There is a much older incarnation of this idea: “The Conditioners” as invisioned by C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man (1943):
The final stage will have come when “humanity” has obtained full control over itself. “Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man.” The ruling minority will have become a caste of Conditioners, people “who really can cut out posterity in what shape they please.” From this moment onward, the human conscience will work the way humans want it to work – that is, the way wanted by the Conditioners.
The writing here was definitely influenced by Lewis (we quote TAoM in footnote 6), although I think the Choice Transition is broader and less categorically negative.
For instance in Lewis’s criticism of the potential abolition he writes things like:
The old dealt with its pupils as grown birds deal with young birds when they teach them to fly; the new deals with them more as the poultry-keeper deals with young birds— making them thus or thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. In a word, the old was a kind of propagation—men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda.
The Choice Transition as we’re describing it is consistent with either of these approaches. There needn’t be any ruling minority, nor do we assume humans can perfectly control future humans, just that they (or any other dominant power) can appropriately steer emergent inter-human dynamics (if there are still humans).
There is a much older incarnation of this idea: “The Conditioners” as invisioned by C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man (1943):
The writing here was definitely influenced by Lewis (we quote TAoM in footnote 6), although I think the Choice Transition is broader and less categorically negative.
For instance in Lewis’s criticism of the potential abolition he writes things like:
The Choice Transition as we’re describing it is consistent with either of these approaches. There needn’t be any ruling minority, nor do we assume humans can perfectly control future humans, just that they (or any other dominant power) can appropriately steer emergent inter-human dynamics (if there are still humans).