on transhumanism and vampires
- Tadhg Kearney
- Oct 10, 2023
- 8 min read
Updated: Apr 25, 2024
This post was originally posted 10th October 2023 and edited on 25th April 2024.
We recently had a class on transhumanism, one that I expected wouldn’t be too influential on me, for a number of reasons. The foremost among them is because I didn’t think there were too many convincing debates against the utopian future that transhumanists seek to create. After all, who wouldn’t take advantage of technology that could put a stopper on death?
The class was led by the frustratingly brilliant Graham Allen and he levied some fantastic points towards the class that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. He argued that human beings need urgency, a sense of mortality, in order for us to have agency. Immortality would lend itself to lackadaisical complacency.
Now, I’m more than content with the level of technology that we have now, this is not my primary concern. A limit to human creativity however, that is what terrifies me. I like to imagine myself, first and foremost, as a creative, and anything that puts a limit on my creativity is something I would fervently oppose. Now, I like to imagine that should I have the theoretical access to this theoretical technology, I would orientate my life around the creation and output of creative texts, to become the most prolific writer in human history, but that only highlights both my own and the transhumanist’s utopian naivety.
(Max More)
Transhumanism is a fascinating theory, but I’d like to reorientate my focus towards fiction.
Fiction is essential because it offers concrete (for lack of a better word) examples of the abstract. It humanises the theoretical. Coincidentally we also discussed this in a seminar on ecofeminism the following week. In essence, we can ascribe the human onto the myriad of ‘what if?’ questions we think of daily.
As technology increases, the line between magic and machinery blurs. One issue that transhumanism posits is a solution for human mortality. One issue that fantasy and folklore posits is a solution for human mortality. And, strangely enough, my mind kept drifting towards the fantastical in our class about concrete future hypotheticals (if you’ll ignore the oxymoron). Namely, vampires.
Now, there are quite clearly innumerable differences between the future that transhumanists aim to create and the fictitious vampire. One thing we can infer from both however, is what an immortal life might actually look like. Here, I get to talk about a recent television series I watched- and fell in love with- while I procrastinated on my readings- called What We Do In The Shadows.
This show follows the lives of a group of vampires, Nandor, Laszlo, Nadja, Colin Robinson, and their familiar, (servant/slave/friend) Guillermo, as they live out of a mansion in Staten Island, New York. The Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi created show, in my mind, is probably the most realistic scenario for what actual human immortality would lead itself to, which is complacency to the Nth degree.
The primary conflict of the first season stems from the arrival of the Baron Afanas, an ancient vampire who demands that they conquer the New World. This is at odds with the primary motivations of the core cast, who are lazy, rude, utterly incompatent at everything they do. They are constantly saved by Guillermo, a regular human, and never acknowledge or thank him. On top of that, he is constantly surrounded by vampires who, at best, seek to take advantage of him, if not just outright kill and eat him.
My favourite character in the show is the hedenostic Laszlo Cravensworth. Played by Matt Berry, and endlessly quotable, the man oozes charisma at every turn. But he has his flaws. He is immortal, has access to ancient knowledge, but instead he says ‘I didn't become a vampire to end up as pen-bushing bureaucrat. I became a vampire to suck blood and to fuck forever’ ('The Prisoner').
That more or less is the essence of his character, especially in the earlier seasons. He just wants to have fun, consume ungodly amounts of blood, and have as much sex as possible, whether that be with his wife, Nadja, or the countless other men and women he sleeps with throughout the show. Just to run through his list of crimes…
murder
corruption
rioting
bullying
stalking
kidnapping
dueling
forgery
copraphelia (not a crime, but it should be)
insurance fraud
impersonation
not paying off debts
torture
is literally jack the ripper and
turning a baby into a vampire
…it is quite clear what kind of man Laszlo is. But that’s not to say that Laszlo doesn’t have development. His character arc revolves around becoming more selfless and more curious. In one episode, Laszlo is confronted by Jim the Vampire. Their conflict stems from Laszlo skipping out on paying rent and Jim’s desire for revenge. This arc shows the series’s penchant for absurd storylines, but one that is quite fitting when it comes to immortality. It is revealed that Jim the Vampire was hunting Laszlo for 167 years and blames his financial troubles in the interim period on this fact. Humans are petty after all.
We have a tendency to blame anything or anybody besides ourselves for our shortcomings. Laszlo then goes on the run and assumes a human identity as Jackie Daytona, regular human bartender, once again fleeing from his problems. This marks the first time in the story where Laszlo cares about somebody other than himself or his wife. He becomes the patron of a local volley ball team and hosts a fundraiser to send them to State. After the money gets burned, he and Jim put aside their differences, and Laszlo burns down a building to collect the insurance money to pay for the volley ball team’s competition. This marks a change in Laszlo, where he finally learns empathy. It must be said that it wasn’t anything to do with his vampirism or any magical powers, it was his exposure to a pointedly human community.
So, where am I going with all this? To return to the idea of transhumanism, I want to critique the idea of a ‘post-human’ and the notion that longer life spans and perfect health would necessarily make society better. In his essay, ‘Why I Want To Be A Posthuman When I Grow Up’, Nick Bostrom argues that a post-human is a being that has at least one posthuman capacity, that is to say, a capability of a human to exceed in something without any techonological assistance. He offers three strands here: healthspan, cognition, and emotion (More 28-9). Now, I can’t speak to the cognitive differences of the fictional vampires, but it is abundantly clear that they do have some cognitive differences to the humans of the show (Laszlo successfully assumes a new identity, the only difference in his appearance being dusty blue jeans and a tooth pick) and I contest Bostrom’s definition of and notion that we can enhance emotion, we are left with the life-span aspect. Bostrom continues:
‘As you yourself are changing you may also begin to change the way you spend your time. Instead of spending four hours each day watching television, you may now prefer to play the saxophone in a jazz band and to have fun working on your first novel. Instead of spending the weekends hanging out in the pub with your old buddies talking about football, you acquire new friends with whom you can discuss things that now seem to you to be of greater significance than sport. Together with some of these new friends, you set up a local chapter of an international non-profit to help draw attention to the plight of political prisoners.’ (More 32)
In What We Do In The Shadows, we can define the vampires as post-humans. They were once humans and are gifted with capabilities that humans cannot exceed by normal means. We are confronted with people gifted with immortality, blessed with good lucks, carte blanche access to ancient knowledge in a library belonging to the Vampiric Council, and all they do is fail at things, sit around in their house all night, have copious amounts of sex, and I can’t help but feel like this is the most realistic depiction of immortality I’ve found in fiction.
A core tenant of human beings is empathy. To be human is to be empathetic, which is to say, to be human is to feel. Laszlo was surrounded by other post-humans in the form of his vampire contemporaries, but it wasn’t until he fraternised with regular human beings does he actually become a better being himself, a being that contributes to some sort of concept of a net positive for the world. Laszlo’s character arc culminates in him embracing empathy. This is evident in where his characters go in subsequent seasons, such as helping his once roommate and now friend, Colin Robinson, to a great time before his death. It is also shown in the fact that he raised the child that crawled out of the rotting carcass of the deceased Colin Robinson (don’t ask, just watch the show, it’s great!). But we must not forget that it is his involvement with regular human beings that facilitated this change. That is to say, the post-human is nothing without the human.
(Baby Colin Robinson; least disturbing image I could find)
Another aspect of transhumanism I’d like to discuss is using technology to counter our own biological weaknesses. There is actually a plot in the show that explores this very topic, coincidentally also featuring Laszlo. It is a rule in the show that vampires cannot survive sunlight. He performs an experiment, obtains the sweat of a person who is stuck transitioning from human to vampire and covers his skin in said sweat, thus allowing him to go out in the daylight for the first time in centuries. He could do anything, the world is his oyster, but instead he simply goes to the beach, sits down and watches the waves, frolics in the water, catches a fish, and traces the shape of a penis into the sand. This is also the only time in the show he takes advantage of this technology/discovery. Perhaps the Romantics got it right when they wrote all that nature poetry. All Laszlo sought to do is feel the sun on his skin again.
I’d like to compare Laszlo to other immortal characters here. Characters like Klaus Mikaelson, Dracula, Dorian Grey, etc. They are fantastical in their construction. They seek beauty, world domination, human desires taken to the extreme. WWDITS is different. It’s characters, despite being post-human, are fundamentally human in their construction. Base in their scope and desire. We’ve discussed Laszlo at length. Nandor has an existential crisis every other episode. Nadja tries and fails in a number of ventures, like teaching, running a night club, being the leader of the New York Vampiric Council, other things I’m more than likely forgetting. Guillermo is interesting in that his primary motivation is to become a vampire, he initially serves as Nandor’s familiar in the hopes that he will one day turn him into a vampire, or to transition from human to post-human. This arc culminates in him ultimately rejecting being turned into a vampire. The human desire to stay human in the face of the other, the post-human.
I suppose, to wrap things up, I’d like to say that this was just a surface level excuse to discuss one of my favourite shows. But it does highlight a key tenant of my own personal philosophy: assuming this technology is inevitable, how do we hold on to our humanity? It is a troubling thought, but the conclusion I come to, is that it is impossible. Should this technology become widely available, that is of course a utopian idea that the proletariat will have the same level of access to this technology that the bourgeoise will, what will humanity become? Will art have a place in this world? The next few years will be interesting. But, in the meantime, at least I have my silly little vampire show.
~ tadhg
WORKS CITED
Clement, Jemaine, and Taika Watiti. What We Do in the Shadows. 2019.
The Transhumanist Reader : Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, edited by Max More, and Natasha Vita-More, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2013.
IMAGES USED
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All images accessed on 25th April 2024.
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