Abstract
And here we are, at the real Transhumanism; this strange hybrid movement that expressly wants to retrace the footsteps of the builders of the famous biblical tower, with the awareness that, this time, there won’t be anyone to confuse the languages. Considered by some an ideology or a philosophy, by others a kind of faith, by others still a mixture of theories waiting for scientific validation or denial, this movement – precisely because of its interdisciplinarity and the way in which it mixes political agendas and theoretical speculations – is still difficult to define. Wikipedia considers Transhumanism “an international intellectual movement that aims to transform the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellect and physiology.” Not bad, as a program, but then, neither were the forerunners kidding.
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Change history
11 March 2019
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Notes
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Ned Ludd is a semi-historical character – in the sense that his existence is not certain – who lived in the Eighteenth Century and came from the village of Anstey, near Leicester. According to the story, in 1768, this worker, in a fit of rage, broke a pair of mechanical looms in the factory where he worked. The twenties of the Nineteenth Century saw, in England, the birth of a protest movement among workers inspired precisely by the figure of Ned Ludd, so-called Luddism, whose main strategy was to sabotage industrial production and to destroy the machinery. With the term “neo-Luddism” or “bio-Luddism,” Transhumanists refer to all of those thinkers who, in their opinion, would embody an anti-scientific and anti-technological vision of things. In reality, neo-Luddism is a composite movement, or rather a term that acts as an umbrella for figures and positions very different from each other, from ecologists to conservatives, from the religious to the anti-globalists. Of particular interest – for the criticisms brought to Transhumanism from a conservative perspective – is the quarterly magazine The New Atlantis, edited by three American think tanks, the Center for the Study of Technology and Society, the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Witherspoon Institute. Cf. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/
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The Movement of the Human Potential was born in America in the 1960s, starting from the idea that human beings have a great untapped potential within themselves. In some respects, this movement represents the most “serious” side of the New Age; the core of this current can be seen in so-called “Transpersonal Psychology,” a movement on the borders of the academically accepted, which examines aspects of the human soul as mystical experiences, incorporating aspects of Eastern thought and heterodox forms of psychotherapy. One of the sources of inspiration for the Human Potential Movement was undoubtedly Aldous Huxley, especially in his “lysergic” and spiritualistic phase – that of the books The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell. On the practical side, this movement gravitated around the Esalen Institute, founded in California in 1962 by Dick Price and Michael Murphy.
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Cf. A. Harrington, The Immortalist, Random House, New York 1969.
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D. Gelles, Immortality 2.0: A Silicon Valley Insider Looks at California’s Transhumanist Movement, in: «The Futurist», January 2009.
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Essentially through parthenogenesis, that is, the phenomenon in which, under certain conditions, the females of some animal species are able to self-impregnate without the use of male sperm.
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G. Dvorsky e J. Hughes, Postgenderism: Beyond the Gender Binary, 2008. http://ieet.org/archive/IEET-03-PostGender.pdf
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R. M. Geraci, Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012.
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Cfr. D. Correia, If Only Glenn Beck Were a Cyborg, «Counterpunch», September 15, 2010, http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/09/15/if-only-glenn-beck-were-a-cyborg/
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The movement founded by Max More stands out for some of its very “American” aspects, that is, those typical of a culture fascinated by secret societies, slogans and associative symbologies. In particular, among them, the assumption of fictitious names – like Max More, Tom Morrow and Mark Plus – and a particular handshake that symbolizes their enthusiasm for the future. Cf. E. Regis, Meet the Extropians, «Wired», October 1994, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/extropians.html
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Cf. C. Sagan, The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2000.
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Cfr. M. Dery, Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century, Grove Press, New York 1997.
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There are, or there have been, many micronations, some of which have issued their own currency. A list of micronations can be found on Wikipedia or, if you prefer, at the following address: www.dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Micronations/
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If you want to know more about these topics, you can take a look at the Survival Preparedness Index. Cf. http://www.armageddononline.org/disaster-prep-help.html
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http://cosmeng.org/. Currently (2019), the site does not seem to be active anymore.
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The Long Now Foundation, created in 1966, aims to promote a mentality based on the very long term. See http://longnow.org/
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F.M. Esfandiary, Up-Wingers: A Futurist Manifesto, John Day Company, New York 1973.
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F.M. Esfandiary, Optimism One. The Emerging Radicalism, Norton & Company, New York 1970.
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Free download at the following address: http://www.cryonics.org/book1.html
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Cooper was a simple activist, and he was responsible for the formation of the first, true cryonics organization, the Life Extension Society; in 1969, however, he abandoned cryonics activism and, in 1983 – in a poetic way, in fact – disappeared at sea.
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See M. More, The Proactionary Principle, version 1.2, July 29, 2005, http://www.maxmore.com/proactionary.htm
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A pathological condition in which the embryo implant takes place in a different location from the uterus, generally with very low probability of success – and with possible risks, also considerable, for the mother.
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Conceptual Art is an artistic movement that has developed in the United States since the 1960s, starting from the premise that ideas and concepts embodied in artistic work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material considerations. Conceptual Art is linked to the practice of “installations” – as the artistic works produced are called – which can often be built by anyone, following a set of written instructions.
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See N. Bostrom; M. Cirkovic (ed.), Global Catastrophic Risks, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2011.
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The definition of “supreme baby-boomer” fits perfectly with Kurzweil, representing the desire – incarnated by much of his generation – to remain in play indefinitely.
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Thomas Horn, Forbidden Gates: How Genetics, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Biology, Nanotechnology, and Human Enhancement Herald The Dawn of Techno-Dimensional Spiritual Warfare, Defender Publishing, Crane 2011.
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See Joseph P. Farrell and Scott D. de Hart, Transhumanism: a grimoire of alchemical agendas, Feral House, Port Townsend 2011.
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See G. O. Longo, Il simbionte. Prove di Umanità futura, Meltemi, Rome 2003, and ibid., Homo technologicus, Meltemi, Rome 2005.
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Since 2009, the American Academy of Religion has organized an annual symposium dedicated to “Transhumanism and Religion,” in which several academics address the identification and analysis of any religious beliefs implicit in Transhumanist thought. See http://papers.aarweb.org/content/transhumanism-and-religion-group
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Manzocco, R. (2019). A New Tower of Babel. In: Transhumanism - Engineering the Human Condition. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04958-4_2
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