“Oh, Brave New World that has such people in it!”

Minerva in Shakespeare’s The Tempest and John Savage in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World

In today’s world of gene editing, plant and animal cloning, DYI biohacking, and artificial intelligence, the transhumanist movement merits careful thought. Simply put, transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement that advocates for enhancing the human condition and expanding human capabilities through advanced technology.

But when does a Transhumanist’s individual expression of “transcendence” become a movement toward the Singularity? The political ambitions that wish to use science to “enhance” humanity, based on someone’s idea of “perfect” carry dangerous social implications. The transhumanist notion of “self-directed evolution” to recast humanity in the image of “perfection” evokes social Darwinism and the Übermensch. It brings to mind the early American eugenics programs that inspired the fascist sonderweg and Hitler’s aggressive “race hygiene” by application of eugenics in the Holocaust.

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Eugenics: Designing A ‘Perfect Society’ from a ‘Perfect Human’

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Put simply, eugenics is the scientifically erroneous and immoral belief and practice of “racial genetic improvement’ and “selective breeding” (or more currently through genetic manipulation), which gained particular popularity during the early 20^th century with key scientific misappropriation (scientific racism).

Eugenics and scientific racism are concepts as old as Plato and have haunted humanity since the biblical portrayal of Adam and Eve. The philosophy and associated practice became increasingly common in the 1870s and 1880s as leaders and intellectuals worldwide argued for policies based on racist and xenophobic attitudes—justifying actions of antisemitism, sexism, colonialism, slavery, and imperialism. Discussions of ‘human improvement’ and the ideology of scientific racism became increasingly common. In 1883, Francis Galton, English statistician and ethnologist (and cousin of Charles Darwin), gave the practice a name. He called it eugenics, which comes from a Greek term meaning “good” or “noble” birth.

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Eugenics was based on ‘scientific racism’, an ideology that appropriated the legitimate methods of science to argue for the superiority of white Europeans. Misappropriation of advances in medicine, anatomy and statistics during the 18^th and 19^th centuries (including Charles Darwin’s 1859 theory of evolution and Gregor Mendel’s laws of inheritance) added a false sense of validity to these racist claims.

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Historically the ideology of ‘scientific racism’ and practice of eugenics took on two forms: 1) positive eugenics—encouraging people deemed ‘superior’ or ‘fit’ (based on wealth, race or intelligence) to have more children; and 2) negative eugenics—discouraging or preventing people deemed ‘unfit’ (e.g. ethnic minorities, poor or disabled) from having children (most commonly through forced sterilization or murder).

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Eugenic strategies flourished in the USA in the early 20^th Century when thousands of people underwent forced sterilization. 

For instance, Work conducted at the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) in Cold Spring Harbor, under the direction of Charles Benedict Davenport from 1910 to 1939, directly led to the forced sterilization of thousands of American citizens and the passage of anti-immigration laws.

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By the 1920s, eugenics was a global phenomenon, popular with the elite, particularly in countries such as Germany, the United States, Great Britain, Italy, Mexico, and Canada. In the United States, involuntary sterilization, forced institutionalization, social ostracization and stigma have continued well into the 1970s. Concerned over “race suicide” (based on differential birthrates of races), American eugenicists promoted involuntary sterilization of mostly native Americans, African Americans, poor whites and people with disabilities; declaring certain individuals “feebleminded” or anti-social. Over 60,000 people were sterilized against their will by the 1970s.

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“Perhaps more than any other science, biology has consistently been employed as an accomplice to moral claims because it has tremendous social utility in translating scientific findings into political imperatives,” says Cosima Herter, science consultant for the TV show Orphan Black (which covers the topic of eugenics well.) “Deeply embedded in the public consciousness is the hope that social problems can be solved with ‘scientific panaceas’,” Herter adds. “…Science can as easily act as an ally to existing institutions and justify pernicious prejudices – racism, sexism, homophobia, and class disparity to name a few – as it can produce wondrous, beautiful, and beneficial fruits in the service of a better world.”

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Eugenics & Transhumanism

In 1929, Cambridge crystallographer J.D. Bernal, speculated on radical changes to human bodies and intelligence through bionic implants and cognitive enhancement. Two years before that, Fritz Lang’s expressionist SF film Metropolis introduced the first robot depicted in cinema: the Maschinenmensch, the machine-human.

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Biologist Julian Huxley, brother of author Aldous Huxley, first used the word Transhumanism in a 1957 article, where he presented the concept of the technological singularity, or the ultra-rapid advent of superhuman intelligence. Julian Huxley defined Transhumanism as “man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature.”

The founders of Transhumanism were educated wealthy individuals of mostly British and European descent. They were an elite ruling class, who considered themselves the forward-thinking intelligentsia. Transhumanism is an intellectual and cultural movement that promotes eugenic principles through science & technology to improve human mental and physical characteristics and capacities.  Transhumanists seek to expand technological opportunities for people to live longer and healthier lives and enhance their intellectual, physical, and emotional capacities through the use of synthetic biology: genetic, cybernetic and nanotechnologies. From the transhuman perspective, “in time the line between machines and living beings will blur and eventually vanish, making us part of a bionic ecology.”

While early Transhumanists advocated the elitest pseudoscience of eugenics or “racial hygiene”, many of today’s Transhumanists argue that market dynamics and individual choice will drive twenty-first century eugenics. However, this argument contradicts the movement’s own dialectic: that of achieving the Singularity. The Transhuman quest for the Singularity of the Übermensch consists of the ability to upload the minds of all individuals to a Hive Mind, a symbiotic collective consciousness, in which all peoples can link to an artificial “brain” or global hard drive, to achieve super-intelligence. The Mind Upload Research Group (MURG) is currently researching this possibility.

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If such an existence were even desirable—which it isn’t to me—such a utopia would not be available to everyone; it would remain the domain of a wealthy aristocracy, creating yet another class system. I’m reminded of William Gibson’s pithy proclamation: “The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed.”

Kurzweil admits: “Humans who resist the pressure to alter their bodies by becoming part-cyborg or are unable to afford such procedures will be ostracized from society. Humans who do not utilize such implants are unable to meaningfully participate in dialogues with those who do.”

In Kurzweil’s brave new world of biological and non-biological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence will expand outward in the universe at the speed of light. Will such an elite see the mass of humanity as worthless parasites and either prevent them from reproducing via mass sterilization programs or simply slaughter them outright?

The smell of eugenics remains ever-present.

Its oppressive aroma lingers in the biocapital frontier. In the neo-eugenic ‘marketplace of genetics’ encouraged by current advances in genetic screening and gene editing. In the continued confabulations of “designer babies” for the wealthy. In the neoliberal commodification of “human capital,” and rebranding of the “unfit.” In the biopolitics of disabled populations. In the persistence of white-supremacist movements throughout the world.  

In the introduction to their 2000 paper in Nature Reviews Genetics entitled “Engineering American society: the lesson of eugenics”, researchers David Micklos and Elof Carlson write: “We stand at the threshold of a new century, with the whole human genome stretched out before us. Messages from science, the popular media, and the stock market suggest a world of seemingly limitless opportunities to improve human health and productivity. But at the turn of the last century, science and society faced a similar rush to exploit human genetics. The story of eugenics—humankind’s first venture into a ‘gene age’—holds a cautionary lesson for our current preoccupation with genes.”

What is perfect and how do we measure it? What is the risk of even suggesting a recipe for such a thing? A perfect society? Isn’t a Utopia an oxymoron of unresolvable paradox? Science fiction literature has given us many visions of where so-called utopias may descend (e.g., Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, A Stranger in a Strange Land, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Matrix, The Hunger Games, Elysium, Divergent, Clockwork Orange, Delirium, and so many more). The very act of being an individual provides complexity and diversity that promotes stability in change.

Stable chaos.

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Perhaps, one day, when we are done hubristically tampering with things we shouldn’t be, we may find that the mess that is humanity fits rather nicely in this wonderfully messy world—and we’ll leave it all well alone.

More likely, that will be done for us by a world no longer patient with us.

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Glossary:

Der Übermensch (‘superman’): a philosophical concept introduced by Friedrich Nietzsche in his 1883 book Also sprach Zarathustra in which his character Zarathustra posits as a goal for humanity the Übermensch: a higher, self-mastering individual who creates their own values, affirms earthly life, and transcends the limitations of traditional morality and religion.

Transhumanism: a philosophical and intellectual movement that advocates for enhancing the human condition and expanding human capabilities through advanced technology.

Sonderweg: “special/unique path”; historically the term refers to the German/Teutonic belief that Germans were entitled to a distinct, separate historical development from the rest of Western Europe, ultimately leading to the rise of Nazism and the events of World War II. Historically, some German thinkers proudly viewed their special path as superior. They argued that Germany possessed a uniquely deep culture, strong statehood, and efficient bureaucracy that stood above “superficial” Western liberalism and parliamentary democracy

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References:

Micklos, David and Elof Carlson. 2000. “Engineering American society: the lesson of eugenics.” Nature Reviews Genetics 1: 153-158.

Rutherford, Adam. 2022. “Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics.” WW Norton. 384pp.

Torres, Mark. 2025. “Long Island and the Legacy of Eugenics: Station of Intolerance.” The History Press. 240pp.

Whatcott, Jess. 2024. “Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics.” Durham & London, Duke University Press. 248pp.

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