Stepwise Transhumanism

We’re here to discuss transhumanism. But before we do that, let’s start with just humanism.

In the early 20th century, psychology was dominated by two paradigms:

• Psychoanalysis — focused on unconscious drives, early childhood, pathology.

• Behaviorism — focused on observable behavior, conditioning, and external control.

But both were largely seen as reductionist and deterministic, leaving little room for this strange thing that humans do, which is meaning-making, having agency, or growth.

Then, in the 1940s and 50s, a shift began. Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow started emphasizing subjectivity, self-actualization, and potential. They laid the groundwork for what, in 1964, James Bugental named: The Third Force in Psychology — Humanist Psychology (Bugental 1964).

In that essay, Bugental lays out five postulates, trying to identify what it means to be human — but before we get there, there is one line from his essay that really hit me:

“the sciences of man are so badly outdistanced by the sciences of things that the very race of man is in jeopardy.”

Bugental identifies a fear of technology. 

Now, he wrote this essay in 1964, a short time after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, after nearly two decades of nuclear aftermath. The threat of nuclear war was still very real and the global atmosphere was charged with anxiety about technological advancement outpacing our moral understanding of humanity, ourselves. Something about this feels parallel — though on a different scale — to the sentiment surrounding AI risk, at least in our (or my) specific subculture. 

There’s a feeling that technology will soon outpace humanity.  

And it feels very anti-transhumanist! Which aims to use technology to enable our highest values.

Now in the 60s this feeling triggered the Humanist Psychology movement. In which thinkers attempted to define what it means to be human. And Bugental’s Essay — the essay that established Humanist Psychology as a formal movement — has a really fascinatingly broad definition of what it means to be human.

And the fact that we (or some of us), are feeling the fearful sentiment again, made me think we could revisit those postulates, maybe they’re a compass for the abundant and glorious transhuman era we are building. 

But we’re not gonna revisit them quite yet, there’s one more little interlude that I promise will paint the frame we are trying to create for this exploration.

The Gentle Seduction as Humanist Parable

Just after reading Bugental’s essay, I coincidently read a sci-fi short story called The Gentle Seduction by Marc Stiegler. 

And in reading this I realized: she lives out every single one of Bugental’s five Humanist postulates.

Let me show you:

1. Humans are more than the sum of their parts

Steigler's heroine reluctantly approaches this postulate, that her body is just a part to be fixed, starting with a pill to cure her back, then a pill to tighten up her neural circuitry to improve memory, then stabilizing her physical appearance to always look about the age of 32, then a BCI device: the nection, and further and further and further. As her own body becomes vestigial, she retains her humanness — because it was never located in the parts. 

She attempts to recreate Jack, molecule by molecule, memory by memory — but it’s not him. Because a person isn’t just data or a body.

There’s even a direct quote saying that she realized life was much more than the sum of its parts:

“...life dealt with wholes much greater than the sums of their parts. But she understood it intuitively — it was easy to distinguish an engineering intelligence, good only for manufacture, from a member of the community, even though that member might once have been just an engineering intelligence as well.”

2. Humans exist in uniquely human contexts

Bugental writes, “We postulate second that the unique nature of man is expressed through his always being in relationship with his fellows.”

Throughout the entire transformation of the protagonist, she is constantly motivated and grounded in her decision making by the desire to exist in community or to help her community of humans. By the end of the gentle seduction the protagonist chooses to enter a sort of hive mind consciousness, and asks herself 

“Are you still yourself, even now? Were you still yourself, even when you were 25?” 

and knowing the answer she “dips into communion.”  

3. Humans are self-aware

​​Steigler characterizes new members of humanity as "designed" or "expressed" rather than born, and there is this great quote about how they are granted consciousness, so intelligence or genius isn’t enough to be human, humans are self aware.

“New members of humanity usually came to life this way: an intelligence designed as a machine or an artwork expressed a special genius, a genius that deserved the ability to appreciate itself through self-awareness. When this happened, the psychological engineers would add those elements of the mind needed for life.”

4. Humans have free will

This is just the whole point of the story.

5. Humans are intentional

She is constantly meaning making, at every step of the transition she is processing nostalgia, grief, motivations, and telling stories. Her processing the nostalgia of Mount Rainier is just one example of this:

“The day came to say goodbye to her oldest friend. With her wonderful old earth-born body, she returned to Earth to hike Rainier one last time: Rainier, whose surface lay so cold and eternal, was boiling within. With dawn, she knew, the boiling fury would break through, in the greatest volcanic event in earthly centuries. She stood at the summit the day before the end and surveyed the horizon. Her feeling of appreciation grew till she thought she would burst. This was home in a sense few others could now understand.

She descended. A marmot met her on the way down; she swooped him into her arms and carried him to safety, though he fought her and cut her and her bleeding would seem to never end. Still the marmot could not prevent her from saving him.

She had considered saving the mountain itself; she could, she knew. She could lace the mountain with billions of tiny tubes, capillaries so small no living thing would notice. She could extract the heat, cool the heart.

But to deny the Mountain its moment of brilliance seemed not right: perpetual sameness was never right, though change might often be wrong.

So the next day, she and the marmot watched the eruption from afar. It was as beautiful as she had expected. And though the aftermath was gray and dreary, she knew that in a very short time the marmot's children would return to the Mountain, and a new kind of beauty would grow there.”  

So, I became convinced that The Gentle Seduction was a parable of Humanist Psychology, adapted for a Transhumanist future-vision. One that is warm and human-loving. Bugental’s essay even has a bunch of Mountain Imagery and there’s Mountain Imagery all over The Gentle Seduction. It seemed very clear that this was true. I emailed Marc Steigler, the author, to ask about this and he said No.

But despite that, I still think it’s poetic and fascinating that the protagonist of an extremely transhumanist story operates from the five defining postulates of Humanist Psychology. And the reason she remains human is largely because the definition of human that Bugental outlines is adaptive. She ascends into a transhumanist future, but by this decades old psychology definition, she remains human. 

There’s one more part that I want us to consider, here’s a quote from the story:

"From her, Jack had learned the importance of making technology's steps small, making its pieces bite-size. He had learned this as he watched, in her disbelieving eyes, her reaction to the world he had planned.

For those who loved technology and breathed of it deeply, small bite-size steps were not important. It would have been easy to callously cast off those who did not understand or who were afraid. But Jack had thought of her, and had not wanted her to die."

The people here, I assume, love technology. I don’t think you would be here if you did not breathe of it deeply. But you all probably have people who are more nostalgic, and they are good too. 

And people get left behind:

250,000-500,000 Vitamin A-Deficient Children, Annually

The WHO estimates 250,000-500,000 vitamin A-deficient children go blind annually, half of whom die within twelve months of losing their vision. Vitamin A deficiency is the world’s leading preventable cause of childhood blindness (WHO 2009). In effort to combat this health crisis a variety of rice was genetically engineered to produce beta-carotene, a precursor to vitamin A. This variety is known as Golden Rice. But concerns over corporate control, environmental impact, and food sovereignty led to limited adoption. Rice was already a common crop grown in areas of need, the engineered variety could prevent blindness in children. But its introduction wasn’t gentle and as a result, it was not chosen.   

14.8 Million Patients of Cardiovascular Disease, Annually  

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide (Our World in Data 2021). 80% of premature heart disease and stroke (14.8 million people annually) is preventable and more than three-quarters of these deaths take place in low- and middle-income countries (CDC 2018, World Heart Federation, WHO). Statins are well documented to help prevent cardiovascular disease by lowering blood cholesterol levels, but only a third of patients adhere to their medication, representing millions of preventable deaths annually (Latry et al 2011).

300,000 Women from Cervical Cancer, Annually

Over half a million women develop cervical cancer annually, and more than 300,000 die from the disease (Our World in Data 2024). HPV vaccines reduce the risk of cervical cancer by nearly 90% when given before age 17 (Lei J 2020). Despite this remarkable effectiveness, HPV vaccination rates in the United States stagnated in 2022 and 2023, with only 61.4% of adolescents aged 13-17 up to date on their vaccinations (CDC 2023). As of 2019, nearly two-thirds of parents remained hesitant about the vaccine, citing safety concerns, lack of perceived necessity, and insufficient information (Adjei Boakye et al 2021). A vaccine that could virtually eliminate a major cancer remains underutilized.

There are plenty more examples of technologies that could provide massive benefits, falling short: nuclear power, viral surveillance infrastructure, lab grown meat, high speed rail, etc. 

So as we go about the next couple hours, hearing from our speakers about the technologies they are building, I’d like us to consider what Methods of Gentle Seduction we can use for the transhumanist future that we imagine?

How do we process the nostalgia and the taboo of each (if any) and move it into social amenability? How do we take bite sized steps and maintain our human context, our self awareness, our freedom of choice and our intention?