Advancing Humanism vs. Transhumanism

"Well, if you insist on tagging me, call me a meliorist."

This post started to percolate when I read this... "The cowardice I see out there is astonishing. Smart, productive, de facto transhumanists that are just too damn stodgy to use the T-word to describe themselves."

It continued to brew after I read this... "All humans have the right to become transhumans. If not, then the transhumanist movement is no longer humanist."

And what would a blogpost be without controversy? "An international, intellectual, and fast-growing cultural movement known as transhumanism... intends the use of biotechnology, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence as tools that will radically redesign our minds, our memories, our physiology, our offspring, and even perhaps... our very souls."

Seven or eight years ago I had a real fascination with transhumanism. It seemed like the kind of cool, progressive movement that a smart, sci-fi loving geek like me could relate to and embrace. Yet here I am, 'regressed' back to ordinary humanism. Why? What changed?

• I began to feel that the transhumanist movement was limited in its unflagging reverence of technology. Like the man said, "At best, we can say that we have effectively become 'slaves' to the technology we create." (q) Technology was/is presented by transhumanists as the only, the inevitable, and even the superior course through which humanity can, will, and should evolve. I began to believe that there was another way for humanity to evolve, and for the definition of what it means to be human to significantly change; one that did not involve the hybridization of man and machine.
• I began to believe that transhumanism was too focused on the far future, and was dangerously disconnected from the problems that we currently face. Don't tell me about the glories of a cyborg body; tell me about the various expressions of humanity that stand to be wiped out by improvements in genetic screening technology. Tell me about the current sociological consequences of our rush to seek 'normalcy' via neuropharmacology.
• Transhumanist writings began to seem more like the fantasies of an isolated elite, and less like a practical, mainstream philosophy or an attempt to address current real-world concerns. Yes, on some level we like to be entertained with visions of the future, but where/what is the transhumanist approach to hunger, poverty or illiteracy? What does transhumanism have to say about the fact that coveted biological 'amplifications' aren't available to everyone?

I appreciate that it's exciting to talk about and plan for a far future; one that might be utopian or dystopian, as your mood permits. Even I find it more exciting to talk about the possibility of mind-uploading than the future of Brazil as an agricultural world power.

But I also want to talk about what happens when you force the ordinary factory worker to engage a slow, flawed piece of software for eight hours via voice recognition. How does the company's desire for increased productivity rate against the psychological and neurological change (one might even say 'damage') that the new technology inflicts upon the worker? And I want to talk about the freedom to resist the pressure to modify one's consciousness according to the current social norms.

Embracing the race toward a better future via technology is transhumanism. Being concerned for those who suffer along the way is humanism. We really shouldn't be transhumanists without first being humanists...

My Name Is Memory

"A poem is but a thought, a mere memory caught at play. From hand onto paper, bleeding thoughts emerge."

Where were you, and Who am I.
Catching moments passing by.

Buried deep, yet a sight away.
A song evokes another day.

Little things, like what you wore,
All of this and more I store.

Holding love, and loss: identity.
Feed me well, but cautiously.

Mark this day 'save', and this 'forget'.
Season nothing with regret.

As the moment comes again,
the time returns: another when.

Yet swear by me not, for I deceive,
Colored by what you want to believe.

So we dance together and you try to lead.
Held in check, I accede.

But today I held the upper hand,
Not quite under your command...

Labor Day

Yours truly is still learning about humanism.

It seems to me that humanists would/should have something to say about labor and the conditions under which people labor. Googling various expressions of 'humanism' and 'labor' brought up nothing so frequently as it did Marxist-Humanism. Having been brought up in the era of Marxism=Communism=BAD, and having little direct knowledge of the man's work, I didn't know quite how to react to this association. But it's made for some interesting reading...

"He must constantly look upon his labour-power as his own property, his own commodity, and this he can only do by placing it at the disposal of the buyer temporarily, for a definite period of time. By this means alone can he avoid renouncing his rights of ownership over it." (q) (I seize upon the word 'temporarily', as I can imagine nothing so frightful as a voluntary captivity of 20+ years with a single employer.)

"The workers’ antagonism to the machine has traveled a long way from the time when they simply wished to smash it. Now what they want to have done with is their very work. They want to do something entirely different – express all their natural and acquired powers in an activity worthy of them as human beings." (q) (Self-actualization, anyone?)

"Marx's aim was true man - living under emancipated conditions of labor and not disintegrated by the division of labor. His vision of humanity's future was founded on the assumption that such a man was not only possible, but the necessary result of social development and essential to the existence of a truly human society." (q)

"More specifically, real liberty does not exist unless workers effectively control their workplace, the products they produce, and the way they relate to each other. Workers are not fully emancipated until they work not in the way domesticated animals or robots work, but voluntarily and under their own direction." (q) (My emphasis.)

"The opposite of war is not peace, but social revolution." (q) (Just because it's an interesting thought...)

And speak to me like you know me - the theory of the alienated worker...

"The most basic form of workers’ alienation is their estrangement from the process of their work. An artist, unlike an industrial worker, typically works under his or her own direction; artists are in total control of their work. (That is why artists usually do not mind working long hours and even under adverse conditions, because their creative work is inherently meaningful, and an expression of their most personal desires and intuitions.)... In modern industry, however, workers typically do not work under their own direction. They are assembled in large factories or offices, and they work under the close supervision of a hierarchy of managers who do most of the important thinking for them. Planners and managers also divide complex work processes into simple, repetitive tasks which workers can perform in machine-like fashion... " (q) (Yours truly never considered herself an artist, until she started blogging.)

"In what, then, consists the alienation of labor? First, in the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., that it does not belong to his nature, that therefore he does not realize himself in his work, that he denies himself in it, that he does not feel at ease in it, but rather unhappy, that he does not develop any free physical or mental energy, but rather mortifies his flesh and ruins his spirit. The worker, therefore, is only himself when he does not work, and in his work he feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor, therefore, is not voluntary, but forced--forced labor. It is not the gratification of a need, but only a means to gratify needs outside itself. Its alien nature shows itself clearly by the fact that work is shunned like the plague as soon as no physical or other kind of coercion exists." - Marx (via) (Shunned like the plague, people.)

"A person with very few possessions, but with an intensive life, comes much closer to Marx' idea of a happy human being than a well-paid worker who can afford to buy many consumer goods, but who is neither informed enough to understand the society in which he lives, nor has the motivation to shape, in cooperation with fellow-workers, his working conditions or the political system in which he lives. A worker who is overweight, who spends most of his time watching commercial television, whose main conversations with colleagues deal with the sports page, and who is too tired or apathetic to participate in the political process--such a worker is not well off in Marx' eyes, but a victim of a system that is ripe with alienation in every sense. Marx was not so much interested in what people might have, but in what they could be. He was interested in people being alive, informed, and in control of their destiny." (q) (Yours truly was just commenting yesterday that the two most-miserable years of her life were the years when she earned the most money.)


Some things to think about this Labor Day...