Transhumanism. What Remains of It?

With the recent statements about immortality made by extremely rich old men, one cannot help wondering what remains of transhumanism, the philosophy that concerns — or used to concern — itself with imagining the consequences of modern technologies in relation to the enhancement of the human body.

There is a ghost haunting the modern world, and it is transhumanism. That it was permeated by a certain kind of fascism, and in particular frequented by quite a few fascist or para-fascist movements, I had already noticed years ago, when I prudently decided to keep my distance from it. It was not difficult to notice: all one had to do was look at who was talking about it, with what words, with what obsessions, with what idea of man and society.

Today, with various billionaires such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel speaking about it explicitly — and believe me, the other billionaire oligarchs of technology will join in soon enough, as soon as they understand which way the wind is blowing — it is time to ask a few questions.

The first thing that clearly stands out is that transhumanism seems to have become the social and political ideology of the techno-oligarchs. And here all those who see red as soon as technology is mentioned are already charging like so many bulls in search of a sheet, provided it is red. And, let us be clear, they also have some reason to charge. The idea of a body enhanced to the point of never dying, or even the idea of backing up consciousness onto some cloud, is already fairly borderline in itself.

When, on top of that, there are people building immense data centres and other people putting chips into brains, it becomes fairly clear what they are thinking about, or at least what imaginary they are selling.

One does not need to be a conspiracy theorist to realise that the narrative package is always the same: overcoming the body, overcoming death, overcoming biological limits, overcoming the human. The problem is that, in the mouth of a billionaire, “overcoming the human” rarely means improving everyone’s life.

Much more often it means building a new hierarchy, in which those who can afford enhancement become something different, while those who cannot afford it remain simply discardable flesh, human material not updated to the latest release.

From imagining a humanity free from disease, death, ignorance and fear to reaching the concrete reality of actual fact, the path is long. And it consists mainly of one rather banal fact, often conveniently removed from the discussion: only these techno-billionaires can truly afford the technologies being discussed.

If tomorrow Musk wanted to become bionic, he could probably have some apparatus capable of NFC, RFID and who knows what else implanted into his body, and begin communicating directly with machines by using his own body as an interface.

The day a prosthesis becomes stronger, more precise or more efficient than a real arm, I have no doubt that the usual Musk could also choose to have a bionic arm transplanted, perhaps presenting it as the next step in evolution, or as an investor demo with enough neon lights.

But let us say it plainly: who else could afford it?

And I am not referring only to the costs, which would already be enough to close the discussion. I am also referring to the legal, medical and political problem. A doctor who amputated someone’s healthy arm, even in order to replace it with a superhuman prosthesis, would probably be struck off the medical register, and perhaps even end up in court. We are not talking about therapy, but about mutilating a healthy body in order to turn it into a hardware platform.

Could someone do it for Elon Musk? Much more probably, yes, simply because Musk has enough money, enough lawyers, enough lobbyists and enough relationships in positions of power to move the boundary between “forbidden” and “innovative” according to the needs of the moment. And this is the point that is always kept out of transhumanist propaganda: the limit is not only technological. It is not only a matter of research, science, engineering, or “when we get there”.

The limit is economic and legal. Or, to put it less elegantly but more precisely: the limit is power.

And this is why it appears fascist. What makes it appear fascist is not simply the fact that so many people from the world of the right, or the far right, feel attracted to it like moths to a neon lamp. That is a symptom, not the disease. The real problem is that, given the way society is built, this control over one’s own body is granted only to the most powerful.

And when control over the body, health, longevity, cognitive capacity, and the very possibility of “improving oneself” becomes a class privilege, then we are no longer in the field of human liberation. We are in the field of hierarchy.

And when a biological, economic and political hierarchy is presented as natural destiny, inevitable evolution or individual merit, we are already inside an imaginary that stinks of fascism even without any need for black shirts, Roman salutes and people shouting from a balcony.

If you think about it, almost all of the latest innovations are operating in the same way. We are talking about a world moving from “everything free” to “if you want at least decent performance, pay 23 dollars a month”, as happens with AI.

And if you then really want good performance, if you want quality, continuity, computing power, better models, privileged access, professional tools, then we are no longer talking about the twenty-dollar toy: depending on the performance required, or the quality required, you can even reach something like thirty thousand euros a year.

The mechanism is always the same. First, the technology is presented as universal emancipation. Then, once everyone has internalised that this technology is necessary, the price list arrives. At that point, the promise “it will be for everyone” becomes “it will be for everyone who can pay”. And the difference, as always, is not a technical detail. It is the entire political project.

We see beautiful women going around telling us that sixty is the new forty. Absolutely. And it is also very true, of course: today it is possible to reach sixty in physical, aesthetic and social conditions that were once much rarer. Except that, in those conditions, life costs you those extra hundred thousand dollars a year.

And this is where the narrative begins to creak.

Is that an enormous sum? It depends on where you are looking at the world from. For the upper-middle class and above, in the United States, probably not. Nor is it in many areas of Europe, at least for that social layer which can pay for preventive medicine, gyms, personal trainers, dermatologists, nutritionists, constant tests, travel, free time, quality food, regular sleep, decent housing and the possibility of not breaking its back in order to live.

But the ordinary woman, the one who does not earn a hundred thousand dollars a year, or who perhaps would not see those hundred thousand dollars even by adding together two salaries and a miracle, will never be a “new forty-year-old”. She will never be a “perennial”, as those who sell cosmetics, courses, supplements, cosmetic surgery and illusions packaged in English like to say.

Not because she lacks willpower. Not because she “lets herself go”. Not because she has failed to understand the secret of warm water with lemon in the morning. But because the body also ages according to the material conditions in which it lives. And if you work too much, sleep too little, eat what you can afford, postpone medical appointments, have no time to train and perhaps spend years taking care of others before even taking care of yourself, then sixty does not become the new forty.

It simply becomes sixty, with all the social, economic and biological weight that has been dumped onto it.

I bought a PC to run decent AI models on it. Now, it is true that I will deduct this cost as an expense reimbursement in my tax return, so it is not exactly the same thing as buying it to play Doom with RGB lights. But on the other hand, the sum I paid in Italy corresponds more or less to five monthly salaries.

Five.

And so the question becomes unavoidable: are we really sure that hatred of AI truly comes from the fact that it is supposedly intrinsically evil? Are we sure that the problem is only philosophical, ethical, spiritual, artistic, the usual chorus of beautiful souls defending humanity from the evil machine? Or, much more banally, does part of that hatred come from those social classes that cannot afford four thousand euros for a graphics card, a suitable computer, the electricity needed to run it, the time to learn how to use it, and perhaps also the technical competence to do something useful with it?

Because this is the point that is very rarely stated. AI today is described as a kind of alien invasion. It arrives, destroys work, replaces people, kills creativity, steals the soul, eats children and probably double-parks as well. But in practice, those who can afford to use it well use it. Those who can buy it integrate it. Those who can pay for the best tools pay for them. Those who can hire people capable of automating parts of the work do so.

And those who cannot afford it instead experience it as a threat descending from above.

Are we sure that, if it were available at reasonable prices, it would be hated and despised in the same way? Are we sure that, if every worker could truly have access to powerful, local, controllable tools, without having to depend on the monthly subscription to whichever cloud master happens to be in charge, the reaction would be the same? Or are we willing to think something much less noble, but much more concrete: that if it were also available to those classes of workers who fear it today, perhaps it would simply become part of their work?

Because this has already happened countless times. A technology appears. At first it is stuff for the rich, for companies, for the military, for universities, for people who live on the top floor of the building. Then it descends, becomes accessible, becomes normal, and at that point nobody calls it apocalypse anymore. They call it a tool. The problem, therefore, is not only AI.

The problem is who owns it, who pays for it, who controls it, who can afford to use it to increase their own power, and who instead has to wait for it to land on them in the form of a layoff, a corporate algorithm, or a twenty-three-dollar-a-month subscription.

My suspicion is simple: I suspect that this world of emerging technologies does not appear fascist to most people because they are “inherently” fascist. I do not believe that inside a neural network, inside a prosthesis, inside a chip, inside a language model or inside a data centre there exists, through some mysterious metaphysical property, the seed of fascism.

I am convinced, rather, that it would not appear that way if it were made available without building a hierarchy. That is, without being distributed according to a scale of access that increasingly resembles a caste system disguised as a commercial price list:

• free, if you accept reading bullshit;
• 23 dollars a month, if you want it to be acceptable;
• 200 dollars a month, if you want to start working with it;
• 20,000 dollars a year, if you really want to work with it.

Or, alternatively, you can spend five of your salaries to buy a computer that can run it at home. Provided, of course, that you already know that in a year your models will be too poor, your graphics card will be old, your RAM will no longer be enough, and someone will explain to you in a paternal tone that this is how progress works, that you cannot expect to keep up if you do not invest continuously, and that ultimately it is your fault if you are not competitive enough.

And this is where technology begins to take on that face. Not because it is fascist in itself, but because it is introduced into a society that is already hierarchical, already unequal, already built to turn every innovation into a new class barrier. The promise is universal: intelligence for all, health for all, enhancement for all, longevity for all, access for all.

The practice, instead, is always the same: a free taste to train the public, a minimum subscription so as not to fall completely behind, a professional plan to actually work, and then the divine plan, the one for those who can pay sums that for many people are simply annual budgets for survival.

At that point we are no longer talking about progress. We are talking about automated social selection. Those who can pay enter the future. Those who cannot pay remain in the present, or better still in the past, but with the moral guilt of not having updated themselves. And when the future is sold in pricing tiers, there is no need for technology to be fascist in order to produce a fascist effect. It is enough for it to be distributed as privilege.

The problem, then, is not the philosophical content of transhumanism, or at least not only that. It is not the old conference question, the one with the professor in the velvet jacket wondering whether it is right to overcome the limits of the human, whether it is moral to live longer, whether it is legitimate to enhance the body, whether consciousness can be copied, whether a prosthesis improves or distorts personal identity.

The real problem is access.

Because a philosophy that promises liberation, but becomes available only to those who have enough money and power, immediately stops being liberation.