I am a 21st Century person who was accidentally launched in the 20th. I have a deep nostalgia for the future. FM-2030

FM-2030, pioneering transhumanist, author of Are You A Transhuman?, Telespheres, Optimism One, Upwingers, and numerous other books, has recently undergone cryonic suspension. FM, world renowned for his visionary ideas, is remembered for his optimism and originality.

FM inspired many. His classes, held at the New School University in the mid 1960s, University of California Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s, and most recently in Miami, Florida in the 1990s, were catalytic in bringing together ideas about the future in a way that ignited the imagination and set many minds on alert for improving and enhancing life.

FM died at the age of 69, in 2000 of cancer. He is now suspended at Alcor awaiting reanimation.

Online Writings:

[>] Transhuman History
[>] FM-2030 Frozen At Age 69

Here are some other links about FM:

An Eternal Hero - by Natasha Vita-More


"When He Returns…" An interview about FM-2030 visions of the future with Flora SCHNALL as part I:

http://www.lightmillennium.org/fall/fm_int...rviewpart1.html

"The Possibility of Immortality..." An interview about FM-2030 with Flora SCHNALL: p.II

http://www.lightmillennium.org/winter01/fm...hnall2_new.html

"He Knew The Answer..." Another interview about FM-2030 with Prof. Gabriel GRAYSON

http://www.lightmillennium.org/winter01/fm...son_answer.html

FM & I, by Johnny BOSTON

http://www.lightmillennium.org/winter01/fm...fm_jboston.html

Good morning FM-2030: A fictional interview by Bircan ÜNVER

http://www.lightmillennium.org/newyear_03/...ing_fm2030.html

James Hughes of the World Transhumanist Association has put together a short film about FM:

Video Homage to FM-2030

Download it here.

I posted a link to the FM-2030 video on the Brights' Forum, and it has generated some heated discussions:

http://www.the-brights.net/forums/index.ph...wtopic=3225&st=

Apparently some self-professed "Brights" have given up on the future.

I thought this one was way funny directed at you Mark from pray11342:


He obviously doesn't know with whom he speaks or are you leading a double life )

To be fair he was replying specifically to Brightsapien but he was painting you both with the same brush as you had started the thread.

FM is easy to knock because he presented a view of the future that can come across as a compilation of bad science fiction cliches. I suspect the absurd, politically correct utopia portrayed in Stallone's film Demolition Man was partly based on his ideas, considering that he taught at UCLA Extension in the late 1980's and early 1990's and a number of people in the entertainment industry back then were familiar with him. (Demolition Man also hints that many in Hollywood were familiar with Arnold Schwarzenegger's political ambitions, over a decade before Arnold's opportunity arrived.)

FM's outlook on man is also vulnerable because he came of age when environmentalist views of human nature, like Marxism and behaviorism, were in their ascendancy. In the mid-20th Century a number of intelligent people were willing to speculate that rationally modifying the human environment would solve many of our species' problems, and FM fell into this line of thought. Today evolutionary-psychological theories, which take a more pessimistic view of human malleability, are highly regarded among "Third Culture" intellectuals, though I suspect they are over-reaching the evidence as well. For example, the case for "god genes" or a biological basis for religiosity hasn't really dealt with the anomaly that religious belief has spontaneously imploded in much of Western Europe, without any deliberate effort to suppress it. (Hm, maybe those radical philosophes in the Enlightenment were on to something when they predicted that democracy and education would make religion go away.) Something in the social environment there has been interfering with the perpetuation of religion down through the generations since the First World War, so FM's claim about the trend away from religiosity does have a nontrivial data point in support.

The same could be said for FM's other claims. You can point to some empirical evidence in their favor, though maybe not in ways that would have left even FM comfortable, like the alleged spread of teen swinging ("daisy chaining") in the UK as evidence of sexual "nonexclusivity" or "fluidity" or whatever he called it. (Read more about FM's theory of future "intimacy" here. Interestingly, FM called temporary sexual-romantic encounters "linkups" years before the term "hookups," which has nearly the same meaning, entered the language.) Reading and hearing enough of FM gets one to thinking about the plausibility of his vision of life in the mid to latter 21st Century, though no doubt he'll have gotten plenty of things wrong, as we all do.

Hollywood did Demolition Man during the Reagan administration and it has been considered a part of the fast track to California and even National politics since the post WWII period.

The God gene issue is interesting to me and I would argue that in the West there has only been a substitute of one associative divinity for another as the relationship is confused by institutional competition for loyalties (i.e. product branding, pro sport teams, or party affiliation) and the State and more importantly market ideology is replacing religion in the practical cognitive reality for many people.

For example science is not religion, nor would any self respecting scientist accept it be treated that way or see it as a principle of faith, as this is antithetical to the logical requirements of skepticism necessary for scientific investigation to best flourish.

However science, as it is packaged (technology) and *MARKETED* (commercialized) to the masses results in a theistic relationship that exploits those God genes for evolutionary psychological aspects. Communism also exploited this type of psychosocial substitution to exploit human nature, albeit in a less sophisticated manner. This is where modern memetics enters the discussion though that study is still far too nascent to draw conclusions from.

I suspect the genetic propensity is real but the conclusions drawn about it are still somewhat confused. It neither proves anything about God, nor can be directly assumed to be derived from religious practice but it may prove a reason 'why' we develop such things as religious institutions but also how such idea as nationalism can be substituted for the same cognitive effect by stimulating similar reactions neurochemically. It could also explain a part of the immune function with respect to the placebo effect but it doesn't explain the *advantage* that this system evolves from environmentally.

Why faith?

Is it the ultimate way of not accepting doing nothing?

Not tolerating our powerlessness against ignorance?

Is it a way of developing self assurance through faith in self by extension to a paradigm of perfection?

Why such genes for neural pathways and subsystems exist fascinates me not for theological reasons but to better understand the pragmatics of cognition as it develops evolutionarily.

From,

http://jetpress.org/volume14/bostrom.html

Posted here (and attached as a word doc.) is an article by Natasha Vita-More concerning FM-2030.
---

An Eternal Hero

“There will come a day when the death of any one person will be so rare
the news of it will ring around the planet.” FM-2030

FM was my romantic partner for many years. We remained close friends after we broke up and I met and married Max More. Throughout the years, FM was one of my dearest friends, colleague, confident, collaborator, and inspiration. We collaborated on the TransCentury Update cable TV show which I hosted, we collaborated on the classes he taught at UCLA, and we collaborated on ways to bring cryonics to the world. He told me that I should be the spokesperson for immortality, but I didn’t think so. I wanted to be the spokesperson for transhumanism. I will be forever sad that I, or Max and I were, not able to be with him before he was suspended. We had a pact to protect each other’s suspension – we were cryobuddies. In fact, we created the term together … “cryobuddies” whichever one went first, the other would be there. That pact was not available to us at his time of suspension. I will be forever sad.

One of FM’s favorite pastimes was to imagine the future with his friends. He loved people and had many companions who he shared his life with. If I had had one little ounce of FM’s quick wit, engaging mind, loving personality, charm and vision … oh well, we cannot all be that close to perfection.

____________________

On June 8th the announcement of FM-2030’s cryonic suspension sent an electronic flash around the planet headlining the world’s most known immoralist.
____________________


FM’s vision of the future is highlighted iridescently in bold strokes across the pages of his life. Words such as multi-track, transhuman, global, optimism, telespheres and linkup have made their way onto printed pages around the Globe and will irrevocably be associated with FM.

FM wrote and lectured about ways to navigate the future. He planned a strategy for examining the rapid changes ahead and scenarios for dealing with them. FM saw the world as global—an interconnecting, telespheral community, believing there are “no illegal aliens, just illegal borders.” He also emphasized the fluidity of humanity and saw today’s environment as hyperfluid where people flow in and out of different lifestyles. He saw the future of humans as an evolution from being exclusively biological to becoming post-biological—the transhuman.

A fervent glance at FM’s nostalgia for the future signals a hope for the prolongation of life and motions a desire for new and exotic environments. Like a mosaic of divergent styles, FM’s sense of life renders a deep appreciation of the universe around him.

A quick wit and cajoling humor balanced FM’s pervasive privacy. He simply did not want everyone knowing everything about him. FM believed that he had transformed—that he was a continuation of his history and an amalgamation of his future. He encouraged others to embrace the future and in doing so, he felt it was unnecessary to emphasize his past.

Respectively, he simply did not what to place emphasis on his birth date while believing he was ageless, one nationality while believing he was global, a single liaison while loving many. A consequence of this clandestine approach to life may have left many with a condensed version of FM. Perhaps he wanted it this way, in charge of his own distinguished memory, even from afar.

Regardless, it took merely a few hours for the news machine to publicize concealed information that had made FM-2030 so legendary. These sidebars to his life clearly helped to form his prevailing character, but had little relevance in his pursuit of immortality. Inasmuch, it may take more than a headline article to wake up the world to the magnitude of FM’s heroic quest.

“I have no age. Am born and reborn every day.
I intend to live forever. Barring an accident I probably will.
I also want to help others live on indefinitely.” FM-2030

FM’s many years teaching and writing about the future are well known among cryonicsts and others involved in the business of future technology, science, and the arts. He was highly supportive of his peers and encouraged others to pursue their work in bringing about an awareness of the possibilities that await us. He had little tolerance for those who dismissed vegetarian views, who voted on politicians, who used terms like boyfriend or wife, who were not signed up for cryonics, who resorted to pissing matches, who did not exercise their intelligence, and who were inflexible about change. Conversely, he was patient and inspiring to those who wanted to enhance their understanding of the future. He was considered by many to be a heroic mentor, especially by proponents of our post-biological future. Further, it is his philosophy, as expressed in his courses from the 1960s along with his trilogy Optimism One, Telespheres and UpWingers, and his undeniable compassion for humanity that formed his vision and which was later expressed in Are You A Transhuman?

FM enchanted an audience by his charismatic manner; nevertheless his greatest quality was enriching the mind. He seemed to be at his peak when taking a conversational lead, inviting others on his fast-track imaginative lift-off into the future. I remember his enormous capacity for understanding the deep anguish and great joys of humanity. I also remember our heady conversations, lively speculations, and long walks by the sea imaging a time when we would not be restricted by consequences of disease and aging, political and religious wars, the suffering and torture of people, and our own mortality.

As FM often said, “I am not an automaton—I am still locked in this biological body with some of the wiring of an early human.” FM wanted, more than anything, to shed what he called an “outdated body.” He wanted to live indefinitely. How strange it was to read the headlines on June 11th and the words dead and FM side by side—like a paradox.

As far as most people were told, FM did not know that his illness had become terminal. As far as most people were told, he was not aware that a suspension team had been alerted. As far as most people were aware, FM did not knowingly prepare, in ways that most of us would want to, for his suspension. As such, he did not have an opportunity to discuss, in intimacy or in detail, issues with his close cryonics friends—issues that are necessary and even beneficial to his future re-entry. The reluctance of some close to him to engage in productive discourse about his situation was disconcerting. On the other hand, those close to FM gave him love, nurturing and every ounce of possible hope during the weeks prior to his suspension.

What he really wanted had he known he was going to be suspended remains an enigma. There is no question that hope is exceedingly beneficial to a person ill and awaiting a cure. Those in suspension are still waiting. The hope to see our suspended friends again lies on the foundation of action to provide the best possible entry into and re-entry from biostatis.

“Hope is the memory of the future.” FM-2030

_____________________________________________




On February 14, 2000, FM wrote the following and had it sent to me as an inclusion in my book about our culture.

I asked, “FM, what lies ahead?”

“These days I am at work on 2 sets of ideas.

“First, in the 1960s and 70s I attempted to develop and launch an overview of the social, educational, economic, and political infrastructures of the postindustrial world. I presented these agendas and models in books, in New York Times articles and at seminars at the New School University and at UCLA. It turned out these efforts were premature. There was not yet a framework in which to file these new concepts.

“Today at the beginning of the 21st century these ideas are beginning to crystallize. If the nuclear family is in fact coming apart, what specifically is replacing it? What is replacing school-based education? What is replacing hospital-based medicine? What will eventually replace capitalism and socialism? What will take the place of elective government? Today more than ever people want hard answers to these pressing questions. I am offering a specific agenda for the postindustrial world that is this very day unfolding everywhere.

“Second, I am also at work developing a new set of ideas for the coming decades. Specifically who are transhumans? How do they differ from humans? When will we emerge as posthumans? Specifically how will posthumans be more advanced than humans?

“I expect to develop detailed profiles of transhumans and posthumans.” FM-2030

(FM-2030, p. 97, Create/Recreate: The 3rd Millennial Culture)

Natasha Vita-More
Natasha@natasha.cc
http://www.natasha.cc
http://www.transhuman.org

Apparently it never occurred to FM that human nature doesn't allow for infinite plasticity, and that a reversion (as in, "reversion to the mean") to conservative social patterns was likely to happen despite all the technological progress we see around us. In other words, FM misinterpreted the temporary social perturbations circa 1970 as evidence that something "revolutionary" was happening. The trend towards political and religious authoritarianism (e.g., as manifest in the new pope, who believes much like the previous doctrinaire one) could very well mean that FM's increasingly atavistic Sixties' and Seventies' liberation-speak won't map future social behavior.

Some christian group in Australia targets FM explicitly as a bad guy for advocating "radical" social changes:

http://www.despatch.cth.com.au/Books_D/iyf_BOOK.pdf (pages 19-20)

I love it when I find ImmInst while doing a google search! --Thanks Bruce--I was looking up more about FM after speaking with Natasha yesterday, it was fun finding this.

Greg Klerkx writes about FM's role in the "second wave of transhumanism" (in the 1970's), now "spent as a cultural force," in his essay "The transhumanists as tribe."

BTW, Shannon, how does Natasha feel about FM's failed reanimation in 21st Century Kids?

Here is a link to the story NPR did on FM-2030 awhile back:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...storyId=1076532

You can listen to the audio of the broadcast by clicking the "Listen" button. (requires RealPlayer)

Michael Shermer mentions FM's cryosuspension in his Scientific American column a few years back.

And Alcor posted a response.

FM published an essay, "Up-Wing Priorities," in the June 1981 issue of the long-defunct Future Life magazine. As an exercise in prediction & extrapolation, it makes a spectrum of good, bad and thought-provoking forecasts for life in 2010, just 2.5 years from now. I scanned it, and you can download a pdf file from this webpage:

http://www.box.net/shared/ay9lub60ha

This post has been edited by advancedatheist: Jul 10 2007, 11:43 PM

Lawrence Auster, a conservative christian blogger, follows up on some of the things I've noted lately about FM-2030:

Back to Methuselah? (July 21, 2007)

I once took a course with F.M. Esfandiary at the New School. Esfandiary, an Iranian immigrant and New Age guy, was a believer that science could change everything about human life, even mortality itself. But in order to believe this, one must believe that the structure of existence can be changed by man. A basic aspect of the structure of existence is that living things come into being, and then, after an allotted time, they go out of being. Whether we are speaking of a fly, or a dog, or a human, or an elephant, the life-span of a species is a function of the nature of that species. A species does not create its own nature, its nature is given to it by something beyond itself, by that from which all being comes, with some species given a larger portion of being, some less. The notion that human life could be extended, not merely by a few tens of years, but by thousands of years, is a fantasy born of the rejection of transcendence, and the resulting desire to make man into his own god.

The desire to create human nature over again is expressed in the name of Esfandiary's movement, "Transhumanism," as well as in the fact, which I learn from Wikipedia, that F.M. Esfandiary changed his name to FM-2030,

QUOTE

to reflect the hope and belief he would live to celebrate his 100th birthday in 2030. In his own words, "Conventional names define a person's past: ancestry, ethnicity, nationality, religion. I am not who I was ten years ago and certainly not who I will be in twenty years.... The name 2030 reflects my conviction that the years around 2030 will be a magical time. In 2030 we will be ageless and everyone will have an excellent chance to live forever. 2030 is a dream and a goal."

Reading this brings back to mind the kinds of things Esfandiary said in the course I took with him, which was around 1980. Even then, before I was consciously a conservative, I felt his worldview was repellent, anti-human. Having lived in many countries and feeling attached to none, he made a big thing about the idea that all people should feel that way. And of course he was an atheist. Notice how the rejection of any transcendent reality above us so often goes hand in hand with the rejection of any enduring cultural reality around us.

As for F.M.'s hopes for extending human life by hundreds or thousands of years, Mark Plus at "Yet Another Transhumanist Blog" writes:

QUOTE

In 1976, F. M. Esfandiary predicted the crossover to longevity [meaning humans living for hundreds of years] would happen by 2000. In 1980, Dr. Alvin Silverstein predicted it by 1990.

In 1981 Esfandiary predicted

QUOTE

Around 2010 the world will be at a new orbit in history. We will translive all over this planet and the solar sphere--at home everywhere. We will be hyperfluid: skim on land--swim in the deep oceans--flash across the sky.
Family will have given way to Universal life. People will linkup/linkout free of kinship and possessiveness.

We will stream ahead propelled by a cornucopia of abundance.

Life expectancy will be indefinite. Disease and disability will nonexist. Death will be rare and accidental--but not permanent. We will continuously jettison our obsolescence and grow younger.

At 2000 plus ten all this will be the norm-hardly considered marvelous.

He thought the entire structure of human nature and human society would be transformed into his sci-fi fantasy by the year 2010. It is now 2007. Lots of things have changed since 1981. The structure of human life has not changed. Which reminds me of the scene in Annie Hall, when Alvy Singer as a boy is worrying that the universe is expanding and will soon fall apart, and Alvy's mother says to him, "This is Brooklyn, Alvy. Brooklyn's not expanding."

Auster then goes on to write that



Apparently Auster believes in something like the "intelligent design" of the human personality, meaning that it operates according to engineering principles that humans can discern and probably change to improve performance. In that case, re-engineering the human personality for radical longevity doesn't look any more absurd than re-engineering the biological platform to make it last a lot longer than normal through some project like SENS.

Auster is unaware that every motivation, action and indeed aspect of personality is determined by our brain and thus nervous sytem and hence biology. Anyone who has suffered any kind of metal imbalance or brain damage will know intimately how the two are connected...

Since when is a 'personality' a separate and divisible part from the vehicle within which it resides.. If the brain can be changed to live longer.. you can bet your bippy that the personality will follow..

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