Cross the trans-human divide? Hell, we just got here!

Who will own our trans-human future? Why, libertarians, of course! Or so says Ronald Bailey in his article in Reasononline, "Trans-Human Expressway - Why libertarians will win the future".

Politics in the 21st century will cut across the traditional political left/right rift of the last two centuries. Instead, the chief ideological divide will be between transhumanists and bioconservatives/bioluddites.

James Hughes, the executive director of the World Transhumanist Association, explores this future political order in his remarkably interesting yet wrongheaded, Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future. Hughes, who lectures on health policy at Trinity College in Connecticut, defines transhumanism as "the idea that humans can use reason to transcend the limitation of the human condition." Specifically, transhumanists welcome the development of intimate technologies that will enable people to boost life spans, enhance intellectual capacities, augment athletic abilities, and choose their preferred emotional states.

With a topic as historically important as the transformation of human biology by technology, you would think that the question of which political philosophy will garner the majority of benefits is a trivial concern, but not for a libertarian true believer like Bailey.

Bailey correctly points out that Hughes' couching of the trans-human future in a traditional leftist political context shows how little Hughes has transcended the limitations on his own human imagination:

In a sense, Hughes himself has not transcended the left/right politics of the past two centuries; he hankers to graft old fashioned left-wing social democratic ideology onto transhumanism. That isn't necessary. The creative technologies that Hughes does an excellent job of describing will so scramble conventional political and economic thinking that his ideas about government health care and government guaranteed incomes will appear quaint. The good news is that if his social democratic transhumanism flounders, Hughes will reluctantly choose biotech progress. "Even if the rich do get more enhancements in the short term, it's probably still good for the rest of us in the long term," writes Hughes. "If the wealthy stay on the bleeding edge of life extension treatments, nano-implants and cryo-suspension, the result will be cheaper, higher-quality technology."

But Bailey cannot see his own inability to transcend his own libertarian context:

Although it clearly pains him, Hughes grudgingly recognizes that libertarian transhumanists still belong in his big tent. And why not? You will not find a more militantly open, tolerant bunch on the planet. Adam and Steve want get married? We'll be the groomsmen. Joan wants to contract with Jill for surrogacy services? We'll throw a baby shower. Bill and Jane want to use ecstasy for great sex? We'll leave them alone quietly. John wants to grow a new liver through therapeutic cloning? We'll bring over the scotch to help him break in the new one.

My point is not to confirm or deny whether trans-humanism will promote libertarian political principles, but to say that Bailey is asking the wrong question, or more precisely, is ignoring the most important question: should we even attempt to transcend human biology?

The extent to which Bailey and Hughes welcome this trend as an absolute good with seemingly no reservations is extremely troubling. Neither are ready to answer the critical question "what are the reasons for not pursuing a trans-human direction?". The obvious problem with a Hughes-esque, big government, socialist driven program for human transformation is that such an approach repeats the "fatal conceit" of all socialist programmes. Such a program will repeat the disasters of socialist run economies, that no group of experts can ever understand the intricate, interconnected variables and relationships of a complex system like a human economy or social system.

While a libertarian approach may appear to avoid the problems of a central planning model, it also ignores the effects that people, making individual decisions to employ trans-human methods to design alternate outcomes for themselves and their children, can have on the larger society, for good and for ill. The fatal conceit of the libertatian philosophy is that individuals can operate independently from the dominant moral ethos of the society in which they live.

Society will need a voice in deciding what trans-human technologies are pursued, and to what extent. The aim of society's involvement must not be to design and implement trans-human future for its members, a la the Hughes program. It should be, rather, to preserve the moral and ethical principles under which society operates as the technologies progress and individuals seek to use them to their benefit.

The WTA and the Extropy Institute both advocate approaches seeking to accelerate the pace of trans-human technical development and exploitation, as if the human genome has exhausted its potential for sustaining humanity. It may be a good time to pause and reflect on how successful this genome has been, and to appreciate its marvelous ability to adapt to a variety of ecological, social and technological environments over the ages. This genome posesses and incredible wealth of wisdom that we should tamper with extreme caution, if at all.

My sense is that the technology of human augmentation will continue to accelerate of its own momentum. Rather than applying additional external forces to accelerate this trend even more, social and political groups should act more in the function of a brake, slowing this trend to ensure the continuity of society's moral ethos. These are the kinds of decisions that will affect humanity for untold generations to come. It makes sense to approach this future slowly, with all due respect for our genetic heritage.