In this six - minute video from thePBS Idea Channel , Mike Rugnetta take us on a whirlwind tour research a few construct related toTranshumanismthrough the lens of the TV showFuturama . To make an super complex hardening of thought excessively simple , Transhumanism is the feeling that engineering will make human animation better by eliminating suffering . It has interesting offshoots likeSingularitarianism , in which humans transcend biota and become ( and/or are displace by ) digital lifeforms ( for a small more on that , seeRay Kurzweil ’s Pill Habit ) . And it ’s a very appealing notion – it ’s often well-to-do to see how technology improves our lifespan . But it ’s also wanton ( more and more so , I ’d argue ) to translate that technology does n’t always make us happier or get rid of suffering . *
But why is that ? Rugnetta ’s argument is the skillful oldhedonic treadmill , the depressing - but - apparently - dead on target notion that humans adapt to fresh degree of happiness - and - cool - stuff ( and unhappiness - and - bad - stuff ) by leveling out at a set point in the midsection of the felicity spectrum . In other Holy Writ ( as Rugnetta mentions ) , this is Louis C.K. ’s " Everything is awful and nobody is happy . " Rugnetta usesFuturamaas a subject study of a basically fair scene of the future , where despite wildly advanced technology , humans and transhumans are still on the hedonic treadmill .
Sample cite : " Though able to defeat aging and remedy suffering , [ the mankind ofFuturama ] is far from an Eden . Futuramaisn’t the post - scarcity , post - war Earth ofStar Trek , it ’s not even Thomas More ’s complex - but-‘fair’Utopia , or Matt Fraction ’s Coldheart Island . It ’s just sort of liketoday , but … afterward . "
If this is n’t enough for you , just tune in forten hr of Hypnotoad .
- = Note - I ’m amply mindful that engineering oftendoeseliminate agony – for example , applied science to provide white drinking water , cure disease , allow for food , and so on . But when we think about the technology that Westerners encounter in our home ( and in our pockets ) that seems like a big passel and makes it feel like the future tense has arrived , we have to ask : does this engineering science basically change the human stipulation , or will we always scramble ?
