Normal Human Heroes

September 15th, 2009
With human history stretching back a few thousand years, there’s been quite a few exceptional people. Or maybe just fairly regular people who’ve done exceptional things, and that makes us consider them exceptional. Regardless, whatever you might find admirable, there have been people who’ve displayed those traits to an extraordinary degree. For most of us, I’m talking about courage, compassion, wisdom, tenacity, etc. What causes us to look up to a person – or a group – even more, is when they were able to bring about lasting change. People who improved the world around them, often times being part of the reason our lives are as good as they are. Maybe it’s the leaders of the civil rights movements, Abraham Lincoln, the authors of the Declaration of Independence, or the signers of the Magna Carta. It could be the founders of the environmental movement, those who have intelligently campaigned for better working conditions in the US and elsewhere, or diplomats who have devoted their lives to improving human rights. It could be Marie Curie, Davinci, or Pythagoras. It could be more personal heroes, such as parents, a teacher, or hard-as-nails ancestors upon whom our existence depended.
Whoever they are, whoever you might look up and whatever great works you might be thankful for, practically none of that survives an existential disaster. It matters a little, sure, that we and others have benefited from their efforts for at least a few years. And just maybe those accomplishments will keep doing good after existential disaster, like giving a permanently hamstrung humanity on a blasted earth some better form of government, as they appreciate what literature of ours survived. Perhaps some superintelligence carries a little of their values or work with it into the stars, after we’ve all been turned into computronium, and maybe that makes it just slightly easier to take. But as an acceptable approximation, all the good that has ever been done on this Earth won’t really mean crap if our planet becomes a roiling mass of replicationg nanobots or inert nano-smiles.
There have been thousands if not millions who have even died to protect a worthy ideal or leave a better world for future people, and the continued value of their efforts requires us to protect what they gained. If we fail to ensure a meaningful future, then we also fail to ensure a meaningful past, and the sum of all human sacrifices will mean almost nothing. The mantle of human history – perhaps inconveniently, perhaps surprisingly – falls on us.

August 11th, 2009 (See the About page above for more information on the underlying ideas of this blog.)
If there is anything to the majority of transhumanist claims, we are at an exceptionally interesting point in history. As technological progress accelerates, radical changes in the fabric of human life seem possible within our lifetimes. Negligible senescence, full immersion virtual reality, better minds and bodies, and neuroengineered gradients of bliss all might be possible. So might the death of the nearly 7 billion people on Earth, technological domination of a world totalitarianism, and futures in which humankind is alive but exists as something we would never have rationally chosen to become. Whether our future resembles utopia, a planetary graveyard or prison, or something in between depends on our actions as a society.  Despite how bizarre it sounds to say it, it may be that all of our lives, the human race, the world, and perhaps even the galaxy are at stake. This sounds like a comic book job for Superman.
And yet not surprisingly, Superman is nowhere to be found. Calls for Batman and Spiderman have likewise turned up nothing but some movies and books. For better or worse, we live in a world without Jedis. Even futures posthumans rely on us to enable their existence, and we cannot expect cyborgs Major Kusanagi and Batou to solve our problems; JC Denton is likewise out. There is no Neo.
All we are left with is us. We don’t have superhuman fighting skills and research departments on call to invent slick gadgets. We are neither mystical wizards nor beings from another dimension, we haven’t fallen into nuclear reactors and gained godlike powers, and getting angry doesn’t give us golden hair and a thousand times our usual strength. Sadly, artistic license doesn’t allow us to get shot 20 times and straggle home. And despite desires to the contrary, we don’t yet have the technology to enable perfect memories, orders-of-magnitude faster thought, or 30 minute sprints on single gulps of air.
What we do have are foibles, eccentricities, and fixations. We have imperfections and disabilities, irrational modes of thought and poor calibration. We’re dragged down by fear and self-doubt and insecurities. We’re given to rash and ineffective violence, and to thinking in tribalistic, us-versus-them mindsets. We shake and we cry and we bleed, we get sick and we get disparaged and we get depressed. We don’t even know if we can make any difference.
And yet I think there is reason for hope that we can. History is full of examples of “ordinary humans” rising to face challenges that seemed beyond them. Abraham Lincoln once said “We are now on the brink of destruction. It appears to me that even the Almighty is against us. I can hardly see a ray of hope.” Yet his efforts were ultimately successful. And regardless of what the future may hold we are still the most powerful and intelligent creatures on this planet, and are likely to remain so for several years. Unless you believe in a god, there is no entity more able to step forward. If you could choose only one being to apply itself to these issues, it would be a human being.
Even now we can improve ourselves to become people better equipped for navigating our future. We can notice and account for our weaknesses when going forward, even as we work to reduce them. We can become more rational and better calibrated. We can manage our fears, keep our doubts well matched to reality, and face our insecurities. We can hold ourselves back from intuitive but damaging violent action, and force ourselves to remain open to new ideas, even those we most dislike, in order to best know reality and the course we ought to take. We can realize that our enemies are human error and human hatred, not human beings. And we can cultivate and maintain healthy bodies and minds, to keep us around and at our most effective.
Our actions that we take now, today and in the coming years, may determine whether humanity is a funny little short-lived oddity or the seed of a humane and joyous starfaring civilization. All that has gone before and all that will come after may rest on our shoulders. Of course it’s true it might not, maybe we’re even ”fated” to destruction or paradise, and then maybe we should just say to hell with the chance to save 6.7 billion lives, to help bring about lifetimes of potentially thousands of years and better lives for all humankind and other creatures. A person is free to throw up their hands at the task and concentrate on having the most fun they can now. But there’s some chance that what you do will matter, even if just by allowing a few more lives access to a “posthuman utopia”. And if we ever get to such a pleasant place, which life would you be more proud to have lead?
Please, don’t sell yourself short. Don’t leave the future up to unfeeling trends and social phenomena. Allow yourself to be the very best you can be, allow yourself to be great. And yes, save the world.

Comic by Ryan Armand. Click the picture for his comic, it’s pretty cool. Thanks to uionioph for filling me in on the author.