1989 PREFACE:
THE TRANSHUMAN CONDITION
One of our dogs would like to be human. He wants to eat in a chair at the table, and sleep in a bed. We don't let him, because his habits aren't hygienic enough and too much people-food isn't good for him. But surely no one can blame him for trying.
And who can blame us for also wanting more and better? We think life is great already--but that doesn't mean we settle for what we have.
We enjoy our bodies--when they function--but there's no denying that we are made of very cheap materials. Our minds have done marvels--but they are feeble in light of the potential we glimpse. Our emotions are frequently delightful or useful--but fragile and erratic far too often.
Some do blame us immortalists, us transhumanists, and reproach us for hubris, because in earlier times there seemed to be good reasons to accept the status quo-namely, there was little we could do about it, hence mental health and a stable society might require resignation.
The "human condition" celebrated/lamented in song & story (often by philosophers/novelists crying in their beer) centers on limitations and inherent contradictions. Wagnerian tragedy sometimes focused on "impurity of blood," the irreversible defect. (You are stuck with your genome; your fate is to be only human, and in fact to be only a particular type of human.) Our psyches are in a chronic state of civil war; there is incurable turmoil in Lorenz' "parliament of instincts," for example with self preservation ever in conflict with self-sacrifice. The heroic thing, we are usually told, is to accept the limitations and live with the contradictions--to muddle through.
But humans have always tried to transcend their limitations, and have often to some extent succeeded. ("Natural man" would be living naked in a cave or shivering in a tree.) And now we are on the brink of the can-do era, when the leopard will be able to change his very spots. The transhuman condition is one of life unlimited--no acknowledged boundaries in time, space, or quality.
True enough, no one has grown any younger since the first version of The Prospect of Immortality in 1962; and no one has leaped any tall buildings since the first edition of Man into Superman in 1972. Yet there are potential immortals today, the people in cryostasis or frozen storage. There are supermice and patented animals and plants resulting from genetic engineering. Scientific heavyweights think that even within your natural lifetime we can have mental prostheses--direct computer links to your brain. The future is looking good.
There are risks, to be sure, and dissenters. Some people are fixated on the past, which they claim has produced enough wars, famines, acne, and funny money to make a sensible person say, "All right, already!" Hence they either doubt the future or dread it.
Pessimism is partly a matter of bad experiences or/and hormone shortages. These can be remedied, if you can hang on a while.
Pessimism is also partly a failure of imagination. Most people think the future will be just like the recent past, with maybe a little more chrome and somewhat higher prices. They need to pay closer attention to what is happening.
What is happening is a discontinuity in history, with mortality and humanity on one side--on the other immortality and transhumanity. With a little encouragement, many of us can make the transition: that is what this book is about.
Have you had a better offer lately?
R.C.W. Ettinger Oak Park, Michigan November, 1988
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