Transumanar

The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists

The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists begins with “We transhumanists have adopted a clear and ambitious goal since the birth of the Italian Transhumanist Association: to create in our country the conditions for a moral and intellectual revolution with a Promethean orientation. A revolution capable of producing radical changes in the world of culture and daily life”.

I have had the pleasure and the honor to contribute to this very important document, together with Giuseppe Lucchini, Alberto Masala and Stefano Vaj. But the main writer is the philosopher Riccardo Campa, the President of the Italian Transhumanist Association and a former Board member of the World Transhumanist Association. I hope the Manifesto will be translated, but translating a dense document of 14 pages is not easy work. I will translate some excerpts here, and wish to urge all Italian speakers to read the full text.

The definition of transhumanism is simple and crystal clear: “The cornerstone of transhumanism can be summed up in a formula: it is possible and desirable to move from a phase of blind evolution to a stage of purposeful self-directed evolution”. I agree that this simple sentence says it all. One of my first impression is that the Manifesto is a very reasonable document, very far from hysteria and “who is not with me is against me” fundamentalism. Riccardo, a visionary but pragmatic thinker, has avoided the easy mistake of proposing a one-size-fits-all black and white worldview, and acknowledged the _necessary_ diversity of opinions in the transhumanist community.

So, about politics: “Regarding politics, a recent poll shows that, in qualitative terms, in the WTA there are transhumanists of nearly every color, from the extreme left to the extreme right, and everything that lies between the two poles… transhumanists are able to look farther compared the traditional policy. The birth and development of the Internet and geographically distributed virtual communities require rethinking a whole range of issues such as the management of technology patents, copyright standards, the phenomenon of Open Source, telematics systems and satellite surveillance, citizen privacy. Technological development shows the inadequacy of a leadership still focused on the public-private dichotomy and still reasoning in limited nation-state terms”. And also: “in our synthetic view the three major fetish ideologies of the nineteenth century -the market, the state, the race- abandon the center stage to a higher value, self-directed evolution”.

About religion: “Transhumanism is not and should not be classified as a religion, although nothing prevents it from being interpreted as an alternative to religion, or as a vision that can find space inside a religious doctrine”. But also “Although open to dialogue with everyone, we see the impossibility of an agreement over principles with the ecclesiastical hierarchy, especially on issues such as artificial insemination and research in biotechnology”.

Much of the discussion on politics and religion is centered on Italian politics and the disproportionate influence of the Church on it (strange in a country where, as in most of Europe, most people do not take really seriously a religion which is not an important factor in their day-to-day life). But a lot goes much beyond Italy and is applicable also to global politics and policy making.

About the scientific worldview: “The boundary between science and science fiction is well defined. Scientific theories are one thing, and futurist speculations are a very different thing. These two areas have different functions. Research must develop, enrich and deepen the scientific conception of the world, while futurology (which is not science as it deals with futurabilia, things that may be possible but do not exist yet) explores possible future developments of current work. Without any certainty or faith… We will take care to avoid speculations too bold in public policy discourse”. But also: “To sum up, only when a technology exists and is experimentally proven it can be considered in a transhumanist policy program of action - which is typically aimed at ensuring access to citizens. Until then, it can be only a working hypothesis of scientists in their laboratories or science fiction writers in their literary works. Transhumanists are ready to recognize the importance of these speculations, because they can give meaning and direction to activism and offer a far reaching vision that permits seeing today’s issues in a cosmic perspective”.

Very far from both naive wishful thinking and bigot ultra-rationalist fundamentalism. I agree with each and every word in the text quoted, and I have been accused of being both a ultra-hard scientist without imagination, and an anti-scientific cultist. Well, these two accusations cannot be both true at the same time, and I guess I will just continue to ignore them.

One final comment to sum everything up: Bravo Riccardo!

Posted by on 02/28 at 11:35 AM