Against Transhumanism
Against Transhumanism, a monograph co-authored by Alexander Melas and Fred Strong in VI.1751 AN, was circulated internally within the cadres of the Federal Humanist Party of Nouvelle Alexandrie, the Coalition for Democratic Humanism in Hurmu, and the Humanist parties of Constancia, Oportia, and Zeed.
Summary
The core thesis of Humanism posits that human consciousness and social complexity emerged from the evolutionary logic of collaborative predation — the struggle to control resources and reproductive capacity, which historically drove violent demographic turnovers and established warrior aristocracies. This foundational "animal will" remains the engine of history, now dangerously diverted by a modern technocratic managerialism that prioritises safety, comfort, and docile consumption. The ultimate purpose of our self-aware species, or Geist, is therefore not to escape this will but to consciously redirect its formidable energies toward transcending our material and existential confines. To deny or neuter this drive, in pursuit of mere comfort, would be a species-level failure, reducing humanity to a state of permanent spiritual infancy.
Transhumanism, with its goal of transcending biological limits through technological enhancement, appears superficially aligned with this project of overcoming the human condition. However, from this theory's perspective, mainstream transhumanism risks becoming the ultimate expression of the very managerial pacification it seeks to critique. By framing transcendence as a series of consumer upgrades — longevity treatments, cognitive boosters, emotional optimisation — it reduces a cosmic potential to a personal luxury commodity, reinforcing the individualistic, risk-averse ethos of the current age. It offers a technological bypass around struggle rather than a channel for it.
This renders transhumanism a profound trap. Rather than harnessing the disciplined, collective will required for projects of cosmic scale, it encourages a passive relationship with enhancement, where agency is outsourced to platforms and providers. Its vision often seeks to edit out humanity's disruptive vital elements — aggression, tribalism, ambition — in favour of a harmonised, rational, and manageable being. This would produce a post-humanity perfectly adapted to a static, administered utopia: enhanced in capability yet neutered in spirit, becoming the final triumph of the faux-progressive management caste, who would oversee the evolution of humanity into a race of contented, high-functioning wards.
True transcendence, in contrast, demands a "hard" path consistent with our predatory heritage. It would utilise technology not as a means of comfortable augmentation, but as a new set of claws and fangs — tools for confronting a hostile universe, building civilisations beyond Micras, and engaging in struggles worthy of our inherited will. The distinction is between a "soft" transhumanism that internalises the values of safety and self-optimisation, leading to sophisticated stagnation, and a "hard" transcendence that directs our core drives toward a collective, generational project worthy of the Geist’s awakening. The former promises a gilded cage; the latter demands the stars.
Internal reaction
Whilst drafted as an internal policy document intended to serve as the beginning of a response to the newly emergent ideology of Resplandorismo, the explicit articulation of a doctrine of Humanist Vitalism, denounced by some respondents as "Occult Materialism", exposed a tension between that position as articulated and earlier touchstones of Humanist Doctrine such as the Harmonious Society, Conditioned Social Harmonisation and Pragmatic Humanism. The result was a period of "doctrinal debate in pursuit of a stable new synthesis of core values by cadres subject to Party Discipline whilst permitted a certain licence with regards to Freedom of Inquiry for a set span of time."
