— A History of Tomorrow
Select Quotes
1 The New Human Agenda
For generation after generation humans have prayed to every god, angel and saint, and have invented countless tools, institutions and social systems–but they continued to die in their millions from starvation, epidemics and violence. – Page 1
For the first time in history, more people die today from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals combined. In the early twenty-first century, the average human is far more likely to die from bingeing at McDonald’s than from drought, Ebola or an al-Qaeda attack. – Page 2
In the eighteenth century Marie Antoinette allegedly advised the starving masses that if they ran out of bread, they should just eat cake instead. Today, the poor are following this advice to the letter. – Page 5
People readily believed in angels and fairies, but they could not imagine that a tiny flea or a single drop of water might contain an entire armada of deadly predators. – Page 7
Altogether the pandemic killed between 50 million and 100 million people in less than a year. The First World War killed 40 million from 1914 to 1918.10 – Page 9
(Incidentally cancer and heart disease are of course not new illnesses–they go back to antiquity. In previous eras, however, relatively few people lived long enough to die from them.) – Page 12
In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the world; 620,000 of them died due to human violence (war killed 120,000 people, and crime killed another 500,000). In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide, and 1.5 million died of diabetes. 23 Sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder. – Page 14
Nuclear weapons have turned war between superpowers into a mad act of collective suicide, and therefore forced the most powerful nations on earth to find alternative and peaceful ways to resolve conflicts. – Page 15
In consequence, the word ‘peace’ has acquired a new meaning. Previous generations thought about peace as the temporary absence of war. Today we think about peace as the implausibility of war. – Page 16
In essence, terrorism is a show. – Page 18
Terrorists are like a fly that tries to destroy a china shop. The fly is so weak that it cannot budge even a single teacup. So it finds a bull, gets inside its ear and starts buzzing. The bull goes wild with fear and anger, and destroys the china shop. – Page 18
Because Christianity, Islam and Hinduism insisted that the meaning of our existence depended on our fate in the afterlife, they viewed death as a vital and positive part of the world. Humans died because God decreed it, and their moment of death was a sacred metaphysical experience exploding with meaning. – Page 21
Modern science and modern culture have an entirely different take on life and death. They don’t think of death as a metaphysical mystery, and they certainly don’t view death as the source of life’s meaning. – Page 22
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not say that humans have ‘the right to life until the age of ninety’. It says that every human has a right to life, period. That right isn’t limited by any expiry date. – Page 24
The writing is on the wall: equality is out–immortality is in. – Page 25
We mortals daily take chances with our lives, because we know they are going to end anyhow. So we go on treks in the Himalayas, swim in the sea, and do many other dangerous things like crossing the street or eating out. – Page 25
Dramatic improvements in conditions, as humankind has experienced in recent decades, translate into greater expectations rather than greater contentment. – Page 35
If you have just been fired (or lost a decisive football match), but you are experiencing very pleasant sensations (perhaps because you popped some pill), you might still feel on top of the world. – Page 37
Who knows, perhaps it really happened to some lucky squirrel millions of years ago. But if so, that squirrel enjoyed an extremely happy and extremely short life, and that was the end of the rare mutation. – Page 37
People drink alcohol to forget, they smoke pot to feel peaceful, they take cocaine and methamphetamines to be sharp and confident, whereas Ecstasy provides ecstatic sensations and LSD sends you to meet Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. What some people hope to get by studying, working or raising a family, others try to obtain far more easily through the right dosage of molecules. – Page 40
For thousands of years history was full of technological, economic, social and political upheavals. Yet one thing remained constant: humanity itself. Our tools and institutions are very different from those of biblical times, but the deep structures of the human mind remain the same. – Page 46
No clear line separates healing from upgrading. Medicine almost always begins by saving people from falling below the norm, but the same tools and know-how can then be used to surpass the norm. – Page 51
This is the paradox of historical knowledge. Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses its relevance. – Page 57
Though historians occasionally try their hand at prophecy (without notable success), the study of history aims above all to make us aware of possibilities we don’t normally consider. Historians study the past not in order to repeat it, but in order to be liberated from it. – Page 59
Homo sapiens does its best to forget the fact, but it is an animal. – Page 66
Part I Homo Sapiens Conquers The World
2 The Anthropocene
Yes, a big asteroid will probably hit our planet sometime in the next 100 million years, but it is very unlikely to happen next Tuesday. – Page 73
At most, a nostalgic elder might have told sceptical youngsters that ‘when I was young, mammoths were much more plentiful than these days. And so were mastodons and giant elks. And, of course, the tribal chiefs were honest, and children respected their elders.’ – Page 75
Alas, domesticated species paid for their unparalleled collective success with unprecedented individual suffering. – Page 78
When a woman sees a man and thinks, ‘Wow! He is gorgeous!’ and when a peahen sees a peacock and thinks, ‘Jesus! What a tail!’ they are doing something similar to the automatic vending machine. – Page 86
The farm thus became the prototype of new societies, complete with puffed-up masters, inferior races fit for exploitation, wild beasts ripe for extermination and a great God above that gives His blessing to the entire arrangement. – Page 96
3 The Human Spark
Though schools evidently do a very poor job teaching evolution, religious zealots still insist that it should not be taught at all. – Page 102
Similarly, consciousness may be a kind of mental pollution produced by the firing of complex neural networks. It doesn’t do anything. – Page 116
According to Turing, in the future computers would be just like gay men in the 1950s. It won’t matter whether computers will actually be conscious or not. It will matter only what people think about it. – Page 120
People sometimes develop deep emotional attachments to fetishes like weapons, cars and even underwear, but these attachments are one-sided and never develop into relationships. The fact that dogs can be party to emotional relationships with humans convinces most dog owners that dogs are not mindless automata. – Page 121
Humans know how to cooperate far more effectively than chimpanzees, which is why humans launch spaceships to the moon whereas chimpanzees throw stones at zoo visitors. Does it mean that humans are superior beings? – Page 138
All large-scale human cooperation is ultimately based on our belief in imagined orders. – Page 142
Suddenly a hole in time opens, a mysterious ray of light illuminates the face of one of the teenagers, who announces: ‘I am going to fight the infidels and liberate the Holy Land!’ – Page 149
People weave a web of meaning, believe in it with all their heart, but sooner or later the web unravels, and when we look back we cannot understand how anybody could have taken it seriously. – Page 149
Hence if we want to understand our future, cracking genomes and crunching numbers is hardly enough. We must also decipher the fictions that give meaning to the world. – Page 151
Part Ii Homo Sapiens Gives Meaning To The World
4 The Storytellers
As history unfolded, the impact of gods, nations and corporations grew at the expense of rivers, fears and desires. – Page 155
The basic abilities of individual humans have not changed much since the Stone Age. But the web of stories has grown from strength to strength, thereby pushing history from the Stone Age to the Silicon Age. – Page 155
The resulting scriptures purported to describe reality in its entirety, and generations of scholars became accustomed to looking for all the answers in the pages of the Bible, the Qur’an or the Vedas. – Page 170
The Bible accordingly shows no interest whatsoever in understanding the global ecology, the Babylonian economy or the Persian political system. Such self-absorption characterises all humans in childhood. Children of all religions and cultures think they are the centre of the world, and therefore show little genuine interest in the conditions and feelings of other people. – Page 173
When the US economy falters, even evangelical Republicans sometimes point an accusing finger at China rather than at their own sins. – Page 174
It’s ironic that they swear to tell the truth on a book brimming with so many fictions, myths and errors. – Page 174
History isn’t a single narrative, but thousands of alternative narratives. Whenever we choose to tell one, we are also choosing to silence others. – Page 176
Human cooperative networks usually judge themselves by yardsticks of their own invention and, not surprisingly, they often give themselves high marks. In particular, human networks built in the name of imaginary entities such as gods, nations and corporations normally judge their success from the viewpoint of the imaginary entity. – Page 176
5 The Odd Couple
It is often said that God helps those who help themselves. This is a roundabout way of saying that God doesn’t exist, but if our belief in Him inspires us to do something ourselves–it helps. Antibiotics, unlike God, help even those who don’t help themselves. They cure infections whether you believe in them or not. – Page 179
Religion cannot be equated with superstition, because most people are unlikely to call their most cherished beliefs ‘superstitions’. We always believe in ‘the truth’; only other people believe in superstitions. – Page 180
Liberals, communists and followers of other modern creeds dislike describing their own system as a ‘religion’, because they identify religion with superstitions and supernatural powers. – Page 182
Science has no ability to refute or corroborate the ethical judgements religions make. But scientists do have a lot to say about religious factual statements. Biologists are more qualified than priests to answer factual questions such as ‘Do human fetuses have a nervous system one week after conception? Can they feel pain?’ – Page 190
As individuals, scientists and priests may give immense importance to the truth; but as collective institutions, science and religion prefer order and power over truth. – Page 198
6 The Modern Covenant
Yet in fact modernity is a surprisingly simple deal. The entire contract can be summarised in a single phrase: humans agree to give up meaning in exchange for power. – Page 199
The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause. If modernity has a motto, it is ‘shit happens’. – Page 200
In the Middle Ages, the outbreak of a plague caused people to raise their eyes towards heaven, and pray to God to forgive them for their sins. Today when people hear of some deadly new epidemic, they reach for their mobile phones and call their brokers. – Page 203
Modernity has turned ‘more stuff’ into a panacea applicable to almost all public and private problems, from religious fundamentalism through Third World authoritarianism down to a failed marriage. – Page 206
This mutual-benefit approach has probably helped global harmony far more than centuries of Christian preaching about loving your neighbour and turning the other cheek. – Page 209
The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance. – Page 212
People who believe in the hi-tech Ark should not be put in charge of the global ecology, for the same reason that people who believe in a heavenly afterlife should not be given nuclear weapons. – Page 216
For thousands of years priests, rabbis and muftis explained that humans cannot overcome famine, plague and war by their own efforts. Then along came the bankers, investors and industrialists, and within 200 years managed to do exactly that. – Page 219
7 The Humanist Revolution
Throughout history prophets and philosophers have argued that if humans stopped believing in a great cosmic plan, all law and order would vanish. Yet today, those who pose the greatest threat to global law and order are precisely those people who continue to believe in God and His all-encompassing plans. God-fearing Syria is a far more violent place than the secular Netherlands. – Page 220
They don’t say, ‘These sinners shouldn’t hold a gay parade because God forbids homosexuality.’ Rather, they explain to every available microphone and TV camera that ‘seeing a gay parade passing through the holy city of Jerusalem hurts our feelings. Just as gay people want us to respect their feelings, they should respect ours.’ – Page 226
Today, copies of Duchamp’s masterpiece are presented in some of the most important museums in the world, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Canada, the Tate Gallery in London and the Pompidou Centre in Paris. (The copies are displayed in the museums’ galleries, not in the lavatories.) – Page 230
At least in the West, God has become an abstract idea that some accept and others reject, but it makes little difference either way. In the Middle Ages, without a god I had no source of political, moral and aesthetic authority. I could not tell what was right, good or beautiful. Who could live like that? Today, in contrast, it is very easy not to believe in God, because I pay no price for my unbelief. – Page 234
In the early nineteenth century Wilhelm von Humboldt–one of the chief architects of the modern education system–said that the aim of existence is ‘a distillation of the widest possible experience of life into wisdom’. He also wrote that ‘there is only one summit in life–to have taken the measure in feeling of everything human’. – Page 238
No culture in history has ever given such importance to human feelings, desires and experiences. – Page 239
The humanist view of life as a succession of experiences has become the founding myth of numerous modern industries, from tourism to art. Travel agents and restaurant chefs do not sell us flight tickets, hotels or fancy dinners–they sell us novel experiences. – Page 239
It is liberal politics that believes the voter knows best. Liberal art holds that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Liberal economics maintains that the customer is always right. Liberal ethics advises us that if it feels good, we should go ahead and do it. Liberal education teaches us to think for ourselves, because we will find all the answers within. – Page 247
People feel bound by democratic elections only when they share a basic bond with most other voters. – Page 249
Lastly, as you dance the nationalist polka, a small but momentous step may take you from believing that your nation is different from all other nations to believing that your nation is better. Nineteenth-century liberal nationalism required the Habsburg and tsarist empires to respect the unique experiences of Germans, Italians, Poles and Slovenes. Twentieth-century ultra-nationalism proceeded to wage wars of conquest and build concentration camps for people who danced to a different tune. – Page 250
Just as Stalin’s gulags do not automatically nullify every socialist idea and argument, so too the horrors of Nazism should not blind us to whatever insights evolutionary humanism might offer. Nazism was born from the pairing of evolutionary humanism with particular racial theories and ultra-nationalist emotions. Not all evolutionary humanists are racists, and not every belief in humankind’s potential for further evolution necessarily calls for setting up police states and concentration camps. – Page 256
Evolutionary humanism played an important part in the shaping of modern culture, and is likely to play an even greater role in the shaping of the twenty-first century. – Page 257
Yet this economic giant casts a very small ideological shadow. Nobody seems to know what the Chinese believe these days–including the Chinese themselves. – Page 267
This ideological vacuum makes China the most promising breeding ground for the new techno-religions emerging from Silicon Valley – Page 267
New technologies kill old gods and give birth to new gods. That’s why agricultural deities were different from hunter-gatherer spirits, why factory hands fantasised about different paradises than peasants and why the revolutionary technologies of the twenty-first century are far more likely to spawn unprecedented religious movements than to revive medieval creeds. – Page 268
If you value national health services, pension funds and free schools, you need to thank Marx and Lenin (and Otto von Bismarck) – Page 271
Why did Marx and Lenin succeed where Hong and the Mahdi failed? Not because socialist humanism was philosophically more sophisticated than Islamic and Christian theology, but rather because Marx and Lenin devoted more attention to understanding the technological and economic realities of their time than to scrutinising ancient texts and prophetic dreams. – Page 271
You couldn’t have established a communist regime in sixteenth-century Russia, because communism necessitates the concentration of information and resources in one hub. – Page 272
Socialism, which was very up to date a hundred years ago, failed to keep up with new technology. Leonid Brezhnev and Fidel Castro held on to ideas that Marx and Lenin formulated in the age of steam, and did not understand the power of computers and biotechnology. Liberals, in contrast, adapted far better to the information age. – Page 273
If Marx came back to life today, he would probably urge his few remaining disciples to devote less time to reading Das Kapital and more time to studying the Internet and the human genome. – Page 274
Think, for example, about the acceptance of gay marriage or female clergy by the more progressive branches of Christianity. Where did this acceptance originate? Not from reading the Bible, St Augustine or Martin Luther. Rather, it came from reading texts like Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality or Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’. – Page 275
Part Iii Homo Sapiens Loses Control
8 The Time Bomb In The Laboratory
However, like every other religion, liberalism too is based not only on abstract ethical judgments, but also on what it believes to be factual statements. And these factual statements just don’t stand up to rigorous scientific scrutiny. – Page 281
The contradiction between free will and contemporary science is the elephant in the laboratory, whom many prefer not to see as they peer into their microscopes and fMRI scanners. – Page 282
Some of those voices repeat society’s prejudices, some echo our personal history, and some articulate our genetic legacy. All of them together, says Sally, create an invisible story that shapes our conscious decisions in ways we seldom grasp. – Page 289
Paradoxically, the more sacrifices we make for an imaginary story, the more tenaciously we hold on to it, because we desperately want to give meaning to these sacrifices and to the suffering we have caused. – Page 300
Medieval crusaders believed that God and heaven provided their lives with meaning; modern liberals believe that individual free choices provide life with meaning. They are all equally delusional. – Page 305
Humans are masters of cognitive dissonance, and we allow ourselves to believe one thing in the laboratory and an altogether different thing in the courthouse or in parliament. – Page 305
9 The Great Decoupling
Over the past half century there has been an immense advance in computer intelligence, but there has been exactly zero advance in computer consciousness. – Page 311
This raises a novel question: which of the two is really important, intelligence or consciousness? As long as they went hand in hand, debating their relative value was just an amusing pastime for philosophers. But in the twenty-first century this is becoming an urgent political and economic issue. – Page 311
We should remind ourselves of the fate of horses during the Industrial Revolution. – Page 312
The shifting of authority from humans to algorithms is happening all around us, not as a result of some momentous governmental decision, but due to a flood of mundane personal choices. – Page 345
People usually compare themselves to their more fortunate contemporaries rather than to their ill-fated ancestors. – Page 348
In the twentieth-century medicine benefited the masses because the twentieth century was the age of the masses. Twentieth-century armies needed millions of healthy soldiers, and economies needed millions of healthy workers. – Page 348
10 The Ocean Of Consciousness
Despite all the talk of radical Islam and Christian fundamentalism, the most interesting place in the world from a religious perspective is not the Islamic State or the Bible Belt, but Silicon Valley. That’s where hi-tech gurus are brewing for us brave new religions that have little to do with God, and everything to do with technology. – Page 351
Seventy thousand years ago the Cognitive Revolution transformed the Sapiens mind, thereby turning an insignificant African ape into the ruler of the world. The improved Sapiens minds suddenly had access to the vast intersubjective realm, which enabled them to create gods and corporations, to build cities and empires, to invent writing and money, and eventually to split the atom and reach the moon. – Page 352
Just as the spectrums of light and sound are far broader than what we humans can see and hear, so the spectrum of mental states is far larger than what the average human perceives. – Page 353
For millions of years we were enhanced chimpanzees. In the future, we may become oversized ants. – Page 363
What might replace desires and experiences as the source of all meaning and authority? As of 2016, there is one candidate sitting in history’s reception room waiting for the job interview. This candidate is information. The most interesting emerging religion is Dataism, which venerates neither gods nor man–it worships data. – Page 366
11 The Data Religion
True, for the last 70,000 years or so, human experiences have been the most efficient data-processing algorithms in the universe, hence there was good reason to sanctify them. However, we may soon reach a point when these algorithms will be superseded, and even become a burden. – Page 388
Your feelings are the voice of millions of ancestors, each of whom managed to survive and reproduce in an unforgiving environment. – Page 391
In ancient times having power meant having access to data. Today having power means knowing what to ignore. – Page 396
Acknowledgments
To Yigal Borochovsky, who convinced me to go easy on God. – Page 398