As the Christian world celebrates the capital punishment and resuscitation of Jesus Christ, and Jews celebrate Passover, there are fierce winds of change suggesting that these acts of worship will become the exception rather than the norm. There is a philosophy reinforcing this change and it has equal distaste for all religions, not just Christians or Jews.

There is a general disbelief in god or gods or any supernatural beings (ghosts, angels, fairies, goblins) intervening in the world and taking an interest in human affairs; disbelief in an immortal soul or life after death and, among other things, a disbelief in a divine plan or ultimate purpose of the universe.

The compelling argument for the disbelief in any gods is the existence of evil and suffering which makes it impossible to believe in a loving, all-powerful, all-knowing deity who would allow so much suffering in the world to be caused by nature and people. A supporting argument is that religions claim things to be true for which there is no supporting evidence and encourage belief in the unbelievable and in superstition. This philosophy is posthumanism.

Humanism is not new, its modern iteration emerged during the Renaissance as tensions developed between religious authoritarianism and secularism in Medieval Europe. The secular view was that white European rational thinking men should be in control of socio-political institutions and human destiny.

Humanist International (global representative body of the humanist movement, uniting a diverse community of non-religious organisations and individuals) defines posthumanism as a democratic and ethical life stance that affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. Posthumanism, they continue, stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethics based on human and other natural values in a spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities.

Posthumanists assert that the world has evolved throughout the centuries in a natural and unguided manner that makes it difficult to predict the future. Posthumanism wants to change this natural process; the belief is that the future and human nature can be shaped or engineered by way of technological advancements. According to the British Institute of Post Human Studies (BIOPS) posthumanist thoughts does two things:

(1) considers current trend to see how future technologies will develop, and how they might affect us

(2) the use of current and upcoming technologies to bring about societal change

BIOPS indicates that there are three critical areas of humanist thought that have extraordinary transformative potential; the three supers:

(1) super longevity;

(2) super intelligence; and

(3) super well-being.

Super longevity: Humanist view ageing as the major cause of death; it is a disease, a medical condition that can be cured. The current life cycle of birth, development, aging, and death can be changed by developing technologies to combat ageing, so individuals can live for as long as you want.

Super intelligence: A future in which there is a symbiotic relationship with artificial intelligence (AI) or integrating ourselves with AI, propelling humanity into period of super intelligence — artificial general intelligence. Some see a future where we can upload our minds to the cloud, and we could download our minds into other bodies or replicate it onto a system to make it sentient, like a cyborg.

Super well-being: Why have super longevity and super intelligence unless it can make us happy more content. The idea is to phase out suffering by gene modification to avoid depression, anger, jealousy, and other negative states — no sadness, only happiness.

These three critical areas raise some obvious and significant ethical concerns; however, this is not the purpose of this article. Instead, let us examine two phenomena: LGBTQ and ChatGPT in the context of posthumanism.

The LGBTQ philosophy or queer theory is a way of thinking that dismantles traditional assumptions about gender and sexual identities. Queer theorists analyse gender and sexuality as socially and culturally constructed concepts. Within this umbrella are transgender (people or individuals whose gender identity or gender expression is different from typical expectations of the gender they were assigned at birth).

Amnesty International defines sexual orientation as who you are attracted to and who you want to create relationships with. The argument is that everyone’s sexual orientation is personal, and it is up to them to decide how, and if, they want to define it, and for some people, these change over time.

This is a brief synopsis of a complex issue. However, when we view the LGBTQ and trans debate through a transhumanism lens, gender recognition reform is a fundamental and deliberate reengineering of sexual orientation and gender and a change in human nature to conform with the philosophy. Transition surgery is also consistent with posthumanist philosophy to use technological advancements to change human nature. This gives a perspective on the culture wars.

Let us now look at ChatGPT. In November 2022 OpenAI released ChatGPT, a new artificial intelligence tool that can tell stories, write computer code, create legal documents, write news reports among other cognitive tasks. The public responded in awe, enthusiasm, and fear. Four months later, on March 13, 2023, OpenAI released a more advanced and powerful version: GPT-4 on a subscription basis.

Some technology experts reacted with alarm, writing an open letter signed by hundreds of prominent artificial intelligence experts, tech entrepreneurs, and scientists calling for a six-month moratorium on the development and testing of AI technologies more powerful than GPT-4 so that the risks it may pose can be properly studied. It warned that language models like GPT-4 can already compete with humans at a growing range of tasks and could be used to automate jobs and spread misinformation. The letter also raises the distant prospect of singularity of AI systems that could replace humans and remake civilisation. Despite the bangarang, GPT-5 is currently in training by OpenAI. The call for a moratorium on new AI developments is unlikely to happen because of geopolitical competition and internal USA competition primarily between Microsoft and Google.

What is currently happening with AI is consistent with the second pillar of posthumanism, a super intelligent future. The small sample used in this article suggests that the West are already operating in a posthumanist ethos but are they or the rest of the world ready to reengineer nature? The purpose of this article was to use post-humanist philosophy to explain the massive vertigo inducing changes taking place in society and to gain insights into the behavioural and technological trajectory of the changes to come.

Professor Paul Golding is former dean of the College of Business and Management at the University of Technology, Jamaica. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or pgolding@utech.edu.jm.