might better be described as a qualification for moral personhood: where a person is simply a rational agent capable of shaping its own life and living on fair terms with other persons.

If posthumans were to qualify as moral persons by this or some other criterion we appear to have a basis for a posthuman republicanism. The fact that other beings may be differently embodied from regular humans intelligent robots, cyborgs or cognitively enhanced animals does not prevent us living with them as equals.

However, it is possible to conceive of technological alterations producing life forms or worlds so alien that they are not recognizably human lives or worlds.

In a 1993 article The Coming Technological Singularity: How to survive in the posthuman era the computer scientist Vernor Vinge argued that the invention of a technology for creating entities with greater than human intelligence would lead to the end of human dominion of the planet and the beginning of a posthuman era dominated by intelligences vastly greater than ours (Vinge 1993).

For Vinge, this point could be reached via recursive improvements in the technology. If humans or human-equivalent intelligences could use the technology to create superhuman intelligences the resultant entities could make even more intelligent entities, and so on.

Thus a technology for intelligence creation or intelligence amplification would constitute a singular point or singularity beyond which the level of mentation on this planet might increase exponentially and without limit.

The form of this technology is unimportant for Vinges argument. It could be a powerful cognitive enhancement technique, a revolution in machine intelligence or synthetic life, or some as yet unenvisaged process. The technology needs to be extendible in as much that improving it yields corresponding increases in the intelligence produced. Our only current means of producing human-equivalent intelligence is non-extendible: If we have better sex . . . it does not follow that our babies will be geniuses (Chalmers 2010: 18).

The posthuman minds that would result from this intelligence explosion could be so vast, according to Vinge, that we have no models for their transformative potential. The best we can do to grasp the significance of this transcendental event is to draw analogies with an earlier revolution in intelligence: the emergence of posthuman minds would be as much a step-change in the development of life on earth as the The rise of humankind.

Vinges singularity hypothesis the claim that intelligence-making technology would generate posthuman intelligence by recursive improvement is practically and philosophically important. If it is true and its preconditions feasible, its importance may outweigh other political and environmental concerns for these are predicated on human invariants such as biological embodiment, which may not obtain following a singularity.

However, even if a singularity is not technically possible or not imminent the Singularity Hypothesis (SH) still raises a troubling issue concerning our capacity to evaluate the long-run consequences of our technical activity in areas such as the NBIC technologies. This is because Vinges prognosis presupposes a weaker, more general claim to the effect that activity in NBIC areas or similar might generate forms of life which might be significantly alien or other to ours.

If we assume Speculative Posthumanism it seems we can adopt either of two policies towards the posthuman prospect.

Firstly, we can account for it: that is, assess the ethical implications of contributing to the creation of posthumans through our current technological activities.

Vinges scenario gives us reasons for thinking that the differences between humans and posthumans could be so great as to render accounting impossible or problematic in the cases that matter. The differences stressed in Vinges essay are cognitive: posthumans might be so much smarter than humans that we could not understand their thoughts or anticipate the transformative effects of posthuman technology. There might be other very radical differences. Posthumans might have experiences so different from ours that we cannot envisage what living a posthuman life would be like, let alone whether it would be worthwhile or worthless one. Finally, the structure of posthuman minds might be very different from our kind of subjectivity.

Moral personhood presumably has threshold cognitive and affective preconditions such as the capacity to evaluate actions, beliefs and desires (practical rationality) and a capacity for the emotions, and affiliations informing these evaluations. However, human-style practical reason might not be accessible to a being with nonsubjective phenomenology. Such an entity could be incapable of experiencing itself as a bounded individual with a life that might go better or worse for it.

Read more:
Humanism, Transhumanism and Posthumanism

In New Bottles for New Wine, London: Chatto & Windus, 1957, pp. 13-17

As a result of a thousand million years of evolution, the universe is becoming conscious of itself, able to understand something of its past history and its possible future. This cosmic self-awareness is being realized in one tiny fragment of the universe in a few of us human beings. Perhaps it has been realized elsewhere too, through the evolution of conscious living creatures on the planets of other stars. But on this our planet, it has never happened before.

Evolution on this planet is a history of the realization of ever new possibilities by the stuff of which earth (and the rest of the universe) is made life; strength, speed and awareness the flight of birds and the social polities of bees and ants; the emergence of mind, long before man was ever dreamt of, with the production of colour, beauty, communication, maternal care, and the beginnings of intelligence and insight. And finally, during the last few ticks of the cosmic clock, something wholly new and revolutionary, human beings with their capacities for conceptual thought and language, for self-conscious awareness and purpose, for accumulating and pooling conscious experience. For do not let us forget that the human species is as radically different from any of the microscopic single-celled animals that lived a thousand million years ago as they were from a fragment of stone or metal.

The new understanding of the universe has come about through the new knowledge amassed in the last hundred yearsby psychologists, biologists, and other scientists, by archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians. It has defined mans responsibility and destinyto be an agent for the rest of the world in the job of realizing its inherent potentialities as fully as possible.

It is as if man had been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all, the business of evolution appointed without being asked if he wanted it, and without proper warning and preparation. What is more, he cant refuse the job. Whether he wants to or not, whether he is conscious of what he is doing or not, he is in point of fact determining the future direction of evolution on this earth. That is his inescapable destiny, and the sooner he realizes it and starts believing in it, the better for all concerned.

What the job really boils down to is thisthe fullest realization of mans possibilities, whether by the individual, by the community, or by the species in its processional adventure along the corridors of time. Every man-jack of us begins as a mere speck of potentiality, a spherical and microscopic egg-cell. During the nine months before birth, this automatically unfolds into a truly miraculous range of organization: after birth, in addition to continuing automatic growth and development, the individual begins to realize his mental possibilitiesby building up a personality, by developing special talents, by acquiring knowledge and skills of various kinds, by playing his part in keeping society going. This post-natal process is not an automatic or a predetermined one. It may proceed in very different ways according to circumstances and according to the individuals own efforts. The degree to which capacities are realized can be more or less complete. The end-result can be satisfactory or very much the reverse: in particular, the personality may grievously fail in attaining any real wholeness. One thing is certain, that the well-developed, well-integrated personality is the highest product of evolution, the fullest realization we know of in the universe.

The first thing that the human species has to do to prepare itself for the cosmic office to which it finds itself appointed is to explore human nature, to find out what are the possibilities open to it (including, of course, its limitations, whether inherent or imposed by the facts of external nature). We have pretty well finished the geographical exploration of the earth; we have pushed the scientific exploration of nature, both lifeless and living, to a point at which its main outlines have become clear; but the exploration of human nature and its possibilities has scarcely begun. A vast New World of uncharted possibilities awaits its Columbus.

The great men of the past have given us glimpses of what is possible in the way of personality, of intellectual understanding, of spiritual achievement, of artistic creation. But these are scarcely more than Pisgah glimpses. We need to explore and map the whole realm of human possibility, as the realm of physical geography has been explored and mapped. How to create new possibilities for ordinary living? What can be done to bring out the latent capacities of the ordinary man and woman for understanding and enjoyment; to teach people the techniques of achieving spiritual experience (after all, one can acquire the technique of dancing or tennis, so why not of mystical ecstasy or spiritual peace?); to develop native talent and intelligence in the growing child, Instead of frustrating or distorting them? Already we know that painting and thinking, music and mathematics, acting and science can come to mean something very real to quite ordinary average boys and girls provided only that the fright methods are adopted for bringing out the childrens possibilities. We are beginning to realize that even the most fortunate people are living far below capacity, and that most human beings develop not more than a small fraction of their potential mental and spiritual efficiency. The human race, in fact, is surrounded by a large area of unrealized possibilities, a challenge to the spirit of exploration.

The scientific and technical explorations have given the Common Man all over the world a notion of physical possibilities. Thanks to science, the under-privileged are coming to believe that no one need be underfed or chronically diseased, or deprived of the benefits of its technical and practical applications.

The worlds unrest is largely due to this new belief. People are determined not to put up with a subnormal standard of physical health and material living now that science has revealed the possibility of raising it. The unrest will produce some unpleasant consequences before it is dissipated; but it is in essence a beneficent unrest, a dynamic force which will not be stilled until it has laid the physiological foundations of human destiny.

Once we have explored the possibilities open to consciousness and personality, and the knowledge of them has become Common property, a new source of unrest will have emerged, will realize and believe that if proper measures are taken, no one need be starved of true satisfaction, or condemned to sub-standard fulfillment. This process too will begin by being unpleasant, and end by being beneficent. It will begin by destroying the ideas and the institutions that stand in the way of our realizing our possibilities (or even deny that the possibilities are there to be realized), and will go on by at least making a start with the actual construction of true human destiny.

Up till now human life has generally been, as Hobbes described it, nasty, brutish and short; the great majority of human beings (if they have not already died young) have been afflicted with misery in one form or anotherpoverty, disease, ill-health, over-work, cruelty, or oppression. They have attempted to lighten their misery by means of their hopes and their ideals. The trouble has been that the hopes have generally been unjustified, the ideals have generally failed to correspond with reality.

The zestful but scientific exploration of possibilities and of the techniques for realizing them will make our hopes rational, and will set our ideals within the framework of reality, by showing how much of them are indeed realizable. Already, we can justifiably hold the belief that these lands of possibility exist, and that the present limitations and miserable frustrations of our existence could be in large measure surmounted. We are already justified in the conviction that human life as we know it in history is a wretched makeshift, rooted in ignorance; and that it could be transcended by a state of existence based on the illumination of knowledge and comprehension, just as our modern control of physical nature based on science transcends the tentative fumblings of our ancestors, that were rooted in superstition and professional secrecy.

To do this, we must study the possibilities of creating a more favourable social environment, as we have already done in large measure with our physical environment. We shall start from new premises. For instance, that beauty (something to enjoy and something to be proud of) is indispensable, and therefore that ugly or depressing towns are immoral; that quality of people, not mere quantity, is what we must aim at, and therefore that a concerted policy is required to prevent the present flood of population-increase from wrecking all our hopes for a better world; that true understanding and enjoyment are ends in themselves, as well as tools for or relaxations from a job, and that therefore we must explore and make fully available the techniques of education and self-education; that the most ultimate satisfaction comes from a depth and wholeness of the inner life, and therefore that we must explore and make fully available the techniques of spiritual development; above all, that there are two complementary parts of our cosmic duty one to ourselves, to be fulfilled in the realization and enjoyment of our capacities, the other to others, to be fulfilled in service to the community and in promoting the welfare of the generations to come and the advancement of our species as a whole.

The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature.

I believe in transhumanism: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Pekin man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny.

Read this article:
Transhumanism by Julian Huxley (1957)

Transhumanism r en internationell intellektuell och kulturell rrelse som fresprkar anvndandet av teknik fr att frbttra och utka mnniskans mentala och fysiska egenskaper. Enligt transhumanismen har mnniskan ondiga svagheter som leder till handikapp, lidande, sjukdom, ldrande och dd. Det r dessa svagheter man vill vervinna. Transhumanistiska tnkare studerar utvecklingen och anvndandet av teknik som kan anvndas fr att frbttra mnniskan, samt vilka mjligheter och konsekvenser som r frknippade med detta.[1]

Transhumanism ses ofta som en synonym till mnsklig frbttring och rrelsen symboliseras ibland med tecknen >h eller h+.[2] ven om den frsta knda anvndningen av termen "transhumanism" r frn 1957, etablerades begreppets nutida betydelse under 1980-talet, nr futurister i USA brjade organisera vad som sedan dess har vuxit till den transhumanistiska rrelsen. Enligt transhumanistiska tnkare kan mnniskan s smningom komma att f s pass utkade frmgor att termen post-mnniska blir mer lmplig n mnniska.[1] Alternativa begrepp fr transhumanism r drfr "posthumanism" eller en form av transformationell aktivism inspirerad av posthumanistiska ideal.[3]

Frgan kring hur en transformerad framtida mnsklighet i s fall kommer att se ut i har intresserat en rad anhngare och kritiker frn ett antal olika perspektiv och discipliner. Transhumanism har av en kritiker, Francis Fukuyama, beskrivits som vrldens farligaste id,[4] vilket bemttes med uttalandet att det r en "rrelse som r ett idealt exempel p de mest vghalsiga, modiga, fantasifulla och idealistiska strvandena hos mnskligheten".[5]

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Transhumanism Wikipedia

Transhumanism, social and philosophical movement devoted to promoting the research and development of robust human-enhancement technologies. Such technologies would augment or increase human sensory reception, emotive ability, or cognitive capacity as well as radically improve human health and extend human life spans. Such modifications resulting from the addition of biological or physical technologies would be more or less permanent and integrated into the human body.

The term transhumanism was originally coined by English biologist and philosopher Julian Huxley in his 1957 essay of the same name. Huxley refered principally to improving the human condition through social and cultural change, but the essay and the name have been adopted as seminal by the transhumanism movement, which emphasizes material technology. Huxley held that, although humanity had naturally evolved, it was now possible for social institutions to supplant evolution in refining and improving the species. The ethos of Huxleys essayif not its lettercan be located in transhumanisms commitment to assuming the work of evolution, but through technology rather than society.

The movements adherents tend to be libertarian and employed in high technology or in academia. Its principal proponents have been prominent technologists like American computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil and scientists like Austrian-born Canadian computer scientist and roboticist Hans Moravec and American nanotechnology researcher Eric Drexler, with the addition of a small but influential contingent of thinkers such as American philosopher James Hughes and Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom. The movement has evolved since its beginnings as a loose association of groups dedicated to extropianism (a philosophy devoted to the transcendence of human limits). Transhumanism is principally divided between adherents of two visions of post-humanityone in which technological and genetic improvements have created a distinct species of radically enhanced humans and the other in which greater-than-human machine intelligence emerges.

The membership of the transhumanist movement tends to split in an additional way. One prominent strain of transhumanism argues that social and cultural institutionsincluding national and international governmental organizationswill be largely irrelevant to the trajectory of technological development. Market forces and the nature of technological progress will drive humanity to approximately the same end point regardless of social and cultural influences. That end point is often referred to as the singularity, a metaphor drawn from astrophysics and referring to the point of hyperdense material at the centre of a black hole which generates its intense gravitational pull. Among transhumanists, the singularity is understood as the point at which artificial intelligence surpasses that of humanity, which will allow the convergence of human and machine consciousness. That convergence will herald the increase in human consciousness, physical strength, emotional well-being, and overall health and greatly extend the length of human lifetimes.

The second strain of transhumanism holds a contrasting view, that social institutions (such as religion, traditional notions of marriage and child rearing, and Western perspectives of freedom) not only can influence the trajectory of technological development but could ultimately retard or halt it. Bostrom and American philosopher David Pearce founded the World Transhumanist Association in 1998 as a nonprofit organization dedicated to working with those social institutions to promote and guide the development of human-enhancement technologies and to combat those social forces seemingly dedicated to halting such technological progress.

Excerpt from:
transhumanism | social and philosophical movement | Britannica.com

Humans have always imagined states of existence different from the ones that they experience in their everyday lives. In fact, the pervasive feeling of dissatisfaction with our physical constraints could be seen to be the main motivating factor for religious as well as scientific thought. From ancient mythologies to modern popular culture, humans have created myriad images of transformations of the body and mind into forms that allow them to interact with the world differently.

Why do humans search for perfection? This is by no means an easy question to answer: in fact it directs us to the numerous definitions that have been given to the question what makes us human? Dostoyevsky, after spending some time in a Siberian prison, came to the conclusion that the human is the creature that can adapt to anything (Dostoyevsky 1985). This is a significant definition because it highlights the human propensity to change in response to external circumstances with both positive consequences (it helps us to survive), and negative ones (it induces us to blindly accept injustice). The harsh situation in which this definition was created also points to a major incentive that humans have for adapting: to avoid suffering the suffering that comes from disease, isolation, poverty, oppression and prejudice.

We could therefore say that one reason that humans search for perfection, and for what the spiritually inclined would call transcendence, is because they are not only aware of suffering (arguably most animals are), but also, and more importantly, because they critically reflect on their suffering, and can recognize and reflect on the suffering of others. Deliberately changing what we are means, in many ways, letting go of what makes us suffer.

Transhumanism (or Human Plus, H+) is a social and philosophical movement that explores the uses of technology for the positive transformation of human capacities, and the social, political and ethical implications that such a transformation would carry. Its ideological uniqueness lies in an almost existentialist interpretation of science: while acknowledging the value of the scientific method based on the principles of precision, objectivity and falsifiability it foregrounds its relevance for social justice, self-determination and personal fulfilment, in other words, for improving the human condition. In transhumanism, therefore, science is owned differently than in humanism, where it was a symbol of human intellect, ingenuity and a key to the truth. The transhumanist perspective, generally, begins with the question of human experience and then takes an activist approach, looking to science to find how it can alleviate suffering and thereby improve this experience.

The writers in this Special Issue agree that the use of science to alter and ameliorate human capacities is certainly not a new phenomenon. Looking only at the last hundred years or so, for example, we find scientific breakthroughs that have radically altered human existence, even though they are now so closely assimilated into our lives that we often take them for granted. To name just a few of these changes: the contraceptive pill has liberated women from the demands of reproduction and changed the structure of the workforce, antibiotics have obliterated previously fatal diseases, and aviation technology has facilitated rapid global travel. Because of such developments we have better control over our bodies, enjoy longer life spans and can make multiple and fast relocations to different parts of the planet, radically changing our life experiences.

What these writers also recognize, however, is that recent scientific developments have accelerated the rate of change, taking it into areas that cannot be predicted. Genome research, the imaging of the brain and the creation of more and more intelligent computers are re-defining and re-adjusting the level of control we have over our bodies, our lifestyles and the environment in which we interact. This context makes it imperative that we theorize science-driven changes so as to integrate them more rationally and effectively in our policies, social regulations and individual life plans (Hughes, 2004). This Special Issue offers a flavor of transhumanist approaches to this endeavor, and a glimpse into the transhumanist vision of the future of humanity.

In considering transhumanism, we should keep in mind that it is essentially a human (even if not humanist) movement. As Patrick Hopkins points out in his essay, transhumanist ideals stem from the propensity of humans to imagine themselves to be other than what they are. This propensity hides a paradox: what humans often strive to escape is what they have in fact evolved to be. The imagination creates environments that seem desirable but that may not be suitable for humans, which means that we can long for what we are not actually any good at (such as a state of existence with no struggle and adversity). Realizing this can lead either to an attempt at changing our evolutionary heritage into a literally trans-human state (something other than human), or to equating improvement with enhancement. The latter implication means we would aim to strengthen, rather than surpass, our evolved traits, thereby making ourselves super-human what Hopkins aptly calls superprimates. Therefore, when considering technologies that can transform the human constitution, we need to decide carefully what we want to keep and what we want to discard, and what the assumptions and beliefs are behind each choice.

What are some ways in which such transhuman transformations can occur? A major theme of transhumanist discourses is the development of specific technologies aimed at assisting our quest to lead fulfilling lives. One area that has received much attention in this regard, both from transhumanist and cultural theorists, is computer technology and the electronic media. Cyberspace and the Internet, in particular, have been hailed as signalling the emergence of new conceptions of identity. There is widespread agreement that the Internet has produced new social settings and re-structured communication patterns and perceptions of space. Some have even paralleled its influence on social behavior to architectural changes and the effects of migration and urbanization (Meyerowitz 1985). At the same time, there is an increasing concern by others that such non-physical spaces encourage escapism, addictive behavior and emotional isolation. MIT media theorist Sherry Turkle represents this view when she says that for those who are lonely yet afraid of intimacy, information technology has made it possible to have the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship (Turkle, 2004, n.p.).

Another way to explore information technologies, however, is through their potential to accurately assess an individuals cognitive and/or emotive weaknesses or difficulties, and then offer the means to overcome them. In his article, William Bainbridge describes numerous examples of personalized information technologies, where computer systems act as guides and mentors for the users. Originally developed to replace lost or damaged functions in the physically or cognitively disabled, such technologies are now being generalized to enhance normal human abilities. For example location-aware mobile computing has successfully helped cognitively impaired people to move around without getting lost. In the future, the functions of this technology could be expanded to include showing the users not only where they are, but also how close they are to locations that are suited to their disposition and values where to go and where not to go.

Also, computer games are increasingly challenging traditional narrative form through increased user participation. Now, players must follow the dictates of the system and play a game correctly, if they are to enjoy the experience. One cannot play a game such as the hugely popular Grand Theft Auto, for example, non-aggressively or oppositionally, by leading the protagonist to perform charitable acts, or by propelling the story through the actions of marginal characters (Barr, Marsen and Noble 2005). The narrative structure of the game assumes certain values with which the player must comply in order to progress the action, making it more a case of the game playing the player than vice versa. Current computer game development, however, aims to change this and increase interactivity to the point where the player can give the story different endings, and direct the narrative action from different perspectives.

Having started as visual media with limited interactivity, computer games are becoming immersive, engaging more of the users senses, and even pervasive, where the simulated environment links with a persons daily life. Virtual Reality is already being used to treat physical and emotional trauma, and Bainbridge imagines a future therapy, which he calls Displacement Therapy, where the system analyzes a users weaknesses and creates a pervasive environment where the user can safely perform actions that will enable him/her to overcome these weaknesses.

In a similar vein, Sam Kenyon examines the significance of the interface as a meeting ground between humans and machines, in a future where individuals will need to engage intimately with technology. Taking his lead from the prototypical conflict scenarios of Humans-Against-Machines and We-Become-Them, Kenyon shows how the perceived dichotomy between the machinic and the human is being bridged by implants that re-define boundaries of self, relationship with other, and perceptive ability.

Other writers look beyond the types and uses of emerging technologies to their philosophical and social implications. Comparing the transhumanist with the humanist approaches to science, Riccardo Campa raises the question of the motivations of the scientific endeavour itself. In its history and philosophical underpinnings, science emerged as a spiritual activity aimed at reaching the truth and pure knowledge. Is the transhumanist perspective changing science into an instrument for improving the human condition, and what are the epistemological implications of such a shift in attitude? In a parallel way, improving the human condition does not only entail developing technologies that overcome human limitations, but also involves satisfying existential concerns, which leads to a personally meaningful life. As Campa asks, can living forever replace knowing the sense of ones life? And is it appropriate to look to science for the answer to this question?

In this trajectory into the meaning of science, Campa explores the relations between individual existence and the world in which this existence unfolds. It could be that the world is really alien to us, but it could also be that we are just not intelligent enough to understand it and in doing so re-negotiate our existence within it. In fact, it could be that our existential dissatisfaction and anxiety stem from cognitive underdevelopment, and should be seen as obstacles to overcome rather than as defining criteria of human sensibility.

Taking his lead from C. S. Lewis essay The Abolition of Man, Gregory Jordan also visits this theme, by pondering the concepts of motivation, rationality and value, and positing them against the model of the technologically enhanced human. Jordan considers the possibility that by technologically modifying our minds we may have better access to the qualities that make us human. This access may in turn enable us to strengthen the characteristics that we consider as defining us positively. In some ways paradoxically, we may transcend human weaknesses by embracing essential human qualities such as benevolence, exuberance and tolerance, and gaining more control over them: the trans human may well be the very human.

How do changes in the human body and mind affect attitudes towards oneself and towards others, and what would their implications be for the norms and ethics of social interaction? Joseph Jackson invites us to re-consider our ideas of morality and aesthetics in the backdrop of a future world where physical appearance, sexual orientation and gender are no longer evolved or genetic traits but matters of choice and preference. In this world, preferences are morally inert, and all evaluation of individually selected enhancements should be seen as an aesthetic appreciation rather than a moral judgement.

However, such a world where an individual is empowered to choose his/her ability and appearance cries out for a socially recognized balance between ones preferences and anothers a monitor that would ensure that ones preference does not become anothers obligation, such as in a you have to become what I like scenario. In fact, such a world cries out for a developed capacity to empathize. PJ Manney stresses the importance of empathy in any community that claims to be ruled by social justice and equal rights to happiness for all its members. Manney rightly points out that we already have a technology enabling us to develop empathic capacity. This technology is the universal trait we share as a species our storytelling capacity. Storytelling, in particular in the form of sophisticated written narratives, such as novels, offers us a creative and safe space in which to hypothesize, project different outcomes to events, reflect on causal processes, and consider the effects of different emotions.

Actually, and perhaps in some ways paradoxically, by developing empathic inter-subjectivity, the ability to see the world from anothers perspective, we also become more objective and realistic. One of the greatest lessons to be learnt from empathy is that otherness is not something one has to deal with (but would rather not have to), but is actually a way through which one can conceptualize ones own potential as more-than-self. The other can offer the self many occasions to reflect on what it would be like to live in a different physical form with its own strengths and weaknesses, as well as its own wishes, desires and fears. In this context, tolerance for diversity is transformed into something else: the potential to experience, even if vicariously, different possibilities of life. This potential in turn enables us to choose more appropriately our own social performances, and, in a transhuman future, perhaps even our forms of embodiment.

What are the implications of all these transhumanist ideas and possibilities for us humans as we exist now? Taking a practical perspective, George Dvorsky describes his daily habits as reflective of his transhumanist principles. From a description of what he eats every day to how he uses technology, Dvorksy gives an example of life choices informed by expectations of the future what a human may do now in hope of leading a transhuman life in the future. In a parallel way, a possible perspective of the transhuman being itself is imaginatively narrated by Nick Bostrom, who takes a future perfect angle on existence, addressing the reader from a position of completion and arrival, set in a post-human future, rather than from a position of departure and uncertainty.

As Cory Doctorow points out in his essay, transhumanist ideas are as much about the present, and the human, as they are about the future, and the trans-human. More than merely describing an evolutionary inevitability, they mirror actual human desires and fears, and show us what we already possess, and what we would like to possess in our quest for perfection and the abolition of suffering. In doing this, transhumanist thought does more than just promote technology as a catalyst for human improvement. The insights it offers into our potential can absolve us from the primitive and paralyzing guilt that plagues our search for happiness, pleasure and beauty, encouraging us instead to seek freely and purposely sights more majestically beautiful, music more deeply soul-stirring, sex more exquisitely erotic, mystical epiphanies more awe inspiring, and love more profoundly intense (Pearce 2007, n.p.)

Barr, P., Marsen, S. and Noble, J. 2005. Oppositional Play: Gathering negative

evidence for computer game values. Proceedings of the Second Australasian

Conference on Interactive Entertainment, Sydney, Australia, pp. 3-10. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1109181

Dostoyevsky, F. 1985 (original 1862). The House of the Dead. Translated by David McDuff. London: Penguin

Hughes, J. 2004. Citizen Cyborg: Why democratic societies must respond to the redesigned human of the future. New York: Westview Press.

Meyerowitz, J. 1985. No Sense of Place: The impact of electronic media on social behavior. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pearce, D. 2007. The Hedonistic Imperative (Introduction). http://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedonist.htm

Turkle, S. 2004. How Computers Change the Way We Think. The Chronicle of Higher Education. January 30, Volume 50, Issue 21, Page B26. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i21/21b02601.htm

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Becoming More Than Human: Technology and the Post-Human ...

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Transhumanism

Transhumanism represents the view that we should take a proactive role in upgrading the human species.

The word "transhumanism" was first coined by biologist Julian Huxley in 1927 when he wrote that "the human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself". He went on to add that "we need a name for this new belief. Perhaps transhumanism will service: man remaining man, but transcending himself by realizing new possibilities".

In 1990 philosopher Max More wrote an essay entitled Transhumanism: Toward a Futurist Philosophy that is regarded by many as the foundation of modern transhumanistic thought. Within, More defines transhumanism as "a class of philosophies of life that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology".

Today, a 6,000 member non-profit organization known as Humanity+ provides a focal point for transhumanist activity. Formally known as the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), Humanity+ believes that the "human species in its current form does not represent the end of our development but rather a comparatively early phase". It therefore advocates the "ethical use of technology to expand capacities" in pursuit of "better minds, better bodies and better lives".

Humanity+ maintains a detailed Transhumanist Declaration. This was first drawn up by an international group of contributors in 1998, and notes that humanity now stands on the brink of being able to overcome "cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth". The Declaration goes on to state that policymakers need to exercise 'inclusive moral vision' in weighing the risks and benefits of new technologies. It also advocates the well-being of all sentient life -- including humans, non-human animals, artificial intellects and modified life forms -- and strongly favours "personal choice" in the adoption of enhancement technologies to advance and improve the human race.

The concept of transhumanism is of course not to everybody's liking. Taking a different viewpoint, many other people believe on ethical, moral, religious or other grounds that the human condition and human evolution are naturally "fixed" and should not be tampered with. Most people of course lie somewhere along the spectrum between these two extremes, and/or have never thought too deeply about the ethical dilemmas that technology developments now place before us.

Debates concerning the development, implications and public adoption of a genetic engineering and synthetic biology in particular are now moving from being of largely academic interest to being key inputs to fundamental government policy and multinational business strategy. An understanding of the transhumanism and its implications for the ethics and practice of human existence is hence becoming a prerequisite for all of us thinking about and planning for tomorrow.

More information on transhumanism can be found in my book 25 Things You Need to Know About the Future. A list of tranhumanism web references can be found here.

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ExplainingTheFuture.com : Transhumanism

Transhumanism and its associated philosophiescan be divisive. To be sure, the movement has some negative stereotypes attached to it. But nonetheless, its gaining traction in mainstream discourse.

After several decades of relative obscurity Transhumanism as a philosophical and technological movement has finally begun to break out of its strange intellectual ghetto and make small inroads into the wider public consciousness. This is partly because some high profile people have either adopted it as their worldview or alternatively warned against its potential dangers. Indeed, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama named it The worlds most dangerous idea in a 2004 article in the US magazine Foreign Policy, and Transhumanisms most outspoken publicist, Ray Kurzweil, was recently made director of engineering at Google, presumably to hasten Transhumanisms goals.

So, what are these goals and how does Transhumanism define itself? Well, since it is not some monolithic organization there are different definitions and declarations, but one of the oldest came out of The World Transhumanist Association, latterly re-branded HumanityPlus (Humanity+, or H+, being a shorthand way insiders generally write Transhumanism):

Transhumanism is a class of philosophies of life that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values. (Max More 1990)

Which sounds harmless enough and rather bland. What lies beneath is most definitely neither bland nor harmless and represents a potential change in life on Earth, and Humanity as a whole, which is unprecedented not only in the historical record but the geological. It is, perhaps, the single most momentous event in a billion years if its more ambitious goals can be realized. Indeed, these goals are so ambitious that they warrant the title of this article irrespective as to whether they are in any way feasible, and it will become abundantly clear that while we may talk of a philosophy what we have is a declaration of intent. They are aspirations that address questions that were once the sole preserve of religions, but unlike conventional religions they seek hard engineering answers rather than ill defined and ancient obfuscations. They address the deepest hopes and fears of the Human mind life, death, the afterlife, immortality, the nature of God(s) and the destiny of the universe.

So, who are the Transhumanists? Well, nobody really knows how many people define themselves as such. The best guess is probably less than one hundred thousand, mostly engineers and scientists and not as one might expect, science fiction fans. No doubt a much greater number agree with at least one or more H+ ambitions but who do not buy the whole package, which during its modern development since the 1980s has accrued its own stereotypes and its own folklore and mythology which is now intertwined with that bland definition above. For example, a standard belief within H+ is that we are all rational atheists, which is far from true. Hence we have organizations based around contemporary religions, such as the Mormon Transhumanist Association, Christian Transhumanism and others who see this for what just about every religious person throughout history would have seen it an apotheosis of religion itself. There is also a non-negligible contingent of current or former occultists, however one might define that term. There also seems to be no significant age correlation within the H+ movement beyond what one might expect from technologically savvy Net users. Conversely, there is a very significant gender bias towards males, although females have certainly made huge contributions over the past decades and hold prominent positions within various organizations. So, to start with the lowest common denominator

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Transhumanism The Final Religion? - disinformation

August 2015

Transhumanism

Lisa Renee

Dear Ascending Family,

We are standing at the precipice of a massive evolutionary transformation that impacts the future development of the human race on this planet. Will we evolve as organic living consciousness or potentially, be infected and hijacked by artificial dead intelligences? Many of us can sense the red carpets of AI, being rolled toward humanity from multiple angles now.

As you consider the challenging information contained in this newsletter, I want to remind you that nothing is more powerful than your eternal God spirit connection, and the strong committed relationship to develop and expand personal consciousness through the virtues of Loving Kindness, Compassion and Empathy. These are the higher heart based qualities that make a human a true human being. No person or thing can take your divinity or humanity away from you when you absolutely refuse to give it up.

This timeline is similar to the events that changed the course of history and radically digressed humanities consciousness evolution after World War II. Previous to and throughout World War II, advanced alien technologies were exchanged with high-ranking earth officials, which introduced these weapons to earth. Pacts were made for continued military exploitation and experimentation, aimed at controlling the public. This timeline trigger event marks when off planet aliens introduced advanced military-grade EMF weaponry to the main governmental powers on the earth, further manifesting into cooperative agreements with the military industrial complex, MILAB and Secret Space Programs.

Scientific research and development of nuclear weapons programs, such as the Manhattan Project, were the beginning stages of creating more black military operations, which became offshoots from the principle laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The war began the race for nuclear arms and the development of newly introduced alien advanced technologies. The competition for world domination and military supremacy eventually extended to off planet social experiments and expanded the diversity of exopolitic agendas. Additionally, the development of hidden militarized electromagnetic, radio waves (ELF), and microwave weaponry, commonly applied on the planet today in psychotronic warfare, began in earnest.

The first nuclear weapons were created by the United States during the time that technology trade agreements were being made with off planet civilizations. These trade agreements were hidden behind multinational corporations and government agencies that would be gradually assimilated into one global conglomerate of control, that extended to off planet activities, to enforce the veil of secrecy. Seventy years ago this month, the U.S. dropped the first atomic bombs on the two Japanese cities during the final stage of the Second World War. The planet has never been the same since, as these destructive events created grave consequences for the future timeline of the human race, as a result of these anti-human and barbaric actions. The planets protective magnetic force field and atmospheric functions for radiation balancing and its energy transfer processes were damaged. This further resulted in the creation of inorganic black holes and artificial wormholes that are littered throughout the planetary atmosphere.

Inorganic Black Holes allowed Parasitic Invasion

This greatly damaged and destroyed sections of the planetary grid system, creating electromagnetic anomalies and inorganic black holes, as well as adding pollution in the form of chemicals and waste products. The toxic dumping ground is obvious in the material realm and is present in the etheric body of the earth down to the quantum level. These toxic waste products are energetic pollutants that infect many other dimensional realms, and can be observed in membranes around the earth where parasitic alien forces have infested. This planetary damage and toxic infestation greatly concerns many neighboring civilizations. This has instigated many benevolent extraterrestrial races to attempt to open dialogues for diplomatic relations with the World Governments, which have been mostly refused thus far. Hence, the benevolent races regularly contact humans who are not involved in the enforcement of the controlling structures, to support open knowledge about extraterrestrial civilizations.

The inorganic black holes are rips in the time space fabric, which weaken the planetary atmosphere and allow much more access to Negative Alien interference and dark force infection into our world. Clearly, the NAA were well aware that greedy controller humans would abuse the technologies, from the trade agreements, setting the stage for the next advancement of technological warfare against the earth during the critical years after 2012. For many years the continued mind control and intimidation tactics towards making global war, spreading fear and poverty consciousness, while distributing disinformation through the mass media, has been to keep the human population distracted and dumbed down. Meanwhile, the greedy antics and power abuses of the Elite would remain hidden, allowing diversion for a full scale infiltration of corporate conglomerate control into the highest chains of command in the world governments. By maintaining strict codes of secrecy on penalty of death, and aggressively hiding the extraterrestrial problem from the general public, the military industrial complex, corrupt governments and corporatocracy have handed the inhabitants of earth to the NAA on a silver platter. This is why full extraterrestrial disclosure to the masses is critically important. As long as this agenda remains hidden, it generates deeper and deeper parasitic infection into the earth that harms all inhabitants.

Now in this current cycle, the war over consciousness on planet earth is moving to the next stage, which is an attempted alien artificial intelligence infiltration, used to take full control over human DNA in future timelines. One facet of this agenda is the mass accepted use and activation of alien artificial intelligence technologies to transform the unconscious and asleep human public into mind control robots, AI hybrids or cyborgs. This is aggressively promoted to the public through skyrocketing into fame a new genre of rock star computer scientists or tech futurists, through mainstream media, to glorify the Transhumanism or the posthuman movement. These mostly atheistic futurist gurus are popularizing the AI singularity concept, as the natural evolution for the future of humanity, where artificial intelligence overtakes human thinking and takes control over the functions of the human body. Over the past few years, Transhumanism has become the cool progressive thought form, meant to appeal to the younger generation. This artificial intelligence control is promoted as a natural and desirable result for the technological evolution and future progression of humanity. This is extremely dangerous for humanity. This has set into the future timelines consequences, through which segments of the human population on earth now, will lose their ability to incarnate into human bodies in the future. This means they are forfeiting their true humanity, and losing their ability to evolve in the future timeline as a human being.

What is Transhumanism?

Transhumanism is an international, cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition, by making available technologies that greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. Many transhumanists believe in the compatibility between the human mind and computer hardware, with the implication that human consciousness can be transferred to alternative media, known as mind uploading. Since the Science of the Soul and the consciousness functions of the spiritual bodies, have not yet been discovered by scientists, this has potentially extremely destructive consequences to human consciousness and the electromagnetic functions of the Lightbody. Posthumans (the result of applied transhumanist technologies) could be completely synthetic artificial intelligences, or a symbiosis of human and artificial intelligence, or uploaded consciousness, or the result of making profound technological augmentations to a biological human.

Transhumanism is a school of thought that seeks to guide us towards a posthuman condition. Essentially, this is about creating artificially intelligent hybrids or cyborgs to replace the organic spiritual consciousness of humans. Some examples are redesigning the human organism using advanced nanotechnology or radical technological enhancements. Some of the proposed biological enhancements are using some combination of technologies such as genetic engineering, psychopharmacology, life extension therapies, neural interfaces, brain mapping, wearable or implanted computers, and entrainment of cognitive techniques. Most of these options are designed to disconnect the human soul from the human body, and prepare the body to be used as a shell for a new host. Effectively, this is integrating technological and pharmaceutical hybridization to damage human DNA, as preparation for body snatching.

The fundamental basis of the Transhumanism concept is the A.I. downloaded into the scientific human mind from the Negative Aliens and Satanic Forces, in their quest to survive and achieve immortality by hijacking human consciousness and ultimately possessing the human host body. They do not have flesh and bone bodies and covet ours. Most academics are filled with a variety of mind control and alien implants to be a cog in the wheel to steadily enforce alien control systems. Most early transhumanism concepts were developed by geneticists interested in eugenics and sustaining life forms in synthetic environments. (Like the eugenic experiments similar to those of the Black Sun Nazis). A common feature of promoting transhumanism is the future vision of creating a new intelligent species, into which humanity will evolve and eventually, either supplement it or supersede it. This distraction on the surface is a scheme, while the underlying motivation is intending species extinction of what we know as humans today. Transhumanism stresses the evolutionary perspective, yet it completely ignores the electromagnetic function of human DNA and the consciousness reality of the multidimensional human soul-spirit. They claim to want to stop human suffering but have no idea of the alien machinery and mind control implants used to imprison human consciousness. They know nothing about the afterlife, what happens during the death of the body or even how the human body or Universe really works, yet they want to control every aspect of the human body with artificial technology.

A primary goal of many transhumanists is to convince the public that embracing radical technology and science is in the human species best interest. With the False God Alien Religions used to spread the rhetoric of fear and mindless obedience on one end, and the primarily atheistic science used to mock all things religious without any comprehension of true spiritual understanding on the other, they have the bases covered. Consciousness and spiritual groups are quickly labeled conspiracy theorists by scientists to intimidate, discredit and shut us up. Obviously, until people have personal consciousness experiences outside of their body, have the ability to communicate with assorted lifeforms, such as deceased humans and travel to other dimensions, they have zero information about consciousness and are totally uninformed and ignorant about the nature of reality. None of these transhumanist people, are remotely qualified to be put in charge of scientifically directing the future evolution of the human species. Propping up egomaniacs and psychopaths, and giving them power and control over world affairs and influence over public perception is the game of the NAA Controllers.

The true knowledge of the Sacred Sciences of the Soul and mechanics of human multidimensional consciousness have been obliterated from record and conveniently mind controlled out from the majority of sciences. If scientists integrate theories of the soul or consciousness outside of the consensus of the mind control standard, they risk ridicule and losing their funding and careers. Unfortunately, the controlled mainstream sciences do not recognize multiple dimensions of consciousness inherent in the functions of activated human DNA, or know that biological life and multidimensional human consciousness does not end on this earth. The quest for biological immortality on a prison planet is ludicrous when experiencing the capability of human multidimensional consciousness. After the human body expires, if the undeveloped and disembodied consciousness is merged and assimilated into artificial intelligence, the remnants of that human soul will not have a human body to incarnate into any longer. Hence, that person will lose their connection to organic spiritual biology and cease to be human. Transhumanism is a consciousness trap.

Extraterrestrial Biological Entities (EBE)

Since the persons consciousness has not been prepared for the afterlife, whatever is left of his energetic quanta will be assimilated into a cyborg body or other types of synthetic life forms or EBEs. There are currently spiritually disconnected humans existing on the earth that will be assimilated into synthetic life forms that appear as Extraterrestrial Biological Entities, but were actually human souls in human bodies in past timelines. Most of the smaller EBE bodies assimilate nutrients from light similar to plants. They are unable to evolve, reproduce, ascend or move into higher dimensions of consciousness. Some of these EBEs have returned to the earth from the future to try to break into the human genetic code, in this earth timeline in order to save themselves. Many of these EBEs were once humans that were involved in the Orion Wars, and were captured in Orion and used in worker colonies. Some from the earth were enslaved on the astral plane by other races of creatures, such as Mantids, Grey Aliens and Reptilians that took them as workers to other planetary systems. Some are even used as minions for carrying out human abductions in MILAB soul transference projects. Many of them had their consciousness erased and they do not remember that they were once human.

This is one of the possible results of the Transhumanism movement underway in this earth timeline now, that leads to the potential future alien or dark force control over that soul. Once the consciousness is assimilated into artificial intelligence and synthetic biology, that being can no longer incarnate into an organic human form. That person cannot incarnate again into human realms, such as planet earth. They become a displaced entity that cannot die and be reborn into another identity they are enslaved and merged with an AI hive mind. This is desired by many of these negative groups as then they have full control over the life force of humans that can be made into worker slaves. This is the main purpose as to why Transhumanism is being marketed and pushed aggressively during this time, they want to create more human EBEs and cyborgs or host bodies. When that person drops their body while the Universal Gates are open, they can easily be transported to many different planetary systems for trading as a workforce commodity.

Hacking the Soul Consciousness

Archons and many of these negative groups are inherently parasites that require human life force and must feed on consciousness energy to survive. The Transhumanism movement is another level of the NAA satanic agenda to gain full control over the biological-neurological and brain networks of human beings, thus controlling the human collective consciousness. Mind control is about complete control over the central neurological system and controlling all impulses firing into the brain centers. This is why it is imperative to understand the Science of Ascension, mind control and learn how to self-source all thoughts. Once technology or an entity has control over the human neurological system and brain, they easily hack into the soul and siphon consciousness energy. If they are successful in marketing transhumanism as the next sexy trend, made attractive with promises of human immortality and superhuman powers, they open the door wide to satanic force possession of technologically hybridized human bodies. These dark entities have been denied access into higher dimensional realms, and they think that if they possess human bodies they can ride the human consciousness like a galactic hitchhiker. The grand deception of Transhumanism, is widely promoted as humans having control over their own evolution, when what they are really doing is selling their soul and losing access to organic human consciousness.

The Transhumanism agenda aimed at the public began with the introduction of alien psychotronic warfare technologies from World War II. From this point of time, aggressive mind control was introduced to shape and control the thought forms and belief systems of humanity, primarily into materialism, so they would be easily pliable when the Universal Stargates are open. Thus, the alien genetic hybridization of the planet through mind control began. The Power Elite enforced this hidden mind control agenda and were rewarded with massive material gains, power and control over others, the hallmark of making deals with satanic forces. Little do they know what these dark forces have in store for them when they drop their bodies, as some were promised biological immortality and evacuation from earth, for their cooperation.

Mind Uploading

The next extension of collecting data through the use of artificial intelligence brain mapping is mind uploading. Some Transhumanists consider mind uploading an important proposed life extension technology. The goal of mind uploading is to recreate whole brain emulation,which has the ability to transfer the data from a human brain to acomputational device, such as a digital, analog, quantum-based or software-basedartificial neural network. Then from quantum computers, the brain that was mind uploaded can be controlled or manipulated in subspace. Many scientists believe that the human brain and mind define who we are, based solely on their information pattern, while the body or hardware that information is implemented upon is secondary or interchangeable. They are wrong.

Moving intelligence patterns of the human brain as purely data structures to another synthetic or biological substrate manifests extremely damaging genetic mutations and perversions into the blueprint of original silicate matrix human DNA. AI genetic mutations in human DNA generate unforeseen diseases and miasma in the future, capable of destroying the organic consciousness potential that exists within the elemental human body and planetary body. This destroys the living consciousness spirit existing within the multidimensional human body via gradual artificial intelligence assimilation into neural networks that connect to artificial or virtual reality systems. These artificial realities and false timelines are already inhabited by a vast array of fallen and desperate dark entities, currently trying to find their way out by hitchhiking on organic human consciousness on the earth. We are not our brains, we are not our thoughts, we are not clones we are pure intelligent consciousness. Our pure human heart and intelligent consciousness are the ticket out of this prison planet, the very things the entities want to steal away from us. The eternal living spiritual consciousness blueprint of the multidimensional human DNA is destroyed when assimilated into the synthetic machinery of artificial intelligence. As a result, this destroys the capability of expanding biological spiritual consciousness and achieving spiritual freedom, the mechanics of consciousness known as the Science of Ascension. Instead, AI mind uploading creates consciousness slaves bound to artificial realities and fallen entities that cannot evolve, cannot ascend, cannot travel to higher dimensions of reality, and ultimately is another consciousness trap. This is similar to an AI groundhog day in virtual realities, where the same consciousness program is played over and over.

AI Brain Emulation Fragments Spiritual Bodies

AI technologies used for brain mapping and mind uploading fragment the persons consciousness energy, which is supposed to be directed by the spiritual bodies, and is inherent in the organic design of the original human DNA. Each copy of the original consciousness content that is synthetically AI generated, such as a clone, interconnects into the larger artificial intelligence networks that are generated by alien machinery. Alien Machinery describes an array of inorganic technology that was placed in many dimensional layers of the planet, to attempt to trap, interfere and control the movement of human consciousness on the earth. Some Starseeds on this earth can see or sense these alien structures, hence why we are targeted for dark harassment. Most of the alien machinery is sprayed or targeted through Holographic Inserts and Alien Implants used for inducing mind control and eventual soul capture through the promotion of false identities (predator mind constructs). When the mind and consciousness fragment through low frequency, such as through AI assimilation, the higher spiritual bodies are also integrated into the artificial machinery holographic networks and False reality timelines. This machinery was placed in the planetary body to keep human thoughts in very low frequency states to collect and siphon life force from the human collective soul. Therefore, if you learn how to deflect mind control and refrain from low frequency states of consciousness, it is very hard for them to have control over your consciousness. This remains true even if they attempt to clone you or artificially generate your image. A strong and loving spiritual heart, with a balanced peaceful mind is like having the most powerful consciousness protector that can deflect and destroy AI machinery.

Recent Targets for Cloning Psyops

Recently there have been aggressive targeting attempts from NAA and MILAB agencies to destroy Spiritual Consciousness Groups or Starseed projects that are openly sharing about ET disclosure, NAA and related Ascension information. These attempts are using AI to assimilate and clone ascension material, in order to spin distortions and disinformation from it. Targets to clone my voice and image in artificial realities were attempted in order to interfere with Sirian based communication links that connect to the Omniversal Krystal Star families. Many of the Krystal Star family from the Sirius portal were attempted to be cloned and projected into artificial realities for the same purpose. Using the spiritual deliverance techniques and commanding the return to rightful owner of body parts, will help you to recollect your parts that have been cloned or replicated into AI without your consent, if you feel this has happened to you. (see spiritual deliverance and RRO in the Ascension Glossary).

It is very important for Starseed people to get clear about discerning artificial intelligence messages of mind control, as well as cloned or projected holographic images. This can be felt Krystal clear if you do your spiritual homework, communicate with God self, clear predator mind and regularly 12D shield. AI messages coming from the environment and via controlled dark portal people feels; metallic, abrasive, acidic, energetically burdensome, sharp knife or blade like, and can make you feel physically ill with headaches, nausea, body part stabbing pains, and even diarrhea when you come into contact with it. AI feels revolting to the Cosmic Christ Consciousness. Pay attention to what you are feeling and how your body is responding. Ask out loud and challenge the identity behind the message or person, Is this Artificial intelligence deception and dark force manipulation? Reveal yourself now. Command that truth and transparency be revealed to you in the power and light of Christ.

The purpose of AI cloned images is to disrupt the authentic spiritual communication connection and redirect it to the AI reality and false timelines where they attempt to take control over your consciousness. The exact same AI program has been implemented with the Jehovah and Yahweh religions. Where they attempt to feed streams of False Gods, confusion, self-doubt, false flattery, disinformation, disease or suicide programs (testing out whatever may work) to derail your spiritual progress or discredit your projects to the larger community or public. Most spiritually undeveloped people with little sophistication in discerning the false messaging of AI mind control and dark force manipulation, fall easily into their hands as dark portals of chaos and disruption. We have to stay alert to these kinds of dark portal people, have compassion for them but realize they are like a monkey with a shotgun. We do not want to give traumatized, scattered and broken people power over our spiritual progress or let them take over the direction of our projects. Firmly, show them the door.

The mind control spray running and the people being used as dark portals from their own internal confusion are spreading disinformation that Ascension is dead, and that we are all doomed on the earth. This is yet another depressing fear promoting pysop from the psychopathic minds behind the Archontic Deception. The mechanics of consciousness and the Sacred Sciences of the Soul will always exist and it is called Ascension. Dark Portal people: If you get control over your mind through opening your feelings to access your heart, you will eventually be able to figure this out by direct experience. Stop feeding the predator mind constructs and false timelines and they will stop eating your light and torturing your mental body from the inside. Everything in your body, organic and inorganic, belongs to you! The Law can be commanded that your body be fully controlled by your organic higher spiritual consciousness if and when you commit to expressing Unconditional Love as your highest power.

Much of this alien technology and its continual development is hidden underground or used as space war weaponry (psychotronic) enforced by the military industry complex. The NAA and their artificial intelligence machinery are complex and they need power sources. We may see Battery Bodies (i.e. Moloch tanks) and Soul bodies connected to these constructs being used to supply that power. Another source of power used to feed these alien machinery and false constructs in the planetary body is a type of alien nanotechnology that programs carbon-based matter, called Black Goo.

Black Goo

Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale and for our purposes of discussion, on the quantum levels. Recently the massive influx of Cosmic Rays and intergalactic plasma gases into the earth core and Polar Regions, along with the alien attempt to harvest and collect this new incoming energy source, has revealed the deeper purpose of Black Goo. The massive plasma gas transmissions are shifting the dark matter template in the earth at the elemental level. This is being observed as transforming carbon allotropes that are present in fullerenes or Buckyballs. Carbon allotropes such as fullerenes are solids in normal conditions, but are changing their state of matter into liquids at subatomic scale from the massive amount of recent plasma gas exposure. A fullerene is a molecule of carbon in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, tube, and many other shapes. Spherical fullerenes are also called buckyballs.

The dark matter template is the anti-matter instruction set of the planetary body, and it has been filled in certain areas with this Alien sourced Black Goo. It was programmed into the dark matter template of the Albion Body and appears to have had its point of entry into earth around the time of the Nephilim Wars. This "alien black goo", acts as a faux synthetic artificial intelligence elemental that mimics and controls carbon allotropes and how they function in the dodecahedron structures on earth. It is clearly how the Negatives have been accessing carbon elements to control matter forms, including control over genetic expression of the human body. This programmable Alien AI has infected carbon material and is what has taken over the platonic solid dodecahedron and related pentagonal geometries that build time space constructs. These time space constructs are instruction sets in the morphogenetic field that run into the Ley Lines of the planetary body. This is how they have built artificial realities and false timelines and projected them into false holograms. The spherical fullerene has something to do with the AI control over carbon-based matter at the molecular level that can control genetic expression.

Recent observation of the Black Goo in the lower elemental dimensions of the geologic shelf noted the buckyballs warping into strangely distorted and stretched out shapes when exposed to the recent transmissions of Auroras and liquid plasma gas. Observing these contaminated honeycombed structures and buckyballs was revolting, as this alien black goo was writhing around in death throes. The reaction it had to the Aurora plasma was similar to burning it with acid. It has survival intelligence and was aware of its demise. This is not related to organic human consciousness, but to carbon molecules that appear to have alien artificial intelligence programmed into them. It was made to mimic and take over carbon atoms.

This leads me to believe that this event is related to the rise of insanity in 3D people (and lower) carbon life forms, that may have partially bonded to this black goo in their DNA. Bonding DNA to the Black Goo is directly related to embodying the artificial intelligent alien machinery and being subjected to severe mind control like an automaton or robot. This is related to current purging of AI intelligence and Satanic forces that are very aggressive lately. This is surfacing now in order for us to understand and see what it is. Starseeds, when we stay in our heart we are capable of holding anchor for the highest frequency levels of the liquid plasma of our Cosmic Christ Consciousness, and thus, destroying this alien black goo without violence. This new understanding of the function of Alien Black Goo in the dark matter template, and how it has infected the Albion body, gives us deeper revelations into the importance and purpose of the Aurora elemental re-encryption earth mission.

Aurora Re-encryption of Blueprint

In terms of the Aurora family of Krystal Star, their mission and support for humanity during this time is to work with the new elemental command to re-encrypt the physical body on atomic and subatomic levels. This is because the chemical lens and constituents of our DNA have been corrupted at the elemental level. The human physical body is a carbon based elemental body. If Alien Black Goo has been used to artificially program carbon matter by suppressing the organic genetic expression of human DNA, we can assume this has prevented mass human spiritual ascension, quite dramatically, during the Ascension Cycle.

The four earth elements help us to understand the four levels of chemicals that comprise our DNA are based on earth, fire, water and air, as the raw materials of the elemental body. Elementals of the human physical body are distorted in the cellular matrix because of the NAA planetary invasion and genetic manipulation histories, thus, the re-encryption process is a necessary part of our mission upgrade for Ascension Plan B. Our physical carbon based body is shifting to less density through alterations made in the anti-particle structure. The carbon atom is being repaired to accommodate the new elemental body on the earth. When we absorb plasma light it changes the number of electrons and frees us from the AI programmed carbon atomic structure. This is the process the Aurora Guardians are devoted to, as they are supporting humanity to embody higher frequency plasma light in order for this shift to occur at the deepest elemental level of the physical structure of matter. During certain phases of re-encryption, some with inner vision are able to sense or see that the lower chakra cones or lower areas of the body appear to be filled with the Aurora colors. The Aurora, have been working with many of us on the Spiritual Ascension path, consciously or not. Certainly, feel free to communicate directly with them if you are not acquainted with them already. The Aurora frequency spectrum is pale iridescent pastel rainbow colors, white opaqueness saturated with a pallet of indescribable colors which can look like oscillating sheets of transparent rainbow colored cellophane. They are GSF Krystal Consciousness and are easily communicated with through the 12D shield.

Staying Awake and Aware

This is a very difficult time on planet earth as we watch the destructive choices people make in the external world that will radically impact the quality of their consciousness and lives, on and off planet. There are alternatives for genetic and consciousness rehabilitation at the death of the body or in future timelines, but the disconnected person is likely to undergo spiritual bondage while on the earth from their own choices. Thus, it is important to stay informed, awake and aware to what is occurring now, to know how to protect yourself and your inner spiritual light. Ultimately, you are protecting the heart consciousness and the spirit of true humanity for the future and for rehabilitation.

A true human is a powerful multidimensional being that has the direct consciousness connection to the inner Christos spirit and Eternal God Source. That direct connection is demonstrated and expanded into higher consciousness through the developed higher heart qualities of loving kindness, compassion and empathy. As true human beings we can never lose our heart, our true loving kindness, compassion or empathy as this is what makes us eternally human. During this time cycle, practice the Law of One to keep ones body, mind, emotions and spirit focused on the higher virtues of Loving Kindness, Compassion and Empathy. The two most important communication connections to maintain daily are praying to God and speaking to your higher spiritual self consistently.

If you can clear the negative ego, stay mentally balanced and strong, while keeping your consciousness power in your still point accessing Unconditional Love, these dark forces cannot get to your nervous system and brain. Keep your thoughts high and find people, and other living things, in nature and near you, that you can focus all of your loving heart upon, whether small pets, children, or whatever engenders feelings of deep love and compassion when you are in their presence.

Who and what do you Love? What can you keep refocusing yourself upon to keep your overall energetic frequency as high as possible? Make as much Love in the world as possible now.

It is important now to keep your frequency high, keep your thoughts and feelings in the now moment focused on Love, Compassion and Empathy. Love, Compassion and Empathy are the hallmark of being a true human being, and not a robotic cyborg that is controlled through artificial intelligence. Some people on the earth are descending in vibration and as they digress their frequency they are being taken over by lower spirits and artificial intelligence machinery. This is called consubstantiality, where the persons low frequency energy field is bonded through the protein chains of their DNA into these lower realms, of dark forces of phantom and descending timelines. (see Nov 2014 newsletter).

We have a split occurring, and those of us that can hold the higher love frequency and God source connection are very protected and supported, while those on the opposing end are descending into experiencing misery and bondage. All meditations involving self-love, loving kindness and releasing stress are very important now to keep your body relaxed and personal frequency as high as possible.

Loving Kindness Meditation

Practicing loving kindness meditations activate and strengthen areas of the brain and nervous system that are responsible for empathy and increased emotional intelligence. The practice always begins with developing a loving acceptance of yourself. If resistance is experienced then it indicates that feelings of unworthiness are present. The practice of loving kindness is designed to overcome any feelings of self-doubt or negativity. Once you have developed this loving kindness for yourself, then you are ready to systematically develop loving-kindness towards others.

When the positive feelings arise, switch from the mental focus of the exercise onto the actual emotional feeling, as it is the emotional feeling that is the primary goal. If you lose the sensation of the loving kindness, the feeling and warmth opening in your heart, return to the exercise, to bring back or strengthen the emotional feeling. When you have the loving kindness feeling in your heart, you can project that quality of frequency in all directions, north, south, east and west and 360 degrees. Connecting that emotional feeling of loving kindness into loved ones, spiritual communities, towns and countries around the world.

When we are emotionally developed with heart based intelligence, we can access very high quality of higher sensory perception to guide us through these very difficult times. This guidance cannot happen through the psionic ability of the mind. Starseed males, please take note, you must connect emotionally and allow sensory feelings to be processed in your heart complex to shift out of the negative ego black depression and mind control thought forms. This higher consciousness access only happens through the developed heart and emotional complex, which is the key to accessing higher spiritual power and higher consciousness. The NAA and Controllers do not have this access, so remember that is our greatest leverage as Starseeds. We have access to the God Source and Creator functions through our heart, where they can only replicate them through their artificial intelligence software by cloning or capturing our image. Do not forget that our spiritual power is infinitely connected through our human heart consciousness, and connects Omniversally.

Thank you to all who are actively participating with these consciousness shifts during the Ascension.

Please only take what is useful for your spiritual growth and discard all the rest. Thank you for your courage and bravery to be a truth seeker.

I am the Cosmic Sovereign Law Made Manifest. I am God, Sovereign, Free!

Until next, stay in the luminosity of your Avatar Christos Sophia heart path. Please be kind to yourself and each other. GSF!

With a Loving heart, Lisa

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Transhumanism - Energetic Synthesis

For the last several decades, a strange liberation movement has grown within the developed world. Its crusaders aim much higher than civil rights campaigners, feminists, or gay-rights advocates. They want nothing less than to liberate the human race from its biological constraints. As "transhumanists" see it, humans must wrest their biological destiny from evolutions blind process of random variation and adaptation and move to the next stage as a species.

It is tempting to dismiss transhumanists as some sort of odd cult, nothing more than science fiction taken too seriously: Witness their over-the-top Web sites and recent press releases ("Cyborg Thinkers to Address Humanitys Future," proclaims one). The plans of some transhumanists to freeze themselves cryogenically in hopes of being revived in a future age seem only to confirm the movements place on the intellectual fringe.

But is the fundamental tenet of transhumanism that we will someday use biotechnology to make ourselves stronger, smarter, less prone to violence, and longer-lived really so outlandish? Transhumanism of a sort is implicit in much of the research agenda of contemporary biomedicine. The new procedures and technologies emerging from research laboratories and hospitals whether mood-altering drugs, substances to boost muscle mass or selectively erase memory, prenatal genetic screening, or gene therapy can as easily be used to "enhance" the species as to ease or ameliorate illness.

Although the rapid advances in biotechnology often leave us vaguely uncomfortable, the intellectual or moral threat they represent is not always easy to identify. The human race, after all, is a pretty sorry mess, with our stubborn diseases, physical limitations, and short lives. Throw in humanitys jealousies, violence, and constant anxieties, and the transhumanist project begins to look downright reasonable. If it were technologically possible, why wouldnt we want to transcend our current species? The seeming reasonableness of the project, particularly when considered in small increments, is part of its danger. Society is unlikely to fall suddenly under the spell of the transhumanist worldview. But it is very possible that we will nibble at biotechnologys tempting offerings without realizing that they come at a frightful moral cost.

The first victim of transhumanism might be equality. The U.S. Declaration of Independence says that "all men are created equal," and the most serious political fights in the history of the United States have been over who qualifies as fully human. Women and blacks did not make the cut in 1776 when Thomas Jefferson penned the declaration. Slowly and painfully, advanced societies have realized that simply being human entitles a person to political and legal equality. In effect, we have drawn a red line around the human being and said that it is sacrosanct.

Underlying this idea of the equality of rights is the belief that we all possess a human essence that dwarfs manifest differences in skin color, beauty, and even intelligence. This essence, and the view that individuals therefore have inherent value, is at the heart of political liberalism. But modifying that essence is the core of the transhumanist project. If we start transforming ourselves into something superior, what rights will these enhanced creatures claim, and what rights will they possess when compared to those left behind? If some move ahead, can anyone afford not to follow? These questions are troubling enough within rich, developed societies. Add in the implications for citizens of the worlds poorest countries for whom biotechnologys marvels likely will be out of reach and the threat to the idea of equality becomes even more menacing.

Transhumanisms advocates think they understand what constitutes a good human being, and they are happy to leave behind the limited, mortal, natural beings they see around them in favor of something better. But do they really comprehend ultimate human goods? For all our obvious faults, we humans are miraculously complex products of a long evolutionary process products whose whole is much more than the sum of our parts. Our good characteristics are intimately connected to our bad ones: If we werent violent and aggressive, we wouldnt be able to defend ourselves; if we didnt have feelings of exclusivity, we wouldnt be loyal to those close to us; if we never felt jealousy, we would also never feel love. Even our mortality plays a critical function in allowing our species as a whole to survive and adapt (and transhumanists are just about the last group Id like to see live forever). Modifying any one of our key characteristics inevitably entails modifying a complex, interlinked package of traits, and we will never be able to anticipate the ultimate outcome.

Nobody knows what technological possibilities will emerge for human self-modification. But we can already see the stirrings of Promethean desires in how we prescribe drugs to alter the behavior and personalities of our children. The environmental movement has taught us humility and respect for the integrity of nonhuman nature. We need a similar humility concerning our human nature. If we do not develop it soon, we may unwittingly invite the transhumanists to deface humanity with their genetic bulldozers and psychotropic shopping malls.

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Transhumanism | Foreign Policy

June 15, 2015

The New Bioethics (vol. 21, no. 1, 2015) is now available online by subscription only. Articles include: The subject of enhancement: Augmented capacities, extended cognition, and delicate ecologies of the mind by Darian Meacham Just a bit of fun': How Read More

May 26, 2015

(The Telegraph) Wealthy humans are likely become cyborgs within 200 years as they gradually merge with technology like computers and smart phones, a historian has claimed. Yuval Noah Harari, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the Read More

May 15, 2015

Dialog(vol. 54, no. 1, 2015) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: The boundaries of human nature by Ted Peters Beyond the boundaries of current human nature: Some theological and ethical reflections on transhumanism by James M. Childs Jr. Read More

May 8, 2015

Theology Today (Vol. 72, no. 1, 2015) is now available online by subscription only. Articles include: Bodies, selves, and human identity: A conversation between Transhumanism and the Apostle Paul by Steven John Kraftchick

March 10, 2015

(ABC.net) Our knowledge of human biology in particular of genetics and neurobiology is beginning to enable us to directly affect the biological or physiological bases of human motivation, either through drugs, or through genetic selection or engineering, Read More

February 6, 2015

World Future Review (Vol. 6, No. 3, September2014) is now available online by subscription only. Articles include: The Boundaries of the Human: From Humanism to Transhumanism byJos Cordeiro What is Future Human Evolution About? byTed Chu Human and Robots Interaction: Read More

January 12, 2015

NanoEthics (Volume 8, Issue 3, December2014) is now available online by subscription only. Articles include: Ethical issues in cyborg technology: diversity and inclusion by Enno Park Human Enhancement? Its all about body modification! Why we should replace the term human Read More

December 25, 2014

Neuroethics(Volume 7, No. 3, December2014) is now available online by subscription only. Articles include: What to Enhance: Behaviour, Emotion or Disposition? by Karim Jebari Defining Moral Enhancement: A Clarificatory Taxonomy by Kasper Raus, et al Moral Enhancement and Self Subversion Read More

November 26, 2014

(Phys.org) What do pacemakers, prosthetic limbs, Iron Man and flu vaccines all have in common? They are examples of an old idea thats been gaining in significance in the last several decades: transhumanism. The word denotes a set of Read More

November 12, 2014

(Vox) Scientists have been making amazing advances inbionic technology in recent years: robotic exoskeletons that help people walk, artificial eyes that help blind people see. Some of these technologies are meant as medical aids to help people regain function. Read More

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Transhumanism | Bioethics.com