I really fell out with my parents over my body-mod efforts, as tame as they are by some standards. “It’s not natural,” my mother would say. “You’re marginalising yourself into a small group of people who aren’t content to leave their bodies the way they are.” [Image by UnsureShot – no, that’s not me in the picture.]
Not such a small group after all, mother dearest – research suggests the British have spent over $1billion on cosmetic surgery in 2007 alone. [Via grinding.be]
Of course, they’re spending that money chasing after an unattainable media-manipulated conception of perfect beauty, which is still more socially acceptable than investing a few hundred dollars a year in having permanent pictures drawn on you and holes punched through various parts of your anatomy … horses for courses, I guess.
But whichever way you cut it, body modification of one type or another is becoming very commonplace. So why are people still so aghast at the concepts of transhumanism?
Hmm. Somehow I don’t think subcultures created by horrible music genres count as anywhere close to transhumanism.
I’ll save that (transhumanism) for when the contents of my brain gets put into an electronic brain with exponentially more capacity and parallel processing capability.
Despite a recent BusinessWeek article, I know that our company will run for the hills rather than hire anyone who has any sort of visible tattoos or piercings (we’ll hire you as programmers or behind the scenes people, but not as consultants or management-types, which is where the money generally is). I may not necessarily agree with this practice, having had a bit of a preference for suicide-girl esque looks in my dating habits in the good old days, but I understand the reasoning behind it.
Many business customers would immediately think ‘unprofessional’. Personally, I don’t view the body as any sort of sacred temple or any of that garbage, but I do think that anything that could hurt you in your professional life should probably be avoided if it’s reasonable to avoid it.
The ideal would be body-modification efforts that are not permanent.
Transhumanists support the idea that people should be free to alter their bodies as they wish, but tattoos (no matter how clever or witty they may be) and piercings are not yet completely reversible, so they lack the kind of freedom advocated by transhumanists.
That picture is pretty amazing though. Is there any more information about it?
“That picture is pretty amazing though. Is there any more information about it?”
it’s the work of Steve Haworth