Bruce Charlton's Notions

Transhumanism is not ridiculous - not something to be disposed of with a sneer - rather, Transhumanism is the implicit religion of modern, secular Leftism - it is mainstream and near-universal in the West - it has great power and reach - it underpins the main assumptions of public discourse and policy.

In sum, most modern Western people's actual lives and opinions are based on the Transhumanist belief that Man can, will and should transcend his humanity -- and that the nature of humanity, as it has existed so far, should be considered as a set of defects and limitations that need to be transcended.

Transhumanism is an incremental outgrowth of the secular religion of progress - it sees itself as the optimistic alternative among modern secular Leftist ideologies.

What is Transhumanism? -- well, it is a network of beliefs that people can/ will - sooner-or-later/ and should:

1. Always be happy - never suffer (except insofar as they wish to)

2. Never be ill, never age

3. Never die - there will be no ageing (see above) and death will be infinitely postpone-able - the person will be open-endedly repairable or restoreable - death will be reversible

4. Be able to improve intelligence, personality, strength, capacity for pleasure etc - beyond anything yet attained by any human

5. Be able to change sex, make new sexes, abolish sexual identity and the need for sex itself - or redefine and modify them endlessly

6. Wholly detach reproduction from sex - be able to make babies, perfect babies, without intervention of parents - to bring them up perfectly without 'need' for families

7. Go beyond historical levels of human wisdom, goodness - achieve a higher morality (which will be effortless and universal)

and so on...


None of these things have actually been achieved, indeed in many ways we are further from achieving them than we were a few decades ago - as human capability dwindles and hype increases...

But the core idea is to live-by the belief that such things could-happen - and therefore we should behave asif they have-happened.


Capability dissolves good and evil - because good and evil are subsumed within pleasure/ pain - and when good is pleasure, and pleasure is psychological - then goodness become the technical problem of ensuring pleasure (and abolishing pain) and removing any obstacles to this - and any 'moral' factors which interfere with this can and should be engineered-away.

Human nature is something to created and recreated - the purpose of Transhumanism is, after all to transcend the human; so the core project is not to make humans happier but to go beyond humans - the idea is that humans should build something better than humans - where better is seen in terms of the hedonic axis of pleasure/ fulfillment versus suffering/ misery, such that any human, biological, historical limitation on positive emotional states can and should be removed.

Because, from the Transhumanist perspective, to think otherwise is to want, and to enforce, pain, suffering and misery on oneself and others. And that is evil.


The basis of Transhumanism is that human limitation is the primary problem in life, and human capability is therefore the primary good for humanity; and more capability is better - because (and this is key) any problems that may arise from capability should/can/will be solved by more capability.


Name your problem, and Transhumanism has a solution: Loneliness? Solved by manipulating emotions, perhaps pharmacologically but ultimately genetically - so you cannot feel lonely anymore (i.e. human nature will be re-engineered to become immune to the problem).

Or technology will provide everyone with a perfect virtual social world - psychologically-indistinguishable from the real social world, and completely satisfying and available without limitation. (Meanwhile, the necessary work and reproduction will be done by other means.)

And people will never get fed-up of these solutions, because that fed-up-ness too will itself be engineered-away.


If you happen to believe or feel that the above approach is wrong or wicked or pathetic - then that too is something which can - and probably should - be edited-out -- because it is obstructive at best, evil at worst.

In the end, all reasons for misery and conflict will either be solved in reality, or else we will be re-engineered so as to case caring about them - so 'problems' will cease to be perceived as problems, 'limitations' will cease to be felt as limiations.

And this will not be boring, because boredom will become a thing of the past -- we will be satisfied with what we have, and the possibilities of novelty are open-ended - everything can be change; life will be an endless play and adventure - with all the thrills but none of the risk -- That is the Transhumanist hope, or promise.


The thing to recognize about Transhumanism is that it does not have any respect for human nature as it is - it sees nothing 'sacred' in humans as they are; indeed humans as they are are seen as on the one hand arbitrary, contingent products of natural selection - which could easily have been otherwise, and which are - anyway - simply optimized for average reproductive success under average ancestral conditions...

Why on earth should such a bundle of historical chances be preserved?

And further than this, human nature as it is is seen as a major problem - if not the major problem - because on the one hand we are full of aggression, hatred, sadism, spite etc - while on the other hand we are vulnerable to pain, misery, despair, terror and all manner of sufferings. Both sins and the vulnerability to sin can and should be deleted.


To understand Transhumanism, and understand its visceral appeal and its almost universal influence on modern values - one needs to appreciate, to experience for oneself, this intoxicating sense of liberation that comes from regarding Man as nothing but the contingent product of natural selection... 

One needs to feel the sense that every problem by progress can be solved by more progress - including that any insoluble problems can cease to be regarded as problems

- so that subjectively (so far as he knows) Man attains through progress nothing less than absolute freedom, and complete happiness - forever.

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Although explicitly confined to a tiny group of 'nerdy' intellectuals, Transhumanism has now become, implicitly, the most advanced and rigorous form of Left/Liberal/ Progressive ideology.

Transhumanism is the project, the desire, to regard as the primary virtue and have as the primary goal the abolition - via technology - of all forms of human suffering; including human disease, ageing and death - and beyond that to enable a continuous, albeit varied, state of happiness, bliss, positivity.

Transhumanism gets its name because it explicitly aims to transcend - that is to transform and improve - human nature.

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Until recently, all ideologies claimed or aimed to fulfil human nature - but in the nineteenth and twentieth century socialism or communism, then mainstream governments and corporations, aimed to change human nature - to make a New Man.

This was tried initially by psychological means - by propaganda, coercion, regimentation, brainwashing and the like. It was somewhat successful, but the results were far from complete. Transhumanism aims to extend and complete the process using biological means - the full range of modern technologies - pharmacology, surgical interventions, ultimately genetic re-reprogramming.

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Transhumanism may sound far-fetched, but one example is gender reassignment - in which technological (surgical and pharmacological) methods are used with the aim of changing a person's sex; and the results are nowadays in the West not a matter of individual opinion, but legally declared to have been successful.

A more mainstream example is that the majority of Western women have re-made their exteriors - using technological means - to simulate the exteriors of younger women - sometimes with, superficially (at a glance, from a distance), reasonable effectiveness. This also is deemed to have been a success - in that it is socially unacceptable, a slur or insult, to tell a woman over thirty that she looks as old as she actually is!

These provide examples of a similarity between the way that communism and transhumanism unfolded in practice - where the gap between aspiration and achievement was closed by force of law - and communism succeeded in the sense that was harshly-punishable to observe that communism had failed.

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With transhumanism, the intention is that utilitarianism (greatest happiness of the greatest number) would be operationalized and implemeted - any hope or ideal that happiness would be a matter of individual choice will stumble, fall and be trampled under the lability, subjectivity and inter-individual incompatibility from trying to make a social project out of an emotion.

Suffering is the worst evil, happiness now is the greatest good. These emotions will necessarily be decontextualized, abstracted and measured, so that they can be made into an engineering problem.

As with communism, these official measures of suffering and happiness will be made true by definition when their truth is disputed by individuals or spontaneous mass behaviour - and the crudity and coercion will be justified in terms of the imperative importance of the long term goals. 

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The problems of transhumanism are the same as the problems of communism, because it it trying to achieve the same ends merely by different means.

Transhumanism ignores the intractable problems of Leftism by dazzling itself with a vision of technological possibility; as when people are intoxicated by the idea that this could be a wonderful world if only everybody was sensible and nice to each other - which is true enough, as far as it goes...

For transhumanism, the world could be a lot better if technology was harnessed primarily to alleviate suffering and promote happiness - this also is true enough, so far as it goes; but meanwhile in the world the pharmaceutical companies - whose advertised intentions are transhumanist in nature - are actually mass marketing fake illnesses in order to sell drugs that reduce functionality and create dependence. 

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There are two major worries about transhumanism - that it will not work but like communism and Big Pharma the dishonest attempt to implement it will cause vast unneccessary suffering.

Or that it will work, and human nature will either be transformed or at least twisted and distorted by genetic re-programming into - well who knows what?

Then we enter a scenario variously depicted by the Tower of Babel, Brave New World, and That Hideous Strength.

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The Transhumanist agenda (like most things) has two sides to it - depending on motivation.

For well-motivated transhumanists, for therapeutic transhumanists (as we might call them - a category including most of the people who openly call themselves by that name of transhumanism); it is the project to alleviate all pain and distress, maximise gratification and fulfillment, abolish ageing and sustain human life indefinitely. In other words, it is a kind of extrapolation of medicine from treatment into enhancement.


At a mild and quantitative level, this soft-transhumanism has nearly always been a part of human life - the idea to use human knowledge and technology to enhance human life. But taken as an imperative, when regarded as a kind of religion-substitute; even well-motivated transhumanism is deadly - because by its focus on trans-cending human limitations, it implies trans-forming humans into something else...

So that if the human condition entails suffering, then humans ought to be abolished; if humans cannot be prevented from ageing, then we should devise some alternative 'life' that is immune to ageing; if humans persist in dying, then humans should be replaced by something that doesn't die...

If the abolition of suffering is the primary goal, it implies the abolition of life - which would be the only way of ensuring that nobody and nothing suffered. Bottom line transhumanism is therefore only one step away from advocating death as prophylaxis.

Transhumanism also provides no reason for having children - and many reasons to avoid having children - since children usually suffer, and are typically a cause of suffering in their parents. The safe option is to avoid them.

Or, short of death, abolishing human consciousness, which greatly intensifies the possibilities of suffering. This suggests that a lobotomised life, a tranquillised life, a sedated life, a false-virtual life, a drugged-euphoric life are all preferable to a conscious and free life insofar as they entail less suffering or more pleasure. Even if such a life led to rapid death, it would be preferable on a purely hedonic calculus. 


But there is another side to transhumanism; which is the transhumanism that denies itself and operates by deception and dishonesty.

This is the transhumanism of mainstream, modern, almost-ubiquitous totalitarianism - a  transhumanism that aims at omni-surveillance and micro-control of the population.

This transhumanism sells itself as hedonic - as enhancing - but is motivated by the agenda of control. It is the strategic push for intercommunicating 'smart' technology, for omnipresent cameras and microphones, a society in which everyone carries a tracking device (smart phone) that monitors their activity to a fine level of discrimination - and seeks always to extend this (artificial 'intelligence', self-driving cars, the skies filled with drones...) - and to make it mandatory (microchip implants etc.).

This transhumanism has infiltrated medicine, with a massive and expanding use of prescribed psychotropic drugs - mostly SSRI-type 'antidepressants' and 'antipsychotics' marketed as 'mood stabilisers'...

These types of drugs (especially when given to young children and teens and essentially normal adults, as at present)  have a pronounced overall tendency to blunt emotions and induce a state of indifference - to partially-zombify people, to put it crudely. They all tend to increase suicide rates. Certainly they do more harm than good, overall - yet usage continues to expand - driven by serious problems of drug dependence and withdrawal symptoms, which are denied and hidden.

Much the same applies to the top-down mass campaigns of propaganda, funding and coercion to induce 'gender' uncertainty and same-sex attraction in children; and to 'treat' such situations with permanently harmful hormones and mutilating surgery. This is a crystal clear case of totalitarian transhumanism pushing forward under the guise of therapeutic transhumanism.


This totalitarian transhumanism is, I believe, an existential approach to social engineering, a core aspect of spiritual warfare; driven by the demonic powers of evil, and with the ultimate aim of compelling humans actually to want and to choose damnation.


So far, this totalitarian transhumanism has been spectacularly successful in persuading people that this is what they want. In this post-religious, anti-religious world it seems that most people are not just prepared to trade off freedom and privacy for amusement and convenience - they are positively queueing-up, and shelling-out large sums of money, to do so...

This totalitarian transhumanist agenda aims to implement a comprehensive system of surveillance and control so complete and dominant that it will be able to shape human emotions, motivations and knowledge as required.

My point here is to ascertain whether they are correct - supposing the totalitarian transhumanist agenda does, as seems to be happening, go-through to a very high level of completion. Suppose the world becomes one of omni-surveillance and micro-monitoring and control of behaviour...

Suppose the world is a single gigantic and interlinked System which affects the entirety of perception and extends into our bodies (via brain and hormone influencing microchips, or whatever might replace them).

Suppose that the demonic evil powers are in control of this total-system - so that they decide what we perceive - and are substantially able to entrain our emotions, and our reasoning processes.

Is this lethal to human agency or freedom of will; or not? Is a wholly controlled human brain-and-body also a wholly controlled person?

The answer is metaphysical - not evidential. If we believe that there is in Man that which is eternal and divine - the Real Self then that will always be free, agent, able to choose... If we believe that Real Self stands-outside of 'material' reality - and controlling the brain and body does not control  the Real Self...

In other words, if the arena of freedom is thought, and if the thinking of the real self is immaterial - then this cannot be touched by the most successful totalitarian agenda; and the demonic plan is destined to fail.


So, are the demons making a mistake? Are they wrongly supposing that they can control thought  by controlling the brain?

No - it is Not a mistake - because the demons already have in-place a metaphysical system which negates the Real Self.


For a long time, materialism (positivism, scientism, reductionism) has been the inbuilt assumption of official, media and all public discourse. This discourse intrinsically assumes that the Real Self cannot exist, because nothing immaterial (nothing spiritual) can exist. So the mind is wholly the brain, and the brain is the mind - and everything else is an illusion, a deception, a mistake...


In practice, this means that although the Real Self cannot be controlled, and cannot be destroyed; the situation has long since been created and sustained that the Real Self can be ignored - indeed ought-to-be ignored, since it is irrelevant, imaginary, an epiphenomenon. Insofar as the thinking of the Real Self reaches awareness, it will therefore be ignored or rejected.

As I have said, this has been going on for a long time by now. For example; a century ago Freud replaced Conscience - which concept carried a quasi divine imperative; with the Superego - which was implanted by parents and teachers as a mechanism of social control. At a stroke, the promptings of conscience changed from potentially divine nudgings, to an instrument of oppression that should be suppressed or ignored.

In a future totalitarian transhumanist society, the same would apply. Our Real Selves would still be present, and free agents; but we would - by our metaphysical assumptions - regard the Real Self as false, unreal, deceptive... and we would suppress or ignore it.

Thus the Real Self is utterly negated by inbuilt (often unconscious) metaphysical assumptions; and the merely-brain processing is a wholly-controlled unit of The System. Humanity has been captured - and can be directed to any goal desired...


I think this is a very important matter for us to get clear - since at present it looks very much as if the strategy of totalitarian transhumanism will succeed. There is little insight about the intentions and implications of current trends in surveillance and control. There is a general metaphysical denial of the immaterial and the divine.

Everything is in place - and the only delay is caused by the process of rolling-out the technology everywhere and to affect everyone...

Is there hope it will fail? Of course there is hope - each and any person can reject the agenda. I'm just saying that it does not look like this is happening.


The other hope - which is more realistic - is that the modern System will collapse before it can be fully implemented. I find this quite likely to happen - since there is a genetic decline in human capability (from the chosen sterility of the most intelligent and able population, and from the accumulation of deleterious mutations due to relaxed natural selection).

Geniuses have all-but disappeared from The West, we have already almost-ceased to make significant 'breakthroughs' in science and technology; and the failure would be expected to spread to R&D incremental development, then to repair and maintenance, then to the ability to manufacture and distribute...

And all this is exacerbated and accelerated by the deliberate dysfunctionality of 'affirmative action' preferences for women, specific races and classes, non-Christians, and those who identify with the goals of the Sexual Revolution. So we are not even trying to have the best people doing the most important jobs. 


So, it is not unlikely that the totalitarian transhumanist agenda - which requires mass advanced technology and a reasonably-competent workforce - will be intercepted and prevented through our faults and blindness and wicked intent; rather than because of our understanding, foresight or virtue.

Prevented, therefore, by a wholesale collapse of modern civilisation; of agriculture, manufacture, medicine, trade and transport - with rapid and colossal mortality (measured in billions) from starvation, disease and violence.

Yet even that scenario (entailing the greatest quantity of acute suffering the world has yet seen) would almost certainly be better than the alternative of a permanent, comprehensive, global system of damnation...


Note added: I forgot to mention that in talking of transhumanism I speak as something of an ex-insider of the 'therapeutic' style of the thing. I was writing from this perspective in my psychiatric and psychopharmacology writings from about 1998 up to the middle/ late 2000s - and my writings from this era were and are hosted on David Pearce's hedweb.com server (Dave being one of the co-founders of the World Transhumanist Association, now renamed Humanity+). There is a video on YouTube from the summer of 2008, of a lecture I gave in which I set out the possible futures as Transhumanist or Religious. It was shortly after making this clear to myself that I became a Christian.

ANA. Tell me where can I find the Superman? 

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One of the problems about ideas, about discussion, debate, advocacy - is that it may be so difficult to get people en masse to accept a truth (even when it is true) that those who advocate it never get to the point of discovering its consequences.

They never get to the point where you can say - "Okay, let's accept everything you say is valid: then what?"

People never get to this point, even inside their own heads, because they are so engaged by the process of advocacy, trying to persuade, implement, monitor etc. They never get to the point where they are forced to imagine that the thing they advocate is actually in place - and then doing the thought experiment of what difference it actually makes - what kind of consequences will ensue.

This problem is particularly bad when the advocacy is for something which is wrong in some way, or is pushing against unacknowledged realities - something which goes against the flow. Bad ideas of this kind never get near to being implemented, and therefore their advocates never get near to being compelled to see their undesirability.

The most obvious and dominant way that this is shown is, of course, mainstream New Left politics - political correctness. There is an arena where the mass of the population go along with ideas, policies, rules about things like democracy, equality and diversity that - if they were implemented in the desired way would be very obviously destructive (if the evaluation was honest - and that is a big 'if) - but which never get near being implemented because they are so riddled with errors, omissions and illogic.

But the phenomenon is very pervasive and cuts very deep in much secular thinking which is intended to tackle the fundamental problems of life. For example, the main ideological alternative to Christianity is Transhumanism - the idea that the primary problems of life can be solved by knowledge, science, technology. The analysis starts from defining these primary problems in terms such as pain and suffering, lack of joy and happiness, and death - so the ultimate aim is making people feel completely happy all the time (unless they chose otherwise) and each person lived for (say) several centuries.

This is such a difficult and unlikely goal, that Transhumanists will never come to the point where they are compelled to consider the consequences of their wishes; and the extent to which even if they achieved all their hope, the fundamental problems of life remain untouched. 

The emotions of suffering and happiness, and the significance of imminent death are extremely important problems - but even if they could all be solved the ultimate problems remain untouched: problems of meaning, purpose and my relationship to meaning and purpose - problems about the significance of my life.

Transhumanists could contend that they are not offering a complete answer, as indeed they are not, but that reduced suffering, greater happiness, greatly-extended healthy-lifespan are all things good in themselves - and which might enable people better to tackle the primary problems - but that is now what I see.

What I see is people who use the Transhumanist project so as not ever to acknowledge, consider, think-about the real primary problems of life. People who are so absorbed by the difficulties of getting what they want that they never recognize that - even if they could have it - it would leave the basic problems of life completely untouched.

I see people who are so wrapped up in 'the fight' that they do not know what they are fighting for. In effect, each has made the implicit decision that "the meaning and purpose of my life is the advocacy of Transhumanism". The practical strategy, the actually-lived approach to the problems of life, is so to fill one's mind with the problems of funding, achieving and implementing Transhumanism that there is no room in the mind for anything else - the means have completely displaced the end.

I often feel that the same applies to religions which offer 'more life' as their goal - which offer 'me as I am now' (but eternal and healthy) an eternity in a paradise of sensuous gratification; and fail to see that this is just more of the same old stuff. Or ideas of reincarnation as an endless recyling of versions of me as I am now - and they don't notice that this means that an eternity of staying-alive or recycling would be as meaningless/ pointless as they perceive the present to be!

They are, in effect, trying to solve the fundamental problems of lack of meaning, purpose, existential satisfaction by perpetuating lack of meaning/ purpose/ satisfaction forever!

All this may be perfectly understandable human behaviour - but it is frustrating to contemplate!

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Note: There are many other problems with what is currently termed the Transhumanist project, but which has been around for a few hundred years - as is explained in CS Lewis's essay The Abolition of Man and his novel That Hideous Strength; but I take Transhumanism as my examplehere, being the most complete and 'idealistic' of the current world-betterment schemes.
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Yesterday's post, which provided a possible contributory evolutionary explanation for modern Man's extraordinarily maladaptive behaviours, reminded me of what it was that led-up-to my becoming a Christian:
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/religion-as-proximate-method-of-group.html

I found that there were several cultural phenomena which led me to recognize the necessity for religion - and in some instances Christianity. In sum, I recognized that Religion was necessary to Man - which took me to the doorstep of Christianity as the best religion.

This did not, of course, make me a Christian - but it led me to recognize that some kind of religion was necessary for even a minimally sustainable society - and Christian society seemed to be better than any other alternative when it came to some of the things I most valued. 

1. Dishonesty in science (and in public discourse). Anything less than complete honesty about everything seemed obviously wrong, dishonesty was obviously increasing - yet the only acceptable secular criticisms were remote, abstract and ineffective.

2. Subfertility. The fact that all modern societies in the world were sub-fertile and en route to chosen extinction had a big impact on me. That religion was the only effective antidote for suicide-by-sterility I found to be a very impressive fact. I still do.

3. Children. Related to subfertility, I sometimes found myself talking about the question of having children in a way that was - on later reflection, or even at the time - shocking, repulsive and utterly false to my own deepest feelings; I would sometimes discuss matters as if children were simply a part of 'lifestyle' - to be evaluated as (merely) a means to the end of whether they enhanced or detracted-from one's own sense of happiness and fulfilment; or in terms of potential risks and benefits...

4. Human Accomplishment. This book by Charles Murray suggested that without a strong belief in transcendental values (Truth, Beauty, Virtue) sustained by religion - most of the greatest achievements in human history never would have happened.

5. Tough decisions. I noticed that people could seldom make tough decisions - decisions where a good long term outcome required short term suffering or risk, or when overall advantage entailed significant problems and disadvantages that would attract criticism - even when they seemed to know that these decisions were right and necessary.

6. Saying no. This is perhaps related to 'tough decisions' - but I can recall a number of situations in which I found I could not find any reason for saying no to something, or disapproving something, despite that I knew in my heart it was wrong. I realized that without religion, there was, no basis for principled action - and I saw very little indeed in the way of principled action among my secular acquaintances.

7. Transhumanism. I was for a while generally very positive about transhumanism - and excited by the possibilities of abolishing human suffering, abolishing ageing, extending life and so forth. Then it dawned on me that the logical conclusion of this agenda included changing humans to something different-from humans; and a perspective that it was better to be dead (or never to have lived) than to suffer - yet suffering was, in real life, universal and inevitable - so transhumanism was close to being a kind of death cult. And, related to children, I found transhumanism encouraged me to discuss families as if they were purely a technological mechanism for reproduction that could (probably should) be replaced by some reproductive technique that was more efficient, less risky; more controlled and controllable - scientific and rational.

Such considerations took me, as I said, to the threshold of religion where I swiftly recognized Christianity as the best religion for me. So I got to the point where I regarded Christianity as 'a good thing' and acknowledged that I wanted to be a Christian; then it was a matter of waiting to see whether I believed it.

What got me over the edge? I think it was a combination of negative and positive factors - the negative factors included that I realized there was no reason why I should not become a Christian - that there was enough positive evidence of the truth of Christianity that it was rational to be a Christian.

The positive factors included daily prayer, and then a couple of personal (and private) miracles amounting to answered prayers.

So then I was a Christian. It took me absolutely ages to get to that point (a zig-zagging route across the decades); but almost as soon as I was there I realized it was merely a single step over the line, the easy bit; and all the difficult stuff was just beginning.

This is a very interesting recent video featuring Terry Boardman.

In the early section (about 29 minutes) he discusses the three major threats of The West; which he identified in order of imminence as:

1. Superpower War, He feels this could happen at any time, but in a scale of a few years - war between the US and China and or Russia. And if it does; it will - like previous such wars - happen very fast.

I don't have anything to add to this, except that it is certainly possible - but would probably be an unintended consequence of other strategies. I think the Global Establishment are aiming at endemic intra-social conflict or low-grade civil war - rather than international war.)

2. The Transhumanist assault of Artificial Intelligence and computer/ electric technology. The aim is to merge-replace the human mind, thinking, and biological being - with technological substitutes. This is on a timescale of about a decade - with 5G the main current manifestation.

Boardman says some very interesting stuff on this topic, about the way scientists and technologists know a lot less on these matters than they pretend, and the disdain for biology evidenced. He also makes the argument that this is the third stage of replacement - that the Western Church abolished the unique individual (incarnating) spirit, then the industrial revolution took over from the body - transhumanism intends the replacement of the only remaining human distinction - the living mind and its thinking.

3. The environmental crisis - by which he means the real crisis unfolding over the next 80 years or so, and due to massive overproduction/ over-consumption. I got from this that our materialism drives all forms of over-production and also the consumerism that fuels it - whether this is capitalism, state controlled-regulated or something else is irrelevant - since everybody wants ever-more stuff/ entertainment/ building/ comfort/ convenience/ excitement etc., as their primary life goal (there being nothing else).

The proper response to the real environmental crisis is to reduce production and consumption, to have a differently orientated life, a life including the spirit, recognising this world as God's (and potentially our) creation.

Boardman characterises mainstream 'environmentalism' as a dishonest manipulation... the Global Warming movement (Greta and Extinction Rebellion) as a manufactured fake emergency. The intention is to create a terrified/ self-righteous wartime panic - leading ASAP to an immediate and irreversible handover of power and resources to the Establishment.

The popular aspects are merely a contrived front for international finance and multinationals who hope to benefits from a colossal expansion of self-styled Green/ Sustainable technologies. Yet the scale of this exercise is by far the largest in human history - the International powers of finance and funding are very serious, and very much want things to happens imminently.

Real environmentalists want a less material life. Fake environmentalists want to maintain and indeed expand the current world-focus on production and consumption; but to replace the existing infrastructure, and expend billions-trillions of dollars to make it (supposedly) green-and-sustainable.

My interpretation of this propaganda-hysteria is an attempted power and money grab designed to fund and rationalise the demonic forces of evil. The billions-trillions spent on replacing infrastructure will be skimmed and redirected into the agenda of evil.

There is a lot of evil to be done in the world, and Climate Emergency is how it will get paid-for.

The Climate Emergency's significance is that it will pay for the Transhumanism - and Transhumanism is the central rationale for advancing totalitarian agenda of omni-surveillance and micro-control.

(Even though the AI agenda is impossible, and its pursuit inefficient and ineffective; it justifies and enables the real but hidden agenda.)


Putting these together - I see behind all of these is the spiritual disease of materialism that sees all problems and solutions in economic and political terms; and creates paralysing alienation, demotivation, despair - and increasingly desperate attempts to treat these technologically and by consumption or mob crazes.

As so often, we return to the stark fact that all of these bad things, or similar ones, will happen unless we repent our reductionism, materialism, positivism, scientism; unless we recover religion, the spiritual, the romantic-as-real.

This happens only at the individual level, and must be a voluntary choice. And if it doesn't happen, we know in broad terms what shall happen - keep happening - and keep getting-worse.

(Note: The later part of Terry's video presentation focuses on Rudolf Steiner's ideas of Threefold organisation of society - which I regard as 100 years obsolete and currently absolutely impossible; and indeed, undesirably backward-aiming in terms of Steiner's own deeper insights.)

There is a very prevalent logical error that pervades our culture; so thoroughly pervades it that it is all-but invisible, and difficult to understand. 

The error is to confuse annihilation and replacement, with transformational development. 

This error was made clear to me only in recent years and through reading Owen Barfield; but until that point (around 2014) I too was in thrall to the mistake. 

We have a deep, ancient and primary understanding of 'evolution' as a process akin to the development of an acorn to an oak tree, and egg to a chicken, a newborn baby to an adult. 

That is, we understand evolution to be a transformation of the self - while retaining the identity of the self. 

This could be called developmental-transformative evolution. 

In this primary understanding of evolution; the Being remains itself - but changes form. 

Thus, if we (as Christians) imagine our future spiritual evolution from this mortal life to resurrected eternal life; this is a 'process' during which we remain our-self but undergo developmental or transformative changes in both body and mind. 

The result is that our resurrected eternal self is the same person as he was during mortal life. And in Heaven we can 'recognize' others whom we knew in mortal life: they are still themselves.

But from the time that evolution by natural selection became a dominant social paradigm (during the late 1900s) there has emerged a qualitatively different conception of 'evolution'. 

This could be called selection-reproductive evolution. 

The key to this concept is selection acting on reproduction. Evolution of this sort 'happens' after reproduction, and is defined in terms of changed offspring. Therefore it is Not about transformation of the same-self; but replacement of the original parent by following generations. 

With selection-reproductive evolution; a variety of different types - different selves - compete; some reproduce differentially more than others; and evolution has occurred when either one or just-some of the original selves continue to reproduce. 

Meanwhile the other selves have Not reproduced, and their continuity has been annihilated. 

So this concept is based on Darwinian ideas of natural selection; and entails not transformation but replacement. After such selectional evolution, what persists is Not the previous self - but a different self: a different Being; because offspring are different Beings than their parents.  

In a brief phrase: natural selection is reproductive replacement. It is all-about replacing one thing with some other thing. 

Some survive and others do not; and those which survive replace those which do not. 

Because if the identity of the organism is being defined in terms of its genetic composition; then any genetic change is itself a kind of replacement. 

Following Barfield; I believe that many people are often deeply confused between these two concepts of evolution. The seem to believe emotionally that they are proposing a developmental-transformative evolution; when in fact they are advocating replacement of one thing by another. 

For instance; when people are keen on a future based upon Artificial Intelligence, or the Transhumanist changing of Man (by means of drugs, genetic engineering, inorganic implants, links to computers or the internet etc); they seem to suppose that this is an transformational enhancement of Men. 

But in fact such aspirations are simply the annihilation of Men and their replacement. Replacement of Men with... something else. 

In spiritual terms; AI and Transhumanism are therefore advocating covert suicide: suicide, because they themselves (and all other Men) will cease to exist; covert, because this desire for self-destruction is hidden by an irrelevant focus on what might replace us. 

This is closely analogous to a plan to solve the problems of this Earth by exploding the planet - and then calling Mars 'the new and better Earth'. Maybe Mars is better (fewer problems), maybe not - but better or worse, Mars is Not an evolved Earth; it is some-thing different. 

So much is fairly obvious; but the 'afterlife' proposed and yearned-for by many people shares this fundamentally suicidal impulse; because it hopes for the total destruction of the body, the self, the ego and all that is individual - by its absorption into the impersonal and discarnate divine.  

I am talking about the Oneness spiritual movement - which is so much a feature of the New Age in The West. This talks constantly about how all things truly are one, and how separation into persons is an illusion (Maya), and a 'sin'; and separation of Man from God is an illusion and a sin. 

According to Oneness; in reality there are no persons, no Men - only one God; and that God is not a person - because the divine encompasses everything, so there can be no definition or description of God. 

Nothing specific can be said about the divine except for an infinite series of denials of all less-than-total claims of God's nature: i.e. a negative theology of what God is not.

To hope for the 'evolution' of my-self, and Mankind, into One; is therefore to hope-for one's own annihilation and replacement. 

There would be - could be -  no continuity between me-now, and now living Men - and the aimed for annihilation of separateness into divine unity.

Oneness spirituality is not to solve any of the problems of the world; but to destroy the world - to destroy every-thing... and replace it with something else. 

It is solving the problem of misery and suffering in life, by ending all life - by killing everything. 

In other words; Oneness offers exactly the same kind of 'solution' to the problem of Man's mortal life as does Artificial Intelligence and Transhumanism. 

Oneness is just as much a covert advocacy of suicide, as are the schemes of technological replacement of Man by... 'something better'. 

And the reason why this is not immediately obvious; is that our culture has become deeply confused by the two concepts of evolution.

And has erroneously carried-over the spiritual aspirations of evolution understood as transformative-development, into the annihilation-seeking mechanisms of transformative-replacement.

It was an ancient insight (going back to the earliest recorded philosophy) that Men as we are in this earthly mortal life; cannot be truly happy. 

Because; if Men (as we now are) were placed into 'Paradise' - then it would not be Paradise. 

We would not be fully happy there - and might even be more miserable. 

Furthermore; even if it had been Paradise before we arrived - we (as we now are) would soon wreck the place, to at least some degree -- in which case it would no longer be Paradise. 

Therefore; we our-selves are to blame for the ultimate unsatisfactoriness of mortal life on earth. 

Therefore, we have need for transformation before we can be truly happy; we our-selves must be first transformed before Paradise could be Paradise. 

Interestingly, this is recognized by the most advanced form of materialism so-far: transhumanism. This recognizes that Men need to transcend their current nature if they are to be fully happy, and free from suffering. 

But the transhumanist sees this as a material problem; and envisages Men as being transformed by physical means: drugs, surgery, implants, genetic engineering etc. But physical interventions can only operate within the constraint of this mortal world, which is entropic by nature; such that the desired order is always being-corrupted by chaos and any desirable state of being is temporary. 

Thus, even by its own lights - transhumanism can only at best yield amelioration of our condition - not Paradise. 

If Men are to be happy in Paradise it requires a spiritual - as well as material - transformation; indeed it requires that we understand the material to be part-of the spiritual, with the spiritual as primary. 

The Christian transformation that enables us to be wholly happy is termed resurrection; which can be understood as primarily a spiritual transformation to 'fit us for Heaven'/ Paradise - as well as the necessary physical transformation for such a life; such that we will have bodies, and yet also be immortal.  

Since Christians are called upon to have hope, and to follow Jesus to salvation; it seems to me that we need to be able to imagine what Heaven is like - sufficiently in order to desire it. 

Can we imagine the transformation of resurrection and a fully happy life in Heaven?

Some of us can. Those who recognize that some-times, at our best, this mortal life on earth is indeed Paradisal; thus wholly happy - albeit briefly. 

And we may also be able to recognize that these moments are also those times when we are most our-selves...

We may therefore be able to imagine, hence understand, that - in principle - we could be transformed such as to remain our-selves at our best; and become fit for Paradise. 

We may also be able to infer from such moments (and their basis in love) the nature of paradise. 

In sum - we may be able to know both that we require transformation to be truly happy; the nature of transformation needed; and that this kind of transformation is exactly what was offered by Jesus Christ. 

(After which we only need to determine whether Jesus's offer was valid.)

Note added. This post approaches the question from the bottom line moral assumption of mainstream modern secular materialist leftism - which is (roughly) that that is good which is most conducive to happiness - especially the elimination of suffering (the conceptualization of what-ought-to-be-happy vacillates, incoherently, between the individual - especially oppressed, victimized - person, and some abstract group entity that is regarded as oppressed/ victimized. But the scope of happiness is assumed to be that of this mortal life; and eternal life is disbelieved or disregarded. Thus all secular ideologies, including those that regard themselves as of The Right (conservative, republican, libertarian, alt-right etc), only differ in terms of suggested means to the same end: i.e. optimizing mortal earthly happiness.  

When the assumption is that we live eternally, the main rival to Christianity is that 'Oneness' spirituality which the West has extracted from Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, and which is promoted via the New Age, Perennial philosophy, and officially-approved 'mindfulness' exhortations. These locate suffering in consciousness, and consciousness in the-self (plus/minus the-material); and aim at the alleviation of suffering (plus/minus the maximization of happiness) by the annihilation of The Self into immaterial spirit, and assimilation of that which was separate into the oneness of deity. 

My point is that there is a sense in which all religions and ideologies can be reduced - and this is a reduction - to the nature of their concern with happiness. And that these differ irreconcilably about the proper scope of happiness, and how it can or should be attained. In other words, there is no possible coherent way of creating a single spirituality/ religion/ ideology from these three fundamentally differing assumptions. 

Leftism, Oneness and Christianity cannot be combined coherently - neither as pairs nor as a single unity. All attempts to combine them are actually subordinating one or other; or else alternating between incompatibles. 

We must therefore actively and consciously choose what kind of happiness we really want - or else the choice will (passively unconsciously) be imposed upon us. 

The answer is simply that both the totalitarian societies and the 'rebellious' heroes are both Godless.  Genuine, rooted and cultural Godlessness is demotivating, induces despair - and cannot support courage. 

The two great dystopias are Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and 1984 by George Orwell - both induce in the reader a feeling of helpless despair. The reason is quite simple - that AH and GO were both products of the twentieth century during which Christianity was abandoned - and first of all by the upper classes.

The characteristic despair of 20th century art is not really to do with the world wars; but with the replacement of Christianity by a this-worldly, leftist ideology. It was not about the horror and pain of massive conflict, it was about the newly-narrow perspective from which any war (or poverty, disease, or any kind of suffering) was understood and evaluated.

From that perspective, when the solitary individual (or tiny group) confronts a massive, oppressive society; society can be the only winner.


Because this is a 'war' in which there is only one 'side': and that side is society. There may be various dissident individuals; but each is up-against the interlocking power and propaganda of The System, with a relatively-immense capacity to propagandise and censor, bribe and seduce, or torment and punish.

And since the assumption is that human life begins at birth (or conception) and is terminated by death - whichever side wins in this-life, wins forever. Any society that controls (nearly) all of human life therefore is capable of infliction (what is assumed to be) total suffering.

When Orwell wrote his book, he hoped that it would provide an effective warning and preventive against totalitarianism; but because his dystopia is Godless it has had the opposite effect. What we see all around us in the West is a mass population embracing totalitarianism; in the hope that it will be 'benign' and lead to a totally-happy life. This is popular transhumanism - focused around the provision of virtual realities via electronic media.

Totalitarian transhumanism is rational - within its narrow and rigid frame of understanding. If biological life is the entirety of human experience, and political 'solutions' have comprehensively failed; then our only hope is that it will be happy (or, at least, free of suffering) - and most people have reasoned that the only hope of happiness is technological and therapeutic.


People believe in a benign Global Establishment - headed by multi-billionaires and the large media and technological corporations - because they have nothing else to believe-in. If only they can believe that the globalist Elites are benign in nature and intent; then they can hope for a virtual, drugged and technologically enhanced life of pleasant feelings (with perhaps a bit of actual sex, interspersed) - which is the highest life that modern Godless Man can conceive-of.

So a 'good' totalitarianism is the highest aspiration - by contrast, an evil totalitarianism, one that exploits and torments its people, is the worst horror.

But the typical modern Man; totalitarianism is a given, indeed it is necessary - because only if a society can be totally monitored and totally controlled, would it be possible to eliminate suffering and to provide pleasurable stimulus to all. So, any extension of centralised surveillance and bureaucratic control is welcomed - so long it can semi-plausibly be presented as a step towards universal pleasure, comfort, and convenience.


This is important to (real) Christians; firstly because it explains why it is likely that (assuming we live long enough, and Western societies do not collapse) we will all be living under a hostile totalitarianism, in which most citizens will be keen to destroy Christian institutions on the basis that they interfere with transhumanist totalitarian plans.

All Christian institutions that can be detected will be destroyed; or subverted and inverted. 

And secondly because this will be a test of our faith. especially our belief in Heaven, and in Jesus's promise that any can attain to Heaven who will follow him.

Because we will very probably each be compelled to live in a vast, overwhelming, globally-interlinked Totalitarian System; without institutional support; and without realistic hope of escape or victory... in this mortal life

I once read somewhere the statement that if 'science' made it so that ageing did not happen and nobody ever died - then this would destroy the need for, or benefit from, 'religion'.

I suppose this stuck in my mind as being one of those comments that reveals a great deal about the person who wrote it and those who endorse it.

One thing it reveals, one of the less obvious things, is the absurdity of taking a single 'issue' at a time... implicitly here is a thought-experiment of this world, with the added change of unageing and undying bodies swapped-into it... and trying to puzzle out what difference this would make. It is one of those 'assumptions' that begs a very large number of questions of a fundamental kind...

But beyond that, the purpose of the statement is to equate the specifically-Christian idea of eternal life with a biological thought experiment. Implicit is the idea that the only thing that Christians really want from their religion - behind the pretence - is to escape decay and death, to live forever in perfect health.

And beyond this that the only thing really wrong with our mortal incarnate lives on earth - is that these lives are mortal. The assumption that if mortality could be fixed, then we would be fundamentally happy.

The most concise wrongness about this is to equate the fact that mortality does indeed spoil everything, with the false reversal that Not-mortality would fix everything (or, fix everything that really needs to be fixed).

It is an attempt - by false logic - to confuse a solidly true human intuition by trying to reverse it into a non-intuition. 

What is extremely interesting (and I speak as an atheist for most of my life) is that the intuition that mortality-spoils-everything has become so deeply confused by modern culture, that many people no longer experience it as an intuition. It seems plenty of people think that a mortal life leading to utter annihilation (which is how mainstream modern materialists regard the human condition) is not-a-problem - not, anyway, to someone who is enlightened.  

Yet (I assume) every child in history has regarded mortality as a problem, when he or she discovers it... So the modern idea is that the problematic status of mortal life is an illusion.

Whence cometh this universal illusion? I think the usual answer would be some kind of repressive manipulation - by upper classes, priests etc; the idea that such people inculcate the fear of death into children in order to control people. Or something.

Anyway, people no longer clearly see that mortality spoils everything; so they no longer appreciate the core of Jesus's promise - except in an absurdly reductionistic form in which immortal, eternal life can be outcompeted by unendingly-persistent perfect-health - as 'offered' by transhumanism and artificial intelligence...

By this account - the spiritual-warfare point of transhumanism and AI is not the plausibility or coherence of their claims - but the distorting, disorientating, deranging effect of such claims - due to their re-framing of discourse and experience.   

Modern media and public policy has reached a point where it cannot be understood except in the light of spiritual warfare: Good versus evil, God v the demons, Heaven v hell...

Creation versus the Transhumanism - i.e Man claiming to have-become God-the-creator, and to offer (Here! Now!) an 'Alternative' and better 'Reality'.


Satan has a big problem - which is that he and we and everything are part of God's creation: how then can they be rejected?

The answer is to create what is claimed to be an immaterial Alternative Reality; to choose to inhabit that AR, and by denying that we have made such a choice to claim that the Alternative is really real. In other words, Satan is the lead architect of the transhumanist agenda.

There is no need for you to do a thought experiment and imagine this situation - we are already there (albeit not yet fully so) - with the transgender agenda that has been very rapidly and aggressively imposed by the entirety of the Western ruling Establishment over the past decade.

The transgender agenda (by which self-defined gender incrementally-replaces, completely replaces, sexuality) needs to be recognised as a component of the transhumanist agenda; and both as the major strategy of the demonic agenda in the spiritual war.

Because most of this analysis (God, Good, Creation) is denied; dissenters and realists in The West have been helpless to prevent the imposed-reality of transgenderism - which is now assumed by law, and dissent from which is punished by law (and, worse, by mass media and bureaucratic employers). 

The trans-agenda should be seen as a perfectly rational step towards the kind of Alternative Reality that the demonic powers need to be successful in the context of God's creation. It is part of a world picture that has been building-up over several generations; which has denied God, Creation and Reality - and asserted that this world is humanly constructed ('socially' constructed). The 'Reality' in the phrase itself assumes that reality is man-made, at will.


The appeal of the AR is the promise of freedom and pleasure - since, IF the AR really-was equivalent to created-reality, then in principle we might make Reality any way we pleased; without constraint. For instance; people could choose to be men or women, and swap back and forth at whim! Differences between sexes, classes, races, nations, individual people could be made or abolished!

If all that was true and possible (which of course it is not) there would still be the question of Who Exactly Is In Charge? - and the overwhelming probability that they would be evil-motivated people, who would shape reality to their own selfish ends.

But the problem is compounded by the fact that it is evil demons that are in charge of AR - it is their project; and demonic motivations are different and worse than human motivations; and their agenda goes beyond the gratification of their their own short-term selfishness into the long-term desire for universal damnation.

And - finally - the the very desire to create and dwell in an Alternative Reality on the assumption it is the Only Reality is itself intrinsically evil; because dishonest, because prideful, because of its hedonic hence self-centred/ self-ish motivations.


At some level, perhaps deep, we all know this to be true; which serves only to make its denial more shrill and spiteful.

In a world that denies Good, the Creation and God; the desire for life inside a 'reality' built-around our own pleasures and preferences, yet wholly convincing, is so great that all objections are swept aside by this desperate craving. 

And so, Ladies and Gentlemen (to use forbidden terminology): This is the modern world! 

Here. Now. Compulsory!