Anarcho-Transhumanism

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Anarcho-Transhumanism, often shortened to AnH+ or @H+, is a culturally progressive and economically ambiguously left-wing to post-economic Anarchist ideology which is stemmed from Anarcho-Individualism.

The central idea to Anarcho-Transhumanism is that, rather than being just a combination of Anarchism and Transhumanism, the two are in fact intertwined and should be synchronized.

They hold the idea that progress should not be held back by "dogmatic and oppressive institutions" (i.e. corporations and/or governments). Rather, innovation and improvement of the human condition (via nanotechnology and cybernetics) can be brought about by emphasizing survival (in fact, abolishing death completely) and cooperation, instead of competition and conquest.

They may advocate various praxis to advance their ideals, including computer hacking, three-dimensional printing, or biohacking.

History

Origins

The fundamental historical roots of Anarcho-Transhumanism are deeply grounded in the Russian artistic avant-garde movements, which flourished in the context of the broad spectrum of anarchist, socialist, and communist movements that immediately preceded the Russian Revolution, and very briefly followed it until the Socialist realism art movement picked up and replaced it. This very broad radical cultural milieu saw the birth of the artistic and literary Futurism, alongside a wide range of related movements such as Rayonism, Cubo-Futurism, Suprematism, Orphism. The visual arts and poetry of these Russian avant-garde movements were dominated by a broad mythology of technoscientific progress, a visionary modernity deeply rooted in anarchist and socialist philosophy. Images of trains were widespread, as symbols of a revolutionary modernity that collectively drives humanity towards the future, through a new level of connectedness that transcended state and class boundaries. Other dominant iconological themes included the human body as mechanism and the blending of body and machine (from Oskar Schlemmer's mechanical ballet figures to Capek's robots), the myth of electrification as modernization and as metaphor for revolutionary political power, the image of the city as dynamical hub of radical societal transformations and technoscientific innovations, and the early developments of a mythology of outer space and of the connection between human progressive destiny and the exploration of the cosmos.

It is within this general cultural and political background that the philosophical movement of Cosmism (sometimes referred to as Biocosmism) flourished. This was the direct origin of modern Transhumanism, and it exhibited several of the most important themes one encounters in its contemporary forms. Like its modern transhumanist counterpart, Russian Cosmism was a very composite movement, where some representative figures stirred closer to mysticism and religion, while others embraced anarchist, socialist, and communist ideals. Cosmist thinkers advocated the radical extension of human life, the conquest of immortality through scientific means, the merging of human and machine, and the quest for space exploration and the creation of human settlements outside the Earth. The Cosmist philosophical movement in turn deeply influenced the scientists who in later decades realized the Soviet space program, starting with Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the father of Soviet Cosmonautics.

The convergence of Anarchism and Socialism with Cosmism and Futurism that took place in the years leading up to the Russian Revolution remains a profound source of inspiration for the modern movements combining Anarchism and Transhumanism.

Contemporary History, Influences and Thought

Its modern philosophy draws heavily from the individualist anarchism of William Godwin, Max Stirner and Voltairine de Cleyre as well as the cyberfeminism presented by Donna Haraway in A Cyborg Manifesto.

Another influence is the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) formed 1995 at Warwick University in Coventry, England and lasted until 2003 which included notable people such as Sadie Plant, Nick Land and Mark Fisher, famous for its idiosyncratic "theory-fiction", and which their work involved things such as psychedelia, accelerationism, esotericism, rave culture and Jungle music, cybernetics and cyberpunk media genre.

Cyberpunk and it's subsequent sub-genres have heavily influenced Anarcho-Transhumanism, notably Biopunk, Nanopunk and Solarpunk.

Much of early Anarcho-Transhumanist thought was a response to Anarcho-Primitivism. However, some Anarcho-Transhumanists are Post-Civ.

Some aesthetics commonly associated with Anarcho-Transhumanism, especially among online users, are the Vaporwave, Outrun and Kaybug aesthetics, notable for their retro-futuristic technological influences, indicating that Anarcho-Transhumanism isn't just about modern technology, but also the utilization of much of the technology that previous generations associated with being "futuristic" at the time. Older tech is also often used in @H+ praxis as it is less easier to track activity than more modern devices.

Anarcho-Transhumanism may be interpreted either as criticism of, or an extension of humanism, because it challenges what being human means.

Relationship to Transhumanism

Borrowing from techno-anarchism, anarchist activist William Gillis and others argue that the disruptive nature of emergent technologies are either incompatible or extremely dangerous with hierarchical structures of today, including representative or majoritarian democracy. Failure to challenge physical and social conditions together has been argued to risk oligarchic transhumanism, primitivism, or even extinction.

Anarcho-Transhumanists also criticize non-anarchist forms of transhumanism such as Nazi 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. Anarcho-Transhumanism is anti-capitalist, arguing capitalist accumulation of wealth would lead to dystopia while partnered with transhumanism. Anarcho-Transhumanism advocates for equal access to advanced technologies that enable morphological freedom and space travel.

Individual Anarcho-Transhumanists may or may not be singularitarians, variously considering an anarchist society and hypothesized singularity events as prerequisites, mutually exclusive, or inevitable outcomes of one another.

Individual rights and social values

Morphological freedom

Morphological freedom is widely supported, especially in opposition to bio-chauvinism. Adding to anarchism's objections to the coercive power structures, transhumanist anarchism argues against their influence on the availability and viability of the means of exercising autonomy over oneself.

Racism, misogyny, and transphobia are similarly rejected.

Anti-surveillance

Active opposition to surveillance and techniques such as facial recognition and biometrics are widespread.

Within an established egalitarian society, presumably capable of equiveillance, some scope of total history may be desirable to facilitate knowledge and decision-making, both individually and collectively.

Anti-Speciesism

Citing evidence of cognition in nonhuman animals, they are generally held to deserve protection from suffering. Support varies for personhood, rights, and capacity to participate in society, depending on species and sometimes degree of uplifting.

Opposition to substrate chauvinism

Anarcho-Transhumanist proponents of artificial intelligence and/or mind uploading value the continued autonomy of such conscious beings, and advocate against bio-chauvinism in anticipation of such issues.

Economics

Opposition to Absentee Ownership

Capitalism

Anarcho-Transhumanists advocate a variety of economic systems, with the common theme of rejecting systems based on absentee ownership of land and the means of production, such as Capitalism and Marxism-Leninism. All Anarcho-Transhumanists are anti-capitalist, owing to anarchism's understanding of capitalism as a hierarchical system with capitalists and landlords as de-facto rulers.

Authoritarian Socialism/Communism

Government-mediated socialist and communist systems are similarly rejected, with the government and its agents replicating the role and issues with absentee owners.

Intellectual Property

With the rejection of proprietarianism comes the abolition of intellectual property. In addition to the problems cited by other anarchists, Anarcho-Transhumanists see numerous conflicts between intellectual property and an individual's self-determination that arise from emerging technologies. The presence of software or hardware components that are considered the intellectual property of others in a prosthetic device, in effect, means the partial ownership of one's body by another.

Proposed alternatives

Libertarian Municipalism

Libertarian municipalism, especially as described in Murray Bookchin's Post-Scarcity Anarchism, is a common starting point for Anarcho-Transhumanist economics.

Libertarian Socialism

Libertarian socialism and communism are commonly supported systems, possibly made more viable by a transition to post-scarcity. This transition could be facilitated by manufacturing techniques enabled by 3D Printing and nanofabrication.

Auxiliary economic systems

While futarchy as originally conceptualized is incompatible with anarchism's rejection of representative governance and elected officials, a prediction market not mediated by elected officials could be considered as a tool of informing decisions. Trust and reputation metrics based on public or personal records may also be useful, whether arranged as a market or otherwise. These systems can be cited as a supplement to a typical market or gift economy, often to bridge the gap between scarce and post-scarce demands. Spimes or blockchains may be used to track stakeholdership over goods and infrastructure.

Personality and Behavior

AnH+ basically acts in a similar manner to Transhumanism, but with Anarchist personality traits. To represent the individualist approach to transhumanism, AnH+ will use python when speaking.

How to Draw

Flag of Anarcho-Transhumanism

Anarcho-Transhumanism is represented with a flag that's blue, specifically ultramarine (drawing from the doppler effect on light, aka "blueshift", a metaphor for acceleration and progress), and black (in typical Anarchist fashion).

  1. Draw a ball,
  2. Fill the bottom-right half of the ball in black,
  3. Fill the top-left half in ultramarine blue,
  4. Add the eyes (one normal eye and one red, transhumanist eye), and you're done!
  5. (Optional) Draw a grey pipe that goes from the red eye to the back of the ball.
Color Name HEX RGB
Black #202020 32, 32, 32
Ultramarine #0000FE 0, 0, 254
Red #FF0019 255, 0, 25
Grey #8E8E8E 142, 142, 142


Saved Relationships

Positive

  • Anarcho-Individualism - print('Preferred Fraternal Unit.')
  • Anarchism - print('Maternal Unit.')
  • Transhumanism - print('Paternal Unit.')
  • Socialist Transhumanism - print('Fraternal Unit.')
  • Technogaianism - print('Fraternal Unit and hippie friend. (And Solarpunk is very based.)')
  • Anarcho-Frontierism - print('Fraternal Unit and cowboy friend.')
  • Anarcho-Communism - print('Communism is a viable way of achieving transhumanism.')
  • Queer Anarchism - print('Different kind of trans which is equally as based.')
  • Libertarian Municipalism - print('Your works are an inspiration for my economics!')
  • Anarcho-Egoism - print('Technology very much pleases my ego.')
  • Fully Automated Gay Space Communism - print('A goal to look forward to.')
  • Soulism - print('A little bit too far perhaps, but still, brilliant ideas. Let's ascend humanity together!')
  • Autarchy - print('Fantastic ideas, just please stop simping for AnCap.')
  • Posadism - print('Authoritarianism aside, certainly some interesting ideas. Also, we were both influenced by Russian Cosmism. ( The anarchist version of him is one of my closest friends.)
  • Techno-Anarchism - print('Lazier version of me.')
  • Total Liberationism - print('Pretty much just a non-technological version of me. Although, morphological freedom is essential for "total" liberation.')
  • Synthesis Anarchism - print('I like what you are doing.')
  • Xenofeminism - print('Incredibly based. I agree with everything you've said.')
  • Veganarchism - print('There's no need to harm animals when everything is nano-constructed 3D-printed synthetics anyway. Actually, thinking about it, there's no need to harm them now.')
  • Acid Communism - print('We be trippin' together, imagining new futures, transcending the meatspace...)
  • Ego-Communism - "Why you need collectivism, when all individuals have their own personal 3D nano-printers, that replace large and inefficient factories?"

Neutral

  • Technological Primitivism - print('ERROR CANNOT COMPUTE.')
  • Anarcho-Capitalism - print('Capitalism is not good, but we both like cyberpunk.')
  • Libertarian Transhumanism - print('Same as above. Just a right-wing version of me.')
  • Post-Leftism - print('You also hate work, but yet Bob Black dismisses automization as just shifting the work to machines, and wants to get rid of work all together. You also have an odd history with the Primitivists and Neoluddites. But you also have some pretty based thinkers which take a lot of influence from and support my ideals which is based.)
  • Anarcho-Nihilism - print('Why must you dislike technology? Maybe a virtual reality personalized simulation where you can do whatever you want, including all drugs, guns and femboys will make you happier?')

Negative

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