Movement promises “an end run around mortality”

A real beauty, or virtually so. (Image: from the transhumanist book, The Perfect World Tour, by “A.R. Teest.”)

Natasha Vita-More does not appreciate being called a religious leader. (See her reply to a recent parallelnormal post here.) Vita-More and her husband, Max More, are leaders of the transhumanist and extropian movements, which advocate for the use of technology to transform the human into a “posthuman,” which they believe will be better than the originals.

But the movements, which have ties to the United Nations, and to Oxford and Yale universities, do offer hope to those who long for life “beyond our current biological limitations,” and for greater security in a dangerous world.

Transhumanism also has its share of famous followers, drawn largely from the fields of science, engineering and biology.

The transhumanists, after all, will need the help of scientists to realize their dream of creating a life form to supplant mankind.

Posthumans will replace ordinary, biological, humans with “completely synthetic artificial intelligence,” according to one scenario described by the Extropian Institute, Max More’s think-tank.

Such virtual life might arise from human brains being downloaded to computers, or humans being modified with multiple computer implants, the extropians add.

The inventor Ray Kurzweil and MIT artificial intelligence guru Marvin Minsky are transhumanists.

Kurzweil is not a religious man. But he does believe science might help him “live long enough to live forever.” He takes dozens of supplements daily, and spends a full day each month at a Massachusetts clinic, where he receives massive vitamin doses intravenously.

“The promise of eternal life through continuous upgrades obviously satisfies one of the chief needs of religious personalities — an end run around mortality,” my brother, Erik, told me last week.

Erik covered a meeting of the World Transhumanist Association at Yale for the Village Voice in 2003.

Erik does not share my belief that transhumanism might meet the deifinition of a cult. “But,” he said, “some vulnerable people attracted to it might be ripe for such exploitation.”

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More information:

Red Ice Creations special report

Alan Watt’s Cutting Through the Matrix