Transhumanism in the news: Oxytocin as Eugoic drug

On the day the 'discovery' of oxytocin as a wonder cure for social anxiety hits the mass media; on Oxytocin as a future Eugoic, from Designer Evolution (2005) ...

"The pleasure of love and friendship is a neurochemical conditioning mechanism attracting us to those of most benefit to our survival and reproductive success. The human body has evolved to respond to friendly, cooperative, benevolent behavior by releasing a pleasure reward of neurochemicals such as oxytocin (inducing maternal love) and serotonin (inducing brotherly love—or friendliness). Oxytocin, secreted during pregnancy and breast feeding, conditions positively for the benevolence of maternal instinct in order to encourage child nurturing. Mothers lacking oxytocin lack maternal feeling. To be kind meant originally to protect one’s kin, or kinder, the German word for children. Felt Morality is sympathy—an instinctive response to another’s needs."

p218

Eugoics

Well-being enhancers (from Greek, eu, well or good; egoic, pertaining to self; hence “good self”). Drugs designed to improve well-being by altering levels of specific neurochemicals. More generally, any rational techniques for enhancing wellbeing.

p 381

Eugoics

Future science of neurochemical self-enhancement.
p117

Transhumanism: Alert

Live on the Net, now; the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill debate in the House of Commons, UK, Committee Stage. Currently discussing Designer Babies. Watch it here.

This is an historic debate. Whatever you think you might think, please listen to both sides of the argument with respect and humility.

If one's ideals lead to contempt for those who don't share them, they don't deserve to be realised.

It's better to watch or listen to the debate, rather than simply reading the Parliamentary transcripts afterwards, which don't give the same sense of real, live, thinking, feeling human individuals with sincere beliefs, discussing the most profound philosophical issues of our time - life, death, and the future of the species (that is, Transhumanism) - in our name.

Transhumanism: ethical principle

"Pro-Science, not 'anything goes'." Simon Young

Transhumanism: R U a Transhumanist?

12/5/08
Are you a Transhumanist?
If you're not watching the debate on the proposed updating of the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill being discussed at this moment in the UK parliament, you're not a serious one.

Transhumanism is not eugenics

"Bioenhancement is not eugenics. This term describes the systematic attempt by the state to improve the constitution of a population through enforced sterilization and selective breeding. In short, eugenics means state control of reproduction. Let us reject it entirely and unequivocally, and fiercely oppose any attempt by a government to control the bodies or minds of the citizens it is elected to serve. The future lies not in state-run eugenic programs, but in voluntary consumer access to Superbiology, enabling individuals to enhance their bodies and minds as they see fit, in their own interests—not those of the state! In the Self-Enhancement Society of the future, Bioenhancement will be available to consumers in the same way that they may choose to spend their disposable income on a facelift, tummy tuck, or boob job today. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was a state-controlled dictatorship in which free will and individuality were banned. The emerging Self-Enhancement Society will be a plurality of autonomous individuals freely engaged in Reciprocal Eugoics—the mutual encouragement of ever-increasing well-being."

p65, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006). see more at designerevolution.net

Transhumanism in a nutshell

"Transhumanism is humanism recovered in the Gene Age." Simon Young

On Neuropolitics (autonomy of thought/action)

"In the future, everyone will have their own 'ism'."

Simon Young

On Meat Without Murder

1/6/07

1st June 2007 Utrecht, The Netherlands (Reuters) - Dutch researchers are trying to grow pork meat in a laboratory with the goal of feeding millions without the need to raise and slaughter animals. "We're trying to make meat without having to kill animals," Bernard Roelen, a veterinary science professor at Utrecht University, said in an interview.

On Climate Change Realism

"The way to meet this challenge of energy and global climate change is through technology, and the United States is in the lead."
President Bush, 31st May 2007.

On Designer Evolution

"Darwinian Evolution by random genetic mutations and natural selection will be succeeded by Designer Evolution—evolution self-directed by humanity in its own interests of ever-increasing survivability and well-being." Simon Young

p282, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006). see more at designerevolution.net and worldtranshumanistsociety.com

On Neuropolitics

Neuropolitics is the politics of individual autonomy, freedom, self-determination, independence, self-rule—in short, the freedom to be yourself.
p282, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006). see more at designerevolution.net and amazon.com

On Groupthink

groupthink Inability to think for oneself, characteristic of Bodypolitics, as opposed to Neuropolitics.
p383, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006). see more at designerevolution.net and amazon.com

On 21st Century Philosophy

"The chief task of twenty-first-century philosophy is the unification of science and ethics."
p30, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006).

On Science v Religion and Politics

Science promises to succeed where religion and politics have failed—to make the weak strong.
p36, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006) See more at Amazon.com and designerevolution.net

On the Neurochemical Basis of Love

Love is...nature’s neurochemical bribe to procreate. To recognize the evolved, neurochemical basis of love is no more to undermine its value in our lives than an understanding of what lies beneath the hood of a car undermines the pleasure of driving.
p121, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006). See more at Amazon.com and designerevolution.net

On The Benevolent Gene

In this sense, the Selfish Gene might equally be termed the Benevolent Gene, since human benevolence is necessary for survival and reproductive success, and genes neurochemically induce fellow feeling in order to encourage behavior such as nurturing, friendship, cooperation, and love.
Admittedly, the Benevolent Gene may not have sold so many books.
p236, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006). See more at amazonbooks.com

On Bodypolitics

By Bodypolitics, then, I mean a society, or group within a society, organized according to the principle that its leader (“head of the Bodypolitic”) is expressing the general will of all, when in fact determining rules of behavior for him-or her-self.
p269, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006). See more at amazonbooks.com

On Growth

That which ceases to grow, begins to decay. Human beings were not meant to live in the moment like the lilies of the field—our purpose is to be all that we can be.
p39, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006). See more at Amazon.com

Transhumanism and the Purpose of Life

The purpose of life is the continual expansion of abilities in pursuit of ever-increasing survivability and well-being.
Transhumanism and the Purpose of Life, p367, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006). See more at Amazon.com, designerevolution.net, and worldtranshumanistsociety.com

On the Dawkins Doctrine

The Dawkins Doctrine of the Selfish Gene inadvertently encourages social demoralization by ignoring the neurochemistry of love. We are not “born selfish” (as stated on page 3 of the Selfish Gene) but with a neurochemical instinct for empathy.
p200, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006). See more at Amazon.com

On Grumpy Old Man Syndrome

The Doomsday Luddites are temperamentally inclined fatalists who like to assure us that progress is an illusion, new technology doomed to fail, and thus all effort ultimately futile. Doom mongering—the tendency to see the glass half empty—is characteristic of a neurotype predisposing to low mood and accompanying pessimism. It is particularly common among aging males—due perhaps to a combination of fading testosterone and failed life dreams (nature and nurture). I call it Grumpy Old Man Philosophy. One wonders if a course of eugoic mood-brighteners might help the miserabilist doom mongers to accentuate the positive. Perhaps their wives might also benefit.
p78, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006). See more at Amazon.com.

On Consciousness

"Consciousness is recognition; self-consciousness is self-recognition."

p33, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006). See more at Amazon.com

On the Unconscious

Just as the belief in Original Sin kept humankind in the chains of religious subservience through the acceptance of its fallen nature, so the secular religion of psychoanalysis keeps us in biological servitude, slaves to the forces of the unconscious.
p71, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006). See more at Amazon.com

On Love and Nurethics

Nurethics is the recognition that love is—as a noun, a neurochemical instinct (we are not “born selfish” but with an impulse for empathy); and as a verb, a rational tactic of Sensible Self-Interest (for we help ourselves by helping others).
p229, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006). See more at Amazon.com

On Memetics

He who holds the power is he who controls the meme.
p38, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006). See more at Amazon.com.

On the Clash of Civilizations

A civilization which confines itself to critical self-examination is a civilization in decline, ripe for replacement by some other, more assertive culture, with altogether different ideals...
p259, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006). See more at Amazon.com

On Rousseau

"Man is not born free, but everywhere in biological chains"
Simon Young, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, p32

On Transhumanism and Humanism

As humanism freed us from the chains of superstition, let Transhumanism free us from our biological chains.
p32, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Maniesto, by Simon Young (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006).