Genity White Paper
Genity and DNA Stewardship
This section describes the prospect of sequential life cycles imminent within this century.
The outlined Society program introduces the concept of Genity as secure long-term DNA stewardship, beginning with an optimized tissue sample (e.g. whole blood) viable for reproduction, held in advanced biobanks. The Humanist Union Society in this instance acts as an Oracle overseeing member samples, while executing the members’ registered smart contracts, both onto and off the Ethereum blockchain.
Ectogenesis
The declared and implied goal of such long term biobanking is to enable our literal rebirth, via a deeply complex technique termed ectogenesis (EG, artificial womb). Counterarguments around memories (as the seat of the Self and consciousness) notwithstanding, biobanking is fully capable of retaining viable tissue samples for centuries. As such it is DNA stewardship arresting the march of time, awaiting the ongoing maturity of a reproduction revolution that will expand humanity’s life extension options as a species, and most pointedly — as individuals.
The cycle begins by leveraging biobanking’s infinite patience, until EG becomes accepted and reliable. Once the Oracle oversight can confirm a definitive DNA test — we are thus reborn, and the blockchain funds are remitted to each party. It behooves the HU to participate in a project that, like fusion power, presents deep new perspectives for humanity. An integrated procedure that affords women an option beyond conventional pregnancy, while redefining the parceling of life itself, is worthy of escalating, dedicated study and financial support by this Society and localized affiliates.
Biobanking
In simple terms, the membership gets aboard a time machine designed to transport their full genetic identity, as their continuing seed or ‘franchise’ in life, through to rebirth. Low temperature DNA stewardship is an established technology, a retail service available to anyone today. For example, the Humanist Union’s biobanking contractor has more than 3000 funeral homes as affiliates. Twenty-year storage in an advanced vapor nitrogen facility costs no more than $100 annually. More than anything, stewardship will rely on this stability over decades, alongside evolving EG technology already operative for successful mammalian and primate cloning.
The Blockchain
Truth and its inalterable documentation are the twin attributes that the blockchain brings to human culture, and together they ensure a solid certainty that precludes cheating. This effectively elevates human character by reducing opportunities for intrusive gatekeepers, and allows both logic and capital to move through smart contracts intact. The blockchain is the sure guarantor of our sequential DNA identity, as only a positive DNA test at the end of EG will release the funds designated for each party and process. The same is true of any intermediate ‘trust’ processes described and programmed within those contracts.
Governance — Humanism vs Militarism
Presently humans are a young species of killer apes maximized as a literal, biological plague. We have converted the earth’s verdant river deltas into massive concrete hemorrhoids exuding poisons. The expedient way to exterminate any infestation is to fumigate its breathing space — to snuff their atmosphere. If this is magnified by a nuclear war, the planet itself may step back a billion years, become a hellish cinder like Venus.
Our humankind twice has failed in the past century to rationalize our own species governance. The United Nations nonetheless remains a ready framework for redirecting ‘defense’ budgets that perpetuate human failure and poverty into social and environmental reconstruction programs. There is no question that nuclear weapons and the 20th century comprise a dire warning. Yet if homo sapiens explicitly doubles its lifespan, as a focused alternative to the pursuit of wealth, then our planet and sister species should return to the rich diversity we once all shared collectively.
Despite those 20th century failures, amid our ongoing cultural cancer of war, a new variant of species governance — liquid democracy — promises to bond humanity internally. Liquid democracy aka delegative democracy has numerous advantages over simple representative versions, and places everyone into an active democratic role that reflects their own expertise.
Humanism
Why is Humanism the preferred envelope for biobanking/ectogenesis? The notion of ‘sequential lives’ implies that we each share two or more full life cycles within the next 500 years — an arbitrary time frame that delivers genetic continuance, including the wondrous embrace of human childhood and youth. If Humanism is classified by some as a de facto religion, then it here offers half a millennium in paradise. Genity will find universal respect in the law, with recognition as a gateway to an afterlife — which many religions envisage — adoptable within beliefs as a ritual/ceremony. Humanism can act as a secular appendage enabling ancestral transitions that religions have presaged for millennia. Religion is private and personal — the Society remains a secular, humanist sidecar — personally suitable for docking with any faith to celebrate life and our planet’s glories, for centuries to come.
The humanist rationale foresees that after a putative period of five hundred years, our young species will likely face existential risks such as artificial intelligence, natural disasters, and Black Swan entities and events that will require humans to cooperate as one interdependent species. This is a consensus, target junction where transhumanism and AI can be dealt with by a sophisticated species — homo sapiens at maturity — specifically interfacing with these threats, and their grave implications for life itself.
The conceit in this analysis lies in the fact that society must restructure pro-actively, via institutions such as fusion power and liquid democracy, to bypass climate peril, to defund militarism and allocate resources to constructive programs. If a warship is a monument to human failure, stolen from the poor — perhaps it can be converted to a relief vessel for natural disasters. Such is how our thinking must evolve. A palace of peace awaits humanity, if this self-centered strategy finds broad acceptance across all cultures.
Hence we can access the foretold paradise of our ancestors, to enjoy the glories of families and health, the vistas within wise education, shared across friendships that span multiple life cycles.
Passing the Torch
Buddhists describe our spirit, transitioning between two states of existence, as a flame that is passed between two candles. This is metaphor of course, yet it is critical to understand that the transition to a sequential life cycle is completely biological — our universal blockchain is Evolution. Exactly one molecule of DNA is physically transferred from one life cycle to the next — intact — as the sole actor in this nouveau immaculate conception.
The New Philosophy will have much to say about this in the decades to come. Contemplating our next life cycle is a useful and edifying pastime.
This is continuance of the precise chemical and biological identity of the individual in stewardship with the Society as Oracle, and is what distinguishes Buddhist allegory from our required scientific certainty. L1 of the blockchain will listen only for the L2 data that confirms that definitive DNA test, signaling your rebirth. It then funds infancy and youth in accordance with the smart contracts. Here are the circumstances for our successive births. These arrangements can be made today, for eventual EG, and for EG/ETH to blossom as the greatest conspiracy of all.
This process, from DNA stewardship through to secure Genity, is an implied quid pro quo binding species cooperation over the next five centuries. From that vantage point homo sapiens can address any exogenous threats and emerging opportunities, if we do some housecleaning on Earth beforehand.
References
- DNA Capsule Specifications — SecuriGene DNA Capsule Specifications — SecuriGene
- First monkeys cloned with technique that made Dolly the sheep (nature.com)
- Liquid democracy — Wikipedia
- Humanist Union | Stewardship
