Finally, after two months of summer parenting duties, I’ve found time to review another independent author’s work. This time around I’ve chosen, “The Transhumanist Wager” by Zoltan Istvan. I had the pleasure of meeting Zoltan at a Transhumanism conference near Berkeley, CA. In general, he’s a staunch advocate of the Transhuman movement and his blogs on the Huffington Post often get a rise out of people. To put it simply, Zoltan is passionate about his work and he doesn’t mind stepping on a few toes to get his message out there. As a matter of fact, the more toes stepped upon, the more people discuss his blog, which in the end is a good thing when you’re trying to get people to think about the future.
The parallels between Zoltan and his main character, Jethro
Knights, are not lost on anyone who’s followed him. Yet Jethro is indeed his
own man in many, many ways. A young college co-ed at the beginning of the
novel, Jethro Knights prides himself on his perfect ability to reason. His love
and devotion to logic are obvious, to the point that any conclusion that
considers human emotions is silly and meaningless to him. He views humanity through a
lense that makes him an outcast at best. No one could possibly ever understand
such a detached human being. Many have compared Istvan’s work to “Atlas
Shrugged” by Ayn Rand but I would disagree. Jethro Knights is not John Gault at
all. “The Fountainhead” would be the more appropriate Rand analogy to "The Transhumanist Wager"-- Jethro Knights is Howard Roark, purely devoted to his craft, without the sado-masochistic love
relationship.
Disgusted by the religiously biased current in his
curriculum, and the government as a whole, Jethro leaves the university, after
pissing off some very important people, and makes his way around the world on a
sailboat he’s rebuilt by hand. During his sojourn, the United States government
invests in a War on Transhumanism, fighting against science and any gains it
might make to improve human life.
While overseas, in a surprising moment of weakness for this
otherwise emotionless man, Jethro meets Zoe Bach, and falls in love with her,
despite his own war on irrationality that he’s been waging his entire life.
Some have said this love story is unreasonable, for nothing is more irrational
than falling in love, but I find Zoe, and her relationship with Jethro, to be
one of the most delightful, and insightful story lines in the book. While her presence
in the story is too short, her impact was lasting for me. It was Zoe’s take on
life, which she accurately calls “Quantum Zen,” that showed the most obvious
path to immortality. Much more than Jethro’s avid atheism, which is just as narrow-minded
as the Christian doctrines his antagonists carry with them, Zoe’s outlook on
life, aging and death were engaging, interesting and full of potential.
Which brings me to the narrow-minded Christian antagonists--
they’re developed slowly within the storyline, and we don’t actually get to see them in full action until Jethro returns to the US and takes up his mantle as the new face
for the Transhuman Movement. At that point Jethro becomes Enemy Number 1 of the
state, and enter Reverend Belinas, your typical sleazy televangelist. The kind
of Christian that makes you go, “Yuck.” On many fronts, Istvan is accurate in
describing the zealous nature that drives Belinas to commit crime in the name
of the Lord. Belinas is exactly the reason we need the separation of Church and
State—people like him often throw out Christ’s entire message of peace and love
for the one line in the Bible where the prophet declared, “Only through me shall man enter
the kingdom of heaven,” thus giving Christians the right to manipulate politics to
their dogma, since that’s the only way to get to heaven.
“The Transhumanist Wager” tackles this aspect of our society
in a scathingly honest way. I have no doubt that the reason our governments
spends .65 of every tax dollar on the war machine rather than on
infrastructure, technology and education, is to further zealous idealisms like
the ones Reverend Belinas supports. This sort of intrusive thinking is also
what limits technological research and fuels the anti-science movement we’re
witnessing. From the tone in this novel, I can see that Istvan is very
concerned about this religious-political environment and how it will affect his
dreams of living forever. Jethro Knights likens it to genocide of sorts-- that
denying people the right to radical life extensions due to religious fears is a
form of murder on the part of those in power.
Overall, the technology in “The Transhumanist Wager” is fun
to think about. Transhumania, the sea city Utopia Jethro is forced to build in
order to invest in Transhuman technologies without government intrusion, is
every libertarian's dream.
But there’s a glaring hypocrisy I simply cannot ignore-- Jethro Knight’s relentless belief that his way of life is the only way of life
feels very similar to Reverend Belinas’ worldview. One places his belief in an unseen God while the other places his in an unproven science. It's ironic when atheists, or
those who believe only in science, use the same language as a religious
zealot to justify their choices. To be against any way of life other than yours is simply intolerance, whether religious, racial or technical. There’s a scene in the novel where the Reverend is torturing Jethro,
ready to kill him, in order to protect the evolution he thinks humanity should
take. In that moment I of course sided with Jethro; I don’t believe that
killing others to support my way of life is justified. Yet only a few chapters
later, when Jethro is released and back on his heavily armed floating city, he
issues an ultimatum to the world that is so eerily similar in language as
Belinas, I had to laugh at the hypocrisy.
True, Jethro wasn’t calling all Christians to evangelize the
world. Instead, he was calling all of those who were willing to produce and
work hard for an immortal future to evangelize the world. If you didn’t agree
with him, or perhaps were just lazy, then you weren’t needed. You were
expendable. Yes, perhaps even murderable. For in the future according to Jethro
Knights, only the capable are needed. The rest are nothing to him and taking
up resources. Best to simply kill them off.
To me, this is the polarization that has kept humanity back
for centuries. As long as we look at one another as either with us or against
us, we’ll be limited in our growth. As long as we see our technology as either
evil or good, we’ll never make the next great leap. True, we’ll keep inventing interesting
stuff to control or kill one another, but to great destruction and unnecessary
expense.
In my opinion, “The Transhumanist Wager” let me down at the very end not
because it’s written poorly, nor because I don’t agree with the fantastic
vision that Istvan has for our future when it comes to technology, but because
Jethro Knights is just another bully forcing his philosophy upon the
inhabitants of the world. There’s nothing novel about a tyrant. We’ve been
there, done that, over and over again.
Life shouldn’t have to be either/or anymore. We can rise up
and be both/and. Philosophers call it, “neutralizing the binaries.” I like that
idea. When we can move from a binary way of thinking, to a more quantum view of
life, then anything becomes possible.
Alas, perhaps Istvan has hidden the key to our future in this book
after all, in the form of Zoe Bach’s “Quantum Zen.” Follow her, rather than
Jethro Knights, and the singularity, as well as world peace and tolerance, might just be around the corner.
