Many people believe that the way to living a fulfilling life is by developing yourself and enhancing your mind to its fullest potential. Humanists believe that human nature is a universally state in which a human being is capable of existence. Transhumanists take this theory to a whole new level. Transhumanism is a way of thinking about the future, based on the belief that the human form that we are now, is not the end, and that existing is not enough. Transhumanists believe that the stage that humans are at is just an early phase of what they can develop into. Their focus is more on the modification of human through science. Something that caught my eye during my Wikipedia dive was posthumanism. It has the same beliefs of transhumanism, just to a farther point. A posthuman is a being, that seeks to reconceive the human form. It is not a single individual but rather one that can embody multiple identities and understand multiple perspectives. The most important factor to the posthuman is having the ability to manifest through different identities. A posthuman is basically the same as a cyborg, which after reading and trying to understand this concept for the last hour makes it even more confusing. Confusing because the relationship with technology is different between the two. Cyborgs are directly involved with robots and technology, while posthumans focus on cybernetics and the relationship to technology. Meanwhile, transhumanism doesn’t focus on any kind of technology. They focus on the modification of any kind of humanistic concept. I think the craziest thing about all these beliefs, is that all of them think that the others are hypothetical. Not that the ideas are hypothetical, for example, a transhumanistic thinker would believe that a posthuman is just a made-up idea of the future. This might be because their ideas of the future are so different. In a posthuman future, other beings could exist while the posthuman lives on earth, but eventually the posthumans will develop a new society that the humans won’t be able to keep up with, because they lack the same abilities. All of these beliefs have little to no signs of becoming a reality, however the idea of evolving into an entire new life form is pretty crazy to think about.
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)
E110 FA19 Class Blog 