Transhumanism is a very strong trend among the Western élites. Its aim is to overcome the natural limitations of human biology using technology.
Proponents of transhumanism, including Yuval Harari and Klaus Schwab, believe in ideas such as these:
that we can improve the human body to create cyborgs, which are fictive organisms in which human organs and technology are seamlessly combined;
that properties such as human intelligence can be genetically enhanced by germline genome manipulation;
that mRNA technology will soon allow us to “write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers” (as worded in President Biden’s Executive Order on biotechnology);
that we will soon cure cancer using genetic or even nano-mechanic (tiny machine) therapies;
that machines will shortly be able to read thoughts;
that there is no free will because the mind is a collection of biochemical processes;
that soon we will obtain digital immortality by “uploading our minds to the cloud”;
that “artificial intelligence” (AI) will soon lead to machines more intelligent than humans;
and either
that AI will make most humans useless to society because all their work will be taken over by machines,
or
that we will be able to genetically reprogram the sex of adult humans in the near future—
to name just a few of the ideas they espouse.
Why is all of this unscientific balderdash? And why do so many—including clever people like the billionaire Elon Musk—believe in it? What are the roots and goals of this movement? Let’s answer these questions in reverse order.
What are the transhumanists’ goals?
There are two groups of transhumanists.
The first group sees transhumanism as the ultimate method of self-actualisation (alias self-realisation), supposedly allowing those who think they can afford this eye-wateringly expensive alleged self-improvement to escape the biological limits of their bodies. For example, the transhumanist Martine Rothblatt, whose cells have the XY karyotype but who “became” a woman, says that self-defining one’s gender is just the first step on a path that will lead to a cure for cancer and other lethal diseases and ultimately to digital immortality.
Related to this goal, but of lesser importance, is the idea that transhumanism could promote universal equality of outcomes in the tradition of the French Enlightenment ideal of equality by law (as opposed to the Protestant Enlightenment ideal of equality under the law, or isonomy). In this flavour, transhumanism has an emancipatory character akin to abolitionism (the fight against slavery in the nineteenth century) or feminist emancipation, the absurd idea that both sexes should be equal in every respect. Proponents of this variant of the creed believe that all human beings could be altered using transhumanistic technology to achieve equality of outcomes. We will see in the last two sections below that none of these hopes can be fulfilled.
Read More: Transhumanism: What Is It And Why Is It Evil?