Transhumanism

[condor]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism

What do you think?

[SecurityManKillJoy]

I think that it is a good development, because humans are conscious in the general sense and do not deserve restrictions on conscious awareness just because the body that makes its consciousness has limits and reacts with various environmental phenomenon and with itself in consciousness-destroying and conscious-awareness-limiting ways. However it probably isn't possible to get far in this ideal under bourgeois class restrictions and the technology that it offers us, which will always reach peak limits due to the limits of a class society.

Thus it can't be a purely moralist or religious ideology, as that would make it unconsciously enslaved to existing class conditions which it tries to ignore, and a pure, absolute  consciousness with no bodily 'impurities' is perhaps a completely impossible ideal. However the ideal of improving the body into 'higher' unities and making its chemical reactions work in a stabler pattern to as much of a degree as possible should be pursued, and of course it is pursued in some way all the time in existing social conditions with the emergence of new disease-killing drugs, etc. Then again if we get to the point of completely synthetic organs, won't the idyllic essence of pain/pleasure be changed, as its basis is switched from unconscious nature to consciously-made synthetic origins? Just a thought.

Not to try and go somewhat off-topic here, but I did read something that bothered me. For we can see quite clearly how some of it has become an ugly bourgeois-based ideology such as with the cult of Rael and his bourgeois cloning business for rich people, and his genetocracy theories which are supposedly not based on class but on intelligence, despite the glaring fact that it takes being a high-class member to get good intelligence and that such an intelligence-based inequality-making political superstructure requires unequal economic class divisions to stay alive. He also takes a thoroughly reactionary belief in the Elohim race, as he won't explain what they are and how they had the genetic technological power in order to create the human race and all the class and economic conditions that allowed them to do so. Of course belief in Elohim extends into Theosophic sects, Gnostic sects, etc, but the Rael-type kind of transhumanism needs to be especially denounced.

If a manipulative high-class sect of Elohim/whatever beings do exist, they need to be interpreted historically and all of their potential antics that they have been doing to humanity need to be historically exposed and put on a class basis instead of on a body-basis and religious-worship a-historical basis. They might have more conscious-awareness if they do exist (which is heavily doubtful) but it is idealistic for these kinds of transhumanists to say these races are absolutely a more conscious being just because they have 'higher' body conditions and technology. Anyway I just wanted to talk about that because I've read about Rael's arrogant theories and now I see he is mentioned as a transhumanist in that Wikipedia article, and I've heard some of his beliefs in other religions. Of course they couldn't historically take it to the level of genetic-modification beliefs like Rael, but even then heidealistically correlated  intelligence with 'better' genetics in an absolute way.

[Green]

I think Rael is hillarious. I heard he died.

One of the things these people are looking for (but its not completely possible yet) is a way to live forever. I personally look forward to death.

[condor]

How can anyone look foreward to death? It is the ultimate embodiment of farce.

[Green]

We all die soon or later, so you might as well stop worrying about it and accept the fact that some day you're going to die and there is nothing you can do about it.

[condor]

For a Marxist, that's an astonishingly defeatist and conservative philosophy.

[Green]

Are you saying I should try to figure out how to live forever?

[condor]

It wouldn't hurt to try.

[Pie]

It can hurt to try, you would be wasting an indefinite amount of time and resources to chase a very unrealistic dream. You would be running into an unlimited amount of problems. For example the reason why cancer is a more seen disease now than maybe a hundred years ago is that a hundred years ago there were many more diseases that have now been virtually abolished or are in more control of, so many started to live longer, so cancer bacame more apparent.

Also I agree with Green, I don't don't feel like living forever either, I want to live maybe long time but not too long, because later in life is when your body degrades the most, and when you are virtually most useless, not to mention the world isn't a pretty place to live.

[condor]

If you actually bothered reading the article properly you might have realised none of the attempts to transcend the limits of human biology are either infinitely time consuming or run into infinite problems. Try thinking outside the narrow limits of the present. Decrepitude occurs as a symptom of the aging process and is a symbol of the irrevocable slide towards death; if the aging process is eliminated, so is decrepitude; you don't live forever like a permanently old person.

It's weird and deeply disturbing knowing a communist thinks "the world isn't a pretty place to live," and will remain so forever. You seem to have ignored the entire progressive nature of human history. Clearly, your live is so pointless and futile and your power so limited that neither you nor anyone else will care when oblivion takes you.

[socialism]

You SHOULD NOT upset the natural balance!
this is not good because even if we can live forever, we ALL need sex,
and as seen life's purpose in my eyes is to reproduce, otherwise there is no population.
So we should be careful when talking about this because we need death for Capitalism, and the only way for that to happen is if we let it die off or spontaneously kill it, so we all need death in one or more ways.
In closing, I personally look to joining with God in Heaven and do not wish to upset that balance. For atheists, natures always comes back ten times as strong when suppressed, it is just like our movement.