For Zoltan Istvan, Being Alive is the Most Beautiful Thing on the Planet

 Transhumanism  

Shortly before announcing the formation of the Transhumanist Party and his run for the US presidency, transhumanist philosopher and writer Zoltan Istvan gave a TEDs talk explaining his path and his vision for the future.

After the success of his book The Transhumanist Wager, Zoltan Istvan started actively promoting transhumanism and other futurist issues, giving talks, media interviews, writing and he is now running for the US presidency under his newly-formed Transhumanist Party banner.

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Like the character in his book, Jethro Knights, Istvan, an American-Hungarian, began a solo, multi-year sailing journey around the world at the age of 21. His main cargo was 500 handpicked books, mostly classics. He's explored over 100 countries—many as a journalist for the National Geographic Channel—writing, filming, and appearing in dozens of television stories, articles, and webcasts.

In this talk, recorded last month at the 2014 TEDxTransmedia Exponential Beauty event in Geneva, Switzerland, Istvan relates how is near-death experience with an unexploded landmine in Vietnam focused his attention on his desire to go on living, and centralized his focus on transhumanism.

"What I wanted to realize about the process was that I was ready to give up my journalism, ready to give up the danger in order to join a field that is interested in preserving life."

"While laying there on the ground, I had the discovery of a lifetime, or perhaps the revelation I like to call the philosophical nuclear bomb because at that moment I realized that for a couple years I've been doing some incredibly dangerous things," Istvan relates. "What I wanted to realize about the process was that I was ready to give up my journalism, ready to give up the danger in order to join a field that is interested in preserving life."

"I realized at that moment that I wanted to overcome death and not die." For this reason, Istvan calls this moment the most beautiful in his life.

He goes on to relate a few advances in life extension, or as he labels it—transhumanism. According to Istvan, if research into life extension continues at its current pace, many people will not have to face death.

One of the potential technologies Istvan talks about is mind uploading. "The foot is already in the door for us finding the technology to download our entire set of memories," he claims.

Istvan asks what beauty will be like in the future virtual world of and an enhanced view of reality.  "The human eye only sees about one percent of the light spectrum.  The human ear only hears about 0.1 percent of what's out there in the sound waves," he says. "Imagine for a second if we're tied into devices that allow us to experience that other 99 percent...it makes you think about how everything, not just beauty is going to change."

"Ultimately, we're just an infant in what the universe is," concludes Istvan. "When we start applying technology like life extension and robotics and microchips into our head and start tying ourselves to a digital world, we're going to find ourselves uncovering entire new concepts of beauty."

A lot of what Istvan discusses is only five, ten or fifteen years away according to experts and trends.

Like Ted Chu, Istvan says we will no longer be the human species once we adopt these technologies.

"Whatever happens, no matter how far we go, how far we evolve, one thing is going to remain constant—beauty requires us to be alive."


SOURCE  TEDx Talks

By 33rd Square

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