Quotes & Sayings About Transhumanism

Somewhere out there, a higher
form of sadism won the first round.
Well, screw that. I'm not ready to be
pwned. — Clyde DeSouza

Ask anyone who's transgender. They'll tell you they're trapped in the wrong body. But me, I'm trapped in the wrong body because I'm trapped in a body. All bodies are the wrong body. — Tim Cannon

A lot of people recoil from the word "drugs" - which is understandable given today's noxious street drugs and their uninspiring medical counterparts. Yet even academics and intellectuals in our society typically take the prototypical dumb drug, ethyl alcohol. If it's socially acceptable to take a drug that makes you temporarily happy and stupid, then why not rationally design drugs to make people perpetually happier and smarter? Presumably, in order to limit abuse-potential, one would want any ideal pleasure drug to be akin - in one limited but important sense - to nicotine, where the smoker's brain finely calibrates its optimal level: there is no uncontrolled dose-escalation. — David Pearce

A mere two days without eating and you passed out. It must be tough not being able to photosynthesize. — Tsutomu Nihei

Transhumanism literally means "beyond human." It's using science and technology to radically change and improve the human species and experience. — Zoltan Istvan

If you want to make it human, make it whole. — Greg Egan

Everytime you think of your father, you resurrect him. Why shouldn't he continue a posthuman life in this world while he's resting in the other? — Clyde DeSouza

You realize, there is no free-will in anything we create with Artificial Intelligence ... — Clyde DeSouza

I had to wonder what sadistic pleasure and entertainment human suffering must provide to the divine game players who decided the fate of their pawns in a board game they made of life. — Clyde DeSouza

What is a human being, then?'
'A seed.'
'A ... seed?'
'An acorn that is unafraid to destroy itself in growing into a tree. — David Zindell

I saw them do it. Chip vandals. Right there on Commerce, behind the main road...They cut his head open. They know I watched. — Anna L. Davis

Come now, Tichy. For half a century civilization hasn't been left to its own devices. A hundred years ago a certain Dior was dictating fashions in clothing. Today this sort of regulating has embraced all walks of life. If prostheticism is voted in, I assure you, in a couple of years everyone will consider the possession of a soft, hairy, sweating body to be shameful and indecent. A body needs washing, deodorizing, caring for, and even then it breaks down, while in a prostheticized society you can snap on the loveliest creations of modern engineering. What woman doesn't want to have silver iodide instead of eyes, telescoping breasts, angel's wings, iridescent legs, and feet that sing with every step? — Stanislaw Lem

Transhumanism encapsulates a long-lived error among the headliners of science: in a world without a destination, we cannot even break ground on our Tower of Babel, and no amount of rush and hurry on our part will change that. That we are going nowhere is not a curable condition; that we must go nowhere at the fastest possible velocity just might be curable, though probably not. And what difference would it make to retard our progress to nowhere? — Thomas Ligotti

It seemed to me that transhumanism was an expression of the profound human longing to transcend the confusion and desire and impotence and sickness of the body, cowering in the darkening shadow of its own decay. This longing had historically been the domain of religion, and was now the increasingly fertile terrain of technology. — Mark O'Connell

My kids understand what I'm doing. They're totally saturated in it. My daughter, she's eleven. A little while ago, she said to me, 'Dad, I don't care if you become a robot, but you have to keep your face. I don't want you to replace your face.' Personally, I don't have any sentimental attachment to my face, any more than I have a sentimental attachment to any other part of my body. I could look like the Mars Rover for all I give a shit. But she's pretty attached to my face, I guess. — Tim Cannon

Bad things happen to good people: The Jesus Christ Syndrome, I labeled it. — Clyde DeSouza

I'd begun to think of the Immortality Bus as the Entropy Bus, and of ourselves as trundling across Texas in a great mobile metaphor for the inevitable decline of all things, the disintegration of all systems over time. — Mark O'Connell

Hannah strived for physical catharsis, but she was trapped in an unfamiliar mind without its biological counterparts; gasping without lungs, crying without tears, forgiving without a heart. — Jake Vander Ark

The bold code of the transhumanist will rise. That's an inevitable, undeniable fact. It's embedded in the undemocratic nature of technology and our own teleological evolutionary advancment. It is the future. We are the future like it or not. And it needs to molded, guided, and handled correctly by the strength and wisdom of transhumanist scientists with their nations and resources standing behind them, facilitating them. It needs to be supported in a way that we can make a successful transition into it, and not sacrifice ourselves - either by its overwhelming power or by a fear of harnessing that power. You need to put your resources into the technology. Into our education system. Into our universities, industries, and ideas. Into the strongest of our society. Into the brightest of our society. Into the best of our society So that we can attain the future. — Zoltan Istvan

We blow the past a kiss, our last blush of artifice as performers before this Future we're flirting with becomes terribly and totally Real. And we then begin to occupy reality. — Woody Evans

The suppression of ecstasy and condemnation of pleasure by patriarchal religion have left us in a deep, festering morass. The pleasures people seek in modern times are superficial, venal, and corrupt. This is deeply unfortunate, for it justifies the patriarchal condemnation of pleasure that rotted out our hedonistic capacities in the first place! Narcissism is rampant, having reached a truly global scale. It now appears to have entered the terminal phase known as "cocooning," the ultimate state of isolation. Dissociation from the natural world verges on complete disembodiment, represented in Archontic ploys such as "transhumanism," cloning, virtual reality, and the uploading of human consciousness into cyberspace. The computer looks due to replace the cross as the primary image of salvation. It is already the altar where millions worship daily. If the technocrats prevail, artificial intelligence and artificial life will soon overrule the natural order of the planet. — John Lamb Lash

No ... we're not playing God. We're only attempting to set things right. — Clyde DeSouza

It's amazing how once the mind is free of emotional pollution, logic and clarity emerge. — Clyde DeSouza

Technology isn't what makes us "post-human" or "transhuman," as some writers and scholars have recently suggested. It's what makes us human. Technology is in our nature. Through our tools we give our dreams form. We bring them into the world. The practicality of technology may distinguish it from art, but both spring from a similar, distinctly human yearning. — Nicholas Carr

But this was the real world wasn't it? Miracles must happen in some parallel universe. — Clyde DeSouza

You can't hack your destiny, brute force ... you need a back door, a side channel into Life. — Clyde DeSouza

I expect to see the coming decades transform the planet into an art form; the new man, linked in a cosmic harmony that transcends time and space, will sensuously caress and mold and pattern every facet of the terrestrial artifact as if it were a work of art, and man himself will become an organic art form. There is a long road ahead, and the stars are only way stations, but we have begun the journey. To be born in this age is a precious gift, and I regret the prospect of my own death only because I will leave so many pages of man's destiny - if you will excuse the Gutenbergian image - tantalizingly unread. But perhaps, as I've tried to demonstrate in my examination of the postliterate culture, the story begins only when the book closes. — Marshall McLuhan

Too many of our preferences reflect nasty behaviours and states of mind that were genetically adaptive in the ancestral environment. Instead, wouldn't it be better if we rewrote our own corrupt code? — David Pearce

You should get more sleep," he remarked. "You won't need so many chemicals."
She raised an eyebrow. "This from the man with half his bloodstream registered in the patent office." Jovellanos hadn't had her shots yet. She didn't need them in her current position, but she was too good at her job to stay where she was much longer. Desjardins looked forward to the day when her righteous stance on the Sanctity of Free Will went head-to-head against the legal prerequisites for promotion. She'd probably take one look at the list of perks and the new salary, and cave.
He had, anyway. — Peter Watts

Transhumanism is the ethics and science of using things like biological and genetic engineering to transform our bodies and make us a more powerful species. — Dan Brown

Only chance to make the world a success for humanity lies in technology, grand possibility technology provides to do more with less, and indiscriminately for everyone. Return to nature as nature pre-technologically was, attractive and possible as it still in some places is, can only work for some of us. — John Cage

I believe in transhumanism: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny. — Julian Huxley

What use was time to those who'd soon achieve Digital Immortality? — Clyde DeSouza

EVEN RANDOMNESS IS WITHIN A SET OF PARAMETERS; THRESHOLDS ... — Clyde DeSouza