Better Than Well

The boys in Ministry's R&D department tell me that in order to get our cybernetic bodies built more quickly, we need to integrate the folks at the World Transhumanist Association into the Flock. Their declaration states that they "advocate the moral right for those who so wish to use technology to extend their mental and physical (including reproductive) capacities and to improve their control over their own lives. We seek personal growth beyond our current biological limitations."

If the purely scientific approach leaves you cold, perhaps you are a Promethian. The religion of Prometheism, officially founded on October 12th of 2000, claims to be "the first sovereign transtopian & neo-eugenic libertarian religious-state."


The Flag of Prometheism

These movements are also known as "posthumanism" (this should not be confused with the literary theory of the same name that is a 21st Century update of Renaissance Humanism, and practiced largely in European colleges). In essence, the idea is that the next stage in human evolution should not be allowed to develop by accident. Using terms like "Conscious Evolution" and "Human Potential Enhancement," transhumanists believe that man should actively choose what the next step in our evolution will look like. Some writers on the topic have pointed out that once individuals begin to compete using neo-eugenic technology, speciation will not flow along any one line. There may be dozens of viable new "species" of human, and Transhumanists want to help them all hatch.

I'm torn on this. There is an elegant simplicity about evolution that seems to be violated by intelliegent mutation, but I must admit that their motto - "Better than Well" - is mighty appealing right now (I'm still coughing up a lung every few hours). What does the Flock think?