Better Safe Than Sorry; Or, Why Bother With the Transhumanists?

Upgraded and adapted from the Moot

Of transhumanism and singularitarianism and the other branches of techno-utopian Robot Cultism I've been critiquing here rather a lot lately, an Anonymous comment in the Moot holds up a genial and calming hand and proposes that it is, after all, "mostly goofy fun that explodes in to heated debate equivalent to the way people get emotionally attached to discussions about who should play shortstop for the Yankees."

This comment recurs fairly regularly in some form or other in the Moot -- earlier versions of responses to it can be found here and here, for example. I understand the sentiment, and I would like to agree with it in a general sort of way, especially since I actually am a nerd and enjoy geeking out with science fiction enthusiasts on science fictional topics of the kind that preoccupy many transhumanists and since many transhumanist-identified folks are plenty likeable as far as that goes however philosophically incoherent and politically pernicious the roller coaster they are riding and exhorting others to ride with them actually happens to be… But there are a couple of things that give me pause in taking up this suggestion when all is said and done.

First, however goofy and marginal Superlative Technocentrics may seem (and, crucially, mostly are, so far) in their cul-de-sac sub(cult)ures, it is also true that they crystallize tendencies to techno-utopian hyperbole, technocratic elitism, scientistic reductionism, glib "enlightened" eugenicism, and odes to wild-eyed military spending that also characterize actually prevailing corporate-militarist developmental assumptions and rhetoric. But with the explicitly transhumanist versions of the rhetoric there is the benefit that the bloody-minded bat-shit craziness of this constellation of assumptions and aspirations is plainer to see for most people in its stark extremity, and hence exposing the one provides a good and underexploited way of trying to drive home the more general critique of corporate-militarist technodevelopmental rhetoric, policy, and outcomes as well.

Second, it is also true that the transhumanists and singularitarians and other Superlatives make good copy for corporate media outlets precisely for their goofiness and extremity and, frankly, from the perspective of lots of corporate-militarist incumbent interests, many of their views make good plain sense, too -- "in moderation," of course! -- and so transhumanists and techno-utopians generally have managed to make a good deal more noise and hence a good deal more mischief deranging sensible and progressive public discourse on technodevelopmental issues in my view than their persistently small numbers would otherwise justify.

It is indeed true that there can sometimes seem something rather silly and sad about all these privileged boys with their toys who think they're the smartest guys in the room indulging their fantasies, calculating the Robot God odds and contemplating imperishable robot bodies and nanobotic genie-in-a-bottle treasure caves and stainless-steel soopergenius labs in the asteroid belt, or whatever it is that is going on their heads…

Wouldn't it be better to be kind to the poor dears, after all?

But then I think how silly the Neocons once must have seemed in their forlorn whiteboy clubhouses, plotting and planning for the future in the University of Chicago or what have you, reading Milton Friedman and Atlas Shrugged and starting to craft their Noble Lies, their racist Southern Strategy, their Contract Hit on America, and their Project for a New American Century...

Then I find myself thinking it's a good thing indeed for at least a few of the folks who know enough to know better here and now to try to nip this thing in the bud via exposure, analysis, ridicule, and the proposal of more progressive alternatives.

Francis Fukuyama once declared transhumanism the most dangerous idea in the world. Of course, when he said that he was studiously avoiding the more obvious candidate for that title to which he himself had been so long devoted, Neoconservatism itself.

But there are good reasons for those of us who would gladly observe the ongoing eclipse of the Neoconservative movement in the ruins wrought by its false and facile fantasies to pay close attention to transhumanism as an aborning potential successor movement (think of Glenn Reynolds if you want to understand with what ease such a transition can be made), a retro-futurist successor to Neoconservatism just now stitching together its organizations, its donors, its think-tanks, its public intellectuals.

Born in the irrational exuberance of digital techno-utopianism, in the freewheeling anarcho-capitalist crypto-anarchist cryonicist gun-nut techno-utopianism of the California Extropians movement, devoted to market fundamentalism and limit-denialism (a hostility to biological life and death, a hostility to sensible regulations of corporate greed, a hostility to environmental concerns), now transhumanism is trying to be a wee bit more suave and more savvy in its surface representation -- even though the market fundamentalists, the social Darwinists, the scientistic reductionists, the technocratic elitists, the liberal eugenists are all still there, even among the so-called "democratic transhumanists," making their "serious" cases to their respectful colleagues, thronging their organizational advisory Boards, providing more and more of the donor dollars on which they depend to do their futurological "work."

I hope the transhumanists are as harmless as they deserve to be. I would like to enjoy blue-skying with them as geeks who like some good science fiction if they would just drop the pretensions to being a "movement" holding the Keys to History, the self-appointed assumption of a Priestly "protectorate" of Science and Enlightenment on their parochial construal of it, and all the fundamentalist paraphernalia of their Superlative Technocentricity.

But just in case, I think there is something to be said for paying attention to them, naming names, following the money, mapping the organizations, their staffs, advisors, donors, and inter-relations, and otherwise connecting the dots. Better safe than sorry.