Daniel C. Elton, Ph.D.

Author’s Note: a version of this article was previously published as “Transhumanism has a visual aesthetics problem” on my Substack. 

If you do a Google search for “transhumanism”, this is what you see:

Three heads pop up. Let’s take a closer look:

They are all pretty similar. All women, which is curious. All have shaven heads — also curious. Finally, all have weird things sticking out of their heads — curiouser and curiouser.

This sort of imagery is likely to trigger a disgust response. Millions of years of evolution have hard-wired us to find bodily mutilation disgusting on some level.

Disgust is often described as a “moral emotion”. Thus, these images instill in people the idea that transhumanism is morally wrong. A possible exception is people who are already accustomed to seeing this imagery.

In the moral foundations framework, disgust is lumped under the “degradation of the sacred”. So, that is another way of looking at this. Most religious traditions treat the human body as sacred and worthy of respect and awe. Young women are generally considered to be pure and beautiful. Here we see them defiled and degraded.

The internet is flooded with imagery like this. Check out Google images:

Many of these images are some combination of creepy, disgusting, or just plain weird.

Most of these images come from news articles about transhumanism. Some of these articles are clearly against transhumanism, while others appear to be neutral or a bit sympathetic. In many cases here, editors and publishers probably realized that grotesque or weird images will catch eyes and result in more clicks.

Strangely, I’ve noticed that even people who are very aligned with transhumanism can fall into using this sort of imagery. For instance, there is a new biography of Zoltan Istvan coming out in July 2024. (Istvan founded the U.S. Transhumanist Party and ran for president in 2016.) Based on his tweets, the author appears to be largely sympathetic to Zoltan’s work. However, the cover makes Zoltan look creepy and nefarious.

The color scheme is designed to cast Zoltan in a negative light. This is the same sort of color scheme is used by advertisers when they show competitor’s products — dark, drab, and dull.

In recent years it’s been noted that fewer and fewer people want to publicly identify as transhumanists, despite the growing popularity of transhumanist ideas. This is partially due to the poor aesthetics creating a “negative halo” around the term. Another factor is the proliferation of conspiracy theories around transhumanism on both the far left and far right — something I plan to discuss in my next post.

Take a look at this new book by Austrian right-wing agitator Stefan Magnet. The title translates to Transhumanism: War Against Humanity.

Again, we see defilement. It’s interesting that the pattern on the face is similar to the iconography on the cover of the new Zoltan biography.

What might good transhumanist aesthetics look like?

Let’s consider a list of transhumanist technologies: genetic engineering, age-reversal biomedicine, nanotechnology, brain-computer interfaces, friendly artificial intelligence, helpful robots, spaceships, space colonies. I can think of ways to visualize these technologies that are aesthetically pleasing, with the exception of friendly AI.

Let’s consider core values more generally. According to transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom, the core transhumanist value is “having the opportunity to explore the transhuman and posthuman realms”. This is very hard to illustrate, because, as Bostrom admits, we don’t actually know what the posthuman realm will look like.

From this core value Bostrom derives a long list of derivative values including “caring about wellbeing of all sentience, diversity (many forms), saving lives, peace, international cooperation, pragmatism, engineering, science.” These are easiest to visualize, although they are quite general and not specifically tied to transhumanism.

The art of Robert McCall

The art of Robert McCall (1919-2010) holds a special place in the hearts of many transhumanists and futurists. If I recall correctly, for several years his work “The Prologue and the Promise” was used by the Foresight Institute on the webpage of its “Existential Hope” initiative.

Here are a few other of his works:

Other good art I stumbled upon

Much of this is not explicitly transhumanist, but is provided to be food for thought.