Transhumanism is the concept of humans taking evolution into their own hands in order to transcend natural phenomenons that act as barriers to human survival and progress. This mentality has existed within humankind since the dawn of our higher cognitive functions; expressed through our technological achievements, medicines, etc. However, in our modern context, Transhumanism is taking on a completely new role.
The prospects of our technological advances and breakthroughs in medical science has opened the doors to humanity not just transcending simple barriers like disease, broken bones, missing limbs and organs, etc; but overcoming problems of death itself, the degradation of the body in its entirety, offering augmented and artificial limbs and organs, or even entirely new alternative vessels to store our consciousness within. And yet, this notion of transferring our consciousness is only one step in our evolutionary course.
The prospects of transferring consciousness technologically, coupled with the ability of designing vessels to occupy, will allow individuals to become multiple bodies via technological surrogates. This can range from any form of biological embodiment into ones of cybernetic and robotic construction. The simple idea of one individual gaining this ability insights philosophical questioning questioning the entire foundation of our socio-political-religious-economic system, the basis of culture itself, and our entire conception of self and other as individuals and as a collective species.
The question at hand that humanity is left to face is the prospect of how our collective species will deal with this. For if we indeed hold true to the notions of being a collective union of individuals under the auspice of the United States civilization, then we must ask ourselves both what the potentials our collective self could have if indeed every individual gained this ability to technological transcendence. The thought of an entire species gaining this ability will not only determine the fate of terrestrial existence; but will weigh the scales of how humans will impact on a macrocosmic scale. We have seen what individuals do instinctively through a collective unconscious through reflecting upon history. The thing we must imagine now is what a collective of individuals who themselves are a collective. What can they achieve, for positive and negative. And we must further ask ourselves and how we can achieve the positive aspects while preventing the negative. This will ultimately require an immense level of self reflection as individuals and as a species.
