We’re Treating Self-Improvement Like a Software Upgrade
Your value is not about utility
Self-improvement of the transhumanist sort requires that we adopt an entirely functional understanding of who and what we are: All of our abilities can be improved upon and all of our parts are replaceable. Upgradable.
The quirks that make us human are interpreted, instead, as faults that impede our productivity and progress. Embracing those flaws, as humanists tend to do, is judged by the transhumanists as a form of nostalgia, and a dangerously romantic misinterpretation of our savage past as a purer state of being. Nature and biology are not mysteries to embrace but limits to transcend. This transhumanist mindset is, in fact, taking hold. We can see it in the way we bring digital technologies closer and closer. The screen is encroaching on the eye, from TVs to computer monitors to phone screens to smartwatches to VR goggles to tiny LEDs that project images onto the retina to neural implants that communicate directly with the optic nerve.
With each leap in human–machine intimacy, resolution increases, and our utility value is improved along some measurable metric. This is the mindset encouraged by wristbands that count our heartbeats and footsteps under the pretense of improved health or life extension. Health, happiness, and humanity itself are…
