Monthly Archives: January 2023

The Great Reset is the latest deceptive euphemism for totalitarian socialism that is being promoted by yet another group of wealthy corporate elitists who think they can centrally plan the entire world economy. They are essentially the ideological heirs of Frederick Engels and his intellectual puppet Karl Marx. The Great Reset follows in the rhetorical footsteps of such euphemisms for socialism as economic democracy, social justice, liberation theology, progressivism, market socialism (an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp or military intelligence), environmentalism, fighting climate change, sustainable development, and green new deal, to mention just a few.

The main figure of this movement is wealthy German engineer Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, who champions what he calls transhumanism, the integration of nanotechnology into the human body so that humans can be controlled remotely by the state.[1] As Ron Paul has noted, Included in Schwabs proposal for surveillance [of every citizen] is his idea to use brain scans and nanotechnology to predict, and if necessary, prevent, individuals future behavior . This means that anyone whose brain is scanned could have his . . . [constitutional] rights violated because a government bureaucrat determines the individual is going to commit a crime.[2]

The Fourth Industrial ...Schwab, KlausBest Price: $9.95Buy New $10.69(as of 05:40 UTC - Details)Placed in the hands of politicians, this would create a level of totalitarianism the Soviets could only have dreamed of. In other words, Schwab is reminiscent of that famous twentieth-century German who also fantasized about creating a master race and ruling the world.

This is nothing new, Antony Mueller points out, as eugenics, which was all the rage among so many ruling class elitists of the early twentieth century is now called transhumanism.[3] Among the most prominent late nineteenth-and twentieth-century eugenicists were H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Charles Darwins son Leonard, John Maynard Keynes, Irving Fisher, Winston Churchill, and Bill Gates, Sr. Bill Gates, Jr. is an enthusiastic funding source for transhumanism research and, like his father, is fond of eugenics.

During a recent Ted talk Gates, Jr. complained that The world today has 6.8 billion people . .. thats headed up to about 9 billion. Have no fear, he said, because if we do a really great job on vaccines [with anti-fertility drugs? Poisons?] health care, reproductive health services [including abortion?], we could lower that by perhaps 10 to 15 percent.[4] That in turn will lower carbon dioxide levels on the planet and address climate change as well, said Gates.

Keynes was treasurer of the Cambridge University Eugenics Society and director of the Eugenics Society of London. He called eugenics the most important and significant branch of sociology [Eugenics Archive]. Irving Fisher, icon of the Chicago School of Economics, literally wrote the book on the subject, entitled Eugenics.

When he was the British Home Secretary (1910-1911) Winston Churchill advocated the confinement, segregation, and sterilization of a class of persons contemporarily described as the feeble minded [International Churchill Society]. His stated goal was the improvement of the British breed. Accordingly, he supported compulsory detention of the mentally inadequate; the sterilization of the unfit; and proper labor colonies for tramps and wastrels.

World Government, Anyone?

How the West Grew Rich...Birdzell Jr., LEBest Price: $4.42Buy New $18.66(as of 11:22 UTC - Details)Antony Mueller also wrote of how the first attempt to create some kind of global governing institution to centrally plan the world was the League of Nations (1920), followed by the United Nations in 1945 under the leadership of Stalin, FDR, and Churchill.[5] Although Churchill was fond of citing F.A. Hayek, especially The Road to Serfdom, FDR was essentially a fascist whose domestic policies differed very little from fascist Italy and Germany, and of course Stalin was a mass-murdering communist.

Churchill was voted out of office and replaced by the socialist Labor Partys Clement Atlee in 1945. The three allied powers of World War II were then led by two socialists and the political heir to FDRs economic fascism, Harry Truman.

The U.N. immediately created UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and the World Health Organization (WHO), whose stated goal was to manipulate human development. Eugenicist Julian Huxley was the first director of UNESCO who lamented that Marxisms attempt to create a new type of human (socialist man) had already failed because it lacked a biological component.

Neo-Malthusianism and the Birth of Environmentalism

[S[ocialism . . . is . . . the society that must emerge if humanity is to cope with . . . the ecological burden that economic growth is placing on the environment . . . . [C]apitalism must be monitored, regulated, and contained to such a degree that it would be difficult to call the final social order capitalism.

Robert Heilbroner, After Capitalism, The New Yorker, Sept. 10, 1990

The above quotation by socialist economist, the late Robert Heilbroner, was written in the context of an article that lamented and mourned the worldwide collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. The great debate between capitalism and socialism was over, he said, and Ludwig von Mises was right about socialism all along, said a man who had spent the past half century promoting socialism in his teaching, speaking, and writing. But do not despair, he told his fellow socialists, for there is one more trick up our sleeves, namely, the Trojan Horse of achieving socialism under the guise of environmentalism.

On the Origins of MoneyMenger, Carl MengerBest Price: $12.31Buy New $16.36(as of 11:22 UTC - Details)The basic strategy was then, as it is now, to constantly frighten the gullible public with predictions of The End of the World from environmental catastrophe unless we abandon capitalism and adopt socialist central planning. This has always been the one constant theme of the environmentalist movement (not to be confused with the conservation movement which is actually interested in the health of the planet and the humans who occupy it) since the 1960s. It ignores the fact that the twentieth-century socialist countries like the Soviet Union and China had by far the worse environmental problems on the planet, orders of magnitude worse than in the capitalist countries.

In 2019 the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) published Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions by Myron Ebell and Steven Milloy.[6] The study is a compilation of reprints of newspaper and magazine articles that illustrate the seemingly never-ending false scare stories spread by the environmentalistS and their media puppets. The real founder of the modern environmental movement was entomologist Paul Ehrlich, not Rachel Carson, author of the widely-cited novel, Silent Spring. Ehrlich was supported by a group of wealthy socialists known as The Club of Rome. His book, The Population Bomb, was incredibly successful, selling millions in just a couple of years, warning that the entire world will soon be destroyed by capitalism unless it is ended NOW and severe regulatory measures are taken.

The first article displayed by CEI was from the November 17, 1967 Salt Lake Tribune announcing that Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford said the time of famines is upon us and will be disastrous by 1975 because of over-population. Such talk was a resurrection of the hoary, thoroughly-discredited Malthusianism of the nineteenth century, cloaked in the words of modern science. Birth control may have to be made involuntary, said Ehrlich, and accompanied by putting sterilization agents into staple foods and drinking water. The Catholic church needs to be pressured by government to support his, said Ehrlich, who became one of the most celebrated, rich, and famous academics of the twentieth century.

The New York Times quoted Ehrlich on August 10, 1969, as predicting that unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam n 20 years.

Ice Age Hysteria of the 70s

Socialism: An Economic...Von Mises, LudwigBest Price: $7.57Buy New $12.95(as of 07:00 UTC - Details)Global cooling that would create a new ice age was the next scare tactic. An April 18, 1970 Boston Globe article quoted pollution expert James P. Lodge, Jr. as saying air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the next century.

Ehrlich chimed in, naturally. An October 6, 1970 Redlands, CA Daily Facts article quoted him as predicting that the oceans will be . . . dead . . . in less than a decade because of pollution caused by capitalism. And they will be frozen over. A July 9, 1971 Washington Post article quoted a Dr. S.I. Rasool of NASA and Columbia University who said that pollution will cause an average temperature drop of as much as ten degrees that could be sufficient to trigger an ice age!

On December 3, 1972 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sent a letter to President Nixon predicting a global deterioration of climate never before seen by civilized mankind that would lead to a new ice age.

A January 29, 1974 article in The Guardian was headlined, Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast. This was followed by a June 24, 1974 Time magazine article warning that telltale signs are everywhere that we were already in a new ice age. Global cooling hysteria was still alive and well in 1978. A January 5, 1978 New York Times article was headlined, International Team of Specialists Finds No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend in Northern Hemisphere.

Pivoting on a Dime: Global Warming Hysteria

By 1988, after more than a decade of warnings of a new ice age unless capitalism is destroyed failed to produce the desired result, many of these same scientists and bureaucrats all of a sudden began warning of an earthly apocalypse caused by global warming. The greenhouse effect of pollution was discovered/invented, with nationwide warnings like one in the June 24 Miami News declaring that 88 On Way to be Hottest Ever as World Temperatures Up Sharply. James Hansen of NASA warned in the Lansing State Journal on December 12, 1988 that Washington, D.C. would go from its current 35 days a year over 90 degrees to 85 days a year and the level of the ocean will rise by as much as six feet. Rising seas could obliterate nations, a U.N. official informed the Associated Press on June 30, 1989. In reality, as CEI points out, is that the number of 90+ degree days in Washington, D.C. peaked in 1911 and continues to decline.Friedrich A. Von Hayek...Check Amazon for Pricing.

By 2000 the mantra of the global warming hysterics included predictions that snowfalls are now just a thing of the past, and children just arent going to know what snow is, The Independent announced on September 12, 2015, quoting another environmentalist expert from the University of East Anglia.

By 2013 the Arctic will be free of sea ice predicted James Hansen in 2008, as reported by The Argus Free Press of Owosso, Michigan. In the same year Al Gore informed us that the North polar ice cap would be gone, as reported by the Associated Press on June 24, 2008. For such predictions Massachusetts Senator ed Markey designated Hansen as a climate prophet.

The renowned atmospheric scientist Prince Charles told The Independent on July 9, 2009 that the price of capitalism and consumerism is just too high. The planet will be destroyed by 2017 if capitalism is not essentially destroyed immediately, said the mega-wealthy prince whose preferred method of travel is by gas-guzzling Rolls Royce and private jet.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown outdid the prince by informing The Independent on October 20, 2009 that we have fewer than fifty days to save our planet from catastrophe. When New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez publicly announced in 2019 with perfect certainty that the world will end in in twelve years, she was referring to a 2018 United Nations study of climate change that said the same thing.[7] The world will likely end in twelve years, said the U.N. bureaucrats, unless the U.N. is given vast new governing powers over all countries of the world, and vast sums of additional tax revenue.

NONE of these widely-touted and celebrated predictions came true. Birds did not even disappear from the planet as predicted in Silent Spring. capitalism was not replaced by worldwide socialist central planning; so the environmental scientists pivoted on a dime once again and adopted the language of climate change. It now does not matter whether the climates temperature is increasing or decreasing; either will cause a catastrophe that can only be avoided by replacing whats left of capitalism with some kind of worldwide socialist central planning, they inform us.

A quarter of a century of climate change hysteria has still not led to the desired result. The next step in this more-than-a-century-old political crusade for worldwide socialism, therefore, is The Great Reset.Fascism versus CapitalismLlewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.Best Price: $3.39Buy New $7.45(as of 05:45 UTC - Details)

The Great Nonsense of The Great Reset

Klaus Schwab holds doctorates in engineering and economics, although he seems ignorant of the most elementary economic concepts when he contends that the entire world economy can somehow be stopped by a god-like hand, pushbutton style, and reset and built back better, one of his favorite slogans. He is the founder of the World Economic Forum, touted as an organization that promotes Public-Private Cooperation. As Ayn Rand once said, however, whenever the private sector partners with government, government is always the senior and controlling partner.

Schwab seems totally unaware of how the institutions of capitalism have evolved over the centuries by ingenuity and efforts of millions and were not magically set or reset by any single man or government committee.[8] Money evolved on the free market and did not originate from governmental edits.[9] Even language evolved, and was not invented by any government bureaucracy. There is no recognition at all in any of Schwabs books that he understands (or cares) anything about the spontaneous order of markets, the importance of private property and free-market prices, the economy-smothering effects of government bureaucracy, or the economic reasons for the inevitable failures of socialism. Like all other socialist ideologues, he does not even bother to address the critics of socialism as he blindly makes his case for world socialism. It can work, he insists, if only he and his corporate elitist comrades could be in charge.

The logic of The Great Reset can be stated in a syllogism: 1. Socialism has failed disastrously everywhere it has been implemented; 2) Everyone knows this; 3; Therefore, what the world needs is more socialism on the biggest scale ever.

Schwab is an engineer and believes that world society can be socially engineered by corporate elitists like himself. The Soviets would label this kind of thinking scientific socialism.

Destructionism

Like all socialist ideologues, Schwabs starting point is what Ludwig von Mises called destructionism. All socialists, Mises said, advocated the destruction of the existing institutions of society, especially capitalism, the family, and religion, all of which form a barrier between the individual and the controlling dictates of the state. Only then can society be reset to create a socialist utopia. For Socialism is . . . the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It doesnt build; it destroys. For destructionism is the essence of it . . . each step leading towards socialism must exhaust itself in the destruction of what already exists.[10]

This is why Schwab, Gates, Biden, and other proponents of the great reset so enthusiastically celebrate the lockdowns that occurred during the so-called pandemic of 2020 and declare that it is time to build back better. Destroy what exists, they tell us, and then trust them to build back the entire planet better. In fact, they were caught on video at their annual World Economic Forum meeting in early 2021 cheering a video of empty city streets and closed-down businesses caused by the government-mandated lockdowns that plunged literally millions into poverty worldwide. The lockdowns are improving cities around the world, said Schwab.[11] They may even moderate climate change, he triumphantly chortled. The unemployed and impoverished residents of those devasted cities would obviously disagree with this rosy scenario.

A team of researchers at the University of East Anglia, an institution that is notorious for its studies of global warming/cooling/climate change hysteria, has also chimed in to advocate a global lockdown every two years to supposedly reduce carbon dioxide emissions as required by the Paris Climate Accord.[12] These lockdowns would not be related to any virus but would simply be designed to intentionally destroy much of the world economy, leaving millions in abject poverty, causing untold illness and death, for the sake of fighting climate change and of course, to achieve their real objective of destroying capitalism and adopting a version of worldwide socialist central planning.

Abolition of Private Property

The Word Economic Forum (WEF) socialists reveal themselves as classic Marxists in the sense that many of them call for the abolition of private property which, coincidentally, was the first plank of the ten planks of The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. Former Danish Minister of the Environment Ida Auken was given a platform at a WEF event to explain her definition of a good life that entailed the abolition of private property:

Welcome to the year 2030 . . . . I dont own anything, I dont own a car. I dont own a house. I dont own any appliances or any clothes . . . someone else is using our [house] whenever we do not need it . . . . I have no real privacy . . . everything I do . . . is recorded [by the state]. All in all, it is a good life.[13]

Auken here is obviously dreaming of a good life where governments own all property and rent or lease everything to their subjects. Of course, that means that politicians will decide for you what you need. There would be no such thing as consumer sovereignty any more than there was in the Soviet Union (apart from the black markets). And as Hayek famously said, in such a system the only power worth having would be political power. Bribery, corruption, and rent seeking run amok would be pervasive in any such society.

They want to spy on your every move, using the latest nanotechnology which probably means implanting devices into your body. There will no privacy, and thats all good with Ida Auken and her WEF colleagues.

Auken speaks fondly of how, if she wasnt using a room of her house, it would be perfectly fine for strangers to occupy it in her absence. Government-approved strangers, of course. This is eerily reminiscent of how the Soviets socialized housing and forced strangers to live in extremely cramped spaces in communal housing. It is easy to imagine an Auken army doing the same in the name of sustainability.

After receiving criticism of this outrageous view, Auken attempted to soft pedal and disguise her true beliefs by saying that such a world was not actually her utopia but only what she believes is the inevitable. This is another old socialist gimmick to argue that socialism is inevitable, and it is therefore futile to oppose it. Her argument that she was just explaining an inevitable future is not believable.

In fact, the inevitability gimmick is the main theme of all of Schwabs books on the subject. They tend to go into excruciating detail about the digitalization of life, nanotechnology, etc., portray it all as inevitable, and then make a pitch for why this supposedly means that centralized political control of all societies is necessary .

Exactly the opposite is true, however. As Hayek pointed out in almost all of his lifes work. The more complex society becomes, the greater is the need to rely on voluntarism, private property, and free markets, the only known means of achieving an effective use of knowledge in society. Complexity requires the use of many minds (and bodies) to make effective use of increasingly complex knowledge in order to advance. Not only many minds, but many minds in a regime of economic freedom is necessary again the polar opposite of the great reset ideology.

The Soviet Union had many brilliant people but they were largely forbidden to apply their talents in a way that would improve the lives of their fellow citizens. They were viewed by the state instead as tools to aggrandize the state, not to serve the citizenry. To deny this is to engage in what Hayek called a fatal conceit.[14]

The Stakeholder Subterfuge

The WEF elitists also employ another subterfuge as a means of essentially abolishing private property. They do this by advocating the replacement of corporate shareholders with stakeholders, which includes just about every type of group of individuals in any community which are said to have a right to affect corporate decision making on a day-to-day basis.[15] Such groups usually involve various left-wing political pressure groups such as labor unions, environmentalists, the civil rights/affirmative action lobbyists, ad infinitum. Libertarians and free-market economists never seem to appear on the lists of stakeholders that are espoused by leftist stakeholder theorists.

Public choice economics teaches us, however, that such large groups tend to be disorganized because of their size, diversity, and consequently high decision-making costs and are therefore rarely effective. It would also subject corporate decision making to profit-destroying bureaucracy and indecision, effectively turning corporations into versions of say, the Department of Motor Vehicles or the U.S. Postal Service in terms of efficiency.

The stakeholder advocates surely understand this, which is why they propose that people such as themselves serve as unelected spokesmen for all the various stakeholders. This will require the heavy hand of government to empower them to order corporations to do as they say, not as their customers and shareholder owners say. It is de facto nationalization, in other words, an effective abolition of private property in corporations.

In addition to offering no clue that he understands elementary economic principles, Schwab also seems completely clueless about the long history of classical liberal ideas such as private property, free markets, limited constitutional government, decentralized government, the rule of law, and much else. Or, he simply doesnt care because he is a megalomaniacal tyrant. He is no different, in other words, than all the other twentieth century socialists who were either ignorant of these things or openly attacked them as barriers to their totalitarian intentions.

Moreover, Aukens utopian daydream is reminiscent of the late nineteenth century book, Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy. This was another utopian socialist daydream in the form of a novel whereby one Julian West falls asleep in 1887 and awakens 113 years later in the U.S. in the year 2000 when the country had been turned into a socialist utopia. Auken apparently believes it would only take a single decade to achieve her (and Schwabs) socialist utopia, however.

The Great Reset as Super Fascism

The World Economic Forum claims to exist in order to promote an integration of private enterprise and the state. This is a perfect definition of economic fascism.[16] Economic fascism in Mussolinis Italy and Nazi Germany allowed ostensibly private enterprises to exist (unlike the Russian socialists), but only if it was subjected to a totalitarian regulatory regime that forced all production to serve the common good as defined by the political ruling class, not the ruled. Consumer sovereignty was not at all a concern. Schwab uses this same language of the common good to describe his great reset agenda.

It is basically a plea to turn the entire world economy into a version of Chinese fascism. In the past several decades the Chinese communist government allowed more and more private enterprises to exist, but they are all still very heavily regulated, regimented, and controlled by the state. Of course, the same can be said of the U.S. economy; its all a matter of degree. As Robert Higgs has said, the American economic system is a system of participatory fascism, by which he meant a combination of economic fascism and democracy instead of dictatorship.

After claiming that the Fourth Industrial Revolution in the form of the digitalization of just about everything is inevitable, and arguing that that means there is a need for the most centralized government the world has ever known, Klaus and his associates drag out the same tired, old socialist platitudes that Leftists have been promoting for generations as the alleged answers to all of societys problems. They advocate shutting down more and more of the world economy with more lockdowns (destructionism); a huge expansion of the catastrophically-failed welfare state with the unlimited printing of money by central banks in order to hand out universal basic income to everyone; the eventual abolition of beef in order to fight climate change allegedly caused by cow flatulence; the abolition of virtually all other kinds of meat, replacing it with grass and insects as part of the average diet (presumably not their diet, however); the abolition of the energy industries and their replacement with windmills and solar panels; communal housing, Soviet style; the leveling of wage differences by regulating labor markets essentially null and void, which would create communistic chaos; and the effective nationalization of whatever is left of private society with a 400% increase in taxation (for starters).

There is supposed to be no opposition to this recipe for totalitarian utopia because it is all being done in the name of equity and inclusion (the mating call of Leftists everywhere), sustainability, and the common good. To oppose this latest proposal for a totalitarian world order is, therefore, to be an enemy of society. The common good before individual good, by the way, was also the explicitly-stated theme of the 1920 Nazi Party Platform.[17] According to the World Economic Forum crowd this is the new ideology that is supposed to lead us all through the twenty-first centurys Fourth Industrial Revolution.

[1] Klaus Schwab, The Fourth Industrial Revolution (New York: Currency, 2016); Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret, COVID-19: The Great Reset (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2020).

[2] Ron Paul, The Great Reset is about Expanding Government Power and Suppressing Liberty (https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/01/ron-paul-the-great-reset-is-about-expanding-government-power-and-suppresing-libety/).

[3] Antony Mueller, The United Nations and the Origins of The Great Reset (https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/11/antony-mueller-/the-united-nations-and-the-origins-of-the-great-reset/).

[4] Gary D. Barnett, Eugenics is Alive and Well, and the COVID-19 Scam is the Engine for Accomplishing Depopulation (https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/02/gary-d-barnett/eugenics-is-alive-and-well-and-the-covid-19-scam-is-the-engine-for-accomplishing-depopulation/).

[5] Antony Mueller, The United Nations and the Origins of The Great Reset.

[6] Myron Ebell and Steven Milloy, Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-Pocalyptic Predictions, (https://www.cei.org/wong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-population-predictions/).

[7] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, The World is Going to End in Twelve Years if We Dont Address Climate Change (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/01/22/ocasio-cortez-climate-change-alarm/264281002/).

[8] Nathan Rosenberg and L.E. Birdzell, Jr., How the West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation of the Industrial World (New York: Basic Books, 1987).

[9] Carl Menger, On the Origins of Money (https://mises.org/library/origins-money-0).

[10] Ludwig von Mises, Socialism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951), p. 457.

[11] Jim Holt, World Economic Forum Deletes Latest Video After Cheering Global Lockdowns that Pushed 100 Million Humans into Extreme Poverty (https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/world-economic-forum-deletes-latest-video-after-cheering-global-lockdowns-that-pushed-100-millio-humans-into-extreme-poverty/).

[12] Helen Buyniski, Global Lockdown Every Two Years Needed to Meet Paris CO2 Goals (https://www.rt.com/news/517146-climate-lockdowns-every-two-years/).

[13] Ida Auken, Welcome to 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy and Life Has Never Been Better (https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/shopping-i-cant-really-remember-what-that-is-or-how-differetly-we-live-in-2030/?sh=3d95793e1735).

[14] F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

[15] See George Reisman, Shareholders Not Stakeholders (https://misesorg/wire/shareholders-not-stakeholders); and Gary Galles, Why Shareholders are Better Than Corporate Stakeholders(https://mises.org/library/why-shareholders-are-better-corporte-stakeholders).(https://mises.org/library/why-shareholders-are-better-corporte-stakeholders).

[16] Lew Rockwell, Fascism versus Capitalism (Auburn, Alabama: Mises Institute, 2013).

[17] https://historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/25points.htm.

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The Great Nonsense of The Great Reset - LewRockwell

Although tyrannymay successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people.

~ Hannah Arendt

In order for tyrants to claim and retain total power, the people must become ignorant of their own history and roots, and must through propaganda and fear be so terrified as to abandon all logic and responsibility in order to seek a false safety. In this country today, history and tradition are being destroyed, while the ruling class and government have stoked immense fear based on a propaganda campaign that was used to create a make-believe threat called Covid-19. Every element is now in place to transfer all power to the state, and in order for that coup to be successful for the tyrants, all dissent and disobedience to totalitarian mandates must be squelched. The key element to accomplish this lies in the ability for the government to instill division and distrust among the people themselves; so much so, that the masses turn on each other to assure compliance to order to have a false sense of security. This leads to voluntary servitude, which is vital to the evil governing system, because once force is the only option for the state, chaos, revolution, or violent civil unrest will replace tyranny.

The Origins of Totalit...Hannah ArendtBest Price: $8.49Buy New $12.90(as of 06:35 UTC - Details)With this in mind, the plot to achieve an economic and technological reset is being pursued through lies and propaganda at every level, including the use of the military within the boundaries of the United States. This is happening globally as well, and in fact is far advanced in some areas of the world. This should be of extreme importance to Americans, because what is happening in other parts of the world will soon be on our doorstep, as the areas around the globe experiencing more extreme control measures are being used as tests to gauge when to let loose similar policies here. It is only a matter of time.

Next door in Canada, the military is openly using propaganda methods as training in order to understand how that population can be maneuvered into a position of total compliance. In Australia, where extreme gun control efforts in the past disarmed the entire citizenry, brutal controls are now in place to capture and contain the people so that any resistance can be eliminated. Harsh measures and mandates are also being ramped up again in the U.K. Compulsory vaccination legislation is also going forward in Australia, with possible long jail time and high fines for refusal to comply. Gun control and a state monopoly of arms and force is always a prerequisite to totalitarian rule. Most Americans still have the legal ability to possess weapons, but that could change with any new legislation, or emergency executive orders due to a contrived and purposely structured threat. If the people give up their arms, they would stand defenseless in the face of a heavily armed state and military. That cannot be allowed to happen.

The Human Condition: S...Allen, DanielleBest Price: $15.00Buy New $15.99(as of 02:44 UTC - Details)One of the major plots to gain control over the masses rests in the development and distribution of vaccines. Trump said recently that Pfizer Pharmaceuticals had developed and successfully tested a Covid vaccine. This was an outright lie meant to gain political favor in this time of a contentious election battle. In addition, Trump had made an announcement earlier that he had deployed the military to stand ready to distribute these poisonous vaccines across the nation. This borders on insanity, and is an attempt to frighten the herd so greatly by claiming this vaccine delivery should be a military operation. But as it stands now, this government and its military, as well as all police and security forces, are at war against the people of the United States. In other words, the new enemy of America according to the self-claimed ruling elites and their pawns in government are all of us lowly citizens.

While we are in the midst of the most corrupt and criminal election fraud in our history, and this includes many players from both sides, but especially on the left this time around, and the entirety of the mainstream media, the masses are ignoring what is continuing to go on concerning the takeover of this country and the world. Covid-19 seems to be on the back burner for the moment, and playing second fiddle to the election circus, but that is not the case. All the nefarious agendas concerning this fraudulent virus pandemic are not only still in place, but advancing without pause. More lockdowns are occurring in this country and globally, and vaccine plans are in place. Pfizer has openly stated that they already have a stockpile of vaccines awaiting the go ahead from the FDA, even though no serious testing whatsoever has occurred. I have stated many times that this Covid vaccine has been available for a long time, waiting for the right moment to be released on the public. Depending on the outcome of this selection by the ruling class, the entire country could be shut down almost overnight. Plans are set to increase the tyranny, and blame it on this fake virus, and regardless of who is chosen to be the next president; there will be substantial trouble ahead.The Politics of Obedie...Etienne de la BoetieBest Price: $7.00Buy New $7.00(as of 05:45 UTC - Details)

The U.S. governments primary enemies today are the American people, all of us, especially any that question and disobey state mandates. What is planned and what is possible in the near future is staggering. New lockdowns seem imminent at this point, and could be handed down at the national level, which would vastly increase the risk of federal and military policing and martial law. Isolation from friends and family will increase, and job loss will escalate as more lockdowns occur, causing an economic catastrophe, which will lead to a digital monetary restructuring. Travel will become even more impossible, and even local borders could close or be heavily restricted. Those that refuse the forthcoming deadly vaccination will find themselves in a virtual prison, as without a vaccine or health pass, normal life and sustaining any normal life will disappear. Surveillance that is already expansive will become so invasive as to eliminate all privacy, inside or outside the home. Contact tracing will likely become a federal system, with tens or hundreds of thousands of new government workers with one mission; to spy on and report any not acquiescing to government rules. Food shortages that are already evident in many areas would dramatically worsen, causing hunger, poverty, and sickness. Parents brave enough to protect their children by refusing toxic vaccines or quarantine could have their children removed from the home. All this could easily bring about unrest, rioting, looting, and violence as well, whether purposely designed or not, and this could in turn lead to internal warlike scenarios, especially in the cities.The Demon in Democracy...Legutko, RyszardBest Price: $11.33Buy New $11.87(as of 05:06 UTC - Details)

This is no time to be complacent, and no time to ignore these risks. Worse times are coming regardless of this political nonsense, and increased control will be prevalent no matter the final outcome of this state selection process. Wake up people, as our lives are losing all meaning, and all the joy, emotion, and love of life are being systematically destroyed in favor of technocratic transhumanism, which can only lead to a robotic existence devoid of wonder and feeling.

Extreme evil is coming, and hell is coming with it, so cowardice in the face of this evil; refusing to take risks to remain free, guarantees a deserved slavery.

Sources: Here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

How to Opt-Out of the ...Broze, DerrickBest Price: $12.50Buy New $12.00(as of 04:52 UTC - Details)The Conscious Resistan...Broze, DerrickBest Price: $8.25Buy New $12.00(as of 04:52 UTC - Details)

The Best of Gary D. Barnett

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The US Government and Its Military Have Declared War on ... - LewRockwell

I wrote to the late, great Becky Akers about a year before her too-early passing early in 2022. I wanted to share with her my horror upon learning that an academic had just published a book suggesting that all of humanity should be eliminated in the cause of saving the environment. Eliminated. I was familiar enough with Beckys own work to know that she would drop her jaw (as I did) upon finding yet another ostensibly educated person pronouncing her way out of our scientific world right back into the realm of (supposedly discredited) metaphysical decisions. The professor in question I wont here give her name or the title of her book so as to avoid granting her one scintilla of publicity decided it was her place to pontificate regarding humanity-ending decisions. The kinds of decisions that belonged, during sane eras, to God Almighty. Bring to an end all of mankind? Hey why not? She has a PhD, right?

Returning to sanity, for a moment. About man and his role in life, death, and the environment, one of my favorite Psalms says this:

You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;You have put all things under his feet,All sheep and oxenEven the beasts of the field,The birds of the air,And the fish of the seaThat pass through the paths of the seas.

Its certainly true that in our era, just like the academic about whom Becky and I marveled, there are now teeming millions of our fellow human beings currently bowing to elements of nature (or, the earth, or to Gaia, or the environment pick the name of your idol). These folks willingly worship and revere that which is neither eternal nor divine.

So its almost confusing to read straightforward words, from God, no less, about man exercising dominion. Really? Were to prevail upon nature, upon the environment, that false god so widely revered, venerated, and even downright worshipped in our day? Needless to say, unlike our unnamed academic, the Psalm says not one word suggesting collective suicide in behalf of the environment, in some sort of macabre twisting of Gods mandate to assert dominion. (As an aside, Ill note that those turning nature and the environment into false gods do so apparently ignorant of the most basic teachings provided by any decent Sunday School: Bad things come to idolaters. Really bad things.)

Sure, there might be room for a tad bit of confusion as to who, exactly, exercises dominion over nature, given that the Psalmist uses metonymy to define his subject: What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor.

Quibblers could (and probably do) ask, what exactly does the Psalmist mean here by, man? One thing is perfectly clear, though: The eighth Psalm makes no mention about governments, nations, or corporations exerting said dominion. Nor does the Psalmist suggest that God grants this globe-spanning dominion over nature to only select groups, such as Yuval Hararis most intelligent among us, nor the cyborg-ish post-humans found in the dreams of Lee Silver, Ray Kurzweil, Gregory Stock, and a growing number of transhumanists in our midst.

Just as fascinating to me, being a post-Nietzschean, is the eighth Psalms lack of mention of an Ubermensch. Which is to say: Nothing in the Psalmists wording seems to exclude any old regular Joe from exerting dominion over even the arcane aspects of Gods green earth. Granted, I, being a regular Joe if there ever was one, dont spend much time where the fish of the sea pass through. But the Psalms wording suggests that even those nuances of nature normally hidden from view (i.e., the paths of the seas) are ripe for the taming. I.e., for taming by us the contented members of regular-Joe tribes.

Tech for Me, but not for Thee

But today theres even more confusion about man and his relationship to nature than any we might encounter when reading the eighth Psalm. Think about it: Is there not something grotesquely odd about todays leaders funding research into the most nature-intrusive experimental technology anyone has ever imagined, while simultaneously egging on the masses to hate and abandon life-sustaining, reliable, and simple technologies like firewood and food fertilizer? How much cognitive dissonance are we to accept? Were now learning about multiple labs around the world looking into altering the DNA of viruses so that they can better infiltrate and influence the bodies of human beings. I speak here of the newly infamous gain of function research. Yet, at the same time, were being told that collecting firewood (or, Gaia forbid coal!) to heat hearth and home is an act of selfishness at best. Nothing funny about the logic of the elites there, eh?

So clearly one issue at question here is limits. And more specifically, the issues at hand involve determining who applies limits to technology? And these limits are applied for what purpose? When and where do we apply these limits, and perhaps the most intriguing question we impose these limits for the benefit or protection of whom?

During the many centuries in which stirrups and leather saddles, a coal-fired smithy, or a tall-masted wooden ship were somewhere near the apex of technology, maybe it made little sense to concern ourselves about placing limits upon mans manipulation of nature. Those hot-coal fires of yesteryear, after all, pounded out merely one life-threatening knife or sword at a time. And thankfully those swords neither procreated nor morphed into oddly named variants chasing through our cloth masks. (Kraken swords, anyone?)

To be more blunt: Whereas for the ancient Greeks, Prometheus may have deserved the wrath of Zeus, his revelations to men about fire did not generate anything nearly as deadly as Faucis gain-of-function research. Fauci and Prometheus now theres an odd but rightly-paired couple for you.

But heres the rub: Today, while financial and technological elites are toying with ideas far more deadly than even nuclear technology, with some of them bragging openly about creating entirely new species of post-humans, millions of citizens all over Europe and North America are self destructing by way of clamoring for states to outlaw simple technologies that form the very backbone of our continued physical existence.

Theres some small degree of resolution to this dissonance if we acknowledge that straightforward elitism explains the current tech for me, but not for thee approach: Largely the same financial elites funding and encouraging death labs own or control much of the media and communication technology stirring up the wrath of Zeus in the common man the common man being the newly angry regular Joes guys very much like me. Which is another way of highlighting the sad fact that a Prince Philip could enjoy the life of royal luxury, jet-setting about the globe, while simultaneously writing in the preface to a childrens book that in the future hed like to return to earth as a deadly virus so that he could help kill people. (One presumes this future-Philip-virus would be engineered to bypass fellow royalty and elites? Maybe well have a high-tech new version of the Passover?)

Destructive Dialectic, Anyone?

The Psalmist neither called us to pagan mindsets that attribute sentience to various flavors of nature-idols, nor did he imply that our dominion over nature should reflect any version of abusive control or monstrous domination. With apologies to PETA, his wording suggests a warm welcome to farmers and fishermen. Heck, as a one-time aviator, I even like to imagine the reference to dominion over the birds of the air may have foreshadowed aviation. (Yes, I realize thats a stretch.)

But the enemy of our souls wants a lack of balance, both in us as individual children of God and within our communities and societies. Old Scratch encourages a complete disdain for harmony and moderation. There may even be yet another wicked dialectic at work here:

Theres an irony of sorts at work here. Lust of chaos a twisted desire for the kind of bedlam that ensues when we fail to address our lack of respect for the natural order as given by God Himself has a mirror sin in lust of control. The writer of the eighth Psalm suggests what for millennia has been an accepted norm: That men, in their love of God and in their appropriate respect for His creation, shepherd all His creatures. Then along comes a wanna-be Prometheus with laboratories full of new fire. And as that fire evolves it becomes clear that soul-crushing (not to mention body-destroying) control of not just animals, fish, and birds is possible, but that this new tech can harness yet another of todays idols: Human evolution itself.

Yes, its true. Read the works of todays purveyors of transhumanism, and youll see that their Holy Grail is an admixture of biology, nanotech, and genetic engineering, operating in an infrastructure of technocracy, and put in motion to literally re-engineer humanity. Survival of the fittest changes its stripes the moment you put both the definition of fittest and the timeline and conditions of survival into the purview of well-funded lab coats. Transhumanists blush not at all when altering the definition of either (or both) of these words.

In my aging God-given skin, and even with my increasingly creaky DNA, given the choice between the new fire of transhumanism or the Psalmists (implied) endorsement of a life of fishing and farming, Ill take the hoe and a fishing net. While Im out and about, casting and digging, please get the firewood stacked and ready.

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Tech for Me, but Not for Thee: Psalm 8 Meets Transhumanism

Transhumanism is the idea that human beings, as a whole, can be drastically improved in physical and mental areas with technologies, such as cloning, genetic modification, bionics, nanotechnology, drugs, etc. The great majority of transhumanists believe that the human species has evolved and that science can provide a kind of artificial, directed evolution. Transhumanists look to the future and believe the human condition will see improvement in physical ability, lifespan, and mental acuity, and health. In addition, the world condition can also be improved by reducing starvation and poverty. Such technological advancements, some have said, would even redefine what it means to be human.

Some of the areas the trans-humanists propose can be assisted and or improved by technology are as follows:

Some trans-humanists have even proposed the idea of transferring human consciousness into the machine in order to vastly extend lifespans.

Philosophers and ethicists have been delving into the theological and moral issues related to the advancement of technology as a relates to altering human capabilities, mental states, duration of life, etc. Many questions have arisen that dont, as yet, have answers.

More here:

What is transhumanism? Can humans and technology meld together?

Political ideology

Transhumanist politics constitutes a group of political ideologies that generally express the belief in improving human individuals through science and technology.

The term "transhumanism" with its present meaning was popularised by Julian Huxley's 1957 essay of that name.[1]

Natasha Vita-More was elected as a Councilperson for the 28th Senatorial District of Los Angeles in 1992. She ran with the Green Party, but on a personal platform of "transhumanism". She quit after a year, saying her party was "too neurotically geared toward environmentalism".[2][3]

James Hughes identifies the "neoliberal" Extropy Institute, founded by philosopher Max More and developed in the 1990s, as the first organized advocates for transhumanism. And he identifies the late-1990s formation of the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), a European organization which later was renamed to Humanity+ (H+), as partly a reaction to the free market perspective of the "Extropians". Per Hughes, "[t]he WTA included both social democrats and neoliberals around a liberal democratic definition of transhumanism, codified in the Transhumanist Declaration."[4][5] Hughes has also detailed the political currents in transhumanism, particularly the shift around 2009 from socialist transhumanism to libertarian and anarcho-capitalist transhumanism.[5] He claims that the left was pushed out of the World Transhumanist Association Board of Directors, and that libertarians and Singularitarians have secured a hegemony in the transhumanism community with help from Peter Thiel, but Hughes remains optimistic about a techno-progressive future.[5]

In 2012, the Longevity Party, a movement described as "100% transhumanist" by cofounder Maria Konovalenko,[6] began to organize in Russia for building a balloted political party.[7] Another Russian programme, the 2045 Initiative was founded in 2012 by billionaire Dmitry Itskov with its own proposed "Evolution 2045" political party advocating life extension and android avatars.[8][9]

In October 2013, the political party Alianza Futurista ALFA was founded in Spain with transhumanist goals and ideals inscribed in its statutes.[10]

In October 2014, Zoltan Istvan announced that he would be running in the 2016 United States presidential election under the banner of the "Transhumanist Party."[11] By November 2019, the Party claimed 880 members, with Gennady Stolyarov II as chair.[12]

Other groups using the name "Transhumanist Party" exist in the United Kingdom[13][14][15] and Germany.[16]

According to a 2006 study by the European Parliament, transhumanism is the political expression of the ideology that technology and science should be used to enhance human abilities.[17]

According to Amon Twyman of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), political philosophies which support transhumanism include social futurism, techno-progressivism, techno-libertarianism, and anarcho-transhumanism. Twyman considers such philosophies to collectively constitute political transhumanism.[18]

Techno-progressives, also known as Democratic transhumanists,[19][20] support equal access to human enhancement technologies in order to promote social equality and prevent technologies from furthering the divide among socioeconomic classes.[21] However, libertarian transhumanist Ronald Bailey is critical of the democratic transhumanism described by James Hughes.[22][23] Jeffrey Bishop wrote that the disagreements among transhumanists regarding individual and community rights is "precisely the tension that philosophical liberalism historically tried to negotiate," but that disagreeing entirely with a posthuman future is a disagreement with the right to choose what humanity will become.[24] Woody Evans has supported placing posthuman rights in a continuum with animal rights and human rights.[25]

Riccardo Campa wrote that transhumanism can be coupled with many different political, philosophical, and religious views, and that this diversity can be an asset so long as transhumanists do not give priority to existing affiliations over membership with organized transhumanism.[26]

Truman Chen of the Stanford Political Journal considers many transhumanist ideals to be anti-political.[27]

Anarcho-transhumanism is a philosophy synthesizing anarchism with transhumanism that is concerned with both social and physical freedom respectively.[29] Anarcho-transhumanists define freedom as the expansion of one's own ability to experience the world around them.[30] Anarcho-transhumanists may advocate various praxis to advance their ideals, including computer hacking, three-dimensional printing, or biohacking.[31][29]

The philosophy draws heavily from the individualist anarchism of William Godwin, Max Stirner and Voltairine de Cleyre[32] as well as the cyberfeminism presented by Donna Haraway in A Cyborg Manifesto.[33] Anarcho-transhumanist thought looks at issues surrounding bodily autonomy,[34] disability,[35] gender,[34][29] neurodiversity,[36] queer theory,[37] science,[38] free software,[29] and sexuality[39] whilst presenting critiques through anarchist and transhumanist lens of ableism,[36] cisheteropatriarchy[34] and primitivism.[40] Much of early anarcho-transhumanist thought was a response to anarcho-primitivism. Anarcho-transhumanism may be interpreted either as criticism of, or an extension of humanism, because it challenges what being human means.[29]

Anarcho-transhumanists also criticise non-anarchist forms of transhumanism such as democratic transhumanism and libertarian transhumanism as incoherent and unsurvivable due to their preservation of the state. They view such instruments of power as inherently unethical and incompatible with the acceleration of social and material freedom for all individuals.[41] Anarcho-transhumanism is generally anti-capitalist, arguing capitalist accumulation of wealth would lead to dystopia while partnered with transhumanism, instead advocating for equal access to advanced technologies that enable morphological freedom and space travel.[42][43]

Anarcho-transhumanist philosopher William Gillis has advocated for a 'social singularity', or a transformation in humanity's morals, to complement the technological singularity. This social singularity will ensure that no coercion will be required to maintain order in a future society where people are likely to have access to lethal forms of technology.[44]

Democratic transhumanism, a term coined by James Hughes in 2002, refers to the stance of transhumanists (advocates for the development and use of human enhancement technologies) who espouse liberal, social, and/or radical democratic political views.[45][46][47][48]

According to Hughes, the ideology "stems from the assertion that human beings will generally be happier when they take rational control of the natural and social forces that control their lives."[46][49]The ethical foundation of democratic transhumanism rests upon rule utilitarianism and non-anthropocentric personhood theory.[50] Democratic transhumanists support equal access to human enhancement technologies in order to promote social equality and to prevent technologies from furthering the divide among the socioeconomic classes.[51]While raising objections both to right-wing and left-wing bioconservatism, and libertarian transhumanism, Hughes aims to encourage democratic transhumanists and their potential progressive allies to unite as a new social movement and influence biopolitical public policy.[46][48]

An attempt to expand the middle ground between technorealism and techno-utopianism, democratic transhumanism can be seen as a radical form of techno-progressivism.[52] Appearing several times in Hughes' work, the term "radical" (from Latin rdx, rdc-, root) is used as an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the root or going to the root. His central thesis is that emerging technologies and radical democracy can help citizens overcome some of the root causes of inequalities of power.[46]

According to Hughes, the terms techno-progressivism and democratic transhumanism both refer to the same set of Enlightenment values and principles; however, the term technoprogressive has replaced the use of the word democratic transhumanism.[53][54]

Hughes has identified 15 "left futurist" or "left techno-utopian" trends and projects that could be incorporated into democratic transhumanism:

These are notable individuals who have identified themselves, or have been identified by Hughes, as advocates of democratic transhumanism:[55]

Science journalist Ronald Bailey wrote a review of Citizen Cyborg in his online column for Reason magazine in which he offered a critique of democratic transhumanism and a defense of libertarian transhumanism.[22][23]

Critical theorist Dale Carrico defended democratic transhumanism from Bailey's criticism.[56] However, he would later criticize democratic transhumanism himself on technoprogressive grounds.[57]

Libertarian transhumanism is a political ideology synthesizing libertarianism and transhumanism.[45]

Self-identified libertarian transhumanists, such as Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine and Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, are advocates of the asserted "right to human enhancement" who argue that the free market is the best guarantor of this right, claiming that it produces greater prosperity and personal freedom than other economic systems.[58][59]

Libertarian transhumanists believe that the principle of self-ownership is the most fundamental idea from which both libertarianism and transhumanism stem. They are rational egoists and ethical egoists who embrace the prospect of using emerging technologies to enhance human capacities, which they believe stems from the self-interested application of reason and will in the context of the individual freedom to achieve a posthuman state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.[60] They extend this rational and ethical egoism to advocate a form of "biolibertarianism".[58]

As strong civil libertarians, libertarian transhumanists hold that any attempt to limit or suppress the asserted right to human enhancement is a violation of civil rights and civil liberties. However, as strong economic libertarians, they also reject proposed public policies of government-regulated and -insured human enhancement technologies, which are advocated by democratic transhumanists, because they fear that any state intervention will steer or limit their choices.[23][61]

Extropianism, the earliest current of transhumanist thought defined in 1988 by philosopher Max More, initially included an anarcho-capitalist interpretation of the concept of "spontaneous order" in its principles, which states that a free market economy achieves a more efficient allocation of societal resources than any planned or mixed economy could achieve. In 2000, while revising the principles of Extropy, More seemed to be abandoning libertarianism in favor of modern liberalism and anticipatory democracy. However, many Extropians remained libertarian transhumanists.[45]

Critiques of the techno-utopianism of libertarian transhumanists from progressive cultural critics include Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron's 1995 essay The Californian Ideology; Mark Dery's 1996 book Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century; and Paulina Borsook's 2000 book Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High-Tech.

Barbrook argues that libertarian transhumanists are proponents of the Californian Ideology who embrace the goal of reactionary modernism: economic growth without social mobility.[62] According to Barbrook, libertarian transhumanists are unwittingly appropriating the theoretical legacy of Stalinist communism by substituting, among other concepts, the "vanguard party" with the "digerati", and the "new Soviet man" with the "posthuman".[63] Dery coined the dismissive phrase "body-loathing" to describe the attitude of libertarian transhumanists and those in the cyberculture who want to escape from their "meat puppet" through mind uploading into cyberspace.[64] Borsook asserts that libertarian transhumanists indulge in a subculture of selfishness, elitism, and escapism.[65]

Sociologist James Hughes is the most militant critic of libertarian transhumanism. While articulating "democratic transhumanism" as a sociopolitical program in his 2004 book Citizen Cyborg,[48] Hughes sought to convince libertarian transhumanists to embrace social democracy by arguing that:

Klaus-Gerd Giesen, a German political scientist specializing in the philosophy of technology, wrote a critique of the libertarianism he imputes to all transhumanists. While pointing out that the works of Austrian School economist Friedrich Hayek figure in practically all of the recommended reading lists of Extropians, he argues that transhumanists, convinced of the sole virtues of the free market, advocate an unabashed inegalitarianism and merciless meritocracy which can be reduced in reality to a biological fetish. He is especially critical of their promotion of a science-fictional liberal eugenics, virulently opposed to any political regulation of human genetics, where the consumerist model presides over their ideology. Giesen concludes that the despair of finding social and political solutions to today's sociopolitical problems incites transhumanists to reduce everything to the hereditary gene, as a fantasy of omnipotence to be found within the individual, even if it means transforming the subject (human) to a new draft (posthuman).[66]

See the article here:

Transhumanist politics - Wikipedia

The future seems to arrive at an increasingly faster pace. It is as if humanity collectively ordered express delivery robots with advanced artificial intelligence to deliver a ticket to space. But we didnt sit down to order this package, did we? And will there be enough tickets for everyone? Here the philosophy of transhumanism enters because it grapples with questions about the future. What is the best way to develop humanity with growing access to new gadgets, robots, and space? Some think we should colonize space, others think that a built-in communications device installed below the skin is the way to go. Maybe you want your consciousness uploaded to the cloud? Or perhaps you want to live forever?

InA History of Transhumanist Thought, the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom outlines the history of transhumanism in a straightforward and well-argued manner. Bostrom locates the first notion of extending human life as far back as theEpic of Gilgamesh(1700 B.C.). Transhumanism, according to Bostrom, began with the publication of DarwinsOrigin of Species(1859) and Nietzsches conception of thebermensch, inThus Spoke Zarathustra(1883).

Both these books are important because they form the beginning of the philosophical foundation of transhumanism. Each of them suggests a novel understanding of humanity which does not see humanitys current stage as the endpoint of evolution but rather as a possibly quite early phase (Bostrom, 2005). For Bostrom and other transhumanists, this means that the phase humanity is currently in could potentially (and perhaps should) be transcended. Transcendence (the term from which transhumanism takes its prefix), or overcoming our present physical, mental, economic, or technological limitations, is a vital aim for most transhumanists. Let us continue to the development of transhumanism as a philosophical position.

In the years after WWII, the genre of science-fiction developed and caught the imagination of the public. Writers likeKarel apek,Isaac Asimov,Stanisaw Lem, andArthur C. Clarke became important figures whose visions shaped an entire generations conception of the future. One of the early science fiction hallmarks was a techno-optimism that envisioned the unlimited possibilities for human development and property. However, contemporary science-fiction series likeBattlestar Galactica,ElysiumorThe Expanse have taken a more dystopian perspective on humanitys future.

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From techno-optimism to techno-scepticism or pessimism, this change seems to mirror the growing realization on the fragile nature of humanity. The fact that a single asteroid could potentially exterminate humankind is, if not a stark reminder of our mortality, at least a wake-up call. It is precisely a wake-up call that these realizations have impacted on transhumanism, helping it develop into a philosophy aiming at saving humanity from impending destruction. Books, TV shows, films, and plays have been created as thought experiments for examining possible future scenarios for humanitys development.

Two events were necessary for the intellectual development of transhumanism as a philosophical position. The first event was the publication ofAre you a Transhuman?(1989) byFM-2030(formerly known as F.M. Esfandiary). This book played a huge role in making the theory a proper philosophical position, bringing it out of darkened bedrooms of geeks and into the world of academia.

The second event, the founding ofThe World Transhumanist Association in 1998, helped shape the current transhumanist program into its contemporary form. Transhumanism became a political agenda that seeks, on one hand the betterment, and on the other, the survival of humanity. This began when transhumanism attracted fame by drawing in philanthropists such as Elon Musk, making it relevant for popular news outlets to engage with this philosophy. A political party has even been created in the US, which espouses a fundamental transhumanist position.

In general, transhumanism is often described as an umbrella term for technology-optimistic philosophies concerned with these three general characteristics:

More often than not, these concerns overlap because any new solution to one impacts another.

Lets begin by looking at the first characteristic: in our day and age, threats humanity faces have shifted focus. Before, we feared that the Cold War would end in a nuclear holocaust. Today, our concerns surround viruses, climate change, AI, or the possibility of asteroids colliding with Earth. This leads to the question of whether or not we should fear the future.

The second characteristic focuses on improving humanitys inherent abilities and capabilities to make humanity and society better. Philosophers tend to ask: do we need to be better to live a good life?

The third and final characteristic is overcoming natural limits, such as only perceiving light from a limited range of wavelengths, limited strength and intellectual capacities, and even our own death. The response:is immortality as great as it appears?

Transhumanists come in many shapes and sizes. Like Nick Bostrom and Elon Musk, some worry about the survival of humanity, about the dangers posed by asteroids orartificial intelligence. Others again wish to experiment with the human body to enhance its capabilities or toextend lifeindefinitely. With the wide-ranging interests of transhumanists, it can be hard to describe them as a uniform group.

Most transhumanists do, however, agree with theTranshumanist Declarationpublished by the non-profitHumanityPlus. The points of agreement that most transhumanists share could be paraphrased as follows:

Based on these eight points, we see transhumanists have a common concern. They wish to make the future world as pleasant as possible, not only for humans but also for animals and for artificial intelligence. Bostrom, FM-2030 (Esfandiary) and other transhumanist thinkers such as Anders Sandberg, Max More, and Natasha Vita-More are only a few of the original signatories of the Transhumanist Declaration.

Today, many philanthropists have been convinced of the Transhumanist cause. Elon Musks goal of colonizing Mars could easily be conceived of as a Transhumanist endeavour to make humanitya multi-planetary species. Both Musks and Bill Gates fear of artificial intelligence has spurred research into what Nick Bostrom and Stuart Russell has called thecontrol issue. The problem can be boiled down to the question of how to stop a super-intelligent AI from turning humanity into a cog in its wheel. Think of the movie The Matrix, 1999, and you get the sense of how such a future might look.

When it comes to asteroids hitting Earth, one potential threat to the planet, people at NASAsCenter for Near-Earth Object Studies(CNEOS) in California are hard at work. Prominent transhumanists such asElon MuskandNick Bostromare outspoken advocates of the view that humanity must seek to reduce its existential risks. The transhumanist answer to whether humanity should colonize Mars would be to consider the risk of two asteroids hitting both Mars and Earth simultaneously. The chances of this are small, which entails that if humanity inhabits both planets, the risk of extinction becomes smaller.

The philosophy of transhumanism can be seen as preparation for human extinction a sort of survivalist philosophy on a global scale. Instead of preparing to save ones immediate family, transhumanists want to safeguard the human race.

When not looking to secure humanitys survival, transhumanists often look towards enhancements to improve the capabilities of humans. Some prefer to use herbal or chemical supplements to boost their mental abilities. Others install electronic devices in their bodies or experiment with genetic modification of their genes outside of the restrictions imposed by governments. Many of these treatments are considered controversial, while others might be illegal depending on the country. Lumped together, all of those engaging in these practices share a common goal; to enhance and further humanitys capabilities at withstanding the tests of time and space.

Another goal at which many transhumanists aim for is the desire to overcome natural limitations. Longevity, or the prolongation of human lifespan, is sought as a goal among transhumanists, and the final goal is immortality. This aim is the subject of philosophical criticism because death, within certain philosophical traditions, is considered a necessary condition of life. But according to transhumanism, such thinking is outdated because of the advances in technology and medical capabilities involved in keeping the human body alive.

I will now attempt to sum up the philosophy of transhumanism in a single sentence. Transhumanism is a philosophy that seeks to make human life better by advancing human capabilities and survivability. It is, however, essential to keep in mind that transhumanisms fixescould potentially create further inequalities between those who have enhancements and those who do not.

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Should We Fear the Future? The Philosophy of Transhumanism - TheCollector