This chapter explores transhumanist attempts to live “happily ever after.” As British philosopher and transhumanist Dave Pearce expounds in The Hedonistic Imperative, “nanotechnology and genetic engineering will “eliminate aversive experience from the living world” and usher in “a sublime and all-pervasive happiness”(Pearce 1995). This chapter thus asks, how exactly do transhumanists conceive of the good life? By what means do they seek to usher it in? How do transhumanist conceptions of the good life compare and contrast with the way peope in other societies have understood and pursued the good life? This chapter seeks to further our understanding of “the hedonistic imperative” and in so doing, further illuminate some of the values transhumanists hold dear.

Chapter 4 explores the transhumanist pursuit of morphological freedom. It asks, how does the transhumanist attempt to transform the body compare and contrast with “social skins” found in other societies (Turner 1980)? Transhumanists insist that individuals should be allowed to do with their bodies what they please. At first glance, therefore, what they seem to champion is not a social skin, but rather a sovereign skin, a purely autonomous body and subject that will be unhampered by the pressures of society and absolutely free to develop in whatever way he/she/they see fit. A closer look at transhumanist initiatives to modify or enhance the body, however, do reveal a commitment to a shared set of meanings and values. Therefore, by focusing on some of the iniitatives that animate pursuits of morphological freedom, this chapter sheds further light on the values and meanings that animate the transhumanist world view. It also considers how the transhumanist pursuit of morphological freedom might be establishing new standards of techno-normativity that could have a profound consequences for the way subjects and societies will be disciplined and stratified in the future.

The concluding chapter provides some reflections on the values, visions and tensions that animate the transhumanist movement and technological imagination in the United States. It discusses the merits of approaching transhumanism from a comparative perspective and putting transhumanism in conversation with some classic disciplinary concerns. It considers what a posthuman future might mean for the discipline of cultural anthropology.

This chapter provides a brief history of the Transhumanist Movement in the United States by returning to Anthony Wallace's work on revitalization movements. More than half a century ago, Wallace defined a revitaliztion movement as a “deliberate, conscious, organized effort by some members of society to construct a more satisfying culture.” In this chapter I apply Wallace's model to the contemporary Transhumanist Movement with the aim of exploring how transhumanism is both like and unlike other revitalization movements studied by anthropologists. This exercise enables me to highlight features that have not been flagged in other histories of transhumanist thought. Second, it provides an opportunity to consider how transhumanism is emerging as catalyst of cultural change in the United States. Third, invoking the revitalization paradigm provides a way to recast debates as to whether transhumanism is best understood as a “new religious movement” or a secular response to the disenchantments of modernity. Finally, by returning to Wallace's work this chapter ultimately seeks to demonstrate that models are still good to think with. They help promote comparative modes of inquiry by enabling us to more readily recognize correspondences and differences between social phenonema occuring in different times and places.

Chapter 7 explores the varied ways transhumanists conceive of the econmoy of the future. It examines some of the ways transhumanists attempt to eliminate the problem of scarcity and it considers the values and assumptions that animate their attempts to do so. What kinds of social arrangements might a “post-scarcity” society be predicated upon? How do transhumanist conceptions of “radical abundance” compare and contrast with the way other societies have conceived of an affluent life? This chapter explores these questions by returning to Marshall Sahlin's essay, “The Original Affluent Society.” Revisiting Sahlins' essay will not only provide an ethnographic counterpoint from which to consider transhumanist conceptions of affluence, it will also enable us to consider how the economic organization of society influences other aspects of human social life.

Chapter 2 explores how the transhumanist attempt to achieve immortality in avatar form through the technology of mind cloning, compares and contrasts with the many attempts our species has made to achieve immortality in ancestral form. It asks: what are the conditions that make certain modes of immortality conceivable and desirable? What kind of practices, understandings, and forms of self-discipline are these modes of immortality predicated upon? What kinds of experiences do, and might, these modes of immortality give rise to? Why are these modes of immortality meaningful to the people who pursue them. By juxtaposing the ubiquitous making of ancestors with the making of avatars among transhumanists, the chapter further illuminates the values and beliefs that animate the transhumanist technological imagination, and once again demonstrates that thinking comparatively can sharpen our abilities to grasp the features of a given social phenomenon.

The introductory chapter provides a brief overview of transhumanism and argues that transhumanism can be better understood by approaching it from a comparative perspective and putting it in conversation with longstanding concerns within the discipline of cultural anthropology. It discusses how the book speaks to existing anthropological research on technology, the future, the technological imagination and transhumanism. It also provides a brief overview of the chapters and discusses the research methods I used.

This chapter explores some of the ways transhumanists envision the posthuman family. From attempts to create digital offspring through the use of software fertility doctors, to establishing intimate relationships with robotic kin, to advocating for forms of biological reproduction that involve multiple genitors and occur in a laboratory rather than a womb, transhumanists propose that the posthuman family will look considerably different than it does today. The point of this chapter is not to determine whether or not these possibilities will be actualized in the future, but rather, to explore and explain why this way of construing kinship makes sense to transhumanists. In so doing, the chapter will further our understanding of transhumanism and provide yet another example of the diverse ways our species has attempted to imagine and configure something we call family.

Chapter 5 explores transhumanist conceptions of the self. Transhumanist conceptions of the self have been variously described as “informatic,” “quantified,” or “data-based,” and a number of scholars have shown how these conceptions of the self have emerged from a cross-fertilization between the fields of neuro-science, computer science, and artificial intelligence. However, in this chapter, I put transhumanist conceptions of the self in conversation with Alfred Irving Hallowell's work on “The Ojibiwa Self and its Behavioral Enviornment.” In so doing, the chapter provides some new insights into the way transhumanists conceive of the self and the future behavioral enviornments in which posthuman descendants will dwell. The chapter argues that like the Ojibiwa, transhumanists also envision a future in which personhood will not be the sole domain of humanity, but rather, distributed among an array of “other-than-human” powerful beings.