[an excerpt from "Are You a Transhuman?" by FM-2030] WHAT ARE SOME HIGHLIGHTS OF NEW IDEOLOGICAL DIRECTIONS IN THE COMING YEARS? All existing ideologies of left and right are inherently industrial age. As we hasten to a new age these ideologies lose relevance. The telespheral age is inevitably spawning new agendas - beyond right and left. It may be too early to tell exactly how things will fall into place in the coming years. We don't even have a designation for this new ideological thrust. Years ago I suggested the term "Up-Wing" as the ideological heir to the right- and left-wings. I suggested that Up-Wingers are those who are committed to helping accelerate the shift to new historical and evolutionary levels. What matters is not so much the name or names we finally settle on for our new agendas. What matters is that we need a new ideological direction. Right and left ideologies are essentially part of the same industrial-age continuum. In their most progressive leanings they strive to modernize *existing* systems. They call for better family relations - more progressive schools - more sophisticated hospitals - more reliable postal services - more efficient government bureaucracies - more jobs and prosperity - more open elections of government leaders and representatives - cleaner and more efficiently run cities and so on. Up-Wingers see all these and related systems as inherently outdated. No incremental modernization can effectively salvage these and other industrial- age holdovers. Powerful new forces in the world are steadily rescripting life in fundamentally new ways. The details of this new age may still be blurred. But the outlines are becoming clearer every day. As noted earlier the direction in *all* areas of life is unmistakably toward decentralization - despecialization - demonopolization - debureaucratization - globalization. Even more profound evolutionary changes are now evident. We are striving to deanimalize our species - debiologize intelligence - deplanetize. Following is a short-hand overview of Up-Wing agenda. (For details please see my books *Up-Wingers* and *Telespheres* and the forthcoming *Countdown to Immortality*.) PHYSICAL IMMORTALITY. The most urgent problem facing us is not social - economic - political. The most pressing problem facing us *all* everywhere is death. All other human constraints are derivative. So long as there is death no one is free. So long as there is death we cannot upgrade the basic quality of life. The elimination of death has never been on anyone's agenda because throughout the ages we were never able to do anything about it. Today for the first time ever we are significantly slowing down the ageing process. We are devising mroe and more spare parts for malfunctioning body organs. We are slowly learning to transfer intelligence. Other extraordinary advances are now on our launching pads. Immortality is now a question of when - not if. The elimination of death will not do away with problems. It will take away the tragedy in human life. Once we attain immortality everything will be possible. SPACE COLONIZATION. We must urgently accelerate the temp of Space exploration and colonization. Why is this a top priority? (I will reiterate for emphasis what I suggested in Monitor 19: Space.) Space colonization opens up the abundance of the universe. Frees us of all finiteness. Quickens the momentum-swing to telespheres. Accelerates our transformation from Earth-specific animal/human organisms to extraterrestrial posthumans. Multiplies our chances of connecting with other intelligences who in turn could give us a mighty boost forward. TELESPHERES. Everywhere the industrial world is wearing out. It is not an accident that suddenly more and more of our institutions are malfunctioning. It is not an accident that in advanced industrial societies the nuclear family and school education and postal service and small farms and labor unions and the auto and steel industries and central governments and industrial-age cities and national economies are all buffeted by persistent problems. These and other industrial-age systems are all interconnected. As one part of the apparatus breaks down other parts begin to fall apart also. The fact is that the entire planet is shifting to a new stage - beyond industrialism. But the right and left - the two dominant ideological thrusts of our times - do not have agendas to facilitate a quick and coordinated stepup to the postindustrial age. The differences between the industrial and telespheral worlds are basic and significant. By grafting intelligence and communications to all areas of our lives we are forever altering the nature of everything: our services - our employment - our ways of interacting with one another - our decision-making processes. Telespheres forge a continuous interface of people and technology and services. In this emerging electronic environment we do not need the cumbersome bureaucracies and structures of the industrial age. We have *direct* accesses to services - at any time and from anywhere. The most "progressive" school is still an old system of education. The stage beyond school education is teleducation. The most modern hospital is stlil an old and inefficient way of keeping people healthy. The stage beyond hospitals is preventive protective telemedicine. The most efficient postal service is still postal. The stage beyond is electronic mail. In other words the most modern automobile is still an automobile. A truly moren transport is something beyond the automobile - a helicopter or a magnetic levitation device. We need a leap to the next stage. NETWORKS OF INTIMACY. Mating - reproduction - parenting are undergoing profound changes. The conditions that through the ages sustained family systems are on their way out. People no longer need to marry for procreation - companionship - love - sexual intimacy - protection - economic support. We are steadily moving toward shared or collaborative procreation and collaborative parenting. Collaborative procreation means screening people's sex cells and using only those most likely to produce healthy wholesome new lives. This will upgrade the quality of life for everybody. Shared parenting means creating collaborative networks of people who wish to share in the parenting of children. At a time when many marriages break up and people value their autonomy such networks free people of the responsibility of parenting alone. These arrangements allow parents freedom of movement. They also allow children a richer more varied more continuous early environment. POSTSURVIVAL ECONOMICS. Until now all economic systems have dealt with survival. How to provide for people's basic needs: food - shelter - clothing. The basics of all economics have not changed in hundreds of thousands of years. The economics of Neanderthals and the economics of a modern complex society are essentially the same. The details have grown mroe complex - but the basics are unchanged. How to provide for people's basic needs - survival needs. Something unprecedented is happening in economics. We are going beyond mere survival. The new economics - the economics of the coming decades - deals not with survival. The new economics wants to ensure our immortality. Some of the fastest-growing areas in economics today (and certainly in the years ahead) are technologies and resources that directly or indirectly aim at the indefinite extension of each human life. What are some of these glamor areas of mdoern economics? Molecular biology - bioenginerring - biochips - prostheses - body reconstruction - geriatrics and gerontology - life-extending products - medical technology - life support technology - life suspension. Other areas of postsurvival economics: supercomputers - robots - androids - replicants - ultraintelligent systems - memory transfer and so on. Some of these technologies are already multibillion-dollar industries. The others are on their way. The new economics does not strive to keep peole alive for a few decades. It aims to extend each life indefinitely. Up-Wing economics is not content with cradle-to-grave protection. It wants to do away with the grave. The new economics goes beyond mere survival. What we have is the beginnings of a twenty-first-century Economics of Immortality. COLLABORATIVE DECISION-MAKING (POLITICS). Voting for leaders in free elctions has long been touted as a "democratic process". The fact is that this is an anachronistic definition of democracy. Voting for leaders - even in free elections - is not democracy. A system of government that calls for a few officials to make unilateral decisions for millions of people can hardly be called democratic. Government through leadership and representation - right or left - elected or imposed - is a form of private enterprise with its own vested interests - its own self-serving ideological and economic advantages - its unilateral exercise of power - the inevitable cult of personality. Government through leadership automatically creates two distinct categories - leaders and followers. This in turn leads to unequal exercise of power. Whether the right or the left wins elections does not redress this undemocratic imbalance. The decisions are still made by the leaders. (Governments in advanced insutrial countries are losing power - not because of right or left reforms - but because of the decentralizing impact of the new information flow.) The only way to transfer power to the people is to phase out all systems of government based on leadership and representation. Democracy in our times means voting - not for leaders - but voting directly on issues. This may not have been possible in the past. But today we have the electronic technology for such collaborative decision-making. The growing number of referendums - ballot initiatives - propositions - public opinion polls are steps toward the evntual creation of a political framework enabling people to participate *directly* in decision making. Collaborative self-government is not only more democratic than all existing political systems. It is also a more rapid - efficient - depoliticized way of making decisions in our times. These are some Up-Wing goals and priorities. There ar others: globalism - telecmomunities - twenty-first-century values and so on. All the above prioriities are interconnected. To advance rapidly in any one area we must leap ahead in *all* areas. This new ideological trajectory is intended to bring us more freedom more abundance more leisure more fluidity more intimacy more growth. Today as we hasten toward telespherization and global life - toward new sources of limitless abundance and new forms of limitless intelligence - toward transsolar colonies and immortality - we are reaching beyond conservative and liberal - beyond right and left. We are moving Up.