Great article:
On a few occasions Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the Uebermensch (over-human) has been mistakenly identified with the Transhumanist concept of the Posthuman. This mistake largely stems from the following quote from Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment…”
From <http://aspieplus.blogspot.com/2009/06/difference-between-nietzsche-and.html>
I wanted to respond a few topics in the post I liked above.
First, he notion that a post-scarcity based economy will lead to a population of lazy post-humans.
I think there will be a transitionary period, whose length will depend on the overlap between our ability to enhance the human mind and body, and our ability to fulfill all people’s material needs and desires.
There are going to be lazy people. There always have been, and this is not going to change right away. Those people will cease to contribute to the future of humans. They will consume resources, but when those resources are not scarce they will be free to do so.
There have also always been people with ambition. That ambition is not going to disappear. Ambition does not exist as a means to material gain. Ambition is a deeper driving factor in the human psyche. It is also a human trait that can be enhanced just like any other. I believe that we will have the ability to enhance our intelligence, focus, ambition, compassion, or any other human trait. There is no reason to believe that we will evolve into something less than human. We are the masters of our own evolution now. We can enhance everything that we value in ourselves now, and overpower everything that we to not desire.
I will tolerate all the “Last Men” as described by Nietzsche.