02.08.07
Democracy and Transhumanism
By Max More
(»Are transhumanists democrats? Should they be committed to and defined by democracy?
Let‛s go back to the seventeenth century. Monarchy is the prevailing system in the Western world. Suppose a group of progressive early humanists wanted to associate their views about the status of human beings – views radical for the time – with the best political orders of the time. They might declare that “modern 17th Century humanism is a constitutional monarchist philosophy”. Such a statement would show that they reject outdated forms of unlimited monarchy or theocracy.
We would find such a quickly-dated commitment amusing today. “What does humanism have to do, in essence, with constitutional monarchy?” we might ask. Humanism asserts the value of progress. Tying it to the political system of the time – even though the system was the best of the time – would confuse ends (human dignity, personal sovereignty, and so on) with a means.
Transhumanist organizations that declare themselves to be “democratic transhumanists” make an even bigger mistake. Transhumanist perspectives look further ahead, into much more drastic change to the human condition. To identify transhumanism with any current political system must appear short-sighted and blinkered to some. To others it may simply appear to be a transparent attempt at posturing – like telling Americans that transhumanism is all about “motherhood and apple pie” or telling Europeans that transhumanism is committed to universal, government-provided health care.
A transhumanist organization should no more describe its core commitments as “democratic” than it should describe itself as an “Internet organization” when in practice and in aspiration the organization interacts by means of any effective medium of communication. [...]«)