to do this we must study the posibilities of creating a more favourable social environment, as we have already done in large measure with our physical environment. we shall start from new premisses. for instance, that beauty (something to enjoy and something to be proud of) is indispensable, and therefore that ugly or depressing towns are immoral; that quality of people, not mere quantity, is what we must aim at, and therefore that a concerted policy is required to prevent the present flood of population increase from wrecking all our hopes for a better world; that true understanding and enjoyment are ends in themselves, as well as tools for or relaxations from a job, and that therefore we must explore and make fully available the techniques of education and self-education; that the most ultimate satisfaction comes from a depth and wholeness of the inner life, and therefore that we must explore and make fully available the techniques of spiritual development; above al, that there are two complementary parts of our cosmic duty one to ourselves, to be fulfiled in the realization and enjoyment of our capacities, the other to others, to be fulfiled in service to the community and in promoting the welfare of the generations to come and the advancement of our species as a whole. the human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself- not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity. we need a name for this new belief. perhaps transhurmanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new posibilities of and for his human nature. "i believe in transhumanism": once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of pekinman. it will at last be consciously fulfiling its real destiny.
United States