Practical Transhumanism

Transhumanism, at root, is about becoming a fuller, more complete human being. It means pursuing more health, fitness, intelligence, emotional depth, creativity, culture, spirituality, and empathy. It means seeking progress and growth along every dimension of human existence.

Like everything else in life, there are practical components to this, and more abstract components. Both are necessary; the abstract components help us to choose our direction and focus, give us an over-arching storyline for framing our lives, and inspire us to greater efforts. The practical components, though, are necessary and easy to overlook.

This has always been a problem; religion and philosophy have struggled with it forever. Ask any thoughtful theologian, and they will tell you that the significance of religion is in how it impacts human life. Otherwise, there would be no need for all of the time, energy, and effort invested in it. But even so, it's incredibly easy for religious abstractions intended to improve human life to become excuses for making life worse, or for disengaging from life entirely. This, I think, is the paradox inherent in all abstractions. Human life could not exist without abstraction, and yet abstraction can easily become destructive to that very life.

So I’d like to write a bit about the practical side of transhumanism. There is a serious constraint to this, however, and it’s the same constraint that applies to every bit of self-help, self-improvement, and productivity advice out there: what works for one person may not work for another.

So I’m not going to write general advice or universal principles; I’m going to write about my process, as I figure it out. That’s all this will be, and that’s the limit of what it applies to. I hope, however, that there is some benefit (to me, if not to anyone else) in documenting the slow process of figuring out the future.