Against the Perfect
Trans-humanism and the Gnostic Age
Recently, two great writers have written essays on the subject of trans-humanism. Last month, Charles Eisenstein published “Transhumanism and the Metaverse,” in which he writes the following rather important critique regarding the left’s alignment with trans-human fantasies:
What leftists seem not to notice is that these versions of progress also enable the encroachment of capitalism into more and more intimate territories. Do you think the immersive AR/VR experience of the Metaverse will be free of advertising, perhaps so subtly targeted as to be invisible? The closer our integration with technology in all aspects of life, the more life can become a consumer product.
Again this is nothing new. The Marxian crisis of capital (falling profit margins, falling real wages, evaporation of the middle class, proletarian immiseration—sound familiar?) has been forestalled only by the constant expansion of market economies through two main vehicles: colonialism and technology. Technology opens up new, high-profit domains of economic activity to keep capitalism running. It allows more of nature and human relationship to be converted into money. When we depend on technology for such things as clean drinking water, resistance to a disease, or interacting socially, then these things swell the realm of monetized goods and services. The economy grows, return on financial investment stays above zero, and capitalism continues to operate. My dear leftists—if ye indeed remain leftists (and not authoritarian corporatists; that is to say, crypto-fascists)—can you please reevaluate your political alliance with the ideology of progress and development?
And just a few days ago, Paul Kingsnorth wrote about the relationship between Trans-humanism and the Abolition of Man:
The real issue is that a young generation of hyper-urbanised, always-on young people, increasingly divorced from nature and growing up in a psychologised, inward-looking anticulture, is being led towards the conclusion that biology is a problem to be overcome, that their body is a form of oppression and that the solution to their pain may go beyond a new set of pronouns, or even invasive surgery, towards nanotechnology, ‘cyberconsciousness software’ and perhaps, ultimately, the end of their physical embodiment altogether.
Both essays absolutely merit your attention, especially in that each approaches the matter from a slightly different framework. I have myself generally skirted around the subject of trans-humanism, its relationship to the left and to Gnosticism, and also to the current shift away from naturalistic conceptions of the body toward social and technological constructions. This reluctance on my part hasn’t been because it isn’t an interesting matter to me; on the contrary, I see it as one of the core problems any authentic leftist movement must grapple with if it is ever to present any real resistance to capitalism.
What’s held me back? The continued legacy of the Green Scare, reborn as the terror of “Eco-Fascism,” as seen especially in the following statement: