Transhumanism is a bitter fight against the drowning nihilistic darkness of naked materialism.

Whether it is Aubrey de Gray’s railing against aging, Nick Bostrom’s intellectualism, George Dvorsky’s loathing of suffering, or Zoltan Istvan’s sunny and energetic proselytizing — beneath it all lurks raw desperation occasioned by terror of eventual nothingness and ultimate meaninglessness.

There is no hope, the movement says, except our desperate yearning for “the singularity,” when technology saves our bacon from nonexistence through radical life extension, uploading our minds into computers, and endowing adherents with superhuman capacities, as in The Matrix.

Now, a transhumanist has confirmed my criticisms by proclaiming Nietzsche as the “patron saint” of transhumanism, in an article mostly about “personality enhancement.” (Good grief.) From “Transhumanist Therapy III,” by William Sims Brainbridge:

At the risk of mixing metaphors, it can be said that the patron saint of Transhumanism is Friedrich Nietzsche. Insane the last years of his brief life, dead now twice as long as he lived, his fame remarkably endures — nine million hits when googling “Friedrich Nietzsche” as a two-word phrase.

No superman, he was a rope across an abyss, who said of himself, “Der Mensch ist ein Seil, gekn�pft zwischen Thier und �bermensch — ein Seil �ber einem Abgrunde.” Did I misunderstand that sentence? Or is it impossible to translate Nietzsche even into German, let alone English? Ah, here’s the correct metaphor: Jesus died for our sins, crucified on a cross, while Nietzsche died for our dreams, falling into an abyss.

Very apt. Now think about all of the pain Nietzsche ushered into the world and ask yourself: Is a materialistic movement — with him as its patron — ultimately healthy and worth following?

If Nietzsche is transhumanism’s patron saint, Woody Allen is its patron comedian:

Image: by F. Hartmann [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Cross-posted at Human Exceptionalism.