The Transhumanist Wager discussion

I think that Zoltan Istvan’s book -the Transhumanist Wager - is an important journalistic contribution to achive a better popular understanding of the really breath-taking new developments in science that are leading us to the threshold of eventual eternal life /as Hawking himself predicts it/. I think it rightly shows that somefundamentalist religious groups have a strong irrational need to preserve their traditions together with some irrational psychotic taboos and are prone to be aggressive or oppressive, But he misses the point of the function religions: most religions’ appeal is not in t he superficial „omnipotent” god-fantasy, but i n the loving care of suffering people. The preserved therapy and wisdom lore are capable of giving consolation- because we all do need it sometimes. This consolation consists exactly in what this author gives us:that death may not be final or may never really overcome our permanent core existence. I do think that he is right : science will eventually conquer death. But to want to precipitate this by aggressively destroy religious symbolism /like in the Soviet or Nazi Era / is not realistic : still it is a compelling comics-like vision. I do not want to evaluate this pamphlet: it is rhytmically well written. And the ideological clash he depicts is partly real. But I think that the past with its religions has a deeper and more indestructable psychological and artistic value. We do inherit hormonally our past and the main traumatic events that would lead us to stress and hence to aggression. But also, parallelly, we inherit the different melodies that have /as it is proven/ a therapy effect and diminish aggression. Both sides are connected to the religious symbolism of the past: but both have a hormonal and posychological level that is simply not manageable by well-meaning scientist ideologies and certainly not by robots or cyborgs or hacked computers or not even by all-out atomic war... I think that Zoltan Istvan’s book’s real strength is in showing us the devastating nature of any ideology: be it fundamentalist traditionalism /and its relentless war in t he name o f an imagined Past against novelty, the Future, against avangarde science and art/. Or be it some extremist technocratic scientist revolutionary ideology /like the o ne of his hero/. Both diminish the depth of our rich and varied existence on this Planet. Both side become inhuman cartoon-like draft-like entities, like the protagonists of this sci-fi story. And they are here to stay and wage their endless wars above our heads. The only message worth taking seriously in this book/that has a strange lack of humour,maybe to fit the almost autistic hero’s mindset / is that indeed we will have to change our attitude toward our traditions when death will be technically conquerable. (Which is just now.) But in reality this will really diminish the traditinal religions impact and will create new religious insights: at long last the prophetic visions about life after death will become everyday reality. It is strange that the author thinks that the meaningless and empty concept of "God" is worth fighting against - in the orginal Bible this word never appears: El means Higher or Upper and Yehoveh means Futurator, /translated simply as Creator/. In Buddhism and Taoism there is no "God" (so the story has a main character, the lover and wife of the hero,Zoe, who is allowed by the hero to use Zen concepts). We will have enough time – after the death of the body - to educate ourselves,to learn new and more cooperative behaviors, to use the resources of therapies. It is a relief to look around after reading this breath-takingly monumental futurist vision and to see that real life is not black-and-white. But sometimes grey and colourful too.
As an afterthought, I think it may become a popular cult book, because the desperation of most thinking people /among them some scientists/ and Progressive people about the surviving dumb Oppressive-Past-Reenacting Masses /and hence fantasies of world war and its correlating mass murder fantasies/ will make it a popular fantasy discharge tool in some circles. It is easier to read than the Canaanite Wars of the Bible or the wars of Krishna in the Bhagavad Ghita or thoseof the Al-Quran.
Still I think, that in our real life these collective subconscious changes he depicts already are starting and gives hope and incentive to start inner attitude-change through therapy - to millions of people.
In my plan of acomic book I intended to show a pro-religion sect that believes in the Transhumanist Credo /EternalLife and hence the Task of Electing a Messiah as predicted - but then conflicting Blood-Lines and Clans from different Legendary Families (of Jazz-Us Cry-Stop and other "Messy Ice" figures will begin to compete/. So in my fantasy /plan/ about this very same topic the front-line is not between Technicists and Anti-Tech "Luddists" as for Z.Istvan. In this alternative- more realistic - concept the fundamentalist Messianist Sects become invigorated by EternalLife projects and become ever more prude and so they start to kill randonly the "Immoral" Art Folks and Sexist Fun-mongers. Naturally, it is not right in a review to present an an ternative plot : I only do this to try to point out where I feel that psycholoical realism is lacking in this fascinating text. /My alternative project’s draft data on the same topic can be seen at www. historicweeklymelody.com/

Hi Geo, Thanks for your comments. I found them very interesting. I appreciate the depth of thought you put into the matter and the ideas in my book. Cheers, Zoltan