Transhumanism, are you for it, agree with parts of it or against it?
I'm a big fan of science and technology as well as humans. I like the transhumanist movement and was just wondering what your thoughts and feelings are about it?
Please stay on topic and don't obsessively talk about how religion is mostly anti-human etc. I already know that. :P
I'm more interested in how humanity can be better, have more enjoyable lives and evolve in positive ways. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism
Thanks and I look forward to your ideas and perspectives. :)
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Nate Lundgren on -
What new objectives are more important than humans? If you take a radical environmental stance where you value the earth more than humans then that is a dogma/philosophy called technogaianism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technogaianism
But if you don't like technology in relationship with the earth and just like the environment as it is then you a treehugger. I like treehuggers by the way.
Science is a great pursuit that can enhancing humanities ability to find new objectives. But it still boils down to humans doing the striving. Once humanity has fully and completely figured out our brains then I can see that new objectives are more important. But as it stands, studying humans along with everything else is an important balance to have for brains to work on. I will own the fact that humanism or transhumanism are dogma-like philosophies. So what now? Just dismiss them outright with some kind of free-floating anti-dogma search for novelty or some vague "freedoms."
My perspective is rooted in being a human so if you have figured out how to transcend that I sure would like to know what or how you did that.
What is your paradigm? Like you said before, there needs to be balance in life so why not choose a positive dogma like transhumanism as part of the equation in your paradigm?
When you just focus on what not to think or accept (dogmas/ideas) and rarely talk about what to think about or accept, it just comes across as being negatively focused.
How about we try to keep the conversation more balanced and not too negative or positive about these philosophical lines of inquiry?
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on -
TAA, I'm not clear just how true this statement is: "But this Christian dogma has been very successful at multiplying Homo sapiens at the cost of all else."
I would ask for some degree of evidence regarding this claim, but even if it were true, that same Christian dogma has been responsible for millions, if not billions of deaths over the past 2K years, quite likely balancing out any multiplication for which it may, or may not, have been responsible.
Further, I can accept your definition that dogma is a belief system that "cannot be changed without affecting the very system's paradigm." And I would further be the first to agree that religion has given the term, "dogma" a stigma from which it may never recover, but religion aside, what is wrong with espousing a firmly-held belief? The converse, it would seem to me, would be, "wishy-washy" --
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Permalink Reply by T A A on -
Look at net numbers, the growth of human population since the advent of religiously organised societies, births, survival, elderly totals vastly outnumber deaths, so the deaths did not balance out even a little. The highly regimented religious society played a huge role in increasing human numbers.
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on
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Can you tell me where I might find those stats for the past 2000 years, and who was handling the compilations during, say, Nero's time? (for reliability purposes)
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Permalink Reply by Unseen on -
Humanism is but godless Christianity, that's why I see it as entirely useless.
So humanism is to Christianity as Splenda is to sugar?
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on
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He has an occasional lucid moment --
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Permalink Reply by Kris Feenstra on -
What? While I am sure there are Humanist Transhumanists out there, I don't see the relevance of Humanism in this conversation. I also don't know to which dogmas you are referring.
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Permalink Reply by Kris Feenstra on
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That doesn't really work. You could try for the ol' "You can't spell 'Transhumanism' without 'Humanism'", but it would just be something to say; it wouldn't really mean anything. As I've always understood it, the core focus of Transhumanism is transcending human barriers through technology and science, and not necessarily using that technology to advance ideals on general human welfare.
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Permalink Reply by T A A on
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Huamanism plus technology. "General human welfare" is the essence of Humanism.
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Permalink Reply by Kris Feenstra on
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I'm trying to explain to you that the 'humanism' in the word is coincidental. The root term is 'transhuman' and the '-ism' is an add on.
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