1988 - The Post-Human Movement Manifesto - Steve Nichols

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Do you have the potentail to evolve - or are you doomed to remain human?

THE POST-HUMAN MOVEMENT

ROBOTS

Global society is in turmoil, as it has been for the whole of this century. We have witnessed devastating wars, and the breakdown of traditional systems of belief. Massive advances in technology and science have left the average human in their wake -too overloaded with data to respond to all the changes. Although we have to our disposal a greater intellectual and economic resource than ever before, a bottle neck exists. Our capacity to fully utilise this has not grown at a corresponding rate. We seem to be stuck in the past with a "HUMAN operating mode" programmed in. At last, a software upgrade is available!

THE HUMAN CONDITION

As we owe a debt to our ancestors for their efforts in ascending from sub-human to fully human status, we owe it to our descendants in turn to progress from the worn out human role-model, to be POST-HUMAN. This need not be a painful transition. We cab build upon our human heritage, taking what is useful from the old order, and discarding the dross. Care must be taken not to merely exchange one lable for another. As soon as we fix our identity to any tag, then we award ourselves with limitations. 'Post' simply means 'after'.

TRANSCENDENCE

This set of proposals may strike you as new and revolutionary. In history though we find a number of examples of individuals not happy to accept a human identity. Buddha advocated the dissolution of the self/ego as a prerequisite for true enlightement. The Pharoes of ancient Egypt considered themselves to be deities rather than men, as perhaps to a lesser extent did the divine Kings of medievil Europe. Nietsche toyed with the possibility of 'superman', and exclaimed that God is dead. Christ went to pains to distinguish himself from the common population. Francis Regardie implores us to be 'more than human', following the teachings of the Golden Dawn. David Bowie re-emphasises the I Ching in the words of his song 'got to make way fo Homo Superior'. The POST-HUMAN movement is not revolutionary, but inevitable.

AT NO COST TO YOU...

How can you tap your evolutionary potential by associating with this movement? It can be expected that just by comtemplating this document some advance will be achieved. Certain ingrained problems and weaknesses will vanish the instant that we confront the falseness of idea that HUMAN is the only possibility open to us. If you wish to take things further, the author of this document possessed detailed knowledge relating to the emergence and nature of consciousness, and is prepared to share this work for the benefit of all sentient beings. Philosophers such as Descartes saw part of this knowledge, but were unable to access the full information owing to the restraints of their time. THE POST-HUMAN MOVEMENT offers a range of publications that go far beyond anything existing in the whole of the human tradition.

Please send an SAE to receive your FREE COPY of the introductory booklet 'THE PRIMAL EYE - a crash course in the evolution of intelligence'.

- First published in Games Monthly magazine and elsewhere 1988.

Links

URL: http://www.posthuman.org/page2.html

Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20160328013139/http://www.posthuman.org/page2.html