Posthuman Social Policy

One of the things that comes up when people ask about my thesis (an action they soon regret-I do go on) is a sense of surprise. Not just because I managed to secure funding. More because the idea of the posthuman still has a whiff of science-fiction-with emphasis on the latter- to the general public. Almost everyone is familiar with say, Arnie’s cyborg The Terminator or the super-humans of The Avengers, but the notion that such beings might become a reality are generally dismissed as either ridiculous or thousands of years away. In fact, one of the problems any proponent of Transhumanism must face is the inability of most current humans to think beyond their own lifetime; or to think in deep time, if you like.

Of course, writers like Ray Kurzweill  and others argue for an exponential development of science and technology (see here for more on ‘accelerated change’. In which case our post human future is not a question of deep time but one that requires a public debate in the present. Current developments in techno-science push us ever closer to a point beyond the existential dilemma of knowing who we are to the ethical question of knowing what we want to become. Choosing which of the qualities we have come to define as human we wish to retain. If any.

At any rate, that is a discussion for another post. What I want to do here is present a list of various governmental and parliamentary reports that relate to the development of the posthuman. This is not a complete list, I’m sure there are many more of these from various countries and research groups, so if anyone knows of any please do get in touch and pass them on. I’m sure there’s an interesting comparative study to be done of the local differences of approach. A flavour of such differences may be gleaned here. I’m going to put them in reverse chronological order because I want to end by highlighting the importance of a public debate about post/transhumanism. More importantly, I hope that this list at least provides sceptics with evidence that these issues are no longer the sole province of science-fiction. These are real governmental reports addressing real questions. And of course they are all hyper-linked for your reading and research pleasure. The search for a posthuman social policy starts here!

Transhumanism,Eugenics and Human Neophobia

Nazis+Posthuman=Bad News

A forthcoming paper in the journal Ethics, Policy and the Environment entitled “Human Engineering and Climate Change” has recently caused a bit of a hoopla for daring to suggest that the notion of human enhancement deserves “further consideration in the debate about climate change“. The paper includes a disclaimer stating:

To be clear, we shall not argue that human engineering ought to be adopted; such a claim would require far more exposition and argument than we have space for here. Our central aim here is to show that human engineering deserves consideration alongside other solutions in the debate about how to solve the problem of climate change. Also, as we envisage it, human engineering would be a voluntary activity – possibly supported by incentives such as tax breaks or sponsored health care – rather than a coerced, mandatory activity.

Never the less, according to an article in The Grauniad a flurry of hostile reactions to the paper (abetted by an interview in The Atlantic with it’s lead author S. Matthew Liao) ensued:

terms such as “eugenics”, “Nazis” and “eco fascists” were quickly being bandied around. One sceptic blogger said  that the “sick” Liao and his co-authors should be “kept in Guantanamo”. Another said  the paper “presages the death of science, and indeed the death of reason, in the West”. But prominent environmentalists were also keen to denounce the paper. Bill McKibben tweeted  that the paper contained the “worst climate change solutions of all time”. Mark Lynas tweeted  that he thought it was an “early April Fool”. It was hard to disagree.

The phrase ‘it was hard to disagree’ at the end there is telling, and invites us to ask why trans/posthumanist ideas are often so quickly dismissed? It is only hard to disagree with the notion of bioengineering humans being an April Fool if it already seems foolish to you. These reactions probably highlight the twin poles of ‘human’ reactions to posthumanity.