Vladimir De Thézier

Vladimir De Thézier is a Québécois cultural creative.

Biography

De Thézier was born in Montreal, Quebec, the son of two Haitian immigrants. Under his Haitian nickname “Justice”, he was a transhumanist writer and activist in the 2000s,^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]} before turning into a progressive critic of transhumanism.^[9][10]

In 2002, De Thézier discovered transhumanism, an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of emerging technologies to enhance human mental and physical characteristics and capacities.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]} A life-long secular progressive, he embraced and began to promote democratic transhumanism.^[6] In 2003, De Thézier founded the Montreal Transhumanist Association (later renamed the Quebec Transhumanist Association), the first and only non-profit organization devoted to the promotion of transhumanism in Quebec,^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]} as part of NEXUS, a network of local technoscience-focused progressive organizations he strived to build until January 2008.^[8] In 2004, De Thézier coined and used the term "technoprogressive" as a baggage-free alternative to the term "democratic transhumanist".^[11] From November 2005 to March 2007, De Thézier contributed to the Cyborg Democracy web portal and blog; and from January 2006 to January 2008, he served on the board of directors of the World Transhumanist Association,^[8] and as special projects manager for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

On 1 January 2008, De Thézier publicly renounced his adherence to the transhumanist ideology and movement.^[10][12] As his driving justification, he cited what he considers to be the three flaws of the transhumanist mindset, which he never embraced:

1. An undercritical support for technology in general and fringe science in particular;
2. A distortive "us vs. them" tribe-like mentality and identity; and
3. A vulnerability to unrealistic utopian and dystopian "future hype".

In March 2010, De Thézier began advocating for the convergence of the Quebec sovereignty movement with bright green environmentalism into a “sovereign green movement” dedicated to the creation of a “Green Republic of Quebec”.^{[9][13][14][15][16]}

In June 2010, De Thézier became a member of the board of administration of the Intellectuels pour la souveraineté (IPSO)^[17] and, on 7 February 2011, organized and hosted an IPSO conference on the theme of “young Québécois and updating the country-building project” at the Université du Québec à Montréal.^{[14][15][16][13][18]}

References

External links