transhumanism.html

TRANSHUMANISM

Neo-Buddhism is as a modern variant of traditional Buddhism, holding on to the idea of rebirthing and multiple lives. However, only in a scientific way.

It might well be that the human mind at some point is tired of living, that live has been too long, and that the whole cycle of multiple lives should come to an end. But one live is very short, and probably many of us would need more lives to get to this point. Of course we might get ill, and then death can be a relieve for the pain of the sickness. But if we were healthy instead most of us would be glad to live some more time added to their lives. It is not a coincidence that most religions believe in another live after death. It is the hope for people to be able to live on in a next live.

But Neo-Buddhism is holding to the idea that our live does not have a separate spiritual component in the sense that there is a spirit in our brain, which would leave to heaven after death. Instead, the spiritual aspects of live are seen as special properties of matter, and especially of the biological brain. Therefore Neo-Buddhism believes only in rebirthing by means of cryonics. The body is frozen after death, and will be awakened later on.

There is a hope that human technology will improve, and be able to rebirth the body, cure the cause of death, and even rejuvenate us. In fact transhumanism is thus a part of Neo-Buddhism.

Transhumanism is the believe that men is still evolving, that science and technology are bringing mankind to higher levels of civilization and thus that our current state as men is a stage between what we came from (ape-like creatures, that started to be human in the desserts of Africa) and what we eventually will become. The human being is being transformed into another being, relying on advanced technology for his daily life, being constantly connected to computer networks and databases, gaining knowledge and raising beyond himself.

When men dies, this is diagnosed as being brain dead. The brain dies because of a shortage of oxygen, which is caused by the blood not being pumped around anymore, or blood pressure having dropped too much. This results unfortunately in damage to the brain. In order to restore the human mind, this damage should be repaired, as well as the cause of death. If this can be fixed, the system of the human being is restored to his original functioning, and thus could live on. The personality and memory are patterns in the brain, that are still there. The question is, however, how the brain damage and the cause of death could be repaired.

The answer is nano-technology. Little robots, nano-machines, with the size of maybe one human cell or even smaller, will be injected into the blood. The machines could go through the blood vessels, through the gland canals, and even go through the membrane of a cell. There the nano-machines could do repairs and fix cells to what they should have been giving their specialization and genetic code. In this way, cancer cells could be located and repaired or destroyed, as well as brain cells could be fixed. Of course the pattern of the brain would be lost when fixing this part, unless there would be information stored about the structure of these very patterns.

Suppose that everyone on the planet would make use of cryonics, would earth not then get overpopulated soon? Actually, the human population is heading towards overpopulation anyways. When people would all be into cryonics, the point of overpopulation could be reached sooner, but it probably would be reached anyhow. Before we reach the point of overpopulation, men has to start living in space, or on other planets. Maybe this will even happen before the first cryonicist is defrosted anyways, so then cryonics wouldn't even have an influence on this process. Besides, the same goes for getting children. Getting Children also causes the world to head towards overpopulation sooner. Nevertheless people do take children. If people have a right to take children, they also do have a right to re-birth themselves.

If it is really possible to freeze someone after death, and he will have another live later when he is awakened again, could men then become immortal?

I don't think so.

Suppose that there is a chance of one in a million, or one in a billion, that a person would be hit by an incendiary bomb and would evaporate into thin air. Then this particular body could not be repaired. If you live a normal 80 years, this will probably not happen to you, but if you would live lets say one million year, the expectancy for this to happen would be 100%. Of course this remains a certain change and some people could be so lucky as not to be hit in one million years. But if you would live forever, for certain would you once be hit by an incendiary bomb and evaporate into thin air. Therefore you will not live forever, and at some point you will be damaged beyond repair.

On the other hand all of the information of your information processing system of the brains, including details of all of the chemical and biological components, could be stored on disks or other electronic devices. In this sense men could be backuped. Information could be stored, in digital form, of all of the patterns in our brain. We could grow brain cells in a laboratory, and then use nano-technology to insert the same patterns into this tissue, and thus retrieve the backuped person again.