Transhumanism and the will to power.

Over the last year, I have been following the rapidly growing and astoundingly optimistic transhumanist movement. I’ve been reading Grossman, Kurzweil, de Grey. It’s a broad ideology, and its principles are what I believe attracted me to become a biology student. It pivots on the idea that science and technology can be applied to radically enhance the longevity and quality of human life, such as to the point of reversing the aging process and extending the boundaries of human performance with genetic and nanotech augmentation.

Progress relevant to these goals accelerates at a rate that I don’t think a layman can appreciate. The quantifiable efficiency of genetic decoding has increased exponentially since 1990, and is now doing so at a yearly rate. New models and applications for nanites are in the process of development . Critical knowledge regarding the aspects of cancer, aging, gene therapy, nutrition and various diseases are becoming understood at a level never imagined. Rapamycin was unveiled six months ago as the first drug to significantly increase the lifespan of mice, and it’s already approved by the FDA for suppressing the rejection of transplanted organs. “If” is not a relevant question regarding the coming revolutions in genetics, biotechnology and medicine; the only questions left are “how” and “when.”

There will be designer genetics. There will be profiling for diseases at birth. There will be cures for all of them. There will be a merging of nanotechnology with biology, augmentation to memory and cognition, enhancements to bodily functions. An end to viral infections will happen. The fundamental cause of all cancers will be cured.

Many of our boundaries will be erased, and in my pursuit of biological sciences, I aim to be a part of that. It must have been Nietzsche who put that fire in me. His reoccurring theme of self-creation has impassioned me, and set me on a quest to recreate myself in my own image, to become what I will myself to become. It is why I am so mindful of my diet, of every acid or sugar that I ingest. It is why I exercise daily. It is why I take a handful of supplements and vitamins daily. It’s all so that I may bring my body into alignment with what I want it to be.

The most beautiful notion is that we needn’t be confined behind the bars of circumstance, that we may shrug off millions of years of the past, be unphased by the eons, break the shackles of our biology, and become reflections of our own will, as are omnipotent gods. The notions soothe the fear of existential loneliness, of biological weakness, of mortality, replaces them with vigor, as a crisp air in the lungs. My attraction to transhumanism and the life sciences is a manifestation of my own “will to power,” and I am entranced by the coming of a time when the line between what we are and what we want to become is blurred to the point of transparency, where our biology is no longer dictated by countless generations and an obedience to them, but by conscious decisions. I want very much to live the art of self-creation, even if in a pathetically small way. I am humbled by it, desperate for it, as a mortal groveling before the cosmos, begging for his own godhood. Maybe Mephistopheles will pay me a visit.

Given time, nature always caters to the will of man, for we know her secrets, and they are our currency.