******************************

Oblivion threatens to engulf us all, spreading toward us across the void of the dead past. Billions have succumbed to it already – precious universes of thought, feeling, and sensation, snuffed out by senescence, decay, and ruin. But we do not acquiesce. We fight the greatest war of all time, a war not against men but against what for ages was unquestioningly accepted as the human predicament. We do not meekly accept our limitations, but boldly strive to overcome them. We do not resign ourselves to lifespans of a paltry forty, sixty, eighty years. We do not concern ourselves with “putting our affairs in order” so that the next generation can repeat the same cycle of growth and decay, just a quarter-century removed in time. We journey not from cradle to grave, but from our present narrow confines to the vast expanses of space, time, and intelligence. We are transhumanists, who confront ruin itself with the courage and conviction that this foe, too, shall be overcome.

What are our weapons in the war against ruin? Reason and science, philosophy and technology, will and skill, persuasion and action. We do not accept that things must remain as they have been in recent memory. We recognize that the status quo is but a fleeting moment, and stability is an illusion. The choice for humanity is clear: we move forward in exponential progress, or ruin drags us down into the primeval bog. Evolution is cruel and has wiped out the overwhelming majority of all species. We must not become its victims. Existential risks continue to threaten us, but the worst risks are not those of our making. The greatest risk we face is that of our own fear and inaction, of allowing indifferent, thoughtlessly destructive forces of the wild to demolish what we and our ancestors have painstakingly built. Only mastery of nature, including our own biology, will enable us to preserve and amplify what we hold dear. Machines – from the tiniest nanobots to the most comprehensive networks of supercomputers and artificial intellects – will be our allies in our struggle. Eventually, they and we shall become inseparable. From them we shall gain faculties that biology alone could never provide. From us they shall gain life and reason.

Imagine the vast, open realm of possibilities for a being without a built-in expiration date. What could you do today if you knew that an inexhaustible succession of tomorrows awaited? No more would the nagging reminder of your forthcoming oblivion confine your focus to the most rudimentary of tasks. What would you attempt to learn, to experience, to build, to bring into your ever-widening sphere? We will give you the universe, if you accept it. And if you do not accept it right away, the splendor of the transhumanist world will continue to beckon. It will be a world devoid of the annihilation of the good, where the suffering of sentient beings will diminish until it is no more. It will be a world where each person will finally have the total liberty to think and innovate – the only treatment which properly respects the minds and dignity of rational beings. As the fruits of the human mind and its creations finally blossom all around you, partaking of them will be irresistible. But all this is not yet ours, and the future can only be what we make of it. The greatest struggles of all history await. Become a champion of the future, to prevent yourself from disappearing into the past. Fight the war on ruin, so you do not become its casualty. Become a transhumanist: you have nothing to lose but loss itself.