[ExI] The Italian Transhumanists' Manifesto

[Stefano Vaj]

At a time when important components of the transhumanist movement, including
the WTA, are reconsidering their very identity and strategy, I think a few
relevant contributions may be contained in the Italian Transhumanists'
Manifesto, made public by the Associazione Italiana Transumanisti in the
latter's Web site, at http://www.transumanisti.it a few months ago.

Please note that I am solely responsible for this very quick translation,
which is certainly in dire need of proof-reading, and above all of
subediting by somebody who be English mother-tongue before its final
publication.

<<We. the transhumanists, have picked for us a clear and ambitious goal
since the establishment of the Associazione Italiana Transumanisti: creating
in our country the conditions for a moral and intellectual revolution with a
prometheic orientation. A revolution capable to produce radical changes in
both our everyday world and our cultural landscape.

In particular, we should like to see Italy and Europe as protagonists of a
new phase of technological, scientific, industrial, cultural, but also
biological, development - given that amongst our fundamental values there
are longevism, the slowing down of the aging process, the health of
citizens, and the physical and mental enhancement both of disable and
"normal" people, including beyond the limits imposed by our current
biological structure. We consider as well as a fundamental value the
self-determination of peoples and individuals, so that we do not intend to
impose our values to anybody, but simply to *propose* them. Similarly, we
cannot tolerate that a different worldview be imposed upon us through force
or threats.

It is best to make it immediately clear that by publishing this manifesto we
do not plan to found any new political party, which the already very
fragmented Italian world of politics and politicians would hardly feel the
need for. Organised transhumanism is and remains a cross-party, plural
movement and operates with the typical tools and methods of social and
cultural movements: publishing, press releases, the organisation of public
events, boycotts, passive resistance, referendum and poll promotion,
subscription campaigns, lobbying, moral and monetary support to deserving
individuals and entities, research grants, electoral support to specific
candidates on the basis of their programs and irrespective of their
political affiliations. The purpose of this manifesto is simply that of
explaining more precisely the principles and the line of the movement.

The main idea behind transhumanim can be summarised in a single sentence: it
is possible and desirable to switch from a blind-evolution phase to a
self-directed, self-conscious evolution. We are ready to do what science
makes today possible, namely to our specific destiny in our hands. We are
ready to accept the challenges arising from the world of biotechnology,
cognitive sciences, robotics, nanotechnology, AI, taking said challenge to a
political and philosophical level, in order to give a sense and a direction
to our path. It should be noted that this project does not have much to do
with the negative and repressive forms of eugenism preached in the XIX
century and implemented in the United States, in the Third Reich and in the
social-democratic Scandinavia in the XX century. Sterilisation of
inheritable diseases is a primitive and brutal response to a problem new
technologies allow us to overcome without affecting individual reproductive
freedom. In other words, it is grossly mystifying to identify the negative
and authoritarian eugenism of the past with the contemporary transhumanist
model of self-directed evolution, which is aimed at positively ensuring the
health and the enhancement of individuals and of their offspring while
protecting the freedom of choice and the health of our descendants.

Even though dealing with the problem in those terms is possible today for
the first time, it would be equally wrong to see the overcoming of current
human limitations as a plan dreamed up by improvised apprentice sorcerers.
Such idea has on the contrary a solid tradition in the history of European
thought, and is suggested or reflected in the works of thinkers of the
caliber of Francis Bacon, Tommaso Campanella, Jean Condorcet, Friedrich
Nietzsche, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Leon Trotzky, Julian Huxley, Jacques
Monod, Francis Crick and Jean-François Lyotard, just to mention a few of the
best-known amongst them. Now, we are simply bringing forward their
discourse.

The advocates of self-directed evolution, more than challenging the Nature,
intend to favour the deployment of its possibilities. The sense and the
direction we refer to are ultimately those being at the origin of our
species - which represented the emersion of more sophisticated organisms in
comparison with their immediate predecessors. This is the reason why, if we
reason in evolutionary rather than static terms, it clearly appears that
transhumanism cannot be considered as "innatural". We are rather trying to
establish a new harmony between culture and nature. It is then hardly
surprising that those who see us as dangerous foes are primarily enemies of
evolution and of knowledge - that of our evolution as a species has been the
fruit.

The charge of hybris - arrogance, trespassing, crossing the Pillars of
Hercules - that is often brought forward against us reflects pre-Darwinian
wordviews; the transhuman cannot go against what nature would dictate
because nothing that technoscience can perform happens out of the realm of
physics and biology. In any event, a "human nature" never existed in the
first place that was not the product of a self-domestication, of a
conjugation of the "human" with the "living" and with the "technological",
and that was not therefore already, to some extent, a self-directed
evolution, albeit at an unconscious level.

*A polymorphic, multicultural movement*

As it can easily be seen from our Pantheon, the central transhumanist idea
can be coupled with different political, philosophical and religious
opinions. Accordingly, we have observed individual and groups joining us
from very different persuasions. Now, as it is easily understandable, on one
hand such diversity may be an asset in terms of ideas and stimuli, but on
the other may involve a practical paralysis, especially when given members
give priority to their existing affiliations over their belonging to
organised transhumanism. In order to remedy such inconvenience we have
engaged for years in a debate aimed at finding a positive synthesis of
different transhumanist tendencies and philosophical propensities. In fact,
this manifesto, even though materially drafted by a singol person, is the
final result of long discussions with AIT members, and accordingly owes much
to several different minds (*). And while it is a manifesto of
*Italian*transhumanists, we do not make it a secret that we hope to
contaminate with
the ideas expressed herein other organisations that are active abroad or
internationally.

In the World Transhumanist Association, of which the Associazione Italiana
Transumanisti is the local chapter, different ideological orientation
persist, as it is appropriate for an umbrella organisation of an explicitely
apolitical and undenominational nature. The awareness however exists that
single affiliated organisations may require stronger identities, depending
on geopolitical imperatives, different cultural heritages and their own
philosophical preferences, while adhering to general principles.

In the transhumanist movement, there are three main areas where ideological
differences exist, both at the global and at the Italian level: politics,
religion and science. We shall discuss the outlines of those internal
differences, and then indicate how we intend to overcome them in the
framework of the Associazione Italiana Transumanisti.

As far as politics is concerned, a recent WTA member poll shows that
transhumanists exist of any traditional political persuasions, from the
far-left wing to the far-right wing, with everything inbetween. In terms of
numbers, however, a prevalence of self-defined left-wingers can be observed
(47% in total), with a preponderance of members identifying themselves as
"socialist" or "progressive" e small fringes of anarchists (2%) and
communists (1%). The libertarians are also numerous (20% the total
percentage) with a smaller more radical (Randian-objectivist,
anarco-capitalist, minarchist) component. Members also exist that support
conservative, religious or nationalist ideas. To give a few more data,
christian democrats are around 0.5%, as are self-defined right-wing
extremists. Among WTA international membership, 14% already declares,
however, to support an upwing position (neither on the left nor on the
right, but "upward"), while 11% says that they are not interested in
contemporary politics. It should also be noted that the overwhelming
majority of transhumanist support democratic self-determination, while - a
details equally interesting - critics of democracy are spread across the
entire political spectrum.

With regard to religion, 64% of transhumanists are atheists or agnostics,
while 31% adhere to some form of spirituality or religious persuasion.
Amongst the latter, 9% are christian (protestants, catholics and mormons),
4% are buddhists, 2% are pagans, 1% observing jewish and 1% muslim - just to
mention some well-known religious denominations. There are also members that
also in this area call themselves as transhumanists, thus defining
transhumanism itself as a religion.

Coming to science, we have two main propensities. On one side, we have
transhumanists careful to remain within the boundaries of official and
academic science, and accordingly inclined to consider science fiction,
utopias and futurism little more than a pastime or useful thought
experiments. On the other, there are transhumanists ready to consider
possible technologies and events yet to take place as articles of faith,
only because they have been predicted by some eminent futurists or science
fiction novelists. Those differences concern mostly subjects such as
mind-uploading, immortality, the coming of a Singularity. It appears here
that 19% of WTA members deem its discourse too oriented in a utopian,
futurist and science-fictional direction, while 8% believes on the contrary
that the WTA is too focused on short-term, uninspirational, prosaic issues.
The remaining 73% believe instead that the existing WTA approach is
sufficiently balanced in this respect. Now, this does not tell much, until
one considers how respondents interpret the WTA line. It is therefore more
significant to observe that only 7% proclaim themselves "immortalist", that
is believers in an earthly immortality. The remaining 93% confine themselves
to a much more pragmatic and realistic stance, defining the transhumanis
under this aspect in terms of longevism, that is of extending the human
lifespan and increasing life expectancy - within the limit of the
opportunities increasingly offered by biological and physical sciences.

*The reaction of mass-media and the most widespread biases

*Those data are significant, because they imply a sub-optimal communication
between the transhumanist movement and the external world. Many people who
come in contact with transhumanist ideas derive as a consequence a wrong
impression, an idea often very remote from what real transhumanism actually
is. This is true for the US movement, but even more for European
transhumanism, not to mention Italian transhumanism.

As far as Italy is concerned, we have enjoyed a remarkable attention by
local mass media. We have been discussed by newspapers, radio and TV
broadcasts, magazines and Webzines and blogs of every cultural and political
areas. Coverage has been obtained by Italian national press, including by *
Il Corriere della Sera*, *La Repubblica*, *l'Espresso*, *Panorama*, *Libero*,
*Linus*, *Il Foglio*, *il Sole-24 Ore*, *Avvenire*, *Il Tempo*, *Il Secolo
d'Italia*, *Il Manifesto*, *MondOperaio*, *Rinascita*, *La Stampa*, *Agenda
Coscioni*, *Letteratura-Tradizione*, *La Padania* e *Il Federalismo*, as
well as by many local organs, such as *Il Giornale di Bergamo*, *La Voce di
Mantova*, *La Gazzetta di Mantova*, *La Cronaca di Mantova*, *La Libertà* of
Piacenza, and *La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno*. The same happened with TV
networks, such as RAI 2, which devoted to our themes a monographic
documentary, "Il Mutante: il futuro postumano che ci aspetta" (The Mutant:
the Posthuman Future that Awaits Us"), while RAI 3 broadcasted a documentary
on AIT itself, "Nascita del superuomo" (Birth of the Overman). In addition,
the subject of transhumanism has been dealt with by many Italian Web
sources, such as Notizie Radicali, Fondazione Bassetti, LibMagazine,
Resistenza Laica, Futuroprossimo, Enterprise, Fantascienza, l'Uomo Libero,
Ulisse, Bioetiche, Aprile, La Destra, Cuorelettrici, Digitalife, Indymedia,
ECplanet, Luogocomune, Punto Informatico, plus innumerable personal blogs.
By now, there are as well hundreds of books and essays in several languages,
many of which in Italian or translated in Italian, focused on transhumanism
or related thereto, for which we refer our readers to the extensive
bibliography published by our Web site at http://www.transumanisti.it,
probably the most complete currently available worldwide.

In this paper and bit blizzard, there are those who made no secret of
sharing our ideas, those who restrained themselves to mere, impartial
reporting, and those who extended criticisms and doubts. If most of those
sources presented an image substantially acceptable of our movement, there
has been no want of distortions and mystifications. From a page of
*IlCorriere della Sera
* Francis Fukuyama, member of the US Presidential Council on Bioethics,
defined us as the most dangerous organisation in the world. *Avvenire*, the
daily newspaper of the Council of Italian catholic bishops, did not refrain
from presenting us as dangerous extremists, sometimes far-right extremists,
sometimes far-left ones, according to what was more expedient in the
circumstances. Giuliano Ferrara, a well-known Italian journalist and
politician, from his newspaper *Il Foglio*, spent a great deal of ink and
many vitriolic comments on us, as if we were the swinging factor in Italian
politics. The Rebecchini Foundation even organised an anti-transhumanist
conference, inviting as speakers Mr. Fukuyama, Mr. Ferrara and Monsignor
Fisichella. Marcello Veneziani has labelled us as enemies of the human
species and of religion. We do not know whether Mr. Ratzinger is wondering
whether to reactivate the Inquisition to take care of us, but the
commentaries heard sofar are not sounding too reassuring in this respect.
And attacks do not only come from the Right. Many leftist bloggers and
mainstream journalists racked their brains in the concoction of most
elaborate conspiracy theories, presenting ourselves as a kind of Spectre or
of Masonry engaged in occult world-domination plans.

Our ears are still tinning from such vibrant denounciations. We have been
stigmatised as "lunatic adepts of materialist futur-scientism",
"technologically advances, and spiritually putrefied, humanoids", "biotech
Talibans", "extramists of human manipulation", "advocates for an aseptic,
emotionless world", "enemies of the human species", "weird cultists",
"eugenic totalitarians", "devil's agents", "devisers of monsters", etc.

Even though the latter sources are not predominant, they are nevertheless
very vociferous. Thus, a resolute and clear response is required to clear
away a few negative stereotypes.

Given the extraordinary parallelism of this situation, we are not resisting
the temptation to paraphrase the incipit of a famous XIX century manifesto,
that signed by Marx and Engels: there is a ghost wandering throughout the
world, the ghost of transhumanism. All the old-world powers-that-be are have
formed a coalition in a scared witch-hunting against this ghost. Hence two
consequences: transhumanism is by now recognised as a powerful myth by world
powers. Time has come that transhumanists openly present to the world their
perspective, their worldview, their propensities, and that they oppose to
the ghost stories about transhumanism a manifesto of their own ideas.

The most widespread biases are at least three, and precisely concern the
movement internal differences, that is to say that it would be sterile to
limit oneself to victimisation, blaming for them our adversaries and bad
press. Our divisions objectively play a negative role, at least as much as
they hinder a clean and unitary response to those unfounded allegations.

1) The bias of plutocratic élitism

According to this point of view, transhumanists would be an élite of members
of the upper middle classes, who plan to enhance themselves at a mental and
physical level, becoming immortal demigods, a new superhuman species, in the
best scenario ignoring the rest of their communities, and in the worst
aiming at enslaving them. They would do that without openly resorting to
violence, but simply working in order to have market laws to become the only
universal law. The strategy of transhumanists would be one and the same with
that of international megacorporations and with the establishment of a world
government, which would be nothing else than a single planetary market ruled
by the US of A, the new world policeman, the new Empire.

In this scenario, once the national health services demolished, and the
nations themselves with their welfare policies dismantled, the painless
access to power of such an evil élite would take place. If biotechnologies
are going to be expensive, and nothing suggest they are not going to be,
considering how much recostructive dental care cost today in Italy, only the
rich will be able to enhance themselves, and accordingly what is today class
struggle will become a species struggle. And such struggle could not end
otherwise than with the total victory of the superhuman species over the
weaker human species.

An additional instrument to this goal would be the establishment of an
Orwellian State. Transhumanists would strive to persuade citizens to take
psycho-active drugs or to install underskin chips so that they could be
better controlled. In other words, they would launch new fashions, after
networked computers and mobile phones - which by the way already allow
authorities to spy and control citizens' thoughts and movements - in order
to improve this unconscious slavery. The citizen still believes to be in a
position to protect its privacy and to enjoy secure communication by
switching off computers and mobile phones and meeting outdoor. But this is a
delusion. We have already entered an era of control and repression through
new devices: a cloud of orbital satellites, from which it is possible to
read a car plate or the labial movements of an individual; videocameras at
every street corners and in every building in the name of national security;
drug treatments aimed at creating addictions or at making people less
restless, and thus more pliant and compliant, children included; and
artificial insects or "smart dust" made of spying nanobots that can control
us in any location, including our own home. Thus, invasive and pervasive
technologies, underskin microchips or directly in the brain, would simply
represent the last stage of that Machiavelic project. And transhumanists
would be nothing else that agents at the service of the Big Brother.

2) The bias of cultism

Transumanists would be just a new sect, in the pursuit of the abovementioned
evil goals, also in order to replace existing religions with a new universal
cult. Essentials of this new theology would the existence of a spiritual God
whose servants would be preparing the final Coming. the Incarnation, through
the development of ever-more-sophisticated computers and robots. When AI
implementations will be infinitely more powerful and intelligent than those
currently in existence, amnd they will be all connected in a single
planetary network, the resulting supernatural entity will enter its machinic
triumph, will become synthetic flesh, to reinstate heaven on earth. At that
time, the human beings shall be invited (or compelled) to upload their mind
in the Supercomputer, and live their life in the form of disembodied
avatars, a little like our alter egos in Second Life. Even the dead would be
resurrected in this form. And the Computer-God will probably reserve the
right to judge the dead and the alive, and to modify slightly the most
dangerous humans (Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein), so that any harm to the
System forever be avoided.

This is an eschatological event that many confuse with the Singularity, even
though the latter has no univocal definition. Then, the Computer-God would
expand in the  universe, converting all matter and energy in computation,
until the entire universe or multiverse will be nothing else than a grand
computing machine. Thus, the end of being will be reached: the absolute
self-awareness of the universe.

Of course, for atheist critics, this Computer-God is nothing else than the
God of monotheist religions under a thin technological veneer. For christian
critics, all that can only be blasphemous, unless of course the Computer-God
is the Devil itself.

3) The bias of quackery

Transhumanists, rather than referring to official, mainstream science, would
believe to utopian, futurist, science-fiction fairy tales. The
abovementioned scenarios can be believed only by taking more than a few
liberties not just with natural sciences, but with social sciences as well.
A serious analysis must in fact take into account all the available
information and data, including feedbacks and built-in limitations, and not
just extrapolate trends from a few discoveries and inventions that would be
best in accord with one's desires and hopes. But, according to critics,
transhumanists are either naive or charlatans. They would equally ignore
science and philosophy. Thus, from the fact that the Braingate allows to
transfer electric signals from the brain to a machine, they would hasten to
conclude that, hop, all individuals will be soon uploaded on a digital
computer, thus resolving once forever the problem of death. From the fact
that the processing power of computers double every eighteen months,
according to Moore's Law, they would infer that some kind of Singularity is
not only possible, but certain and very imminent.

Now, needless to say, there appears a rather sharp contrast between the poll
results reported hereabove and those three biases. And there are also a few
contradictions amongst those biases: e.g., either we are a group of
charlatans, or we are a dangerous élite secretly ruling the world, we can
hardly be both. But all that happens because transhumanist fringes more
inclined to far-fetched or less plausible positions, even though they are a
minority within transhumanism, are more newsworthy. The "crazy technomaniac
plutocrat" is a more savoury character, for traditional mass-media and blogs
alike, than a citizen demanding access to technologies, irrespective of how
radical and revolutionary the latter may be. Thus, the former image is more
likely to be sticked on transhumanists than the latter.

*A strategy for the Italian transhumanist movement*

We are persuaded that it is necessary and urgent to codify the principles
and the goals of the Italian transhumanist movement in order to communicate
a cleare and sharper image of the same. This means that choices have to be
taken, a shared programme has to be defined, first of all to clear away the
three abovementioned  negative biases. In doing that we do not intend to
mark a distance from the WTA and from the global transhumanist movement. We
mean exactly the opposite, that is to make more evident those that already
appear to be dominant views within the transhumanist world, only too often
hidden behind a mistaken idea of pluralism.

It is obvious that the first goal of transhumanism is that of favouring the
scientific and technological developments, and in that we do not depart in
the least from the line of other transhumanists and extropians in other
countries, but the *cultural and social conditions where such developments
can or cannot take place are not a marginal or secondary problem*. On the
contrary, it is exactly at the level of cultural and social engagement that
the raison d'etre of our movement is deployed, given that many other
subjects are involved in those developments.

Accordingly, we have resolved to put on (digital) paper our own three main
battlefields:
A) the struggle for access to technologies and information;
B) the struggle against cultural and political clerical egemony;
C) the struggle for the diffusion of the technoscientific worldview.

Those priorities, which will presently better explained, represent a
meditated synthesis of the different "souls" of the movement - i.e., a
synthesis that takes into account the substance and the weight of our
various propensities and concern. This is for us *transhumanism without
further qualifications*.

A) The struggle for access to technologies and information

If we consider i) that the vast majority of the transhumanists identify
themselves as left-wingers or upwingers; ii) that most   non-libertarian
right-wingers and religious moderates have, especially in Italy, a
communitarian orientation iii) that even libertarians in Europe (what in
Europe are called "liberals") are not prejudicially against social and
public policies in the fields of research, education and health services -
we can conclude that the bias of "plutocratic élitism", that is the
suspicion that transhumanism is an upper middle-class conspiracy against
their fellow citizens, is purely caricatural. In other words, an image
unvoluntarily diffused by a minority of minarchists and anarco-capitalists
is sticked on the entire world movement.

Why, we explicitely declare hereby that *Italian transhumanists* - who
happen by the way to share this view with the majority of transhumanists
worldwide - *support the efforts of all those struggling against the
exclusion from current and future technologies*, at a social as well as at a
international level.

The transhumanist commitment towards technological and informational
empowerment can be summarised in three level of intervention: freedom,
development, access.

If the struggle to obtain that increasing human and economic resources be
devoted to technoscience and research is a fundamental step, it is equally
obvious that without a real freedom of research, as defined by the
scientific method and ethos, the such fight would be futile. The resources
would be simply wasted. Our priority is therefore that of a
anti-prohibitionist fight in order to obtain the freedom for the scientific
research in all fields, plus the freedom to mutate, to evolve, to transform
one's phenotype and one's genotype. To be more specific, the optimal
employment of already meager available resources is today seriously hindered
by liberty-destroying laws such as Law no. 40/2004, dealing with procreative
technologies, cloning, genetic engineering and staminal cells research. The
abrogation or radical  reform of this statute is the top specific goal of
Italian transhumanists.

At a second level, we find the issue of development. Once obtained the
liberation of prometheic technoscientific research from religious, political
and economic hindrances, a plan must be establised to stimulate research
programmes that, with all due respect to researchers' autonomy, should not
lose sight of priorities related to the improvement of social and individual
conditions, starting from health, quality of life and life expectancy. In
this context, Italy, a relative forerunner in the field of robotics, does
not invest enough in the biotech area, starting from fundamental biological
research up to gerontology and cutting-edge medical research. On the other
hand, it is obvious that an efforts in this direction would not make sense
without a reform of the Italian research and academic system in the sense of
greater transparency, meritocracy and efficiency.

But certainly we do not stop here. We should not be contented with formal
freedom and and effective public support to technoscientif research
programmes, we also demand substantial freedom. Which means demanding and
obtaining as well social policies and guarantees, so that one's income does
not end up being the only parameter deciding who has the actual chance of
enhancing oneself, of slowing down aging, of postponing death. It means
popular sharing of benefits of scientific research and technological
innovation. It means a socialised access to technologies. A citizen may be
entitled to decide what to do with his or her own life, but citizens must be
supported in such choice by the community they belong to, last but not least
because it would be very myopic to be ambigous on this point, something
which would throw in the bioludite camp the mass of the excluded.

A policy of shared access to technology is perfectly legitimised by the
collective nature of the scientific effort. Each and every discovery,
invention, innovation, owes its existence to the joint effort of many minds,
working in different places and eras. When we were born, our community made
us to participate in its language, knowledges, information. Our personality
does not come from nihil. This is true for citizens as well as for
scientists and researchers. A quantum computer, for instance, manufactured
by an international company would not be conceivable without the ideas of
Democritus, Galileo, Leibniz and many other thinkers. Moreover, scientific
research is often directly or indirectly financed or made possible by public
funding. It would be unfair to take money from workers' and citizens'
pockets to finance research programmes the ultimate result of which would be
their social marginalisation of most of them. The inventor and the
discoverer deserve recognition, including of a monetary nature, which may
also be necessary to make possible the private funding of their efforts, but
it is exceedingly inefficient to grant unconditional and monopolistic
proprietary rights on new technologies by the mechanical and ever more
extensive granting of patent and other protection that may vastly exceed the
abovementioned purposes and not recognise the collective contribution behind
the releval findings.

The negative side effects of this mistaken pereception of science and
technology as a proprietary product of private efforts are very visible.
They take place in in a world where, notwithstanding any technological
progress, human beings are often still labouring the same number of hours in
more precarious contexts than their fathers and without profiting from many
results of the developments taking place. In this we identify a flaw of
current production systems which should be corrected.

What we do not wanti is a society where access to enhancing technologies
would be  decided exclusively on the basis of personal income. We are not
against private enterprise in the field of new technologies. On the
contrary, we should like to see it encouraged and supported, by - inter alia
- the adoption of all regulatory measures required to allow the deployment
of its full potential. We have no qualms in having confidence in the market
whenever it can show better results at lower costs (may it suffice to
mention here low-cost flights and consumer electronics). It is a fact that
liberalisations often favour the consumers, including what was once called
the "proletariat" and is now  more soberly defined the "working class".

Nevertheless, our trust in the market mechanisms is not unconditional. For
us, the market is not an article of faith, but simply a tool. More than once
it has historically appeared not to deliver the desidered results in the
appropriate timeframe. To electrify our entire country we had to wait for a
crucial State intervention. The infrastructure of our transportation system,
education system, health services, research  programmes, exist thank to the
fact that the State has acted. Space exploration and nuclear technologies
have been developed through public programmes, and most often for reasons
more related to power and prestige than to immediate monetary profit.

Hence, whenever private businesses do not appear able to produce the
necessary efforts in the sectors that we deem strategic, of fail in
delivering the desired results, and for failure we also mean an inability to
provide the related services at affordable prices to interested citizens, or
to support adequately fundamental research in the concerned sector, the
State shall act - or the community itself, according to cooperative models
that it is exactly technology to make possible, as is the case for Open
Source software development. Or, in any event, we are engaged to make such
actions take place.

As far as human biotechnologies are concerned, in Italy we can take a more
specific stance, since we have a public infrastructure already in place that
can be put at use for the researching, testing  and deployment of new
therapies and enhancing procedures: the Servizio Sanitario Nazionale, the
Italian National Health Service. Certainly it does not work optimally, cases
of curruption and negligence exist. wastes and nepotism are far from unheard
of, but several international agencies judge it comparatively one of the
best in the world. Every time new therapies become available that slow down
aging and increase life expectancy, if the private sector hesitates or fail
or finds itself in a position to extract excessive profits to the detriment
of their diffusion, the public intervention must guarantee that  Italian
citizens may have not just a free and informed, but also real, choice
concerning their adoption.

And this is a commitment that may well start as of now, so that disabled and
senior citizens may access the best therapies and prosthetic solutions. In
fact, interestingly, 21% of WTA members worldwide have some form of
disability, and in Italy and Europe we similarly feel the need to offer
concrete answers to all those that, even though they may have never heard of
transhumanism, may find themselves in such conditions. The lack of resources
is not an acceptable excuse, especially considering the enormous wastes that
currently denote public expenditures in our country.

We realise that in some countries millions of people are denied even basic
health services. But if the excluded tolerate such predicament, possibly
being consoled by the fact that common lot of humankind, that is aging and
death, is going to be their avenger, the scenario might change radically
when regenerative therapies based onm stem cell or other technologies were
to bring forward an actual rejuvenation or a significant extension of the
life span of the relevant patients. In this event, the excluded might even
entertain the idea of violent actions against those profiting from medical
advancement without concern for the destiny of other members of their
community. The desiero to own a more expensive residence or car is not
exactly as the prospective of living in good health untile age two-hundred
rather than to die not much later than seventy owing to progressive and
inexorable degeneration. The scenario of a rebellion of the excluded should
always be kept in mind in this discussion, and requires quick and concrete
preemptive responses. The efforts aimed at spreading the access to therapies
should be begin now, so that when new, radical biotechnologies emerge a
working model be already in place.

The same approach is applicable to the robotic, AI, and nanotech sectors. As
long as private entrepreneurs make good-quality services and products widely
available at competitive and affordable prices, public agencies and citizens
may restrict  themselves to a watching role. If, on the contrary,
distortions and inefficiencies are remarked, then Italian transhumanists
shall support the idea of a direct State intervention, even though this
might end up conflicting with the intererests of international companies and
big businesses. In other terms, confidence in the private sector, but
confidence of a conditional nature. If it does not work, it become
inevitable to consider the possibility of a socialisation of what are from
the transhumanist point of view the key sectors, namely biotechnology,
robotic and nanotechnology industries, to ensure results, popular control
and social justice.

But transhumanists are able to look beyond traditional politics. The birth
and the development of the Internet and of virtual communities encourage to
reconsider a number of issues such as the granting, the handling and the
management of technological patents, the laws on copyright, the Open Source
model, the digital and satellite surveillance systems, and citizens'
privacy. The technological developments emphasise the inadequacy of a
political class still reasoning in terms of private vs. public or within the
limited viewpoint of nation states. It is not necessary to fall in the
temptation of anti-political populism to remark that it is a fact - but for
rare and praiseworthy exceptions - we are ruled by a class that, also owing
to its typical age and education, is far from realising the revolutionary
scope of the Internet and associates only too often the Net just to
pornography and gambling, in the hope of exorcising it or of justifying
censorship and bureaucratisation.

Now, the fact that transhumanists do not have much to do with an Orwellian
State of censorship and pervasive control, but are inclined instead to fight
it, is quite obvious for two simple reasons. Firstly, Big Brother was
already here before the birth of the transumanist movement. Secondly, were
we amongst the supporters and creators of an Orwellian State, why ever
should we be here to discuss it? Shouldn't it be more productive to conspire
in the darkness? Let us say it loud and clear: our public action  is the
most obvious and glaring proof that those who concoct and diffuse conspiracy
theories about us is grossly mistaken or in bad faith.

Our enemies know only too well that we are here to put in place a
counteroffensive against all attempts to reduce the freedom of peoples and
citizens. And such a counteroffensive can be put in place only through the
reappropriation of technologies, including at an individual level. If an
evil global ruling class exists, its interest is rather that of keeping
peoples out of, and far from, access to technology, know-how, and
information. Because Sir Francis Baconì's say is still valid: knowledge is
power.

We do not invite anybody to employ dangerous drugs or install underskin
chips as a matter of course. We simply maintain that attempts to escape from
technology, or to emphasise its negative potential, are naive and
counterproductive, since this means relinquishing power to others. The trap
of neoprimitivist sirens should be avoided. Those who spread the longing for
a never-existed idyllic past or the desire for an impossible and
philosophically unsound "return to Nature" weaken their people and deliver
them to slavery. We should instead learn as much as possible, be open to the
future, and accept the idea that freedom is conquered day by day, by
upgrades and updates.

The fact that the "System" may profit from more advanced technologies is
true only in part. Everybody can see that technopyles and hackers are often
more skillful than the ruling classes and their agents. But even admitting
that ruling classes have access to better technologies, to more advanced
communication and surveillance systems, one should not forget that
know-hows, information, personal skills and motivation still play a
fundamental role. The performances of a technology also depend on our
ability to make use of it. We can see it everyday. Thus, it may be true that
"them" (both very public and possible occult "them") may spy on "us", the
people, but it is also true that they can be similarly watched and and
checked by us, exactly as technology increases our ability to spread
important data, news and information, including through unofficial channels.
Knowledge is everything, information is everything.

The developments of communication technology are therefore heartily welcome,
notwithstanding their many perils, because they favour the free circulation
of  information and knowledge, which used to be dominated by public and
private monopolies. If with respect to tangible assets and services we try
to go beyond the traditional dichotomy between the State and the Market, and
to be flexible, we have a decidedly more communitarian view of information
and knowledge. The difference should not be missed here between tangible
assets, as real estate or commodities, and intangible goods in the nature of
information or knowledge. While the transfer of a tangible asset from one
owner to another is a zero-sum game, in the sense that it impoverish the
first player as it enriches the second, the free circulation of information
and knowledge within a community enriches the transferee without depriving
of it the transferor. This is why we squarely support the wide and free
diffusion of information and knowledge, an attitude which always denotes the
scientific community.

In short, our approach is denoted by strategic and value criteria that
originate from from different ideological components of transhumanism. Those
who insist on the importance of the market mechanisms and of a free society
are often extropians; tecnoprogs tend to be concerned with social justice
and State intervention; and those with a more Nietschean or postmodern
penchant are likely to emphasise the importance of empowerment, popular
sovereignty and cultural and ethnic identities. Let us make it clear,
however, that in the synthetic vision above the centrality is lost of the
three grand idols of the ideologies of the XIX and XX centuries: the market,
the State, the race. They lose their place in the name of a higher value,
self-directed evolution. And they are made merely instrumental to that
value. We cannot have any real synthesis without an overcoming of one's
past. In all sincerity, we can do without sectarians perpetually turned
backwards. We should like open minds that look forward and are ready to put
themselves into play, to share their values, without demanding that they
remain unique, hegemonic or unchanged.

B) The struggle against cultural and political clerical egemony in Italy

As far as religion is concerned, our current predicament is similar.
Atheists, agnostic appear to be almost 70% amongst WTA members, but one
should additionally consider that it is America that notably raise the
percentage of the minority of "believers". The rate of those who do not
adhere to metaphysical denominations and creeds is substantially higher in
Europe and in Italy, and is close to the totality of the respondents of the
WTA poll. Lastly, it should be kept in mind that pagans, pantheists and
buddhist do not believe in the personal God of monotheist religions, so that
they can be counted as well in the category of "non-believers". Moreover,
only 1% considers transhumanism itself as a traditional "religion".

In this framework, it is easy to understand how groundless the prejudicial
allegation of cultism is. The factual truth has nothing to do with it.
Italian and European transhumanists are not just tolerant towards all
religions, but rather basically indifferent, if not diffident, towards
dominant religions. This indifference often translates into free-thought
activism or militantism.

It should be stressed that such orientation has matured by itself. Given
that we were vehemently attacked by the catholic church and by
church-affiliated politicians and intellectuals since our very first public
appearances, we have attracted, like it or not, above all atheists,
agnostics or neopagans, with a generally secularist attitude. This certainly
does not mean that we intend to close our door face to those who adhere to a
church. The problem does not consist in the metaphysical postulates that are
still present in our culture, the problem is the constant attempt to make
them hegemonic, and a public adhesion thereto substantially compulsory. The
existence of the so-called "devoted atheists" (a group of intellectuals that
while not being christian themselves adamantly support christian values, as
well as the cultural and political power of the catholic church in the
Italian society) illustrates how christian fundamentalists are not the only
one not to recognise the need for a State really independent from clerical
power, and that do not accord any preference or privilege to any creed.

It is therefore of little surprise that transhumanists, in this desolating
landscape, has been immediately pointed at by clericalism's advocates as a
threat. And this is why for us the material independence from religious
denominations and clerical power of public bodies and agencies and services,
especially those that are crucial for our goals, such as the school system,
the universities, the research centres, the health services, the bioethic
committees - is an absolute priority. In fact, pragmatically, we even tend
to prefer open-minded christians than atheist advocates of clerical power
and cultural hegemony. Accodingly, the splitting line remains for us on the
dichotomy clericalism-secularism, more than on the line
monotheists-atheists.

This does not imply that profound philosophical difficulties be non-existent
that could generate worldview conflicts between transhumanism and
catholicism. It is pretty clear that we adhere to anthropological views
hardly compatible with an orthodox christian anthropology and, especially,
with that currently preached by the Vatican and by American evangelical
protestantism. If for christians the man is made in God's image and we see,
in a Nietzschean sense, the man as something which should be overcome., it
is obvious how hard will be to conjugate our discourse with the christian
narrative. The problem is not really the embryo or the right to life, but
rather the idea that the man be allowed to change himself and the world
according to its will, that he can master its destiny brandishing his
technoscience rather than trusting in the faith and the providence. Only
with a radical reform of its dogmas catholicism could integrate itself with
the development in an evolutionary sense of man and his technologies.

For the time being, on the other hand, it appears that the catholic church
is regressing towards premodern and fundamentalist positions rather than
reforming itself. But this is none of our business. What we care to
emphasise is the fact that the allegation of cultism is false. It is bizarre
to suspect transhumanism of religious propensities or sectarism, let alone
of a theistic nature. Transhumanism is not and should not be defined as a
religion, at least in the current meaning of the word, even though nothing
prevents one from interpreting it as an alternative to traditional
religions., or as a vision that may coexist with some sort of religious
worldview.

Even though we are open to debate with anyone, we have to accept that for
the time being an agreement on principles with the catholic establishment
appears impossible, especially with regard to issues such as reproductive
technologies and biotechnological research. Now, some kind of entente has
been insistently promoted by a few Italian who claim to be inspired by
extropism, but appear to be closer in fact to neoconservative sectors of the
Italian and American establishment. We do not believe that such proposal can
be seriously taken into consideration, besides not being especially in line
with extropic spirit, considering that Max More, the founder of the Extropy
Institute, never made a secret of his positions, which appear not only
secular, but squarely opposed to religious biases and and clerical hegemony.
In fact, "negotiations" cannot take place with the catholic establishment,
if anything because it makes abundantly clear that their values are not
negotiable. Negotiations imply the idea of a possible compromise, of a
mid-way meeting from different positions, but even if we were willing to do
so, whenever the other party assumes to be indisputably and absolutely on
the side of the angels and do not envisage any kind of compromise, what
would possible discussions be about? What they demand is unconditional
surrender. And we shall not accept such a capitulation.

C) The struggle for the diffusion of the technoscientific worldview

Transhumanists adhere to different epistemological doctrines. Amongst us,
one can find critical empiricists and rationalists, neopositivists and
pragmatists, inductivists and deductivists, realists and relativists,
modernists and postmodernists. But whatever the image of science that our
member espouse, they all share a confidence in science - in the broadest
sense of the word, as the form of knowledge that is based on logic and
experimental evidence.

There are those who see science as a value per se and those who rather
consider it as a tool, those who enthused on its cognitive potential and
those who define it in connection with its ability to establish
technologies, but amongst transhumanists science enemies or deniers can
hardly be found. And when we say "science" we do not refer to
pseudosciences, we make reference to official, established, mainstream
science accepted by the academia and the international scientific community
through peer-reviewed work and general consent. This of course without
dreaming of denying distortions, endemic conservatorism,  clientelism that
may affect the process and unduly slow down or resist the  success of new
theoretical, methodological or technical breakthroughs and changes of
paradigm, especially in the academia.

The synthesis of our all our philosophical and epistemological positions
goes therefore in the sense of a scientific worldview.

If this is the case - and considering that the leading and most influential
transhumanists work in the best universities and research centres of the
world, humanities departments included - one cannot but be astonished by the
charge of quackery that is often raised against transhumanism. There again,
we have heere an obvious communication problem. In our view, this problem
arises from the fact that transhumanist intellectuals have often being
involved in the sketching of futurist scenarios and in the tentative
extrapolation of current trends. This activity is perfectly legitimate, but
the undesirable side effect has been that mass media tend to focus on the
most curious or sensational aspects of such speculations, rather than the
serious research projects that denote the everyday work of many
transhumanists.

This is why it is urgent to make explicit that for us the border between
science and science fiction is extremely well defined. One thing are
scientific theories, another are futurist speculations or engineering
thought experiments. Those two areas have different purposes.
Technoscientific research is aimed at elaborate, enrich and deepen our
knowledge and power on the world, while futurist speculations - which cannot
be considered as science, since they make non-verifiable, albeit more or
less plausible,  hypotheses on possible future events - is rather concerned
with the mental exploration of different future developments of the present
circumstances and of other, sometimes unexpected, factors. Without any
certainty, without any faith in things "bound to happen".

As the transhumanist is perfectly clear on the hypothetical and speculative
nature of futurist scenarios and misunderstandings continue nevertheless to
arise, a new communication strategy should be adopted, namely by avoiding
the mixing up of far-fetched speculations in the official transhumanist
discourse. Once again, with this choice we do nothing else than to give its
due prominence to what are majority views throughout the international
transhumanist movement.

Let us consider the controversial issue of longevism and immortalism. From
the WTA poll repeatedly mentioned therein, it appears, as already noted,
that a mere 7% of WTA members believe in the possibility of an earthly
immortality, while 93% believes in the more sober and immediate prospective
of a radical extension of our life expectancy (a trend that is undeniably
already in place) and of our species's lifespan. As a first concrete stance,
Italian transhumanists have decide to limit drastically the rhetorics
connected with the use of the world "immortality". We do not promise
immortality, nor we indicate it as an item in our agenda. It is too far away
from immediate possibilities offered or envisaged by mainstream science.
Besides, even after an indefinite extension of our life span, many possible
causes of death would remain, from a car accident to the exhaustion of our
sun's nuclear fuel. Were humans or posthumans to quit the planet before its
doom, there are obviously no certainties that every single individual may
survive, let alone resurrect from the dead, or that a convenient cosmology
is applicable to our universe place allowing an eternal processing of the
information defining his or her identity. Let us leave in the theologians'
and novelists' camp concepts such as the conversion of all matter in the
universe into a single thinking and divine being.

If we really should venture in futurist speculations, the scenario would in
fact seem more plausible which is sketched in François Lyotard's *Moralités
postmodernes*, with our successors compelled to relocate in order to survive
the death of the planet Earth, but more similar to a space caravan of
cyborgs and mutants than to a godlike supercomputer containing all the
conceivable knowledge and able to expand triumphally out of the borders of
our galaxy. As stronger and more intelligent than existing human beings they
may be, the sentients of the future will inevitably remain weaker than
natural forces - which makes only more interesting and worth living their
challenge to the latter.

In summary, only when a technology exists and is experimentally proved it
should become part of transhumanist immediate policies and denote its action
programmes - that are in general aimed at obtaining its implementation and
access to the same. Until then, it can only be a working hypothesis for
scientists in their laboratories or of science fiction writers in their
literary works. Transhumanists are ready to recognise the importance of
those speculations, because they help to give sense and a direction to their
action and offer a a long-term vision allowing to frame contemporary
problems in a broader, more "cosmic" prospective. But we cannot base present
policies on hypotheses that for the time being are only theoretically
feasible, such as mind-uploading or an AI Singularity. We would deem it
hardly convenient, since it would risk to change transhumanism in a new
"opium of the people". We do not want transhumanists to ignore the struggle
for access to real or present technologies, such as IVF, cloning, cybernetic
prosthetics, artificial organs, ubiquitous broadband, nanobots, OGMs, new
sources of energy, etc., in view of a salvation or a rapture by a future
possible Computer-God, or the final defeat of scarcity thank to the coming
of the Universal Nanomolecular Assembler - let alone without really caring
of the social, political, national, economic context in which new
technologies see the light, that is of the "when, where, why, who" of future
developments, which is what makes all the difference for real people.

*A closure, to go back to action
*
We are not deluded that, by making those three fight guidelines public, the
attacks against transhumanism will eventually cease. We expect on the
contrary that they will take new forms, equally imbibed of biases and
falsehoods. But this is not a source of concern for us, as it is part of the
dynamics of the political and cultural debate. By saying that we should not
like to indulge in self-victimisation, a stance hardly compatible with our
fierce and joyful attitude, but simply to concede ourselves a touch of
irony.  Having invited the people to diffuse knowledge, to resist
censorship, to fight discrimination, we shall now be accused of anti-System
subversion. Having demanded a non-confessional State and public life, we
shall be accused of atheist fundamentalism. Having defended the cognitive
possibilities of science and the usefulness of its applications, we shall
now be accused of naive scientism.

"Scientism" has become a swearword, almost an insult, as in fact have
"irreligious" or "revolutionary". In general, both the word "atheism" as the
word "scientism" are ritually followed by some reference to the XIX century,
to imply that they have no more reason d'etre, as outfashioned concepts. Too
bad that those who would like hastily to relegate those ideas some kind of
historic dustbin, usually do that in the name of much older and more stale
ideas, as creationism or the christian dogmas.  Why, if an ideas is to be
disposed of because it was born in the XIX century, what should we do with
ideas that become widespread in Europe in the IV century? Besides, while
monotheistic religions, being based on one "Revelation" or another, cannot
change, secular philosophies evolve, adapt to times, to new knowledges, to
new feelings. Similarly, scientific worldviews have also evolved. If it used
to be "naive", meaning that it assumed science to be able to reach certain
and final theories about the world that were simply accumulating with time,
now have become critical. The adept of naive scientism thought that science
was the sole acceptable source of knowledge and that scientific methods had
to be applied to all aspects of reality. "Critical scientism" maintains
something different, namely that several diverse forms of knowledge, but
that science is a legitimate and even preferred form of knowledge, and it is
therefore possible, albeit uncompulsory, to apply scientific methods to all
aspects of reality.

Such approach respects philosophical insights, since - contrary to XIX
century scientism - they are aware that the scientific worldview itself is a
philosophy, is part of philosophy - as it is used to be the case, by the
way, before the coming of monotheism in Europe. In other words, it has
profited from postmodern and critical studies. With anti-science
postmodernism the debate may have been fierce, but exactly those "science
wars" have allowed to refine this position. As an army after the battle may
appropriate also the weapons and the insignia of the enemy, many of those
who nowadeays gives great importance to  scientific worldviews do not
hesitate to qualify themselves as well in a critical and postmodern fashion.
If the acritical scientist of the XIX century was persuaded that we can know
everything, and the sceptical of the XX century was inclined to believe that
nothing could be really known after all, such critical position simply
maintains that there are things which we can know with sufficient
probability and for all practical purposes.

But, even though this might reflect once more a synthesis, namely in the
meta-science field, be it far from us the idea of applying any prefabricated
label to transhumansts in this field. On the contrary, it is our intention
to let everybody define oneself as he or she sees it fit, as long as he or
she adheres to the three agenda items defined above and contributes to their
fulfilment.

Let us just conclude with a last remark, before getting back to action. If
somebody intends to go on playing the game of labelling ou movement, let he
or she be aware that rather than being accused of plutocratic élitism, we
would prefer to be considered to be advocates of subversion; rather than
being even vaguely associates with religious cults we would prefer to be
considered as atheist militants; and rather than being accused of quackery,
we prefer to be considered as adept of scientism.

Be it clear, however, that we remain always and only transhumanists.

(*) This manifesto has been compiled by Riccardo Campa, president of the
Associazione Italiana Transumanisti. Amongst the many members of the
association who have contributed suggestions, ideas, comments, and
amendments,  a special mention goes to Giuseppe Lucchini, Alberto Masala,
Giulio Prisco and Stefano Vaj. The manifesto has been unanimously approved
by the AIT National Board on the 11th of February, 2008.>>
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