Yuval Noah Harari addresses the main challenges human society will face in the years to come in his book “21 Lessons for the 21st Century.” The book tries to bring clarity and confronts the most urgent questions on today’s global agenda such as, how can we protect ourselves from nuclear war, ecological cataclysms and technological disruptions? What can we do about the epidemic of fake news or the threat of terrorism? What should we teach our children? 

Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli public intellectual, historian and a professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Harari is an author of popular science best sellers such as Sapiens, which examined the course of early human history, and Homo Deus, which speculated on where we might be heading as a post-human species.




















Summary & Key Learnings


Part I: The Technological Challenge
1. Disillusionment - The end of history has been postponed
2. Work - When you grow up, you might not have a job
3. Liberty - Big Data is watching you
4. Equality - Those who own the data own the future

Part II: The Political Challenge
5. Community - Humans have bodies
6. Civilisation - There is just one civilisation in the world
7. Nationalism - Global problems need global answers
8. Religion - God now serves the nation
9. Immigration - Some cultures might be better than others

Part III: Despair and Hope
10. Terrorism - Don’t panic
11. War - Never underestimate human stupidity
12. Humility - You are not the centre of the world
13. God - Don’t take the name of God in vain
14. Secularism - Acknowledge your shadow

Part IV: Truth
15. Ignorance - You know less than you think
16. Justice - Our sense of justice might be out of date
17. Post-truth - Some fake news lasts for ever
18. Science Fiction - The future is not what you see in the movies

Part V: Resilience
19. Education - Change is the only constant
20. Meaning - Life is not a story
21. Meditation - Just observe


Part I: The Technological Challenge


Humankind is losing faith in the liberal story that dominated global politics in recent decades, exactly when the merger of biotech and infotech confronts us with the biggest challenges humankind has ever encountered. 


 

1. Disillusionment

The end of history has been postponed


Stories & Artificial Intelligence

This chapter makes the point that ‘humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers or equations which is why the communist, fascist and liberal stories of the 20th Century were so powerful'. Different ideologies have always shaped how humans see and steer the world. Whichever one holds people's interest the most, tends to determine our history for decades. In the 20th century, fascism, communism, and liberalism fought for that privilege. Liberalism ended up being the clear winner.

Since the global financial crisis of 2008 people all over the world have become increasingly disillusioned with the liberal story. While there’s a lot of pushback against the liberal story today, humankind won’t abandon the liberal story because it doesn’t have any viable alternatives. “People may give the system and angry kick in the stomach but having nowhere else to go they will eventually come back.”

Depending on which ideology dominates, different assets grow in value. Whatever’s most valuable is the thing politicians and nations will fight for, thus deciding what future the world progresses towards. So far, in the 21st century, technology seems to be our prime ideology. Data has become the most valuable asset.

While the 20th Century was all about three political systems, the 21st century introduces new stories and classes, that of humans, superhumans and artificial intelligence. As AI gets more sophisticated it will create classes of humans; superhumans who are augmented by technology. As Elon Musk pointed out on a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, we’ve already been augmented, there’s just a disconnect and the data rate is too slow.

Tip - The simpler the story, the better the story sticks.

We need to reinvent our story. Perhaps, it's time to break with the past and craft a completely new story that goes beyond old gods and nations but focuses on core modern values of liberty and equality. If liberalism, nationalism, etc or some noval creed wishes to shape the future world, it will need to make sense of artificial intelligence, big data algorithms and bioengineering and incorporate them in a new meaningful narrative. In order to reinvent our story that would move us forward in the future, we need to fully grasp the implications of our new ideology, 'technology'.


2. Work

When you grow up, you might not have a job


Humans have two types of abilities–physical and cognitive. AI is now beginning to outperform humans in more of these skills, including in the understanding of human emotions. It is crucial to realise that the AI revolution is not just about computers getting faster and smarter. It is fueled by breakthroughs in the life sciences and the social sciences as well.

The better we understand the biochemical mechanisms that underpin human emotions, desires and choices the better computers can get at analysing human behaviour, predicting human decisions and replacing human professions such as bankers and lawyers. 'Human intuition' is in reality "pattern recognition". In particular, AI can be better at jobs that demand intuitions about other people. Two particularly important non human abilities that AI possesses are connectivity and updatability. What we are facing is not the replacement of millions of individual human workers by millions of individual robots and computers; rather, individual humans are likely to be replaced by an integrated network. We should compare the abilities of a collection of human individuals to the abilities of an integrated network.

Many jobs are uninspiring drudgery not worth saving. Harari says that is is nobody's life dream to be a cashier, "what we should focus on is providing for people's basic needs and protecting the social status and self worth." "Universal basic income will protect the poor against job losses and economic dislocation while protecting the rich from populist rage."

Potential Solutions
Potential solutions fall into three main categories: 
  • what to do in order to prevent jobs from being lost
  • what to do in order to create enough new jobs
  • what to do if, despite our best efforts, job losses significantly outstrip job creation
We would have to explore new models for post-work societies, post-work economies, and post-work politics. The first step is to honestly acknowledge that the social, economic, and political models we have inherited from the past are inadequate for dealing with such a challenge.

Some might argue that humans could never become economically irrelevant, because even if they cannot compete with AI in the workplace, they will always be needed as consumers. However, it is far from certain that the future economy will need us even as consumers. Machines and computers could do that too. Algorithms obviously have no consciousness, so unlike human consumers, they cannot enjoy what they buy, and their decisions are not shaped by sensations and emotions. However, algorithms select things based on their internal calculations and built-in preferences, and these preferences increasingly shape our world.

Maybe we need to flip a switch in our minds and realise that taking care of a child is arguably the most important and challenging job in the world. Alternatively, governments could subsidise universal basic services rather than income. This is in fact the utopian vision of communism. It is debatable whether it is better to provide people with universal basic income (the capitalist paradise) or universal basic services (the communist paradise). Both options have advantages and drawbacks. But no matter which paradise you choose, the real problem is in defining what “universal” and “basic” actually mean.

What is Universal? What is Basic?
Whichever way you choose to define “basic human needs,” once you provide them to everyone free of charge, they will be taken for granted, and then fierce social competitions and political struggles will focus on luxuries. If universal basic support is aimed at improving the objective conditions of the average person in 2050, it has a fair chance of succeeding. But if it is aimed at making people subjectively more satisfied with their lot and preventing social discontent, it is likely to fail. To really achieve its goals, universal basic support will have to be supplemented with some meaningful pursuits.

In the lives of all people, the quest for meaning and community might eclipse the quest for a job. If we manage to combine a universal economic safety net with strong communities and meaningful pursuits, losing our jobs to algorithms might actually turn out to be a blessing. Losing control over our lives, however, is a much scarier scenario. Notwithstanding the danger of mass unemployment, what we should worry about even more is the shift in authority from humans to algorithms, which might destroy any remaining faith in the liberal story and open the way to the rise of digital dictatorships.

Alternatives to UBI
The government could subsidise universal basic services (UBS) rather than income instead of giving money to people who then shop around for whatever they want. The Government might subsidise free education, free healthcare, free transport and so forth. This effectively brings the communist plan to fruition, albeit not by revolution.

Harari warns of the threat of further geographic consolidation of wealth though. “If a 3D printer takes over from the Bangladeshis, the revenues previously earned by the South Asian country will now fill the coffers of a few tech giants in California. This could pave the way for an even greater wealth gap and the collapse of developing countries."

Some say that the big tech companies should be taxed to cover the shortfall, but Harari points out that people are unlikely to support the distribution of these funds offshore. If you believe the typical American voter will support that, says Harari, you might just as well believe that Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny will solve the problem.

Happiness = Reality — Expectations
The problem with UBI or UBS is that human beings aren’t just built for satisfaction. Human happiness depends less on objective conditions and more on our own expectations. Our expectations adapt to changing conditions including to the condition of other people (keeping up with the Joneses). When things improve, expectations balloon and consequently even dramatic improvements in conditions might leave us as a dissatisfied as before. Today’s poor live better than yesterday’s kings, however, Americans are taking antidepressants in astounding numbers, leading to the current opioid epidemic. 

Tip - The AI revolution will lead to the rise of the useless class. 

What an individual can do to help their situation is to continuously learn, adapt and change. Instead of competing with AI, focus on collaborating, servicing and leveraging it. 

On a more wider level, society needs to honestly acknowledge that the social, economic, and political models we have inherited from the past are inadequate for dealing with this challenge. We need to explore new models that not only meet with people's basic needs, but people need to feel like they have enough. They need to feel that their contributions are worthwhile, that they are learning and growing and that they have access to a community. 

3. Liberty
Big Data is watching you

The liberal story cherishes human liberty as its number one value. It argues that all authority ultimately stems from the free will of individual humans, as expressed in their feelings, desires, and choices. In politics, liberalism believes that the voter knows best. It therefore upholds democratic elections. In economics, liberalism maintains that the customer is always right. It therefore hails free-market principles. In personal matters, liberalism encourages people to listen to themselves, be true to themselves, and follow their hearts–as long as they do not infringe on the liberties of others. This personal freedom is enshrined in human rights.

Referendums and elections are always about human feelings, not about human rationality. If democracy were a matter of rational decision-making, there would be absolutely no reason to give all people equal voting rights–or perhaps any voting rights at all. Harari shares the following quote: “You might as well call a nationwide plebiscite to decide whether Einstein got his algebra right.” However, he goes on to say that for better or worse, elections and referendums are not about what we think. They’re about what we feel.

This reliance on the heart might prove to be the Achilles’ heel of liberal democracy. For once somebody (whether in Beijing or in San Francisco) gains the technological ability to hack and manipulate the human heart, democratic politics will mutate into an emotional puppet show. 

Listen to the Algorithm
Our feelings are not some uniquely human spiritual quality, and they do not reflect any kind of “free will.” Rather, feelings are biochemical mechanisms that all mammals and birds use in order to quickly calculate probabilities of survival and reproduction. Feelings aren’t based on intuition, inspiration, or freedom–they are based on calculation.

Feelings are therefore not the opposite of rationality–they embody evolutionary rationality.

For we are now at the confluence of two immense revolutions. Biologists are deciphering the mysteries of the human body, and in particular of the brain and human feelings. At the same time computer scientists are giving us unprecedented data-processing power. When the biotech revolution merges with the infotech revolution, it will produce Big Data algorithms that can monitor and understand my feelings much better than I can, and then authority will probably shift from humans to computers. My illusion of free will is likely to disintegrate as I daily encounter institutions, corporations, and government agencies that understand and manipulate what was until now my inaccessible inner realm. 

Harari puts it simply; truth today is defined by the top results of the Google search. On big data algorithms, once we begin to count on AI to decide what to study, where to work, and who to marry, democratic elections and free markets will make little sense.

The Drama of Decision-Making
Hacking human human decision-making not only will make Big Data algorithms more reliable but also will simultaneously make human feelings less reliable.

Once AI makes better decisions that we do about careers and perhaps even relationships, our concept of humanity and of life will have to change. Humans are used to thinking about life as a drama of decision-making. Liberal democracy and free-market capitalism see the individual as an autonomous agent constantly making choices about the world.

As authority shifts from humans to algorithms, we may no longer view the world as the playground of autonomous individuals struggling to make the right choices. Instead, we might perceive the entire universe as a flow of data, see organisms as little more than biochemical algorithms, and believe that humanity’s cosmic vocation is to create an all-encompassing data-processing system–then merge into it.

The Philosophical Car
Human emotions trump philosophical theories in countless other situations. This makes the ethical and philosophical history of the world a rather depressing tale of wonderful ideals and less-than-ideal behavior. How many Christians actually turn the other cheek, how many Buddhists actually rise above egoistic obsessions, and how many Jews actually love their neighbors as themselves? That’s just the way natural selection has shaped Homo sapiens. Like all mammals, Homo sapiens uses emotions to quickly make life-and-death decisions. We have inherited our anger, our fear, and our lust from millions of ancestors, all of whom passed the most rigorous quality control tests of natural selection. Computer algorithms, however, have not been shaped by natural selection, and they have neither emotions nor gut instincts.

Digital Dictatorships
In the late twentieth century democracies usually outperformed dictatorships because democracies were better at data processing. A democracy diffuses the power to process information and make decisions among many people and institutions, whereas a dictatorship concentrates information and power in one place. Democracy in its present form cannot survive the merger of biotech and infotech. Either democracy will successfully reinvent itself in a radically new form or humans will come to live in “digital dictatorships.”

Artificial Intelligence and Natural Stupidity
We still don’t know enough about consciousness. In general, there are three possibilities we need to consider:
  1. Consciousness is somehow linked to organic biochemistry in such a way that it will never be possible to create consciousness in non organic systems.
  2. Consciousness is not linked to organic biochemistry, but it is linked to intelligence in such a way that computers could develop consciousness, and computers will have to develop consciousness if they are to pass a certain threshold of intelligence.
  3. There are no essential links between consciousness and either organic biochemistry or high intelligence. Therefore computers might develop consciousness–but not necessarily. They could become superintelligent while still having zero consciousness.
The danger is that if we invest too much in developing AI and too little in developing human consciousness, the very sophisticated artificial intelligence of computers might only serve to empower the natural stupidity of humans.

Tip – The danger is that we invest too much in developing AI and too little in developing human consciousness which leads to AI serving to empower the natural stupidity of humans. We shouldn’t forget that AI has spawned from us. Current AI are built on systems that collects oceans of data collected from human experiences. It inherits our prejudices and other less ideal qualities and it’s been found that AI is prone to amplify sexist and racist biases from the real world. Hence, we need more understanding of human consciousness, human behaviour and the biochemical mechanisms that underpin those behaviours to build AI that inherits qualities that lead to better outcomes.

4. Equality
Those who own the data own the future

Following the Agricultural Revolution, property multiplied and with it inequality. Hierarchy was not just the norm, but also the ideal. How could there be order without a clear hierarchy between aristocrats and commoners, between men and women, or between parents and children? Priests, philosophers, and poets all over the world patiently explained that just as in the human body not all members are equal–the feet must obey the head–so also in human society equality would bring nothing but chaos. In the late modern era, however, equality became an ideal in almost all human societies. It was partly due to the rise of the new ideologies of communism and liberalism. But it was also due to the Industrial Revolution, which made the masses more important than ever before. Globalisation has certainly benefited large segments of humanity, ut there are signs of growing inequality both between and within societies. Some groups increasingly monopolise the fruits of globalisation, while billions are left behind. Already, the richest 1 percent owns half the world's wealth. Even more alarmingly, the richest hundred people together own more than the poorest 4 billion. This could get far worse. The rise of AI might eliminate the economic value and political power of most humans. At the same time, improvements in biotechnology might make it possible to translate economic inequality into biological inequality.

Who Owns the Data?
If we want to prevent the concentration of all wealth and power in the hands of a small elite, the key is to regulate the ownership of data. If data becomes concentrated in too few hands, humankind will split into different species. If we want to prevent a small elite from monopolising such godlike powers, and if we want to prevent humankind from splitting into biological castes, the key question is: who owns the data? Does the data about my DNA, my brain, and my life belong to me, to the government, to a corporation, or to the human collective?

Politicians are a bit like musicians, and the instrument they play on is the human emotional and biochemical system. They give a speech, and there is a wave of fear in the country. They tweet, and there is an explosion of hatred. I don’t think we should give these musicians a more sophisticated instrument to play on. Once politicians can press our emotional buttons directly, generating anxiety, hatred, joy, and boredom at will, politics will become a mere emotional circus.

How do you regulate the ownership of data? This may well be the most important political question of our era. If we cannot answer this question soon, our sociopolitical system might collapse. People are already sensing the coming cataclysm. Perhaps this is why citizens all over the world are losing faith in the liberal story, which just a decade ago seemed irresistible. How, then, do we go forward from here, and how do we cope with the immense challenges of the biotech and infotech revolutions?

Tip – Those who own the data hold the power. The abuse of that power could lead to increased economic inequality, as well as, biological inequality. To prevent this concentration of power we need to regulate the ownership of data.




Part II: The Political Challenge


The merger of infotech and biotech threatens the core modern values of liberty and equality. Any solution to the technological challenge has to involve global cooperation. But nationalism, religion and culture divide humankind into hostile camps and make it very difficult to cooperate on a global level.

 

5. Community

Humans have bodies

Though in the twenty-first century humans might be upgraded into gods, as of 2018 we are still Stone Age animals. In order to flourish we still need to ground ourselves in intimate communities. Unfortunately, over the past to centuries intimate communities have been disintegrating. The attempt to replace small groups of people who actually know one another with the imagined communities of nations and political parties will never succeed in full. Consequently, people live ever more lonely lives in an ever more connected planet. Many of the social and political disruptions of our time can be traced back to this malaise. On tech addiction and how it is compromising genuine human connection and community, Harari makes the point that it is easier than ever to talk to his cousin in Switzerland but it is harder to talk to his husband over breakfast because he constantly looks at his smartphone instead of at him.

Online versus Offline
A community may begin as an online gathering, but in order to truly flourish it will have to put down roots in the offline world too. Physical communities have a depth that virtual communities cannot match, at least not in the near future. Humans have bodies.

People estranged from their bodies, senses, and physical environment are likely to feel alienated and disoriented. Pundits often blame such feelings of alienation on the decline of religious and national bonds, but losing touch with your body is probably more important. Humans lived for millions of years without religions and without nations; they can probably live happily without them in the twenty-first century too. Yet they cannot live happily if they are disconnected from their bodies. If you don’t feel at home in your body, you will never feel at home in the world.

Unfortunately, intimate relations probably are a zero-sum game. Beyond a certain point, the time and energy you spend on getting to know your online friends from Iran or Nigeria will come at the expense of your ability to know your next-door neighbors.

Tip – Although in the 21st century we may have been upgraded into gods we are still stone age animals. Humans have bodies and still need to ground ourselves in the real, offline world. Humans estranged from their bodies, senses and physical environment are likely to feel alienated and disorientated and so it’s important to connect with the physical world.

6. Civilisation

There is just one civilisation in the world

Yes, human groups may have distinct social systems, but these are not genetically determined, and they seldom endure for more than a few centuries. Human groups are defined more by the changes they undergo than by any continuity, but they nevertheless manage to create for themselves ancient identities thanks to their storytelling skills. No matter what revolutions they experience, they can usually weave old and new into single yarn. 10,000 years ago, humankind was divided into countless isolated tribes where we knew no more than a few dozen people. With each passing millennium, these tribes fused to larger and larger groups creating fewer and fewer distinct civilizations. In recent generations, the few remaining civilizations have been blending into a single global civilisation.

The Medieval Olympics
Today, in contrast, a single political paradigm is accepted everywhere. The planet is divided between about two hundred sovereign states, which generally agree on the same diplomatic protocols and on common international laws. The world may be peppered with various types of “failed states,” but it knows only one paradigm for a successful state. Global politics thus follows the Anna Karenina principle: successful states are all alike, but every failed state failed in its own way, by missing this or that ingredient of the dominant political packages. 

So when you watch the Tokyo Games in 2020, remember that this seeming competition between nations actually represents and astonishing global agreement. For all the national pride people feel when their delegation wins a gold medal an their flag is raised, there is far greater reason to feel pride that humankind is capable of organising such an event.

One Dollar to Rule Them All
A thousand years ago every culture had its own story about the universe, and about the fundamental ingredients of the cosmic soup. Today, learned people throughout the world believe exactly the same things about matter, energy, time, and space. People still have different religions and national identities. But when it comes to the practical stuff–how to build a state, an economy, a hospital, or a bomb–almost all of us belong to the same civilisation.

The people we fight most often are our own family members. Identity is defined by conflicts and dilemmas more than by agreement. Whatever changes await us in the future, they are likely to involve a fraternal struggle within a single civilisation rather than a clash between alien civilisations. The big challenges of the twenty-first century will be global in nature. What will happen when climate change triggers ecological catastrophes? What will happen when computers outperform humans in more and more tasks, and replace them in an increasing number of jobs? What will happen when biotechnology enables us to upgrade humans and extend life spans? No doubt we will have huge arguments and bitter conflicts over these questions. But these arguments and conflicts are unlikely to isolate us from one another. Just the opposite. They will make us ever more interdependent. Though humankind is very far from constituting a harmonious community, we are all members of a single rowdy global civilisation.

Tip – Globalisation has led to complex problems, consequently leading to global conflicts which may have added to the nationalistic wave sweeping much of the world. This is ever more evident with the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, global problems need global answers. In order to combat these problems, we need to band together in problem solving rather than doing this in isolation.

7. Nationalism

Global problems need global answers

Does a return to nationalism offer real solutions to the unprecedented problems of our global world, or is it an escapist indulgence that may doom humankind and the entire biosphere to disaster? 

In order to answer this question, we should first dispel a widespread myth. Contrary to common wisdom, nationalism is not a natural and eternal part of the human psyche, and it is not rooted in human biology. True, humans are social animals through and through, with group loyalty imprinted in their genes. However, for hundreds of thousands of years Homo sapiens and its hominid ancestors lived in small intimate communities numbering no more than a few dozen people. Humans easily develop loyalty to small intimate groups such as a tribe, an infantry company, or a family business, but it is hardly natural for humans to be loyal to millions of utter strangers. Such mass loyalties have appeared only in the last few thousand years–yesterday morning, in evolutionary terms–and they require immense efforts of social construction.

Will we make a world in which all humans can live together, or will we all go into the dark? Do Donald Trump, Theresa May, Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi, and their colleagues save the world by fanning our national sentiments, or is the current nationalist spate a form of escapism from the intractable global problems we face?

There is nothing wrong with benign patriotism. The problem, Harari warns, starts when benign patriotism morphs into chauvinistic ultra-nationalism. Instead of believing that my nation is unique, which is true all nations, I might begin feeling that my nation is supreme.

The Nuclear Challenge
As long as humans know how to enrich uranium and plutonium, their survival depends on privileging the prevention of nuclear war over the interests of any particular nation.

The Ecological Challenge
For thousands of years Homo sapiens behaved as an ecological serial killer; now it is morphing into an ecological mass murderer. We need to enter rehab today. Not next year or next month, but today. “Hello, I am Homo sapiens, and I am a fossil-fuel addict.”

Nationalist isolationism is probably even more dangerous in the context of climate change than nuclear war. An all-out nuclear war threatens to destroy all nations, so all nations have an equal stake in preventing it. Global warming, in contrast, will probably have different impacts on different nations. Some countries, most notably Russia, might actually benefit from it. Since there is no national answer to the problem of global warming, some nationalist politicians prefer to believe the problem does not exist.

The Technological Challenge
In order to avoid such a race to the bottom, humankind will probably need some kind of global identity and loyalty. Moreover, whereas nuclear war and climate change threaten only the physical survival of humankind, disruptive technologies might change the very nature of humanity, and are therefore entangled with humans’ deepest ethical and religious beliefs.

Within a century or two, the combination of biotechnology and AI might result in physical and mental traits that completely break free of the hominid mold. Some believe that consciousness might even be severed from any organic structure and could surf cyberspace free of all biological and physical constraints. On the other hand, we might witness the complete decoupling of intelligence from consciousness, and the development of AI might result in a world dominated by superintelligent but completely nonconscious entities.

The Spaceship Earth
Each of these three problems–nuclear war, ecological collapse, and technological disruption–is enough to threaten the future of human civilisation. But taken together, they add up to an unprecedented existential crisis, especially because they are likely to reinforce and compound one another.

We need a new global identity because national institutions are incapable of handling a set of unprecedented global predicaments. We now have a global ecology, a global economy, and a global science–but we are still stuck with only national politics. To globalise politics means that political dynamics within countries and even cities should give far more weight to global problems and interests.

Tip – There are 3 threats facing humanity: technology, nuclear and ecological. We have a global ecology, a global economy and global science but we are stuck with only national politics. This mismatch prevents the political system from effectively countering these main problems. To have effective politics we must either be globalising economics and the major science or we must globalise politics. However, Harari says that global governance is unrealistic as that would mean that political dynamics within countries give far more weight to global problems and interests.

8. Religion

God now serves the nation

So far, modern ideologies, scientific experts, and national governments have failed to create a viable vision for the future of humanity. Can such a vision be drawn from the deep wells of human religious traditions?

To understand the role of traditional religions in the world of the 21st century, we need to distinguish between three types of problems:
  • Technical problems. For example, how should farmers in arid countries deal with severe droughts caused by global warming?
  • Policy problems. For example, what measures should government adopt to prevent global warming in the first place?
  • Identity problems. For example, should I even care about the problems of farmers on the other side of the world, or should I care only about problems of people from my own tribe and country?
Traditional relations are largely irrelevant to technical and policy problems. In contrast, they are extremely relevant to identity problems–but in most cases they constitute a major part of the problem rather than a potential solution.

Technical Problems: Christian Agriculture
The victory of science has been so complete that our very idea of religion has changed. We no longer associate religion with farming and medicine. Traditional religions have lost so much turf because, frankly, they just weren’t very good at farming or healthcare.

Yet it is precisely their genius for interpretation that puts religious leaders at a disadvantage when they compete against scientists. Scientists too know how to cut corners and twist the evidence, but in the end, the mark of science is the willingness to admit failure and try a different tack. That’s why scientists gradually learn how to grow better crops and make better medicines, whereas priests and gurus learn only how to make better excuses.

Policy Problems: Muslim Economics
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and Christian thinkers railed against modern materialism, soulless capitalism, and the excesses of the bureaucratic state. They promised that if only they were given a chance, they would solve all the ills of modernity and establish a completely different socioeconomic system based on the eternal spiritual values of their creed. Well, they have been given quite a few chances, and the only noticeable change they have made to the edifice of modern economies is to redo the paint and place a huge crescent, cross, Star of David, or om on the roof.

Just as in the case of rainmaking, so also when it comes to economics: it is the long-honed expertise of religious scholars in reinterpreting texts that makes religion irrelevant. From this perspective, religion doesn’t really have much to contribute to the great policy debates of our time. As Karl Marx argued, it is just a veneer. 

Identity Problems: The Lines in the Sand
Even if Islam, Hinduism, or Christianity is just a set of colorful decorations over a modern economic structure, people often identify with the decor, and people’s identities are a crucial historical force. Human power depends on mass cooperation, and mass cooperation depends on manufacturing mass identities–and all mass identities are based on fictional stories, not on scientific facts or even on economic necessities.

Knowingly or not, numerous governments today follow the Japanese example. They adopt the universal tools and structures of modernity while relying on traditional religions to preserve a unique national identity. The role of state Shinto in Japan is fulfilled to a lesser or greater degree by Orthodox Christianity in Russia, Catholicism in Poland, Shiite Islam in Iran, Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia, and Judaism in Israel. No matter how archaic a religion might look, with a bit of imagination and reinterpretation it can almost always be marred to the latest technological gadgets and the most sophisticated modern institutions.

The Handmade of Nationalism
Religions, rites, and rituals will remain important as long as the power of humankind rests on mass cooperation and as long as mass cooperation rests on belief in shared fictions.

Unfortunately, all of this really makes traditional religions part of humanity’s problem, not part of the remedy. Religions still have a lot of political power, inasmuch as they can cement national identities and even ignite the Third World War. But when it comes to solving rather than stoking the global problems of the twenty-first century, they don’t seem to offer much. Though many traditional religions espouse universal values and claim cosmic validity, at present they are used mainly as the handmaid of modern nationalism, whether in North Korea, Russia, Iran, or Israel. They therefore make it even harder to transcend national differences and find a global solution to the threats of nuclear war, ecological collapse, and technological disruption.

Tip - As Karl Marx argued, religion doesn’t really have much to contribute to the great policy debates of our time.

9. Immigration

Some cultures might be better than others

The European Union was built on the promise of transcending the cultural differences between French, Germans, Spaniards, and Greeks. It might collapse due to its inability to contain the cultural differences between Europeans and migrants from Africa and the Middle East. Ironically, it has been Europe’s very success in building a prosperous multicultural system that drew so many migrants in the first place.

It would perhaps be helpful to view immigration as a deal with three basic conditions or terms:
  • TERM 1: The host country allows the immigrants in.
  • TERM 2: In return, the immigrants must embrace at least the core norms and values of the host country, even if that means giving up some of their traditional norms and values.
  • TERM 3: If the immigrants assimilate to a sufficient degree, over time they become equal and full members of the host country. “They” become “us.”
A fourth debate concerns the fulfillment of the terms. When people argue about immigration, they often confuse the four debates, so that nobody understands what the argument is really about. Underneath all these debates lurks a far more fundamental question, which concerns our understanding of human culture. DO we enter the immigration debate with the assumption that all cultures are inherently equal, or do we think that some culture might well be superior to others?

From Racism to Culturalism
Life scientists, and in particular geneticists, have produced very strong scientific evidence that the biological differences between Europeans, Africans, Chinese, and Native Americans are negligible. At the same time, however, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, behavioral economists, and even brain scientists have accumulated a wealth of data for the existence of significant differences between human cultures.

People continue to conduct a heroic struggle against traditional racism without noticing that the battlefront has shifted. Traditional racism is waning, but the world is now full of “culturists.” The shift from biology to culture is not just a meaningless change of jargon. It is a profound shift with far-reaching practical consequences, some good, some bad. For starters, culture is more malleable than biology. A second key difference between talking about biology and talking about culture is that unlike traditional racist bigotry, culturist arguments might occasionally make good sense, as in the case of Warmland and Coldia. Anthropologists, sociologists, and historians feel extremely uneasy about this issue. On one hand, it all sounds dangerously close to racism. On the other hand, culturism has a much firmer scientific basis than racism, and particularly scholars in the humanities and social sciences cannot deny the existence and importance of cultural differences.

Many culturist claims suffer from three common flaws. 
  1. First, culturists often confuse local superiority with objective superiority.
  2. Second, when you clearly define a yardstick, a time, a place, culturist claims may well be empirically sound. But all too often people adopt very general culturist claims that make little sense.
  3. Yet the worst problem with culturist claims is that despite their statistical nature they are all too often used to prejudge individuals.




Part III: Despair and Hope


Though the challenges are unprecedented, and though the disagreements are intense, humankind can rise to the occasion if we keep our fears under control and be a bit more humble about our views.

 

10. Terrorism

Don't panic

Terrorists are masters of mind control. Since September 11, 2001, each year terrorists have killed about 50 people in the European Union, about 10 people int he United States, about 7 people in China, and up to 25,000 people elsewhere in the globe (mostly in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Syria). In contrast, each year traffic accidents kill about 80,000 Europeans, 40,000 Americans, 270,000 Chinese, and 1.25 million people altogether. Diabetes and high sugar levels kill up to 3.5 million people annually, while air pollution kills about 7 million people per year. So why do we fear terrorism more than sugar, and why do governments lose elections because of sporadic terrorist attacks but not because of chronic air pollution?

As the literal meaning of the word indicates, terrorism is a military strategy that hopes to change the political situation by spreading fear rather than by causing material damage. The terrorists hope that even though they can barely make a dent in the enemy’s material power, fear and confusion will cause the enemy to misuse his intact strength and overreact. Terrorists calculate that when the enraged enemy uses his massive power against them, he will raise a much more violent military and political storm than the terrorists themselves could ever create. In this respect, terrorists resemble a fly that tries to destroy a china shop and there is no shortage of short-tempered bulls in the world.

Reshuffling the Cards
Terrorism is a very unattractive military strategy, because it leaves all the important decisions in the hands of the enemy. We intuitively understand that terrorism is theater, we judge it by its emotional rather than material impact. Like terrorists, those combating terrorism should also think more like theater producers and less like army generals. Above all, if we want to combat terrorism effectively, we must realise that nothing the terrorists do can defeat us. We are the only ones who can defeat ourselves, if we overreact in a misguided way to their provocations. Terrorists undertake an impossible mission: to change the political balance of power through violence, despite having no army. To achieve their aim, they present the state with an impossible challenge of its own: to prove that it can protect all of its citizens from political violence, anywhere, anytime. A terrorist is like a gambler who is holding a particularly bad hand and tries to convince his rivals to reshuffle the cards. He cannot lose anything, and he could win everything.

A Small Coin in a Big Empty Jar
Why should the state agree to reshuffle the cards? Why are states so sensitive to terrorist provocations?  States find it difficult to withstand these provocations because the legitimacy of the modern state is based on its promise to keep the public sphere free of political violence. This is why the theater of terrorism is so successful. The state has created a huge space empty of political violence, which now acts as a sounding board, amplifying the impact of any armed attack, however small. The less political violence in a particular state, the greater the public shock at an act of terrorism. Paradoxically, then, the very success of modern states in preventing political violence makes them particularly vulnerable to terrorism.

How then should the state deal with terrorism? A successful counterterrorism struggle should be conducted on three fronts. 
  1. First, governments should focus on clandestine actions against the terrorist networks.
  2. Second, the media should keep things in perspective and avoid hysteria. The theater of terror cannot succeed without publicity. Unfortunately, the media all too often provides this publicity for free.
  3. The third front is the imagination of each and every one of us. It is the responsibility of all citizens to liberate our imagination from the terrorists and to remind ourselves of the true dimensions of the threat. It is our own inner terror that prompts the media to obsess about terrorism and the government to overreact.
Terrorism goes Nuclear
We should be very careful to differentiate such hypothetical future scenarios from the actual terrorist attacks we have so far witnessed. It is hard to set priorities in real time, while it is all too easy to second-guess priorities with hindsight.

Tip – The overreaction to terrorism poses a far greater threat to our security than terrorist themselves. To counter terrorism the government should focus on clandestine actions against terror networks. The media should keep things in perspective and avoid hysteria. Every citizen should liberate their imagination from the terrorist and remind ourselves the true dimensions of this threat.

11. War

Never underestimate human stupidity

For all its military prowess and for all the hawkish rhetoric of Israeli politicians, Israel knows there is little to be won from war. Like the United States, China, Germany, Japan, and Iran, Israel seems to understand that in the twenty-first century the most successful strategy is to sit on the fence and let others do the fighting for you.

The View from the Kremlin
Authoritarian nationalism may indeed be spreading in the world, but by its very nature it is not conducive to the establishment of cohesive international blocs.

The Lost Art of Winning Wars
Why is it so difficult for major powers to wage successful wars in the twenty-first century? One reason is the change in the nature of the economy. In the past, economic assets were mostly material; therefore, it was relatively straightforward to enrich yourself by conquest. Today the main economic asset consists of technical and institutional knowledge rather than wheat fields, gold mines, or even oil fields, and you just cannot conquer knowledge through war. 

The March of Folly
Alas, even if it remains impossible to wage successful wars in the twenty-first century, that would not give us an absolute guarantee of peace. We should never underestimate human stupidity. Both on the personal and on the collective level, humans are prone to engage in self-destructive activities. Human stupidity is one of the most important forces in history, yet we often tend to discount it. The problem is that the world is far more complicated than a chessboard, and human rationality is not up to the task of really understanding it. For that reason even rational leaders frequently end up doing very stupid things. One potential remedy for human stupidity is a dose of humility. How can we make nations, religions, and cultures a bit more realistic and modest about their true place in the world?

Tip - Human stupidity is one of the most important forces in history, yet we often tend to discount it. One potential remedy for human stupidity is a dose of humility. 

12. Humility

You are no the centre of the world

Most people tend to believe they are the center of the world, and their culture is the linchpin of human history. All these claims are false. They combine a willful ignorance of history with more than a hint of racism. None of the religions or nations of today existed when humans colonised the world, domesticated plants and animals, built the first cities, or invented writing and money. Morality, art, spirituality, and creativity are universal human abilities embedded in our DNA. Their genesis was in Stone Age Africa. It is therefore crass egotism to ascribe to them a more recent place and time, be it China in the age of the Yellow Emperor, Greece in the age of Plato, or Arabia in the age of Muhammad.

Ethics before the Bible
Scientists nowadays point out that morality in fact has deep evolutionary roots predating the appearance of humankind by millions of years. All social mammals, such as wolves, dolphins, and monkeys, have ethical codes, adapted by evolution to promote group cooperation. It was only the Christians who selected some choice morsels of the Jewish moral code, turned them into universal commandments, and spread them throughout the world. Indeed, Christianity split from Judaism precisely on this account. It therefore makes absolutely no sense to credit Judaism and its Christian and Muslim offspring with the creation of human morality.

The Birth of Biogotry
But the real problem with the idea that Judaism contributed monotheism to the world is that this is hardly something to be proud of. From an ethical perspective, monotheism was arguably one of the worst ideas in human history. What monotheism undoubtedly did was to make many people far more intolerant than before, thereby contributing to the spread of religious persecutions and holy wars. Polytheists found it perfectly acceptable that different people worshipped different gods and performed diverse rites and rituals. They rarely if ever fought, persecuted, or killed people just because of their religious beliefs. By insisting that “there is no god but our God,” the monotheist idea tended to encourage bigotry. Jews would do well to downplay their part in disseminating this dangerous meme and let the Christians and Muslims carry the blame for it.

Jewish Physics, Christian Biology
"I would like to emphasize that I am not saying Judaism is a particularly evil or benighted religion. All I am saying is that it wasn’t particularly important to the history of humankind. Jews may be a very interesting people, but when you look at the big picture, you must realize that they have had a very limited impact on the world. Many religions praise the value of humility but then imagine themselves to be the most important thing in the universe. They mix calls for personal meekness with blatant collective arrogance. Humans of all creeds would do well to take humility more seriously. And among all forms of humility, perhaps the most important is to have humility before God. Whenever they talk of God, humans all too often profess abject self-effacement, but then use the name of God to lord it over their brethren."

Tip - Scientists nowadays point out that morality in fact has deep evolutionary roots predating the appearance of humankind by millions of years. Therefore, we shouldn’t credit religion with the creation of human morality.

13. God

Don't take the name of God in vain

Does God exist? That depend son which God you have in mind: the cosmic mystery, or the worldly lawgiver? Sometimes when people talk about God, they talk about a grand and awesome enigma, about which we know absolutely nothing. We invoke this mysterious God to explain the deepest riddles of the cosmos. Why sit here something rather than nothing? What shaped the fundamental laws of physics? What is consciousness, and where does it come from? We do not know the answers to these questions, and we give our ignorance the grand name of GOD. The most fundamental characteristic of this mysterious God is that we cannot say anything concrete about Him. This is the God of the philosophers, the God we talk about when we sit around a campfire late at night and wonder what life is all about.

When the faithful are asked whether God really exists, they often begin by talking about the enigmatic mysteries of the universe and the limits of human understanding. Yet like magicians fooling an audience by imperceptibly replacing one card with another, the faithful quickly replace the cosmic mystery with the worldly lawgiver. After giving the name of “God” to the unknown secrets of the cosmos, they then use this to somehow condemn bikinis and divorce. “We do not understand the Big Bang–therefore you must cover your hair in public and vote against gay marriage.” Not only is there no logical connection between the two, but they are in fact contradictory. The deeper the mysteries of the universe, the less likely it is that whatever is responsible for them gives a damn about female dress codes or human sexual behaviour.

Perhaps the deeper meaning of this commandment is that we should never use the name of God to justify our political interests, our economic ambitions, or our personal hatreds. People hate somebody and say, “God hates him”; people covet a piece of land and say, “God wants it.” The world would be a much better place if we followed the third commandment more devotedly. You want to wage war on your neighbours and steal their land? Leave God out of it and find yourself some other excuse.

Godless Ethics
The idea that we need a supernatural being to make us act morally assumes that there is something unnatural about morality. Morality doesn’t mean “following divine commands.” It means “reducing suffering.” Therefore in order to act morally, you don’t need to believe in any myth or story. You just need to develop a deep appreciation of suffering.

Tip – We should never use the name of God to justify our political interests, our economic ambitions, or our personal hatreds. Morality means to reduce suffering. To act morally you just need to develop a deep appreciation of suffering.

14. Secularism

Acknowledge your shadow

Self-professing secularists view secularism in a very different way. For them, secularism is a very positive and active worldview, defined by a coherent code of values rather than by opposition to this or that religion. In fact, many of the secular values are shared by various religious traditions. Unlike some sects that insist they have a monopoly over all wisdom and goodness, one of the chief characteristics of secular people is that they claim no such monopoly. They don’t think that morality and wisdom came down from heaven in one particular place and time. Rather, they view morality and wisdom as the natural legacy of all humans. Therefore it is only to be expected that at least some values would pop up in human societies all over the world and would be common to Muslims, Christians, Hindus, and atheists.

Religious leaders often present their followers with a stark either/or choice–either you are a Muslim or you are not. And if you are Muslim, you should reject all other doctrines. In contrast, secular people are comfortable with multiple, hybrid identities. This ethical code–which is in fact accepted by millions of Muslims, Christians, and Hindus as well as by atheists–enshrines the values of truth, compassion, equality, freedom, courage, and responsibility. It forms the foundation of modern scientific and democratic institutions. Like all ethical codes, the secular code is an ideal to aspire to rather than a social reality. 

The Secular Ideal
What then is the secular idea? The most important secular commitment is to the truth, which is based on observation and evidence rather than on mere faith. Secularists strive not to confuse truth with belief. In addition, secularists do not sanctify any group, person, or book as if it and it alone has sole custody of the truth. The other chief commitment of secular people is to compassion. This is the deep reason secular people cherish scientific truth: not in order to satisfy their curiosity, but in order to know how best to reduce the suffering in the world. The twin commitments to truth and compassion result also in a commitment to equality. Secular people are fundamentally suspicious of all a priori hierarchies.

We cannot search for the truth and for the way out of suffering without the freedom to think, investigate, and experiment. For that reason secular people cherish freedom, and refrain from investing supreme authority in any text, institution, or leader as the ultimate judge of what’s true and what’s right. Secular education teaches us that if we don’t know something, we shouldn’t be afraid of acknowledging our ignorance and looking for new evidence. People afraid of losing their truth tend to be more violent than people who are used to looking at the world from several different viewpoints. Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question. Finally, secular people cherish responsibility. … Instead of praying for miracles, we need to ask what we can do to help.

Secular education does not mean a negative indoctrination that teaches kids not to believe in God and not to take part in any religious ceremonies. Rather, secular education teaches children to distinguish truth from belief, to develop compassion for all suffering beings, to appreciate the wisdom and experiences of all the earth’s denizens, to think freely without fearing the unknown, and to take responsibility for their actions and for the world as a whole.

Was Stalin Secular? 
Since it is difficult to send soldiers into battle or impose radical economic reforms in the name of doubtful conjectures, secular movements repeatedly mutate into dogmatic creeds. Whether one should view Stalin as a secular leader is therefore a matter of how we define secularism.

Acknowledging the Shadow
Christians appalled by the Inquisition and by the Crusades cannot just wash their hands of these atrocities; they should rather ask themselves some very tough questions. How exactly did their “religion of love” allow itself to be distorted in such a way, and not once but numerous times? Protestants who try to blame it all on Catholic fanaticism are advised to read a book about the behaviour of Protestant colonists in Ireland or in North America. Similarly, Marxists should ask themselves what it was about the teachings of Marx that paved the way to the gulag, scientists should consider how the scientific project lent itself so easily to destabilising the global ecosystem, and geneticists in particular should take warning from the way the Nazis hijacked Darwinian theories.

Every religion, ideology, and creed has its shadow, and no matter which creed you follow you should acknowledge your shadow and avoid the naive reassurance that “it cannot happen to us.”

"As we come to make the most important decisions in the history of life, I personally would trust more in those who admit ignorance than in those who claim infallibility. If you want your religion, ideology, or worldview to lead the world, my first question to you is: “What was the biggest mistake your religion, ideology, or worldview committed? What did it get wrong?” If you cannot come up with something serious, I for one would not trust you."

Tip – We cannot search for the truth and for the way out of suffering without the freedom to think, investigate, and experiment.

Trust those who admit ignorance than in those who claim infallibility.

Whatever creed you follow you should acknowledge your shadow and avoid the naïve reassurance that this cannot happen to us.




Part IV: Truth


If you feel overwhelmed and confused by the global predicament, you are on the right track. Global processes have become too complicated for any single person to understand. How then can you know the truth about the world, and avoid falling victim to propaganda and misinformation?

 

15. Ignorance

You know less than you think

While our emotions and heuristics were perhaps suitable for dealing with life in the Stone Age, they are woefully inadequate in the Silicon Age. Not only rationality, but individuality too is a myth. We think in groups. What gave Homo sapiens an edge over all other animals and turned us into the masters of the planet was not our individual rationality but our unparalleled ability to think together in large groups. Individual humans know embarrassingly little about the world, and as history has progressed, they have come to know less and less.

The Knowledge Illusion
Most of our views are shaped by communal groupthink rather than individual rationality, and we hold on to these views due to group loyalty. Bombarding people with facts and exposing their individual ignorance is likely to backfire. Most people don’t like too many facts, and they certainly don’t like to feel stupid. Similarly the liberal belief in individual rationality may itself be the product of liberal groupthink. Modern democracies are full of crowds shouting in unison, “Yes, the voter knows best! Yes, the customer is always right!”

The Black Hole of Power
Great power thus acts like a black hole that warps the very space around it. The closer you get to it, the more twisted everything becomes. If you really want truth, you need to escape the black hole of power and allow yourself to waste a lot of time wandering here and there on the periphery. Revolutionary knowledge rarely makes it to the center, because the center is built on existing knowledge. That’s why you need to waste so much time in the periphery: while it might contain some brilliant revolutionary insights, it is mostly full of uninformed guesses, debunked models, superstitious dogmas, and ridiculous conspiracy theories. Leaders are thus trapped in a double bind. If they remain at the center of power, they will have an extremely distorted vision of the world. If they venture to the margins, they will waste too much of their precious time.

Tip – If you want others to adopt your view you need to appeal to the majority. Unfortunately, people think in groups. In addition, revolutionary knowledge rarely makes it to the center because the center is built on existing knowledge. So, for revolutionary knowledge to get through it needs time for it to repeated over and over again until the majority accept it but by then it’s no longer revolutionary. Other current Stone Age emotions and heuristics are woefully inadequate in our Silicon Age and is hindering us moving forward.

16. Justice

Our sense of justice might be out of date

Whether secular or religious, citizens of the twenty-first century have plenty of values. The problem is with implementing these values in a complex global world. It’s all the fault of numbers. The foragers’ sense of justice was structured to cope with dilemmas relating to the lives of a few dozen people in an area of a few dozen square miles. When we try to comprehend relationships between millions of people across entire continents, our moral sense is overwhelmed. 

"Unfortunately, an inherent feature of our modern global world is that its casual relations are highly ramified and complex. I can live at home peacefully, never raising a finger to harm anyone, and yet according to left-wing activists, I am a full partner to the wrongs inflicted by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank. According to the socialists, my comfortable life is based on child labor in dismal Third World sweatshops. Animal-welfare advocates remind me that my life is interwoven with one of the most appalling crimes in history–the subjugation of billions of farm animals to a brutal regime of exploitation. Am I really to blame for all that? It’s not easy to say."

Stealing Rivers
It doesn’t matter whether you judge actions by their consequences (it is wrong to steal because it makes the victims miserable) or believe in categorical duties that should be followed irrespective of consequences (it is wrong to steal because God said so). The problem is that it has become extremely complicated to grasp what we are actually doing. One can try to evade the problem by adopting a “morality of intentions.” What’s important is what I intend, not what I actually do or the outcome of what I do. However, in a world in which everything is interconnected, the supreme moral imperative becomes the imperative to know.

Downsize or Deny?
In trying to comprehend and judge moral dilemmas of this scale, people often resort to one of four methods. 
  1. The first is to downsize the issue.
  2. The second method is to focus on a touching human story that ostensibly stands for the whole conflict.
  3. The third method of dealing with large-scale moral dilemmas is to weave conspiracy theories.
  4. The fourth and ultimate method is to create a dogma, put our trust in some allegedly all-knowing theory, institution, or chief, and follow it wherever it leads us. Religious and ideological dogmas are still highly attractive in our scientific age precisely because they offer us a safe haven from the frustrating complexity of reality. While such doctrines provide people with intellectual comfort and moral certainty, it is debatable whether they provide justice.

What should we do? Should we adopt the liberal dogma and trust the aggregate of individual voters and customers? Or perhaps we should reject the individualist approach and, like many previous cultures in history, empower communities to make sense of the world together? Such a solution, however, only takes us from the frying pan of individual ignorance into the fire of biased groupthink. All existing human tribes are absorbed in advancing their particular interests rather than in understanding the global truth.

17. Post-truth

Some fake news lasts for ever

If this is the era of post-truth, when, exactly, was the halcyon age of truth? And what triggered our transition to the post-truth era? A cursory look at history reveals that propaganda and disinformation are nothing new, and even the habit of denying entire nations and creating fake countries has a long pedigree.

The Post-truth Species
In fact, humans have always lived in the age of post-truth. Homo sapiens is a post-truth species, whose power depends on creating and believing fictions. We have zero scientific evidence that Eve was tempted by the serpent, that the souls of all infidels burn in hell after they die, or the the creator of the universe doesn’t like it when a Brahmin marries a Dalit–yet billions of people have believed in these stories for thousands of years. Some fake news lasts forever.

"I am aware that many people might be upset by my equating religion with fake news, but that’s exactly my point. When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one month, that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years, that’s a religion, and we are admonished not to call it “fake news” in order not to hurt the feelings of the faithful (or incur their wrath). Again, some people might be offended by my comparison of the Bible to Harry Potter. If you are a scientifically minded Christian, you might explain away all the errors, myths, and contradictions in the Bible by arguing that the holy book was never meant to be read as a factual account, but rather as a metaphorical story containing deep wisdom. But isn’t that true of the Harry Potter stories too?"

Once a Lie, Always the Truth
A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth. – Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf

Commercial firms also rely on fiction and fake news. Branding often involves retelling the same fictional story again and again, until people become convinced it is the truth. What images come to mind when you think about Coca-Cola? Do you think about healthy young people engaging in sports and having fun together? Or do you think about overweight diabetes patients lying in a hospital bed? Drinking lots of Coca-Cola will not make you young, will not make you healthy, and will not make you athletic–rather, it will increase your chances of suffering from obesity and diabetes. Yet for decades Coca-Cola has invested billions of dollars in linking itself to youth, health, and sports–and billions of humans subconsciously believe in this linkage.

The truth is that truth was never high on the agenda of Homo sapiens. In practice, the power of human cooperation depends on a delicate balance between truth and fiction.

If you distort reality too much, it will indeed weaken you by making you act in unrealistic ways.
On the other hand, you cannot organise masses of people effectively without relying on some mythology. In fact, false stories have an intrinsic advantage over the truth when it comes to uniting people. If you want to gauge group loyalty, requiring people to believe an absurdity is a far better test than asking them to believe the truth.

If you observed a human brain in an fMRI scanner, you would see that as someone is presented with a suitcase full of hundred-dollar bills, the parts of the brain that start buzzing with excitement are not the skeptical parts (“other people believe this is valuable”) but rather the greedy parts (“Holy shit! I want this!”). Conversely, in the vast majority of cases people begin to sanctify the Bible or the Vedas or the Book of mormon only after long and repeated exposure to other people who view it as sacred. We learn to respect holy books in exactly the same way we learn to respect paper currency.

For this reason there is no strict division in practice between knowing that something is just a human convention and believing that something is inherently valuable. Yet 99 percent of the time, we aren’t engaged in deep philosophical discussions, and we treat corporations as if they are real entities in the world, just like tigers or humans. Blurring the line between fiction and reality can be done for many purposes, starting with “having fun” and going all the way to “survival.” You cannot play games or read novels unless you suspend disbelief at least for a little while. Humans have a remarkable ability to know and not know at the same time. Or, more correctly, they can know something when they really think about it, but most of the time they don’t think about it, so they don’t know.

Truth and power can travel together only so far. Sooner or later they go their separate paths. If you want power, at some point you will have to spread fictions. If you want to know the truth about the world, at some point you will have to renounce power. Scholars throughout history have faced this dilemma: Do they serve power or truth? Should they aim to unite people by making everyone believe in the same story, or should they let people know the truth even at the price of disunity?

As a species, humans prefer power to truth. We spend far more time and effort on trying to control the world than on trying to understand it–and even when we try to understand it, we usually do so in the hope that understanding the world will make it easier to control it. Therefore, if you dream of a society in which truth reigns supreme and myths are ignored, you have little to expect form Homo sapiens. Better to try your luck with chimps.

Getting out of the Brainwashing Machine
Here I would like to offer two simple rules of thumb.
  1. First, if you want reliable information, pay good money for it. If you get your news for free, you might well be the product.
  2. The second rule of thumb is that if some issue seems exceptionally important to you, make the effort to read the relevant scientific literature.
Tip - A cursory look at history reveals that propaganda and disinformation are nothing new. The truth is that truth was never high on the agenda of Homo sapiens. In practice, the power of human cooperation depends on a delicate balance between truth and fiction. Truth and power can travel together only so far. If you want to know the truth about the world, at some point you will have to renounce power. As a species, humans prefer power to truth. We spend far more time and effort on trying to control the world than on trying to understand it. Hence, we are caught in a bind. How do we make it so that truth is higher on the agenda than power? Humans desire power because it was an evolutionary advantage to be in a position of power. In order to achieve putting truth higher on the agenda, we need to figure out how to tackle a behaviour that has been evolutionarily softwired into us. This is a tremendous challenge and I honestly believe this would require some sort of renaissance where people look introspectively to try to analyse and understand the true nature of humans.

18. Science Fiction

The future is not what you see in the movies

Whenever you see a movie about an AI in which the AI is female and the scientist is male, it’s probably a movie about feminism rather than cybernetics.

Living in a box
The current technological and scientific revolution implies not that authentic individuals and authentic realities can be manipulated by algorithms and TV cameras but rather that authenticity is a myth. People are afraid of being trapped inside a box, but they don’t realise that they are already trapped inside a box–their brain–which is locked within the bigger box of human society with its myriad fictions. When you escape the matrix the only thing you discover is a bigger matrix. When you begin to explore the manifold ways the world manipulates you, in the end you realise that your core identity is a complex illusion created by neural networks.

Most science-fiction movies actually tell a very old story: the victory of mind over matter. But the truth is that humans gained control of the world not so much by inventing knives and killing mammoths as by manipulating human minds. According to the best scientific theories and the most up-to-date technological tools, the mind is never free of manipulation. There is no authentic self waiting to be liberated from the manipulative shell.

Do you have any idea how many movies, novels, and poems you have consumed over the years, and how these artefacts have shaped and sharpened your idea of love? Romantic comedies are to love as porn is to sex and Rambo is to war. And if you think you can press some delete button and wipe out all trace of Hollywood from your subconscious and your limbic system, you are deluding yourself.

Disney Loses Faith in Free Will
Since your brain and your “self” are part of the matrix, to escape the matrix you must escape your self. That, however, is a possibility worth exploring. Escaping the narrow definition of self might well become a necessary survival skill in the twenty-first century.

Tip - When you escape the matrix the only thing you discover is a bigger matrix. When you begin to explore the manifold ways the world manipulates you, in the end you realise that your core identity is a complex illusion created by neural networks. Since your brain and your “self” are part of the matrix, to escape the matrix you must escape your self. Escaping the narrow definition of self might well become a necessary survival skill in the twenty-first century.




Part V: Resilience


How do you live in an age of bewilderment, when the old stories have collapsed and no new story has yet emerged to replace them?

 

19. Education

Change is the only constant

In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world. In truth, this has been the ideal of Western liberal education for centuries, but up till now even many Western schools have been rather slack in fulfilling it. Teachers allowed themselves to focus on imparting data while encouraging students “to think for themselves.” Due to their fear of authoritarianism, liberal schools have had a particular horror of grand narratives. We have now run out of time. The decisions we will make in the next few decades will shape the future of life itself, and we can make these decisions based only on our present worldview. If this generation lacks a comprehensive view of the cosmos, the future of life will be decided at random.

The Heat is On
So what should we be teaching? Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching “the four Cs”–critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. More broadly, they believe, schools should downplay technical skills and emphasise general-purpose life skills. Most important of all will be the ability to deal with change, learn new things, and preserve your mental balance in unfamiliar situations. In order to keep up with the world of 2050, you will need not merely to invent new ideas and products but above all to reinvent yourself again and again.

If somebody describes the world of the mid-twenty-first century to you and it sounds like science fiction, it is probably false. But then again, if somebody describes the world of the mid-twenty-first century to you and it doesn’t sound like science fiction, it is certainly false. We cannot be sure of the specifics: change itself is the only certainty.

How do you live in a world where profound uncertainty is not a bug but a feature?

To survive and flourish in such a world, you will need a lot of mental flexibility and great reserves of emotional balance.

Hacking Humans
"So the best advice I can give a fifteen-year-old stuck in an outdated school somewhere in Mexico, India, or Alabama is: don’t rely on the adults too much. Most of them mean well, but they just don’t understand the world. In the past, it was a relatively safe bet to follow the adults, because they knew the world quite well, and the world changed slowly. But the twenty-first century is going to be different. Because of the increasing pace of change, you can never be certain whether what the adults are telling you is timeless wisdom or outdated bias."

So on what can you rely instead?

You might have heard that we are living in the era of hacking computers, but that’s not even half the truth. In fact, we are living in the era of hacking humans.

The algorithms are watching you right now. They are watching where you go, what you buy, whom you meet. Soon they will monitor all your steps, all your breaths, all your heartbeats. They are relying on Big Data and machine learning to get to know you better and better. And once these algorithms know you better than you know yourself, they can control and manipulate you, and you won’t be able to do much about it. You will live in the matrix, or in The Truman Show. In the end, it’s a simple empirical matter: if the algorithms indeed understand what’s happening within you better than you understand it yourself, authority will shift to them.

Of course, you might be perfectly happy ceding all authority to the algorithms and trusting them to decide things for you and for the rest of the world. If so, just relax and enjoy the ride. You don’t need to do anything about it. The algorithms will take care of everything. If, however, you want to retain some control over your personal existence and the future of life, you have to run faster than the algorithms, faster than Amazon and the government, and get to know yourself before they do. To run fast, don’t take much baggage with you. Leave all your illusions behind. They are very heavy.

Tip – People need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world. If this generation lacks a comprehensive view of the cosmos, the future of life will be decided at random.

So what should we be teaching? We should be teaching “the four Cs”–critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity and downplay technical skills and emphasise general-purpose life skills. Most important skills we should be teaching is the ability to deal with change, learn new things, and preserve your mental balance in unfamiliar situations. In order to keep up with the world of 2050, you will need not merely to invent new ideas and products but above all to reinvent yourself again and again.

Change itself is the only certainty. To survive and flourish in such a world, you will need a lot of mental flexibility and great reserves of emotional balance.

If, we want to retain some control over your personal existence and the future of life, we have to run faster than the algorithms, faster than Amazon and the government, and get to know yourself before they do. To run fast, we need to leave all our illusions behind.

20. Meaning

Life is not a story

"All stories are incomplete. Yet in order to construct a viable identity for myself and give meaning to my life, I don’t really need a complete story devoid of blind spots and internal contradictions. To give meaning to my life, a story needs to satisfy just two conditions. 
  1. First, it must give me some role to play.
  2. Second, whereas a good story need not extend to infinity, it must extend beyond my horizons. The story must provide me with an identity and give meaning to my life by embedding me within something bigger than myself."
Most successful stories remain open-ended. They never need to explain where meaning ultimately comes from, because they are so good at capturing people’s attention and keeping it inside a safe zone. This theory of life as a never-ending epic is extremely attractive and common, but it suffers from two main problems. First, by lengthening my personal story I don’t really make it more meaningful. I just make it longer. The second problem with this theory is the paucity of supporting evidence.

People who doubt that some kind of soul or spirit really survives their death therefore strive to leave behind something a bit more tangible. That “something tangible” could take one of two forms: cultural or biological. If we cannot leave something tangible behind, such as a gene or a poem, might it be enough if we just make the world a little better? A wise old man was asked what he learned about the meaning of life. “Well,” he answered, “I have learned that I am here on earth in order to help other people. What I still haven’t figured out is why the other people are here.” If you are really in love with someone, you never worry about the meaning of life. 

The Weight of the Roof
Any story is wrong, simply for being a story. The universe just does not work like a story. So why do people believe in these fictions? 
  1. One reason is that their personal identity is built on the story. 
  2. Second, not only are our personal identities built on the story, but so are our collective institutions.
Most stories are held together by the weight of their roof rather than by the strength of their foundations.

Hocus-pocus and the Industry of Belief
It’s obvious why humans want to believe the story, but how do they actually believe? How do we make the story feel real? Priests and shamans discovered the answer to this question thousands of years ago: rituals. A ritual is a magical act that makes the abstract concrete and the fictional real. “Hoc est corpus!” [“This is the body!”] got garbled into “Hocus-pocus!”

If you want to make people really believe in some fiction, entice them to make a sacrifice on its behalf. Once you suffer for a story, it is usually enough to convince you that the story is real. 
Most people don’t like to admit that they are fools. Consequently, the more they sacrifice for a particular belief, the stronger their faith becomes. This is the mysterious alchemy of sacrifice. In order to bring us under his power, the sacrificing priest need not give us anything at all–not rain, or money, or victory in war. Rather, he needs to take away something.

It works in the commercial world too. If you buy a secondhand Fiat for $2,000, you are likely to complain about it to anyone willing to listen to you. But if you buy a brand-new Ferrari for $200,000, you will sing its praises far and wide, not because it is such a good car but because you have paid so much money for it that you have to believe it is the most wonderful thing in the world. Why do you think women ask their lovers for diamond rings? Once the lover makes such a huge financial sacrifice, he must convince himself that it was for a worthy cause.

Few gods, nations, or revolutions can sustain themselves without martyrs. Alternatively, if martyrs are scarce and people are unwilling to sacrifice themselves, the sacrificing priest might get them to sacrifice somebody else instead. Once you do this, a slightly different alchemy of sacrifice begins to work its magic on you. When you inflict suffering on yourself in the name of some story, it gives you a choice: “Either the story is true or I am a gullible fool.” When you inflict suffering on others, you are also given choice: “Either the story is true or I am a cruel villain.” And just as we don’t want to admit we are fools, we also don’t want to admit we are villains. We prefer to believe that the story is true. Sacrifice not only strengthens your faith in the story but also often substitutes for all your other obligations toward it. Most of the great stories of humankind have set up ideals that most people cannot fulfil.

Unable to live up to the ideal, people turn to sacrifice as a solution.

The Identity Portfolio
Hardly anyone has just one identity. The problem with evil is that in real life it is not necessarily ugly. It can look very beautiful. The word “fascism” comes from the Latin fascis, meaning “a bundle of rods.” A single rod is very weak, and you can easily snap it in two. However, once you bundle many rods together into a fascis, it becomes almost impossible to break them. This implies that the individual is a thing of no consequence, but as long as the collective sticks together, it is very powerful. Fascists therefore believe in privileging the interests of the collective over those of any individual, and demand that no single rod ever dare break the unity of the bundle. Of course, it is never clear where one human “bundle of rods” ends and another begins.
Some neurons are just not on speaking terms with one another.

The Supermarket at Elsinore
Throughout history almost all humans believed in several stories at the same and were never absolutely convinced of the truth of any one of them. This uncertainty rattled most religions, which therefore considered faith to be a cardinal virtue and doubt to be among the worst sins possible–as if there were something intrinsically good about believing things without evidence. With the rise of modern culture, however, the tables were turned. Faith began to look increasingly like mental slavery, while doubt came to be seen as a precondition for freedom.

Modernity didn’t reject the plethora of stories it inherited from the past. Instead, it opened a supermarket for them. The modern human is free to sample them all, choosing and combining whatever fits his or her taste.

According to liberal mythology, if you spend long enough time in that big supermarket, sooner or later you will experience the liberal epiphany and realise the true meaning of life: all the stories on the supermarket shelves are fakes. The meaning of life isn’t a ready-made product. There is no divine script, and nothing outside me can give meaning to my life. It is I who imbue everything with meaning through my free choices and through my own feelings.

In itself, the universe is only a meaningless hodgepodge of atoms. Nothing is inherently beautiful, sacred, or sexy; human feelings make it so. It is only human feelings that make a red apple seductive and a piece of turd disgusting. Take away human feelings, and you are left with a bunch of molecules. 

The universe does not give me meaning. I give meaning to the universe.

In practical terms, those who believe in the liberal story live by the light of two commandments: create, and fight for liberty. Creativity can manifest itself in writing a poem, exploring your sexuality, inventing a new app, or discovering a previously unknown chemical. Liberalism has a particularly confused notion of “free will.” Humans obviously have a will, they have desires, and they are sometimes free to fulfil their desires. If by “free will” you mean the freedom to do what you desire, then yes, humans have free will. But if by “free will” you mean the freedom to choose what to desire, then no, humans have no free will.

Realising this can help us become less obsessive about our opinions, about our feelings, and about our desires. We don’t have free will, but we can be a bit more free from the tyranny of our will. It is better to understand ourselves, our minds, and our desires than to try to realise whatever fantasy pops into our heads. People ask “Who am I?” and expect to be told a story. The first thing you need to know about yourself is that you are not a story. 

The Test of Reality
The big question facing humans isn’t “what is the meaning of life?” but rather “how do we stop suffering?” When you give up all the fictional stories, you can observe reality with far greater clarity than before, and if you really know the truth about yourself and about the world, nothing can make you miserable. But that is of course much easier said than done. So if you want to know the truth about the universe, about the meaning of life, and about your own identity, the best place to start is by observing suffering and exploring what it is. The answer isn’t a story.

20. Meditation

Just Observe

"Now that I have criticised so many stories, religions, and ideologies, it is only fair that I put myself in the firing line too, and explain how somebody so skeptical can still manage to wake up cheerful in the morning. I hesitate to do so, partly for fear of self-indulgence and partly because I don’t want to give the wrong impression that what works for me will work for everybody. I am very aware that the quirks of my genes, neurons, personal history, and dharma are not shared by everyone. But readers should probably know which hues color the glasses through which I see the world, thereby distorting my vision and my writing.

Our nation feels nothing, but our body really hurts.

I think I learned more about myself and about humans in general by observing my sensations for those ten days than I had learned in my whole life up to that point. And to do so I didn’t have to accept any story, theory, or mythology. I just had to observe reality as it is. The most important thing I realized was that the deepest source of my suffering is in the patterns of my own mind. When I want something and it doesn’t happen, my mind reacts by generating suffering. Suffering is not an objective condition in the outside world. It is a mental reaction generated by my own mind. Learning this is the first step toward ceasing to generate more suffering."

Digging from Both Ends
Many people, including many scientists, tend to confuse the mind with the brain, but they are really very different things. The brain is immaterial network of neurons, synapses, and biochemicals. The mind is a flow of subjective experiences, such as pain, pleasure, anger, and love. Biologists assume that the brain somehow produces the mind and that biochemical reactions in billions of neurons somehow produce experiences such as pain and love. However, so far we have absolutely no explanation for how the mind emerges from the brain. 

If we are willing to make such efforts in order to understand foreign cultures, unknown species, and distant planets, it might be worth working just as hard in order to understand our own minds. And we had better understand our minds before the algorithms make our minds up for us.

Tip – Life is not a story. The universe does not work like a story. However, people believe in stories because their personal identity is built on a story and so are collective institutions. Most great stories of humankind have set up ideals that most people cannot fulfil, those that cannot live up to those ideals turn to sacrifice as a solution. There is no divine script, and nothing outside me can give meaning to my life. It is I who imbue everything with meaning through my free choices and through my own feelings. In itself, the universe is only a meaningless hodgepodge of atoms. Nothing is inherently beautiful, sacred, or sexy; human feelings make it so. Take away human feelings, and you are left with a bunch of molecules. The universe does not give me meaning. I give meaning to the universe.

Humans have a will, they have desires, and they are sometimes free to fulfil their desires. If by “free will” you mean the freedom to do what you desire, then yes, humans have free will. But if by “free will” you mean the freedom to choose what to desire, then no, humans have no free will.

The big question facing humans isn’t “what is the meaning of life?” but rather “how do we stop suffering?” When you give up all the fictional stories, you can observe reality with far greater clarity than before, and if you really know the truth about yourself and about the world, nothing can make you miserable. Suffering is not an objective condition in the outside world. It is a mental reaction generated by my own mind. Learning this is the first step toward ceasing to generate more suffering. We need to better understand our minds before the algorithms make our minds up for us.



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