Are Friends Electric?

Gary Numan’s 1979 hit Are “Friends” Electric? and Kraftwerk’s “we are the robots” refrain on their 1978 album The Man-Machine had, over 40 years ago, given an artistic expression to a future that would see the merging of man and machine. An idea known as transhumanism, which, as an outgrowth of the old eugenics movement, has been gaining momentum since the 1980s¹ and is the rationale behind “The Great Reset” – an attempt not only to “transform the world [and] accelerate many of the changes that were already taking place before [covid-19] erupted”, but to shatter in the process “our beliefs and assumptions about what the world could or should look like.”² Its origins go back to the British geneticist J. B. S. Haldane who, in 1923, first advanced the fundamental ideas of this newly emerging philosophy, foreseeing, in his view, great benefits from applying advanced sciences to human biology. It was, however, the biologist Julian Huxley who popularised the term transhumanism in an influential 1957 essay, and who is generally regarded as the founder of transhumanism.

“The idea of technologically enhancing our bodies is not new. But the extent to which transhumanists take the concept is”, writes Robin McKie. “In future, we might use implants to augment our senses so we can detect infrared or ultraviolet radiation directly or boost our cognitive processes by connecting ourselves to memory chips. Ultimately, by merging man and machine, science will produce humans who have vastly increased intelligence, strength, and lifespans; a near embodiment of gods.”³

In the 17th century, the French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650), one of the initiators of modern science and father of Western philosophy, presented a new vision of the natural world that continues to shape the way we think and look at the world to this day. He drained souls out of nature, and the universe, along with animals and plants, became a soulless machine. Only mind, or spirit, was immaterial; and while, two centuries later, the mind, or consciousness, was still the ultimate reality for a lot of philosophers in Europe and America, increasing numbers of people came to reject the co-existence of science and religion, saying that the realm of spirit doesn’t exist and all is matter. By deleting the spirit pole of dualism, the realms of spirit and its beings simply vanished from the world at one stroke and “God is dead”, as Nietzsche famously declared in the second half of the 19th century.

Since around the turn of our century, “the transhumanist movement has been growing fast and furiously. Local groups are mushrooming in all parts of the world. Awareness of transhumanist ideas is spreading. Transhumanism is undergoing the transition from being the preoccupation of a fringe group of intellectual pioneers to becoming a mainstream approach to understanding the prospects for technological transformation of the human condition. That technological advances will help us overcome many of our current human limitations is no longer an insight confined to a few handfuls of techno-savvy visionaries.”⁴

We have reached a stage in our human-earthly evolution that is limited to a world of matter, perceived through five senses and interpreted by an abstract brain-bound intellect which, in their view, is a result of brain activity. Transhumanists want to go beyond traditional means of improving human nature, such as education and cultural refinement, to overcome our basic biological limits. But instead of following a path of inner development, transhumanists believe that modern technology will ultimately offer us the chance to live indefinitely, liberated from the imperfections of the human body.

While transhumanism is clearly not a religion, it might serve some of the roles that people usually ascribe to traditional religions, offering a sense of direction and purpose, and a vision of something greater than the narrow confines of our present condition. “Unlike most religious believers, however, transhumanists seek to make their dreams come true in this world, by relying not on supernatural powers or divine intervention but on rational thinking and empiricism, through continued scientific, technological, economic, and human development.”⁵ While supernatural powers don’t exist in the world of transhumanism, they nevertheless want to achieve “unfading bliss, and godlike intelligence” through future engineering achievements.

Tampering with nature “is nothing to be ashamed of” for transhumanists. They see it as the right thing to do. Manipulating nature is “what civilization and human intelligence is all about” to a large extent, and “there is no moral reason why we shouldn’t intervene in nature and improve it if we can” – comparing the invention of the wheel and the use of contact lenses with eugenics “and the application of genetics to improve human characteristics”? Not to mention that there is no moral reason why we shouldn’t intervene in nature, since everything we do and create is in a sense natural too. In other words, overconsumption, overexploitation, pollution, deforestation and biodiversity loss, weapons of mass destruction and the atomic bomb, to name but a few, is natural too, and therefore acceptable...

Transhumanism gives hope to those who view “reincarnation or otherworldly resurrection” as figments of the imagination and who see the “inevitable fact of death” as a dangerous and fatal illusion. Have they ever thought about the impossible consequences of everyone “living forever” on a planet that is already overpopulated? Or perhaps this problem can be solved by simply moving to other planets – preparations for which are already underway…

What about the risks of future technologies? While “today’s AI systems or their near-term successors” don’t pose any threat to human existence, it will be of paramount importance when superintelligence is created “that it be endowed with human-friendly values”, since “imprudently or maliciously designed superintelligence”, being indifferent or hostile to human welfare, could cause our extinction. And while superintelligence may become very powerful due to its planning ability and the technologies it could devise before we know it, it may not result in wiping out all intelligent life. Yet we might nevertheless end up in a world in which a great part of humanity’s potential has been destroyed and in which only a tiny fraction of humanity would get to “enjoy the benefits of posthumanity”. Getting rid of the resource-depleting hoi polloi – the “massive class of useless people”, according to Harari, the modern prophet of transhumanism – and leave the planet to a small elite of the superrich and their “electric friends” who will be “dancing mechanic” to the jolly “we are the robots” tune.

Dr Reiner Füllmich and his group of international laywers have been working hard to bring those responsible for the global corona regime to justice. He has expressed in horror that what was happening during those two years “is so monsterous” and “not just a crime against humanity but a crime against creation itself.” The real judgement, he says, despite not being “a religious person”, will not come from the courts of law, but “there is going to be a really, really great reckoning”, and spirituality may ultimately be what will save us. This is the one aspect that Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984 didn’t take into account: the world of spirit and spiritual beings.

We need to be aware of spiritual factors that are present in human evolution and which have greater relevance than ever to what is happening these days. However, it would be naive to believe that we can reverse the current downhill trend in our earthly development, a time of hard tests for humanity, when old forms of civilization are sinking into the abyss, and we must find our way to something new. Just as every flower grows and fades, and as all youth departs, giving way to old age, so does every culture come and go: what goes up, must come down. Instead of clinging to the “culture of youth” with fanatical intensity and being afraid of ageing, we need to counterbalance the current decline into sub-earthly realms with a conscious inner development.

Freedom is our highest good, that which makes us unique amongst other beings. But with freedom also came the possibility of going astray. Evil is a consequence of freedom. Just as love is impossible without freedom, so is evil too.

We need to be prepared to face evil in full consciousness, so we can bring freedom into the world, and love, born out of this freedom, on a level and of a quality that has never existed before and would not be possible without having to overcome those hindrances and opposing forces. This battle is fought in the human heart, and it will be decisive. The battle against the dragon, the spirit of materialism, who has split our intellect off from our humanity and turned it into the most vicious instrument of evil. No less than the future of humanity depends on whether enough souls are able to unite the cold, abstract intellect with the forces of the heart, infusing our intelligence with living spirituality. Humanity will either stand at the grave of civilisation or at the beginning of a new era with a new and consciously developed spirituality.

1. Nick Bostrom, Oxford University, Faculty of Philosophy, Transhumanist Values in Ethical Issues for the 21st Century, ed. Frederick Adams (Philosophical Documentation Center Press, 2003); reprinted in Review of Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. 4 May 2005. https://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/values.html

2. Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret, Covid-19: The Great Reset, Forum Publishing, 2020. Klaus Schwab is the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum.

3. No death and an enhanced life: Is the future transhuman? by Robin McKie, science editor, May 2018 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/06/no-death-and-an-enhanced-life-is-the-future-transhuman

4.  https://whatistranshumanism.org/

5. Ibid