Transhumanism: A Field Guide

By now, most of you have probably heard the word ‘transhumanism’ tossed around. Without looking it up, sit back and think about what this word means to you. What thoughts pop into your head when you hear the word mentioned? Do you envision a billionaire sitting at a coffeeshop sporting a pair of sleek chrome limbs, perhaps sipping data through a titanium straw? If so, you’d not be alone. But the truth about transhumanism is more subtle, quieter, and messier. And consider yourself forewarned, because transhumanism is already underway.

We didn’t have to take a long leap to transhumanism, because it’s not on the other side of an evolutionary ravine. Rather, transhumanism is at the end of a long slope, one most of us are already sliding down. If you’ve ever handed your memory over to a device, if you ever used a drug to sharpen your edge, had your body mapped, measured and nudged by algorithms, you’re already a part of the experiment! This post isn’t a warning. It’s too late for that. Instead, it’s a guidebook. And folks, you’re going to want one!

What is Transhumanism?

It’s funny how some words move from relative obscurity into mainstream conversation. In a kind of reverse play on “now you see it, now you don’t,” some words change status from “never heard of it” to “hearing it all the time.” Such words often creep into our lexicon without being explained. Suddenly the word is everywhere – in a book, on TV, a website, a podcast – but never quite explained. Before you know it, people are throwing the word around like they know what it means. And they don’t. Today, this blog post is about one such word: “transhumanism.”

If your first thought is that transhumanism sounds like a word straight out of science fiction, you’re not far off the mark. The word, transhumanism, was coined by an evolutionary biologist named Julian Huxley in 1957. Wait, what? Huxley? Yes, Julian was the older brother of Aldous Huxley, the same Aldous who gave us Brave New World, the dystopian novel many of us read in high school. It would seem these two fraternal acorns, Aldous and Julian, didn’t fall far from the same philosophical tree, although they looked in opposite directions.

Julian was seeking a way to give shape to an idea that wasn’t just scientific, but also philosophical and even aspirational. You see, even way back in 1957, Julian felt that we humans had reached a point where we could begin consciously directing our own development, rather than waiting for natural selection to do it for us. Take a look at this paragraph from an essay Julian Huxley wrote, titled “Transhumanism.”

“The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself — not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps ‘transhumanism’ will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature.”[i]

What is interesting about Julian Huxley’s definition is what it’s not: it’s not about machines, nor immortality in a data cloud. Instead, the idea behind this word was about humanity consciously using science and culture to go beyond our current state – not just physically, but ethically and spiritually as well.

Huxley believed that this was a turning point in our evolution – from blind natural selection to a future shaped by conscious intent.

Slippery Slopes and Sci-Fi Fantasies

If you Google “transhumanism” right now, you’ll probably get bombarded with images that look like concept art for a video game: glowing eyes, chrome torsos, minds uploaded to sleek black servers floating in space. The aesthetic of transhumanism has been thoroughly colonized by Hollywood, TED Talks, and certain tech bros who talk like they’ve already merged with their own marketing departments.

But this is a distraction. Most of what feels like transhumanism in popular culture is actually futurism – speculative, edgy, and usually either utopian or dystopian. Transhumanism, as it’s quietly unfolding in the real world, is less about becoming gods and more about becoming incrementally different without noticing.

The slope we’re on isn’t labeled. You don’t wake up one day and think, “Ah yes, today I crossed the threshold into post-humanity.” Instead, you just find yourself relying on your phone to remember your grandson’s birthday. You get a chip implanted to manage your blood sugar, or a device to steady your sleep apnea. You talk to an AI that finishes your sentences better than your spouse. You wear a watch that might know when you’re going to die before you do.

These aren’t features of sci-fi. They’re features of Tuesday!

And this is why the conversation about transhumanism is so often off-key. We’re arguing about futures that might never happen, while ignoring the slow edits already underway. “Already underway?” Yes, the future is now! Take a look around and you will see the edges of transhumanism everywhere, although we rarely ever call it that:

• Medical editing: CRISPR has already been used to correct genes for conditions like sickle-cell anemia. We’re at the point where a child might grow up never knowing the disease that shaped generations before them.
• Neural implants: Patients with Parkinson’s disease use deep brain stimulation to steady tremors. The device is as much a part of their functioning as their own neurons.
• Cognitive outsourcing: Most of us have long since handed parts of our memory to our phones. Directions, appointments, contacts, whole swaths of our recall now live in silicon.
• AI companionship: People are forging real emotional bonds with artificial systems, whether through therapy bots, voice assistants, or creative partners. What begins as convenience ends up reshaping what “relationship” means.
• Biometric surveillance: Fitness watches and rings track heart rhythms, oxygen saturation, stress levels. They don’t just measure us; they increasingly tell us how to live.

None of these look like the shiny androids in our movies. They look like everyday objects, treatments, and conveniences. Which is exactly why they slip under the radar, and why we risk sleepwalking into them without ever asking what we are giving up.

The Cultural Friction

If all of this seems ordinary – medical implants, smart watches, AI that remembers for us –  that’s exactly the point. Transhumanism is not a lightning bolt from the future; it’s a slow seepage into our present. And yet, even as we adopt these tools, something inside us bristles.

Why? Because transhumanism doesn’t just poke at our biology. It unsettles our moral wiring.

You see, we come from cultures shaped, rightly or wrongly, by a deep belief that struggle builds character, that suffering redeems, that death itself is the final and equalizing teacher. Transhumanism threatens to short-circuit all of that. If someone can skip suffering, sidestep death, or enhance their body and mind without “earning” it through labor or discipline, what happens to our ideas of fairness, virtue, or even what it means to live a full life?

This unease shows up in strange ways. A pacemaker or an insulin pump is accepted without controversy, after all, those are “medical.” But talk about genetic editing for higher intelligence, or neural implants that give memory recall sharper than any normal brain, and suddenly people cry “unnatural,” “unfair,” even “inhuman!” The line between treatment and enhancement is blurry, but our instincts react as if it were carved in stone.

Our capitalist society is haunted by the ghost of the Protestant ethic: the conviction that life is meant to be earned through toil, that ease without struggle is suspect, maybe even sinful. It’s why transhumanism feels to some like a betrayal of humanity rather than its continuation.

But here’s the truth: that moral friction won’t stop the slope we’re already on. It only determines how conscious – or unconscious – we’ll be as we continue to slide.

Cautious Inevitability

Here’s the truth, folks. Transhumanism isn’t a question of if. It’s a question of how far, how fast, and under whose control. The slope is already beneath our feet, and pretending otherwise just leaves us unprepared.

That doesn’t mean surrender. It means responsibility. These technologies will keep advancing whether we like it or not. The real choice is whether we let profit motives, state power, or blind momentum set the terms, or whether we engage with eyes open, insisting on laws, norms, and cultural frameworks that reflect more than raw capability.

It also means reframing the conversation. Transhumanism is not about chrome limbs and digital immortality. It’s about what happens when we consciously direct our evolution, technologically and culturally, instead of letting it unfold blindly. That’s both a thrilling possibility and a profound risk.

Where do I land on this topic? I call it cautious inevitability: it’s coming, but how we meet it is still up to us. We can argue endlessly about sci-fi futures, or we can pay attention to the quieter shifts already underway — the implants, the edits, the algorithms shaping our choices.

Because the truth is, transhumanism isn’t waiting on the horizon. It’s already here, woven into the ordinary. The question isn’t whether transhumanism is coming, it’s whether we’ll shape it – or let it shape us.

---

[i] Copyright, 1957, by Julian Huxley.