The following "Researcher Reflection" from Dr. Nicholas Low is part of an ongoing series where we spotlight CSWR scholars and their research.
For millennia, humans have dreamed of “superhuman” beings, in the form of gods, ghosts, demons, and heroes. These superhumans humble us mortals: they transcend human life, and possess powers, abilities, and knowledge that we do not.
However, we seem to be unlearning this humility before superhumans: many have come to embrace the superhuman as a real possibility, even claiming it as our birthright and destiny. Friedrich Nietzsche is a key influence for this trend. Nietzsche argued that the meaning of human life is its capacity to generate the conditions for “superhuman” life, to become a “bridge to the superhuman.”
Nietzsche’s way of thinking informs our contemporary obsession with superhumans. While most children in Spiderman or Elsa costumes eventually resign themselves to the reality that they won’t be spinning webs or freezing by touch, for many, this resignation to all-too-human life never takes hold. Transhumanists envision various augmentations to humans, proponents of AI herald the imminent arrival of cyborg life, and the ancient dream of immortality is no longer spoken of in hushed tones, but openly pursued. Each of these efforts to realize superhumanity reflect Nietzsche’s legacy.
However, not all these fantasies match the subtlety of Nietzsche’s vision. The “effective accelerationist” movement, “e/acc,” is a key example. E/acc has recently gained traction in the mainstream tech world, but has its roots in the “neoreactionary” philosophy of Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin. E/acc is a rejoinder to “effective altruism,” which preaches caution and regulation in tech development.
Venture capitalist Marc Andreesen recently proclaimed himself a spokesman of this movement in his “Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” Beneath a heading that reads “Becoming Technological Supermen,” Andreesen writes: “We believe in deliberately and systematically transforming ourselves into the kind of people who can advance technology.” The details are vague, but the picture is clear: unregulated markets are the vehicle of change, and technologists are at the wheel.
Andreesen celebrates Nick Land’s idea of the “techno-capital machine,” “…the engine of perpetual material creation, growth, and abundance.” Andreesen states that, “We believe the techno-capital machine of markets and innovation never ends, but instead spirals continuously upward.” This upward spiral is how we become “Supermen”: the runaway growth pattern of “intelligence” will lead to cybernetic symbiosis between human and artificial life forms. Andreesen reassures the reader that “Intelligent machines augment intelligent humans, driving a geometric expansion of what humans can do.” But in what sense will “humans” remain?
According to Nick Land, the techno-capital machine expands what he calls “thinking” and “sentience,” but separates them from the human brain and body. In his vision of superhumanity, humanity is a problem, a horrifying nightmare from which “sentience” must soon wake. Meanwhile, Andreesen promises that the machines will “serve us,” but who exactly is this “us?”
One could dismiss Andreesen’s vision as pure science fiction, but superhumanism is what makes this vision appealing. Andreesen and Land are both, like Nietzsche, addressing the crisis of nihilism, a burgeoning discontent with merely human life. They are preaching to a weary congregation that longs for superhumanity.
There are obvious reasons to condemn Andreesen’s manifesto: the naïve confidence that market-driven advances preserve “human” interests, invocations of a survival-of-the-fittest political philosophy (“We believe in competition, because we believe in evolution. / We believe in evolution, because we believe in life”); anti-intellectualism (“Our enemy is the ivory tower, the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview”); and his deafening silence on race (Nick Land avows a form of “hyper-racism”).
But should Andreesen, this wannabe modern Prometheus, be punished for stealing the gods’ fire? Is the lesson that we humans should humble ourselves and retreat to “humanity,” rather than pursue the superhuman? I argue that even if we could, we should not. The “human,” a mutable and shifting category, has its own exclusionary history. Nietzsche showed that humanity is not a fixed product, but something always in progress. In other words, there is neither a stable nor inclusive “humanity” to retreat to. Andreesen’s problem isn’t superhumanism per se, but rather his conflation of superhumanism with mastery and control.
Nietzsche himself diagnoses this issue. Andreesen’s vision of “technological supermen” is a fantasy of mastery – over technology, over nature, and over life. According to Nietzsche, the desire for mastery and control was an expression of revenge against reality, against everything that hurts and frightens us. Nietzsche taught that we shouldn’t deny our humanity, and extolled unconditional love of life rather than revenge against it. This is the extraordinary beauty and difficulty of Nietzsche’s superhumanism: the first step on the road to superhumanity is to end our campaign of revenge against the painful and frightening nature of life. Any superhumanism that perpetuate this campaign will only amplify our all-too-human forms of cruelty. In other words, creating superhumanity requires that while we remain human, we must temper our striving for mastery with a dose of super-humility.
-by Dr. Nicholas Low, Postdoctoral Fellow, Philosophy of Religion, Transcendence & Transformation Initiative