This is the everyman’s introduction to technocracy and transhumanism that builds on my previous books on technocracy. Both are primary to the world economic forum’s great reset, in partnership with the United Nations, to replace Capitalism with an alternative economic system called sustainable development, aka technocracy. Further, humans themselves are targeted by transhumanists to change the human condition into humans 2.0 via genetic engineering. Thus, technocracy transforms the structure and economic system of the world, while transhumanism transforms the people who live there.

Technocracy wants to rule the earth in a panopticon of scientific dictatorship. Transhumanists want to live forever and become omniscient. Both are mechanistic systems that see nature as something to be studied, manipulated, and conquered. Both see themselves as the new intelligent designers of the world, including humans. Both seek to craft a future for planet earth that nobody asked for, voted for, or wanted.

Whatever solutions might spring up that enable us to reject technocracy and transhumanism cannot possibly work unless we have a clear understanding of both.

It is my hope that this book will not depress you, but rather encourage you to take your proper place in the world by doing your part to put a stop to The Evil Twins of Technocracy and Transhumanism.

A tightly argued and expansive examination of the pitfalls of transhumanism that reacquaints us with what it means to live well.

Advocates of transhumanism, or “radical” enhancement, urge us to pursue the biotechnological heightening of select capacities – above all, cognitive ability – so far beyond any human limit that the beings with those capacities would exist on a higher ontological plane. For proponents of such views, humanity’s self-transcendence through advancements in science and technology may even be morally required. Consequently, the human stakes of how we respond to transhumanism are immeasurably high.

In Posthuman Bliss? The Failed Promise of Transhumanism, Susan B. Levin challenges transhumanists’ overarching commitments regarding the mind and brain, ethics, liberal democracy, knowledge, and reality, showing their notion of humanity’s self-transcendence into “posthumanity” to be little more than fantasy. Uniting philosophical with scientific arguments, Levin mounts a significant challenge to transhumanists’ claim that science and technology support their vision of posthumanity. In a clear and engaging style, she dismantles transhumanists’ breezy assurances that posthumans will emerge if we but allocate sufficient resources to that end. Far from offering theoretical and practical “proof of concept” for the vision that they urge upon us, Levin argues, transhumanists engage inadequately with cognitive psychology, biology, and neuroscience, often relying on questionable or outdated views within those fields. Having shown in depth why transhumanism should be rejected, Levin argues forcefully for a holistic perspective on living well that is rooted in Aristotle’s virtue ethics but that is adapted to liberal democracy. This holism is thoroughly human, in the best of senses: It directs us to consider worthy ends for us as human beings and to do the irreplaceable work of understanding ourselves rather than relying on technology and science to be our salvation.