Are Techno-Immortalist Robot Cultists the Real "Deathists"?

In Wake Up, Deathist! You DO Want to Live 10,000 Years!, Robot Cultist Hank Pellissier argues that magic would be cool if it were real as a way of distracting your attention from the fact that magic is not real. My first working title for this piece was the judiciously worded, "Robot Cultist Battles Deathist Menace From Glitter-Farting Unicorn in Space." From all this, the discerning reader of Amor Mundi will understand that the piece under discussion is the latest Very Serious work of futurology published by the White Guys of "The Future" at the stealth Robot Cult "think-tank" IEET, the Institute for Ethics (where ethics are rarely actually discussed) and Emerging Technologies (where the technologies are rarely actually emerging).

Contra Pellissier, I think it is fair to say that not everybody would want to spend 10,000 years living what passes for the lives they are now living, when the reality of suicide demonstrates that not everybody wants to live even the Biblical allotment of three score and ten. More seriously still, I think it is fair to wonder if what we even mean by "living a life" as a narrative and otherwise coherent structural matter when we talk about such things now is enough like what might arise with such a prolongation that it makes a lot of sense to glibly apply the term to such projections, just as I think it is fair to wonder the same about the propriety of applying intuitions of present "selfhood" to such presumably transformed conditions, about the propriety of applying the word "living" to so differently prostheticized and therapized a process and so on.

Of course, Pellisier doesn't care about such things very much, he just wants to pretend that "technology" in some general construal that makes no sense will "provide" through mechanisms that have no real specification "health" and "capacities" and "lives" and "selves" that are and legibly remain everything they already are now, except, you know, that they will be more More MORE! As always with futurologists, the Robot Cultists confuse more with better, confuse more with change: it is an essentially unimaginative temper promoting itself as imagination, it is an essentially incurious consumerism advertising itself as wonder, it is an essentially reactionary fear marketing itself as an embrace of transformation. It's all very boring and very conventional advertising strategy -- more Skittles in the bag peddled as progress! a new color coating added to the Skittles rainbow peddled as change! Robot Cultists just pump up this sort of volume by orders of magnitude more than conventional crappy consumer marketing does -- indeed they amplify advertising hyperbole so much that their discourse takes on the coloration of theological discourse, the fraudulent promises of consumer satisfaction become promises of outright techno-transcendence.

Pellissier and his fellow Robot Cultists are just circus barkers selling a mirage and promoting a brand, at once indulging in wish-fulfillment fantasizing as well as trying to enlist as many others in this fantasizing as may be, either to make the fantasy seem more real in the fervency of shared belief or, more cynically and opportunistically, to attract attention and the power that follows from such attention by making noise. For instance:

"Many researchers suggest that Death will soon be annihilated," writes Pellissier. This is, of course, to speak plainly, a lie. I doubt that very "many" actually reputable researchers suggest anything of the sort even on the most idiosyncratic construal of that word "many," but even if a few folks who aren't laughingstocks in every aspect of their lives otherwise do say such things you can be sure that there are incomparably "many" more who do not for every one who does, and in any case no-one who takes things like citation indexes or reproducible results seriously would ever say or take seriously anything of the kind.

To raise questions, as I do, about the coherence and legibility of terms like "life" and "self" and "health" as they are used by futurologists when they seek at once radically to change the referents for these terms, sometimes beyond recognition, is to risk being derided by Robot Cultists as what they call a "Deathist." To recognize, as I do, and to insist on the recognition, as I do, of the absolutely and irrefutably true facts that human beings are and have always been and are always going to remain mortal to the extent that life is a biological process and intelligence remains incarnated in biological brains and social struggle in a living and finite world is, again, to risk being derided by Robot Cultists as what they call a "Deathist." And to testify, as I do, to the reality of the record in which literally all of the meaning and beauty and pleasure and wonder and power in which humanity has had a part in the world has been both perfectly possible and indeed exclusively available to always only mortal beings is, once again, to risk being derided by Robot Cultists as what they call a "Deathist."

What is wanted, writes Pellissier, "is to promote the Value of Life. Exalting human existence as the extraordinary experience that it is, redefines the Longevity Party movement. Maxim Maximus indicates this on the Longevity Party website; we want to be known as the 'Party for Life.' Conversely, all other groups can be castigated as a 'Party for Death.' Praising and promoting Life EverLasting gives transhumanists a powerful role, as ecstatic clairvoyants and scientific messiahs." You know, Science! (Also, "Maxim Maximus"? Very Serious!) You know, one needn't exactly be thrilled at the prospect of death or displeased by the great progressive of work of therapy and care and support through which illness is ameliorated (outside of the Robot Cult this is known as the rather commonsense appreciation of, you know, healthcare) to also deny utterly that mortality spoils everything for everybody or even counts as the worst evil in a world of inequities and troubles. Of course, we are all familiar enough with the uses to which phrases like "the Party of Life" can be put by political movements to have some healthy skepticism about declarations by people claiming not only to speak for "Life" but claiming that everybody who disagrees with them is dealing in death. There are many people in today's America who fancy themselves Life's great champions while at once treating women as incapable of making decisions concerning their own bodies, indifferent to the conditions of support that would define the quality of life of a child born of an unwanted pregnancy they would eagerly force a woman to bring to term against her will under threat of violence, all the while cheering the prospect of the execution of criminals (including, for some, doctors who perform abortions and women who would seek them) even knowing that at least sometimes this irrevocable punishment will be unjust, championing the unchecked proliferation of deadly weapons on our streets, denigrating the regulation of pollution and toxic substances, and denying the consensus of scientists that humans are contributing to redressable climate change that threatens all life on earth. Beyond the sensible skepticism born of such experience, just looking at Pellissier's specific proposal here, does it really make sense to declare oneself a brave and solitary promoter of the value of "Life" at all while at once denigrating so thoroughly so many of the terms on which it has always been lived?

Again, it is obviously stupid to deny that all humans have always been mortal and obviously stupid to pretend that the elimination of so universal a dimension of the human condition would not raise questions as to the humanity of beings so transformed -- at least insofar as that "humanity" had hitherto been reckoned. It is just as obviously stupid to pretend that there is anything in actual or even remotely developing medical science or technical expertise that makes the contemplation of such transformations matters of anything like practical concern, even if they remain relevant as ways to illuminate philosophical questions (after all, death denialism and wish-fulfillment fantasizing about eternal youth are among the earliest and most endlessly reiterated themes in the literary archive). The first kind of stupidity is just sloppy and lazy thinking, unworthy of intelligent assertion and demonstrative of fatal unseriousness, but the second connects more often than not to actual fraud.

If you think I jest or exaggerate when I deride Robot Cultists who act as though if only everybody could be convinced to clap louder suddenly we would unleash the spontaneous magical soopertech "forces of immortalization" that remain shackled by the weight of pessimists who keep on noticing that people age and die, you need only read Pellissier himself: "Obliterating Death requires a two-pronged attack. Science has to conquer the scourge, but, unfortunately, science is impeded by a stubborn obstacle that’s historically stone-walls progress: the narrow, anxiety-ridden, change-adverse conservatism of most human minds." Do recall Pellissier's talk of "ecstatic clairvoyants and scientific messiahs" before you would relinquish to him even momentarily the keys to the science car. Be that as it may, it still remains one thing to act as if the only reason people are mortal is because sane people recognize the fact of our mortality, and another thing to actually go on to peddle anti-aging kremes and boner-herbs and head-freezing schemes and nanobotic respirocyte animations for money among the rubes.

But it is not enough just to point out how stupid Robot Cultists are being when they fling the "Deathist" term around as they do -- and believe me, this is far from the only stupid thing Robot Cultists spend their limited time on earth doing -- I think it is important to note the extent to which this idiotic "Deathist" term of theirs, if it had any substantial reference to speak of, might more aptly be directed at them.

I say this because it is also fair to say that IF human life expectancy were actually to improve in any kind of substantial way in the actual world, it will almost certainly be because progressive citizens, activists, and administrators educate, agitate, and organize to provide more access to clean water, nutritious food, prenatal care, available but unprofitable treatments for neglected diseases to more people in the world, especially among the most vulnerable people in overexploited regions and populations in the world.

While some Robot Cultists may have notional commitments to such efforts it is crucial to grasp that there is nothing that they contribute from the vantage of their futurology to those commitments and that so long as they are speaking futurologically they are not contributing to these efforts, and indeed they are distracting attention away from these efforts and often actively undermining these efforts through the proposal of imaginary techno-fixes that promote complacency and deny the relevance of actually-available reforms and strategies that are ready-to-hand. Even to the extent that life expectancy might rise in general through the development of new genetic or prosthetic medical techniques it is crucial to note how rarely Robot Cultists are actual participants either in the scientific research and publication, the technical implementation and distribution, or even in the real-world political organizing to increase scientific research spending, improve science education, overcome proprietary circumscriptions of technoscientific innovation and access through elite-incumbent intellectual property regimes, and so on.

This point acquires special resonance in reference to this particular piece by Pellissier, because as we have seen he is not only making the usual nonsensical "anti-deathist" noises of the Robot Cultists in this piece but is doing so in the context of promoting a new "movement" calling itself the Longevity Party. Of course, Robot Cultists are forever re-packaging their stale devotions as Brave New Movements, starting political parties and phony movements that have no real constituencies responding to no real problems, fighting for libertopian asteroid belt colonies that nobody now alive will ever live to see or fighting for the rights of artificial intelligent software that don't exist, writing online manifestos whomping up the same lame digital utopianism with disposable neologisms and pretending that all this represents serious political activity even though it is more or less the same handful of guru wannabes in charge every time and an endlessly revolving and yet never really changing cast of True Believer wannabes who sign on every time.

Just as they claim to be doing politics when they are really indulging in shabby self-promotion, so too they claim to be interested in more medical research even though they are not aligned with legible healthcare advocacy in any way but want to agitate for more money for what they call "radical longevity research," in other words for public money diverted from legitimate medicine and for public legitimacy conferred on the usual futurological snake oil salesmen and software coders who think they are biologists who throng the New Age and nutritional supplement convention circuit with the cryonics cranks and "uploading" enthusiasts who think materialism somehow justifies "soul migration" fantasies and that a picture of you is the same thing as you, except, somehow also immortal.

While Robot Cultists traffic in the fear of death their discourse and their organizations do nothing to improve actual lives in any practical way while they distract attention and derange effort from such practical work at every turn. If their pet term of abuse were not so patently ridiculous in the first place the question might be well asked of them, just who, after all, are the real "Deathists"?