Nerdvana

When I'm feeling argumentative, it's so easy to see the current interest in transhumanism/posthumanism as another religious movement. In a way, it's more about being trans/post deity. The unknown and the unknowable used to be the realm of the shaman, then the priest, then the preacher. For many it still is, but that era is fading. Soon I imagine it will be somewhat like the monarchies that are still in existence. We like to keep them around because they still make us feel something, but we don't generally afford them much power. Faith, a concept that has most assuredly been through the ringer, is separate from religion. I have faith in my spouse to figure out their own path. I have faith in the inherent goodness of humanity. Can't be proved, but I believe it fiercely.

This conversation, tying up all of these Big Thinkers and those of us writing to the Silence has many sides and is bounded only by our imagination and philosophy. The idea of a posthuman utopia sounds so lovely, but is it just a new Heaven or Nirvana? Is transhumanism another Faith? The gleam in the eye is very reminiscent to that of the newly converted. The need to find a way out instead of a way through. We will never be wholly content. Who would want to be? What of the exquisitely beautiful feeling of longing, of fortitude? Can't have either of those in a utopian posthuman world.

As we progress and change and grow, there is always the horizon we can almost make out. Salvation is just a genuflection away, Enlightenment is right on the other side of one more moment of pure acceptance. Except now the original sin is not to be wrapped up only in misogyny. Now it is to be wrapped up in misanthropy. Now sin is humanity itself.

Taken as a whole, are we really so shameful?