If you could merge your current mind and body with technology that would give you superhuman powers and would allow you to live forever, would you do it? This is essentially what the transhumanism movement is seeking to accomplish. Transhumanists envision a day when technology will allow humanity to become so advanced that sickness, disease, poverty and war will essentially be eradicated. They believe that merging with machines will permit us to become trillions of times more intelligent than we are today, and they also believe that radical life extension technologies will make it possible for humanity to actually achieve immortality. Many transhumanists are convinced that such a world can be achieved within their lifetimes. They point to Moore’s Law and to the fact that technology already appears to be growing at an exponential rate. As the technology curve continues to steepen, transhumanists believe that our world will rapidly become transformed into a place that would be unrecognizable to us today. Just a few decades from now, transhumanists believe that superhuman powers and extremely advanced life extension technologies will allow them to essentially become like gods.
The key moment that most transhumanists are looking forward to is known as “the Singularity”. That is the moment when artificial intelligence will actually surpass human intelligence and a massive technological chain reaction will be triggered. At that time, most transhumanists believe that biological intelligence will merge with non-biological intelligence and humanity will become vastly more intelligent than it is today. During this transition, society will be fundamentally transformed…
After the Singularity occurs, it is predicted that vast changes will sweep through society; changes so drastic that they are nearly inconceivable at the present time. Experts in the movement say that after the Singularity, indefinite human life extension will rapidly become the norm. Many scientists working in this field are particularly interested in the concept of achieving immortality.
To most people, the idea of achieving immortality in our decaying physical bodies would sound absolutely ridiculous.
But transhumanists are very serious about this.
One way they are seeking to accomplish this is by searching for a method that will enable them to store the human mind on a computer. If your entire consciousness could be “uploaded” into a computer, it could conceivably later be downloaded into a futuristic avatar of some sort once that technology has been developed.
But that is not the only life extension technology that transhumanists are working on. Some other examples include embedding nanobots in our bodies and brains and eliminating diseases through the process of “genetic reprogramming”…
Other futurists and transhumanists are working toward improving longevity through more biological means, such as growing new organs from stems cells, replacing worn out parts of the body with high-tech updated models, and curing diseases through genetic reprogramming. A third method of achieving a transhuman state of being may come through merging the biological and non biological in equal measure, such as embedding nano robots into the bloodstream and brain; and replacing atoms with nano computers to solve the degeneration that comes with aging.
According to transhumanists, not only will we be able to live much longer, but our quality of life will also be so much better in the future. The following is how one transhumanist envisions what life will be like in the 2050s…
Robots have become an important family acquisition. Ability to replicate self-assembling robot parts in nanofactories, make these machines easily available and affordable. By 2050, technologies advancing at “Moore’s Law” speeds have produced an android-like creature nearly indiscernible from a human.
Programmed with Internet-downloaded software, 2050s household robots cater to our every whim. They also manage the nanorobots that whiz through our veins keeping us healthy 24/7, and monitor our safety when we connect to simulation events that whisk us away in a Star Trek Holodeck-like adventure.
That sounds wonderful doesn’t it?
But how will we earn the money to pay for all of those things?
If robots are so advanced at that point, why would companies even need human workers?
Or will we have to “enhance” ourselves with technology just to be useful in the workforce?
In a recent article by Andrew Smart, he suggests that these “enhancements” could just turn us into “better slaves”…
Could it be that we’ve been tricked into pouring our innovative energy into making ourselves better slaves? If the digital elite achieves its dream of a perfect union with machines, what becomes of the rest of us who either can’t afford cyborgification or who actually enjoy life as a regular human being? Would one Singularitized human be expected to handle the workload of 100 unenhanced workers? Robots will have of course taken the rest of the jobs.
In fact, robots are already taking our jobs at a staggering pace. This is even happening in low wage countries such as China…
Chinese company Hon Hai, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer, has announced it intends to build a robot-making factory and replace 500,000 workers with robots over the next three years.
But transhumanists are not really concerned with such matters. They insist that we will become so intelligent that we will easily figure out the solutions to such social issues.
Yes, most transhumanists concede that there will be bumps on the road to utopia, but they argue that it would be foolish not to “take control of our own evolution”. They believe that we can use science and technology to guide the evolution of society and that this will create a far better world than we have today. The following is what one participant stated at a recent conference about transhumanism and religion…
Transhumanism is a thrust toward transcendence. It is not classical mysticism but seeks a temporal transcendence The driving force behind this is evolution…
What is reality? Reality is evolution. It has a direction from the simple to the complex; the most complex [outcome] is intelligence. Thus evolution is aimed at intelligence.
We should thus have a will to evolve. We have a moral responsibility to increase evolution and do so by continually striving to expand our abilities throughout life by acting in harmony with the evolutionary process…
Science and technology move us toward Utopia. One of the most exciting things about transhumanism is that all will be fixed.
That all sounds so alluring.
After all, who wouldn’t want to live in a “utopia” where everything that is currently wrong with our planet has been “fixed”?
But transhumanists don’t just stop there. They believe that eventually we will possess such superhuman powers and will enjoy such radical life extension technologies that we will essentially be like God.
The most famous transhumanist on the globe, Ray Kurzweil, takes 150 vitamin supplements a day in an attempt to extend his life until more advanced life extension technologies can be developed. In chapter 7 of “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology”, he expresses his belief that evolution and technology are systematically moving us in the direction of becoming more like God…
“Evolution moves toward greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and greater levels of subtle attributes such as love. In every monotheistic tradition God is likewise described as all of these qualities, only without any limitation: infinite knowledge, infinite intelligence, infinite beauty, infinite creativity, infinite love, and so on. Of course, even the accelerating growth of evolution never achieves an infinite level, but as it explodes exponentially it certainly moves rapidly in that direction. So evolution moves inexorably toward this conception of God, although never quite reaching this ideal. We can regard, therefore, the freeing of our thinking from the severe limitations of its biological form to be an essentially spiritual undertaking.”
Transhumanist Mark Pesce is even more extreme. He openly states that he believes that transhumanism will allow us “to become as gods”…
“Men die, planets die, even stars die. We know all this. Because we know it, we seek something more—a transcendence of transience, translation to incorruptible form. An escape if you will, a stop to the wheel. We seek, therefore, to bless ourselves with perfect knowledge and perfect will; To become as gods, take the universe in hand, and transform it in our image—for our own delight. As it is on Earth, so it shall be in the heavens. The inevitable result of incredible improbability, the arrow of evolution is lipping us into the transhuman – an apotheosis to reason, salvation – attained by good works.”
And what transhumanist Dr. Richard Seed has to say about all of this is quite frightening. He warns of “warfare” if anyone tries to prevent him from becoming a god…
If you want to get an idea of where transhumanists want to take us, just check out the YouTube video posted below. It was produced by “the 2045 Initiative”, and as you can see, they believe that the world will be infinitely superior in the year 2045 than it is today…
So what do you think about all of this?
Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…
