Declaration by the "2045" Strategic Social Initiative

Where is human evolution headed?

The challenges of modernity, the growing complexity of the world, successive crises, climate change, the torrential rate at which new technologies appear—these realities dictate the vital necessity for humanity to contemplate the near future and its evolution immediately.

We must ask ourselves a series of questions.

What does the future hold for humanity?

Where is our world headed? In what direction is all of humanity as a civilization, as a single collective intelligence and as an intelligent species—in what direction are we headed?

What paradigm, ideology, or social structure will shape the near future of humanity? What will replace post-industrial consumer society?

What will human society look like in 10, 30, 50, 100, 200 years, given the breakneck pace at which modern technologies are evolving?

It’s clear that humanity is in need of a new evolutionary strategy. It will be a strategy of constant development, as in ancient times—not one of consumption, as in our era.

It is of fundamental importance that we formulate a strategy of evolutionary development. Such a strategy will make it possible to maintain balance against the backdrop of accelerating informational processes and the growing complexity of technology.

Otherwise, we will be facing a bleak picture: a limited, primitive human surrounded by an extremely complex, independently thinking, highly self-organized technological environment endowed with higher intelligence going about its own independent and incomprehensible existence. If, against the backdrop of an increasingly complex technological environment that is also increasingly independent and self-sufficient, humans do not evolve, then sooner or later that environment will displace us.

Development of society as a means of raising levels of self-organization, internal complexity and diversity

The development of human society as a single rational system has followed a clear path over the entire course of human history:

-         Growth in internal complexity and in the diversity of society and all its attributes (science, culture)

-         Acceleration of self-organizational processes, increased levels of order and control

-         Growth in the influence of human civilization on natural processes and on the control of nature

These developments provide grounds for believing that the torrential rate at which new technologies are appearing will lead to a no less significant increase in the level of self-organization of society and to the integration of societies into a unified, collective super intelligence, into a superbeing.

This super intelligence will quickly solve a large array of problems that are currently intractable for humanity, such as:

-         Providing an abundance of all consumer goods;

-         Eliminating aging, illness, and death;

-         Elimination of crime and all conflicts, including inter-ethnic and inter-governmental conflicts;

-         Elimination of all natural disasters and catastrophes.

The formation of such an intelligence will not limit the individuality or freedom of any single person—on the contrary, it will maximize creative development and facilitate the unlocking of boundless potential. All this will inevitably lead to the emergence of a new society—a society of immortal superpeople.

Neo-humanity as the future of human civilization in the third millennium 

The calculations, predictions, and reports made by leading scientists, futurologists, and analysts give all the reason to believe that in the middle of the 21st century, humanity will undergo a powerful polyfurcation comparable in its significance to the appearance of life on Earth.

As a result, in the best-case scenario, trans-national, post-industrial capitalism and the consumer society it has created will give way, at some point between the 2020s and 2040s, to a new form of society (we will call it neo-humanity).

This neo-humanity may become an adequate response of conscious society to the challenges, crises, risks, and threats of a new era.

Neo-humanity as an ideology, a socio-economic structure, and a new form of civilization will usher in a new era in people’s lives—the transition to a cosmic supercivilization of neo-humans.

The world’s leading scientists believe that over the next three decades, we will see intensive development of NBIC (nano-bio-info-cognitive) and GNR (genetics-nano-robotics) technologies: advanced brain-computer interfaces, anthropomorphic robot avatars controlled by one’s thoughts, symbiotic intelligence, digitization of memories, and transfer of personality to a non-protein-based carrier.

Neo-humanity will provide new meaning to people’s lives; new values and goals; things that have never existed before—that could never have existed before—and that even now seem fantastical and incredible to us.

Neo-humanity will change the physical nature of man, making him immortal, free, liberated from the boundaries of space and time.

All the previous development undergone by humankind may end up having been only preparation for this unprecedented evolutionary leap.

The main characteristics of neo-humanity:

-         Neo-humanity of the future, in contrast to all previous societies in history, will strive not to subjugate nature or to create, accumulate and consume material goods for the sake of deriving sensory pleasure, but toward self-actualization, toward the development of man himself;

-         It will be an enormous collective intelligence (noosphere), which will number millions and billions of leading members of the human race who will voluntarily join its ranks. It will be a complex, self-organized, open society of universal progress, evolution, and synergism. In terms of values, ideology, mentality, and economics, neo-humanity will be oriented toward development, toward moving forward, toward growth in the scale of its goals and the comprehensiveness of its projects;

-         Evolution for each individual in this society will become a transition from a rational human to a hyperrational, immortal, multibody neo-human—a cosmic creator who lives eternally in different bodies, unrestricted by the boundaries of nature. Technological and spiritual development will move in parallel. Technologies will most likely be designed to further the advancement of the vehicle carrying the personality of the immortal superhuman of the future;

-         On the societal level, evolution in this society will lead to the creation of a unified, global, collective, network-based meta-intelligence that can live anywhere in outer space.

Tactical goals of neo-humanity (21st-23rd centuries):

-         First and foremost, to vanquish aging and death in the nearest future for all people and all of humanity; with that goal in mind, to master the technology of transferring human personality to an alternative vehicle (artificial body); to achieve boundless immortality, i.e. perfect the capabilities of an artificial body to the point that it can exist indefinitely (achieving independence from time);

-         To acquire the capability of free, boundless movement in space;

-         To provide everyone the opportunity to acquire multiple bodies, i.e. to distribute consciousness among multiple vehicles; to make it possible for one consciousness to live freely in and control several immortal bodies;

-         To expand our habitat to one of multiple realities, i.e. to acquire the ability to live simultaneously in several different realities with the ability to move freely among them.

Strategic goals of neo-humanity (23rd-30th centuries):

-         To control reality using one’s thoughts. To achieve complete control of external reality using one’s thoughts and will power. To acquire the capability of self-organization and the ability to organize and complicate space, creating complex unbalanced systems, entire new worlds, through will power and creative thought;

-         Cosmic expansion: the colonization by humanity of the near and deep space; boundless freedom of movement in the universe; freedom from the necessity to live only in one specific place, on planet Earth (“Earth is the cradle of humanity, but you can’t spend your whole life in the cradle.” Konstantin Tsiolkovsky);

-         Personal universe: to create a personal universe controllable by the mind for every neo-human;

-         To be able to control the course of history using one’s thoughts, to the point of completing all historical processes at the point of singularity (end of history, collapse of time).

A New Set of Ethics for Neo-humanity

It is utterly clear that the process of society becoming more complex and the transition to neo-humanity must be accompanied by the formulation of a new ethical paradigm for all of humanity.

The growth in humanity’s power inevitably makes it necessary for every individual to take on a new level of responsibility, given that a single neo-human will be able to wield power and capabilities currently possessed by a modern army of a large government.

Such responsibility cannot be called into being in a single instant.

And it cannot be created administratively, by order. It can only be nurtured, encouraging a person’s spiritual growth, which would awaken the higher aspects of consciousness in him: inner purity, beauty, compassion, love for all living things, harmony, living not for oneself but for others, the ability to serve for the good of society, sacrifice, devotion.

It’s also clear that such qualities cannot be imparted from without, imposed on someone, or programmed in, since every person has his own will power and the freedom to choose one or another system of values or ethics, ideology, religion, paradigm or model of thinking.

One can nurture such qualities in oneself by way of serious spiritual and ethical labor on oneself, and that means that the new society of the future, apart from the technologies, will be built on high principles of spiritual growth, on high morals and ethics.

Dmitry Itskov, "2045" Initiative

September 26, 2011

Moscow

(The ideological documents of the movement are approved by the "2045" Initiative expert council on ideology and do not necessarily express the views of the scientists and experts doing technical work on the project.)