Among those most curious proclivities of the human organism is the longing to itself surpassed or overcome and most particularly by something of its own creation. This was perhaps first and best pronounced by Friedrich Nietzsche’s Zarathustra who heralded the so-called Übermensch1. More recently have we been given to a notion, at once more imaginative as more banal than the Nietzschean conception, which is referred to by the transhumanist faction of modern futurists as the posthuman.
Some cursory research might reveal the two notions as often erroneously conflated with one-another as vehemently juxtaposed. The parallels are perhaps as undeniable as intrinsic to their likely shared lineage or descendence in their historical sequence. It is feasible, therefor, that we might derive some common thread between the two by which to reconcile their more idiosyncratic nuances into an ultimately more sturdy and virile notion.
For our purposes in this might we aptly refer to that hypothetical common thread as Xenanthropy, or that from which proceeds the Xenanthrop2.
1. Übermensch is most popularly recognized by the translation, superman, but most literally referred to in English as overman, which could perhaps be best understood in every sense that overdrive is commonly understood, to include the mechanical sense (high efficiency in a state sustained activity). ↩
2. One has only to imagine if philanthropy had as its ultimate goal some hypothetical being or state of being called the philanathrop for whom a philanthropist is but a herald and precursor. Or perhaps one might consider what distinction might be made between a misanthrope and a misanthropist with the former being a matter attitude, nature, or personality and the latter being a matter of contrivance or belief. ↩