A Transhumanist's Lament

After getting fed up with the behaviour of individuals who can best be described as "machine cultists in all but name" on Facebook, I had this to say:

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A Transhumanist's Lament

It is a significant source of grievance to watch as an ideology, whose core focus was humanism aligned with the ethical use of technology, is transformed, from a desire to improve the human condition in the here and now with the help of emerging technologies, into what comes across as a crackpot think tank of futurist dreamers, many of whom with mentalities that are disturbingly reminiscent of that of cultists.

Ladies and gentlemen, while transhumanism is, in its most basic form, a noble cause for the greater good of humanity, using it solely as a means to fantasize about scenarios that may or may not come to pass, and then declaring that such predictions will be our future, is just as much of a farfetched prophecy as any that has graced religious texts regarding future events. It is not logically sound or realistic to pin all of our hopes on distant futures that may never see the light of day as a result of current problems that require feasible, realistic and timely solutions, which will in turn produce more problems to solve. Lather, rinse, repeat. Thus, in order to prepare for the challenges of tomorrow, we need to act on the challenges of today, and in omitting the latter all that one will ever accomplish is another meeting of the People's Front of Judea - all talk, no action.

What is more disturbing amongst the dreamers in our midst however is the scarcity of ethics, and thus a lack of humanism, involved in an ideology that is ironically dependent on it. Is it truly ethical to consider excising a human behaviour through genetics simply because of there being negative outlets for it, despite there also existing positive outlets towards which said behaviour could be redirected? Is it truly ethical to force the quote-unquote "unenlightened masses" to accept a particular school of thought over another as a form of social uplift? As more questions of a similar nature are brought up with respect to the line of thought some dreamers make use of, the more that line of thought starts to sound reminiscent of the rationale behind every witch hunt that has occurred in human history, religious and secular alike. For an ideology that prides itself on logic and rational thinking, there are those in its ranks who succeed in achieving the opposite with a hint of personal bias to boot.

This is not to say that we should not pursue the technologies that we raise ethical concerns about on account of a few radical ideas. This is about the ethical use of emerging technologies, and the responsibility we have of ensuring that those technologies are used as such in the best interests of all humanity - interests that will not always be in line with those perceived by individuals who claim to know best.