Iranian-American-Belgian transhumanist philosopher and futurist

FM-2030

FM-2030 (originally born as Fereidoun M. Esfandiary; Persian: ; October 15, 1930 July 8, 2000) was a Belgian-born Iranian-American [1] author, teacher, transhumanist philosopher, futurist, consultant, and Olympic athlete.[2]

He became notable as a transhumanist with the book Are You a Transhuman?: Monitoring and Stimulating Your Personal Rate of Growth in a Rapidly Changing World, published in 1989. In addition, he wrote a number of works of fiction under his original name F.M. Esfandiary.

FM-2030 was born Fereydoon M. Esfandiary on October 15, 1930 in Belgium to Iranian diplomat Abdol-Hossein A. H. Sadigh Esfandiary (1894-1986), who served from 1920 to 1960. [3] He travelled widely as a child, having lived in 17 countries including Iran, India, and Afghanistan, by age 11.[4] He represented Iran as a basketball player and wrestler at the 1948 Olympic Games in London. He attended primary school in Iran and England and completed his secondary education at Colleges Des Freres, a Jesuit school in Jerusalem. By the time he was 18, aside from his native Persian, [5],he learned to speak 4 languages: Arabic, Hebrew, French and English.[6][7] He then started his college education at the University of California, Berkeley, but later transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, where he graduated in 1952.[8] Afterwards, he served on the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine from 1952 to 1954.[9]

In 1970, after publishing his book Optimism One,[10] F.M. Esfandiary [7] started going by FM-2030 for two main reasons: firstly, to reflect the hope and belief that he would live to celebrate his 100th birthday in 2030; secondly, and more importantly, to break free of the widespread practice of naming conventions that he saw as rooted in a collectivist mentality, and existing only as a relic of humankind's tribalistic past. He legally changed in 1988. He viewed traditional names as almost always stamping a label of collective identity varying from gender to nationality on the individual, thereby existing as prima facie elements of thought processes in the human cultural fabric, that tended to degenerate into stereotyping, factionalism, and discrimination. In his own words, "Conventional names define a person's past: ancestry, ethnicity, nationality, religion. I am not who I was ten years ago and certainly not who I will be in twenty years. [...] The name 2030 reflects my conviction that the years around 2030 will be a magical time. In 2030 we will be ageless and everyone will have an excellent chance to live forever. 2030 is a dream and a goal."[11] As a staunch anti-nationalist, he believed "There are no illegal immigrants, only irrelevant borders."

In 1973, he published the political manifesto UpWingers: A Futurist Manifesto in which he views the ideological left and right as outdated and instead proposed a schema of UpWingers: those who looked into the sky and future and DownWingers, those who looked into the Earth and past. FM-2030 identified with the former. He argued that the nuclear family structure and the idea of a city would disappear, being replaced by modular social communities called mobilia, powered by communitarianism and would persist and then disappear.[12]

FM-2030 believed that synthetic body parts would one day make life expectancy irrelevant and shortly before his death, he described the pancreas as a "a stupid, dumb, wretched organ."[13]

In terms of civilization, he stated: No civilization of the past was great. They were all primitive and persecutory, founded on mass subjugation and mass murder. In terms of identity, he stated The young modern is not losing his identity. He is gladly disencumbering himself of it. He believed that eventually, nations would disappear and that identities would shift from cultural to personal. In a 1972 op-Ed in The New York Times, he wrote that the Arab-Israeli conflict had failed leadership, the warring sides acting like adolescents, refuse to resolve their wasteful 25-year-old brawl and believed that the World was irreversibly evolving beyond the concept of national homeland.[14]

He was a lifelong vegetarian and said he would not eat anything that had a mother. He famously refused to answer any questions about his nationality, age and upbringing, deeming them to be irrelevant and that he was a global person.[15] FM-2030 once said, "I am a 21st century person who was accidentally launched in the 20th. I have a deep nostalgia for the future."[16] As he spent much of his childhood in India, he was noted to have spoken a slight Indian accent.[17] He taught at The New School, University of California, Los Angeles, and Florida International University.[2] He worked as a corporate consultant for Lockheed and J. C. Penney.[2] He was also an atheist.[18]FM-2030 was, in his own words, a follower of "upwing" politics, in which he meant that he endorsed universal progress.[19][20] He had been in a non-exclusive "friendship" (his preferred term for relationship) with Flora Schnall, a lawyer and fellow Harvard Law Class of 1959 graduate from the 1960s until his death. FM-2030 and Schnall attended the same class as Ruth Bader Ginsburg.[21] He resided in Westwood, Los Angeles as well as Miami.[22]

FM-2030 died on July 8, 2000 from pancreatic cancer at a friends apartment in Manhattan. He was placed in cryonic suspension at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, where his body remains today. He did not yet have remote standby arrangements, so no Alcor team member was present at his death, but FM-2030 was the first person to be vitrified, rather than simply frozen as previous cryonics patients had been.[15] FM-2030 was survived by four sisters and one brother.[7]

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FM-2030 - Wikipedia