Vladimir De Thézier

Biography

Vladimir De Thézier was born in Montreal, Quebec, the son of two Haitian immigrants.

Under his Haitian nickname "Justice", De Thézier was a transhumanist activist from 2004 to 2008, before turning into a progressive critic of transhumanism. 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. A secular progressive, he embraced and began to promote a synthesis of social democracy and transhumanism known as "democratic transhumanism". 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, as part of NEXUS, a network of local technoscience-focused progressive organizations he strived to build until January 2008. In 2004, De Thézier coined and used the term "technoprogressive" as a baggage-free alternative to the term "democratic transhumanist". 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, 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. 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" group mentality and identity; and
3. A vulnerability to unrealistic utopian and dystopian "future hype".

In March 2010, inspired by critical political ecology, De Thézier began advocating for the idea of a convergence of the Quebec sovereignty movement with the environmental movement in Quebec into a "sovereign green movement" dedicated to the creation of a democratic republic and a green state in a sovereign Quebec independent of Canada. In June 2010, De Thézier became a member of the board of administration of the Intellectuels pour la souveraineté (IPSO) and, on 7 February 2011, organized and hosted an IPSO conference at the Université du Québec à Montréal exploring how new generations of young Quebecers view the idea of Quebec independence.

De Thézier was a political blogger for Le Huffington Post Québec from February 2012 to May 2015.