The cult of Transhumanism seeks the rejection of human being, fallibility and mortality. The ideology of Transhumanism doesn’t understand the beauty of fallibility nor the purpose/meaning of fallibility. Fallibility is demonised by the Transhumanist cult and dreams that one day humans as cyborgs will live forever.
In SPoR, fallible human personhood is understood as the delight of being (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/fallibility-risk-living-uncertainty/). This is why Risk Makes Sense (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/risk-makes-sense/ ).
It is through the ideology of Transhumanism that nonsense assertions like: AI has ‘feelings’ (https://safetyrisk.net/believing-non-sense-in-safety/) are made. You can read about the evolution of Transhumanism here: https://nickbostrom.com/papers/history.pdf
Most of the stuff written from a Transhumanist view is asserted by faith, myth and ideology seeking eternal life. The discerning will see that all of this is packaged as science and yet has nothing to do with science. It is no different than claiming ‘difference’ when nothing is different. This is the safety code of stating what is, by what it isn’t.
Transhumanism opposes all that Becker discusses in The Denial of Death.
Transhumanism attributes anathema to fallibility, mortality, death, risk and vulnerability. SPoR understands these as essential for human ‘being’. The idea of a future semi-robotic human is an abhorrent and dangerous idea to SPoR. To kill off risk, is to kill learning and living. Error, mistakes and risk are essential for human ‘being’.
This is why Zero is a such a dangerous idea (https://vimeo.com/230093823).
The last thing we need as humans is the insane idea that one day there will be no error, no mistakes, no mortality, no vulnerability and no fallibility.
This ideology is also associated with the nihilist quest by Nietzsche (https://www.cambridgescholars.com/resources/pdfs/978-1-4438-7287-4-sample.pdf) for the Ubermensch, the superhuman, the overman – the hero. This is what Safety wants.
Safety loves nothing more than talking about heroes, controls and the eradication of fallibility through zero. Safety would rather speak the non-sense of believing the impossible (https://www.consultdss.com/content-hub/belief-in-the-impossible/) than learn how to tackle the realities of risk. And this love of impossibility comes from DuPont, the lovers of Zero (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/for-the-love-of-zero-free-download/) who delight in hiding how many people they kill (https://safetyrisk.net/dark-waters-the-true-story-of-dupont-and-zero/).
Any quest for the Superhero that seeks escape from fallibility is a religious-faith quest.
- The quest for zero is a religious quest.
- The last thing humans and organisations need is perfection.
- The quest for perfection is the quest for absolute brutalism.
This is why Safety loves a deontological ethic (https://safetyrisk.net/the-ethic-of-alarp-and-the-dilemma-of-safety/).
Safety knows in black and white, what is right and wrong and, it knows it absolutely. It is then the ‘duty’ of Safety (under Natural Law ethics – Kantianism) to meter out the rule of law over wrong doing. In this way (eventually) all error will be banished from the world.
In SPoR, human error is not the problem. Yet, this is what Reason and Decker present. Error is the source of suffering, error is the source of harm and so safety is the task to eliminate human error. Line up the swiss-cheese and hand out the ‘better systems’, the pathway to zero. The new view is the old view packaged ‘differently’. We don’t ‘drift’ into failure, we are always in failure, not in success that incubates failure. This is what it means to be fallible.
There are other valid understandings of error and suffering than that proposed by popular approaches in Safety. Similarly, there is valid ethical knowing that doesn’t need to resonate with the undeclared methodologies embedded in human error discourse. There are other valid views that don’t accept the positivism, behaviourism and scientism adored by Safety. There are other theologies, politics and ethics that better help with hope than the false consciousness of scientism and Transhumanism.
But the nature of wisdom is fostered by open and critical questioning and such a disposition doesn’t sit well with the archetypes of compliance and control.
Zero, The Maintenance of a Dangerous Idea from Human Dymensions on Vimeo.
Dr Rob Long
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