Weltanschauung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Transhumanism

  • The Abolition of Suffering

    The Abolition of Suffering

    Philosopher David Pearce has a message of overwhelming significance: The “Abolition of Suffering” can and will be achieved.

    Anyone who suffers from depression or even normal glumness, anybody who despairs at the condition of our Darwinistic world and brutal economic model, should read David Pearce.  Forget those who write self help books (mostly selling us snakeoil and moonshine) and become involved in a movement which might actually give us a brighter future.

    David Pearce is a British utilitarian philosopher and transhumanist, who promotes the idea that there exists a strong ethical imperative for humans to work towards the abolition of suffering in all sentient life. His internet manifesto The Hedonistic Imperative details how he believes the abolition of suffering can be accomplished through “paradise engineering.” He co-founded the World Transhumanist Association in 1998, and the Abolitionist Society in 2002.

    We are not nice people. We need to change. David quotes Genghis Khan but much the same might have been said by Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot

    “The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.”

    I won’t trouble you with the details – read them for yourself in his books or visit his website The Hedonistic Imperative.

    The rational and the intelligent should abandon religion as an opiate (which has never worked to dull our pain) and should do his or her bit to bring about what the transhumanists believe could become a paradise on earth.

    Now there is a career move.

  • Science and the Sublime

    Science and the Sublime

    Science fiction has long dreamt of an impossibly sophisticated future where mere intelligence has transcended to the superhuman. Religion through the many millennia of human history has peddled an opiate of post death eternity where all will be well and all manner of things will be well.

    Religion has not made good on its promises: we still await the parousia among other things. And as for bodily resurrection, I visited San Lazzaro degli Armeni and was shown around by an erudite and charming young believer.  We were looking around the monastery’s museum and I rather unkindly quipped that the preserved corpse on display was evidently still awaiting resurrection.

    Unfazed by my sarcasm the young man replied: “It will happen”.

    Will science provide what religion has failed to give us?  According to the “transhumanists” the answer is assuredly yes. Per Wikipedia the most common transhumanist thesis is that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into different beings with abilities so greatly expanded from the current condition as to merit the label of posthuman beings.

    I have always been captivated by the transcendent (inspired in childhood by the Narnia Chronicles of CS Lewis and the lore of JRR Tolkein) but in adult life my interest has veered towards the scientific possibility of nirvana and the possibility of different planes of existence and post physical life.

    Mathematical physicist Frank Tipler veers firmly towards religious belief. At the end of time he believes our distant ancestors will be able to re-create every living being that has ever lived in virtual reality. Hence he came to believe in the resurrection and became a Christian.  Perhaps encouraged by the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin.

    While eschewing religious faith I understand its longings.  I’m with Iain M. Banks.