Transhumanism

"Transhumanism" is a social and scientific movement that aims to improve humanity. (Sounds innocuous, right?) More accurately, it aims to make humanity radically better. Most accurately, it aims to improve humanity to the point that the result would be a new species. Or many new species. In other words, to find ways to bring into being our successors. Darwin no longer in the drivers seat. Evolution is very, very good--the trade-off is that it is very, very slow and has a very high cost in terms of how much it discards. It is "a twisty maze of passages, all alike". The idea here is that we can use our higher level faculties to jump ahead to a next level, whatever that might be. Some degree of natural selection may still be appropriate ("Darwin is my co-pilot?", Darwin as a back-seat driver?)... we do not want to be more unfit to our environment.

A way of reaching that next level may be through genetic engineering, for instance, to eliminate common genetic diseases or add capabilities, perhaps the ability to regrow lost limbs. It's not really about freaky super-powered mutants from the likes of X-Men and Heroes, though certainly it is about giving individuals the freedom to change themselves into whatever is safe for the rest of us (and allowed by the laws of physics). The medical breakthroughs made along the way would eliminate a vast amount of human suffering.

Another way may be through the augmentation of cybernetic interfaces, for example, to have fast direct mental access to a stored archive of all human knowledge. Or to develop ways to facilitate mind-to-mind communication, whether 1-to-1, 1-to-many, and so forth. Or to develop true Artificial Intelligence.

Or, it possible that transhuman lifeforms would be entirely artificial and live in computer-generated simulations, their thoughts occuring in software. Or some amalgamation of any or all of these ideas.

It may sound dangerous. It is. It may sound completely terrifying. It could be. On the other hand, advocates of transhumanism (myself included), seem to be more cognizant of the risks as well as the rewards, then those that oppose it.