{"id":17723,"date":"2020-06-23T18:09:19","date_gmt":"2020-06-23T22:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=17723"},"modified":"2020-06-23T18:09:19","modified_gmt":"2020-06-23T22:09:19","slug":"bottom-line-power-elite-pursues-human-immortality-thru-transhumanism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=17723","title":{"rendered":"BOTTOM LINE: Power Elite Pursues Human Immortality Thru Transhumanism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Transhumanism: The new religion of the coming technocracy<\/h1>\n

by Mark E. Jeftovic
\n#AxisOfEasy<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0 recent Wall Street Journal essay,\u00a0\u201cLooking Forward to the End of Humanity\u201d<\/a>,\u00a0\u00a0Adam Kirsch posits a technological push, impelled by the global coronavirus pandemic, that would abolish death:<\/span><\/p>\n

Eternal life through advanced technology seems like a pipe dream for a society that, until recently, had trouble manufacturing enough masks to save doctors\u2019 and nurses\u2019 lives. Yet Covid-19 may turn out to be just the kind of crisis needed to turbocharge efforts to create what its advocates call a \u201ctranshuman\u201d future. With our biological fragility more obvious than ever, many people will be ready to embrace the message of the\u00a0Transhumanist Declaration<\/a>, an eight-point program first issued in 1998: \u201cWe envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering and our confinement to planet Earth.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/span>There is an abundance of well respected thinkers who\u00a0believe\u00a0<\/em>this is possible, including Google Ventures founder Bill Maris, cited in the article, and Yuval Noah Harari, in his Homo Deus sets the tone early on by declaring:<\/p>\n

In the twenty-first century, humans are likely to make a serious bid for immortality\u2026.Humans always die due to some technical glitch\u2026.Nothing metaphysical about it. It is all technical problems.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then of course, no discussion techno-utopianism would be complete without Ray Kurzweil, who posits a \u201ctechnological singularity\u201d which would provide for a personalized and totally controlled universe for every human, one where they would be in complete control to experience whatever they desired, for all eternity, once we all upload our consciousnesses into the cloud.<\/p>\n

The WSJ piece hits on the same theme:<\/p>\n

Today, cognitive scientists often compare the brain to hardware and the mind to the software that runs on it. But a software program is just information, and in principle there\u2019s no reason why the information of consciousness has to be encoded in neurons.<\/p>\n

The Human Connectome Project, launched in 2009 by the National Institutes of Health, describes itself as \u201can ambitious effort to map the neural pathways that underlie human brain function.\u201d If those pathways could be completely mapped and translated into digital 0s and 1s, the data could be uploaded to a computer, where it could survive indefinitely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Does any of this sound like heaven? Or paradise? Valhalla? That\u2019s not surprising because Scientism (as distinct from exploration and discovery using the scientfic method) has ushered in a new era of material reductionism so that religion, spirituality, or any other non-material aspect of reality that cannot be readily quantified have been stripped of relevance and meaning in our Brave New World.<\/p>\n

Something\u00a0<\/em>has to fill the void that the absence of religion and spirituality will vacate. In my next book,\u00a0The Singularity Has Been #Canceled<\/strong>, I posit that this vacuum will be filled with techno-utopian thinking, which will pull forward utopia and everlasting bliss from the next life, and via the promise of expertly managed technology, roll it out into this one.<\/p>\n

My premise for the book includes four main assertions, which are:<\/p>\n