FM 2030: Иран-Америкалық трансгуманист философ және болашақтанушы

Iranian American Belgian transhumanist philosopher and futurist

FM 2030 (born Fereidoun M. Esfandiary; فریدون اسفندیاری; October 15, 1930 – July 8, 2000) was a Belgian born Iranian American author, teacher, transhumanist philosopher, futurist, consultant, and Olympic athlete. He became notable as a transhumanist with the book Are You a Transhuman? : Monitoring and Stimulating Your Personal Rate of Growth in a Rapidly Changing World, published in 1989. In addition, he wrote a number of works of fiction under his original name F. M. Esfandiary.

FM 2030 was born Fereydoon M. Esfandiary on October 15, 1930, in Belgium to Iranian diplomat Abdol Hossein “A. H.” Sadigh Esfandiary (1894–1986), who served from 1920 to 1960. He travelled widely as a child, having lived in 17 countries including Iran, India, and Afghanistan, by age 11. He represented Iran as a basketball player and wrestler at the 1948 Olympic Games in London. He attended primary school in Iran and England and completed his secondary education at Colleges Des Freres, a Jesuit school in Jerusalem. By the time he was 18, aside from his native Persian, he learned to speak 4 languages: Arabic, Hebrew, French and English. He then started his college education at the University of California, Berkeley, but later transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, where he graduated in 1952.

In 1970, after publishing his book Optimism One, F. M. Esfandiary As a staunch anti nationalist, he believed "There are no illegal immigrants, only irrelevant borders." In 1973, he published a political manifesto UpWingers: A Futurist Manifesto in which he portrays both the ideological left and right as outdated, and in their place proposes a schema of UpWingers (those who look to the sky and the future) and DownWingers (those who look to the earth and the past). FM 2030 identified with the former. He argued that the nuclear family structure and the idea of a city would disappear, being replaced by modular social communities he called mobilia, powered by communitarianism, which would persist and then disappear. In terms of civilization, he stated: "No civilization of the past was great. They were all primitive and persecutory, founded on mass subjugation and mass murder." In terms of identity, he stated "The young modern is not losing his identity. He is gladly disencumbering himself of it." He believed that eventually, nations would disappear and that identities would shift from cultural to personal. In a 1972 op Ed in The New York Times, he wrote that the leadership in the Arab–Israeli conflict had failed, and that the warring sides were "acting like adolescents, refuse to resolve their wasteful 25 year old brawl" and believed that the world was "irreversibly evolving beyond the concept of national homeland."

FM 2030 was a lifelong vegetarian and said he would not eat anything that had a mother. He famously refused to answer any questions about his nationality, age and upbringing, claiming that such questions were irrelevant and that he was a “global person”. FM 2030 once said, "I am a 21st century person who was accidentally launched in the 20th. I have a deep nostalgia for the future." As he spent much of his childhood in India, he was noted to have spoken English with a slight Indian accent. He taught at The New School, University of California, Los Angeles, and Florida International University. FM 2030 was, in his own words, a follower of "upwing" politics (i. e. neither right wing nor left wing but something else), and by which he meant that he endorsed universal progress. He had been in a non exclusive "friendship" (his preferred term for relationship) with Flora Schnall, a lawyer and fellow Harvard Law Class of 1959 graduate, from the 1960s until his death. FM 2030 and Schnall attended the same class as Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He resided in Westwood, Los Angeles as well as Miami.

FM 2030 died on July 8, 2000, from pancreatic cancer at a friend's apartment in Manhattan. He was placed in cryonic suspension at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, where his body remains today. He did not yet have remote standby arrangements, so no Alcor team member was present at his death, but FM 2030 was the first person to be vitrified, rather than simply frozen as previous cryonics patients had been. Several musical artists, such as the Reptaliens, Dataport, Ghosthack, Vorja, Gavin Osborn and Philip Sumner have created songs and albums named after FM 2030. A film titled 2030 released in 2020, which explored the possibility of FM 2030's future revival.