What is Extropianism?

That is the question posed on the Talk page for the definition of Extropianism on Wikipedia. That provoked me to venture a response.

Personally, I understand Extropianism to describe a fulfillment of the human condition anticipated by transhumanism; a consummating consilience of a rich history of transhuman work and thought, rather than a splintered sect within that tradition. When I call myself an extropian, I am not evangelizing for a transhuman denomination, I am not advancing a doctrine; rather, I mean that I Am Part of Making the Posthuman Condition Happen, Right Now. I am careful to say "a" fulfillment rather than "the" fulfillment, because beyond the extropians there will be stages of evolution that we cannot yet imagine; regardless of how intimidating one's endowment in the frontal lobe.

Responsible futurists understand that We Just Can't Know how transhumanism will actually play out. We can, however, express an abiding confidence in the fact that it will play, indeed is playing out, and within that merry happenstance we are committed to Being Ever Present; maintaining engaged minds, productive imaginations, and transcendent hopes aligned with the best case scenarios for human longevity and evolution.

An important difference between transhuman theory and extropian practice, as I understand it, is the active commitment to Being There and Making It Happen. Personally, I do not believe we are merely theorizing as earlier transhumanists, of necessity, were resource-bound to do. Forty years ago, when F.M. Esfandiary introduced the idea of transitional humans, even those who agreed with him rightly suspected that they would not survive quite long enough to make the transition. As extropians, we expect to be part of the transhuman migration and are in one sense self-selecting guinea pigs saying "pick me" for the implants, the neuroprosthetics, the gangly first-generation meat-machine interfaces that the average risk-averse human would actually eschew in favor of death.