Редактирование: Transhumanist FAQ Live (раздел)

===What kind of society would posthumans live in?===

Not enough information is available at the current time to provide a full answer to this question. In part, though, the answer is, “You decide.” The outcome may be influenced by the choices we make now and over the coming decades. In this respect, the situation is the same as in earlier epochs that had no transhuman possibilities: by becoming involved in political struggles against today’s social ills and injustices, we can help make tomorrow’s society better.

Transhumanism does, however, inform us about new constraints, possibilities, and issues, and it highlights numerous important leverage points for intervention, where a small application of resources can make a big long-term difference. For example, one issue that moves into prominence is the challenge of creating a society in which beings with vastly different orders of capabilities (such as posthuman persons and as-yet non-augmented humans) can live happily and peacefully together. Another concern that becomes paramount is the need to build a world order in which dangerous arms races can be prevented and in which the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction can be suppressed or at least delayed until effective defenses have been developed [see “Aren’t these future technologies very risky? Could they even cause our extinction?”].

The ideal social organization may be one that includes the possibility for those who so wish to form independent societies voluntarily secluded from the rest of the world, in order to pursue traditional ways of life or to experiment with new forms of communal living. Achieving an acceptable balance between the rights of such communities for autonomy, on the one hand, and the security concerns of outside entities and the just demands for protection of vulnerable and oppressed individuals inside these communities on the other hand, is a delicate task and a familiar challenge in political philosophy.

What types of society posthumans will live in depends on what types of posthumans eventually develop. One can project various possible developmental paths [see “What is a posthuman?”] which may result in very different kinds of posthuman, transhuman, and unaugmented human beings, living in very different sorts of societies. In attempting to imagine such a world, we must bear in mind that we are likely to base our expectations on the experiences, desires, and psychological characteristics of humans. Many of these expectations may not hold true of posthuman persons. When human nature changes, new ways of organizing a society may become feasible. We may hope to form a clearer understanding of what those new possibilities are as we observe the seeds of transhumanity develop.