Transhumanism is an interesting commitment. If you watch a science documentary on TV or read a popular book on physics, you can feel certain that the knowledge that humanity now possesses places us beyond the medium sized world we live in, both in terms of very large objects like planets and solar systems and in terms of the very small quantum world. Science has projected us past ourselves in every direction, and the unlimited technological innovation that it promises and the ability to grab and hold the wonders of the universe as a unique and all-encompassing goal is beyond all belief. This being beyond belief seems an important issue, because we have so many beliefs that cannot possibly follow us into space, if you know what I mean. And yes, you may point out that God can follow us into space, but firstly I'm not so sure about that and secondly, whatchagonnadowhenthelargestarmsinthewwfgetaholdofyoubrotherwhatchagonnado.
I have noticed that one very interesting consequence of belief in scientific futures is the negating effect those beliefs have on my political beliefs. In a sense, human politics belongs to the Earth, to its territories and to its distributions of resources and systems of power. Once I imagine humanity out of orbit, or even radically enhanced here on Earth, it becomes very difficult to conceive of humanity as a struggle in the same ways I think of it today. Humanity becomes about exploration and space opera endeavours, and not at all about the existence of starving children with preventable diseases. Does this mean I am fantasising away the political reality that allows for the emergence of hi-tech?
In Star Trek, the military model is wholly preserved to the purpose of exploration. But what kind of military is that? It's a colonial military, albeit an ideally purified and detached one (you don't even have to walk through Africa to get to the natives - you just float around amongst some pretty stars and then maybe you'll visit x y z planet. That's if they're really lucky). And come to that, why do I, as an engineering technician on a starship, want to work without a break? Everything on the Enterprise is measured in masses of hours and no-one is ever 'off-shift' except where plots and sub-plots demand it. They also wear the same boring clothes every day and care a lot about a rigid command structure even though there is absolutely no demand for it. "I will make Captain one day, but what about all the responsibility, like having to be make the right command decisions at the drop of a hat, and having to be an inspirational influence on all that serve under me?" ... Why would the future present only this measly short-sighted idea of self-worth? It's not even good enough for right now here on Earth. Why should people in the future be so insecure as to require a military hierarchy to regulate a supposedly perfected humanity? And why does Earl Grey tea make me fascinating if it's ordered hot? It didn't make me fascinating yesterday when I spilt it on my foot in the kitchen.
The reason noone worries about how holodecks are basically perfected forms of slavery supporting an entirely fascist society is the same reason noone asks themselves mid-documentary why it's hard to think about the tecnologically unlimited future of a Joburg slum-dweller who is likely to die some time this week. The reason is there are a lot of 'orrible barnacles attached to the idea of science being the social future. I have hi-tech because I happen to have been born where there is an abundance of hi-tech. FM2030, in 'Are you a Transhuman', wrote this:
(sorry about the stupid formatting. It is stupid and I can't seem to change it. Stupid.)
—unwillingness to give—or just unintelligent management of personal life.
...
Typical US attitudes that don't wash. People aren't poor because they think poor, they're poor because society requires poor people - it requires the unemployed, the endebted, the ones that work like dogs to earn what can never truly support them. True story - I saw an ad yesterday for 'office junior' and read it because it stated £7000 - £8000 as its salary and suspicion bit into me. I read the ad and lo and behold the worker is expected to work Monday-Friday 9.00-5.30! This equates to about £1 an hour, in case you're wondering - a slave's wage. That ad runs on Reed.co.uk, a mainstream employment website/company. Power even creates the wasteful and violent for ideological purposes, such as the old industrial working class in the UK now being a violent underclass. What do you call high value people that rely on creating low value people? You call them the real low value people.
Reading FM2030 on this point reminds me that you don't get a happy-clappy vision of technology only by chance, you can also get it by being a douchebag. Oh, he also says that being able to be productive anywhere will decrease the pace of our lives and increase our leisure. How Victorian. Because technology is the playground of the rich or 'affluent' (that word always sounded to me like a nasal problem), then we all just need to become rich, right? Because the rich are free? It seems to me as it seems to many people that the people who can't give up on the old industrial society values are precisely the rich, who require the values and economics of the modern period in order to have their position as a ruling-class. There is no such thing as the 'self-limiting poor', that's a really very abusive position, not to say that it's plain false too (too). H+, to be really anything more than an onanism for the would-be ruling-class, has to steer well clear of this kind of stuff.
Leaving politics aside, and because I do want to take transhumanism seriously as a starting set of beliefs, I find there's merely a different hook to the same problem coming from the consideration of science itself. For H+, being extremely positive about the future, is certainly positivist in its apprehension of the realities of science. True science cannot ignore its environment, it cannot see itself as something above us all purified and powerful and capable of lifting us out of our mess like a saviour. Faith in science such as H+ demonstrates identifies the potential strengths of technological advancement and ignores the embedded and interconnected natures of those very same technologies.
Crude examples follow. Sorry. It's late.
Man landed on the moon at the same time race issues divided the country that sent those astronauts up. Astronauts report how fragile the Earth looks from space, and how sublimely beautiful and so on, and that's a true, honest, and brutal experience. The idea of the Earth from space has the power to say to people that some other way is possible in life, but it's not for all that disconnected from their lives, it isn't really sublime. The Space Program of the US (and I assume the USSR?) came directly out of the rocket science of the Nazis, who shot their rockets at civillian towns and cities. Nazis exterminated the Jews. For this they used IBM technology and more besides. When astronauts look at the Earth from orbit, do they care that the Nazis put them there?
Scientists following pure physics created the atomic bomb, which was then dropped on civillian cities. I remember reading that Richard Feynman wrote that that other well-known-but-the-name-escapes-me scientist (probably not Oppenheimer) who worked on the Manhattan Project advocated a 'social irresponsibility' for science that Feynman found reasonable.
In all this I'm not saying that science should curtail itself, or see itself as working within the midst of destruction and social chaos and therefore conceptualise its achievements as being less happy. I'm merely pointing out that a complete conception of the wonders of science would resolve these difficulties as a matter of course, if science is to be seen as legitimately progressive and not crippled.
I am therefore proposing that it's difficult to think about how society would look in space precisely because even the vast promises of space travel aren't good enough, aren't developed enough in themselves. In short, if H+ were in fact properly demonstrated it wouldn't be a kooky belief system for short people with wire glasses, it would be an inescapable rewriting our values in the here and now, reshaping society itself by the force of necessity.
But is there the philosophy to do it? And is it really an issue for philosophy/philosophy of science? Is it instead a standard political issue to be decided in standardly political means (that is, without the scientific ideal or the vision of technological progress)? Is it correct and right that only short people are transhumanists, as an expression of a political category? Well, I don't like that view given that H+ is really very underdeveloped and probably needs a chance to get going in an honest direction. Also, I personally cannot afford to be a 'lets get down in the mud' sort of person because it all hurts too much, I think of political positions as fundamentally ignorant or hard-hearted, considering how bad things actually are. To strive to see life in the midst of the future is to strive to develop what is truly great about humanity right now.
Maybe I'll write again about 'humanity', it's really overused. In any case, and just to mention one last thing about immortality - yes, H+ cares about extending human life span, perhaps indefinitely. But this already happens whenever you pick up a stick, or work a machine, you are already part of the great mechanisms of the universe and therefore immortal and irreplaceable. And that's my two cents. There's no reason that my body should stop with my organs, or that I simply want to keep my organs alive in spite of the other movements in the universe that I'm a part of. The death of my personality should be negligible, should I be living within good ethics. And that's a wibble on death. For free. Lucky you, feel free to upchuck.
I am a robot.
V
I have noticed that one very interesting consequence of belief in scientific futures is the negating effect those beliefs have on my political beliefs. In a sense, human politics belongs to the Earth, to its territories and to its distributions of resources and systems of power. Once I imagine humanity out of orbit, or even radically enhanced here on Earth, it becomes very difficult to conceive of humanity as a struggle in the same ways I think of it today. Humanity becomes about exploration and space opera endeavours, and not at all about the existence of starving children with preventable diseases. Does this mean I am fantasising away the political reality that allows for the emergence of hi-tech?
In Star Trek, the military model is wholly preserved to the purpose of exploration. But what kind of military is that? It's a colonial military, albeit an ideally purified and detached one (you don't even have to walk through Africa to get to the natives - you just float around amongst some pretty stars and then maybe you'll visit x y z planet. That's if they're really lucky). And come to that, why do I, as an engineering technician on a starship, want to work without a break? Everything on the Enterprise is measured in masses of hours and no-one is ever 'off-shift' except where plots and sub-plots demand it. They also wear the same boring clothes every day and care a lot about a rigid command structure even though there is absolutely no demand for it. "I will make Captain one day, but what about all the responsibility, like having to be make the right command decisions at the drop of a hat, and having to be an inspirational influence on all that serve under me?" ... Why would the future present only this measly short-sighted idea of self-worth? It's not even good enough for right now here on Earth. Why should people in the future be so insecure as to require a military hierarchy to regulate a supposedly perfected humanity? And why does Earl Grey tea make me fascinating if it's ordered hot? It didn't make me fascinating yesterday when I spilt it on my foot in the kitchen.
The reason noone worries about how holodecks are basically perfected forms of slavery supporting an entirely fascist society is the same reason noone asks themselves mid-documentary why it's hard to think about the tecnologically unlimited future of a Joburg slum-dweller who is likely to die some time this week. The reason is there are a lot of 'orrible barnacles attached to the idea of science being the social future. I have hi-tech because I happen to have been born where there is an abundance of hi-tech. FM2030, in 'Are you a Transhuman', wrote this:
(sorry about the stupid formatting. It is stupid and I can't seem to change it. Stupid.)
"
Who
are the slow-growth poor?
...
The chronically poor in affluent societies. People with obvious talents who remain poor because
of guilt about affluence —deflated self-image—self-denial—pathological dependency on others—unwillingness to give—or just unintelligent management of personal life.
...
Can one have high
values and high-tech on iow [sic] income?
in other words can one
be poor and enjoy a progressive life?
Poverty slows down growth: psychological—social—intellectual— economic—political.
Poverty is regressive.
Affluence is progressive."Typical US attitudes that don't wash. People aren't poor because they think poor, they're poor because society requires poor people - it requires the unemployed, the endebted, the ones that work like dogs to earn what can never truly support them. True story - I saw an ad yesterday for 'office junior' and read it because it stated £7000 - £8000 as its salary and suspicion bit into me. I read the ad and lo and behold the worker is expected to work Monday-Friday 9.00-5.30! This equates to about £1 an hour, in case you're wondering - a slave's wage. That ad runs on Reed.co.uk, a mainstream employment website/company. Power even creates the wasteful and violent for ideological purposes, such as the old industrial working class in the UK now being a violent underclass. What do you call high value people that rely on creating low value people? You call them the real low value people.
Reading FM2030 on this point reminds me that you don't get a happy-clappy vision of technology only by chance, you can also get it by being a douchebag. Oh, he also says that being able to be productive anywhere will decrease the pace of our lives and increase our leisure. How Victorian. Because technology is the playground of the rich or 'affluent' (that word always sounded to me like a nasal problem), then we all just need to become rich, right? Because the rich are free? It seems to me as it seems to many people that the people who can't give up on the old industrial society values are precisely the rich, who require the values and economics of the modern period in order to have their position as a ruling-class. There is no such thing as the 'self-limiting poor', that's a really very abusive position, not to say that it's plain false too (too). H+, to be really anything more than an onanism for the would-be ruling-class, has to steer well clear of this kind of stuff.
Leaving politics aside, and because I do want to take transhumanism seriously as a starting set of beliefs, I find there's merely a different hook to the same problem coming from the consideration of science itself. For H+, being extremely positive about the future, is certainly positivist in its apprehension of the realities of science. True science cannot ignore its environment, it cannot see itself as something above us all purified and powerful and capable of lifting us out of our mess like a saviour. Faith in science such as H+ demonstrates identifies the potential strengths of technological advancement and ignores the embedded and interconnected natures of those very same technologies.
Crude examples follow. Sorry. It's late.
Man landed on the moon at the same time race issues divided the country that sent those astronauts up. Astronauts report how fragile the Earth looks from space, and how sublimely beautiful and so on, and that's a true, honest, and brutal experience. The idea of the Earth from space has the power to say to people that some other way is possible in life, but it's not for all that disconnected from their lives, it isn't really sublime. The Space Program of the US (and I assume the USSR?) came directly out of the rocket science of the Nazis, who shot their rockets at civillian towns and cities. Nazis exterminated the Jews. For this they used IBM technology and more besides. When astronauts look at the Earth from orbit, do they care that the Nazis put them there?
Scientists following pure physics created the atomic bomb, which was then dropped on civillian cities. I remember reading that Richard Feynman wrote that that other well-known-but-the-name-escapes-me scientist (probably not Oppenheimer) who worked on the Manhattan Project advocated a 'social irresponsibility' for science that Feynman found reasonable.
In all this I'm not saying that science should curtail itself, or see itself as working within the midst of destruction and social chaos and therefore conceptualise its achievements as being less happy. I'm merely pointing out that a complete conception of the wonders of science would resolve these difficulties as a matter of course, if science is to be seen as legitimately progressive and not crippled.
I am therefore proposing that it's difficult to think about how society would look in space precisely because even the vast promises of space travel aren't good enough, aren't developed enough in themselves. In short, if H+ were in fact properly demonstrated it wouldn't be a kooky belief system for short people with wire glasses, it would be an inescapable rewriting our values in the here and now, reshaping society itself by the force of necessity.
But is there the philosophy to do it? And is it really an issue for philosophy/philosophy of science? Is it instead a standard political issue to be decided in standardly political means (that is, without the scientific ideal or the vision of technological progress)? Is it correct and right that only short people are transhumanists, as an expression of a political category? Well, I don't like that view given that H+ is really very underdeveloped and probably needs a chance to get going in an honest direction. Also, I personally cannot afford to be a 'lets get down in the mud' sort of person because it all hurts too much, I think of political positions as fundamentally ignorant or hard-hearted, considering how bad things actually are. To strive to see life in the midst of the future is to strive to develop what is truly great about humanity right now.
Maybe I'll write again about 'humanity', it's really overused. In any case, and just to mention one last thing about immortality - yes, H+ cares about extending human life span, perhaps indefinitely. But this already happens whenever you pick up a stick, or work a machine, you are already part of the great mechanisms of the universe and therefore immortal and irreplaceable. And that's my two cents. There's no reason that my body should stop with my organs, or that I simply want to keep my organs alive in spite of the other movements in the universe that I'm a part of. The death of my personality should be negligible, should I be living within good ethics. And that's a wibble on death. For free. Lucky you, feel free to upchuck.
I am a robot.
V
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