Is transhumanism a humanism?4 reading minutes

Le Regard Libre N° 24 - Nicolas Jutzet

A number of studies have raised a disturbing issue: almost everywhere in the Western world, IQ levels have been falling at an alarming rate since the beginning of the 21st century. This worrying new trend follows on from the 20th century, which saw IQs rise steadily, largely as a result of health and social progress. Laurent Alexandre, surgeon-urologist and enthusiast of the transhumanist movement, explains the phenomenon by the fact that «the best-educated people tend to delay having a first child, in particular to pursue their studies, and therefore have fewer children than those from the most disadvantaged strata of the population». Couple this data with the disappearance of natural selection (which selected the individuals best able to survive, not necessarily the strongest) and you have a disturbing synthesis. Is humanity condemned to decline? Has it hit its «glass ceiling»?

Some refuse to accept this inevitability. Optimists, they are followers of «transhumanism». This movement aims to go beyond the current approach of simply repairing human beings, which to date has been mainly therapeutic. They want to move on to the next stage, that of enhancement in addition to repair. They want to move from therapy to enhancing human capabilities. The convergence of NBIC (nano-bio-info-cognitive) technologies makes this hypothesis increasingly plausible, even certain according to the authors. For this school of thought, the human being appears as an addition of factors that must be analyzed as a universal engineer. Dissect, analyze and remedy man's current weaknesses. Nick Bostrom, an acknowledged transhumanist, justifies this approach on the grounds that humanity faces four possible evolutions: the extinction of the human species; recurrent collapse (cyclical crises); stagnation; post/trans-human evolution (with or without a radical break with the current aspect of the human being). The fourth evolution is preferred.

The two transhumanist movements

Behind this approach, which some are quick to describe as a new Hitlerian eugenics, reaching the Godwin point at an exceptional speed, lie two main schools of thought. Both are opposed by bio-conservatives, who believe that it is possible to improve the human environment, but not the human itself. The latter, in short, reproach a sin of’hubris to transhumans. Faced with these accusations, the two movements are applying different strategies.

The first, the most measured, aims to improve the physical, cognitive and emotional capacities of humanoids without altering their initial form. They follow in the footsteps of the Enlightenment, placing the individual at the center and wishing to put technological progress at the service of their progressive, secular vision. The main idea is to move «from chance to choice», putting an end to the genetic lottery which, like the social lottery, creates inequalities from birth. This is light-years away from the racist state eugenics theorized under Hitler's socialist dictatorship. Here, the improvement we're aiming for is on an individual, voluntary scale, a far cry from the desire to change the human species as a group, which would require binding political intervention.

The second branch of transhumanism does not stop at simple improvements, but aims to achieve post-humanity, based on cybernetics, robotics, information and artificial intelligence. It claims a perspective of confrontation and surpassing the human being. For the time being, this idea is mainly the stuff of science fiction. Adherents of the meliorative version see in their vision a way to save our species from a decline that seems to be looming. For bio-conservatives, once the tools are available, it will be difficult to convince parents that there is a real difference between choosing the best school for their child and selecting the best genes before birth. To achieve this possibility one day, transhumans are today calling for a negative right to improvement. This right does not prohibit attempts at improvement, but leaves it to the private sector. Eventually, a positive right to improvement will be established. This would be achieved by the community taking responsibility for improvement possibilities, as it does today for medical care insurance.

The social-conservative alliance

Be that as it may, before such a societal choice can be made, we need to overcome the obstacle represented by the opportunistic alliance between bio-conservatives - who erect the human being as a dogma through the sacralization of his own biological form - and egalitarians - who, refusing the emergence of new inequalities, are quick to forget that, in the long term, these tools are likely to be democratized and therefore financially accessible to most of us, on a voluntary basis. Let's take a concrete example of improvement, the vaccine: would it be conceivable today to roll back this decisive advance on the pretext that it is not accessible to all? Similarly, would we be better off if we had banned the idea in its early stages, on the pretext that it was prohibitively expensive?

The constant progress of the tools that will enable this evolution brings us face to face with our responsibilities. It's now up to each and every one of us to form an initial opinion, get informed and choose a side. For the battle is about to begin.

Image: excerpt from the credits of the TV series WestWorld (© Melty)