From: Chris Fedeli (fedeli@email.msn.com)
Date: Sun Aug 15 1999 - 15:59:10 MDT
Brian Manning Delaney wrote:
>> To put my objections to both "post-" and "trans-humanism"
somewhat turgidly: The "human" itself is already the
permanent "self-post-ing" of what we are (the
"self-overcoming beast," to sound Nietzschean and/or
Aristotelian). To be post-human would thus amount almost to
being "post-post-human" -- not something I want to be
(assuming no state of perfection is possible). "Trans-human"
would mean moving towards adding that second "post-." Who
needs it?
.......
If we fully honor the humanist tradition and consider
"human" to mean "self-overcoming beast" then there is no
need for "trans"-humanism at all. We will continue to be
humans until we fully overcome the beast in ourselves, a
point that could be arbitrarily designated at either our
full genetic re-engineering or at that time we are uploaded.
But by this reasoning, it would also not make sense to keep
the 'human' designation as a suffix after we've elimated the
beast, because by eliminating the beast we will also have
eliminated the defining characteristic of 'humanity' (to the
humanists), namely the conflict between reason and animal
instinct. To do so would make as much sense as calling our
current selves "super-chimps" or "ultra-bipeds".
We need some name for our own current, pro-technlogical
evolutionary stance that distinguishes us from those
humanists with no real foresight on how we will eventually
overcome the beast, or who would prefer that we remain in a
perpetual state of 'beast overcoming-ness' (ugh).
"Techno-humanism", "evolutionary humanism", or
"cyborg-humanism" all come to mind as ways to decribe our
position on the current path of humanity. Any of those
terms could adequately replace "transhumanism" without any
semantic discontinuity with the original 'human' in
humanism.
Changing the name at this point might gain us some points
with academics, but would cost us the name recognition in
the public that we have developed in the past decade. As it
concerns the spread of our memes, I have several reasons for
why we might favor keeping the term "transhumanism", at
least in some capacity.
"Transhumanism" rolls off the tongue. My experience is that
the term strikes many neophytes as intuitively obvious in
meaning (unlike evolutionary humanism, I would guess) and
conjures up a pleasant and perhaps inspiring image for the
general population (unlike techno-humanism or
cyborg-humanism, probably).
I base some of this on my experience at the recent World
Future Society conference in Washington DC. Myself and
several other extropians and transhumanists spent hours at a
a small display table where we passed out close to a
thousand pieces of literature to conference participants,
most of it containing the word "transhumanism" at least
once. A not-uncommon response was for people to look at the
word "transhumanism" in our banner and say "oh, I get it."
Part of that intuition surely had to do with the context
(being at a conference about the future). But still, the
meaning of the term seemed pleasingly obvious to many.
My own thoughts on the effectiveness of the term
"transhumanism" are that it conjures up positive
associations that many people have with the American
Transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau. Even if most
people don't have a sophisticated understanding of the
philosophical underpinnings of transcendentalism, they
focus on the "trans" in transhumanism and associate it with
some kind of intellectual spiritualism that has something to
do with the act of becoming something greater.
I personally like that association - a "spiritualism" for
people who don't believe in ghosts or spirits, but rather
are looking for an inspiring and personally meaningful
worldview along with a community of people who share that
common sense of purpose.
This explanation of transhumanism would be an academic
hodge-podge of meanings, but it bears a similarity to the
effective use that the Unitarian Church has put to the
philosophy of humanism. Most Unitarians are probably not
strict Nietzschesans or Aristotelians. For them, "humanism"
has a more general purpose meaning; it is an ideology that
allows them to be a part of church and a spiritual community
wihthout having to believe in god or any particular set of
doctrines. They are united perhaps by nothing more than a
general sense of being pro-human. We could become the
Unitarian Church for the 21st century, and I hope that we
do.
For the sake of the growth and increased influence of
extropianism, I would favor keeping the term "transhumanism"
on our letterhead.
Chris Fedeli
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