The core values and goals of the humanity are; to ensure that every human life is respected, valued, and protected, rather than disrespected, devalued, and attacked and to bring an end to violence against human beings at every stage of life, from conception to natural death. To create a culture of peace and life, to replace our currently existing cultures of war, violent conflict, and killing (our culture has a high tolerance for killing and sees support for war). Instead, we join together around what we have in common: support for the first and most fundamental human right—the right to life. To see a society that values each individual human life.
Humanism is defined as a system of thought and action in which human values, interests, and dignity predominate. Humanist ideas are that every human should be treated with respect and equality by all people; they should choose what they believe and think based on reason, empathy, and concern for human beings and other sentient animals. Humanism is an attitude towards and an approach to man's life and values confined to his life. Humanists reject the idea or belief in a supernatural being such as God; they focus on seeking happiness in this life and have no belief in an afterlife. Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) was called the father of humanism in 1859 for his personal commitment to the way of life found in ancient literature and philosophy. In addition to his scientific work Albert Einstein was an influential humanist who spoke widely about ethics, politics, and social causes. Neohumanism as a holistic philosophical theory promotes individual and collective progress, and universalism plays a central role in this philosophy. According to Indian spiritual teacher P. R. Sarkar (a proponent of Neohumanism), this philosophy expands upon humanism to encompass love and compassion for all human beings.
Why, then, do we demean, enslave, and exterminate others?
(David Livingstone Smith)
Dehumanization is a mental loophole that lets us harm other people. Dehumanizing: to degrade, disgrace, demean, put down, take down, or reduce in worth or character. Dehumanization is one of the forms of moral disengagement. Dehumanization is facilitated by status, power, and social connection, which results in behaviors like violence, support for violence against others, and exclusion. State-organized dehumanization has historically been directed against perceived political, racial, ethnic, national, or religious minority groups. Dehumanization is used to justify war, slavery, confiscation of property, attacks on enemies or political opponents, and is a form of incitement to genocide. To dehumanize someone means to deprive someone of human qualities, personality, or dignity, or to subject someone (such as prisoners) to inhuman or degrading conditions or treatment. People use dehumanization to justify greed, violence, and abuse. Humans are capable of terrible crimes, abuse of children, and insults based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and health status.
They are also dehumanizing victims; blaming is a favorite strategy of many perpetrators. Dehumanization in history: slave owners throughout history considered slaves subhuman and animals. During the Holocaust, Nazis referred to Jews as rats, Hutu involved in the Rwanda genocide called Tutsi cockroaches, and American troops in Afghanistan called the kill team, posing with dead Afghans and taking body parts as trophies. A phenomenon of dehumanization in which the enemy is seen as a game. The most horrible examples of dehumanization are the tortured methods, abuses, and brutal treatment of Arab prisoners at American overseas detention centers (in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo). Suicide bombers, terrorist attacks, killing civilians, and soldiers being aggressive towards children and civilians are a constant reminder of what happens when one really doesn't care if the other side lives or dies. Some American thinkers found that average Americans disturbingly rated Muslims, Mexican immigrants, and Arabs as less evolved. Donald Trump's policies and rhetoric gin up fear and dehumanize Muslims and other groups, and that provokes a more violent response from certain individuals in the Muslim community. Israeli B. Netanyahu has called Palestinians 'human animals'; U.S. President Joe Biden called the Russian leader Vladimir Putin a 'crazy SOB' (son of a bitch); etc. The perception of otherness is troubling enough, and the predictions are that the dehumanization power makes the world a more hostile place.
The advancement of technology and artificial intelligence (AI) has misled and dehumanized every living cells of our human beings. AI holds the power to transform numerous aspects of our daily lives. The technology creates various materials that appear to be from anyone who has enough video content available online. Someone could take your persona and create and distribute videos or pictures of you engaging in whatever acts they desire. Obviously, this is extraordinary and dehumanizing. There is a growing movement of AI (deep fake and pornographic audio and videos) that harvests pictures from the internet to generate a composite image based on a user's specifications. The violation here is diffused acrossthe board, and all of us, too, have the potential for dehumanization. If we accept a society in which someone can create a personalized object (for example, a sex object) on demand, what are the users expectations for people in the real world? It would be a tragedy if we allowed ourselves to be diminished by AI. We are humans; we are not just images. AI can never be human. However, there is a growing concern that an over-reliance on AI may lead to dehumanization. A terrible digital dehumanization is the use of drones, machines, and robots in warfare and genocide (Israelis used robot dogs for the first time in the war, which is dehumanization and genocide against Palestinian people). Balancing technological advancements and the human touch is crucial, as both are essential for a better future. However, we tend to overlook the potential consequences of replacing human roles with algorithms due to the allure of AI's capabilities.
Human empathy is at risk; a lack of empathy may lead to technically correct decisions with negative emotional or moral impacts (a complex of emotional intelligence, non-verbal cues, and shared human experience). We shouldn't stop the progress of AI or see it as a danger to humanity; we need to adopt a balanced attitude. AI can be a valuable tool that solves complex mathematical problems and automates tedious tasks. However, we must preserve the human aspects. Empathy and respect, as the opposite of dehumanization, are best expressed by the Golden Rule, which calls for everyone to give others the same treatment that they would like to get themselves. The golden rule means that all humans or living beings are part of 'us'. If we want a more human society, we cannot engage in violence and harassment ourselves. The vicious cycles of dehumanization can spin without end for centuries. The cycle of dehumanization can be stopped, but it's far from easy.
Transhumanism is viewing the human condition as poor, weak, and 'not very good', both physically and morally. Transhumanism is the idea that humans should transcend their current natural state and limitations through the use of technology. Technologies like nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science are giving rise to possibilities that have long been in the realm of science fiction. These technologies seek to end all human realities—disease, aging, and even death. We could use brain-computer interfaces to connect to advanced artificial intelligence. Nanobots could travel through our bloodstream to monitor our health and improve our emotional propensities for love, joy, and other emotions. And these advances in many areas may lead to radical changes in our world in the near future. Transhumanism proposes that technology can be used to overcome the limitations of the human body and mind. Transhumanism focuses on changing and improving natural human characteristics through biological, technological, and cognitive modifications.
Transhumanism emphasizes the potential of technology to overcome the limitations of the human body. Transhumanists believe that through advances in genetic engineering, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence, humanity can achieve a new level of existence—one that is more intelligent, more fulfilling, and more resilient. The goal of the transhumanist movement is to go beyond current humans and become posthumans. Post-humanism offers a framework for creating a more sustainable future. Posthumanism encompasses a critical view of the coexistence of technology and man. Transhumanists and posthumanists both reject essentialist views of human nature, including religious or ethical positions that take human nature as morally normative.
The idea that technology could be used to augment human abilities gained attention in the 1950s and 1960s with the development of cybernetics, a field that explored the relationship between computers and living organisms. Both transhumanism and posthumanism share a focus on technology and its impact on humanity, but they differ significantly in their underlying philosophies and goals of using technology to overcome the limitations of the human body. Post-humanism takes a more critical view of technological progress and recognizes that our relationship with technology is complex and that new technologies can have profound impacts on our social, political, and ecological systems. Mind-uploading and digital consciousness research seek to explore the possibility of transferring human consciousness into a digital or virtual space. And transhumanists see this as a way to achieve immortality and create new forms of existence. Post-humanists are more cautious, emphasizing the ethical and existential implications of such a radical transformation. The question of the ethics of human enhancement as well as identity and humanity remain central to the transhumanism vs. posthumanism debate. Dr. Nich Bostrom summarizes three general central capacities of the posthuman:
- Health span: the capacity to live a healthy life with an infinite life divergent from successful aging, targeted by conventional medicine.
- Cognition: the common senses humans currently have in common, as well as senses that have yet to be discovered in human beings.
- Emotion: the capacity to relish in a life and one's desire to live the good life.
For some thinkers (Kurtzweil), posthumanism describes a technological future of enhanced humanity, and for others (Horaway), posthumanism is an ethical position that extends moral concern to things that are different from us, and in particular to other species and objects with which we cohabit in the world. Posthumanism invites us to think outside traditional human categories of race, gender, or nationality beyond the interests of our species and across conventional divisions between animals, humans, and machines. Posthumanism is a mode of thinking about the interesting human, non-human, and technological worlds that call into question the role of humans in shaping the fate of the Earth. Post-humanism demolishes the nature binary as it has been enshrined in the Euro-American tradition. The prospect of human enhancement, the expansion of artificial intelligence (AI), and the ethics of these developments affect humans, the law, and the social order. Posthumanist thought demonstrates how all matter is interlinked, mutually dependent, and co-evolved (whether humans impact technology or vice versa).
Transhumanists have many different views of what our ongoing evolution should look like. For example,some of them think we should upgrade our biology through genetic engineering or other methods and advocate uploading the mind into digital form, settling the cosmos. They predict artificial wombs, designer babies, and anti-aging therapies in the future. Transhuman and posthuman, by their very definition, are holy cyborg bodies with an infinite lifespan and self-organizing artificial intelligence. Among the biggest promoters of transhumanist thinking are tech billionaires.
Elon Musk's company, Neurolink, aims to merge humans with AI in the future. And technological innovations could be used to enhance abilities in everyone (embedding chips in the human brain). Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is an AI system that can do all the cognitive tasks a human can do and more. AGI is seen as vital to enabling us to design our own evolutionary futures. And companies like Open AI, Deep Mind, and Anthropic are continuing to develop AGI, despite experts warning that it could lead to human extinction. These companies have a lot to gain, making us think they are engineering a divine power that can create utopia or destroy the world. The elite plan to merge man and machine to create a new world order in the age of transhumanism. And the ultimate goal of transhumanism is to create a posthuman species that will better adapt to the challenges of the modern world and that will be controlled by an elite group of scientists and technocrats. As its name suggests, post-humanism is defined by its rejection of humanism and by its call for a cultural era that moves beyond humanism's core claims.