Common Sense Transhumanism

Common Sense Transhumanism

Another of my favorite brands of transhumanism, apparently quite different from and unrelated to Cosmic Transhumanism, is what I call “Common Sense Transhumanism”.

It just means restating some simple common sense, which is often ignored by politically correct “intellectuals” and “bioethicists” used to hiding behind big words. Common Sense Transhumanism says that: health is better than disease, being smart is better than being stupid, being alive and healthy is better than being dead, etc..., and there is nothing wrong in trying to make things better. This is the basic common sense of the farmer, and the healthy practical approach of the engineer, against the abstract hair-splitting of the intellectual.

My favorite summary of Common Sense Transhumanism is:

Aging is like farting, and dying is like diarrhea. Both are unchosen biological accidents waiting for a good engineer with a good screwdriver. The sooner we can live without shitting our pants, the better.

This is transhumanism in a nutshell, as I see it.

Of course I could have chosen an example not related to things that most people find vulgar and disgusting, but I think this formulation has the merit of removing residual associations with certain mistaken notions of aging and death as good things, and showing in plain and simple words that they are disgusting things.

This must have been one of the reasons why they have chosen a really excellent name for the recently established Fuck Death Foundation (see also their website). I love the name because it tries to remove any vestigial reverence for the “sacred nature” of our limits, that even modern “intellectuals” fall for. Death is not “bad, but...”. It is just bad. So Fuck death is the proper attitude.

The church has invented the concept of humility as a value: you should humbly accept (and even rejoice) that you are poor and powerless, leaving them free to become even more powerful and rich. Of course, if you behave you will go to heaven. Too bad that few people believe in heaven these days. But another facet of the same mentality is that we should feel some respect, or “reverence”, for our limits. Even if you do not believe in god anymore, you are supposed to accept, respect and even worship the “wisdom of nature” that has dictated that we must age and die. we must accept and respect our limits with reverence and humility, and do not try to gain forbidden knowledge and power (or else - think of what happened to poor Icarus and Prometheus).

Even smart and enlightened people can fall prey of this mind virus. In a recent conversation, a person whom I respect a lot (while we often disagree on important points) referred to the “rather questionable achievement of becoming something like a mineral”. This was probably a rhetorical figure, but it may also indicate a residual notion that a person is defined by the limitations of her or his body.

This notion has been used by the church a lot.  What I find very strange is that, while we all know that having a body can be very good (even as a uploaded consciousness, if I get there, I will still simulate good body things like swimming and screwing), the church has always condemned with strong words all pleasures that the body can give. While, of course, they were discretely enjoying the same pleasures themselves. I think another bit of common sense is: swimming and screwing are good things, and farting, aging, diarrhea and death are bad things. Let’s keep the good things, and throw away the bad things. 

Posted by G.P. on 12/01 at 08:18 AM
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