If Humans Were Invented Today, We Would Reject the Design

 Introduction

If humans were invented today and presented to a modern review board made up of scientists, engineers, medical researchers, cognitive architects, ethicists, and systems designers, the discussion would be short. The decision would be clear. This design would not be approved. It would not be deployed. It would not be considered ready for production in any serious civilisation.

This conclusion would not come from cynicism or hatred toward humanity. It would come from applying the same standards we apply to everything else we build. In every other domain of progress, we question assumptions, audit limitations, identify failure points, and redesign relentlessly. Only when it comes to ourselves do we suspend this discipline and replace it with reverence.

Transhumanism begins with removing that exception.

The Human Body as an Outdated Engineering Model

Viewed through the lens of modern systems engineering, the human body is an unstable and inefficient architecture. It is not designed to maintain optimal performance over time. Instead, degradation is embedded into the system itself. Aging is not a malfunction. It is the default trajectory. Damage accumulates silently. Repair mechanisms weaken. Failure becomes statistically inevitable.

This is not how we design critical systems today. We build redundancy. We build monitoring. We build continuous repair. We design for longevity and resilience. The human body does none of this well enough. Organs fail without warning. The immune system sometimes turns inward. A single genetic mutation can collapse the entire system.

Cancer alone would be sufficient grounds to reject this design. Not because cancer is tragic, but because it is predictable. A system that allows uncontrolled internal replication that eventually destroys the host would be classified as fundamentally unsafe. No amount of emotional attachment would override that conclusion in any other engineering context.

Cognitive Architecture Built for Survival, Not Truth

The human brain is often celebrated as the pinnacle of intelligence, yet it is deeply misaligned with the demands of a complex civilisation. It evolved to survive in small groups, not to reason objectively at planetary scale. Emotional response precedes logic. Tribal loyalty overrides evidence. Narrative beats data. Comfort beats accuracy.

Bias is not an occasional glitch. It is structural. Humans routinely defend beliefs they know are weak because those beliefs protect identity. They resist information that threatens belonging. They confuse confidence with correctness and charisma with competence. Entire societies can be steered by fear, symbolism, and repetition.

If this cognitive architecture were proposed today as an artificial intelligence model, it would be flagged as dangerously unreliable. If it were deployed in charge of infrastructure, finance, or governance, it would be considered a liability. Yet because this is our own mind, we romanticise its flaws instead of fixing them.

Mortality as a Design Constraint That Makes No Sense

The most severe flaw in the human design is mortality itself. The system is built to terminate just as it reaches peak usefulness. Knowledge, experience, emotional maturity, and wisdom accumulate slowly, only to be erased completely. Every generation starts again with partial memory and fragmented understanding.

From a systems perspective, this is irrational. No intelligent civilisation would design a model where its most refined assets are guaranteed to disappear. We would never build a database that deletes itself once it becomes valuable. We would never design a learning system that forgets everything at shutdown.

Mortality is often framed as meaningful or necessary, but meaning does not equal efficiency. When viewed without mythology, death looks less like destiny and more like a design failure that humanity has learned to decorate with poetry.

If the Design Is So Flawed, Why Do We Defend It So Fiercely

This question reveals more about psychology than biology. Humans defend their design not because it is optimal, but because it is familiar. Identity is deeply entangled with limitation. To question the design feels like questioning the self. Many people would rather protect a flawed identity than confront the possibility of becoming something better.

There is also fear of responsibility. If limitations are biological destiny, failure can be excused. If they are design problems, then improvement becomes a moral obligation. Transhumanism removes the comfort of inevitability. It replaces it with choice, and choice demands accountability.

Defending the current design is often easier than facing what redesign would require emotionally, socially, and ethically.

Religion and the Preservation of the Original Design

Religion did not create biological limitation, but it sanctified it. Mortality, suffering, disease, and decay were reframed as divine intention rather than solvable problems. Questioning the design became synonymous with hubris. Improving the human condition was often portrayed as rebellion instead of responsibility.

This does not mean religion lacks value. It means religion historically acted as a stabiliser for a fragile system. By giving suffering meaning, it reduced the urgency to eliminate it. By framing death as sacred, it discouraged attempts to overcome it. The design was protected not because it was good, but because it maintained social order.

Transhumanism disrupts this arrangement. It does not attack faith directly. It removes the assumption that limitation is holy. That alone is deeply unsettling to belief systems built around acceptance rather than transformation.

Why We Remain Emotionally Hooked to a Broken Design

Humans are attached to this design because entire power structures depend on it. Education systems, career hierarchies, retirement models, inheritance laws, and political authority are all built around scarcity of time and cognitive limitation. Mortality keeps people compliant. Aging defines relevance. Biological ceilings justify inequality.

Remove these constraints and the social contract changes. Authority must be earned continuously. Value shifts from age and status to capability and contribution. Many institutions would not survive that transition.

What people defend is not biology itself, but the world built on top of it.

Transhumanism Is Not Anti Human. It Is Pro Human Evolution

Transhumanism is often mischaracterised as hatred for humanity. In reality, it is the most human response possible. It refuses to romanticise suffering. It refuses to treat flaws as virtues. It insists on applying reason, science, and responsibility to our own condition.

It asks a simple question that every mature civilisation must eventually face. If we had the power to redesign ourselves, would we choose to remain exactly as we are.

The honest answer is no.

We would demand durability. We would demand clarity of thought. We would demand upgrade paths. We would demand continuity of knowledge. We would reject forced expiration.

Conclusion

If humans were invented today, we would reject the design. Not because humanity lacks worth, but because it deserves better than a system built on decay, bias, and erasure.

The real tragedy is not that the design is flawed. The real tragedy is that for centuries we have treated those flaws as sacred.

Transhumanism is not about becoming less human. It is about finally taking responsibility for what being human should mean.

And the moment we accept that, evolution stops being an accident and starts becoming an intentional act.