Transhumanism

Z

Zaron

Vault Fossil
Orderite
I know this has been posted before, but my concern wasn't (after quick-reading the thread) mentioned, so I decided to make a new thread since I wasn't fond about the idea bringing an old thread to live and posting about something that is a little off-topic. So here we go:

Is there anyone, but me, who sees a connection between 'transhumanism' and the mutant ideolgy? All the talk about FEV and 'the next advancement in human evolution' sure does fit in (if you ask me) with the transhumansist-vision.
Any story to this?
Thoughts? Links? Discussion? Anything?
 
Zaron, I doubt that the designers of Fallout knew of Transhumanism, it's a far too rescent philosophy. You can read unintentional symbolism into any good game, because the designers would endow their game or a story or any work of art with what they consider to be important in their mental and spiritual lives. That is the basis of modern literary criticism. Hence, in the Fallout universe people are vatted into FEV and become sterile supermutants. In the real world people have been inducted for centuries into various imperial armies and that military duty prcluded them from starting families, ever. There is your sterility. In the Ottoman Empire there were Mamalukes - elite soildiers, who were actually kidnapped sons of slaves, themselves slaves who were raised from childhood to be fearless warriors. Their purpose was to fight and whther through castration or by other means, the world of women and social life was denied them. This was before the Renaissance, befoe the concept of an android or a human shaped machine was ever conceived. Eventually Mamalukes became powerful in the way of Knights Templar, and even ruled Egypt. So, in short, Clones from Star Wars, Replicants from Blade Runner, or any other robot armies may not have been built yet, but in the real world people have been forced into very simila roles, vatted, if you will, for centuries, and it is the 20-21st Century with its ideals of humanism that is highly unusual compared with the rest of human history. So, were designers of fallout thinking of transhumanism when developing the Master and his disciples, I doubt it very much, would the mutants have embraced a version of transhumanism (really a new incarnation of Modernism)? Very likely. Just like in his day, Napoleon's Grand Army was viewed by the rest of the common folk as the force for progress and equality, with British soldiers and Polish noblemen migrating to France to join his forces, this today almost forgotten.
 
Although the first known use of the term "transhumanism" dates from 1957, the contemporary meaning is a product of the 1980s,
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I don't know how well-developed the ideology was at the time, but its still a possibility.

Maybe I was a little too far-fetched, but I thought the transhumanist goals reminded very much of mutant ones, but it probably is (as you say) just a coincidence or something.
Still a cool theory though...

...that reminds me of the one that will bring 'peace to the wastelands'
(or such).
 
Akudin said:
Zaron, I doubt that the designers of Fallout knew of Transhumanism, it's a far too rescent philosophy.
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No it isn't. It's been around for a pretty long time.
It's also a very basic philosophy: improve the human race through technology.
So there's a definite similarity between the Master's goals and transhumanism. However, I doubt Fallout's designers were explicitly
influenced or implying transhumanism. It was probably more of a bit of dark irony that the Master wanted to improve the human race by destroying it (after the human race had almost destroyed itself). With more irony added that the Master's alternative destroys itself as well.
Akudin said:
You can read unintentional symbolism into any good game, because the designers would endow their game or a story or any work of art with what they consider to be important in their mental and spiritual lives. That is the basis of modern literary criticism. Hence, in the Fallout universe people are vatted into FEV and become sterile supermutants. In the real world people have been inducted for centuries into various imperial armies and that military duty prcluded them from starting families, ever. There is your sterility. In the Ottoman Empire there were Mamalukes - elite soildiers, who were actually kidnapped sons of slaves, themselves slaves who were raised from childhood to be fearless warriors. Their purpose was to fight and whther through castration or by other means, the world of women and social life was denied them. This was before the Renaissance, befoe the concept of an android or a human shaped machine was ever conceived. Eventually Mamalukes became powerful in the way of Knights Templar, and even ruled Egypt. So, in short, Clones from Star Wars, Replicants from Blade Runner, or any other robot armies may not have been built yet, but in the real world people have been forced into very simila roles, vatted, if you will, for centuries, and it is the 20-21st Century with its ideals of humanism that is highly unusual compared with the rest of human history.
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...
That's a stupid fucking comparison. Sterility/castration/preclusion from famliy was intentional in those examples. With FEV, it was unintentional. An accident. In other words: completely incomparable.
 
I can see a lot of *something* that might or might not be inspired by transhumanism in Fallout setting. I don't only mean the Master's plan for better "humanity", but also for example the implants in Fallout 2. Also, some of the supermutans seem to have all kinds of implants on them, like the Lieutenant's eye.

Actually the philosophies and ideas like of transhumanism is so widely used in popular culture and science fiction, so it is pretty hard to say from where, for example, the Fallout setting has got all the stuff.
 
Sander, with FEV sterility is an unintentional byproduct, any kind of institutionalisation will prevent family life from happening if it's extreme enough, also as an unintentional byproduct. The comparison is more valid than you think, especially if you consider the Supermutants as a military organisation. FEV would be just one of the factors. Secondly, sterility does not preclude family life, does it? You can't conceive of any women as having been vatted? As for sterility, if any Supermutants came together as a family unit, they ***CAN*** ADOPT, can't they?
 
Akudin said:
Sander, with FEV sterility is an unintentional byproduct, any kind of institutionalisation will prevent family life from happening if it's extreme enough, also as an unintentional byproduct. The comparison is more valid than you think, especially if you consider the Supermutants as a military organisation.
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No, it isn't. Especially since the Master wanted the Supermutants to reproduce. A lot. When he finds out they can't, he kills himself and his cult.

Akudin said:
FEV would be just one of the factors. Secondly, sterility does not preclude family life, does it? You can't conceive of any women as having been vatted? As for sterility, if any Supermutants came together as a family unit, they ***CAN*** ADOPT, can't they?
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...
Bwahahaha. Now you're just being silly.
 
Akudin said:
Sander, with FEV sterility is an unintentional byproduct, any kind of institutionalisation will prevent family life from happening if it's extreme enough, also as an unintentional byproduct. The comparison is more valid than you think, especially if you consider the Supermutants as a military organisation. FEV would be just one of the factors. Secondly, sterility does not preclude family life, does it? You can't conceive of any women as having been vatted? As for sterility, if any Supermutants came together as a family unit, they ***CAN*** ADOPT, can't they?
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Your custom avatar and title are well deserved.

Normals, which brought doom on their species, would be prevented from reproducing, making them the last generation of the homo sapiens. As such there would be NO children for sterile supermutants to adopt.

Have you ever listened to the Master?
 
Wikipedia on Modernism said:
Modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was "holding back" progress, and replacing it with new, and therefore better, ways of reaching the same end.
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I can partly agree with you, Akudin, this fits in with the Master's ideology as well.
If I get things right, Transhumanism is based on the same type of values, but has a 'solution' more adapted to the mutant-vision and therefore does fit in better.
Also, I don't get the modernism-art, then again, I never do...
 
Mikey, I didnt talk to Master, I killed him, so I didn't get a chance to find out what his plans were.

Zaron, Modernist art is idealistic - think Grecian sculpture. Nazi art and Soviet agitprop are examples of modernism in art. Modernist art is actually very concrete and actually has nothing to do with surreal or abstract art of, say, Picasso (actually Cubism), things people associate with "Modern" art.
 
Akudin said:
Mikey, I didnt talk to Master, I killed him, so I didn't get a chance to find out what his plans were.
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So, you don't know what the Master was about but you do think you're able to actually make any kind of remarks on his philosophy and intent?
What the fuck?
 
Akudin said:
Mikey, I didnt talk to Master, I killed him, so I didn't get a chance to find out what his plans were.

Zaron, Modernist art is idealistic - think Grecian sculpture. Nazi art and Soviet agitprop are examples of modernism in art. Modernist art is actually very concrete and actually has nothing to do with surreal or abstract art of, say, Picasso (actually Cubism), things people associate with "Modern" art.
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Thanks for the lesson, highly appreciated (no sarcasm).

You never talked to the Master? You just ran forward and shot him? Man, didn't your mama teach you not to judge people from the outside? Heck, I'd join the cause of the mutants if it didn't mean loosing the game.
You just can't analyze something without knowing what the shizz is about first, y'know.
 
Akudin, you're really full of crap.

Cubism, surrealism etc. *have* a fucking lot to do with modernism. They *are* a part of modern art which *is* modernism.

Also, as noted, how the fuck can you argue about the philosophy behind Master's plans, if you haven't talked with him about his plans?

Where the hell do you get all this "knowledge" of yours? You just pull it out of your ass?

Jeez...
 
Og course I talked to the Master - he told me about Unity and his plans to meld human, mutant and cyber into one. Then I started shooting it out with him and won. I did not realize at the time that you can role play the entire encounter without gunplay. Also, I got to the Master after completing the Military Base and by the time I got to the Ghoultown, it was overrun by Supermutants. So I was justified.

Modernism refers to a philosophy that human condition can be improved through technological innovation. At least two of the Modernist schools of art, tye Communist and the Nazi opposed the surreal and abstract as "decandent and degenerate", that's why even though surreal and abstract are considered part of the modern art, and post-modern, Modernism refers to something else which I already mentioned - forms of ideal or idealized reality.
 
Akudin said:
Og course I talked to the Master - he told me about Unity and his plans to meld human, mutant and cyber into one. Then I started shooting it out with him and won. I did not realize at the time that you can role play the entire encounter without gunplay. Also, I got to the Master after completing the Military Base and by the time I got to the Ghoultown, it was overrun by Supermutants. So I was justified.

Modernism refers to a philosophy that human condition can be improved through technological innovation.
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Er...no it doesn't. Modernism refers to a philosophy that is geared toward creating 'progress' with whatever means are necessary, with the essential thought that the 'old' forms of sciences and art were outdated and should be sweeped aside. This was fueled by things like the Theory of Relativity and Freud's analysis of the mind as an objective thing, where subjectivity came from clashes within the mind. Technology had rather little to do with it.
Akudin said:
At least two of the Modernist schools of art, tye Communist and the Nazi
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Those aren't modernist. In fact, the Soviet government rejected all of Modernism.
Nazism had a bit more to do with Modernism, but wasn't even close to Modernism.

Soviet Art, for instance, was not Modernist art but art based on (Socialist) Realism.
Akudin said:
opposed the surreal and abstract as "decandent and degenerate", that's why even though surreal and abstract are considered part of the modern art, and post-modern, Modernism refers to something else which I already mentioned - forms of ideal or idealized reality.
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Wrong.
 
Akudin said:
Og course I talked to the Master - he told me about Unity and his plans to meld human, mutant and cyber into one.
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Which this thread is all about; the 'connection' between transhumanism and the Master's ideology. You're talking against yourself.

I ain't going to comment Modernism any further, that shit is to artsy for me anyway...

I get this feeling that this thread is starting to go a little off topic; I wanted to hear your opinions regarding to 'my' theory, not if Akudin talked to the Master and such.
 
Zaron said:
Is there anyone, but me, who sees a connection between 'transhumanism' and the mutant ideolgy? All the talk about FEV and 'the next advancement in human evolution' sure does fit in (if you ask me) with the transhumansist-vision.
Any story to this?
Thoughts? Links? Discussion? Anything?
Click to expand...
I think that The Master's philosophy was a combination of Communism and Transhumanism, where the latter served to decrease diversity of human race and create The Unity.
 
I'm not quite sure I get the communist-part, are your refering to the part where everyone is equal in a classless society? Or any other part of the ideolgy?

Because if you do, that's a good theory.
If I remember things right, the Master wanted to have this type of equality...
 
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