Prometheus Unbound

A recent book convinces Dalrymple that there is a trend of Prometheanism in society, and that it is akin to the totalitarian impulse:

In [the author’s] opinion, the current fashion for transhumanism is the latest form of mad Prometheanism which underlay totalitarian regimes. Transhumanism is only another manifestation of the desire to make the New Man, the Old Man being so unsatisfactorily inclined to defects both of mind and body. All hitherto existing men have been but pale apologies for the glorious creatures of the future, who will be half biological and half electronic. Just as Marx thought that man would only become truly human once communism was achieved (such matters as private property and class conflict having deformed him and made him less than human), and as the Nazis dreamed of a perfect race of blond beasts uncontaminated by bad blood, so the transhumanists dream of creatures of eternal life whose powers will make Usain Bolt seem like a sea urchin and Einstein a child with severe mental handicap.

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