In our evaluation of the resolution, we recognize the importance of our critical examination of the status quo as we seek to identify its truth. Rejecting the Cartesian dynamic of policy analysis which limits our enagement of reality, we advocate the test of the resultion through the an examination of the quality of mematic normative discourse as a method of uncovering a more expansive reality. In this examination, we explore the imminent opportunity and threat facing mankind, the pending transhumanist evolution and the attainment of the Singularity. Through this analysis, we realize the greatest of existential harms are inherent within our very bodies – slavery, intimidation, coercion, terrorization, genocide and certain death. We don’t need multiple link scenarios with infinite wars and genocidal harms that allegedly take place immediately following the judge’s decision in order to find the absolute magnitude of harm. Instead, we find this issue is intrinsic to all of us as it is the condition of being human. Our engagement of the Singularity is the inherent destiny each of us in this room faces as members of this highly flawed evolutionary human being product.
Young explains:
(Simon Young, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, 2006, Prometheus Books, p.32)
“Human” – the very word is
synonymous with suffering and failure. “I’m only human”; “the human
predicament”; “the tragedy of the human condition”: they all tell the same
truth—that humanity is a disease state from which to be cured. What is “the
human condition” but an affliction? What is a human being? A weak mind in a
decaying body, a bundle of primitive emotions, and a brief life in the
knowledge of inevitable death – extinction for the rest of eternity! Human
beings are the slaves of a three-part genetic program reading, “Survive,
reproduce and self-destruct.” We did not ask to be programmed for
self-destruction. Why then should we accept death, disease and decay like some
helpless sheep? Let us learn to think beyond the human condition. Not what
humanity is, but what it could be.
It is imperative we engage in this self-examination of our relationship to the human state of slavery, torture and death biology chains us to. In our examination, we evaluate the four stages of human question: the Tragedy of our current state, the Ascendency of humankind over death, the Transcendency beyond homo sapiens into the Singularity, and the Destiny we now face through the Transhumanist Manifesto.
What does this initial ascendency look like, and how near to it are we? Young explains that the remaking of the human body is the first step of the transformation, leading to the cure of ageism:
(Simon Young, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, 2006, Prometheus Books, p.18)
Death is a disease waiting to
be cured. We have learned to identify the genetic recipe for life. There is no
reason to suppose that we will not go on to identify the genetic program for
death. Research is well underway. Breakthroughs have been made. The mechanism
by which cells wear out, and the chemicals which extend their life, have been
identified. The life span of simple organisms have been increased. Let us heed
the words of Dr. Aubrey de Grey, immortologist at
de Grey’s observation that a life free from certain death is one that places the risk associated with living into a whole new context. Free from a brutally short life, life’s value increases exponentially. Would we risk death in unnecessary war or aggression and violence against another?
Kurzweil ’05 explains the key to understanding our life now is through the examination of the coming Singularity that transhumanism delivers. Today we are not prepared for the decision each of us will be required to make: to transcend or not. Discourse that faciliates this thinking is necessary for us:
(Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Penguin Group, 2005, p. 7)
What then is the Singularity?
It’s a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so
rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed.
Although neither utopian nor dystopian, this epoch will transform the concepts
that we rely on to give meaning to our lives, from our business models to the
cycle of human life, including death itself. Understanding the Singularity will
alter our perspective on the significance of our past and the ramifications for
our future. To truly understand it inherently changes one’s view of life in
general and one’s own particular life.
According to the transhumanists, mankind is standing in the
doorway of transcendence, departing the biologic era and entering the
post-biologic.
(Mark Walker, “Ship of Fools: Why Transhumanism is the Best Bet to Prevent the Extinction of Civilization,” The Global Spiral, The MetaNexus Institute, 2009, http://www.metanexus.net/magazine/tabid/68/id/10682/Default.aspx )
By altering biology transhumanists propose to improve human nature to the point of creating a new genus: such as posthumans. Note that transhumanism encompasses a moral thesis. Transhumanism does not say that we will create posthumans, rather, it makes a moral claim: we ought to create posthumans. The hint of an argument based on the accrual of moral benefits is perhaps obvious from what has been said: to the extent that we value the development of intellectual, emotional and moral virtue, becoming posthuman is imperative.
The final chapter in the communication of the transhumanist meme is that of the destiny we each face. Young explains that we’re in a meme war where the ideas of Transhumanism must contend with the baggage of pre and post modernist philosophies, left over ideologies that helped us through previous struggles but are irrelevant. These old philosophies serve as impediments to our discourse, challenging our capacity to consider the Singularity.
Dawkins ’76 defines memes for us:
(Richard Dawkins, “The Selfish Gene,” 1976, p. 189)
Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passed it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain. As my colleague N.K. Humphrey neatly summed up an earlier draft of this chapter: `... memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically.(3) When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn't just a way of talking -- the meme for, say, "belief in life after death" is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of individual men the world over.
Rothstein ’02 explains that memes are an alternative energy form that is fundamental in the synthesis of thought and the development of culture:
Rothstein ‘02
(Edward Rothstein,
“SHELF LIFE: The Mysterious Meme, A Seductive Metaphor,” New York Times, August
3 2002, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9901E6D8143BF930A3575BC0A9649C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all )
The behavior of a meme, he
proposes, follows general principles governing such replication. He
characterizes a meme as a state of electrical energy among neurons in the brain,
a pattern that has the unusual ability to replicate itself quickly by spurring
other groups of neurons to fire in similar fashion. Or as he puts it: a
meme is ''the state of a node in a neuronal network capable of generating a
copy of itself.'' These patterns or ''states'' can be experienced as
sensations or ideas or feelings. They can also result in actions, some of which
communicate the meme to others. Such communications -- in books and
artifacts and conversations -- inspire identical patterns of neuronal firing in
other brains. This is the origin of culture.
Young brings memes into the Transhumanist context by explaining their role in causing each of us to reflect this destiny, and identifies the resistance yesterday’s philosophies cause us:
(Simon Young, Designer
Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, 2006, Prometheus Books, p.15)
As genes spread through the
gene pool, so memes spread through the meme pool of human culture. Meme Wars
are battles of ideas played out within a culture to influence the direction it
will take. Whoever controls the spread of attitudes and habits in a society,
controls that society. He who holds the power is he who controls the meme. The
main combatants in the Meme Wars of the modern world at the dawn of the
twenty-first century are defenders of the metamemes we might call
pre-modernity, modernity, and postmodernity. Modernity may be defined as the
condition of a culture based on the underlying belief in ongoing human progress
toward ever-increasing knowledge, abilities, survivability, and well-being,
attained through reason, science and technology, as opposed to irrationality or
superstition. All those who enjoy the civil liberties and material comforts of
the modern world have the metameme of modernity to thank for their good
fortunes.
The philosophy of transhumanism represents a New Modernity emerging in the
twenty-first century. Its Big Idea, or supermeme, is the use of advanced
bio-technology – Superviology – to eradicate disease, enhance minds and bodies,
and ultimately, to defeat death itself, by halting the biogenetic process of
aging. The defenders of pre- and post-modern metamemes seek to counter the rise
of the New Modernity through control of the language operating in society.
Negamemes such as Playing God, Tinkering with Nature, Designer Babies,
Frankenfoods, New Eugenics, and Brave New World are some of the Weapons of
Memetic Destruction (WMDs) with which the defenders of pre and postmodernity
seek to defeat modernity, by destroying the public’s belief in technology. In
Meme Wars, there are no armies, no bombs, no bloodshed, no violence at all.
Meme wars are wars without tears. Yet they are just as significant as
territorial wars.
Whether we should embrace the promise of the transhumanist future which nanotechnology delivers, or step away from the brink, is the role of the exchange of alternative energy memes that we affirm: RESOLVED: THE UNITED STATES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASE ALTERNATIVE ENERGY INCENTIVES IN THE UNITED STATES.
We define alternative as “offering or expressing a choice”
(Merriam-Webster Online, 2/16/2009, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alternative ) and alternative energy through Dawkin’s representation of the energized meme.
We subsequently define significant as “having meaning,” and significantly as
“in a significant manner” according to Merriam-Webster Online. As constituents
within the