Becoming Transhuman Part One: The Cosmere

Trying something new! A short playlist I made for this post:

As you may be able to tell from this blog alone, speculative fiction is constantly exploring novel ideas about the world and our place in it. You probably won’t be surprised, then, at how many authors have surveyed issues of life beyond death and consciousness apart from our fragile human bodies.

My goal with [most of] these posts is to connect my lived experiences with the engaging fiction I love. For this one, I just want to lay out the personal part here before returning to it at the end: I’m human. I often dislike the body I’m in, and am sometimes overtaken by existential dread.

Now, transhumanism - or posthumanism. The science fiction concepts overlap with philosophical ones to such a degree that establishing a simple definition can be difficult. But what I’m talking about is explained fairly well in this line from Wikipedia: ‘a posthuman is a hypothetical future being "whose basic capacities so radically exceed [differ] those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards."’

None of the examples I’ll talk about here are strictly ‘superior’ to our current idea of humanity, but simply explore different and fascinating potential forms of human consciousness.

Transhumanism can take any number of different forms (AI Generated)

Magical Transhumanism

I’ve written before about my love for Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere novels and the way they explore characters’ struggles with trauma, but have barely scratched the surface of the gripping worldbuilding the books are built upon. 

An attempt at some brief context: The ‘gods’ of the Cosmere are called Shards; there are sixteen of them, and they were created by the ‘Shattering of Adonalsium’. Each Shard embodies one aspect, or Intent, of the being they were broken from (Adonalsium). Shards include Ruin, Preservation, Honour and Cultivation - each named for the fundamental principle that defines that Shard and its motivations. The Shards are the source of (most) magic in the Cosmere, and their Intents inform how their magic and its systems manifest. 

Cosmere stories are centered on characters struggling and growing in diverse situations and environments. (Granted, that’s a decent definition for storytelling in general, but it is the discernable focus of Sanderson’s works). These tales focus on living and breathing human characters, though there’s also a healthy mix of crab people, elemental faeries, ogres, changelings, zombies, and even dragons. 

It is in the background - the meta-narrative of the Cosmere where characters’ journeys are extended past their biological and narrative end dates - that transhuman experiences have so far been explored.

‘Friends’ of three centuries discussing moral philosophy - by Diego López

Prolonged existence can be achieved through an ever-growing number of means in the Cosmere, but I’d only qualify two* as being essentially transhuman. The first is to ‘pick up’ or ‘ascend to’ a Shard and become its Vessel - merging one’s personality, perception and ability to act with the Shard’s divine Intent. That’s right, the Cosmere’s gods are (mostly) human too!

The power they hold is functionally infinite, but its use is limited by a combination of their focus and the Shard’s Intent: Ruin must actively perceive a person in order to urge them toward destructive chaos, and it fundamentally cannot heal someone or work towards stability. The Vessel influences the Shard through the act of holding, channeling, and embodying it.

The Shard influences the Vessel at the same time. Ruin’s Vessel Ati was specifically chosen in order to minimize the Shard’s destructive potential in the wider Cosmere, because Ati was a kind and generous individual; yet thousands of years entwined with Ruin’s desire for entropy warped him significantly. The same was true for his friend Leras, who took up Preservation. Need for order and prosperity meant that Leras could scarcely take meaningful action without years of planning and preparation.

Leras and Ati by Blazemalefica

I like to think of magic in the Cosmere as flowing water: Preservation trying to harm something would be akin to forcing water to flow directly against gravity. For it to grow a plant would be nearly as difficult given the amount of change involved - but for Cultivation that would be as easy as breathing. Each Shard is fixed in its state, and Vessels must learn to act creatively within their Intent. Could someone use Ruin to achieve only positive changes, leaning away from violence and insanity and toward constant improvement? Maybe, but it seems just as likely they would start to see a lot of things as needing quick and brutal improvement.

A fascinating example unfolding in recent novels is the Shard Autonomy. The god of ‘working best alone’ almost seems to do the opposite, planting pieces of itself on various worlds with their own personalities and followings. This seems to be because the Vessel found and exploited a loophole: I need no one else, therefore versions of me should rule over everything. 

Autonomy’s Vessel Bavadin, by Maria Lia Malandrino

For Everyone Else

In terms of transhuman experiences, the Vessels definitely have it better than most cognitive shadows - people whose souls (personalities, memories, identities, etc.) are magically prevented from passing on in the Cosmere. Other than one case where the person keeps their body but loses their memory, cognitive shadows either exist formlessly or (eventually) inhabit a body constructed from magic.

Cognitive shadows created by a Shard have more free will than that Shard’s Vessel, but rarely possess any innate abilities or protections. They are programs, written in the code of the Shard to emulate what was once a person. It’s hard to find a rule or trait common to every type. On Threnody where the Shards Ambition, Odium and Mercy clashed and a chunk of the former was left behind, they are malicious ghosts hunting all life. On Roshar, the same ten Heralds of Honour have spent millennia fighting the same hundreds of Fused created by Odium, and they are all exhausted and insane. It remains unclear exactly how prolonged time as a cognitive shadow changes a soul - there are certainly theories that both the Heralds and Fused have become caricatures of their former personalities over time, but suffice to say that Roshar has a lot going on. 

One world has a fascinating test case in the works: three men who knew each other in life and each attained immortality in a different way. One is a Vessel to not one, but two Shards. Another is a cognitive shadow who seems to have stitched himself into a body out of sheer motivation and force of will. The third never died, but thanks to some light non-consensual body modification is able to halt the aging process. At three and a half centuries each man already seems exhausted and set in his ways, and it will be fascinating to see how Sanderson develops them going forward.

Alive, but known as Death throughout the Cosmere - by eyeronis

We are shaped by our motivations, guiding principles, and conditions of life even as we try to shape and act through them. Taking action toward self-improvement makes the next step slightly more accessible; while giving into doubt or temptation increases the likelihood it will happen again.

I think mental health (or survival of who you are) as a cognitive shadow involves mindfulness - remembering who you are and the beliefs that define you. One of my favourite morals in fiction is ‘Choose again’, which you can read more about here.

Let me know your thoughts, or if there’s any great songs I should have in this playlist!

And thanks for reading! Next time, technological and stranger versions of transhumanism.