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There Will be No Manly Transhumans
Technological progress seems opposed to manly virtues
Manliness looks increasingly obsolete in developed societies.
At least, a fear that’s propelled right-wing populist and authoritarian movements throughout the early twenty-first century is that men are no longer appreciated. Indeed, it’s politically incorrect even to speak of a cultural or characterological difference between men and women. We’re all equal in being people, so we should strive to be civil and to express our personal identity, not conform to socially constructed gender norms.
Yet even if masculinity is wholly a cultural contrivance, so that those values have differed from one period or civilization to the next, that doesn’t mean masculinity and femininity are arbitrary or random since civilized societies play out similar dynamics, which is why we can generalize about “civilization” and “society.”
Politically correct relativism
Politically correct relativism overcompensates for the early-modern tendency to overgeneralize based on limited sample sizes. European habits, for instance, were projected onto the rest of the world, so that non-European countries were often deemed inferior for failing to be Christian or “enlightened.” Chastened late-modern social…
