Beyond The Human Race – And “Human-Racism”

J. Hughes is the executive theatre director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies , a professor at Trinity College Hartford , and source of the book Citizen Cyborg . Here he explain the idea of transhumanism – and its dark side .

The problem with the idea of posthumanity is that the thing it is supposed to be beyond , “ humanity , ” is an imagined residential district to begin with . So why imagine posthumanity at all ?

There will for certain be identities that unite and part us in the future , and some of them may revolve around the technologies we expend to alter our bodies . People who have had olfactory organ Job or vaccination , or who have pacemakers or prosthetic limbs , may sense some faint abstract solidarity with one another . But few think of themselves as technologically modify transhumans who are top humanity . So why do we conceive of that our descendants will suddenly feel this desire to adjudge themselves a raw species ?

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It ’s as if we were sixteenth century peasants trying to suppose the 20th century when monarchists will have to confront the scary powers of the “ post - monarchist . ” We are post - monarchist today , but our myriad mod identicalness and factions have nothing to do with monarchy .

I have contributed to this illusive posthumanity trouble . As atranshumanistmy comrades and I talk a caboodle about transhumans and posthumans as if there will be such a break . But I fear that accept these terms carry a pot of unneeded luggage that play into the hands of the “ human - racist , ” those who believe there are clear bound that delineate manhood which must not be transgressed . Some become human - racists because they believe Man was created in imago Dei , in the figure of God , and that mess around with our body and brains outrage a godlike plan . But there are also plenty of temporal multitude exercise about defend humans against posthumans .

In 2002 , for instance , the giving bioethicists George Annas and Lori Andrews published“Protecting the endangered man : Toward an international accord disallow cloning and inheritable alterations,”in the American Journal of Law & Medicine . They fence for an international accord to make cloning and germline hereditary therapy “ crimes against humanity , ” a call taken up by other would - be defender of humanity . Annasopined :

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The posthuman will come to see us ( the garden miscellany human ) as an inferior subspecies without human rights to be enslave or butcher preemptively . It is this voltage for genocide free-base on hereditary difference , that I have term “ genetic genocide , ” that earn metal money - altering genetic engine room a likely artillery of mass death .

What exactly is this human genome that needs such a defense force ? It ca n’t let in the 99 % of our genic code we share with other specie . Hopefully it is n’t reducible to cistron for depilation or upright strength or hidden heat , since I doubt we would deny citizenship to anyone born of humans who miss these traits . If defending this human genome requires throwing would be genetic enhancers before the Hague we can hopefully see out which genes in particular are primal .

Perhaps if we examine human familial origins we could nail the key cistron that caused us to suddenly mutate into human beings . But the paleogenetic record just manure up the idea of humanity . The issue last hebdomad of genetic comparisons of humans and Neandertals revealed that our two “ species ” were interbreeding as recently as 60,000 years ago . Only Africans appear to have break away the contamination of Neandertal miscegenation .

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Today our closest cousins are the great ape , and the human - racists insist that there is a clear shining line between us and them . But that line also erodes daily , as apes are express to utilise lyric , transmit refinement , and understand abstract ideas like death and morality . The Great Ape Projectcampaigns to have human rights stretch out to ape , to protect them from slavery and torture , on the grounds that they own all the genial characteristics necessary to possess rights .

In Imagined Communities , a history of the manufacture of nationalism , Benedict Anderson notes :

… disregarding of the real inequality and development that may prevail in each , the state is always conceived as a deep , horizontal comradeship … Ultimately it is this brotherhood that makes it possible , over the preceding two C , for so many million of hoi polloi , not so much to drink down , as willingly to give out for such limited imaginings .

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Is n’t it clear that man - racial discrimination , like racialism , is just another feat to suppress the divisions between wealthy person and have - nots in favor of a fabricated solidarity of humans against illegal immigrants who have n’t even arrived yet , and when they do will be us and our children ? When Francis Fukuyama argued in Our Posthuman Future that genetic drift would destroy the biologic equality that human rights were based on he was invoking a fancied story in which we granted one another rights simply because we recognized some biological commons that allowed “ every human being to potentially communicate with and enter into a moral relationship with every other human being on the planet . ” But there are no posthumans propose by human enhancers , and few imagined in science fiction , who would be unable to communicate and enter into moral family relationship . If the imaginary moral community of humanity is flexile enough to thrive beyond white male property - owners to all human beings surely it can flourish a little further to include Gorilla gorilla , cyborgs and variation .

In the coming C we will get down to genetically change ourselves to escape from disease , disability and death . We will start rage up our brains and bodies with designer drugs and nanobots . The fight to ensure universal admission to the benefits of these applied science began a farsighted meter ago with the fight for world-wide healthcare and will continue when we are hear to get bum longevity drugs and brain jack out to rural villages . I suspect that the unmodified humans of the future wo n’t separate the world into humans and posthumans , but into those who are on the side of wider access to enable technologies and those who side with corporation and governments to refuse that access .

So let ’s be careful about the estimation of posthumanity , even if we are celebrate its Second Coming .

Lesdilley