Mary Harrington at UnHerd is one of the sharper observers of how progressive trends increasingly try to liberate us from our own humanity. Here she proposes her definition of “transhumanism,” one that is crystal clear:
A worldview in which “human nature” has no special cultural or political status. And in which it’s not just legitimate but morally necessary to use technology — especially biotechnology — to improve on that nature.
That means transhumanism isn’t some future prospect but a present reality. The “transhumanist era”
began in the mid-twentieth century, with a biomedical innovation that radically changed what it is to be a human, in the human social order: reproductive technology.
The Pill was the first transhumanist technology: it set out not to fix something that was wrong with “normal” human physiology — in the ameliorative sense of medicine up to that point — but instead it introduced a whole new paradigm. It set out to interrupt normal in the interests of individual freedom.
Read or watch the rest of her speech here.