Transhumanist politics

Transhumanist politics constitute a group of political ideologies that generally express the belief in improving the human condition through advances in science and technology. Transhumanist Zoltan Istvan claims that the transhumanism movement aims to improve humanity with technology and science, and he gives life extension and human enhancement as examples of transhumanists' ideas. Jeanine Thweatt-Bates considers it impossible to define transhumanist politics as one set of beliefs, as the transhumanist movement includes opposite political perspectives on the "central issue" of regulating technology. James Hughes has noted the dynamic between left-leaning and right-leaning visions for transhumanism and the future of technology and human enhancement.

History

The term "Transhumanism" with its present meaning was popularised by Julian Huxley's 1957 essay of that name.

James Hughes identifies the "neoliberal" Extropy Institute, founded by philosopher Max More and developed in the 1990s, as the first organized advocates for transhumanism. And he identifies the late-1990s formation of the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), a European organization which later was renamed to Humanity+ (H+), as partly a reaction to the free market perspective of the "Extropians". Per Hughes, "[t]he WTA included both social democrats and neoliberals around a liberal democratic definition of transhumanism, codified in the Transhumanist Declaration." Hughes has also detailed the political currents in transhumanism, particularly the shift around 2009 from socialist transhumanism to libertarian and anarcho-capitalist transhumanism. He claims that the Left was pushed out of the World Transhumanist Association Board of Directors, and that libertarians and Singularitarians have secured a hegemony in the transhumanism community with help from Peter Thiel, but Hughes remains optimistic about a techoprogressive future.

In 2012, the Longevity Party, a movement described as "100% transhumanist" by cofounder Maria Konovalenko, began to organize in Russia for building a balloted political party. Another Russian programme, the 2045 Initiative was founded in 2012 by billionaire Dmitry Itskov with its own "Evolution 2045" political party advocating life extension and android avatars.

In 2013, io9 editor Annalee Newitz suggested building a Space Party devoted to developing space settlements and defending humanity against existential threats. Writing for H+ Magazine in July 2014, futurist Peter Rothman called Gabriel Rothblatt "very possibly the first openly transhumanist political candidate in the United States" when he ran as a candidate for the United States Congress. However, later reports in October of that year by Rothman state "Humanity+ board chair Natasha Vita-More was elected as a Councilperson for the 28th Senatorial District of Los Angeles in 1992 on an openly futurist and transhumanist platform."

In October 2014, Zoltan Istvan announced that he is running in the 2016 United States presidential election under the banner of the "Transhumanist Party." Following Istvan's announcement, groups also using the name "Transhumanist Party" emerged in the United Kingdom and Germany.

Core values

According to a 2006 study by the European Parliament, transhumanism is the political expression of the ideology that technology should be used to enhance human abilities.

According to Amon Twyman of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), political philosophies which support transhumanism include social futurism, techno-progressivism, techno-libertarianism, and anarcho-transhumanism. Twyman considers such philosophies to collectively constitute political transhumanism.

Democratic transhumanists, also known as technoprogressives, support equal access to human enhancement technologies in order to promote social equality and prevent technologies from furthering the divide among socioeconomic classes. However, libertarian transhumanist Ronald Bailey is critical of the democratic transhumanism described by James Hughes. Jeffrey Bishop wrote that the disagreements among transhumanists regarding individual and community rights is "precisely the tension that philosophical liberalism historically tried to negotiate," but that disagreeing entirely with a posthuman future is a disagreement with the right to choose what humanity will become.

Riccardo Campa wrote that transhumanism can be coupled with many different political, philosophical, and religious views, and that this diversity can be an asset so long as transhumanists do not give priority to existing affiliations over membership with organized transhumanism.

Criticism

Some transhumanists question the use of politicizing transhumanism, and Truman Chen of the Stanford Political Journal considers many transhumanist ideals to be anti-political.

See also

• Biopunk movement
• Extropianism
• Morphological freedom
• Participant evolution
• Technological utopianism

External links

• An introduction to tomorrow’s politics