Homo deus : a brief history of tomorrow

YUVAL NOAH HARARI

1.

In vitro fertilisation: mastering creation. 1

The New Human Agenda

At the dawn of the third millennium, humanity wakes up,

stretching its limbs and rubbing its eyes. Remnants of some awful

nightmare are still drifting across its mind. ‘There was something

with barbed wire, and huge mushroom clouds. Oh well, it was just

a bad dream.’ Going to the bathroom, humanity washes its face,

examines its wrinkles in the mirror, makes a cup of coffee and

opens the diary. ‘Let’s see what’s on the agenda today.’

For thousands of years the answer to this question remained

unchanged. The same three problems preoccupied the people of

twentieth-century China, of medieval India and of ancient Egypt. Famine, plague and war were always at the top of the list. For

generation after generation humans have prayed to every god,

angel and saint, and have invented countless tools, institutions

and social systems – but they continued to die in their millions

from starvation, epidemics and violence. Many thinkers and

prophets concluded that famine, plague and war must be an

integral part of God’s cosmic plan or of our imperfect nature, and

nothing short of the end of time would free us from them. Yet at the dawn of the third millennium, humanity wakes up to

an amazing realisation. Most people rarely think about it, but in

the last few decades we have managed to rein in famine, plague

and war. Of course, these problems have not been completely

solved, but they have been transformed from incomprehensible

and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. We don’t need to pray to any god or saint to rescue us from them. We know quite well what needs to be done in order to prevent

famine, plague and war – and we usually succeed in doing it. True, there are still notable failures; but when faced with such

failures we no longer shrug our shoulders and say, ‘Well, that’s the

way things work in our imperfect world’ or ‘God’s will be done’.

Rather, when famine, plague or war break out of our control, we

feel that somebody must have screwed up, we set up a commission

of inquiry, and promise ourselves that next time we’ll do better. And it actually works. Such calamities indeed happen less and less

often. For the first time in history, more people die today from

eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from

old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit

suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals

combined. In the early twenty-first century, the average human is

far more likely to die from bingeing at McDonald’s than from

drought, Ebola or an al-Qaeda attack. Hence even though presidents, CEOs and generals still have

their daily schedules full of economic crises and military conflicts,

on the cosmic scale of history humankind can lift its eyes up and

start looking towards new horizons. If we are indeed bringing

famine, plague and war under control, what will replace them at

the top of the human agenda?

Like firefighters in a world without

fire, so humankind in the twenty-first century needs to ask itself

an unprecedented question: what are we going to do with

ourselves?

In a healthy, prosperous and harmonious world, what

will demand our attention and ingenuity?

This question becomes

doubly urgent given the immense new powers that biotechnology

and information technology are providing us with. What will we

do with all that power?

Before answering this question, we need to say a few more

words about famine, plague and war. The claim that we are

bringing them under control may strike many as outrageous,

extremely naïve, or perhaps callous. What about the billions of

people scraping a living on less than $2 a day?

What about the

ongoing AIDS crisis in Africa, or the wars raging in Syria and Iraq?

To address these concerns, let us take a closer look at the world of

the early twenty-first century, before exploring the human agenda

for the coming decades. The Biological Poverty Line

Let’s start with famine, which for thousands of years has been

humanity’s worst enemy. Until recently most humans lived on the

very edge of the biological poverty line, below which people

succumb to malnutrition and hunger. A small mistake or a bit of

bad luck could easily be a death sentence for an entire family or

village. If heavy rains destroyed your wheat crop, or robbers

carried off your goat herd, you and your loved ones may well have

starved to death. Misfortune or stupidity on the collective level

resulted in mass famines. When severe drought hit ancient Egypt

or medieval India, it was not uncommon that 5 or 10 per cent of

the population perished. Provisions became scarce; transport was

too slow and expensive to import sufficient food; and governments

were far too weak to save the day. Open any history book and you are likely to come across horrific

accounts of famished populations, driven mad by hunger. In April

1694 a French official in the town of Beauvais described the

impact of famine and of soaring food prices, saying that his entire

district was now filled with ‘an infinite number of poor souls, weak

from hunger and wretchedness and dying from want, because,

having no work or occupation, they lack the money to buy bread. Seeking to prolong their lives a little and somewhat to appease

their hunger, these poor folk eat such unclean things as cats and

the flesh of horses flayed and cast onto dung heaps. \[Others

consume] the blood that flows when cows and oxen are

slaughtered, and the offal that cooks throw into the streets. Other

poor wretches eat nettles and weeds, or roots and herbs which

they boil in water.’1

Similar scenes took place all over France. Bad weather had

ruined the harvests throughout the kingdom in the previous two

years, so that by the spring of 1694 the granaries were completely

empty. The rich charged exorbitant prices for whatever food they

managed to hoard, and the poor died in droves. About 2.8 million

French – 15 per cent of the population – starved to death between

1692 and 1694, while the Sun King, Louis XIV, was dallying with

his mistresses in Versailles. The following year, 1695, famine

struck Estonia, killing a fifth of the population. In 1696 it was the

turn of Finland, where a quarter to a third of people died. Scotland

suffered from severe famine between 1695 and 1698, some

districts losing up to 20 per cent of their inhabitants.2

Most readers probably know how it feels when you miss lunch,

when you fast on some religious holiday, or when you live for a

few days on vegetable shakes as part of a new wonder diet. But

how does it feel when you haven’t eaten for days on end and you

have no clue where to get the next morsel of food?

Most people

today have never experienced this excruciating torment. Our

ancestors, alas, knew it only too well. When they cried to God,

‘Deliver us from famine!’, this is what they had in mind. During the last hundred years, technological, economic and

political developments have created an increasingly robust safety

net separating humankind from the biological poverty line. Mass

famines still strike some areas from time to time, but they are

exceptional, and they are almost always caused by human politics

rather than by natural catastrophes. In most parts of the planet,

even if a person has lost his job and all of his possessions, he is

unlikely to die from hunger. Private insurance schemes,

government agencies and international NGOs may not rescue him

from poverty, but they will provide him with enough daily calories

to survive. On the collective level, the global trade network turns

droughts and floods into business opportunities, and makes it

possible to overcome food shortages quickly and cheaply. Even

when wars, earthquakes or tsunamis devastate entire countries,

international efforts usually succeed in preventing famine. Though

hundreds of millions still go hungry almost every day, in most

countries very few people actually starve to death. Poverty certainly causes many other health problems, and

malnutrition shortens life expectancy even in the richest countries

on earth. In France, for example, 6 million people (about 10 per

cent of the population) suffer from nutritional insecurity. They

wake up in the morning not knowing whether they will have

anything to eat for lunch; they often go to sleep hungry; and the

nutrition they do obtain is unbalanced and unhealthy – lots of

starch, sugar and salt, and not enough protein and vitamins.3 Yet

nutritional insecurity isn’t famine, and France of the early twenty-

first century isn’t France of 1694.

Even in the worst slums around

Beauvais or Paris, people don’t die because they have not eaten for

weeks on end. The same transformation has occurred in numerous other

countries, most notably China. For millennia, famine stalked every

Chinese regime from the Yellow Emperor to the Red communists. A few decades ago China was a byword for food shortages. Tens of

millions of Chinese starved to death during the disastrous Great

Leap Forward, and experts routinely predicted that the problem

would only get worse. In 1974 the first World Food Conference

was convened in Rome, and delegates were treated to apocalyptic

scenarios. They were told that there was no way for China to feed

its billion people, and that the world’s most populous country was

heading towards catastrophe. In fact, it was heading towards the

greatest economic miracle in history. Since 1974 hundreds of

millions of Chinese have been lifted out of poverty, and though

hundreds of millions more still suffer greatly from privation and

malnutrition, for the first time in its recorded history China is now

free from famine. Indeed, in most countries today overeating has become a far

worse problem than famine. In the eighteenth century Marie

Antoinette allegedly advised the starving masses that if they ran

out of bread, they should just eat cake instead. Today, the poor are

following this advice to the letter. Whereas the rich residents of

Beverly Hills eat lettuce salad and steamed tofu with quinoa, in

the slums and ghettos the poor gorge on Twinkie cakes, Cheetos,

hamburgers and pizza. In 2014 more than 2.1 billion people were

overweight, compared to 850 million who suffered from

malnutrition. Half of humankind is expected to be overweight by

2030.4 In 2010 famine and malnutrition combined killed about 1

million people, whereas obesity killed 3 million. 5

Invisible Armadas

After famine, humanity’s second great enemy was plagues and

infectious diseases. Bustling cities linked by a ceaseless stream of

merchants, officials and pilgrims were both the bedrock of human

civilisation and an ideal breeding ground for pathogens. People

consequently lived their lives in ancient Athens or medieval

Florence knowing that they might fall ill and die next week, or that

an epidemic might suddenly erupt and destroy their entire family

in one swoop. The most famous such outbreak, the so-called Black Death,

began in the 1330s, somewhere in east or central Asia, when the

flea-dwelling bacterium Yersinia pestis started infecting humans

bitten by the fleas. From there, riding on an army of rats and fleas,

the plague quickly spread all over Asia, Europe and North Africa,

taking less than twenty years to reach the shores of the Atlantic

Ocean. Between 75 million and 200 million people died – more

than a quarter of the population of Eurasia. In England, four out

of ten people died, and the population dropped from a pre-plague

high of 3.7 million people to a post-plague low of 2.2 million. The

city of Florence lost 50,000 of its 100,000 inhabitants.6

Credit 1.2

2.

Medieval people personified the Black Death as a horrific demonic force

beyond human control or comprehension. The authorities were completely helpless in the face of the

calamity. Except for organising mass prayers and processions,

they had no idea how to stop the spread of the epidemic – let

alone cure it. Until the modern era, humans blamed diseases on

bad air, malicious demons and angry gods, and did not suspect the

existence of bacteria and viruses. People readily believed in angels

and fairies, but they could not imagine that a tiny flea or a single

drop of water might contain an entire armada of deadly predators. Credit 1.3

3.

The real culprit was the minuscule Yersinia pestis bacterium. The Black Death was not a singular event, nor even the worst

plague in history. More disastrous epidemics struck America,

Australia and the Pacific Islands following the arrival of the first

Europeans. Unbeknown to the explorers and settlers, they brought

with them new infectious diseases against which the natives had

no immunity. Up to 90 per cent of the local populations died as a

result. 7

On 5 March 1520 a small Spanish flotilla left the island of Cuba

on its way to Mexico. The ships carried 900 Spanish soldiers along

with horses, firearms and a few African slaves. One of the slaves,

Francisco de Eguía, carried on his person a far deadlier cargo. Francisco didn’t know it, but somewhere among his trillions of

cells a biological time bomb was ticking: the smallpox virus. After

Francisco landed in Mexico the virus began to multiply

exponentially within his body, eventually bursting out all over his

skin in a terrible rash. The feverish Francisco was taken to bed in

the house of a Native American family in the town of Cempoallan. He infected the family members, who infected the neighbours. Within ten days Cempoallan became a graveyard. Refugees spread

the disease from Cempoallan to the nearby towns. As town after

town succumbed to the plague, new waves of terrified refugees

carried the disease throughout Mexico and beyond. The Mayas in the Yucatán Peninsula believed that three evil

gods – Ekpetz, Uzannkak and Sojakak – were flying from village

to village at night, infecting people with the disease. The Aztecs

blamed it on the gods Tezcatlipoca and Xipe, or perhaps on the

black magic of the white people. Priests and doctors were

consulted. They advised prayers, cold baths, rubbing the body

with bitumen and smearing squashed black beetles on the sores. Nothing helped. Tens of thousands of corpses lay rotting in the

streets, without anyone daring to approach and bury them. Entire

families perished within a few days, and the authorities ordered

that the houses were to be collapsed on top of the bodies. In some

settlements half the population died. In September 1520 the plague had reached the Valley of Mexico,

and in October it entered the gates of the Aztec capital,

Tenochtitlan – a magnificent metropolis of 250,000 people. Within two months at least a third of the population perished,

including the Aztec emperor Cuitláhuac. Whereas in March 1520,

when the Spanish fleet arrived, Mexico was home to 22 million

people, by December only 14 million were still alive. Smallpox was

only the first blow. While the new Spanish masters were busy

enriching themselves and exploiting the natives, deadly waves of

flu, measles and other infectious diseases struck Mexico one after

the other, until in 1580 its population was down to less than 2

million.8

Two centuries later, on 18 January 1778, the British explorer

Captain James Cook reached Hawaii. The Hawaiian islands were

densely populated by half a million people, who lived in complete

isolation from both Europe and America, and consequently had

never been exposed to European and American diseases. Captain

Cook and his men introduced the first flu, tuberculosis and

syphilis pathogens to Hawaii. Subsequent European visitors added

typhoid and smallpox. By 1853, only 70,000 survivors remained in

Hawaii.9

Epidemics continued to kill tens of millions of people well into

the twentieth century. In January 1918 soldiers in the trenches of

northern France began dying in their thousands from a

particularly virulent strain of flu, nicknamed ‘the Spanish Flu’.

The front line was the end point of the most efficient global supply

network the world had hitherto seen. Men and munitions were

pouring in from Britain, the USA, India and Australia. Oil was sent

from the Middle East, grain and beef from Argentina, rubber from

Malaya and copper from Congo. In exchange, they all got Spanish

Flu. Within a few months, about half a billion people – a third of

the global population – came down with the virus. In India it

killed 5 per cent of the population (15 million people).

On the

island of Tahiti, 14 per cent died. On Samoa, 20 per cent. In the

copper mines of the Congo one out of five labourers perished. Altogether the pandemic killed between 50 million and 100

million people in less than a year. The First World War killed 40

million from 1914 to 1918.

10

Alongside such epidemical tsunamis that struck humankind

every few decades, people also faced smaller but more regular

waves of infectious diseases, which killed millions every year. Children who lacked immunity were particularly susceptible to

them, hence they are often called ‘childhood diseases’.

Until the

early twentieth century, about a third of children died before

reaching adulthood from a combination of malnutrition and

disease. During the last century humankind became ever more

vulnerable to epidemics, due to a combination of growing

populations and better transport. A modern metropolis such as

Tokyo or Kinshasa offers pathogens far richer hunting grounds

than medieval Florence or 1520 Tenochtitlan, and the global

transport network is today even more efficient than in 1918.

A

Spanish virus can make its way to Congo or Tahiti in less than

twenty-four hours. We should therefore have expected to live in an

epidemiological hell, with one deadly plague after another. However, both the incidence and impact of epidemics have gone

down dramatically in the last few decades. In particular, global

child mortality is at an all-time low: less than 5 per cent of

children die before reaching adulthood. In the developed world

the rate is less than 1 per cent. 11 This miracle is due to the unprecedented achievements of twentieth-century medicine,

which has provided us with vaccinations, antibiotics, improved

hygiene and a much better medical infrastructure. For example, a global campaign of smallpox vaccination was so

successful that in 1979 the World Health Organization declared

that humanity had won, and that smallpox had been completely

eradicated. It was the first epidemic humans had ever managed to

wipe off the face of the earth. In 1967 smallpox had still infected 15

million people and killed 2 million of them, but in 2014 not a

single person was either infected or killed by smallpox. The victory

has been so complete that today the WHO has stopped vaccinating

humans against smallpox. 12

Every few years we are alarmed by the outbreak of some

potential new plague, such as SARS in 2002/3, bird flu in 2005,

swine flu in 2009/10 and Ebola in 2014.

Yet thanks to efficient

counter-measures these incidents have so far resulted in a

comparatively small number of victims. SARS, for example,

initially raised fears of a new Black Death, but eventually ended

with the death of less than 1,000 people worldwide.13 The Ebola outbreak in West Africa seemed at first to spiral out of control,

and on 26 September 2014 the WHO described it as ‘the most

severe public health emergency seen in modern times’.

14

Nevertheless, by early 2015 the epidemic had been reined in, and

in January 2016 the WHO declared it over. It infected 30,000

people (killing 11,000 of them), caused massive economic damage

throughout West Africa, and sent shockwaves of anxiety across the

world; but it did not spread beyond West Africa, and its death toll

was nowhere near the scale of the Spanish Flu or the Mexican

smallpox epidemic. Even the tragedy of AIDS, seemingly the greatest medical failure

of the last few decades, can be seen as a sign of progress. Since its

first major outbreak in the early 1980s, more than 30 million

people have died of AIDS, and tens of millions more have suffered

debilitating physical and psychological damage. It was hard to

understand and treat the new epidemic, because AIDS is a

uniquely devious disease. Whereas a human infected with the

smallpox virus dies within a few days, an HIV-positive patient may

seem perfectly healthy for weeks and months, yet go on infecting

others unknowingly. In addition, the HIV virus itself does not kill. Rather, it destroys the immune system, thereby exposing the

patient to numerous other diseases. It is these secondary diseases

that actually kill AIDS victims. Consequently, when AIDS began to

spread, it was especially difficult to understand what was

happening. When two patients were admitted to a New York

hospital in 1981, one ostensibly dying from pneumonia and the

other from cancer, it was not at all evident that both were in fact

victims of the HIV virus, which may have infected them months or

even years previously. 15

However, despite these difficulties, after the medical community

became aware of the mysterious new plague, it took scientists just

two years to identify it, understand how the virus spreads and

suggest effective ways to slow down the epidemic. Within another

ten years new medicines turned AIDS from a death sentence into a

chronic condition (at least for those wealthy enough to afford the

treatment).16 Just think what would have happened if AIDS had erupted in 1581 rather than 1981.

In all likelihood, nobody back

then would have figured out what caused the epidemic, how it

moved from person to person, or how it could be halted (let alone

cured).

Under such conditions, AIDS might have killed a much

larger proportion of the human race, equalling and perhaps even

surpassing the Black Death. Despite the horrendous toll AIDS has taken, and despite the

millions killed each year by long-established infectious diseases

such as malaria, epidemics are a far smaller threat to human

health today than in previous millennia. The vast majority of

people die from non-infectious illnesses such as cancer and heart

disease, or simply from old age. 17 (Incidentally cancer and heart disease are of course not new illnesses – they go back to antiquity. In previous eras, however, relatively few people lived long enough

to die from them.)

Many fear that this is only a temporary victory, and that some

unknown cousin of the Black Death is waiting just around the

corner. No one can guarantee that plagues won’t make a

comeback, but there are good reasons to think that in the arms

race between doctors and germs, doctors run faster. New

infectious diseases appear mainly as a result of chance mutations

in pathogen genomes. These mutations allow the pathogens to

jump from animals to humans, to overcome the human immune

system, or to resist medicines such as antibiotics. Today such

mutations probably occur and disseminate faster than in the past,

due to human impact on the environment. 18 Yet in the race against medicine, pathogens ultimately depend on the blind hand

of fortune. Doctors, in contrast, count on more than mere luck. Though

science owes a huge debt to serendipity, doctors don’t just throw

different chemicals into test tubes, hoping to chance upon some

new medicine. With each passing year doctors accumulate more

and better knowledge, which they use in order to design more

effective medicines and treatments. Consequently, though in 2050

we will undoubtedly face much more resilient germs, medicine in

2050 will likely be able to deal with them more efficiently than

today. 19

In 2015 doctors announced the discovery of a completely new

type of antibiotic – teixobactin – to which bacteria have no

resistance as yet. Some scholars believe teixobactin may prove to

be a game-changer in the fight against highly resistant germs. 20

Scientists are also developing revolutionary new treatments that

work in radically different ways to any previous medicine. For

example, some research labs are already home to nano-robots,

that may one day navigate through our bloodstream, identify

illnesses and kill pathogens and cancerous cells. 21 Microorganisms

may have 4 billion years of cumulative experience fighting organic

enemies, but they have exactly zero experience fighting bionic

predators, and would therefore find it doubly difficult to evolve

effective defences. So while we cannot be certain that some new Ebola outbreak or

an unknown flu strain won’t sweep across the globe and kill

millions, we will not regard it as an inevitable natural calamity. Rather, we will see it as an inexcusable human failure and demand

the heads of those responsible. When in late summer 2014 it

seemed for a few terrifying weeks that Ebola was gaining the

upper hand over the global health authorities, investigative

committees were hastily set up. An initial report published on 18

October 2014 criticised the World Health Organization for its

unsatisfactory reaction to the outbreak, blaming the epidemic on

corruption and inefficiency in the WHO’s African branch. Further

criticism was levelled at the international community as a whole

for not responding quickly and forcefully enough. Such criticism

assumes that humankind has the knowledge and tools to prevent

plagues, and if an epidemic nevertheless gets out of control, it is

due to human incompetence rather than divine anger. So in the struggle against natural calamities such as AIDS and

Ebola, the scales are tipping in humanity’s favour. But what about

the dangers inherent in human nature itself?

Biotechnology

enables us to defeat bacteria and viruses, but it simultaneously

turns humans themselves into an unprecedented threat. The same

tools that enable doctors to quickly identify and cure new illnesses

may also enable armies and terrorists to engineer even more

terrible diseases and doomsday pathogens. It is therefore likely

that major epidemics will continue to endanger humankind in the

future only if humankind itself creates them, in the service of

some ruthless ideology. The era when humankind stood helpless

before natural epidemics is probably over. But we may come to

miss it. Breaking the Law of the Jungle

The third piece of good news is that wars too are disappearing. Throughout history most humans took war for granted, whereas

peace was a temporary and precarious state. International

relations were governed by the Law of the Jungle, according to

which even if two polities lived in peace, war always remained an

option. For example, even though Germany and France were at

peace in 1913, everybody knew that they might be at each other’s

throats in 1914.

Whenever politicians, generals, business people

and ordinary citizens made plans for the future, they always left room for war. From the Stone Age to the age of steam, and from

the Arctic to the Sahara, every person on earth knew that at any

moment the neighbours might invade their territory, defeat their

army, slaughter their people and occupy their land. During the second half of the twentieth century this Law of the

Jungle has finally been broken, if not rescinded. In most areas

wars became rarer than ever. Whereas in ancient agricultural

societies human violence caused about 15 per cent of all deaths,

during the twentieth century violence caused only 5 per cent of

deaths, and in the early twenty-first century it is responsible for

about 1 per cent of global mortality. 22 In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the world; 620,000 of them died due to

human violence (war killed 120,000 people, and crime killed

another 500,000).

In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide, and

1.5 million died of diabetes. 23 Sugar is now more dangerous than

gunpowder. Even more importantly, a growing segment of humankind has

come to see war as simply inconceivable. For the first time in

history, when governments, corporations and private individuals

consider their immediate future, many of them don’t think about

war as a likely event. Nuclear weapons have turned war between

superpowers into a mad act of collective suicide, and therefore

forced the most powerful nations on earth to find alternative and

peaceful ways to resolve conflicts. Simultaneously, the global

economy has been transformed from a material-based economy

into a knowledge-based economy. Previously the main sources of

wealth were material assets such as gold mines, wheat fields and

oil wells. Today the main source of wealth is knowledge. And

whereas you can conquer oil fields through war, you cannot

acquire knowledge that way. Hence as knowledge became the

most important economic resource, the profitability of war

declined and wars became increasingly restricted to those parts of

the world – such as the Middle East and Central Africa – where

the economies are still old-fashioned material-based economies. In 1998 it made sense for Rwanda to seize and loot the rich

coltan mines of neighbouring Congo, because this ore was in high

demand for the manufacture of mobile phones and laptops, and

Congo held 80 per cent of the world’s coltan reserves. Rwanda earned $240 million annually from the looted coltan. For poor

Rwanda that was a lot of money. 24 In contrast, it would have made no sense for China to invade California and seize Silicon Valley,

for even if the Chinese could somehow prevail on the battlefield,

there were no silicon mines to loot in Silicon Valley. Instead, the

Chinese have earned billions of dollars from cooperating with hi-

tech giants such as Apple and Microsoft, buying their software and

manufacturing their products. What Rwanda earned from an

entire year of looting Congolese coltan, the Chinese earn in a

single day of peaceful commerce. In consequence, the word ‘peace’ has acquired a new meaning. Previous generations thought about peace as the temporary

absence of war. Today we think about peace as the implausibility

of war. When in 1913 people said that there was peace between

France and Germany, they meant that ‘there is no war going on at

present between France and Germany, but who knows what next

year will bring’.

When today we say that there is peace between

France and Germany, we mean that it is inconceivable under any

foreseeable circumstances that war might break out between

them. Such peace prevails not only between France and Germany,

but between most (though not all) countries. There is no scenario

for a serious war breaking out next year between Germany and

Poland, between Indonesia and the Philippines, or between Brazil

and Uruguay. This New Peace is not just a hippie fantasy. Power-hungry

governments and greedy corporations also count on it. When

Mercedes plans its sales strategy in eastern Europe, it discounts

the possibility that Germany might conquer Poland. A corporation

importing cheap labourers from the Philippines is not worried

that Indonesia might invade the Philippines next year. When the

Brazilian government convenes to discuss next year’s budget, it’s

unimaginable that the Brazilian defence minister will rise from his

seat, bang his fist on the table and shout, ‘Just a minute!

What if

we want to invade and conquer Uruguay?

You didn’t take that into

account. We have to put aside $5 billion to finance this conquest.’

Of course, there are a few places where defence ministers still say

such things, and there are regions where the New Peace has failed

to take root. I know this very well because I live in one of these regions. But these are exceptions. There is no guarantee, of course, that the New Peace will hold

indefinitely. Just as nuclear weapons made the New Peace

possible in the first place, so future technological developments

might set the stage for new kinds of war. In particular, cyber

warfare may destabilise the world by giving even small countries

and non-state actors the ability to fight superpowers effectively. When the USA fought Iraq in 2003 it brought havoc to Baghdad

and Mosul, but not a single bomb was dropped on Los Angeles or

Chicago. In the future, though, a country such as North Korea or

Iran could use logic bombs to shut down the power in California,

blow up refineries in Texas and cause trains to collide in Michigan

(‘logic bombs’ are malicious software codes planted in peacetime

and operated at a distance. It is highly likely that networks

controlling vital infrastructure facilities in the USA and many

other countries are already crammed with such codes).

However, we should not confuse ability with motivation. Though cyber warfare introduces new means of destruction, it

doesn’t necessarily add new incentives to use them. Over the last

seventy years humankind has broken not only the Law of the

Jungle, but also the Chekhov Law. Anton Chekhov famously said

that a gun appearing in the first act of a play will inevitably be

fired in the third. Throughout history, if kings and emperors

acquired some new weapon, sooner or later they were tempted to

use it. Since 1945, however, humankind has learned to resist this

temptation. The gun that appeared in the first act of the Cold War

was never fired. By now we are accustomed to living in a world full

of undropped bombs and unlaunched missiles, and have become

experts in breaking both the Law of the Jungle and the Chekhov

Law. If these laws ever do catch up with us, it will be our own fault

– not our inescapable destiny. Credit 1.4

4.

Nuclear missiles on parade in Moscow. The gun that was always on display

but never fired. What about terrorism, then?

Even if central governments and

powerful states have learned restraint, terrorists might have no

such qualms about using new and destructive weapons. That is

certainly a worrying possibility. However, terrorism is a strategy of

weakness adopted by those who lack access to real power. At least

in the past, terrorism worked by spreading fear rather than by

causing significant material damage. Terrorists usually don’t have

the strength to defeat an army, occupy a country or destroy entire

cities. Whereas in 2010 obesity and related illnesses killed about 3

million people, terrorists killed a total of 7,697 people across the

globe, most of them in developing countries. 25 For the average American or European, Coca-Cola poses a far deadlier threat than

al-Qaeda. How, then, do terrorists manage to dominate the headlines and

change the political situation throughout the world?

By provoking

their enemies to overreact. In essence, terrorism is a show. Terrorists stage a terrifying spectacle of violence that captures our

imagination and makes us feel as if we are sliding back into

medieval chaos. Consequently states often feel obliged to react to

the theatre of terrorism with a show of security, orchestrating

immense displays of force, such as the persecution of entire

populations or the invasion of foreign countries. In most cases,

this overreaction to terrorism poses a far greater threat to our

security than the terrorists themselves. Terrorists are like a fly that tries to destroy a china shop. The fly

is so weak that it cannot budge even a single teacup. So it finds a

bull, gets inside its ear and starts buzzing. The bull goes wild with

fear and anger, and destroys the china shop. This is what

happened in the Middle East in the last decade. Islamic

fundamentalists could never have toppled Saddam Hussein by

themselves. Instead they enraged the USA by the 9/11 attacks, and

the USA destroyed the Middle Eastern china shop for them. Now

they flourish in the wreckage. By themselves, terrorists are too

weak to drag us back to the Middle Ages and re-establish the

Jungle Law. They may provoke us, but in the end, it all depends on

our reactions. If the Jungle Law comes back into force, it will not

be the fault of terrorists. —

Famine, plague and war will probably continue to claim millions

of victims in the coming decades. Yet they are no longer

unavoidable tragedies beyond the understanding and control of a

helpless humanity. Instead, they have become manageable

challenges. This does not belittle the suffering of hundreds of

millions of poverty-stricken humans; of the millions felled each

year by malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis; or of the millions trapped

in violent vicious circles in Syria, the Congo or Afghanistan. The

message is not that famine, plague and war have completely

disappeared from the face of the earth, and that we should stop

worrying about them. Just the opposite. Throughout history

people felt these were unsolvable problems, so there was no point

trying to put an end to them. People prayed to God for miracles,

but they themselves did not seriously attempt to exterminate

famine, plague and war. Those arguing that the world of 2016 is as

hungry, sick and violent as it was in 1916 perpetuate this age-old

defeatist view. They imply that all the huge efforts humans have

made during the twentieth century have achieved nothing, and

that medical research, economic reforms and peace initiatives

have all been in vain. If so, what is the point of investing our time

and resources in further medical research, novel economic

reforms or new peace initiatives?

Acknowledging our past achievements sends a message of hope

and responsibility, encouraging us to make even greater efforts in

the future. Given our twentieth-century accomplishments, if

people continue to suffer from famine, plague and war, we cannot

blame it on nature or on God. It is within our power to make

things better and to reduce the incidence of suffering even further. Yet appreciating the magnitude of our achievements carries

another message: history does not tolerate a vacuum. If incidences

of famine, plague and war are decreasing, something is bound to

take their place on the human agenda. We had better think very

carefully what it is going to be. Otherwise, we might gain complete

victory in the old battlefields only to be caught completely

unaware on entirely new fronts. What are the projects that will

replace famine, plague and war at the top of the human agenda in

the twenty-first century?

One central project will be to protect humankind and the planet

as a whole from the dangers inherent in our own power. We have

managed to bring famine, plague and war under control thanks

largely to our phenomenal economic growth, which provides us

with abundant food, medicine, energy and raw materials. Yet this

same growth destabilises the ecological equilibrium of the planet

in myriad ways, which we have only begun to explore. Humankind

has been late in acknowledging this danger, and has so far done

very little about it. Despite all the talk of pollution, global warming

and climate change, most countries have yet to make any serious

economic or political sacrifices to improve the situation. When the

moment comes to choose between economic growth and

ecological stability, politicians, CEOs and voters almost always

prefer growth. In the twenty-first century, we shall have to do

better if we are to avoid catastrophe. What else will humanity strive for?

Would we be content merely

to count our blessings, keep famine, plague and war at bay, and

protect the ecological equilibrium?

That might indeed be the

wisest course of action, but humankind is unlikely to follow it. Humans are rarely satisfied with what they already have. The most

common reaction of the human mind to achievement is not

satisfaction, but craving for more. Humans are always on the

lookout for something better, bigger, tastier. When humankind

possesses enormous new powers, and when the threat of famine,

plague and war is finally lifted, what will we do with ourselves?

What will the scientists, investors, bankers and presidents do all

day?

Write poetry?

Success breeds ambition, and our recent achievements are now

pushing humankind to set itself even more daring goals. Having

secured unprecedented levels of prosperity, health and harmony,

and given our past record and our current values, humanity’s next

targets are likely to be immortality, happiness and divinity. Having reduced mortality from starvation, disease and violence,

we will now aim to overcome old age and even death itself. Having

saved people from abject misery, we will now aim to make them

positively happy. And having raised humanity above the beastly

level of survival struggles, we will now aim to upgrade humans

into gods, and turn Homo sapiens into Homo deus. The Last Days of Death

In the twenty-first century humans are likely to make a serious bid

for immortality. Struggling against old age and death will merely

carry on the time-honoured fight against famine and disease, and

manifest the supreme value of contemporary culture: the worth of

human life. We are constantly reminded that human life is the

most sacred thing in the universe. Everybody says this: teachers in

schools, politicians in parliaments, lawyers in courts and actors on

theatre stages. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

adopted by the UN after the Second World War – which is

perhaps the closest thing we have to a global constitution –

categorically states that ‘the right to life’ is humanity’s most

fundamental value. Since death clearly violates this right, death is

a crime against humanity, and we ought to wage total war against

it. Throughout history, religions and ideologies did not sanctify life

itself. They always sanctified something above or beyond earthly

existence, and were consequently quite tolerant of death. Indeed,

some of them have been downright fond of the Grim Reaper. Because Christianity, Islam and Hinduism insisted that the

meaning of our existence depended on our fate in the afterlife,

they viewed death as a vital and positive part of the world. Humans died because God decreed it, and their moment of death

was a sacred metaphysical experience exploding with meaning. When a human was about to breathe his last, this was the time to

call priests, rabbis and shamans, to draw out the balance of life,

and to embrace one’s true role in the universe. Just try to imagine

Christianity, Islam or Hinduism in a world without death – which

is also a world without heaven, hell or reincarnation. Modern science and modern culture have an entirely different

take on life and death. They don’t think of death as a metaphysical

mystery, and they certainly don’t view death as the source of life’s

meaning. Rather, for modern people death is a technical problem

that we can and should solve. How exactly do humans die?

Medieval fairy tales depicted

Death as a figure in a hooded black cloak, his hand gripping a

large scythe. A man lives his life, worrying about this and that,

running here and there, when suddenly the Grim Reaper appears

before him, taps him on the shoulder with a bony finger and says,

‘Come!’ And the man implores: ‘No, please!

Wait just a year, a

month, a day!’ But the hooded figure hisses: ‘No!

You must come

NOW!’ And this is how we die. In reality, however, humans don’t die because a figure in a black

cloak taps them on the shoulder, or because God decreed it, or

because mortality is an essential part of some great cosmic plan. Humans always die due to some technical glitch. The heart stops

pumping blood. The main artery is clogged by fatty deposits. Cancerous cells spread in the liver. Germs multiply in the lungs. And what is responsible for all these technical problems?

Other

technical problems. The heart stops pumping blood because not

enough oxygen reaches the heart muscle. Cancerous cells spread

because a chance genetic mutation rewrote their instructions. Germs settled in my lungs because somebody sneezed on the

subway. Nothing metaphysical about it. It is all technical

problems. Credit 1.5

5.

Death personified as the Grim Reaper in medieval art. And every technical problem has a technical solution. We don’t

need to wait for the Second Coming in order to overcome death. A

couple of geeks in a lab can do it. If traditionally death was the

speciality of priests and theologians, now the engineers are taking

over. We can kill the cancerous cells with chemotherapy or nano-

robots. We can exterminate the germs in the lungs with

antibiotics. If the heart stops pumping, we can reinvigorate it with

medicines and electric shocks – and if that doesn’t work, we can

implant a new heart. True, at present we don’t have solutions to all

technical problems. But this is precisely why we invest so much

time and money in researching cancer, germs, genetics and

nanotechnology. Even ordinary people, who are not engaged in scientific

research, have become used to thinking about death as a technical

problem. When a woman goes to her physician and asks, ‘Doctor,

what’s wrong with me?’ the doctor is likely to say, ‘Well, you have

the flu,’ or ‘You have tuberculosis,’ or ‘You have cancer.’ But the

doctor will never say, ‘You have death.’ And we are all under the

impression that flu, tuberculosis and cancer are technical

problems, to which we might someday find a technical solution. Even when people die in a hurricane, a car accident or a war, we

tend to view it as a technical failure that could and should have

been prevented. If the government had only adopted a better

policy; if the municipality had done its job properly; and if the

military commander had taken a wiser decision, death would have

been avoided. Death has become an almost automatic reason for

lawsuits and investigations. ‘How could they have died?

Somebody

somewhere must have screwed up.’

The vast majority of scientists, doctors and scholars still

distance themselves from outright dreams of immortality,

claiming that they are trying to overcome only this or that

particular problem. Yet because old age and death are the outcome

of nothing but particular problems, there is no point at which

doctors and scientists are going to stop and declare: ‘Thus far, and

not another step. We have overcome tuberculosis and cancer, but

we won’t lift a finger to fight Alzheimer’s. People can go on dying

from that.’ The Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not

say that humans have ‘the right to life until the age of ninety’.

It

says that every human has a right to life, period. That right isn’t

limited by any expiry date. An increasing minority of scientists and thinkers consequently

speak more openly these days, and state that the flagship

enterprise of modern science is to defeat death and grant humans

eternal youth. Notable examples are the gerontologist Aubrey de

Grey and the polymath and inventor Ray Kurzweil (winner of the

1999 US National Medal of Technology and Innovation).

In 2012

Kurzweil was appointed a director of engineering at Google, and a

year later Google launched a sub-company called Calico whose

stated mission is ‘to solve death’.

26 Google has recently appointed another immortality true-believer, Bill Maris, to preside over the

Google Ventures investment fund. In a January 2015 interview,

Maris said, ‘If you ask me today, is it possible to live to be 500, the

answer is yes.’ Maris backs up his brave words with a lot of hard

cash. Google Ventures is investing 36 per cent of its $2 billion

portfolio in life sciences start-ups, including several ambitious life-

extending projects. Using an American football analogy, Maris

explained that in the fight against death, ‘We aren’t trying to gain

a few yards. We are trying to win the game.’ Why?

Because, says

Maris, ‘it is better to live than to die’.27

Such dreams are shared by other Silicon Valley luminaries. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel has recently confessed that he aims

to live for ever. ‘I think there are probably three main modes of

approaching \[death],’ he explained. ‘You can accept it, you can

deny it or you can fight it. I think our society is dominated by

people who are into denial or acceptance, and I prefer to fight it.’

Many people are likely to dismiss such statements as teenage

fantasies. Yet Thiel is somebody to be taken very seriously. He is

one of the most successful and influential entrepreneurs in Silicon

Valley with a private fortune estimated at $2.2 billion.28 The writing is on the wall: equality is out – immortality is in. The breakneck development of fields such as genetic

engineering, regenerative medicine and nanotechnology fosters

ever more optimistic prophecies. Some experts believe that

humans will overcome death by 2200, others say 2100.

Kurzweil

and de Grey are even more sanguine. They maintain that anyone

possessing a healthy body and a healthy bank account in 2050 will

have a serious shot at immortality by cheating death a decade at a

time. According to Kurzweil and de Grey, every ten years or so we

will march into the clinic and receive a makeover treatment that

will not only cure illnesses, but will also regenerate decaying

tissues, and upgrade hands, eyes and brains. Before the next

treatment is due, doctors will have invented a plethora of new

medicines, upgrades and gadgets. If Kurzweil and de Grey are

right, there may already be some immortals walking next to you

on the street – at least if you happen to be walking down Wall

Street or Fifth Avenue. In truth they will actually be a-mortal, rather than immortal. Unlike God, future superhumans could still die in some war or

accident, and nothing could bring them back from the

netherworld. However, unlike us mortals, their life would have no

expiry date. So long as no bomb shreds them to pieces or no truck

runs them over, they could go on living indefinitely. Which will

probably make them the most anxious people in history. We

mortals daily take chances with our lives, because we know they

are going to end anyhow. So we go on treks in the Himalayas, swim in the sea, and do many other dangerous things like crossing

the street or eating out. But if you believe you can live for ever, you

would be crazy to gamble on infinity like that. Perhaps, then, we had better start with more modest aims, such

as doubling life expectancy?

In the twentieth century we have

almost doubled life expectancy from forty to seventy, so in the

twenty-first century we should at least be able to double it again to

150.

Though falling far short of immortality, this would still

revolutionise human society. For starters, family structure,

marriages and child–parent relationships would be transformed. Today, people still expect to be married ‘till death us do part’, and

much of life revolves around having and raising children. Now try

to imagine a person with a lifespan of 150 years. Getting married

at forty, she still has 110 years to go. Will it be realistic to expect

her marriage to last 110 years?

Even Catholic fundamentalists

might baulk at that. So the current trend of serial marriages is

likely to intensify. Bearing two children in her forties, she will, by

the time she is 120, have only a distant memory of the years she

spent raising them – a rather minor episode in her long life. It’s

hard to tell what kind of new parent–child relationship might

develop under such circumstances. Or consider professional careers. Today we assume that you

learn a profession in your teens and twenties, and then spend the

rest of your life in that line of work. You obviously learn new

things even in your forties and fifties, but life is generally divided

into a learning period followed by a working period. When you live

to be 150 that won’t do, especially in a world that is constantly

being shaken by new technologies. People will have much longer

careers, and will have to reinvent themselves again and again even

at the age of ninety. At the same time, people will not retire at sixty-five and will not

make way for the new generation with its novel ideas and

aspirations. The physicist Max Planck famously said that science

advances one funeral at a time. He meant that only when one

generation passes away do new theories have a chance to root out

old ones. This is true not only of science. Think for a moment

about your own workplace. No matter whether you are a scholar,

journalist, cook or football player, how would you feel if your boss

were 120, his ideas were formulated when Victoria was still queen,

and he was likely to stay your boss for a couple of decades more?

In the political sphere the results might be even more sinister. Would you mind having Putin stick around for another ninety

years?

On second thoughts, if people lived to 150, then in 2016

Stalin would still be ruling in Moscow, going strong at 138,

Chairman Mao would be a middle-aged 123-year-old, and Princess

Elizabeth would be sitting on her hands waiting to inherit from the

121-year-old George VI. Her son Charles would not get his turn

until 2076.

Coming back to the realm of reality, it is far from certain

whether Kurzweil’s and de Grey’s prophecies will come true by

2050 or 2100.

My own view is that the hopes of eternal youth in

the twenty-first century are premature, and whoever takes them

too seriously is in for a bitter disappointment. It is not easy to live

knowing that you are going to die, but it is even harder to believe

in immortality and be proven wrong. Although average life expectancy has doubled over the last

hundred years, it is unwarranted to extrapolate and conclude that

we can double it again to 150 in the coming century. In 1900

global life expectancy was no higher than forty because many

people died young from malnutrition, infectious diseases and

violence. Yet those who escaped famine, plague and war could live

well into their seventies and eighties, which is the natural life span

of Homo sapiens. Contrary to common notions, seventy-year-olds

weren’t considered rare freaks of nature in previous centuries. Galileo Galilei died at seventy-seven, Isaac Newton at eighty-four,

and Michelangelo lived to the ripe age of eighty-eight, without any

help from antibiotics, vaccinations or organ transplants. Indeed,

even chimpanzees in the jungle sometimes live into their sixties.29

In truth, so far modern medicine hasn’t extended our natural

life span by a single year. Its great achievement has been to save

us from premature death, and allow us to enjoy the full measure

of our years. Even if we now overcome cancer, diabetes and the

other major killers, it would mean only that almost everyone will

get to live to ninety – but it will not be enough to reach 150, let

alone 500.

For that, medicine will need to re-engineer the most

fundamental structures and processes of the human body, and

discover how to regenerate organs and tissues. It is by no means

clear that we can do that by 2100.

Nevertheless, every failed attempt to overcome death will get us

a step closer to the target, and that will inspire greater hopes and

encourage people to make even greater efforts. Though Google’s

Calico probably won’t solve death in time to make Google co-

founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page immortal, it will most

probably make significant discoveries about cell biology, genetic

medicines and human health. The next generation of Googlers

could therefore start their attack on death from new and better

positions. The scientists who cry immortality are like the boy who

cried wolf: sooner or later, the wolf actually comes. Hence even if we don’t achieve immortality in our lifetime, the

war against death is still likely to be the flagship project of the

coming century. When you take into account our belief in the

sanctity of human life, add the dynamics of the scientific

establishment, and top it all with the needs of the capitalist

economy, a relentless war against death seems to be inevitable. Our ideological commitment to human life will never allow us

simply to accept human death. As long as people die of something,

we will strive to overcome it. The scientific establishment and the capitalist economy will be

more than happy to underwrite this struggle. Most scientists and

bankers don’t care what they are working on, provided it gives

them an opportunity to make new discoveries and greater profits. Can anyone imagine a more exciting scientific challenge than

outsmarting death – or a more promising market than the market

of eternal youth?

If you are over forty, close your eyes for a minute

and try to remember the body you had at twenty-five. Not only

how it looked, but above all how it felt. If you could have that body

back, how much would you be willing to pay for it?

No doubt some

people would be happy to forgo the opportunity, but enough

customers would pay whatever it takes, constituting a well-nigh

infinite market. If all that is not enough, the fear of death ingrained in most

humans will give the war against death an irresistible momentum. As long as people assumed that death is inevitable, they trained

themselves from an early age to suppress the desire to live for ever, or harnessed it in favour of substitute goals. People want to

live for ever, so they compose an ‘immortal’ symphony, they strive

for ‘eternal glory’ in some war, or even sacrifice their lives so that

their souls will ‘enjoy everlasting bliss in paradise’.

A large part of

our artistic creativity, our political commitment and our religious

piety is fuelled by the fear of death. Woody Allen, who has made a fabulous career out of the fear of

death, was once asked if he hoped to live on for ever through the

silver screen. Allen answered that ‘I’d rather live on in my

apartment.’ He went on to add that ‘I don’t want to achieve

immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying.’

Eternal glory, nationalist remembrance ceremonies and dreams of

paradise are very poor substitutes for what humans like Allen

really want – not to die. Once people think (with or without good

reason) that they have a serious chance of escaping death, the

desire for life will refuse to go on pulling the rickety wagon of art,

ideology and religion, and will sweep forward like an avalanche. If you think that religious fanatics with burning eyes and

flowing beards are ruthless, just wait and see what elderly retail

moguls and ageing Hollywood starlets will do when they think the

elixir of life is within reach. If and when science makes significant

progress in the war against death, the real battle will shift from the

laboratories to the parliaments, courthouses and streets. Once the

scientific efforts are crowned with success, they will trigger bitter

political conflicts. All the wars and conflicts of history might turn

out to be but a pale prelude for the real struggle ahead of us: the

struggle for eternal youth. The Right to Happiness

The second big project on the human agenda will probably be to

find the key to happiness. Throughout history numerous thinkers,

prophets and ordinary people defined happiness rather than life

itself as the supreme good. In ancient Greece the philosopher

Epicurus explained that worshipping gods is a waste of time, that

there is no existence after death, and that happiness is the sole

purpose of life. Most people in ancient times rejected

Epicureanism, but today it has become the default view. Scepticism about the afterlife drives humankind to seek not only

immortality, but also earthly happiness. For who would like to live

for ever in eternal misery?

For Epicurus the pursuit of happiness was a personal quest. Modern thinkers, in contrast, tend to see it as a collective project. Without government planning, economic resources and scientific

research, individuals will not get far in their quest for happiness. If

your country is torn apart by war, if the economy is in crisis and if

health care is non-existent, you are likely to be miserable. At the

end of the eighteenth century the British philosopher Jeremy

Bentham declared that the supreme good is ‘the greatest

happiness of the greatest number’, and concluded that the sole

worthy aim of the state, the market and the scientific community

is to increase global happiness. Politicians should make peace,

business people should foster prosperity and scholars should

study nature, not for the greater glory of king, country or God –

but so that you and I could enjoy a happier life. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although many

paid lip service to Bentham’s vision, governments, corporations

and laboratories focused on more immediate and well-defined

aims. Countries measured their success by the size of their

territory, the increase in their population and the growth of their

GDP – not by the happiness of their citizens. Industrialised

nations such as Germany, France and Japan established gigantic

systems of education, health and welfare, yet these systems were

aimed to strengthen the nation rather than ensure individual well-

being. Schools were founded to produce skilful and obedient citizens

who would serve the nation loyally. At eighteen, youths needed to

be not only patriotic but also literate, so that they could read the

brigadier’s order of the day and draw up tomorrow’s battle plans. They had to know mathematics in order to calculate the shell’s

trajectory or crack the enemy’s secret code. They needed a

reasonable command of electrics, mechanics and medicine, in

order to operate wireless sets, drive tanks and take care of

wounded comrades. When they left the army they were expected

to serve the nation as clerks, teachers and engineers, building a modern economy and paying lots of taxes. The same went for the health system. At the end of the

nineteenth century countries such as France, Germany and Japan

began providing free health care for the masses. They financed

vaccinations for infants, balanced diets for children and physical

education for teenagers. They drained festering swamps,

exterminated mosquitoes and built centralised sewage systems. The aim wasn’t to make people happy, but to make the nation

stronger. The country needed sturdy soldiers and workers, healthy

women who would give birth to more soldiers and workers, and

bureaucrats who came to the office punctually at 8 a. m. instead of

lying sick at home. Even the welfare system was originally planned in the interest of

the nation rather than of needy individuals. When Otto von

Bismarck pioneered state pensions and social security in late

nineteenth-century Germany, his chief aim was to ensure the

loyalty of the citizens rather than to increase their well-being. You

fought for your country when you were eighteen, and paid your

taxes when you were forty, because you counted on the state to

take care of you when you were seventy.30

In 1776 the Founding Fathers of the United States established

the right to the pursuit of happiness as one of three unalienable

human rights, alongside the right to life and the right to liberty. It’s important to note, however, that the American Declaration of

Independence guaranteed the right to the pursuit of happiness,

not the right to happiness itself. Crucially, Thomas Jefferson did

not make the state responsible for its citizens’ happiness. Rather,

he sought only to limit the power of the state. The idea was to

reserve for individuals a private sphere of choice, free from state

supervision. If I think I’ll be happier marrying John rather than

Mary, living in San Francisco rather than Salt Lake City, and

working as a bartender rather than a dairy farmer, then it’s my

right to pursue happiness my way, and the state shouldn’t

intervene even if I make the wrong choice. Yet over the last few decades the tables have turned, and

Bentham’s vision has been taken far more seriously. People

increasingly believe that the immense systems established more

than a century ago to strengthen the nation should actually serve

the happiness and well-being of individual citizens. We are not

here to serve the state – it is here to serve us. The right to the

pursuit of happiness, originally envisaged as a restraint on state

power, has imperceptibly morphed into the right to happiness – as

if human beings have a natural right to be happy, and anything

which makes us dissatisfied is a violation of our basic human

rights, so the state should do something about it. In the twentieth century per capita GDP was perhaps the

supreme yardstick for evaluating national success. From this

perspective, Singapore, each of whose citizens produces on

average $56,000 worth of goods and services a year, is a more

successful country than Costa Rica, whose citizens produce only

$14,000 a year. But nowadays thinkers, politicians and even

economists are calling to supplement or even replace GDP with

GDH – gross domestic happiness. After all, what do people want?

They don’t want to produce. They want to be happy. Production is

important because it provides the material basis for happiness. But it is only the means, not the end. In one survey after another

Costa Ricans report far higher levels of life satisfaction than

Singaporeans. Would you rather be a highly productive but

dissatisfied Singaporean, or a less productive but satisfied Costa

Rican?

This kind of logic might drive humankind to make happiness its

second main goal for the twenty-first century. At first glance this

might seem a relatively easy project. If famine, plague and war are

disappearing, if humankind experiences unprecedented peace and

prosperity, and if life expectancy increases dramatically, surely all

that will make humans happy, right?

Wrong. When Epicurus defined happiness as the supreme good,

he warned his disciples that it is hard work to be happy. Material

achievements alone will not satisfy us for long. Indeed, the blind

pursuit of money, fame and pleasure will only make us miserable. Epicurus recommended, for example, to eat and drink in

moderation, and to curb one’s sexual appetites. In the long run, a

deep friendship will make us more content than a frenzied orgy. Epicurus outlined an entire ethic of dos and don’ts to guide people

along the treacherous path to happiness. Epicurus was apparently on to something. Being happy doesn’t

come easy. Despite our unprecedented achievements in the last

few decades, it is far from obvious that contemporary people are

significantly more satisfied than their ancestors in bygone years. Indeed, it is an ominous sign that despite higher prosperity,

comfort and security, the rate of suicide in the developed world is

also much higher than in traditional societies. In Peru, Guatemala, the Philippines and Albania – developing

countries suffering from poverty and political instability – about

one person in 100,000 commits suicide each year. In rich and

peaceful countries such as Switzerland, France, Japan and New

Zealand, twenty-five people per 100,000 take their own lives

annually. In 1985 most South Koreans were poor, uneducated and

tradition-bound, living under an authoritarian dictatorship. Today

South Korea is a leading economic power, its citizens are among

the best educated in the world, and it enjoys a stable and

comparatively liberal democratic regime. Yet whereas in 1985

about nine South Koreans per 100,000 killed themselves, today

the annual rate of suicide has more than tripled to thirty per

100,000.31

There are of course opposite and far more encouraging trends. Thus the drastic decrease in child mortality has surely brought an

increase in human happiness, and partially compensated people

for the stress of modern life. Still, even if we are somewhat happier

than our ancestors, the increase in our well-being is far less than

we might have expected. In the Stone Age, the average human had

at his or her disposal about 4,000 calories of energy per day. This

included not only food, but also the energy invested in preparing

tools, clothing, art and campfires. Today Americans use on

average 228,000 calories of energy per person per day, to feed not

only their stomachs but also their cars, computers, refrigerators

and televisions. 32 The average American thus uses sixty times more energy than the average Stone Age hunter-gatherer. Is the

average American sixty times happier?

We may well be sceptical

about such rosy views. And even if we have overcome many of yesterday’s miseries,

attaining positive happiness may be far more difficult than

abolishing downright suffering. It took just a piece of bread to

make a starving medieval peasant joyful. How do you bring joy to

a bored, overpaid and overweight engineer?

The second half of the

twentieth century was a golden age for the USA. Victory in the

Second World War, followed by an even more decisive victory in

the Cold War, turned it into the leading global superpower. Between 1950 and 2000 American GDP grew from $2 trillion to

$12 trillion. Real per capita income doubled. The newly invented

contraceptive pill made sex freer than ever. Women, gays, African

Americans and other minorities finally got a bigger slice of the

American pie. A flood of cheap cars, refrigerators, air conditioners,

vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, laundry machines, telephones,

televisions and computers changed daily life almost beyond

recognition. Yet studies have shown that American subjective

well-being levels in the 1990s remained roughly the same as they

were in the 1950s. 33

In Japan, average real income rose by a factor of five between

1958 and 1987, in one of the fastest economic booms of history. This avalanche of wealth, coupled with myriad positive and

negative changes in Japanese lifestyles and social relations, had

surprisingly little impact on Japanese subjective well-being levels. The Japanese in the 1990s were as satisfied – or dissatisfied – as

they were in the 1950s.34

It appears that our happiness bangs against some mysterious

glass ceiling that does not allow it to grow despite all our

unprecedented accomplishments. Even if we provide free food for

everybody, cure all diseases and ensure world peace, it won’t

necessarily shatter that glass ceiling. Achieving real happiness is

not going to be much easier than overcoming old age and death. The glass ceiling of happiness is held in place by two stout

pillars, one psychological, the other biological. On the

psychological level, happiness depends on expectations rather

than objective conditions. We don’t become satisfied by leading a

peaceful and prosperous existence. Rather, we become satisfied

when reality matches our expectations. The bad news is that as

conditions

improve,

expectations

balloon. Dramatic

improvements in conditions, as humankind has experienced in

recent decades, translate into greater expectations rather than

greater contentment. If we don’t do something about this, our future achievements too might leave us as dissatisfied as ever. On the biological level, both our expectations and our happiness

are determined by our biochemistry, rather than by our economic,

social or political situation. According to Epicurus, we are happy

when we feel pleasant sensations and are free from unpleasant

ones. Jeremy Bentham similarly maintained that nature gave

dominion over man to two masters – pleasure and pain – and they

alone determine everything we do, say and think. Bentham’s

successor, John Stuart Mill, explained that happiness is nothing

but pleasure and freedom from pain, and that beyond pleasure

and pain there is no good and no evil. Anyone who tries to deduce

good and evil from something else (such as the word of God, or the

national interest) is fooling you, and perhaps fooling himself too. 35

In the days of Epicurus such talk was blasphemous. In the days

of Bentham and Mill it was radical subversion. But in the early

twenty-first century this is scientific orthodoxy. According to the

life sciences, happiness and suffering are nothing but different

balances of bodily sensations. We never react to events in the

outside world, but only to sensations in our own bodies. Nobody

suffers because she lost her job, because she got divorced or

because the government went to war. The only thing that makes

people miserable is unpleasant sensations in their own bodies. Losing one’s job can certainly trigger depression, but depression

itself is a kind of unpleasant bodily sensation. A thousand things

may make us angry, but anger is never an abstraction. It is always

felt as a sensation of heat and tension in the body, which is what

makes anger so infuriating. Not for nothing do we say that we

‘burn’ with anger. Conversely, science says that nobody is ever made happy by

getting a promotion, winning the lottery or even finding true love. People are made happy by one thing and one thing only – pleasant

sensations in their bodies. Imagine that you are Mario Götze, the

attacking midfielder of the German football team in the 2014

World Cup Final against Argentina; 113 minutes have already

elapsed, without a goal being scored. Only seven minutes remain

before the dreaded penalty shoot-out. Some 75,000 excited fans

fill the Maracanã stadium in Rio, with countless millions anxiously

watching all over the world. You are a few metres from the

Argentinian goal when André Schürrle sends a magnificent pass in

your direction. You stop the ball with your chest, it drops down

towards your leg, you give it a kick in mid-air, and you see it fly

past the Argentinian goalkeeper and bury itself deep inside the

net. Goooooooal!

The stadium erupts like a volcano. Tens of

thousands of people roar like mad, your teammates are racing to

hug and kiss you, millions of people back home in Berlin and

Munich collapse in tears before the television screen. You are

ecstatic, but not because of the ball in the Argentinian net or the

celebrations going on in crammed Bavarian Biergartens. You are

actually reacting to the storm of sensations within you. Chills run

up and down your spine, waves of electricity wash over your body,

and it feels as if you are dissolving into millions of exploding

energy balls. You don’t have to score the winning goal in the World Cup Final

to feel such sensations. If you receive an unexpected promotion at

work, and start jumping for joy, you are reacting to the same kind

of sensations. The deeper parts of your mind know nothing about

football or about jobs. They know only sensations. If you get a

promotion, but for some reason don’t feel any pleasant sensations

– you will not feel satisfied. The opposite is also true. If you have

just been fired (or lost a decisive football match), but you are

experiencing very pleasant sensations (perhaps because you

popped some pill), you might still feel on top of the world. The bad news is that pleasant sensations quickly subside and

sooner or later turn into unpleasant ones. Even scoring the

winning goal in the World Cup Final doesn’t guarantee lifelong

bliss. In fact, it might all be downhill from there. Similarly, if last

year I received an unexpected promotion at work, I might still be

occupying that new position, but the very pleasant sensations I

experienced on hearing the news disappeared within hours. If I

want to feel those wonderful sensations again, I must get another

promotion. And another. And if I don’t get a promotion, I might

end up far more bitter and angry than if I had remained a humble

pawn. This is all the fault of evolution. For countless generations our

biochemical system adapted to increasing our chances of survival

and reproduction, not our happiness. The biochemical system

rewards actions conducive to survival and reproduction with

pleasant sensations. But these are only an ephemeral sales

gimmick. We struggle to get food and mates in order to avoid

unpleasant sensations of hunger and to enjoy pleasing tastes and

blissful orgasms. But nice tastes and blissful orgasms don’t last

very long, and if we want to feel them again we have to go out

looking for more food and mates. What might have happened if a rare mutation had created a

squirrel who, after eating a single nut, enjoys an everlasting

sensation of bliss?

Technically, this could actually be done by

rewiring the squirrel’s brain. Who knows, perhaps it really

happened to some lucky squirrel millions of years ago. But if so,

that squirrel enjoyed an extremely happy and extremely short life,

and that was the end of the rare mutation. For the blissful squirrel

would not have bothered to look for more nuts, let alone mates. The rival squirrels, who felt hungry again five minutes after eating

a nut, had much better chances of surviving and passing their

genes to the next generation. For exactly the same reason, the nuts

we humans seek to gather – lucrative jobs, big houses, good-

looking partners – seldom satisfy us for long. Some may say that this is not so bad, because it isn’t the goal

that makes us happy – it’s the journey. Climbing Mount Everest is

more satisfying than standing at the top; flirting and foreplay are

more exciting than having an orgasm; and conducting

groundbreaking lab experiments is more interesting than

receiving praise and prizes. Yet this hardly changes the picture. It

just indicates that evolution controls us with a broad range of

pleasures. Sometimes it seduces us with sensations of bliss and

tranquillity, while on other occasions it goads us forward with

thrilling sensations of elation and excitement. When an animal is looking for something that increases its

chances of survival and reproduction (e. g. food, partners or social

status), the brain produces sensations of alertness and excitement,

which drive the animal to make even greater efforts because they

are so very agreeable. In a famous experiment scientists connected

electrodes to the brains of several rats, enabling the animals to

create sensations of excitement simply by pressing a pedal. When

the rats were given a choice between tasty food and pressing the pedal, they preferred the pedal (much like kids preferring to play

video games rather than come down to dinner).

The rats pressed

the pedal again and again, until they collapsed from hunger and

exhaustion. 36 Humans too may prefer the excitement of the race to resting on the laurels of success. Yet what makes the race so

attractive is the exhilarating sensations that go along with it. Nobody would have wanted to climb mountains, play video games

or go on blind dates if such activities were accompanied solely by

unpleasant sensations of stress, despair or boredom. 37

Alas, the exciting sensations of the race are as transient as the

blissful sensations of victory. The Don Juan enjoying the thrill of a

one-night stand, the businessman enjoying biting his fingernails

watching the Dow Jones rise and fall, and the gamer enjoying

killing monsters on the computer screen will find no satisfaction

remembering yesterday’s adventures. Like the rats pressing the

pedal again and again, the Don Juans, business tycoons and

gamers need a new kick every day. Worse still, here too

expectations adapt to conditions, and yesterday’s challenges all

too quickly become today’s tedium. Perhaps the key to happiness

is neither the race nor the gold medal, but rather combining the

right doses of excitement and tranquillity; but most of us tend to

jump all the way from stress to boredom and back, remaining as

discontented with one as with the other. If science is right and our happiness is determined by our

biochemical system, then the only way to ensure lasting

contentment is by rigging this system. Forget economic growth,

social reforms and political revolutions: in order to raise global

happiness levels, we need to manipulate human biochemistry. And this is exactly what we have begun doing over the last few

decades. Fifty years ago psychiatric drugs carried a severe stigma. Today, that stigma has been broken. For better or worse, a

growing percentage of the population is taking psychiatric

medicines on a regular basis, not only to cure debilitating mental

illnesses, but also to face more mundane depressions and the

occasional blues. For example, increasing numbers of schoolchildren take

stimulants such as Ritalin. In 2011, 3.5 million American children

were taking medications for ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity

disorder).

In the UK the number rose from 92,000 in 1997 to

786,000 in 2012.38 The original aim had been to treat attention disorders, but today completely healthy kids take such

medications to improve their performance and live up to the

growing expectations of teachers and parents.39 Many object to this development and argue that the problem lies with the

education system rather than with the children. If pupils suffer

from attention disorders, stress and low grades, perhaps we ought

to blame outdated teaching methods, overcrowded classrooms and

an unnaturally fast tempo of life. Maybe we should modify the

schools rather than the kids?

It is interesting to see how the

arguments have evolved. People have been quarrelling about

education methods for thousands of years. Whether in ancient

China or Victorian Britain, everybody had his or her pet method,

and vehemently opposed all alternatives. Yet hitherto everybody

still agreed on one thing: in order to improve education, we need

to change the schools. Today, for the first time in history, at least

some people think it would be more efficient to change the pupils’

biochemistry.40

Armies are heading the same way: 12 per cent of American

soldiers in Iraq and 17 per cent of American soldiers in

Afghanistan took either sleeping pills or antidepressants to help

them deal with the pressure and distress of war. Fear, depression

and trauma are not caused by shells, booby traps or car bombs. They are caused by hormones, neurotransmitters and neural

networks. Two soldiers may find themselves shoulder to shoulder

in the same ambush; one will freeze in terror, lose his wits and

suffer from nightmares for years after the event; the other will

charge forward courageously and win a medal. The difference is in

the soldiers’ biochemistry, and if we find ways to control it we will

at one stroke produce both happier soldiers and more efficient

armies.41

The biochemical pursuit of happiness is also the number one

cause of crime in the world. In 2009 half of the inmates in US

federal prisons got there because of drugs; 38 per cent of Italian

prisoners were convicted of drug-related offences; 55 per cent of

inmates in the UK reported that they committed their crimes in

connection with either consuming or trading drugs. A 2001 report

found that 62 per cent of Australian convicts were under the

influence of drugs when committing the crime for which they were

incarcerated.42 People drink alcohol to forget, they smoke pot to feel peaceful, they take cocaine and methamphetamines to be

sharp and confident, whereas Ecstasy provides ecstatic sensations

and LSD sends you to meet Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. What

some people hope to get by studying, working or raising a family,

others try to obtain far more easily through the right dosage of

molecules. This is an existential threat to the social and economic

order, which is why countries wage a stubborn, bloody and

hopeless war on biochemical crime. The state hopes to regulate the biochemical pursuit of

happiness, separating ‘bad’ manipulations from ‘good’ ones. The

principle is clear: biochemical manipulations that strengthen

political stability, social order and economic growth are allowed

and even encouraged (e. g. those that calm hyperactive kids in

school, or drive anxious soldiers forward into battle).

Manipulations that threaten stability and growth are banned. But

each year new drugs are born in the research labs of universities,

pharmaceutical companies and criminal organisations, and the

needs of the state and the market also keep changing. As the

biochemical pursuit of happiness accelerates, so it will reshape

politics, society and economics, and it will become ever harder to

bring it under control. And drugs are just the beginning. In research labs experts are

already working on more sophisticated ways of manipulating

human biochemistry, such as sending direct electrical stimuli to

appropriate spots in the brain, or genetically engineering the

blueprints of our bodies. No matter the exact method, gaining

happiness through biological manipulation won’t be easy, for it

requires altering the fundamental patterns of life. But then it

wasn’t easy to overcome famine, plague and war either. —

It is far from certain that humankind should invest so much effort

in the biochemical pursuit of happiness. Some would argue that

happiness simply isn’t important enough, and that it is misguided

to regard individual satisfaction as the highest aim of human

society. Others may agree that happiness is indeed the supreme

good, yet would take issue with the biological definition of

happiness as the experience of pleasant sensations. Some 2,300 years ago Epicurus warned his disciples that

immoderate pursuit of pleasure is likely to make them miserable

rather than happy. A couple of centuries earlier Buddha had made

an even more radical claim, teaching that the pursuit of pleasant

sensations is in fact the very root of suffering. Such sensations are

just ephemeral and meaningless vibrations. Even when we

experience them, we don’t react to them with contentment; rather,

we just crave for more. Hence no matter how many blissful or

exciting sensations I may experience, they will never satisfy me. If I identify happiness with fleeting pleasant sensations, and

crave to experience more and more of them, I have no choice but

to pursue them constantly. When I finally get them, they quickly

disappear, and because the mere memory of past pleasures will

not satisfy me, I have to start all over again. Even if I continue this

pursuit for decades, it will never bring me any lasting

achievement; on the contrary, the more I crave these pleasant

sensations, the more stressed and dissatisfied I will become. To

attain real happiness, humans need to slow down the pursuit of

pleasant sensations, not accelerate it. This Buddhist view of happiness has a lot in common with the

biochemical view. Both agree that pleasant sensations disappear

as fast as they arise, and that as long as people crave pleasant

sensations without actually experiencing them, they remain

dissatisfied. However, this problem has two very different

solutions. The biochemical solution is to develop products and

treatments that will provide humans with an unending stream of

pleasant sensations, so we will never be without them. The

Buddha’s suggestion was to reduce our craving for pleasant

sensations, and not allow them to control our lives. According to

Buddha, we can train our minds to observe carefully how all

sensations constantly arise and pass. When the mind learns to see

our sensations for what they are – ephemeral and meaningless

vibrations – we lose interest in pursuing them. For what is the

point of running after something that disappears as fast as it arises?

At present, humankind has far greater interest in the

biochemical solution. No matter what monks in their Himalayan

caves or philosophers in their ivory towers say, for the capitalist

juggernaut, happiness is pleasure. Period. With each passing year

our tolerance for unpleasant sensations decreases, and our craving

for pleasant sensations increases. Both scientific research and

economic activity are geared to that end, each year producing

better painkillers, new ice-cream flavours, more comfortable

mattresses, and more addictive games for our smartphones, so

that we will not suffer a single boring moment while waiting for

the bus. All this is hardly enough, of course. Since Homo sapiens was not

adapted by evolution to experience constant pleasure, if that is

what humankind nevertheless wants, ice cream and smartphone

games will not do. It will be necessary to change our biochemistry

and re-engineer our bodies and minds. So we are working on that. You may debate whether it is good or bad, but it seems that the

second great project of the twenty-first century – to ensure global

happiness – will involve re-engineering Homo sapiens so that it

can enjoy everlasting pleasure. The Gods of Planet Earth

In seeking bliss and immortality humans are in fact trying to

upgrade themselves into gods. Not just because these are divine

qualities, but because in order to overcome old age and misery

humans will first have to acquire godlike control of their own

biological substratum. If we ever have the power to engineer death

and pain out of our system, that same power will probably be

sufficient to engineer our system in almost any manner we like,

and manipulate our organs, emotions and intelligence in myriad

ways. You could buy for yourself the strength of Hercules, the

sensuality of Aphrodite, the wisdom of Athena or the madness of

Dionysus if that is what you are into. Up till now increasing

human power relied mainly on upgrading our external tools. In

the future it may rely more on upgrading the human body and mind, or on merging directly with our tools. The upgrading of humans into gods may follow any of three

paths: biological engineering, cyborg engineering and the

engineering of non-organic beings. Biological engineering starts with the insight that we are far

from realising the full potential of organic bodies. For 4 billion

years natural selection has been tweaking and tinkering with these

bodies, so that we have gone from amoeba to reptiles to mammals

to Sapiens. Yet there is no reason to think that Sapiens is the last

station. Relatively small changes in genes, hormones and neurons

were enough to transform Homo erectus – who could produce

nothing more impressive than flint knives – into Homo sapiens,

who produces spaceships and computers. Who knows what might

be the outcome of a few more changes to our DNA, hormonal

system or brain structure. Bioengineering is not going to wait

patiently for natural selection to work its magic. Instead,

bioengineers will take the old Sapiens body, and intentionally

rewrite its genetic code, rewire its brain circuits, alter its

biochemical balance, and even grow entirely new limbs. They will

thereby create new godlings, who might be as different from us

Sapiens as we are different from Homo erectus. Cyborg engineering will go a step further, merging the organic

body with non-organic devices such as bionic hands, artificial

eyes, or millions of nano-robots that will navigate our

bloodstream, diagnose problems and repair damage. Such a

cyborg could enjoy abilities far beyond those of any organic body. For example, all parts of an organic body must be in direct contact

with one another in order to function. If an elephant’s brain is in

India, its eyes and ears in China and its feet in Australia, then this

elephant is most probably dead, and even if it is in some

mysterious sense alive, it cannot see, hear or walk. A cyborg, in

contrast, could exist in numerous places at the same time. A

cyborg doctor could perform emergency surgeries in Tokyo, in

Chicago and in a space station on Mars, without ever leaving her

Stockholm office. She will need only a fast Internet connection,

and a few pairs of bionic eyes and hands. On second thoughts, why

pairs?

Why not quartets?

Indeed, even those are actually

superfluous. Why should a cyborg doctor hold a surgeon’s scalpel

by hand, when she could connect her mind directly to the

instrument?

This may sound like science fiction, but it’s already a reality. Monkeys have recently learned to control bionic hands and feet

disconnected from their bodies, through electrodes implanted in

their brains. Paralysed patients are able to move bionic limbs or

operate computers by the power of thought alone. If you wish, you

can already remote-control electric devices in your house using an

electric ‘mind-reading’ helmet. The helmet requires no brain

implants. It functions by reading the electric signals passing

through your scalp. If you want to turn on the light in the kitchen,

you just wear the helmet, imagine some preprogrammed mental

sign (e. g. imagine your right hand moving), and the switch turns

on. You can buy such helmets online for a mere $400.

43

In early 2015 several hundred workers in the Epicenter high-

tech hub in Stockholm had microchips implanted into their hands. The chips are about the size of a grain of rice and store

personalised security information that enables workers to open

doors and operate photocopiers with a wave of their hand. Soon

they hope to make payments in the same way. One of the people

behind the initiative, Hannes Sjoblad, explained that ‘We already

interact with technology all the time. Today it’s a bit messy: we

need pin codes and passwords. Wouldn’t it be easy to just touch

with your hand?’44

Yet even cyborg engineering is relatively conservative, inasmuch

as it assumes that organic brains will go on being the command-

and-control centres of life. A bolder approach dispenses with

organic parts altogether, and hopes to engineer completely non-

organic beings. Neural networks will be replaced by intelligent

software, which could surf both the virtual and non-virtual worlds,

free from the limitations of organic chemistry. After 4 billion years

of wandering inside the kingdom of organic compounds, life will

break out into the vastness of the inorganic realm, and will take

shapes that we cannot envision even in our wildest dreams. After

all, our wildest dreams are still the product of organic chemistry. —

We don’t know where these paths might lead us, nor what our godlike descendants will look like. Foretelling the future was never

easy, and revolutionary biotechnologies make it even harder. For

as difficult as it is to predict the impact of new technologies in

fields like transportation, communication and energy,

technologies for upgrading humans pose a completely different

kind of challenge. Since they can be used to transform human

minds and desires, people possessing present-day minds and

desires by definition cannot fathom their implications. For thousands of years history was full of technological,

economic, social and political upheavals. Yet one thing remained

constant: humanity itself. Our tools and institutions are very

different from those of biblical times, but the deep structures of

the human mind remain the same. This is why we can still find

ourselves between the pages of the Bible, in the writings of

Confucius or within the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides. These classics were created by humans just like us, hence we feel

that they talk about us. In modern theatre productions, Oedipus,

Hamlet and Othello may wear jeans and T-shirts and have

Facebook accounts, but their emotional conflicts are the same as

in the original play. However, once technology enables us to re-engineer human

minds, Homo sapiens will disappear, human history will come to

an end and a completely new kind of process will begin, which

people like you and me cannot comprehend. Many scholars try to

predict how the world will look in the year 2100 or 2200.

This is a

waste of time. Any worthwhile prediction must take into account

the ability to re-engineer human minds, and this is impossible. There are many wise answers to the question, ‘What would people

with minds like ours do with biotechnology?’ Yet there are no good

answers to the question, ‘What would beings with a different kind

of mind do with biotechnology?’ All we can say is that people

similar to us are likely to use biotechnology to re-engineer their

own minds, and our present-day minds cannot grasp what might

happen next. Though the details are therefore obscure, we can nevertheless

be sure about the general direction of history. In the twenty-first

century, the third big project of humankind will be to acquire for

us divine powers of creation and destruction, and upgrade Homo

sapiens into Homo deus. This third project obviously subsumes

the first two projects, and is fuelled by them. We want the ability

to re-engineer our bodies and minds in order, above all, to escape

old age, death and misery, but once we have it, who knows what

else we might do with such ability?

So we may well think of the

new human agenda as consisting really of only one project (with

many branches): attaining divinity. If this sounds unscientific or downright eccentric, it is because

people often misunderstand the meaning of divinity. Divinity isn’t

a vague metaphysical quality. And it isn’t the same as

omnipotence. When speaking of upgrading humans into gods,

think more in terms of Greek gods or Hindu devas rather than the

omnipotent biblical sky father. Our descendants would still have

their foibles, kinks and limitations, just as Zeus and Indra had

theirs. But they could love, hate, create and destroy on a much

grander scale than us. Throughout history most gods were believed to enjoy not

omnipotence but rather specific super-abilities such as the ability

to design and create living beings; to transform their own bodies;

to control the environment and the weather; to read minds and to

communicate at a distance; to travel at very high speeds; and of

course to escape death and live indefinitely. Humans are in the

business of acquiring all these abilities, and then some. Certain

traditional abilities that were considered divine for many

millennia have today become so commonplace that we hardly

think about them. The average person now moves and

communicates across distances much more easily than the Greek,

Hindu or African gods of old. For example, the Igbo people of Nigeria believe that the creator

god Chukwu initially wanted to make people immortal. He sent a

dog to tell humans that when someone dies, they should sprinkle

ashes on the corpse, and the body will come back to life. Unfortunately, the dog was tired and he dallied on the way. The

impatient Chukwu then sent a sheep, telling her to make haste

with this important message. Alas, when the breathless sheep

reached her destination, she garbled the instructions, and told the

humans to bury their dead, thus making death permanent. This is

why to this day we humans must die. If only Chukwu had a Twitter

account instead of relying on laggard dogs and dim-witted sheep

to deliver his messages!

In ancient agricultural societies, most religions revolved not

around metaphysical questions and the afterlife, but around the

very mundane issue of increasing agricultural output. Thus the

Old Testament God never promises any rewards or punishments

after death. He instead tells the people of Israel that ‘If you

carefully observe the commands that I’m giving you \[…] then I will

send rain on the land in its season \[…] and you’ll gather grain,

wine, and oil. I will provide grass in the fields for your livestock,

and you’ll eat and be satisfied. Be careful!

Otherwise, your hearts

will deceive you and you will turn away to serve other gods and

worship them. The wrath of God will burn against you so that he

will restrain the heavens and it won’t rain. The ground won’t yield

its produce and you’ll be swiftly destroyed from the good land that

the Lord is about to give you’ (Deuteronomy 11:13–17).

Scientists

today can do much better than the Old Testament God. Thanks to

artificial fertilisers, industrial insecticides and genetically

modified crops, agricultural production nowadays outstrips the

highest expectations ancient farmers had of their gods. And the

parched state of Israel no longer fears that some angry deity will

restrain the heavens and stop all rain – for the Israelis have

recently built a huge desalination plant on the shores of the

Mediterranean, so they can now get all their drinking water from

the sea. So far we have competed with the gods of old by creating better

and better tools. In the not too distant future, we might create

superhumans who will outstrip the ancient gods not in their tools,

but in their bodily and mental faculties. If and when we get there,

however, divinity will become as mundane as cyberspace – a

wonder of wonders that we just take for granted. We can be quite certain that humans will make a bid for

divinity, because humans have many reasons to desire such an

upgrade, and many ways to achieve it. Even if one promising path

turns out to be a dead end, alternative routes will remain open. For example, we may discover that the human genome is far too

complicated for serious manipulation, but this will not prevent the

development of brain–computer interfaces, nano-robots or

artificial intelligence. No need to panic, though. At least not immediately. Upgrading

Sapiens will be a gradual historical process rather than a

Hollywood apocalypse. Homo sapiens is not going to be

exterminated by a robot revolt. Rather, Homo sapiens is likely to

upgrade itself step by step, merging with robots and computers in

the process, until our descendants will look back and realise that

they are no longer the kind of animal that wrote the Bible, built

the Great Wall of China and laughed at Charlie Chaplin’s antics. This will not happen in a day, or a year. Indeed, it is already

happening right now, through innumerable mundane actions. Every day millions of people decide to grant their smartphone a

bit more control over their lives or try a new and more effective

antidepressant drug. In pursuit of health, happiness and power,

humans will gradually change first one of their features and then

another, and another, until they will no longer be human. Can Someone Please Hit the Brakes?

Calm explanations aside, many people panic when they hear of

such possibilities. They are happy to follow the advice of their

smartphones or to take whatever drug the doctor prescribes, but

when they hear of upgraded superhumans, they say: ‘I hope I will

be dead before that happens.’ A friend once told me that what she

fears most about growing old is becoming irrelevant, turning into

a nostalgic old woman who cannot understand the world around

her, or contribute much to it. This is what we fear collectively, as a

species, when we hear of superhumans. We sense that in such a

world, our identity, our dreams and even our fears will be

irrelevant, and we will have nothing more to contribute. Whatever

you are today – be it a devout Hindu cricket player or an aspiring

lesbian journalist – in an upgraded world you will feel like a

Neanderthal hunter in Wall Street. You won’t belong. The Neanderthals didn’t have to worry about the Nasdaq, since

they were shielded from it by tens of thousands of years. Nowadays, however, our world of meaning might collapse within

decades. You cannot count on death to save you from becoming completely irrelevant. Even if gods don’t walk our streets by 2100,

the attempt to upgrade Homo sapiens is likely to change the world

beyond recognition in this century. Scientific research and

technological developments are moving at a far faster rate than

most of us can grasp. If you speak with the experts, many of them will tell you that we

are still very far away from genetically engineered babies or

human-level artificial intelligence. But most experts think on a

timescale of academic grants and college jobs. Hence, ‘very far

away’ may mean twenty years, and ‘never’ may denote no more

than fifty. I still remember the day I first came across the Internet. It was

back in 1993, when I was in high school. I went with a couple of

buddies to visit our friend Ido (who is now a computer scientist).

We wanted to play table tennis. Ido was already a huge computer

fan, and before opening the ping-pong table he insisted on

showing us the latest wonder. He connected the phone cable to his

computer and pressed some keys. For a minute all we could hear

were squeaks, shrieks and buzzes, and then silence. It didn’t

succeed. We mumbled and grumbled, but Ido tried again. And

again. And again. At last he gave a whoop and announced that he

had managed to connect his computer to the central computer at

the nearby university. ‘And what’s there, on the central computer?’

we asked. ‘Well,’ he admitted, ‘there’s nothing there yet. But you

could put all kinds of things there.’ ‘Like what?’ we questioned. ‘I

don’t know,’ he said, ‘all kinds of things.’ It didn’t sound very

promising. We went to play ping-pong, and for the following

weeks enjoyed a new pastime, making fun of Ido’s ridiculous idea. That was less than twenty-five years ago (at the time of writing).

Who knows what will come to pass twenty-five years from now?

That’s why more and more individuals, organisations,

corporations and governments are taking very seriously the quest

for immortality, happiness and godlike powers. Insurance

companies, pension funds, health systems and finance ministries

are already aghast at the jump in life expectancy. People are living

much longer than expected, and there is not enough money to pay

for their pensions and medical treatment. As seventy threatens to

become the new forty, experts are calling to raise the retirement age, and to restructure the entire job market. When people realise how fast we are rushing towards the great

unknown, and that they cannot count even on death to shield

them from it, their reaction is to hope that somebody will hit the

brakes and slow us down. But we cannot hit the brakes, for several

reasons. Firstly, nobody knows where the brakes are. While some experts

are familiar with developments in one field, such as artificial

intelligence, nanotechnology, big data or genetics, no one is an

expert on everything. No one is therefore capable of connecting all

the dots and seeing the full picture. Different fields influence one

another in such intricate ways that even the best minds cannot

fathom how breakthroughs in artificial intelligence might impact

nanotechnology, or vice versa. Nobody can absorb all the latest

scientific discoveries, nobody can predict how the global economy

will look in ten years, and nobody has a clue where we are heading

in such a rush. Since no one understands the system any more, no

one can stop it. Secondly, if we somehow succeed in hitting the brakes, our

economy will collapse, along with our society. As explained in a

later chapter, the modern economy needs constant and indefinite

growth in order to survive. If growth ever stops, the economy

won’t settle down to some cosy equilibrium; it will fall to pieces. That’s why capitalism encourages us to seek immortality,

happiness and divinity. There’s a limit to how many shoes we can

wear, how many cars we can drive and how many skiing holidays

we can enjoy. An economy built on everlasting growth needs

endless projects – just like the quests for immortality, bliss and

divinity. Well, if we need limitless projects, why not settle for bliss and

immortality, and at least put aside the frightening quest for

superhuman powers?

Because it is inextricable from the other

two. When you develop bionic legs that enable paraplegics to walk

again, you can also use the same technology to upgrade healthy

people. When you discover how to stop memory loss among older

people, the same treatments might enhance the memory of the

young. No clear line separates healing from upgrading. Medicine

almost always begins by saving people from falling below the

norm, but the same tools and know-how can then be used to

surpass the norm. Viagra began life as a treatment for blood-

pressure problems. To the surprise and delight of Pfizer, it

transpired that Viagra can also cure impotence. It enabled

millions of men to regain normal sexual abilities; but soon enough

men who had no impotence problems in the first place began

using the same pill to surpass the norm, and acquire sexual

powers they never had before.45

What happens to particular drugs can also happen to entire

fields of medicine. Modern plastic surgery was born in the First

World War, when Harold Gillies began treating facial injuries in

the Aldershot military hospital.46 When the war was over,

surgeons discovered that the same techniques could also turn

perfectly healthy but ugly noses into more beautiful specimens. Though plastic surgery continued to help the sick and wounded, it

devoted increasing attention to upgrading the healthy. Nowadays

plastic surgeons make millions in private clinics whose explicit

and sole aim is to upgrade the healthy and beautify the wealthy.47

The same might happen with genetic engineering. If a

billionaire openly stated that he intended to engineer super-smart

offspring, imagine the public outcry. But it won’t happen like that. We are more likely to slide down a slippery slope. It begins with

parents whose genetic profile puts their children at high risk of

deadly genetic diseases. So they perform in vitro fertilisation, and

test the DNA of the fertilised egg. If everything is in order, all well

and good. But if the DNA test discovers the dreaded mutations –

the embryo is destroyed. Yet why take a chance by fertilising just one egg?

Better fertilise

several, so that even if three or four are defective there is at least

one good embryo. When this in vitro selection procedure becomes

acceptable and cheap enough, its usage may spread. Mutations are

a ubiquitous risk. All people carry in their DNA some harmful

mutations and less-than-optimal alleles. Sexual reproduction is a

lottery. (A famous – and probably apocryphal – anecdote tells of a

meeting in 1923 between Nobel Prize laureate Anatole France and

the beautiful and talented dancer Isadora Duncan. Discussing the

then popular eugenics movement, Duncan said, ‘Just imagine a

child with my beauty and your brains!’ France responded, ‘Yes,

but imagine a child with my beauty and your brains.’) Well then,

why not rig the lottery?

Fertilise several eggs, and choose the one

with the best combination. Once stem-cell research enables us to

create an unlimited supply of human embryos on the cheap, you

can select your optimal baby from among hundreds of candidates,

all carrying your DNA, all perfectly natural, and none requiring

any futuristic genetic engineering. Iterate this procedure for a few

generations, and you could easily end up with superhumans (or a

creepy dystopia).

But what if after fertilising even numerous eggs, you find that all

of them contain some deadly mutations?

Should you destroy all

the embryos?

Instead of doing that, why not replace the

problematic genes?

A breakthrough case involves mitochondrial

DNA. Mitochondria are tiny organelles within human cells, which

produce the energy used by the cell. They have their own set of

genes, which is completely separate from the DNA in the cell’s

nucleus. Defective mitochondrial DNA leads to various

debilitating or even deadly diseases. It is technically feasible with

current in vitro technology to overcome mitochondrial genetic

diseases by creating a ‘three-parent baby’.

The baby’s nuclear DNA

comes from two parents, while the mitochondrial DNA comes

from a third person. In 2000 Sharon Saarinen from West

Bloomfield, Michigan, gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Alana. Alana’s nuclear DNA came from her mother, Sharon, and her

father, Paul, but her mitochondrial DNA came from another

woman. From a purely technical perspective, Alana has three

biological parents. A year later, in 2001, the US government

banned this treatment, due to safety and ethical concerns.48

However, on 3 February 2015 the British Parliament voted in

favour of the so-called ‘three-parent embryo’ law, allowing this

treatment – and related research – in the UK.49 At present it is technically unfeasible, and illegal, to replace nuclear DNA, but if

and when the technical difficulties are solved, the same logic that

favoured the replacement of defective mitochondrial DNA would

seem to warrant doing the same with nuclear DNA. Following selection and replacement, the next potential step is

amendment. Once it becomes possible to amend deadly genes,

why go through the hassle of inserting some foreign DNA, when

you can just rewrite the code and turn a dangerous mutant gene

into its benign version?

Then we might start using the same

mechanism to fix not just lethal genes, but also those responsible

for less deadly illnesses, for autism, for stupidity and for obesity. Who would like his or her child to suffer from any of these?

Suppose a genetic test indicates that your would-be daughter will

in all likelihood be smart, beautiful and kind – but will suffer from

chronic depression. Wouldn’t you want to save her from years of

misery by a quick and painless intervention in the test tube?

And while you are at it, why not give the child a little push?

Life

is hard and challenging even for healthy people. So it would surely

come in handy if the little girl had a stronger-than-normal

immune system, an above-average memory or a particularly sunny

disposition. And even if you don’t want that for your child – what

if the neighbours are doing it for theirs?

Would you have your

child lag behind?

And if the government forbids all citizens from

engineering their babies, what if the North Koreans are doing it

and producing amazing geniuses, artists and athletes that far

outperform ours?

And like that, in baby steps, we are on our way

to a genetic child catalogue. Healing is the initial justification for every upgrade. Find some

professors experimenting in genetic engineering or brain–

computer interfaces, and ask them why they are engaged in such

research. In all likelihood they would reply that they are doing it to

cure disease. ‘With the help of genetic engineering,’ they would

explain, ‘we could defeat cancer. And if we could connect brains

and computers directly, we could cure schizophrenia.’ Maybe, but

it will surely not end there. When we successfully connect brains

and computers, will we use this technology only to cure

schizophrenia?

If anybody really believes this, then they may know

a great deal about brains and computers, but far less about the

human psyche and human society. Once you achieve a momentous

breakthrough, you cannot restrict its use to healing and

completely forbid using it for upgrading. Of course humans can and do limit their use of new

technologies. Thus the eugenics movement fell from favour after

the Second World War, and though trade in human organs is now

both possible and potentially very lucrative, it has so far remained

a peripheral activity. Designer babies may one day become as

technologically feasible as murdering people to harvest their

organs – yet remain as peripheral. Just as we have escaped the clutches of Chekhov’s Law in

warfare, we can also escape them in other fields of action. Some

guns appear on stage without ever being fired. This is why it is so

vital to think about humanity’s new agenda. Precisely because we

have some choice regarding the use of new technologies, we had

better understand what is happening and make up our minds

about it before it makes up our minds for us. The Paradox of Knowledge

The prediction that in the twenty-first century humankind is likely

to aim for immortality, bliss and divinity may anger, alienate or

frighten any number of people, so a few clarifications are in order. Firstly, this is not what most individuals will actually do in the

twenty-first century. It is what humankind as a collective will do. Most people will probably play only a minor role, if any, in these

projects. Even if famine, plague and war become less prevalent,

billions of humans in developing countries and seedy

neighbourhoods will continue to deal with poverty, illness and

violence even as the elites are already reaching for eternal youth

and godlike powers. This seems patently unjust. One could argue

that as long as there is a single child dying from malnutrition or a

single adult killed in drug-lord warfare, humankind should focus

all its efforts on combating these woes. Only once the last sword is

beaten into a ploughshare should we turn our minds to the next

big thing. But history doesn’t work like that. Those living in

palaces have always had different agendas to those living in

shacks, and that is unlikely to change in the twenty-first century. Secondly, this is a historical prediction, not a political

manifesto. Even if we disregard the fate of slum-dwellers, it is far

from clear that we should be aiming at immortality, bliss and divinity. Adopting these particular projects might be a big mistake. But history is full of big mistakes. Given our past record and our

current values, we are likely to reach out for bliss, divinity and

immortality – even if it kills us. Thirdly, reaching out is not the same as obtaining. History is

often shaped by exaggerated hopes. Twentieth-century Russian

history was largely shaped by the communist attempt to overcome

inequality, but it didn’t succeed. My prediction is focused on what

humankind will try to achieve in the twenty-first century – not

what it will succeed in achieving. Our future economy, society and

politics will be shaped by the attempt to overcome death. It does

not follow that in 2100 humans will be immortal. Fourthly, and most importantly, this prediction is less of a

prophecy and more a way of discussing our present choices. If the

discussion makes us choose differently, so that the prediction is

proven wrong, all the better. What’s the point of making

predictions if they cannot change anything?

Some complex systems, such as the weather, are oblivious to

our predictions. The process of human development, in contrast,

reacts to them. Indeed, the better our forecasts, the more reactions

they engender. Hence paradoxically, as we accumulate more data

and increase our computing power, events become wilder and

more unexpected. The more we know, the less we can predict. Imagine, for example, that one day experts decipher the basic laws

of the economy. Once this happens, banks, governments, investors

and customers will begin to use this new knowledge to act in novel

ways, and gain an edge over their competitors. For what is the use

of new knowledge if it doesn’t lead to novel behaviours?

Alas, once

people change the way they behave, the economic theories become

obsolete. We may know how the economy functioned in the past –

but we no longer understand how it functions in the present, not

to mention the future. This is not a hypothetical example. In the middle of the

nineteenth century Karl Marx reached brilliant economic insights. Based on these insights he predicted an increasingly violent

conflict between the proletariat and the capitalists, ending with

the inevitable victory of the former and the collapse of the

capitalist system. Marx was certain that the revolution would start

in countries that spearheaded the Industrial Revolution – such as

Britain, France and the USA – and spread to the rest of the world. Marx forgot that capitalists know how to read. At first only a

handful of disciples took Marx seriously and read his writings. But

as these socialist firebrands gained adherents and power, the

capitalists became alarmed. They too perused Das Kapital,

adopting many of the tools and insights of Marxist analysis. In the

twentieth century everybody from street urchins to presidents

embraced a Marxist approach to economics and history. Even

diehard capitalists who vehemently resisted the Marxist prognosis

still made use of the Marxist diagnosis. When the CIA analysed the

situation in Vietnam or Chile in the 1960s, it divided society into

classes. When Nixon or Thatcher looked at the globe, they asked

themselves who controls the vital means of production. From 1989

to 1991 George Bush oversaw the demise of the Evil Empire of

communism, only to be defeated in the 1992 elections by Bill

Clinton. Clinton’s winning campaign strategy was summarised in

the motto: ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ Marx could not have said it

better. As people adopted the Marxist diagnosis, they changed their

behaviour accordingly. Capitalists in countries such as Britain and

France strove to better the lot of the workers, strengthen their

national consciousness and integrate them into the political

system. Consequently when workers began voting in elections and

Labour gained power in one country after another, the capitalists

could still sleep soundly in their beds. As a result, Marx’s

predictions came to naught. Communist revolutions never

engulfed the leading industrial powers such as Britain, France and

the USA, and the dictatorship of the proletariat was consigned to

the dustbin of history. This is the paradox of historical knowledge. Knowledge that

does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes

behaviour quickly loses its relevance. The more data we have and

the better we understand history, the faster history alters its

course, and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated. Centuries ago human knowledge increased slowly, so politics

and economics changed at a leisurely pace too. Today our

knowledge is increasing at breakneck speed, and theoretically we

should understand the world better and better. But the very

opposite is happening. Our new-found knowledge leads to faster

economic, social and political changes; in an attempt to

understand what is happening, we accelerate the accumulation of

knowledge, which leads only to faster and greater upheavals. Consequently we are less and less able to make sense of the

present or forecast the future. In 1016 it was relatively easy to

predict how Europe would look in 1050.

Sure, dynasties might fall,

unknown raiders might invade, and natural disasters might strike;

yet it was clear that in 1050 Europe would still be ruled by kings

and priests, that it would be an agricultural society, that most of

its inhabitants would be peasants, and that it would continue to

suffer greatly from famines, plagues and wars. In contrast, in 2016

we have no idea how Europe will look in 2050.

We cannot say

what kind of political system it will have, how its job market will

be structured, or even what kind of bodies its inhabitants will

possess. A Brief History of Lawns

If history doesn’t follow any stable rules, and if we cannot predict

its future course, why study it?

It often seems that the chief aim of

science is to predict the future – meteorologists are expected to

forecast whether tomorrow will bring rain or sunshine;

economists should know whether devaluing the currency will avert

or precipitate an economic crisis; good doctors foresee whether

chemotherapy or radiation therapy will be more successful in

curing lung cancer. Similarly, historians are asked to examine the

actions of our ancestors so that we can repeat their wise decisions

and avoid their mistakes. But it almost never works like that

because the present is just too different from the past. It is a waste

of time to study Hannibal’s tactics in the Second Punic War so as

to copy them in the Third World War. What worked well in cavalry

battles will not necessarily be of much benefit in cyber warfare. Science is not just about predicting the future, though. Scholars

in all fields often seek to broaden our horizons, thereby opening

before us new and unknown futures. This is especially true of

history. Though historians occasionally try their hand at prophecy

(without notable success), the study of history aims above all to

make us aware of possibilities we don’t normally consider. Historians study the past not in order to repeat it, but in order to

be liberated from it. Each and every one of us has been born into a given historical

reality, ruled by particular norms and values, and managed by a

unique economic and political system. We take this reality for

granted, thinking it is natural, inevitable and immutable. We

forget that our world was created by an accidental chain of events,

and that history shaped not only our technology, politics and

society, but also our thoughts, fears and dreams. The cold hand of

the past emerges from the grave of our ancestors, grips us by the

neck and directs our gaze towards a single future. We have felt

that grip from the moment we were born, so we assume that it is a

natural and inescapable part of who we are. Therefore we seldom

try to shake ourselves free, and envision alternative futures. Studying history aims to loosen the grip of the past. It enables

us to turn our head this way and that, and begin to notice

possibilities that our ancestors could not imagine, or didn’t want

us to imagine. By observing the accidental chain of events that led

us here, we realise how our very thoughts and dreams took shape

– and we can begin to think and dream differently. Studying

history will not tell us what to choose, but at least it gives us more

options. Movements seeking to change the world often begin by

rewriting history, thereby enabling people to reimagine the future. Whether you want workers to go on a general strike, women to

take possession of their bodies, or oppressed minorities to

demand political rights – the first step is to retell their history. The new history will explain that ‘our present situation is neither

natural nor eternal. Things were different once. Only a string of

chance events created the unjust world we know today. If we act

wisely, we can change that world, and create a much better one.’

This is why Marxists recount the history of capitalism; why

feminists study the formation of patriarchal societies; and why

African Americans commemorate the horrors of the slave trade. They aim not to perpetuate the past, but rather to be liberated from it. What’s true of grand social revolutions is equally true at the

micro level of everyday life. A young couple building a new home

for themselves may ask the architect for a nice lawn in the front

yard. Why a lawn?

‘Because lawns are beautiful,’ the couple might

explain. But why do they think so?

It has a history behind it. Stone Age hunter-gatherers did not cultivate grass at the

entrance to their caves. No green meadow welcomed the visitors

to the Athenian Acropolis, the Roman Capitol, the Jewish Temple

in Jerusalem or the Forbidden City in Beijing. The idea of

nurturing a lawn at the entrance to private residences and public

buildings was born in the castles of French and English aristocrats

in the late Middle Ages. In the early modern age this habit struck

deep roots, and became the trademark of nobility. Well-kept lawns demanded land and a lot of work, particularly

in the days before lawnmowers and automatic water sprinklers. In

exchange, they produce nothing of value. You can’t even graze

animals on them, because they would eat and trample the grass. Poor peasants could not afford wasting precious land or time on

lawns. The neat turf at the entrance to chateaux was accordingly a

status symbol nobody could fake. It boldly proclaimed to every

passerby: ‘I am so rich and powerful, and I have so many acres

and serfs, that I can afford this green extravaganza.’ The bigger

and neater the lawn, the more powerful the dynasty. If you came

to visit a duke and saw that his lawn was in bad shape, you knew

he was in trouble.50

The precious lawn was often the setting for important

celebrations and social events, and at all other times was strictly

off-limits. To this day, in countless palaces, government buildings

and public venues a stern sign commands people to ‘Keep off the

grass’.

In my former Oxford college the entire quad was formed of

a large, attractive lawn, on which we were allowed to walk or sit on

only one day a year. On any other day, woe to the poor student

whose foot desecrated the holy turf. Royal palaces and ducal chateaux turned the lawn into a symbol

of authority. When in the late modern period kings were toppled

and dukes were guillotined, the new presidents and prime

ministers kept the lawns. Parliaments, supreme courts,

presidential residences and other public buildings increasingly

proclaimed their power in row upon row of neat green blades. Simultaneously, lawns conquered the world of sports. For

thousands of years humans played on almost every conceivable

kind of ground, from ice to desert. Yet in the last two centuries,

the really important games – such as football and tennis – are

played on lawns. Provided, of course, you have money. In the

favelas of Rio de Janeiro the future generation of Brazilian

football is kicking makeshift balls over sand and dirt. But in the

wealthy suburbs, the sons of the rich are enjoying themselves over

meticulously kept lawns. Humans thereby came to identify lawns with political power,

social status and economic wealth. No wonder that in the

nineteenth century the rising bourgeoisie enthusiastically adopted

the lawn. At first only bankers, lawyers and industrialists could

afford such luxuries at their private residences. Yet when the

Industrial Revolution broadened the middle class and gave rise to

the lawn-mower and then the automatic sprinkler, millions of

families could suddenly afford a home turf. In American suburbia

a spick-and-span lawn switched from being a rich person’s luxury

into a middle-class necessity. This was when a new rite was added to the suburban liturgy. After Sunday morning service at church, many people devotedly

mowed their lawns. Walking along the streets, you could quickly

ascertain the wealth and position of every family by the size and

quality of their turf. There is no surer sign that something is wrong

at the Joneses’ than a neglected lawn in the front yard. Grass is

nowadays the most widespread crop in the USA after maize and

wheat, and the lawn industry (plants, manure, mowers, sprinklers,

gardeners) accounts for billions of dollars every year.51

Credit 1.6

6.

The lawns of Château de Chambord, in the Loire Valley. King François I built

it in the early sixteenth century. This is where it all began. Credit 1.7

7.

A welcoming ceremony in honour of Queen Elizabeth II – on the White

House lawn. Credit 1.8

8.

Mario Götze scores the decisive goal, giving Germany the World Cup in 2014

– on the Maracanã lawn. Credit 1.9

9.

Petit-bourgeois paradise. The lawn did not remain solely a European or American craze. Even people who have never visited the Loire Valley see US

presidents giving speeches on the White House lawn, important

football games played out in green stadiums, and Homer and Bart

Simpson quarrelling about whose turn it is to mow the grass. People all over the globe associate lawns with power, money and

prestige. The lawn has therefore spread far and wide, and is now

set to conquer even the heart of the Muslim world. Qatar’s newly

built Museum of Islamic Art is flanked by magnificent lawns that

hark back to Louis XIV’s Versailles much more than to Haroun al-

Rashid’s Baghdad. They were designed and constructed by an

American company, and their more than 100,000 square metres

of grass – in the midst of the Arabian desert – require a

stupendous amount of fresh water each day to stay green. Meanwhile, in the suburbs of Doha and Dubai, middle-class

families pride themselves on their lawns. If it were not for the

white robes and black hijabs, you could easily think you were in

the Midwest rather than the Middle East. Having read this short history of the lawn, when you now come

to plan your dream house you might think twice about having a

lawn in the front yard. You are of course still free to do it. But you

are also free to shake off the cultural cargo bequeathed to you by

European dukes, capitalist moguls and the Simpsons – and

imagine for yourself a Japanese rock garden, or some altogether

new creation. This is the best reason to learn history: not in order

to predict the future, but to free yourself of the past and imagine

alternative destinies. Of course this is not total freedom – we

cannot avoid being shaped by the past. But some freedom is better

than none. A Gun in Act I

All the predictions that pepper this book are no more than an

attempt to discuss present-day dilemmas, and an invitation to

change the future. Predicting that humankind will try to gain

immortality, bliss and divinity is much like predicting that people

building a house will want a lawn in their front yard. It sounds

very likely. But once you say it out loud, you can begin to think about alternatives. People are taken aback by dreams of immortality and divinity

not because they sound so foreign and unlikely, but because it is

uncommon to be so blunt. Yet when they start thinking about it,

most people realise that it actually makes a lot of sense. Despite

the technological hubris of these dreams, ideologically they are old

news. For 300 years the world has been dominated by humanism,

which sanctifies the life, happiness and power of Homo sapiens. The attempt to gain immortality, bliss and divinity merely takes

the long-standing humanist ideals to their logical conclusion. It

places openly on the table what we have for a long time kept

hidden under our napkin. Yet I would now like to place something else on the table: a gun. A gun that appears in Act I, to fire in Act III. The following

chapters discuss how humanism – the worship of humankind –

has conquered the world. Yet the rise of humanism also contains

the seeds of its downfall. While the attempt to upgrade humans

into gods takes humanism to its logical conclusion, it

simultaneously exposes humanism’s inherent flaws. If you start

with a flawed ideal, you often appreciate its defects only when the

ideal is close to realisation. We can already see this process at work in geriatric hospital

wards. Due to an uncompromising humanist belief in the sanctity

of human life, we keep people alive till they reach such a pitiful

state that we are forced to ask, ‘What exactly is so sacred here?’

Due to similar humanist beliefs, in the twenty-first century we are

likely to push humankind as a whole beyond its limits. The same

technologies that can upgrade humans into gods might also make

humans irrelevant. For example, computers powerful enough to

understand and overcome the mechanisms of ageing and death

will probably also be powerful enough to replace humans in any

and all tasks. Hence the real agenda in the twenty-first century is going to be

far more complicated than what this long opening chapter has

suggested. At present it might seem that immortality, bliss and

divinity occupy the top slots on our agenda. But once we come

nearer to achieving these goals the resulting upheavals are likely

to deflect us towards entirely different destinations. The future described in this chapter is merely the future of the past – i. e. a

future based on the ideas and hopes that dominated the world for

the last 300 years. The real future – i. e. a future born of the new

ideas and hopes of the twenty-first century – might be completely

different. To understand all this we need to go back and investigate who

Homo sapiens really is, how humanism became the dominant

world religion and why attempting to fulfil the humanist dream is

likely to cause its disintegration. This is the basic plan of the book. The first part of the book looks at the relationship between

Homo sapiens and other animals, in an attempt to comprehend

what makes our species so special. Some readers may wonder why

animals receive so much attention in a book about the future. In

my view, you cannot have a serious discussion about the nature

and future of humankind without beginning with our fellow

animals. Homo sapiens does its best to forget the fact, but it is an

animal. And it is doubly important to remember our origins at a

time when we seek to turn ourselves into gods. No investigation of

our divine future can ignore our own animal past, or our relations

with other animals – because the relationship between humans

and animals is the best model we have for future relations between

superhumans and humans. You want to know how super-

intelligent cyborgs might treat ordinary flesh-and-blood humans?

Better start by investigating how humans treat their less

intelligent animal cousins. It’s not a perfect analogy, of course, but

it is the best archetype we can actually observe rather than just

imagine. Based on the conclusions of this first part, the second part of the

book examines the bizarre world Homo sapiens has created in the

last millennia, and the path that took us to our present crossroads. How did Homo sapiens come to believe in the humanist creed,

according to which the universe revolves around humankind and

humans are the source of all meaning and authority?

What are the

economic, social and political implications of this creed?

How

does it shape our daily life, our art and our most secret desires?

The third and last part of the book comes back to the early

twenty-first century. Based on a much deeper understanding of

humankind and of the humanist creed, it describes our current predicament and our possible futures. Why might attempts to

fulfil humanism result in its downfall?

How would the search for

immortality, bliss and divinity shake the foundations of our belief

in humanity?

What signs foretell this cataclysm, and how is it

reflected in the day-to-day decisions each of us makes?

And if

humanism is indeed in danger, what might take its place?

This

part of the book does not consist of mere philosophising or idle

future-telling. Rather, it scrutinises our smartphones, dating

practices and job market for clues of things to come. For humanist true-believers, all this may sound very pessimistic

and depressing. But it is best not to jump to conclusions. History

has witnessed the rise and fall of many religions, empires and

cultures. Such upheavals are not necessarily bad. Humanism has

dominated the world for 300 years, which is not such a long time. The pharaohs ruled Egypt for 3,000 years, and the popes

dominated Europe for a millennium. If you told an Egyptian in the

time of Ramses II that one day the pharaohs will be gone, he

would probably have been aghast. ‘How can we live without a

pharaoh?

Who will ensure order, peace and justice?’ If you told

people in the Middle Ages that within a few centuries God will be

dead, they would have been horrified. ‘How can we live without

God?

Who will give life meaning and protect us from chaos?’

Looking back, many think that the downfall of the pharaohs and

the death of God were both positive developments. Maybe the

collapse of humanism will also be beneficial. People are usually

afraid of change because they fear the unknown. But the single

greatest constant of history is that everything changes. Credit 1.10

10.

King Ashurbanipal of Assyria slaying a lion: mastering the animal kingdom. PART I

Homo sapiens Conquers the World

What is the difference between humans and all other animals?

How did our species conquer the world?

Is Homo sapiens a superior life form, or just the local bully?

2

The Anthropocene

With regard to other animals, humans have long since become

gods. We don’t like to reflect on this too deeply, because we have

not been particularly just or merciful gods. If you watch the

National Geographic channel, go to a Disney film or read a book of

fairy tales, you might easily get the impression that planet Earth is

populated mainly by lions, wolves and tigers who are an equal

match for us humans. Simba the lion king holds sway over the

forest animals; Little Red Riding Hood tries to evade the Big Bad

Wolf; and little Mowgli bravely confronts Shere Khan the tiger. But in reality, they are no longer there. Our televisions, books,

fantasies and nightmares are still full of them, but the Simbas,

Shere Khans and Big Bad Wolves of our planet are disappearing. The world is populated mainly by humans and their domesticated

animals. How many wolves live today in Germany, the land of the Grimm

brothers, Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf?

Less than

a hundred. (And even these are mostly Polish wolves that stole

over the border in recent years.) In contrast, Germany is home to

5 million domesticated dogs. Altogether about 200,000 wild

wolves still roam the earth, but there are more than 400 million

domesticated dogs.1 The world contains 40,000 lions compared to

600 million house cats; 900,000 African buffalo versus 1.5 billion

domesticated cows; 50 million penguins and 20 billion chickens. 2

Since 1970, despite growing ecological awareness, wildlife

populations have halved (not that they were prospering in 1970).

3

In 1980 there were 2 billion wild birds in Europe. In 2009 only 1.6

billion were left. In the same year, Europeans raised 1.9 billion

chickens for meat and eggs. 4 At present, more than 90 per cent of

the large animals of the world (i. e. those weighing more than a few

kilograms) are either humans or domesticated animals. Scientists divide the history of our planet into epochs such as

the Pleistocene, the Pliocene and the Miocene. Officially, we live in

the Holocene epoch. Yet it may be better to call the last 70,000

years the Anthropocene epoch: the epoch of humanity. For during

these millennia Homo sapiens became the single most important

agent of change in the global ecology.5

This is an unprecedented phenomenon. Since the appearance of

life, about 4 billion years ago, never has a single species changed

the global ecology all by itself. Though there had been no lack of

ecological revolutions and mass-extinction events, these were not

caused by the actions of a particular lizard, bat or fungus. Rather,

they were caused by the workings of mighty natural forces such as

climate change, tectonic plate movement, volcanic eruptions and

asteroid collisions. Credit 1.11

11.

Pie chart of global biomass of large animals. Some people fear that today we are again in mortal danger of

massive volcanic eruptions or colliding asteroids. Hollywood

producers make billions out of these anxieties. Yet in reality, the danger is slim. Mass extinctions occur once every many millions of

years. Yes, a big asteroid will probably hit our planet sometime in

the next 100 million years, but it is very unlikely to happen next

Tuesday. Instead of fearing asteroids, we should fear ourselves. For Homo sapiens has rewritten the rules of the game. This

single ape species has managed within 70,000 years to change the

global ecosystem in radical and unprecedented ways. Our impact

is already on a par with that of ice ages and tectonic movements. Within a century, our impact may surpass that of the asteroid that

killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That asteroid changed the trajectory of terrestrial evolution, but

not its fundamental rules, which have remained fixed since the

appearance of the first organisms 4 billion years ago. During all

those aeons, whether you were a virus or a dinosaur, you evolved

according to the unchanging principles of natural selection. In

addition, no matter what strange and bizarre shapes life adopted,

it remained confined to the organic realm – whether a cactus or a

whale, you were made of organic compounds. Now humankind is

poised to replace natural selection with intelligent design, and to

extend life from the organic realm into the inorganic. Even if we leave aside these future prospects and only look back

on the last 70,000 years, it is evident that the Anthropocene has

altered the world in unprecedented ways. Asteroids, plate

tectonics and climate change may have impacted organisms all

over the globe, but their influence differed from one area to

another. The planet never constituted a single ecosystem; rather,

it was a collection of many loosely connected ecosystems. When

tectonic movements joined North America with South America it

led to the extinction of most South American marsupials, but had

no detrimental effect on the Australian kangaroo. When the last

ice age reached its peak 20,000 years ago, jellyfish in the Persian

Gulf and jellyfish in Tokyo Bay both had to adapt to the new

climate. Yet since there was no connection between the two

populations, each reacted in a different way, evolving in distinct

directions. In contrast, Sapiens broke the barriers that had separated the

globe into independent ecological zones. In the Anthropocene, the

planet became for the first time a single ecological unit. Australia,

Europe and America continued to have different climates and

topographies, yet humans caused organisms from throughout the

world to mingle on a regular basis, irrespective of distance and

geography. What began as a trickle of wooden boats has turned

into a torrent of aeroplanes, oil tankers and giant cargo ships that

criss-cross every ocean and bind every island and continent. Consequently the ecology of, say, Australia can no longer be

understood without taking into account the European mammals

or American microorganisms that flood its shores and deserts. Sheep, wheat, rats and flu viruses that humans brought to

Australia during the last 300 years are today far more important

to its ecology than the native kangaroos and koalas. But the Anthropocene isn’t a novel phenomenon of the last few

centuries. Already tens of thousands of years ago, when our Stone

Age ancestors spread from East Africa to the four corners of the

earth, they changed the flora and fauna of every continent and

island on which they settled. They drove to extinction all the other

human species of the world, 90 per cent of the large animals of

Australia, 75 per cent of the large mammals of America and about

50 per cent of all the large land mammals of the planet – and all

before they planted the first wheat field, shaped the first metal

tool, wrote the first text or struck the first coin. 6

Large animals were the main victims because they were

relatively few, and they bred slowly. Compare, for example,

mammoths (which became extinct) to rabbits (which survived).

A

troop of mammoths numbered no more than a few dozen

individuals, and bred at a rate of perhaps just two youngsters per

year. Hence if the local human tribe hunted just three mammoths

a year, it would have been enough for deaths to outstrip births,

and within a few generations the mammoths disappeared. Rabbits, in contrast, bred like rabbits. Even if humans hunted

hundreds of rabbits each year, it was not enough to drive them to

extinction. Not that our ancestors planned on wiping out the mammoths;

they were simply unaware of the consequences of their actions. The extinction of the mammoths and other large animals may

have been swift on an evolutionary timescale, but slow and

gradual in human terms. People lived no more than seventy or eighty years, whereas the extinction process took centuries. The

ancient Sapiens probably failed to notice any connection between

the annual mammoth hunt – in which no more than two or three

mammoths were killed – and the disappearance of these furry

giants. At most, a nostalgic elder might have told sceptical

youngsters that ‘when I was young, mammoths were much more

plentiful than these days. And so were mastodons and giant elks. And, of course, the tribal chiefs were honest, and children

respected their elders.’

The Serpent’s Children

Anthropological and archaeological evidence indicates that

archaic hunter-gatherers were probably animists: they believed

that there was no essential gap separating humans from other

animals. The world – i. e. the local valley and the surrounding

mountain chains – belonged to all its inhabitants, and everyone

followed a common set of rules. These rules involved ceaseless

negotiation between all concerned beings. People talked with

animals, trees and stones, as well as with fairies, demons and

ghosts. Out of this web of communications emerged the values

and norms that were binding on humans, elephants, oak trees and

wraiths alike. 7

The animist world view still guides some hunter-gatherer

communities that have survived into the modern age. One of them

is the Nayaka people, who live in the tropical forests of south

India. The anthropologist Danny Naveh, who studied the Nayaka

for several years, reports that when a Nayaka walking in the jungle

encounters a dangerous animal such as a tiger, snake or elephant,

he or she might address the animal and say: ‘You live in the forest. I too live here in the forest. You came here to eat, and I too came

here to gather roots and tubers. I didn’t come to hurt you.’

A Nayaka was once killed by a male elephant they called ‘the

elephant who always walks alone’.

The Nayakas refused to help

officials from the Indian forestry department capture him. They

explained to Naveh that this elephant used to be very close to

another male elephant, with whom he always roamed. One day the

forestry department captured the second elephant, and since then

‘the elephant who always walks alone’ had become angry and

violent. ‘How would you have felt if your spouse had been taken

away from you?

This is exactly how this elephant felt. These two

elephants sometimes separated at night, each walking its own

path…but in the morning they always came together again. On

that day, the elephant saw his buddy falling, lying down. If two are

always together and then you shoot one – how would the other

feel?’8

Such an animistic attitude strikes many industrialised people as

alien. Most of us automatically see animals as essentially different

and inferior. This is because even our most ancient traditions were

created thousands of years after the end of the hunter-gatherer

era. The Old Testament, for example, was written down in the first

millennium BC, and its oldest stories reflect the realities of the

second millennium BC. But in the Middle East the age of the

hunter-gatherers ended more than 7,000 years earlier. It is hardly

surprising, therefore, that the Bible rejects animistic beliefs and its

only animistic story appears right at the beginning, as a dire

warning. The Bible is a long book, bursting with miracles, wonders

and marvels. Yet the only time an animal initiates a conversation

with a human is when the serpent tempts Eve to eat the forbidden

fruit of knowledge (Bil’am’s donkey also speaks a few words, but

she is merely conveying to Bil’am a message from God).

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve lived as foragers. The

expulsion from Eden bears a striking resemblance to the

Agricultural Revolution. Instead of allowing Adam to keep

gathering wild fruits, an angry God condemns him ‘to eat bread by

the sweat of your brow’.

It might be no coincidence, then, that

biblical animals spoke with humans only in the pre-agricultural

era of Eden. What lessons does the Bible draw from the episode?

That you shouldn’t listen to snakes, and it is generally best to

avoid talking with animals and plants. It leads to nothing but

disaster. Yet the biblical story has deeper and more ancient layers of

meaning. In most Semitic languages, ‘Eve’ means ‘snake’ or even

‘female snake’.

The name of our ancestral biblical mother hides an

archaic animist myth, according to which snakes are not our

enemies, but our ancestors. 9 Many animist cultures believed that

humans descended from animals, including from snakes and

other reptiles. Most Australian Aborigines believed that the

Rainbow Serpent created the world. The Aranda and Dieri people

maintained that their particular tribes originated from primordial

lizards or snakes, which were transformed into humans.10 In fact,

modern Westerners too think that they have evolved from reptiles. The brain of each and every one of us is built around a reptilian

core, and the structure of our bodies is essentially that of modified

reptiles. Credit 1.12

12.

Paradise lost (the Sistine Chapel).

The serpent – who sports a human upper

body – initiates the entire chain of events. While the first two chapters of

Genesis are dominated by divine monologues (‘and God said…and God said…

and God said …’), in the third chapter we finally get a dialogue – between Eve

and the serpent (‘and the serpent said unto the woman…and the woman said

unto the serpent …’).

This unique conversation between a human and an animal

leads to the fall of humanity and our expulsion from Eden. The authors of the book of Genesis may have preserved a

remnant of archaic animist beliefs in Eve’s name, but they took

great care to conceal all other traces. Genesis says that, instead of

descending from snakes, humans were divinely created from

inanimate matter. The snake is not our progenitor: he seduces us

to rebel against our heavenly Father. While animists saw humans

as just another kind of animal, the Bible argues that humans are a

unique creation, and any attempt to acknowledge the animal

within us denies God’s power and authority. Indeed, when modern

humans discovered that they actually evolved from reptiles, they

rebelled against God and stopped listening to Him – or even

believing in His existence. Ancestral Needs

The Bible, along with its belief in human distinctiveness, was one

of the by-products of the Agricultural Revolution, which initiated a

new phase in human–animal relations. The advent of farming

produced new waves of mass extinctions, but more importantly, it

created a completely new life form on earth: domesticated

animals. Initially this development was of minor importance,

since humans managed to domesticate fewer than twenty species

of mammals and birds, compared to the countless thousands of

species that remained ‘wild’.

Yet with the passing of the centuries,

this novel life form became dominant. Today more than 90 per

cent of all large animals are domesticated. Alas, domesticated species paid for their unparalleled collective

success with unprecedented individual suffering. Although the

animal kingdom has known many types of pain and misery for

millions of years, the Agricultural Revolution generated

completely new kinds of suffering, that only became worse over

time. To the casual observer domesticated animals may seem much

better off than their wild cousins and ancestors. Wild boars spend

their days searching for food, water and shelter, and are

constantly threatened by lions, parasites and floods. Domesticated

pigs, in contrast, enjoy food, water and shelter provided by

humans, who also treat their diseases and protect them against

predators and natural disasters. True, most pigs sooner or later

find themselves in the slaughterhouse. Yet does that make their

fate any worse than the fate of wild boars?

Is it better to be devoured by a lion than slaughtered by a man?

Are crocodile teeth

less deadly than steel blades?

What makes the fate of domesticated farm animals particularly

harsh is not just the way they die, but above all the way they live. Two competing factors have shaped the living conditions of farm

animals from ancient times to the present day: human desires and

animal needs. Thus humans raise pigs in order to get meat, but if

they want a steady supply of meat, they must ensure the long-term

survival and reproduction of the pigs. Theoretically this should

have protected the animals from extreme forms of cruelty. If a

farmer did not take good care of his pigs, they would soon die

without offspring and the farmer would starve. Unfortunately, humans can cause tremendous suffering to farm

animals in various ways, even while ensuring their survival and

reproduction. The root of the problem is that domesticated

animals have inherited from their wild ancestors many physical,

emotional and social needs that are redundant on human farms. Farmers routinely ignore these needs, without paying any

economic penalty. They lock animals in tiny cages, mutilate their

horns and tails, separate mothers from offspring and selectively

breed monstrosities. The animals suffer greatly, yet they live on

and multiply. Doesn’t that contradict the most basic principles of natural

selection?

The theory of evolution maintains that all instincts,

drives and emotions have evolved in the sole interest of survival

and reproduction. If so, doesn’t the continuous reproduction of

farm animals prove that all their real needs are met?

How can a

pig have a ‘need’ that is not really needed for his survival and

reproduction?

It is certainly true that all instincts, drives and emotions evolved

in order to meet the evolutionary pressures of survival and

reproduction. However, if and when these pressures suddenly

disappear, the instincts, drives and emotions they had shaped do

not disappear with them. At least not instantly. Even if they are no

longer instrumental for survival and reproduction, these instincts,

drives and emotions continue to mould the subjective experiences

of the animal. For animals and humans alike, agriculture changed

selection pressures almost overnight, but it did not change their physical, emotional and social drives. Of course evolution never

stands still, and it has continued to modify humans and animals in

the 12,000 years since the advent of farming. For example,

humans in Europe and western Asia evolved the ability to digest

cows’ milk, while cows lost their fear of humans, and today

produce far more milk than their wild ancestors. Yet these are

superficial alterations. The deep sensory and emotional structures

of cows, pigs and humans alike haven’t changed much since the

Stone Age. Why do modern humans love sweets so much?

Not because in

the early twenty-first century we must gorge on ice cream and

chocolate in order to survive. Rather, it is because when our Stone

Age ancestors came across sweet fruit or honey, the most sensible

thing to do was to eat as much of it as quickly as possible. Why do

young men drive recklessly, get involved in violent arguments and

hack confidential Internet sites?

Because they are following

ancient genetic decrees that might be useless and even

counterproductive today, but that made good evolutionary sense

70,000 years ago. A young hunter who risked his life chasing a

mammoth outshone all his competitors and won the hand of the

local beauty; and we are now stuck with his macho genes. 11

Exactly the same evolutionary logic shapes the lives of pigs,

sows and piglets in human-controlled farms. In order to survive

and reproduce in the wild, ancient boars needed to roam vast

territories, familiarise themselves with their environment and

beware of traps and predators. They further needed to

communicate and cooperate with their fellow boars, forming

complex groups dominated by old and experienced matriarchs. Evolutionary pressures consequently made wild boars – and even

more so wild sows – highly intelligent social animals,

characterised by a lively curiosity and strong urges to socialise,

play, wander about and explore their surroundings. A sow born

with some rare mutation that made her indifferent to her

environment and to other boars was unlikely to survive or

reproduce. The descendants of wild boars – domesticated pigs – inherited

their intelligence, curiosity and social skills. 12 Like wild boars,

domesticated pigs communicate using a rich variety of vocal and

olfactory signals: mother sows recognise the unique squeaks of

their piglets, whereas two-day-old piglets already differentiate

their mother’s calls from those of other sows.13 Professor Stanley Curtis of the Pennsylvania State University trained two pigs –

named Hamlet and Omelette – to control a special joystick with

their snouts, and found that the pigs soon rivalled primates in

learning and playing simple computer games.14

Today most sows in industrial farms don’t play computer

games. They are locked by their human masters in tiny gestation

crates, usually measuring two metres by sixty centimetres. The

crates have a concrete floor and metal bars, and hardly allow the

pregnant sows even to turn around or sleep on their side, never

mind walk. After three and a half months in such conditions, the

sows are moved to slightly wider crates, where they give birth and

nurse their piglets. Whereas piglets would naturally suckle for ten

to twenty weeks, in industrial farms they are forcibly weaned

within two to four weeks, separated from their mother and

shipped to be fattened and slaughtered. The mother is

immediately impregnated again, and sent back to the gestation

crate to start another cycle. The typical sow would go through five

to ten such cycles before being slaughtered herself. In recent years

the use of crates has been restricted in the European Union and

some US states, but the crates are still commonly used in many

other countries, and tens of millions of breeding sows pass almost

their entire lives in them. The human farmers take care of everything the sow needs in

order to survive and reproduce. She is given enough food,

vaccinated against diseases, protected against the elements and

artificially inseminated. From an objective perspective, the sow no

longer needs to explore her surroundings, socialise with other

pigs, bond with her piglets or even walk. But from a subjective

perspective, the sow still feels very strong urges to do all of these

things, and if these urges are not fulfilled she suffers greatly. Sows

locked in gestation crates typically display acute frustration

alternating with extreme despair. 15

This is the basic lesson of evolutionary psychology: a need

shaped thousands of generations ago continues to be felt

subjectively even if it is no longer necessary for survival and

reproduction in the present. Tragically, the Agricultural

Revolution gave humans the power to ensure the survival and

reproduction of domesticated animals while ignoring their

subjective needs. Credit 1.13

13.

Sows confined in gestation crates. These highly social and intelligent beings

spend most of their lives in this condition, as if they were already sausages. Organisms are Algorithms

How can we be sure that animals such as pigs actually have a

subjective world of needs, sensations and emotions?

Aren’t we

guilty of humanising animals, i. e. ascribing human qualities to

non-human entities, like children believing that dolls feel love and

anger?

In fact, attributing emotions to pigs doesn’t humanise them. It

‘mammalises’ them. For emotions are not a uniquely human

quality – they are common to all mammals (as well as to all birds

and probably to some reptiles and even fish).

All mammals

evolved emotional abilities and needs, and from the fact that pigs

are mammals we can safely deduce that they have emotions.16

In recent decades life scientists have demonstrated that

emotions are not some mysterious spiritual phenomenon that is

useful just for writing poetry and composing symphonies. Rather,

emotions are biochemical algorithms that are vital for the survival

and reproduction of all mammals. What does this mean?

Well,

let’s begin by explaining what an algorithm is. This is of great

importance not only because this key concept will reappear in

many of the following chapters, but also because the twenty-first

century will be dominated by algorithms. ‘Algorithm’ is arguably

the single most important concept in our world. If we want to

understand our life and our future, we should make every effort to

understand what an algorithm is, and how algorithms are

connected with emotions. An algorithm is a methodical set of steps that can be used to

make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions. An

algorithm isn’t a particular calculation, but the method followed

when making the calculation. For example, if you want to calculate

the average between two numbers, you can use a simple

algorithm. The algorithm says: ‘First step: add the two numbers

together. Second step: divide the sum by two.’ When you enter the

numbers 4 and 8, you get 6.

When you enter 117 and 231, you get

174.

A more complex example is a cooking recipe. An algorithm for

preparing vegetable soup may tell us:

1.

Heat half a cup of oil in a pot. 2.

Finely chop four onions. 3.

Fry the onion until golden. 4.

Cut three potatoes into chunks and add to the pot. 5.

Slice a cabbage into strips and add to the pot. And so forth. You can follow the same algorithm dozens of times,

each time using slightly different vegetables, and therefore getting

a slightly different soup. But the algorithm remains the same. A recipe by itself cannot make soup. You need a person to read

the recipe and follow the prescribed set of steps. But you can build

a machine that embodies this algorithm and follows it

automatically. Then you just need to provide the machine with

water, electricity and vegetables – and it will prepare the soup by

itself. There aren’t many soup machines around, but you are

probably familiar with beverage vending machines. Such

machines usually have a slot for coins, an opening for cups, and

rows of buttons. The first row has buttons for coffee, tea and

cocoa. The second row is marked: no sugar, one spoon of sugar,

two spoons of sugar. The third row indicates milk, soya milk, no

milk. A man approaches the machine, inserts a coin into the slot

and presses the buttons marked ‘tea’, ‘one sugar’ and ‘milk’.

The

machine kicks into action, following a precise set of steps. It drops

a tea bag into a cup, pours boiling water, adds a spoonful of sugar

and milk, and ding!

A nice cup of tea emerges. This is an

algorithm.17

Over the last few decades biologists have reached the firm

conclusion that the man pressing the buttons and drinking the tea

is also an algorithm. A much more complicated algorithm than the

vending machine, no doubt, but still an algorithm. Humans are

algorithms that produce not cups of tea, but copies of themselves

(like a vending machine which, if you press the right combination

of buttons, produces another vending machine).

The algorithms controlling vending machines work through

mechanical gears and electric circuits. The algorithms controlling

humans work through sensations, emotions and thoughts. And

exactly the same kind of algorithms control pigs, baboons, otters

and chickens. Consider, for example, the following survival

problem: a baboon spots some bananas hanging on a tree, but also

notices a lion lurking nearby. Should the baboon risk his life for

those bananas?

This boils down to a mathematical problem of calculating

probabilities: the probability that the baboon will die of hunger if

he does not eat the bananas, versus the probability that the lion

will catch the baboon. In order to solve this problem the baboon

needs to take into account a lot of data. How far am I from the

bananas?

How far away is the lion?

How fast can I run?

How fast

can the lion run?

Is the lion awake or asleep?

Does the lion seem

to be hungry or satiated?

How many bananas are there?

Are they

big or small?

Green or ripe?

In addition to these external data, the

baboon must also consider information about conditions within

his own body. If he is starving, it makes sense to risk everything

for those bananas, no matter the odds. In contrast, if he has just

eaten, and the bananas are mere greed, why take any risks at all?

In order to weigh and balance all these variables and

probabilities, the baboon requires far more complicated

algorithms than the ones controlling automatic vending machines. The prize for making correct calculations is correspondingly

greater. The prize is the very survival of the baboon. A timid

baboon – one whose algorithms overestimate dangers – will

starve to death, and the genes that shaped these cowardly

algorithms will perish with him. A rash baboon – one whose

algorithms underestimate dangers – will fall prey to the lion, and

his reckless genes will also fail to make it to the next generation. These algorithms undergo constant quality control by natural

selection. Only animals that calculate probabilities correctly leave

offspring behind. Yet this is all very abstract. How exactly does a baboon calculate

probabilities?

He certainly doesn’t draw a pencil from behind his

ear, a notebook from a back pocket, and start computing running

speeds and energy levels with a calculator. Rather, the baboon’s

entire body is the calculator. What we call sensations and

emotions are in fact algorithms. The baboon feels hunger, he feels

fear and trembling at the sight of the lion, and he feels his mouth

watering at the sight of the bananas. Within a split second, he

experiences a storm of sensations, emotions and desires, which is

nothing but the process of calculation. The result will appear as a

feeling: the baboon will suddenly feel his spirit rising, his hairs

standing on end, his muscles tensing, his chest expanding, and he

will inhale a big breath, and ‘Forward!

I can do it!

To the bananas!’

Alternatively, he may be overcome by fear, his shoulders will

droop, his stomach will turn, his legs will give way, and ‘Mama!

A

lion!

Help!’ Sometimes the probabilities match so evenly that it is

hard to decide. This too will manifest itself as a feeling. The

baboon will feel confused and indecisive. ‘Yes…No…Yes…No…

Damn!

I don’t know what to do!’

In order to transmit genes to the next generation, it is not

enough to solve survival problems. Animals also need to solve

reproduction problems too, and this depends on calculating

probabilities. Natural selection evolved passion and disgust as

quick algorithms for evaluating reproduction odds. Beauty means

‘good chances for having successful offspring’.

When a woman

sees a man and thinks, ‘Wow!

He is gorgeous!’ and when a peahen

sees a peacock and thinks, ‘Jesus!

What a tail!’ they are doing

something similar to the automatic vending machine. As light

reflected from the male’s body hits their retinas, extremely

powerful algorithms honed by millions of years of evolution kick

in. Within a few milliseconds the algorithms convert tiny cues in

the male’s external appearance into reproduction probabilities,

and reach the conclusion: ‘In all likelihood, this is a very healthy

and fertile male, with excellent genes. If I mate with him, my

offspring are also likely to enjoy good health and excellent genes.’

Of course, this conclusion is not spelled out in words or numbers,

but in the fiery itch of sexual attraction. Peahens, and most

women, don’t make such calculations with pen and paper. They

just feel them. Even Nobel laureates in economics make only a tiny fraction of

their decisions using pen, paper and calculator; 99 per cent of our

decisions – including the most important life choices concerning

spouses, careers and habitats – are made by the highly refined

algorithms we call sensations, emotions and desires.18

Because these algorithms control the lives of all mammals and

birds (and probably some reptiles and even fish), when humans,

baboons and pigs feel fear, similar neurological processes take

place in similar brain areas. It is therefore likely that frightened

humans, frightened baboons and frightened pigs have similar

experiences. 19

There are differences too, of course. Pigs don’t seem to

experience the extremes of compassion and cruelty that

characterise Homo sapiens, nor the sense of wonder that

overwhelms a human gazing up at the infinitude of a starry sky. It

is likely that there are also opposite examples, of swinish emotions

unfamiliar to humans, but I cannot name any, for obvious reasons. However, one core emotion is apparently shared by all mammals:

the mother–infant bond. Indeed, it gives mammals their name. The word ‘mammal’ comes from the Latin mamma, meaning

breast. Mammal mothers love their offspring so much that they

allow them to suckle from their body. Mammal youngsters, on

their side, feel an overwhelming desire to bond with their mothers

and stay near them. In the wild, piglets, calves and puppies that

fail to bond with their mothers rarely survive for long. Until

recently that was true of human children too. Conversely, a sow,

cow or bitch that due to some rare mutation does not care about

her young may live a long and comfortable life, but her genes will

not pass to the next generation. The same logic is true among

giraffes, bats, whales and porcupines. We can argue about other

emotions, but since mammal youngsters cannot survive without

motherly care, it is evident that motherly love and a strong

mother–infant bond characterise all mammals.20

Credit 1.14

14.

A peacock and a man. When you look at these images, data on proportions,

colours and sizes gets processed by your biochemical algorithms, causing you to

feel attraction, repulsion or indifference. It took scientists many years to acknowledge this. Not long ago

psychologists doubted the importance of the emotional bond

between parents and children even among humans. In the first

half of the twentieth century, and despite the influence of

Freudian theories, the dominant behaviourist school argued that

relations between parents and children were shaped by material

feedback; that children needed mainly food, shelter and medical

care; and that children bonded with their parents simply because

the latter provide these material needs. Children who demanded

warmth, hugs and kisses were thought to be ‘spoiled’.

Childcare

experts warned that children who were hugged and kissed by their

parents would grow up to be needy, egotistical and insecure

adults.21

John Watson, a leading childcare authority in the 1920s, sternly

advised parents, ‘Never hug and kiss \[your children], never let

them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead

when they say goodnight. Shake hands with them in the

morning.’22 The popular magazine Infant Care explained that the secret of raising children is to maintain discipline and to provide

the children’s material needs according to a strict daily schedule. A

1929 article instructed parents that if an infant cries out for food

before the normal feeding time, ‘Do not hold him, nor rock him to

stop his crying, and do not nurse him until the exact hour for the

feeding comes. It will not hurt the baby, even the tiny baby, to

cry.’23

Only in the 1950s and 1960s did a growing consensus of experts

abandon these strict behaviourist theories and acknowledge the

central importance of emotional needs. In a series of famous (and

shockingly cruel) experiments, the psychologist Harry Harlow

separated infant monkeys from their mothers shortly after birth,

and isolated them in small cages. When given a choice between a

metal dummy-mother fitted with a milk bottle, and a soft cloth-

covered dummy with no milk, the baby monkeys clung to the

barren cloth mother for all they were worth. Those baby monkeys knew something that John Watson and the

experts of Infant Care failed to realise: mammals can’t live on

food alone. They need emotional bonds too. Millions of years of

evolution preprogrammed the monkeys with an overwhelming

desire for emotional bonding. Evolution also imprinted them with

the assumption that emotional bonds are more likely to be formed

with soft furry things than with hard and metallic objects. (This is

also why small human children are far more likely to become

attached to dolls, blankets and smelly rags than to cutlery, stones

or wooden blocks.) The need for emotional bonds is so strong that

Harlow’s baby monkeys abandoned the nourishing metal dummy

and turned their attention to the only object that seemed capable

of answering that need. Alas, the cloth-mother never responded to

their affection and the little monkeys consequently suffered from

severe psychological and social problems, and grew up to be

neurotic and asocial adults. Today we look back with incomprehension at early twentieth-

century child-rearing advice. How could experts fail to appreciate

that children have emotional needs, and that their mental and

physical health depends as much on providing for these needs as

on food, shelter and medicines?

Yet when it comes to other

mammals we keep denying the obvious. Like John Watson and the

Infant Care experts, farmers throughout history took care of the

material needs of piglets, calves and kids, but tended to ignore

their emotional needs. Thus both the meat and dairy industries

are based on breaking the most fundamental emotional bond in

the mammal kingdom. Farmers get their breeding sows and dairy

cows impregnated again and again. Yet the piglets and calves are

separated from their mothers shortly after birth, and often pass

their days without ever sucking at her teats or feeling the warm

touch of her tongue and body. What Harry Harlow did to a few

hundred monkeys, the meat and dairy industries are doing to

billions of animals every year. 24

The Agricultural Deal

How did farmers justify their behaviour?

Whereas hunter-

gatherers were seldom aware of the damage they inflicted on the

ecosystem, farmers knew perfectly well what they were doing. They knew they were exploiting domesticated animals and

subjugating them to human desires and whims. They justified

their actions in the name of new theist religions, which

mushroomed and spread in the wake of the Agricultural

Revolution. Theist religions maintained that the universe is ruled

by a group of great gods – or perhaps by a single capital ‘G’ God. We don’t normally associate this idea with agriculture, but at least

in their beginnings theist religions were an agricultural enterprise. The theology, mythology and liturgy of religions such as Judaism,

Hinduism and Christianity revolved at first around the

relationship between humans, domesticated plants and farm

animals.25

Biblical Judaism, for instance, catered to peasants and

shepherds. Most of its commandments dealt with farming and

village life, and its major holidays were harvest festivals. People

today imagine the ancient temple in Jerusalem as a kind of big

synagogue where priests clad in snow-white robes welcomed

devout pilgrims, melodious choirs sang psalms and incense

perfumed the air. In reality, it looked much more like a cross

between a slaughterhouse and a barbecue joint than a modern

synagogue. The pilgrims did not come empty-handed. They

brought with them a never-ending stream of sheep, goats,

chickens and other animals, which were sacrificed at the god’s

altar and then cooked and eaten. The psalm-singing choirs could

hardly be heard over the bellowing and bleating of calves and kids. Priests in bloodstained outfits cut the victims’ throats, collected

the gushing blood in jars and spilled it over the altar. The perfume

of incense mixed with the odours of congealed blood and roasted

meat, while swarms of black flies buzzed just about everywhere

(see, for example, Numbers 28, Deuteronomy 12, and 1 Samuel 2).

A modern Jewish family that celebrates a holiday by having a

barbecue on their front lawn is much closer to the spirit of biblical

times than an orthodox family that spends the time studying

scriptures in a synagogue. Theist religions, such as biblical Judaism, justified the

agricultural economy through new cosmological myths. Animist

religions had previously depicted the universe as a grand Chinese

opera with a limitless cast of colourful actors. Elephants and oak

trees, crocodiles and rivers, mountains and frogs, ghosts and

fairies, angels and demons – each had a role in the cosmic opera. Theist religions rewrote the script, turning the universe into a bleak Ibsen drama with just two main characters: man and God. The angels and demons somehow survived the transition,

becoming the messengers and servants of the great gods. Yet the

rest of the animist cast – all the animals, plants and other natural

phenomena – were transformed into silent decor. True, some

animals were considered sacred to this or that god, and many gods

had animal features: the Egyptian god Anubis had the head of a

jackal, and even Jesus Christ was frequently depicted as a lamb. Yet ancient Egyptians could easily tell the difference between

Anubis and an ordinary jackal sneaking into the village to hunt

chickens, and no Christian butcher ever mistook the lamb under

his knife for Jesus. We normally think that theist religions sanctified the great gods. We tend to forget that they sanctified humans, too. Hitherto

Homo sapiens had been just one actor in a cast of thousands. In

the new theist drama, Sapiens became the central hero around

whom the entire universe revolved. The gods, meanwhile, were given two related roles to play. Firstly, they explained what is so special about Sapiens and why

humans should dominate and exploit all other organisms. Christianity, for example, maintained that humans hold sway over

the rest of creation because the Creator charged them with that

authority. Moreover, according to Christianity, God gave an

eternal soul only to humans. Since the fate of this eternal soul is

the point of the whole Christian cosmos, and since animals have

no soul, they are mere extras. Humans thus became the apex of

creation, while all other organisms were pushed to the sidelines. Secondly, the gods had to mediate between humans and the

ecosystem. In the animistic cosmos, everyone talked with

everyone directly. If you needed something from the caribou, the

fig trees, the clouds or the rocks, you addressed them yourself. In

the theist cosmos, all non-human entities were silenced. Consequently you could no longer talk with trees and animals. What to do, then, when you wanted the trees to give more fruits,

the cows to give more milk, the clouds to bring more rain and the

locusts to stay away from your crops?

That’s where the gods

entered the picture. They promised to supply rain, fertility and

protection, provided humans did something in return. This was

the essence of the agricultural deal. The gods safeguarded and

multiplied farm production, and in exchange humans had to share

the produce with the gods. This deal served both parties, at the

expense of the rest of the ecosystem. Today in Nepal, devotees of the goddess Gadhimai celebrate her

festival every five years in the village of Bariyapur. A record was

set in 2009 when 250,000 animals were sacrificed to the goddess. A local driver explained to a visiting British journalist that ‘If we

want anything, and we come here with an offering to the goddess,

within five years all our dreams will be fulfilled.’26

Much of theist mythology explains the subtle details of this deal. The Mesopotamian Gilgamesh epic recounts that when the gods

sent a great deluge to destroy the world, almost all humans and

animals perished. Only then did the rash gods realise that nobody

remained to make any offerings to them. They became crazed with

hunger and distress. Luckily, one human family survived, thanks

to the foresight of the god Enki, who instructed his devotee

Utnapishtim to take shelter in a large wooden ark along with his

relatives and a menagerie of animals. When the deluge subsided

and this Mesopotamian Noah emerged from his ark, the first thing

he did was sacrifice some animals to the gods. Then, tells the epic,

all the great gods rushed to the spot: ‘The gods smelled the savour

/ the gods smelled the sweet savour / the gods swarmed like flies

around the offering.’27 The biblical story of the deluge (written more than 1,000 years after the Mesopotamian version) also

reports that immediately upon leaving the ark, ‘Noah built an altar

to the Lord and, taking some of the clean animals and clean birds,

he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The Lord smelled the pleasing

aroma and said in his heart: Never again will I curse the ground

because of humans’ (Genesis 8:20–1).

This deluge story became a founding myth of the agricultural

world. It is possible of course to give it a modern environmentalist

spin. The deluge could teach us that our actions can ruin the entire

ecosystem, and humans are divinely charged with protecting the

rest of creation. Yet traditional interpretations saw the deluge as

proof of human supremacy and animal worthlessness. According

to these interpretations, Noah was instructed to save the whole

ecosystem in order to protect the common interests of gods and humans rather than the interests of the animals. Non-human

organisms have no intrinsic value, and exist solely for our sake. After all, when ‘the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the

human race had become’ He resolved to ‘wipe from the face of the

earth the human race I have created – and with them the animals,

the birds and the creatures that move along the ground – for I

regret that I have made them’ (Genesis 6:7).

The Bible thinks it is

perfectly all right to destroy all animals as punishment for the

crimes of Homo sapiens, as if the existence of giraffes, pelicans

and ladybirds has lost all purpose if humans misbehave. The Bible

could not imagine a scenario in which God repents having created

Homo sapiens, wipes this sinful ape off the face of the earth, and

then spends eternity enjoying the antics of ostriches, kangaroos

and panda bears. Theist religions nevertheless have certain animal-friendly

beliefs. The gods gave humans authority over the animal kingdom,

but this authority carried with it some responsibilities. For

example, Jews were commanded to allow farm animals to rest on

the Sabbath, and whenever possible to avoid causing them

unnecessary suffering. (Though whenever interests clashed,

human interests always trumped animal interests. 28)

A Talmudic tale recounts how on the way to the slaughterhouse,

a calf escaped and sought refuge with Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, one

of the founders of rabbinical Judaism. The calf tucked his head

under the rabbi’s flowing robes and started crying. Yet the rabbi

pushed the calf away, saying, ‘Go. You were created for that very

purpose.’ Since the rabbi showed no mercy, God punished him,

and he suffered from a painful illness for thirteen years. Then, one

day, a servant cleaning the rabbi’s house found some newborn rats

and began sweeping them out. Rabbi Yehuda rushed to save the

helpless creatures, instructing the servant to leave them in peace,

because ‘God is good to all, and has compassion on all he has

made’ (Psalms 145:9).

Since the rabbi showed compassion to these

rats, God showed compassion to the rabbi, and he was cured of his

illness. 29

Other religions, particularly Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism,

have demonstrated even greater empathy to animals. They

emphasise the connection between humans and the rest of the

ecosystem, and their foremost ethical commandment has been to

avoid killing any living being. Whereas the biblical ‘Thou shalt not

kill’ covered only humans, the ancient Indian principle of ahimsa

(non-violence) extends to every sentient being. Jain monks are

particularly careful in this regard. They always cover their mouths

with a white cloth, lest they inhale an insect, and whenever they

walk they carry a broom to gently sweep any ant or beetle from

their path.30

Nevertheless, all agricultural religions – Jainism, Buddhism and

Hinduism included – found ways to justify human superiority and

the exploitation of animals (if not for meat, then for milk and

muscle power).

They have all claimed that a natural hierarchy of

beings entitles humans to control and use other animals, provided

that the humans observe certain restrictions. Hinduism, for

example, has sanctified cows and forbidden eating beef, but has

also provided the ultimate justification for the dairy industry,

alleging that cows are generous creatures, and positively yearn to

share their milk with humankind. Humans thus committed themselves to an ‘agricultural deal’.

According to this deal, cosmic forces gave humans command over

other animals, on condition that humans fulfilled certain

obligations towards the gods, towards nature and towards the

animals themselves. It was easy to believe in the existence of such

a cosmic compact, because it reflected the daily routine of farming

life. Hunter-gatherers had not seen themselves as superior beings

because they were seldom aware of their impact on the ecosystem. A typical band numbered in the dozens, it was surrounded by

thousands of wild animals, and its survival depended on

understanding and respecting the desires of these animals. Foragers had to constantly ask themselves what deer dream about,

and what lions think. Otherwise, they could not hunt the deer, nor

escape the lions. Farmers, in contrast, lived in a world controlled and shaped by

human dreams and thoughts. Humans were still subject to

formidable natural forces such as storms and earthquakes, but

they were far less dependent on the wishes of other animals. A

farm boy learned early on to ride a horse, harness a bull, whip a

stubborn donkey and lead the sheep to pasture. It was easy and

tempting to believe that such everyday activities reflected either

the natural order of things or the will of heaven. It is no coincidence that the Nayaka of southern India treat

elephants, snakes and forest trees as beings equal to humans, but

have a very different view of domesticated plants and animals. In

the Nayaka language a living being possessing a unique

personality is called mansan. When probed by the anthropologist

Danny Naveh, they explained that all elephants are mansan. ‘We

live in the forest, they live in the forest. We are all mansan…So are

bears, deer and tigers. All forest animals.’ What about cows?

‘Cows

are different. You have to lead them everywhere.’ And chickens?

‘They are nothing. They are not mansan.’ And forest trees?

‘Yes –

they live for such a long time.’ And tea bushes?

‘Oh, these I

cultivate so that I can sell the tea leaves and buy what I need from

the store. No, they aren’t mansan.’31

We should also bear in mind how humans themselves were

treated in most agricultural societies. In biblical Israel or medieval

China it was common to whip humans, enslave them, torture and

execute them. Humans were considered as mere property. Rulers

did not dream of asking peasants for their opinions and cared little

about their needs. Parents frequently sold their children into

slavery, or married them off to the highest bidder. Under such

conditions, ignoring the feelings of cows and chickens was hardly

surprising. Five Hundred Years of Solitude

The rise of modern science and industry brought about the next

revolution in human–animal relations. During the Agricultural

Revolution humankind silenced animals and plants, and turned

the animist grand opera into a dialogue between man and gods. During the Scientific Revolution humankind silenced the gods too. The world was now a one-man show. Humankind stood alone on

an empty stage, talking to itself, negotiating with no one and acquiring enormous powers without any obligations. Having

deciphered the mute laws of physics, chemistry and biology,

humankind now does with them as it pleases. When an archaic hunter went out to the savannah, he asked the

help of the wild bull, and the bull demanded something of the

hunter. When an ancient farmer wanted his cows to produce lots

of milk, he asked some great heavenly god for help, and the god

stipulated his conditions. When the white-coated staff in Nestlé’s

Research and Development department want to increase dairy

production, they study genetics – and the genes don’t ask for

anything in return. But just as the hunters and farmers had their myths, so do the

people in the R\&D department. Their most famous myth

shamelessly plagiarises the legend of the Tree of Knowledge and

the Garden of Eden, but transports the action to the garden at

Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire. According to this myth, Isaac

Newton was sitting there under an apple tree when a ripe apple

dropped on his head. Newton began wondering why the apple fell

straight downwards, rather than sideways or upwards. His

enquiry led him to discover gravity and the laws of Newtonian

mechanics. Newton’s story turns the Tree of Knowledge myth on its head. In the Garden of Eden the serpent initiates the drama, tempting

humans to sin, thereby bringing the wrath of God down upon

them. Adam and Eve are a plaything for serpent and God alike. In

contrast, in the Garden of Woolsthorpe man is the sole agent. Though Newton himself was a deeply religious Christian who

devoted far more time to studying the Bible than the laws of

physics, the Scientific Revolution that he helped launch pushed

God to the sidelines. When Newton’s successors came to write

their Genesis myth, they had no use for either God or serpent. The

Garden of Woolsthorpe is run by blind laws of nature, and the

initiative to decipher these laws is strictly human. The story may

begin with an apple falling on Newton’s head, but the apple did

not do it on purpose. In the Garden of Eden myth, humans are punished for their

curiosity and for their wish to gain knowledge. God expels them

from Paradise. In the Garden of Woolsthorpe myth, nobody

punishes Newton – just the opposite. Thanks to his curiosity

humankind gains a better understanding of the universe, becomes

more powerful and takes another step towards the technological

paradise. Untold numbers of teachers throughout the world

recount the Newton myth to encourage curiosity, implying that if

only we gain enough knowledge, we can create paradise here on

earth. In fact, God is present even in the Newton myth: Newton

himself is God. When biotechnology, nanotechnology and the

other fruits of science ripen, Homo sapiens will attain divine

powers and come full circle back to the biblical Tree of Knowledge. Archaic hunter-gatherers were just another species of animal. Farmers saw themselves as the apex of creation. Scientists will

upgrade us into gods. —

Whereas the Agricultural Revolution gave rise to theist religions,

the Scientific Revolution gave birth to humanist religions, in

which humans replaced gods. While theists worship theos (Greek

for ‘god’), humanists worship humans. The founding idea of

humanist religions such as liberalism, communism and Nazism is

that Homo sapiens has some unique and sacred essence that is the

source of all meaning and authority in the universe. Everything

that happens in the cosmos is judged to be good or bad according

to its impact on Homo sapiens. Whereas theism justified traditional agriculture in the name of

God, humanism has justified modern industrial farming in the

name of Man. Industrial farming sanctifies human needs, whims

and wishes, while disregarding everything else. Industrial farming

has no real interest in animals, which don’t share the sanctity of

human nature. And it has no use for gods, because modern science

and technology give humans powers that far exceed those of the

ancient gods. Science enables modern firms to subjugate cows,

pigs and chickens to more extreme conditions than those

prevailing in traditional agricultural societies. In ancient Egypt, in the Roman Empire or in medieval China, humans had only a rudimental understanding of biochemistry,

genetics, zoology and epidemiology. Consequently, their powers of

manipulation were limited. In those days, pigs, cows and chickens

ran free among the houses, and searched for edible treasures in

the rubbish heap and in the nearby woods. If an ambitious peasant

had tried to confine thousands of animals in a crowded coop, a

deadly epidemic would probably have resulted, wiping out all the

animals as well as many of the villagers. No priest, shaman or god

could have prevented it. But once modern science deciphered the secrets of epidemics,

pathogens and antibiotics, industrial coops, pens and pigsties

became feasible. With the help of vaccinations, medications,

hormones, pesticides, central air-conditioning systems and

automatic feeders, it is now possible to pack tens of thousands of

pigs, cows or chickens into neat rows of cramped cages, and

produce meat, milk and eggs with unprecedented efficiency. In recent years, as people began to rethink human–animal

relations, such practices have come under increasing criticism. We

are suddenly showing unprecedented interest in the fate of so-

called lower life forms, perhaps because we are about to become

one. If and when computer programs attain superhuman

intelligence and unprecedented power, should we begin valuing

these programs more than we value humans?

Would it be okay,

for example, for an artificial intelligence to exploit humans and

even kill them to further its own needs and desires?

If it should

never be allowed to do that, despite its superior intelligence and

power, why is it ethical for humans to exploit and kill pigs?

Do

humans have some magical spark, in addition to higher

intelligence and greater power, which distinguishes them from

pigs, chickens, chimpanzees and computer programs alike?

If yes,

where did that spark come from, and why are we certain that an

AI could never acquire it?

If there is no such spark, would there be

any reason to continue assigning special value to human life even

after computers surpass humans in intelligence and power?

Indeed, what exactly is it about humans that make us so intelligent

and powerful in the first place, and how likely is it that non-

human entities will ever rival and surpass us?

The next chapter will examine the nature and power of Homo sapiens, not only in order to comprehend further our relations

with other animals, but also to appreciate what the future might

hold for us, and what relations between humans and superhumans

might look like. 3

The Human Spark

There is no doubt that Homo sapiens is the most powerful species

in the world. Homo sapiens also likes to think that it enjoys a

superior moral status, and that human life has much greater value

than the lives of pigs, elephants or wolves. This is less obvious. Does might make right?

Is human life more precious than porcine

life simply because the human collective is more powerful than the

pig collective?

The United States is far mightier than Afghanistan;

does this imply that American lives have greater intrinsic value

than Afghan lives?

In practice, American lives are more valued. Far more money is

invested in the education, health and safety of the average

American than of the average Afghan. Killing an American citizen

creates a far greater international outcry than killing an Afghan

citizen. Yet it is generally accepted that this is no more than an

unjust result of the geopolitical balance of power. Afghanistan may

have far less clout than the USA, yet the life of a child in the

mountains of Tora Bora is considered every bit as sacred as the life

of a child in Beverly Hills. In contrast, when we privilege human children over piglets, we

want to believe that this reflects something deeper than the

ecological balance of power. We want to believe that human lives

really are superior in some fundamental way. We Sapiens love

telling ourselves that we enjoy some magical quality that not only

accounts for our immense power, but also gives moral justification

for our privileged status. What is this unique human spark?

The traditional monotheist answer is that only Sapiens have

eternal souls. Whereas the body decays and rots, the soul journeys

on towards salvation or damnation, and will experience either

everlasting joy in paradise or an eternity of misery in hell. Since pigs and other animals have no soul, they don’t take part in this

cosmic drama. They live only for a few years, and then die and

fade into nothingness. We should therefore care far more about

eternal human souls than about ephemeral pigs. This is no kindergarten fairy tale, but an extremely powerful

myth that continues to shape the lives of billions of humans and

animals in the early twenty-first century. The belief that humans

have eternal souls whereas animals are just evanescent bodies is a

central pillar of our legal, political and economic system. It

explains why, for example, it is perfectly okay for humans to kill

animals for food, or even just for the fun of it. However, our latest scientific discoveries flatly contradict this

monotheist myth. True, laboratory experiments confirm the

accuracy of one part of the myth: just as monotheist religions say,

animals have no souls. All the careful studies and painstaking

examinations have failed to discover any trace of a soul in pigs,

rats or rhesus monkeys. Alas, the same laboratory experiments

undermine the second and far more important part of the

monotheist myth, namely, that humans do have a soul. Scientists

have subjected Homo sapiens to tens of thousands of bizarre

experiments, and looked into every nook in our hearts and every

cranny in our brains. But they have so far discovered no magical

spark. There is zero scientific evidence that in contrast to pigs,

Sapiens have souls. If that were all, we could well argue that scientists just need to

keep looking. If they haven’t found the soul yet, it is because they

haven’t looked carefully enough. Yet the life sciences doubt the

existence of soul not just due to lack of evidence, but rather

because the very idea of soul contradicts the most fundamental

principles of evolution. This contradiction is responsible for the

unbridled hatred that the theory of evolution inspires among

devout monotheists. Who’s Afraid of Charles Darwin?

According to a 2012 Gallup survey, only 15 per cent of Americans

think that Homo sapiens evolved through natural selection alone,

free of all divine intervention; 32 per cent maintain that humans

may have evolved from earlier life forms in a process lasting

millions of years, but God orchestrated this entire show; 46 per

cent believe that God created humans in their current form

sometime during the last 10,000 years, just as the Bible says. Spending three years in college has absolutely no impact on these

views. The same survey found that among BA graduates, 46 per

cent believe in the biblical creation story, whereas only 14 per cent

think that humans evolved without any divine supervision. Even

among holders of MA and PhD degrees, 25 per cent believe the

Bible, whereas only 29 per cent credit natural selection alone with

the creation of our species. 1

Though schools evidently do a very poor job teaching evolution,

religious zealots still insist that it should not be taught at all. Alternatively, they demand that children must also be taught the

theory of intelligent design, according to which all organisms were

created by the design of some higher intelligence (aka God).

‘Teach them both theories,’ say the zealots, ‘and let the kids decide

for themselves.’

Why does the theory of evolution provoke such objections,

whereas nobody seems to care about the theory of relativity or

quantum mechanics?

How come politicians don’t ask that kids be

exposed to alternative theories about matter, energy, space and

time?

After all, Darwin’s ideas seem at first sight far less

threatening than the monstrosities of Einstein and Werner

Heisenberg. The theory of evolution rests on the principle of the

survival of the fittest, which is a clear and simple – not to say

humdrum – idea. In contrast, the theory of relativity and quantum

mechanics argue that you can twist time and space, that

something can appear out of nothing, and that a cat can be both

alive and dead at the same time. This makes a mockery of our

common sense, yet nobody seeks to protect innocent

schoolchildren from these scandalous ideas. Why?

The theory of relativity makes nobody angry, because it doesn’t

contradict any of our cherished beliefs. Most people don’t care an

iota whether space and time are absolute or relative. If you think it

is possible to bend space and time, well, be my guest. Go ahead and bend them. What do I care?

In contrast, Darwin has deprived

us of our souls. If you really understand the theory of evolution,

you understand that there is no soul. This is a terrifying thought

not only to devout Christians and Muslims, but also to many

secular people who don’t hold any clear religious dogma, but

nevertheless want to believe that each human possesses an eternal

individual essence that remains unchanged throughout life, and

can survive even death intact. The literal meaning of the word ‘individual’ is ‘something that

cannot be divided’.

That I am an ‘in-dividual’ implies that my true

self is a holistic entity rather than an assemblage of separate parts. This indivisible essence allegedly endures from one moment to the

next without losing or absorbing anything. My body and brain

undergo a constant process of change, as neurons fire, hormones

flow and muscles contract. My personality, wishes and

relationships never stand still, and may be completely

transformed over years and decades. But underneath it all I

remain the same person from birth to death – and hopefully

beyond death as well. Unfortunately, the theory of evolution rejects the idea that my

true self is some indivisible, immutable and potentially eternal

essence. According to the theory of evolution, all biological entities

– from elephants and oak trees to cells and DNA molecules – are

composed of smaller and simpler parts that ceaselessly combine

and separate. Elephants and cells have evolved gradually, as a

result of new combinations and splits. Something that cannot be

divided or changed cannot have come into existence through

natural selection. The human eye, for example, is an extremely complex system

made of numerous smaller parts such as the lens, the cornea and

the retina. The eye did not pop out of nowhere complete with all

these components. Rather, it evolved step by tiny step through

millions of years. Our eye is very similar to the eye of Homo

erectus, who lived 1 million years ago. It is somewhat less similar

to the eye of Australopithecus, who lived 5 million years ago. It is

very different from the eye of Dryolestes, who lived 150 million

years ago. And it seems to have nothing in common with the

unicellular organisms that inhabited our planet hundreds of

millions of years ago. Yet even unicellular organisms have tiny organelles that enable

the microorganism to distinguish light from darkness, and move

towards one or the other. The path leading from such archaic

sensors to the human eye is long and winding, but if you have

hundreds of millions of years to spare, you can certainly cover the

entire path, step by step. You can do that because the eye is

composed of many different parts. If every few generations a small

mutation slightly changes one of these parts – say, the cornea

becomes a bit more curved – after millions of generations these

changes can result in a human eye. If the eye were a holistic entity,

devoid of any parts, it could never have evolved by natural

selection. That’s why the theory of evolution cannot accept the idea of

souls, at least if by ‘soul’ we mean something indivisible,

immutable and potentially eternal. Such an entity cannot possibly

result from a step-by-step evolution. Natural selection could

produce a human eye, because the eye has parts. But the soul has

no parts. If the Sapiens soul evolved step by step from the Erectus

soul, what exactly were these steps?

Is there some part of the soul

that is more developed in Sapiens than in Erectus?

But the soul

has no parts. You might argue that human souls did not evolve, but appeared

one bright day in the fullness of their glory. But when exactly was

that bright day?

When we look closely at the evolution of

humankind, it is embarrassingly difficult to find it. Every human

that ever existed came into being as a result of male sperm

inseminating a female egg. Think of the first baby to possess a

soul. That baby was very similar to her mother and father, except

that she had a soul and they didn’t. Our biological knowledge can

certainly explain the birth of a baby whose cornea was a bit more

curved than her parents’ corneas. A slight mutation in a single

gene can account for that. But biology cannot explain the birth of a

baby possessing an eternal soul from parents who did not have

even a shred of a soul. Is a single mutation, or even several

mutations, enough to give an animal an essence secure against all

changes, including even death?

Hence the existence of souls cannot be squared with the theory

of evolution. Evolution means change, and is incapable of

producing everlasting entities. From an evolutionary perspective,

the closest thing we have to a human essence is our DNA, and the

DNA molecule is the vehicle of mutation rather than the seat of

eternity. This terrifies large numbers of people, who prefer to

reject the theory of evolution rather than give up their souls. Why the Stock Exchange Has No Consciousness

Another story employed to justify human superiority says that of

all the animals on earth, only Homo sapiens has a conscious mind. Mind is something very different from soul. The mind isn’t some

mystical eternal entity. Nor is it an organ such as the eye or the

brain. Rather, the mind is a flow of subjective experiences, such as

pain, pleasure, anger and love. These mental experiences are made

of interlinked sensations, emotions and thoughts, which flash for a

brief moment, and immediately disappear. Then other experiences

flicker and vanish, arising for an instant and passing away. (When

reflecting on it, we often try to sort the experiences into distinct

categories such as sensations, emotions and thoughts, but in

actuality they are all mingled together.) This frenzied collection of

experiences constitutes the stream of consciousness. Unlike the

everlasting soul, the mind has many parts, it constantly changes,

and there is no reason to think it is eternal. The soul is a story that some people accept while others reject. The stream of consciousness, in contrast, is the concrete reality we

directly witness every moment. It is the surest thing in the world. You cannot doubt its existence. Even when we are consumed by

doubt and ask ourselves: ‘Do subjective experiences really exist?’

we can be certain that we are experiencing doubt. What exactly are the conscious experiences that constitute the

flow of the mind?

Every subjective experience has two

fundamental characteristics: sensation and desire. Robots and

computers have no consciousness because despite their myriad

abilities they feel nothing and crave nothing. A robot may have an

energy sensor that signals to its central processing unit when the

battery is about to run out. The robot may then move towards an

electrical socket, plug itself in and recharge its battery. However,

throughout this process the robot doesn’t experience anything. In

contrast, a human being depleted of energy feels hunger and

craves to stop this unpleasant sensation. That’s why we say that

humans are conscious beings and robots aren’t, and why it is a

crime to make people work until they collapse from hunger and

exhaustion, whereas making robots work until their batteries run

out carries no moral opprobrium. And what about animals?

Are they conscious?

Do they have

subjective experiences?

Is it okay to force a horse to work until he

collapses from exhaustion?

As noted earlier, the life sciences

currently argue that all mammals and birds, and at least some

reptiles and fish, have sensations and emotions. However, the

most up-to-date theories also maintain that sensations and

emotions are biochemical data-processing algorithms. Since we

know that robots and computers process data without having any

subjective experiences, maybe it works the same with animals?

Indeed, we know that even in humans many sensory and

emotional brain circuits can process data and initiate actions

completely unconsciously. So perhaps behind all the sensations

and emotions we ascribe to animals – hunger, fear, love and

loyalty – lurk only unconscious algorithms rather than subjective

experiences?2

This theory was upheld by the father of modern philosophy,

René Descartes. In the seventeenth century Descartes maintained

that only humans feel and crave, whereas all other animals are

mindless automata, akin to a robot or a vending machine. When a

man kicks a dog, the dog experiences nothing. The dog flinches

and howls automatically, just like a humming vending machine

that makes a cup of coffee without feeling or wanting anything. This theory was widely accepted in Descartes’ day. Seventeenth-

century doctors and scholars dissected live dogs and observed the

working of their internal organs, without either anaesthetics or

scruples. They didn’t see anything wrong with that, just as we

don’t see anything wrong in opening the lid of a vending machine

and observing its gears and conveyors. In the early twenty-first

century there are still plenty of people who argue that animals

have no consciousness, or at most, that they have a very different

and inferior type of consciousness. In order to decide whether animals have conscious minds

similar to our own, we must first get a better understanding of

how minds function, and what role they play. These are extremely

difficult questions, but it is worthwhile to devote some time to

them, because the mind will be the hero of several subsequent

chapters. We won’t be able to grasp the full implications of novel

technologies such as artificial intelligence if we don’t know what

minds are. Hence let’s leave aside for a moment the particular

question of animal minds, and examine what science knows about

minds and consciousness in general. We will focus on examples

taken from the study of human consciousness – which is more

accessible to us – and later on return to animals and ask whether

what’s true of humans is also true of our furry and feathery

cousins. To be frank, science knows surprisingly little about mind and

consciousness. Current orthodoxy holds that consciousness is

created by electrochemical reactions in the brain, and that mental

experiences fulfil some essential data-processing function. 3

However, nobody has any idea how a congeries of biochemical

reactions and electrical currents in the brain creates the subjective

experience of pain, anger or love. Perhaps we will have a solid

explanation in ten or fifty years. But as of 2016, we have no such

explanation, and we had better be clear about that. Using fMRI scans, implanted electrodes and other sophisticated

gadgets, scientists have certainly identified correlations and even

causal links between electrical currents in the brain and various

subjective experiences. Just by looking at brain activity, scientists

can know whether you are awake, dreaming or in deep sleep. They

can briefly flash an image in front of your eyes, just at the

threshold of conscious perception, and determine (without asking

you) whether you have become aware of the image or not. They

have even managed to link individual brain neurons with specific

mental content, discovering for example a ‘Bill Clinton’ neuron

and a ‘Homer Simpson’ neuron. When the ‘Bill Clinton’ neuron is

on, the person is thinking of the forty-second president of the

USA; show the person an image of Homer Simpson, and the

eponymous neuron is bound to ignite. More broadly, scientists know that if an electric storm arises in

a given brain area, you probably feel angry. If this storm subsides

and a different area lights up – you are experiencing love. Indeed,

scientists can even induce feelings of anger or love by electrically

stimulating the right neurons. But how on earth does the

movement of electrons from one place to the other translate into a

subjective image of Bill Clinton, or a subjective feeling of anger or

love?

The most common explanation points out that the brain is a

highly complex system, with more than 80 billion neurons

connected into numerous intricate webs. When billions of neurons

send billions of electric signals back and forth, subjective

experiences emerge. Even though the sending and receiving of

each electric signal is a simple biochemical phenomenon, the

interaction among all these signals creates something far more

complex – the stream of consciousness. We observe the same

dynamic in many other fields. The movement of a single car is a

simple action, but when millions of cars move and interact

simultaneously, traffic jams emerge. The buying and selling of a

single share is simple enough, but when millions of traders buy

and sell millions of shares it can lead to economic crises that

dumbfound even the experts. Yet this explanation explains nothing. It merely affirms that the

problem is very complicated. It does not offer any insight into how

one kind of phenomenon (billions of electric signals moving from

here to there) creates a very different kind of phenomenon

(subjective experiences of anger or love).

The analogy to other

complex processes such as traffic jams and economic crises is

flawed. What creates a traffic jam?

If you follow a single car, you

will never understand it. The jam results from the interactions

among many cars. Car A influences the movement of car B, which

blocks the path of car C, and so on. Yet if you map the movements

of all the relevant cars, and how each impacts the other, you will

get a complete account of the traffic jam. It would be pointless to

ask, ‘But how do all these movements create the traffic jam?’ For

‘traffic jam’ is simply the abstract term we humans decided to use

for this particular collection of events. In contrast, ‘anger’ isn’t an abstract term we have decided to use

as a shorthand for billions of electric brain signals. Anger is an

extremely concrete experience which people were familiar with

long before they knew anything about electricity. When I say, ‘I

am angry!’ I am pointing to a very tangible feeling. If you describe

how a chemical reaction in a neuron results in an electric signal,

and how billions of similar reactions result in billions of additional

signals, it is still worthwhile to ask, ‘But how do these billions of

events come together to create my concrete feeling of anger?’

When thousands of cars slowly edge their way through London,

we call that a traffic jam, but it doesn’t create some great

Londonian consciousness that hovers high above Piccadilly and

says to itself, ‘Blimey, I feel jammed!’ When millions of people sell

billions of shares, we call that an economic crisis, but no great

Wall Street spirit grumbles, ‘Shit, I feel I am in crisis.’ When

trillions of water molecules coalesce in the sky we call that a cloud,

but no cloud consciousness emerges to announce, ‘I feel rainy.’

How is it, then, that when billions of electric signals move around

in my brain, a mind emerges that feels ‘I am furious!’?

As of 2016,

we have absolutely no idea. Hence if this discussion has left you confused and perplexed,

you are in very good company. The best scientists too are a long

way from deciphering the enigma of mind and consciousness. One

of the wonderful things about science is that when scientists don’t

know something, they can try out all kinds of theories and

conjunctures, but in the end they can just admit their ignorance. The Equation of Life

Scientists don’t know how a collection of electric brain signals

creates subjective experiences. Even more crucially, they don’t

know what could be the evolutionary benefit of such a

phenomenon. It is the greatest lacuna in our understanding of life. Humans have feet, because for millions of generations feet

enabled our ancestors to chase rabbits and escape lions. Humans

have eyes, because for countless millennia eyes enabled our

forebears to see whither the rabbit was heading and whence the

lion was coming. But why do humans have subjective experiences

of hunger and fear?

Not long ago, biologists gave a very simple answer. Subjective

experiences are essential for our survival, because if we didn’t feel

hunger or fear we would not have bothered to chase rabbits and

flee lions. Upon seeing a lion, why did a man flee?

Well, he was

frightened, so he ran away. Subjective experiences explained

human actions. Yet today scientists provide a much more detailed

explanation. When a man sees a lion, electric signals move from

the eye to the brain. The incoming signals stimulate certain

neurons, which react by firing off more signals. These stimulate

other neurons down the line, which fire in their turn. If enough of

the right neurons fire at a sufficiently rapid rate, commands are

sent to the adrenal glands to flood the body with adrenaline, the

heart is instructed to beat faster, while neurons in the motor

centre send signals down to the leg muscles, which begin to

stretch and contract, and the man runs away from the lion. Ironically, the better we map this process, the harder it becomes

to explain conscious feelings. The better we understand the brain,

the more redundant the mind seems. If the entire system works by

electric signals passing from here to there, why the hell do we also

need to feel fear?

If a chain of electrochemical reactions leads all

the way from the nerve cells in the eye to the movements of leg

muscles, why add subjective experiences to this chain?

What do

they do?

Countless domino pieces can fall one after the other

without any need of subjective experiences. Why do neurons need

feelings in order to stimulate one another, or in order to tell the

adrenal gland to start pumping?

Indeed, 99 per cent of bodily

activities, including muscle movement and hormonal secretions,

take place without any need of conscious feelings. So why do the

neurons, muscles and glands need such feelings in the remaining 1

per cent of cases?

You might argue that we need a mind because the mind stores

memories, makes plans and autonomously sparks completely new

images and ideas. It doesn’t just respond to outside stimuli. For

example, when a man sees a lion, he doesn’t react automatically to

the sight of the predator. He remembers that a year ago a lion ate

his aunt. He imagines how he would feel if a lion tore him to

pieces. He contemplates the fate of his orphaned children. That’s

why he flees. Indeed, many chain reactions begin with the mind’s

own initiative rather than with any immediate external stimulus. Thus a memory of some prior lion attack might spontaneously pop

up in a man’s mind, setting him thinking about the danger posed

by lions. He then gets all the tribespeople together and they

brainstorm novel methods for scaring lions away. But wait a moment. What are all these memories, imaginations

and thoughts?

Where do they exist?

According to current

biological theories, our memories, imaginations and thoughts

don’t exist in some higher immaterial field. Rather, they too are

avalanches of electric signals fired by billions of neurons. Hence

even when we figure in memories, imaginations and thoughts, we

are still left with a series of electrochemical reactions that pass

through billions of neurons, ending with the activity of adrenal

glands and leg muscles. Is there even a single step on this long and twisting journey

where, between the action of one neuron and the reaction of the

next, the mind intervenes and decides whether the second neuron

should fire or not?

Is there any material movement, of even a

single electron, that is caused by the subjective experience of fear

rather than by the prior movement of some other particle?

If there

is no such movement – and if every electron moves because

another electron moved earlier – why do we need to experience

fear?

We have no clue. Philosophers have encapsulated this riddle in a trick question:

what happens in the mind that doesn’t happen in the brain?

If

nothing happens in the mind except what happens in our massive

network of neurons – then why do we need the mind?

If

something does indeed happen in the mind over and above what

happens in the neural network – where the hell does it happen?

Suppose I ask you what Homer Simpson thought about Bill

Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky scandal. You have probably

never thought about this before, so your mind now needs to fuse

two previously unrelated memories, perhaps conjuring up an

image of Homer drinking beer while watching the president give

his ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman’ speech. Where does this fusion take place?

Some brain scientists argue that it happens in the ‘global

workspace’ created by the interaction of many neurons.4 Yet the word ‘workspace’ is just a metaphor. What is the reality behind the

metaphor?

Where do the different pieces of information actually

meet and fuse?

According to current theories, it certainly doesn’t

take place in some Platonic fifth dimension. Rather, it takes place,

say, where two previously unconnected neurons suddenly start

firing signals to one another. A new synapse is formed between the

Bill Clinton neuron and the Homer Simpson neuron. But if so,

why do we need the conscious experience of memory over and

above the physical event of the two neurons connecting?

We can pose the same riddle in mathematical terms. Present-

day dogma holds that organisms are algorithms, and that

algorithms can be represented in mathematical formulas. You can

use numbers and mathematical symbols to write the series of

steps a vending machine takes to prepare a cup of tea, and the

series of steps a brain takes when it is alarmed by the approach of

a lion. If so, and if conscious experiences fulfil some important

function, they must have a mathematical representation. For they

are an essential part of the algorithm. When we write the fear

algorithm, and break ‘fear’ down into a series of precise

calculations, we should be able to point out: ‘Here, step number

ninety-three in the calculation process – this is the subjective

experience of fear!’ But is there any algorithm in the huge realm of

mathematics that contains a subjective experience?

So far, we

don’t know of any such algorithm. Despite the vast knowledge we

have gained in the fields of mathematics and computer science,

none of the data-processing systems we have created needs

subjective experiences in order to function, and none feels pain,

pleasure, anger or love. 5

Maybe we need subjective experiences in order to think about

ourselves?

An animal wandering the savannah and calculating its

chances of survival and reproduction must represent its own

actions and decisions to itself, and sometimes communicate them

to other animals as well. As the brain tries to create a model of its

own decisions, it gets trapped in an infinite digression, and

abracadabra!

Out of this loop, consciousness pops out. Fifty years ago this might have sounded plausible, but not in

2016.

Several corporations, such as Google and Tesla, are

engineering autonomous cars that already cruise our roads. The

algorithms controlling the autonomous car make millions of

calculations each second concerning other cars, pedestrians,

traffic lights and potholes. The autonomous car successfully stops

at red lights, bypasses obstacles and keeps a safe distance from

other vehicles – without feeling any fear. The car also needs to

take itself into account and to communicate its plans and desires

to the surrounding vehicles, because if it decides to swerve to the

right, doing so will impact on their behaviour. The car does all that

without any problem – but without any consciousness either. The

autonomous car isn’t special. Many other computer programs

make allowances for their own actions, yet none of them has

developed consciousness, and none feels or desires anything.6

—

If we cannot explain the mind, and if we don’t know what function

it fulfils, why not just discard it?

The history of science is replete

with abandoned concepts and theories. For instance, early modern

scientists who tried to account for the movement of light

postulated the existence of a substance called ether, which

supposedly fills the entire universe. Light was thought to be waves

of ether. However, scientists failed to find any empirical evidence

for the existence of ether, whereas they did come up with

alternative and better theories of light. Consequently, they threw

ether into the dustbin of science. Credit 1.15

15.

The Google autonomous car on the road. Similarly, for thousands of years humans used God to explain

numerous natural phenomena. What causes lightning to strike?

God. What makes the rain fall?

God. How did life on earth begin?

God did it. Over the last few centuries scientists have not

discovered any empirical evidence for God’s existence, while they

did find much more detailed explanations for lightning strikes,

rain and the origins of life. Consequently, with the exception of a

few subfields of philosophy, no article in any peer-review scientific

journal takes God’s existence seriously. Historians don’t argue

that the Allies won the Second World War because God was on

their side; economists don’t blame God for the 1929 economic

crisis; and geologists don’t invoke His will to explain tectonic plate

movements. The same fate has befallen the soul. For thousands of years

people believed that all our actions and decisions emanate from

our souls. Yet in the absence of any supporting evidence, and

given the existence of much more detailed alternative theories, the

life sciences have ditched the soul. As private individuals, many

biologists and doctors may go on believing in souls. Yet they never

write about them in serious scientific journals. Maybe the mind should join the soul, God and ether in the

dustbin of science?

After all, no one has ever seen experiences of

pain or love through a microscope, and we have a very detailed

biochemical explanation for pain and love that leaves no room for

subjective experiences. However, there is a crucial difference

between mind and soul (as well as between mind and God).

Whereas the existence of eternal souls is pure conjecture, the

experience of pain is a direct and very tangible reality. When I step

on a nail, I can be 100 per cent certain that I feel pain (even if I so

far lack a scientific explanation for it).

In contrast, I cannot be

certain that if the wound becomes infected and I die of gangrene,

my soul will continue to exist. It’s a very interesting and

comforting story which I would be happy to believe, but I have no

direct evidence for its veracity. Since all scientists constantly

experience subjective feelings such as pain and doubt, they cannot

deny their existence. Another way to dismiss mind and consciousness is to deny their

relevance rather than their existence. Some scientists – such as

Daniel Dennett and Stanislas Dehaene – argue that all relevant

questions can be answered by studying brain activities, without

any recourse to subjective experiences. So scientists can safely

delete ‘mind’, ‘consciousness’ and ‘subjective experiences’ from

their vocabulary and articles. However, as we shall see in the following chapters, the whole edifice of modern politics and ethics

is built upon subjective experiences, and few ethical dilemmas can

be solved by referring strictly to brain activities. For example,

what’s wrong with torture or rape?

From a purely neurological

perspective, when a human is tortured or raped certain

biochemical reactions happen in the brain, and various electrical

signals move from one bunch of neurons to another. What could

possibly be wrong with that?

Most modern people have ethical

qualms about torture and rape because of the subjective

experiences involved. If any scientist wants to argue that

subjective experiences are irrelevant, their challenge is to explain

why torture or rape are wrong without reference to any subjective

experience. Finally, some scientists concede that consciousness is real and

may actually have great moral and political value, but that it fulfils

no biological function whatsoever. Consciousness is the

biologically useless by-product of certain brain processes. Jet

engines roar loudly, but the noise doesn’t propel the aeroplane

forward. Humans don’t need carbon dioxide, but each and every

breath fills the air with more of the stuff. Similarly, consciousness

may be a kind of mental pollution produced by the firing of

complex neural networks. It doesn’t do anything. It is just there. If

this is true, it implies that all the pain and pleasure experienced by

billions of creatures for millions of years is just mental pollution. This is certainly a thought worth thinking, even if it isn’t true. But

it is quite amazing to realise that as of 2016, this is the best theory

of consciousness that contemporary science has to offer us. —

Maybe the life sciences view the problem from the wrong angle. They believe that life is all about data processing, and that

organisms are machines for making calculations and taking

decisions. However, this analogy between organisms and

algorithms might mislead us. In the nineteenth century, scientists

described brains and minds as if they were steam engines. Why

steam engines?

Because that was the leading technology of the

day, which powered trains, ships and factories, so when humans tried to explain life, they assumed it must work according to

analogous principles. Mind and body are made of pipes, cylinders,

valves and pistons that build and release pressure, thereby

producing movements and actions. Such thinking had a deep

influence even on Freudian psychology, which is why much of our

psychological jargon is still replete with concepts borrowed from

mechanical engineering. Consider, for example, the following Freudian argument:

‘Armies harness the sex drive to fuel military aggression. The army

recruits young men just when their sexual drive is at its peak. The

army limits the soldiers’ opportunities of actually having sex and

releasing all that pressure, which consequently accumulates inside

them. The army then redirects this pent-up pressure and allows it

to be released in the form of military aggression.’ This is exactly

how a steam engine works. You trap boiling steam inside a closed

container. The steam builds up more and more pressure, until

suddenly you open a valve, and release the pressure in a

predetermined direction, harnessing it to propel a train or a loom. Not only in armies, but in all fields of activity, we often complain

about the pressure building up inside us, and we fear that unless

we ‘let off some steam’, we might explode. In the twenty-first century it sounds childish to compare the

human psyche to a steam engine. Today we know of a far more

sophisticated technology – the computer – so we explain the

human psyche as if it were a computer processing data rather than

a steam engine regulating pressure. But this new analogy may turn

out to be just as naïve. After all, computers have no minds. They

don’t crave anything even when they have a bug, and the Internet

doesn’t feel pain even when authoritarian regimes sever entire

countries from the Web. So why use computers as a model for

understanding the mind?

Well, are we really sure that computers have no sensations or

desires?

And even if they haven’t got any at present, perhaps once

they become complex enough they might develop consciousness?

If that were to happen, how could we ascertain it?

When

computers replace our bus driver, our teacher and our shrink, how

could we determine whether they have feelings or whether they are just a collection of mindless algorithms?

When it comes to humans, we are today capable of

differentiating between conscious mental experiences and non-

conscious brain activities. Though we are far from understanding

consciousness, scientists have succeeded in identifying some of its

electrochemical signatures. To do so the scientists started with the

assumption that whenever humans report that they are conscious

of something, they can be believed. Based on this assumption the

scientists could then isolate specific brain patterns that appear

every time humans report being conscious, but that never appear

during unconscious states. This has allowed the scientists to determine, for example,

whether a seemingly vegetative stroke victim has completely lost

consciousness, or has merely lost control of his body and speech. If the patient’s brain displays the telltale signatures of

consciousness, he is probably conscious, even though he cannot

move or speak. Indeed, doctors have recently managed to

communicate with such patients using fMRI imaging. They ask

the patients yes/no questions, telling them to imagine themselves

playing tennis if the answer is yes, and to visualise the location of

their home if the answer is no. The doctors can then observe how

the motor cortex lights up when patients imagine playing tennis

(meaning ‘yes’), whereas ‘no’ is indicated by the activation of brain

areas responsible for spatial memory. 7

This is all very well for humans, but what about computers?

Since silicon-based computers have very different structures to

carbon-based human neural networks, the human signatures of

consciousness may not be relevant to them. We seem to be

trapped in a vicious circle. Starting with the assumption that we

can believe humans when they report that they are conscious, we

can identify the signatures of human consciousness, and then use

these signatures to ‘prove’ that humans are indeed conscious. But

if an artificial intelligence self-reports that it is conscious, should

we just believe it?

So far, we have no good answer to this problem. Already

thousands of years ago philosophers realised that there is no way

to prove conclusively that anyone other than oneself has a mind. Indeed, even in the case of other humans, we just assume they have consciousness – we cannot know that for certain. Perhaps I

am the only being in the entire universe who feels anything, and

all other humans and animals are just mindless robots?

Perhaps I

am dreaming, and everyone I meet is just a character in my

dream?

Perhaps I am trapped inside a virtual world, and all the

beings I see are merely simulations?

According to current scientific dogma, everything I experience is

the result of electrical activity in my brain, and it should therefore

be theoretically feasible to simulate an entire virtual world that I

could not possibly distinguish from the ‘real’ world. Some brain

scientists believe that in the not too distant future, we shall

actually do such things. Well, maybe it has already been done – to

you?

For all you know, the year might be 2216 and you are a bored

teenager immersed inside a ‘virtual world’ game that simulates the

primitive and exciting world of the early twenty-first century. Once you acknowledge the mere feasibility of this scenario,

mathematics leads you to a very scary conclusion: since there is

only one real world, whereas the number of potential virtual

worlds is infinite, the probability that you happen to inhabit the

sole real world is almost zero. None of our scientific breakthroughs has managed to overcome

this notorious Problem of Other Minds. The best test that scholars

have so far come up with is called the Turing Test, but it examines

only social conventions. According to the Turing Test, in order to

determine whether a computer has a mind, you should

communicate simultaneously both with that computer and with a

real person, without knowing which is which. You can ask

whatever questions you want, you can play games, argue, and even

flirt with them. Take as much time as you like. Then you need to

decide which is the computer, and which is the human. If you

cannot make up your mind, or if you make a mistake, the

computer has passed the Turing Test, and we should treat it as if it

really has a mind. However, that won’t really be a proof, of course. Acknowledging the existence of other minds is merely a social and

legal convention. The Turing Test was invented in 1950 by the British

mathematician Alan Turing, one of the fathers of the computer

age. Turing was also a gay man in a period when homosexuality was illegal in Britain. In 1952 he was convicted of committing

homosexual acts and forced to undergo chemical castration. Two

years later he committed suicide. The Turing Test is simply a

replication of a mundane test every gay man had to undergo in

1950 Britain: can you pass for a straight man?

Turing knew from

personal experience that it didn’t matter who you really were – it

mattered only what others thought about you. According to

Turing, in the future computers would be just like gay men in the

1950s. It won’t matter whether computers will actually be

conscious or not. It will matter only what people think about it. The Depressing Lives of Laboratory Rats

Having acquainted ourselves with the mind – and with how little

we really know about it – we can return to the question of whether

other animals have minds. Some animals, such as dogs, certainly

pass a modified version of the Turing Test. When humans try to

determine whether an entity is conscious, what we usually look for

is not mathematical aptitude or good memory, but rather the

ability to create emotional relationships with us. People

sometimes develop deep emotional attachments to fetishes like

weapons, cars and even underwear, but these attachments are

one-sided and never develop into relationships. The fact that dogs

can be party to emotional relationships with humans convinces

most dog owners that dogs are not mindless automata. This, however, won’t satisfy sceptics, who point out that

emotions are algorithms, and that no known algorithm requires

consciousness in order to function. Whenever an animal displays

complex emotional behaviour, we cannot prove that this is not the

result of some very sophisticated but non-conscious algorithm. This argument, of course, can be applied to humans too. Everything a human does – including reporting on allegedly

conscious states – might in theory be the work of non-conscious

algorithms. In the case of humans, we nevertheless assume that whenever

someone reports that he or she is conscious, we can take their

word for it. Based on this minimal assumption, we can today identify the brain signatures of consciousness, which can then be

used systematically to differentiate conscious from non-conscious

states in humans. Yet since animal brains share many features

with human brains, as our understanding of the signatures of

consciousness deepens, we might be able to use them to determine

if and when other animals are conscious. If a canine brain shows

similar patterns to those of a conscious human brain, this will

provide strong evidence that dogs are conscious. Initial tests on monkeys and mice indicate that at least monkey

and mice brains indeed display the signatures of consciousness.8

However, given the differences between animal brains and human

brains, and given that we are still far from deciphering all the

secrets of consciousness, developing decisive tests that will satisfy

the sceptics might take decades. Who should carry the burden of

proof in the meantime?

Do we consider dogs to be mindless

machines until proven otherwise, or do we treat dogs as conscious

beings as long as nobody comes up with some convincing counter-

evidence?

On 7 July 2012 leading experts in neurobiology and the

cognitive sciences gathered at the University of Cambridge, and

signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, which says

that ‘Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have

the neuroanatomical, neurochemical and neurophysiological

substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit

intentional behaviours. Consequently, the weight of evidence

indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the

neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human

animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other

creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological

substrates.’9 This declaration stops short of saying that other animals are conscious, because we still lack the smoking gun. But

it does shift the burden of proof to those who think otherwise. Responding to the shifting winds of the scientific community, in

May 2015 New Zealand became the first country in the world to

legally recognise animals as sentient beings, when the New

Zealand parliament passed the Animal Welfare Amendment Act. The Act stipulates that it is now obligatory to recognise animals as

sentient, and hence attend properly to their welfare in contexts such as animal husbandry. In a country with far more sheep than

humans (30 million vs 4.5 million), that is a very significant

statement. The Canadian province of Quebec has since passed a

similar Act, and other countries are likely to follow suit. Many business corporations also recognise animals as sentient

beings, though paradoxically, this often exposes the animals to

rather unpleasant laboratory tests. For example, pharmaceutical

companies routinely use rats as experimental subjects in the

development of antidepressants. According to one widely used

protocol, you take a hundred rats (for statistical reliability) and

place each rat inside a glass tube filled with water. The rats

struggle again and again to climb out of the tubes, without success. After fifteen minutes most give up and stop moving. They just

float in the tube, apathetic to their surroundings. You now take another hundred rats, throw them in, but fish

them out of the tube after fourteen minutes, just before they are

about to despair. You dry them, feed them, give them a little rest –

and then throw them back in. The second time, most rats struggle

for twenty minutes before calling it quits. Why the extra six

minutes?

Because the memory of past success triggers the release

of some biochemical in the brain that gives the rats hope and

delays the advent of despair. If we could only isolate this

biochemical, we might use it as an antidepressant for humans. But

numerous chemicals flood a rat’s brain at any given moment. How

can we pinpoint the right one?

For this you take more groups of rats, who have never

participated in the test before. You inject each group with a

particular chemical, which you suspect to be the hoped-for

antidepressant. You throw the rats into the water. If rats injected

with chemical A struggle for only fifteen minutes before becoming

depressed, you can cross out A on your list. If rats injected with

chemical B go on thrashing for twenty minutes, you can tell the

CEO and the shareholders that you might have just hit the jackpot. Credit 1.16

16.

Left: A hopeful rat struggling to escape the glass tube. Right: An apathetic

rat floating in the glass tube, having lost all hope. Sceptics could object that this entire description needlessly

humanises rats. Rats experience neither hope nor despair. Sometimes rats move quickly and sometimes they stand still, but

they never feel anything. They are driven only by non-conscious

algorithms. Yet if so, what’s the point of all these experiments?

Psychiatric drugs are aimed to induce changes not just in human

behaviour, but above all in human feeling. When customers go to

a psychiatrist and say, ‘Doctor, give me something that will lift me

out of this depression,’ they don’t want a mechanical stimulant

that will cause them to flail about while still feeling blue. They

want to feel cheerful. Conducting experiments on rats can help

corporations develop such a magic pill only if they presuppose that

rat behaviour is accompanied by human-like emotions. And

indeed, this is a common presupposition in psychiatric

laboratories. 10

The Self-Conscious Chimpanzee

Another attempt to enshrine human superiority accepts that rats,

dogs and other animals have consciousness, but argues that,

unlike humans, they lack self-consciousness. They may feel

depressed, happy, hungry or satiated, but they have no notion of

self, and they are not aware that the depression or hunger they feel

belongs to a unique entity called ‘I’.

This idea is as common as it is opaque. Obviously, when a dog

feels hungry, he grabs a piece of meat for himself rather than serve

food to another dog. Let a dog sniff a tree watered by the

neighbourhood dogs, and he will immediately know whether it

smells of his own urine, of the neighbour’s cute Labrador’s or of

some stranger’s. Dogs react very differently to their own odour

and to the odours of potential mates and rivals.11 So what does it mean that they lack self-consciousness?

A more sophisticated version of the argument says that there

are different levels of self-consciousness. Only humans

understand themselves as an enduring self that has a past and a

future, perhaps because only humans can use language in order to

contemplate their past experiences and future actions. Other

animals exist in an eternal present. Even when they seem to

remember the past or plan for the future, they are in fact reacting

only to present stimuli and momentary urges.12 For instance, a squirrel hiding nuts for the winter doesn’t really remember the

hunger he felt last winter, nor is he thinking about the future. He

just follows a momentary urge, oblivious to the origins and

purpose of this urge. That’s why even very young squirrels, who

haven’t yet lived through a winter and hence cannot remember

winter, nevertheless cache nuts during the summer. Yet it is unclear why language should be a necessary condition

for being aware of past or future events. The fact that humans use

language to do so is hardly a proof. Humans also use language to

express their love or their fear, but other animals may well

experience and even express love and fear non-verbally. Indeed,

humans themselves are often aware of past and future events

without verbalising them. Especially in dream states, we can be

aware of entire non-verbal narratives – which upon waking we

struggle to describe in words. Various experiments indicate that at least some animals –

including birds such as parrots and scrub jays – do remember

individual incidents and consciously plan for future

eventualities. 13 However, it is impossible to prove this beyond doubt, because no matter how sophisticated a behaviour an

animal exhibits, sceptics can always claim that it results from

unconscious algorithms in its brain rather than from conscious

images in its mind. To illustrate this problem consider the case of Santino, a male

chimpanzee from the Furuvik Zoo in Sweden. To relieve the

boredom in his compound Santino developed an exciting hobby:

throwing stones at visitors to the zoo. In itself, this is hardly

unique. Angry chimpanzees often throw stones, sticks and even

excrement. However, Santino was planning his moves in advance. During the early morning, long before the zoo opened for visitors,

Santino collected projectiles and placed them in a heap, without

showing any visible signs of anger. Guides and visitors soon

learned to be wary of Santino, especially when he was standing

near his pile of stones, hence he had increasing difficulties in

finding targets. In May 2010, Santino responded with a new strategy. In the

early morning he took bales of straw from his sleeping quarters

and placed them close to the compound’s wall, where visitors

usually gather to watch the chimps. He then collected stones and

hid them under the straw. An hour or so later, when the first

visitors approached, Santino kept his cool, showing no signs of

irritation or aggression. Only when his victims were within range

did Santino suddenly grab the stones from their hiding place and

bombard the frightened humans, who would scuttle in all

directions. In the summer of 2012 Santino sped up the arms race,

caching stones not only under straw bales, but also in tree trunks,

buildings and any other suitable hiding place. Yet even Santino doesn’t satisfy the sceptics. How can we be

certain that at 7 a. m., when Santino goes about secreting stones

here and there, he is imagining how fun it will be to pelt the

visiting humans at noon?

Maybe Santino is driven by some non-

conscious algorithm, just like a young squirrel hiding nuts ‘for

winter’ even though he has never experienced winter?14

Similarly, say the sceptics, a male chimpanzee attacking a rival

who hurt him weeks earlier isn’t really avenging the old insult. He

is just reacting to a momentary feeling of anger, the cause of which

is beyond him. When a mother elephant sees a lion threatening

her calf, she rushes forward and risks her life not because she

remembers that this is her beloved offspring whom she has been

nurturing for months; rather, she is impelled by some

unfathomable sense of hostility towards the lion. And when a dog

jumps for joy when his owner comes home, the dog isn’t

recognising the man who fed and cuddled him from infancy. He is

simply overwhelmed by an unexplained ecstasy.15

We cannot prove or disprove any of these claims, because they

are in fact variations on the Problem of Other Minds. Since we

aren’t familiar with any algorithm that requires consciousness,

anything an animal does can be seen as the product of non-

conscious algorithms rather than of conscious memories and

plans. So in Santino’s case too, the real question concerns the

burden of proof. What is the most likely explanation for Santino’s

behaviour?

Should we assume that he is consciously planning for

the future, and anyone who disagrees should provide some

counter-evidence?

Or is it more reasonable to think that the

chimpanzee is driven by a non-conscious algorithm, and all he

consciously feels is a mysterious urge to place stones under bales

of straw?

And even if Santino doesn’t remember the past and doesn’t

imagine the future, does it mean he lacks self-consciousness?

After

all, we ascribe self-consciousness to humans even when they are

not busy remembering the past or dreaming about the future. For

example, when a human mother sees her toddler wandering onto

a busy road, she doesn’t stop to think about either past or future. Just like the mother elephant, she too just races to save her child. Why not say about her what we say about the elephant, namely

that ‘when the mother rushed to save her baby from the oncoming

danger, she did it without any self-consciousness. She was merely

driven by a momentary urge’?

Similarly, consider a young couple kissing passionately on their

first date, a soldier charging into heavy enemy fire to save a

wounded comrade, or an artist drawing a masterpiece in a frenzy

of brushstrokes. None of them stops to contemplate the past or the

future. Does it mean they lack self-consciousness, and that their

state of being is inferior to that of a politician giving an election

speech about his past achievements and future plans?

The Clever Horse

In 2010 scientists conducted an unusually touching rat

experiment. They locked a rat in a tiny cage, placed the cage

within a much larger cell and allowed another rat to roam freely

through that cell. The caged rat gave out distress signals, which

caused the free rat also to exhibit signs of anxiety and stress. In

most cases, the free rat proceeded to help her trapped companion,

and after several attempts usually succeeded in opening the cage

and liberating the prisoner. The researchers then repeated the

experiment, this time placing chocolate in the cell. The free rat

now had to choose between either liberating the prisoner, or

enjoying the chocolate all by herself. Many rats preferred to first

free their companion and share the chocolate (though quite a few

behaved more selfishly, proving perhaps that some rats are

meaner than others).

Sceptics dismissed these results, arguing that the free rat

liberated the prisoner not out of empathy, but simply in order to

stop the annoying distress signals. The rats were motivated by the

unpleasant sensations they felt, and they sought nothing grander

than ending these sensations. Maybe. But we could say exactly the

same thing about us humans. When I donate money to a beggar,

am I not reacting to the unpleasant sensations that the sight of the

beggar causes me to feel?

Do I really care about the beggar, or do I

simply want to feel better myself?

16

In essence, we humans are not that different from rats, dogs,

dolphins or chimpanzees. Like them, we too have no soul. Like us,

they too have consciousness and a complex world of sensations

and emotions. Of course, every animal has its unique traits and

talents. Humans too have their special gifts. We shouldn’t

humanise animals needlessly, imagining that they are just a

furrier version of ourselves. This is not only bad science, but it also

prevents us from understanding and valuing other animals on

their terms. In the early 1900s, a horse called Clever Hans became a German

celebrity. Touring Germany’s towns and villages, Hans showed off

a remarkable grasp of the German language, and an even more

remarkable mastery of mathematics. When asked, ‘Hans, what is

four times three?’ Hans tapped his hoof twelve times. When

shown a written message asking, ‘What is twenty minus eleven?’

Hans tapped nine times, with commendable Prussian precision. In 1904 the German board of education appointed a special

scientific commission headed by a psychologist to look into the

matter. The thirteen members of the commission – which

included a circus manager and a veterinarian – were convinced

this must be a scam, but despite their best efforts they couldn’t

uncover any fraud or subterfuge. Even when Hans was separated

from his owner, and complete strangers presented him with the

questions, Hans still got most of the answers right. In 1907 the psychologist Oskar Pfungst began another

investigation that finally revealed the truth. It turned out that

Hans got the answers right by carefully observing the body

language and facial expressions of his interlocutors. When Hans

was asked what is four times three, he knew from past experience

that the human was expecting him to tap his hoof a given number

of times. He began tapping, while closely monitoring the human. As Hans approached the correct number of taps the human

became more and more tense, and when Hans tapped the right

number, the tension reached its peak. Hans knew how to

recognise this by the human’s body posture and the look on the

human’s face. He then stopped tapping, and watched how tension

was replaced by amazement or laughter. Hans knew he had got it

right. Clever Hans is often given as an example of the way humans

erroneously humanise animals, ascribing to them far more

amazing abilities than they actually possess. In fact, however, the

lesson is just the opposite. The story demonstrates that by

humanising animals we usually underestimate animal cognition

and ignore the unique abilities of other creatures. As far as maths

goes, Hans was hardly a genius. Any eight-year-old kid could do

much better. However, in his ability to deduce emotions and

intentions from body language, Hans was a true genius. If a

Chinese person were to ask me in Mandarin what is four times

three, there is no way that I could correctly tap my foot twelve

times simply by observing facial expressions and body language. Clever Hans enjoyed this ability because horses normally

communicate with each other through body language. What was

remarkable about Hans, however, is that he could use the method

to decipher the emotions and intentions not only of his fellow

horses, but also of unfamiliar humans. Credit 1.17

17.

Clever Hans on stage in 1904.

If animals are so clever, why don’t horses harness humans to

carts, rats conduct experiments on us, and dolphins make us jump

through hoops?

Homo sapiens surely has some unique ability that

enables it to dominate all the other animals. Having dismissed the

overblown notions that Homo sapiens exists on an entirely

different plain from other animals, or that humans possess some

unique essence like soul or consciousness, we can finally climb

down to the level of reality and examine the particular physical or

mental abilities that give our species its edge. Most studies cite tool production and intelligence as particularly

important for the ascent of humankind. Though other animals

also produce tools, there is little doubt that humans far surpass

them in that field. Things are a bit less clear with regard to

intelligence. An entire industry is devoted to defining and

measuring intelligence but is a long way from reaching a

consensus. Luckily, we don’t have to enter into that minefield,

because no matter how one defines intelligence, it is quite clear

that neither intelligence nor toolmaking by themselves can

account for the Sapiens conquest of the world. According to most

definitions of intelligence, a million years ago humans were

already the most intelligent animals around, as well as the world’s

champion tool-makers, yet they remained insignificant creatures

with little impact on the surrounding ecosystem. They were

obviously lacking some key feature other than intelligence and

toolmaking. Perhaps humankind eventually came to dominate the planet not

because of some elusive third key ingredient, but due simply to the

evolution of even higher intelligence and even better toolmaking

abilities?

It doesn’t seem so, because when we examine the

historical record, we don’t see a direct correlation between the

intelligence and toolmaking abilities of individual humans and the

power of our species as a whole. Twenty thousand years ago, the

average Sapiens probably had higher intelligence and better

toolmaking skills than the average Sapiens of today. Modern

schools and employers may test our aptitudes from time to time

but, no matter how badly we do, the welfare state always

guarantees our basic needs. In the Stone Age natural selection

tested you every single moment of every single day, and if you

flunked any of its numerous tests you were pushing up the daisies

in no time. Yet despite the superior toolmaking abilities of our

Stone Age ancestors, and despite their sharper minds and far

more acute senses, 20,000 years ago humankind was much

weaker than it is today. Over those 20,000 years humankind moved from hunting

mammoth with stone-tipped spears to exploring the solar system

with spaceships not thanks to the evolution of more dexterous hands or bigger brains (our brains today seem actually to be

smaller).

17 Instead, the crucial factor in our conquest of the world was our ability to connect many humans to one another.18

Humans nowadays completely dominate the planet not because

the individual human is far smarter and more nimble-fingered

than the individual chimp or wolf, but because Homo sapiens is

the only species on earth capable of cooperating flexibly in large

numbers. Intelligence and toolmaking were obviously very

important as well. But if humans had not learned to cooperate

flexibly in large numbers, our crafty brains and deft hands would

still be splitting flint stones rather than uranium atoms. If cooperation is the key, how come the ants and bees did not

beat us to the nuclear bomb even though they learned to cooperate

en masse millions of years before us?

Because their cooperation

lacks flexibility. Bees cooperate in very sophisticated ways, but

they cannot reinvent their social system overnight. If a hive faces a

new threat or a new opportunity, the bees cannot, for example,

guillotine the queen and establish a republic. Social mammals such as elephants and chimpanzees cooperate

far more flexibly than bees, but they do so only with small

numbers of friends and family members. Their cooperation is

based on personal acquaintance. If I am a chimpanzee and you are

a chimpanzee and I want to cooperate with you, I must know you

personally: what kind of chimp are you?

Are you a nice chimp?

Are you an evil chimp?

How can I cooperate with you if I don’t

know you?

To the best of our knowledge, only Sapiens can

cooperate in very flexible ways with countless numbers of

strangers. This concrete capability – rather than an eternal soul or

some unique kind of consciousness – explains our mastery of

planet Earth. Long Live the Revolution!

History provides ample evidence for the crucial importance of

large-scale cooperation. Victory almost invariably went to those

who cooperated better – not only in struggles between Homo

sapiens and other animals, but also in conflicts between different human groups. Thus Rome conquered Greece not because the

Romans had larger brains or better toolmaking techniques, but

because they were able to cooperate more effectively. Throughout

history, disciplined armies easily routed disorganised hordes, and

unified elites dominated the disorderly masses. In 1914, for

example, 3 million Russian noblemen, officials and business

people lorded it over 180 million peasants and workers. The

Russian elite knew how to cooperate in defence of its common

interests, whereas the 180 million commoners were incapable of

effective mobilisation. Indeed, much of the elite’s efforts focused

on ensuring that the 180 million people at the bottom would never

learn to cooperate. In order to mount a revolution, numbers are never enough. Revolutions are usually made by small networks of agitators

rather than by the masses. If you want to launch a revolution,

don’t ask yourself, ‘How many people support my ideas?’ Instead,

ask yourself, ‘How many of my supporters are capable of effective

collaboration?’ The Russian Revolution finally erupted not when

180 million peasants rose against the tsar, but rather when a

handful of communists placed themselves at the right place at the

right time. In 1917, at a time when the Russian upper and middle

classes numbered at least 3 million people, the Communist Party

had just 23,000 members. 19 The communists nevertheless gained

control of the vast Russian Empire because they organised

themselves well. When authority in Russia slipped from the

decrepit hands of the tsar and the equally shaky hands of

Kerensky’s provisional government, the communists seized it with

alacrity, gripping the reins of power like a bulldog locking its jaws

on a bone. The communists didn’t release their grip until the late 1980s. Effective organisation kept them in power for eight long decades,

and they eventually fell due to defective organisation. On 21

December 1989 Nicolae Ceauşescu, the communist dictator of

Romania, organised a mass demonstration of support in the

centre of Bucharest. Over the previous months the Soviet Union

had withdrawn its support from the eastern European communist

regimes, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and revolutions had swept

Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. Ceauşescu, who had ruled Romania since 1965, believed he could

withstand the tsunami, even though riots against his rule had

erupted in the Romanian city of Timişoara on 17 December. As

one of his counter-measures, Ceauşescu arranged a massive rally

in Bucharest to prove to Romanians and the rest of the world that

the majority of the populace still loved him – or at least feared

him. The creaking party apparatus mobilised 80,000 people to fill

the city’s central square, and citizens throughout Romania were

instructed to stop all their activities and tune in on their radios

and televisions. To the cheering of the seemingly enthusiastic crowd, Ceauşescu

mounted the balcony overlooking the square, as he had done

scores of times in previous decades. Flanked by his wife Elena,

leading party officials and a bevy of bodyguards, Ceauşescu began

delivering one of his trademark dreary speeches. For eight

minutes he praised the glories of Romanian socialism, looking

very pleased with himself as the crowd clapped mechanically. And

then something went wrong. You can see it for yourself on

YouTube. Just search for ‘Ceauşescu’s last speech’, and watch

history in action. 20

The YouTube clip shows Ceauşescu starting another long

sentence, saying, ‘I want to thank the initiators and organisers of

this great event in Bucharest, considering it as a—’, and then he

falls silent, his eyes open wide, and he freezes in disbelief. He

never finished the sentence. You can see in that split second how

an entire world collapses. Somebody in the audience booed. People still argue today who was the first person who dared to

boo. And then another person booed, and another, and another,

and within a few seconds the masses began whistling, shouting

abuse and calling out ‘Ti-mi-şoa-ra!

Ti-mi-şoa-ra!’

Credit 1.18

18.

The moment a world collapses: a stunned Ceauşescu cannot believe his eyes

and ears. All this happened live on Romanian television, as three-quarters

of the populace sat glued to the screens, their hearts throbbing

wildly. The notorious secret police – the Securitate – immediately

ordered the broadcast to be stopped, but the television crews

disobeyed. The cameraman pointed the camera towards the sky so

that viewers couldn’t see the panic among the party leaders on the

balcony, but the soundman kept recording, and the technicians

continued the transmission. The whole of Romania heard the

crowd booing, while Ceauşescu yelled, ‘Hello!

Hello!

Hello!’ as if

the problem was with the microphone. His wife Elena began

scolding the audience, ‘Be quiet!

Be quiet!’ until Ceauşescu turned

and yelled at her – still live on television – ‘You be quiet!’

Ceauşescu then appealed to the excited crowds in the square,

imploring them, ‘Comrades!

Comrades!

Be quiet, comrades!’

But the comrades were unwilling to be quiet. Communist

Romania crumbled when 80,000 people in the Bucharest central

square realised they were much stronger than the old man in the

fur hat on the balcony. What is truly astounding, however, is not

the moment the system collapsed, but the fact that it managed to

survive for decades. Why are revolutions so rare?

Why do the

masses sometimes clap and cheer for centuries on end, doing

everything the man on the balcony commands them, even though

they could in theory charge forward at any moment and tear him

to pieces?

Ceauşescu and his cronies dominated 20 million Romanians for

four decades because they ensured three vital conditions. First,

they placed loyal communist apparatchiks in control of all

networks of cooperation, such as the army, trade unions and even

sports associations. Second, they prevented the creation of any

rival organisations – whether political, economic or social – which

might serve as a basis for anti-communist cooperation. Third, they

relied on the support of sister communist parties in the Soviet

Union and eastern Europe. Despite occasional tensions, these

parties helped each other in times of need, or at least guaranteed

that no outsider poked his nose into the socialist paradise. Under

such conditions, despite all the hardship and suffering inflicted on

them by the ruling elite, the 20 million Romanians were unable to

organise any effective opposition. Ceauşescu fell from power only once all three conditions no

longer held. In the late 1980s the Soviet Union withdrew its

protection and the communist regimes began falling like

dominoes. By December 1989 Ceauşescu could not expect any

outside assistance. Just the opposite – revolutions in nearby

countries gave heart to the local opposition. The Communist Party

itself began splitting into rival camps. The moderates wished to rid

themselves of Ceauşescu and initiate reforms before it was too

late. By organising the Bucharest demonstration and broadcasting

it live on television, Ceauşescu himself provided the

revolutionaries with the perfect opportunity to discover their

power and rally against him. What quicker way to spread a

revolution than by showing it on TV?

Yet when power slipped from the hands of the clumsy organiser

on the balcony, it did not pass to the masses in the square. Though

numerous and enthusiastic, the crowds did not know how to

organise themselves. Hence just as in Russia in 1917, power

passed to a small group of political players whose only asset was

good organisation. The Romanian Revolution was hijacked by the

self-proclaimed National Salvation Front, which was in fact a

smokescreen for the moderate wing of the Communist Party. The

Front had no real ties to the demonstrating crowds. It was

manned by mid-ranking party officials, and led by Ion Iliescu, a

former member of the Communist Party’s central committee and

one-time head of the propaganda department. Iliescu and his

comrades in the National Salvation Front reinvented themselves

as democratic politicians, proclaimed to any available microphone

that they were the leaders of the revolution, and then used their

long experience and network of cronies to take control of the

country and pocket its resources. In communist Romania almost everything was owned by the

state. Democratic Romania quickly privatised its assets, selling

them at bargain prices to the ex-communists, who alone grasped

what was happening and collaborated to feather each other’s

nests. Government companies that controlled national

infrastructure and natural resources were sold to former

communist officials at end-of-season prices while the party’s foot

soldiers bought houses and apartments for pennies. Ion Iliescu was elected president of Romania, while his

colleagues became ministers, parliament members, bank directors

and multimillionaires. The new Romanian elite that controls the

country to this day is composed mostly of former communists and

their families. The masses who risked their necks in Timişoara and

Bucharest settled for scraps, because they did not know how to

cooperate and how to create an efficient organisation to look after

their own interests. 21

A similar fate befell the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.

What

television did in 1989, Facebook and Twitter did in 2011.

The new

media helped the masses coordinate their activities, so that

thousands of people flooded the streets and squares at the right

moment and toppled the Mubarak regime. However, it is one

thing to bring 100,000 people to Tahrir Square, and quite another

to get a grip on the political machinery, shake the right hands in

the right back rooms and run a country effectively. Consequently,

when Mubarak stepped down the demonstrators could not fill the

vacuum. Egypt had only two institutions sufficiently organised to

rule the country: the army and the Muslim Brotherhood. Hence the revolution was hijacked first by the Brotherhood, and

eventually by the army. The Romanian ex-communists and the Egyptian generals were

not more intelligent or nimble-fingered than either the old

dictators or the demonstrators in Bucharest and Cairo. Their

advantage lay in flexible cooperation. They cooperated better than

the crowds, and they were willing to show far more flexibility than

the hidebound Ceauşescu and Mubarak. Beyond Sex and Violence

If Sapiens rule the world because we alone can cooperate flexibly

in large numbers, then this undermines our belief in the

sacredness of human beings. We tend to think that we are special,

and deserve all kinds of privileges. As proof, we point to the

amazing achievements of our species: we built the pyramids and

the Great Wall of China; we deciphered the structure of atoms and

DNA molecules; we reached the South Pole and the moon. If these

accomplishments resulted from some unique essence that each

individual human has – an immortal soul, say – then it would

make sense to sanctify human life. Yet since these triumphs

actually result from mass cooperation, it is far less clear why they

should make us revere individual humans. A beehive has much greater power than an individual butterfly,

yet that doesn’t imply a bee is therefore more hallowed than a

butterfly. The Romanian Communist Party successfully dominated

the disorganised Romanian population. Does it follow that the life

of a party member was more sacred than the life of an ordinary

citizen?

Humans know how to cooperate far more effectively than

chimpanzees, which is why humans launch spaceships to the

moon whereas chimpanzees throw stones at zoo visitors. Does it

mean that humans are superior beings?

Well, maybe. It depends on what enables humans to cooperate

so well in the first place. Why are humans alone able to construct

such large and sophisticated social systems?

Social cooperation

among most social mammals such as chimpanzees, wolves and

dolphins relies on intimate acquaintance. Among common

chimpanzees, individuals will go hunting together only after they

have got to know each other well and established a social

hierarchy. Hence chimpanzees spend a lot of time in social

interactions and power struggles. When alien chimpanzees meet,

they usually cannot cooperate, but instead scream at each other,

fight or flee as quickly as possible. Among pygmy chimpanzees – also known as bonobos – things

are a bit different. Bonobos often use sex in order to dispel

tensions and cement social bonds. Not surprisingly, homosexual

intercourse is consequently very common among them. When two

alien groups of bonobos encounter one another, at first they

display fear and hostility, and the jungle is filled with howls and

screams. Soon enough, however, females from one group cross no-

chimp’s-land, and invite the strangers to make love instead of war. The invitation is usually accepted, and within a few minutes the

potential battlefield teems with bonobos having sex in almost

every conceivable posture, including hanging upside down from

trees. Sapiens know these cooperative tricks well. They sometimes

form power hierarchies similar to those of common chimpanzees,

whereas on other occasions they cement social bonds with sex just

like bonobos. Yet personal acquaintance – whether it involves

fighting or copulating – cannot form the basis for large-scale

cooperation. You cannot settle the Greek debt crisis by inviting

Greek politicians and German bankers to either a fist fight or an

orgy. Research indicates that Sapiens just can’t have intimate

relations (whether hostile or amorous) with more than 150

individuals.22 Whatever enables humans to organise mass-

cooperation networks, it isn’t intimate relations. This is bad news for psychologists, sociologists, economists and

others who try to decipher human society through laboratory

experiments. For both organisational and financial reasons, the

vast majority of experiments are conducted either on individuals

or on small groups of participants. Yet it is risky to extrapolate

from small-group behaviour to the dynamics of mass societies. A

nation of 100 million people functions in a fundamentally

different way to a band of a hundred individuals. Take, for example, the Ultimatum Game – one of the most

famous experiments in behavioural economics. This experiment is

usually conducted on two people. One of them gets $100, which he

must divide between himself and the other participant in any way

he wants. He may keep everything, split the money in half or give

most of it away. The other player can do one of two things: accept

the suggested division, or reject it outright. If he rejects the

division, nobody gets anything. Classical economic theories maintain that humans are rational

calculating machines. They propose that most people will keep

$99, and offer $1 to the other participant. They further propose

that the other participant will accept the offer. A rational person

offered a dollar will always say yes. What does he care if the other

player gets $99?

Classical economists have probably never left their laboratories

and lecture halls to venture into the real world. Most people

playing the Ultimatum Game reject very low offers because they

are ‘unfair’.

They prefer losing a dollar to looking like suckers. Since this is how the real world functions, few people make very

low offers in the first place. Most people divide the money equally,

or give themselves only a moderate advantage, offering $30 or

$40 to the other player. The Ultimatum Game made a significant contribution to

undermining classical economic theories and to establishing the

most important economic discovery of the last few decades:

Sapiens don’t behave according to a cold mathematical logic, but

rather according to a warm social logic. We are ruled by emotions. These emotions, as we saw earlier, are in fact sophisticated

algorithms that reflect the social mechanisms of ancient hunter-

gatherer bands. If 30,000 years ago I helped you hunt a wild

chicken and you then kept almost all the chicken to yourself,

offering me just one wing, I did not say to myself: ‘Better one wing

than nothing at all.’ Instead my evolutionary algorithms kicked in,

adrenaline and testosterone flooded my system, my blood boiled,

and I stamped my feet and shouted at the top of my voice. In the

short term I may have gone hungry, and even risked a punch or

two. But it paid off in the long term, because you thought twice

before ripping me off again. We refuse unfair offers because

people who meekly accepted unfair offers didn’t survive in the Stone Age. Observations of contemporary hunter-gatherer bands support

this idea. Most bands are highly egalitarian, and when a hunter

comes back to camp carrying a fat deer, everybody gets a share. The same is true of chimpanzees. When one chimp kills a piglet,

the other troop members will gather round him with outstretched

hands, and usually they all get a piece. In another recent experiment, the primatologist Frans de Waal

placed two capuchin monkeys in two adjacent cages, so that each

could see everything the other was doing. De Waal and his

colleagues placed small stones inside each cage, and trained the

monkeys to give them these stones. Whenever a monkey handed

over a stone, he received food in exchange. At first the reward was

a piece of cucumber. Both monkeys were very pleased with that,

and happily ate their cucumber. After a few rounds de Waal

moved to the next stage of the experiment. This time, when the

first monkey surrendered a stone, he got a grape. Grapes are much

more tasty than cucumbers. However, when the second monkey

gave a stone, he still received a piece of cucumber. The second

monkey, who was previously very happy with his cucumber,

became incensed. He took the cucumber, looked at it in disbelief

for a moment, and then threw it at the scientists in anger and

began jumping and screeching loudly. He ain’t a sucker. 23

This hilarious experiment (which you can see for yourself on

YouTube), along with the Ultimatum Game, has led many to

believe that primates have a natural morality, and that equality is

a universal and timeless value. People are egalitarian by nature,

and unequal societies can never function well due to resentment

and dissatisfaction. But is that really so?

These theories may work well on

chimpanzees, capuchin monkeys and small hunter-gatherer

bands. They also work well in the lab, where you test them on

small groups of people. Yet once you observe the behaviour of

human masses you discover a completely different reality. Most

human kingdoms and empires were extremely unequal, yet many

of them were surprisingly stable and efficient. In ancient Egypt,

the pharaoh sprawled on comfortable cushions inside a cool and

sumptuous palace, wearing golden sandals and gem-studded

tunics, while beautiful maids popped sweet grapes into his mouth. Through the open window he could see the peasants in the fields,

toiling in dirty rags under a merciless sun, and blessed was the

peasant who had a cucumber to eat at the end of the day. Yet the

peasants rarely revolted. In 1740 King Frederick II of Prussia invaded Silesia, thus

commencing a series of bloody wars that earned him his sobriquet

Frederick the Great, turned Prussia into a major power and left

hundreds of thousands of people dead, crippled or destitute. Most

of Frederick’s soldiers were hapless recruits, subject to iron

discipline and draconian drill. Not surprisingly, the soldiers lost

little love on their supreme commander. As Frederick watched his

troops assemble for the invasion, he told one of his generals that

what struck him most about the scene was that ‘we are standing

here in perfect safety, looking at 60,000 men – they are all our

enemies, and there is not one of them who is not better armed and

stronger than we are, and yet they all tremble in our presence,

while we have no reason whatsoever to be afraid of them’.24

Frederick could indeed watch them in perfect safety. During the

following years, despite all the hardships of war, these 60,000

armed men never revolted against him – indeed, many of them

served him with exceptional courage, risking and even sacrificing

their very lives. Why did the Egyptian peasants and Prussian soldiers act so

differently than we would have expected on the basis of the

Ultimatum Game and the capuchin monkeys experiment?

Because

large numbers of people behave in a fundamentally different way

than do small numbers. What would scientists see if they

conducted the Ultimatum Game experiment on two groups of 1

million people each, who had to share $100 billion?

They would probably have witnessed strange and fascinating

dynamics. For example, since 1 million people cannot make

decisions collectively, each group might sprout a small ruling elite. What if one elite offers the other $10 billion, keeping $90 billion?

The leaders of the second group might well accept this unfair offer,

siphon most of the $10 billion into their Swiss bank accounts,

while preventing rebellion among their followers with a

combination of sticks and carrots. The leadership might threaten

to severely punish dissidents forthwith, while promising the meek

and patient everlasting rewards in the afterlife. This is what

happened in ancient Egypt and eighteenth-century Prussia, and

this is how things still work out in numerous countries around the

world. Such threats and promises often succeed in creating stable

human hierarchies and mass-cooperation networks, as long as

people believe that they reflect the inevitable laws of nature or the

divine commands of God, rather than just human whims. All

large-scale human cooperation is ultimately based on our belief in

imagined orders. These are sets of rules that, despite existing only

in our imagination, we believe to be as real and inviolable as

gravity. ‘If you sacrifice ten bulls to the sky god, the rain will come;

if you honour your parents, you will go to heaven; and if you don’t

believe what I am telling you – you’ll go to hell.’ As long as all

Sapiens living in a particular locality believe in the same stories,

they all follow the same rules, making it easy to predict the

behaviour of strangers and to organise mass-cooperation

networks. Sapiens often use visual marks such as a turban, a beard

or a business suit to signal ‘you can trust me, I believe in the same

story as you’.

Our chimpanzee cousins cannot invent and spread

such stories, which is why they cannot cooperate in large numbers. The Web of Meaning

People find it difficult to understand the idea of ‘imagined orders’

because they assume that there are only two types of realities:

objective realities and subjective realities. In objective reality,

things exist independently of our beliefs and feelings. Gravity, for

example, is an objective reality. It existed long before Newton, and

it affects people who don’t believe in it just as much as it affects

those who do. Subjective reality, in contrast, depends on my personal beliefs

and feelings. Thus, suppose I feel a sharp pain in my head and go

to the doctor. The doctor checks me thoroughly, but finds nothing

wrong. So she sends me for a blood test, urine test, DNA test, X-

ray, electrocardiogram, fMRI scan and a plethora of other

procedures. When the results come in she announces that I am

perfectly healthy, and I can go home. Yet I still feel a sharp pain in

my head. Even though every objective test has found nothing

wrong with me, and even though nobody except me feels the pain,

for me the pain is 100 per cent real. Most people presume that reality is either objective or

subjective, and that there is no third option. Hence once they

satisfy themselves that something isn’t just their own subjective

feeling, they jump to the conclusion it must be objective. If lots of

people believe in God; if money makes the world go round; and if

nationalism starts wars and builds empires – then these things

aren’t just a subjective belief of mine. God, money and nations

must therefore be objective realities. However, there is a third level of reality: the intersubjective

level. Intersubjective entities depend on communication among

many humans rather than on the beliefs and feelings of individual

humans. Many of the most important agents in history are

intersubjective. Money, for example, has no objective value. You

cannot eat, drink or wear a dollar bill. Yet as long as billions of

people believe in its value, you can use it to buy food, beverages

and clothing. If the baker suddenly loses his faith in the dollar bill

and refuses to give me a loaf of bread for this green piece of paper,

it doesn’t matter much. I can just go down a few blocks to the

nearby supermarket. However, if the supermarket cashiers also

refuse to accept this piece of paper, along with the hawkers in the

market and the salespeople in the mall, then the dollar will lose its

value. The green pieces of paper will go on existing, of course, but

they will be worthless. Such things actually happen from time to time. On 3 November

1985 the Myanmar government unexpectedly announced that

banknotes of twenty-five, fifty and a hundred kyats were no longer

legal tender. People were given no opportunity to exchange the

notes, and savings of a lifetime were instantaneously turned into

heaps of worthless paper. To replace the defunct notes, the

government introduced new seventy-five-kyat bills, allegedly in

honour of the seventy-fifth birthday of Myanmar’s dictator,

General Ne Win. In August 1986, banknotes of fifteen kyats and

thirty-five kyats were issued. Rumour had it that the dictator, who

had a strong faith in numerology, believed that fifteen and thirty-

five are lucky numbers. They brought little luck to his subjects. On

5 September 1987 the government suddenly decreed that all

thirty-five and seventy-five notes were no longer money. The value of money is not the only thing that might evaporate

once people stop believing in it. The same can happen to laws,

gods and even entire empires. One moment they are busy shaping

the world, and the next moment they no longer exist. Zeus and

Hera were once important powers in the Mediterranean basin, but

today they lack any authority because nobody believes in them. The Soviet Union could once destroy the entire human race, yet it

ceased to exist at the stroke of a pen. At 2 p. m. on 8 December

1991, in a state dacha near Viskuli, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine

and Belarus signed the Belavezha Accords, which stated that ‘We,

the Republic of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, as

founding states of the USSR that signed the union treaty of 1922,

hereby establish that the USSR as a subject of international law

and a geopolitical reality ceases its existence.’25 And that was that. No more Soviet Union. It is relatively easy to accept that money is an intersubjective

reality. Most people are also happy to acknowledge that ancient

Greek gods, evil empires and the values of alien cultures exist only

in the imagination. Yet we don’t want to accept that our God, our

nation or our values are mere fictions, because these are the

things that give meaning to our lives. We want to believe that our

lives have some objective meaning, and that our sacrifices matter

to something beyond the stories in our head. Yet in truth the lives

of most people have meaning only within the network of stories

they tell one another. Credit 1.19

19.

Signing the Belavezha Accords. Pen touches paper – and abracadabra!

The

Soviet Union disappears. Meaning is created when many people weave together a

common network of stories. Why does a particular action – such

as getting married in church, fasting on Ramadan or voting on

election day – seem meaningful to me?

Because my parents also

think it is meaningful, as do my brothers, my neighbours, people

in nearby cities and even the residents of far-off countries. And

why do all these people think it is meaningful?

Because their

friends and neighbours also share the same view. People

constantly reinforce each other’s beliefs in a self-perpetuating

loop. Each round of mutual confirmation tightens the web of

meaning further, until you have little choice but to believe what

everyone else believes. Yet over decades and centuries the web of meaning unravels and

a new web is spun in its place. To study history means to watch the

spinning and unravelling of these webs, and to realise that what

seems to people in one age the most important thing in life

becomes utterly meaningless to their descendants. In 1187 Saladin defeated the crusader army at the Battle of Hattin and conquered Jerusalem. In response the Pope launched

the Third Crusade to recapture the holy city. Imagine a young

English nobleman named John, who left home to fight Saladin. John believed that his actions had an objective meaning. He

believed that if he died on the crusade, after death his soul would

ascend to heaven, where it would enjoy everlasting celestial joy. He would have been horrified to learn that the soul and heaven are

just stories invented by humans. John wholeheartedly believed

that if he reached the Holy Land, and if some Muslim warrior with

a big moustache brought an axe down on his head, he would feel

an unbearable pain, his ears would ring, his legs would crumble

under him, his field of vision would turn black – and the very next

moment he would see brilliant light all around him, he would hear

angelic voices and melodious harps, and radiant winged cherubs

would beckon him through a magnificent golden gate. John had a very strong faith in all this, because he was

enmeshed within an extremely dense and powerful web of

meaning. His earliest memories were of Grandpa Henry’s rusty

sword, hanging in the castle’s main hall. Ever since he was a

toddler John had heard stories of Grandpa Henry who died on the

Second Crusade and who is now resting with the angels in heaven,

watching over John and his family. When minstrels visited the

castle, they usually sang about the brave crusaders who fought in

the Holy Land. When John went to church, he enjoyed looking at

the stained-glass windows. One showed Godfrey of Bouillon riding

a horse and impaling a wicked-looking Muslim on his lance. Another showed the souls of sinners burning in hell. John listened

attentively to the local priest, the most learned man he knew. Almost every Sunday, the priest explained – with the help of well-

crafted parables and hilarious jokes – that there was no salvation

outside the Catholic Church, that the Pope in Rome was our holy

father and that we always had to obey his commands. If we

murdered or stole, God would send us to hell; but if we killed

infidel Muslims, God would welcome us to heaven. One day when John was just turning eighteen a dishevelled

knight rode to the castle’s gate, and in a choked voice announced

the news: Saladin has destroyed the crusader army at Hattin!

Jerusalem has fallen!

The Pope has declared a new crusade,

promising eternal salvation to anyone who dies on it!

All around,

people looked shocked and worried, but John’s face lit up in an

otherworldly glow and he proclaimed: ‘I am going to fight the

infidels and liberate the Holy Land!’ Everyone fell silent for a

moment, and then smiles and tears appeared on their faces. His

mother wiped her eyes, gave John a big hug and told him how

proud she was of him. His father gave him a mighty pat on the

back, and said: ‘If only I was your age, son, I would join you. Our

family’s honour is at stake – I am sure you won’t disappoint us!’

Two of his friends announced that they were coming too. Even

John’s sworn rival, the baron on the other side of the river, paid a

visit to wish him Godspeed. As he left the castle, villagers came forth from their hovels to

wave to him, and all the pretty girls looked longingly at the brave

crusader setting off to fight the infidels. When he set sail from

England and made his way through strange and distant lands –

Normandy, Provence, Sicily – he was joined by bands of foreign

knights, all with the same destination and the same faith. When

the army finally disembarked in the Holy Land and waged battle

with Saladin’s hosts, John was amazed to discover that even the

wicked Saracens shared his beliefs. True, they were a bit confused,

thinking that the Christians were the infidels and that the Muslims

were obeying God’s will. Yet they too accepted the basic principle

that those fighting for God and Jerusalem will go straight to

heaven when they die. In such a way, thread by thread, medieval civilisation spun its

web of meaning, trapping John and his contemporaries like flies. It was inconceivable to John that all these stories were just

figments of the imagination. Maybe his parents and uncles were

wrong. But the minstrels too, and all his friends, and the village

girls, the learned priest, the baron on the other side of the river,

the Pope in Rome, the Provençal and Sicilian knights, and even

the very Muslims – is it possible that they were all hallucinating?

And the years pass. As the historian watches, the web of

meaning unravels and another is spun in its stead. John’s parents

die, followed by all his siblings and friends. Instead of minstrels

singing about the crusades, the new fashion is stage plays about

tragic love affairs. The family castle burns to the ground and, when it is rebuilt, no trace is found of Grandpa Henry’s sword. The

church windows shatter in a winter storm and the replacement

glass no longer depicts Godfrey of Bouillon and the sinners in hell,

but rather the great triumph of the king of England over the king

of France. The local priest has stopped calling the Pope ‘our holy

father’ – he is now referred to as ‘that devil in Rome’.

In the

nearby university scholars pore over ancient Greek manuscripts,

dissect dead bodies and whisper quietly behind closed doors that

perhaps there is no such thing as the soul. And the years continue to pass. Where the castle once stood,

there is now a shopping mall. In the local cinema they are

screening Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the umpteenth

time. In an empty church a bored vicar is overjoyed to see two

Japanese tourists. He explains at length about the stained-glass

windows, while they politely smile, nodding in complete

incomprehension. On the steps outside a gaggle of teenagers are

playing with their iPhones. They watch a new YouTube remix of

John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’.

‘Imagine there’s no heaven,’ sings

Lennon, ‘it’s easy if you try.’ A Pakistani street cleaner is sweeping

the pavement, while a nearby radio broadcasts the news: the

carnage in Syria continues, and the Security Council’s meeting has

ended in an impasse. Suddenly a hole in time opens, a mysterious

ray of light illuminates the face of one of the teenagers, who

announces: ‘I am going to fight the infidels and liberate the Holy

Land!’

Infidels and Holy Land?

These words no longer carry any

meaning for most people in today’s England. Even the vicar would

probably think the teenager is having some sort of psychotic

episode. In contrast, if an English youth decided to join Amnesty

International and travel to Syria to protect the human rights of

refugees, he will be seen as a hero. In the Middle Ages people

would have thought he had gone bonkers. Nobody in twelfth-

century England knew what human rights were. You want to

travel to the Middle East and risk your life not in order to kill

Muslims, but to protect one group of Muslims from another?

You

must be out of your mind. That’s how history unfolds. People weave a web of meaning,

believe in it with all their heart, but sooner or later the web

unravels, and when we look back we cannot understand how

anybody could have taken it seriously. With hindsight, going on

crusade in the hope of reaching Paradise sounds like utter

madness. With hindsight, the Cold War seems even madder. How

come thirty years ago people were willing to risk nuclear holocaust

because of their belief in a communist paradise?

A hundred years

hence, our belief in democracy and human rights might look

equally incomprehensible to our descendants. Dreamtime

Sapiens rule the world because only they can weave an

intersubjective web of meaning: a web of laws, forces, entities and

places that exist purely in their common imagination. This web

allows humans alone to organise crusades, socialist revolutions

and human rights movements. Other animals may also imagine various things. A cat waiting to

ambush a mouse might not see the mouse, but may well imagine

the shape and even taste of the mouse. Yet to the best of our

knowledge, cats are able to imagine only things that actually exist

in the world, like mice. They cannot imagine things that they have

never seen or smelled or tasted – such as the US dollar, Google

corporation or the European Union. Only Sapiens can imagine

such chimeras. Consequently, whereas cats and other animals are confined to

the objective realm and use their communication systems merely

to describe reality, Sapiens use language to create completely new

realities. During the last 70,000 years the intersubjective realities

that Sapiens invented became ever more powerful, so that today

they dominate the world. Will the chimpanzees, the elephants, the

Amazon rainforests and the Arctic glaciers survive the twenty-first

century?

This depends on the wishes and decisions of

intersubjective entities such as the European Union and the World

Bank; entities that exist only in our shared imagination. No other animal can stand up to us, not because they lack a soul

or a mind, but because they lack the necessary imagination. Lions

can run, jump, claw and bite. Yet they cannot open a bank account

or file a lawsuit. And in the twenty-first century, a banker who

knows how to file a lawsuit is far more powerful than the most

ferocious lion in the savannah. As well as separating humans from other animals, this ability to

create intersubjective entities also separates the humanities from

the life sciences. Historians seek to understand the development

of intersubjective entities like gods and nations, whereas biologists

hardly recognise the existence of such things. Some believe that if

we could only crack the genetic code and map every neuron in the

brain, we will know all of humanity’s secrets. After all, if humans

have no soul, and if thoughts, emotions and sensations are just

biochemical algorithms, why can’t biology account for all the

vagaries of human societies?

From this perspective, the crusades

were territorial disputes shaped by evolutionary pressures, and

English knights going to fight Saladin in the Holy Land were not

that different from wolves trying to appropriate the territory of a

neighbouring pack. The humanities, in contrast, emphasise the crucial importance

of intersubjective entities, which cannot be reduced to hormones

and neurons. To think historically means to ascribe real power to

the contents of our imaginary stories. Of course, historians don’t

ignore objective factors such as climate changes and genetic

mutations, but they give much greater importance to the stories

people invent and believe. North Korea and South Korea are so

different from one another not because people in Pyongyang have

different genes to people in Seoul, or because the north is colder

and more mountainous. It’s because the north is dominated by

very different fictions. Maybe someday breakthroughs in neurobiology will enable us to

explain communism and the crusades in strictly biochemical

terms. Yet we are very far from that point. During the twenty-first

century the border between history and biology is likely to blur not

because we will discover biological explanations for historical

events, but rather because ideological fictions will rewrite DNA

strands; political and economic interests will redesign the climate;

and the geography of mountains and rivers will give way to

cyberspace. As human fictions are translated into genetic and

electronic codes, the intersubjective reality will swallow up the

objective reality and biology will merge with history. In the

twenty-first century fiction might thereby become the most potent

force on earth, surpassing even wayward asteroids and natural

selection. Hence if we want to understand our future, cracking

genomes and crunching numbers is hardly enough. We must also

decipher the fictions that give meaning to the world. Credit 1.20

20.

The Creator: Jackson Pollock in a moment of inspiration. PART II

Homo Sapiens Gives Meaning to the World

What kind of world did humans create?

How did humans become convinced that they not only control the world, but also give it meaning?

How did humanism – the worship of humankind – become the most important religion

of all?

4

The Storytellers

Animals such as wolves and chimpanzees live in a dual reality. On

the one hand, they are familiar with objective entities outside

them, such as trees, rocks and rivers. On the other hand, they are

aware of subjective experiences within them, such as fear, joy and

desire. Sapiens, in contrast, live in triple-layered reality. In

addition to trees, rivers, fears and desires, the Sapiens world also

contains stories about money, gods, nations and corporations. As

history unfolded, the impact of gods, nations and corporations

grew at the expense of rivers, fears and desires. There are still

many rivers in the world, and people are still motivated by their

fears and wishes, but Jesus Christ, the French Republic and Apple

Inc. have dammed and harnessed the rivers, and have learned to

shape our deepest anxieties and yearnings. Since new twenty-first-century technologies are likely to make

such fictions only more potent, understanding our future requires

understanding how stories about Christ, France and Apple have

gained so much power. Humans think they make history, but

history actually revolves around the web of stories. The basic

abilities of individual humans have not changed much since the

Stone Age. But the web of stories has grown from strength to

strength, thereby pushing history from the Stone Age to the

Silicon Age. It all began about 70,000 years ago, when the Cognitive

Revolution enabled Sapiens to start talking about things that

existed only in their own imagination. For the following 60,000

years Sapiens wove many fictional webs, but these remained small

and local. The spirit of a revered ancestor worshipped by one tribe

was completely unknown to its neighbours, and seashells valuable

in one locality became worthless once you crossed the nearby mountain range. Stories about ancestral spirits and precious

seashells still gave Sapiens a huge advantage, because they

allowed hundreds and sometimes even thousands of Sapiens to

cooperate effectively, which was far more than Neanderthals or

chimpanzees could do. Yet as long as Sapiens remained hunter-

gatherers, they could not cooperate on a truly massive scale,

because it was impossible to feed a city or a kingdom by hunting

and gathering. Consequently the spirits, fairies and demons of the

Stone Age were relatively weak entities. The Agricultural Revolution, which began about 12,000 years

ago, provided the necessary material base for enlarging and

strengthening the intersubjective networks. Farming made it

possible to feed thousands of people in crowded cities and

thousands of soldiers in disciplined armies. However, the

intersubjective webs then encountered a new obstacle. In order to

preserve the collective myths and organise mass cooperation, the

early farmers relied on the data-processing abilities of the human

brain, which were strictly limited. Farmers believed in stories about great gods. They built temples

to their favourite god, held festivals in his honour, offered him

sacrifices, and gave him lands, tithes and presents. In the first

cities of ancient Sumer, about 6,000 years ago, the temples were

not just centres of worship, but also the most important political

and economic hubs. The Sumerian gods fulfilled a function

analogous to modern brands and corporations. Today,

corporations are fictional legal entities that own property, lend

money, hire employees and initiate economic enterprises. In

ancient Uruk, Lagash and Shurupak the gods functioned as legal

entities that could own fields and slaves, give and receive loans,

pay salaries and build dams and canals. Since the gods never died, and since they had no children to

fight over their inheritance, they gathered more and more

property and power. An increasing number of Sumerians found

themselves employed by the gods, taking loans from the gods,

tilling the gods’ lands and owing taxes and tithes to the gods. Just

as in present-day San Francisco John is employed by Google while

Mary works for Microsoft, so in ancient Uruk one person was

employed by the great god Enki while his neighbour worked for the goddess Inanna. The temples of Enki and Inanna dominated

the Uruk skyline, and their divine logos branded buildings,

products and clothes. For the Sumerians, Enki and Inanna were as

real as Google and Microsoft are real for us. Compared to their

predecessors – the ghosts and spirits of the Stone Age – the

Sumerian gods were very powerful entities. It goes without saying that the gods didn’t actually run their

businesses, for the simple reason that they didn’t exist anywhere

except in the human imagination. Day-to-day activities were

managed by the temple priests (just as Google and Microsoft need

to hire flesh-and-blood humans to manage their affairs).

However,

as the gods acquired more and more property and power, the

priests could not cope. They may have represented the mighty sky

god or the all-knowing earth goddess, but they themselves were

fallible mortals. They had difficulty remembering all the lands

belonging to the goddess Inanna, which of Inanna’s employees

had received their salary already, which of the goddess’s tenants

had failed to pay rent and what interest rate the goddess charged

her debtors. This was one of the main reasons why in Sumer, like

everywhere else around the world, human cooperation networks

could not grow much even thousands of years after the

Agricultural Revolution. There were no huge kingdoms, no

extensive trade networks and no universal religions. This obstacle was finally removed about 5,000 years ago, when

the Sumerians invented both writing and money. These Siamese

twins – born to the same parents at the same time and in the same

place – broke the data-processing limitations of the human brain. Writing and money made it possible to start collecting taxes from

hundreds of thousands of people, to organise complex

bureaucracies and to establish vast kingdoms. In Sumer these

kingdoms were managed in the name of the gods by human priest-

kings. In the neighbouring Nile Valley people went a step further,

merging the priest-king with the god to create a living deity –

pharaoh. The Egyptians considered pharaoh to be an actual god rather

than just a divine deputy. The whole of Egypt belonged to that

god, and all people had to obey his orders and pay his taxes. Just

as in the Sumerian temples, so also in pharaonic Egypt the god didn’t manage his business empire by himself. Some pharaohs

ruled with an iron fist, while others passed their days at banquets

and festivities, but in both cases the practical work of

administering Egypt was left to thousands of literate officials. Just

like any other human, pharaoh had a biological body with

biological needs, desires and emotions. But the biological pharaoh

was of little importance. The real ruler of the Nile Valley was an

imagined pharaoh that existed in the stories millions of Egyptians

told one another. While pharaoh sat in his palace in the capital city of Memphis,

eating grapes and dallying with his wives and mistresses,

pharaoh’s officials criss-crossed the kingdom from the

Mediterranean shore to the Nubian Desert. The bureaucrats

calculated the taxes each village had to pay, wrote them on long

papyrus scrolls and sent them to Memphis. When a written order

came from Memphis to recruit soldiers to the army or labourers

for some construction project, the officials gathered the necessary

men. They computed how many kilograms of wheat the royal

granaries contained, how many work days were required to clean

the canals and reservoirs, and how many ducks and pigs to send to

Memphis so that pharaoh’s harem could dine well. Even when the

living deity died, and his body was embalmed and borne in an

extravagant funerary procession to the royal necropolis outside

Memphis, the bureaucracy kept going. The officials kept writing

scrolls, collecting taxes, sending orders and oiling the gears of the

pharaonic machine. If the Sumerian gods remind us of present-day company brands,

so the living-god pharaoh can be compared to modern personal

brands such as Elvis Presley, Madonna or Justin Bieber. Just like

pharaoh, Elvis too had a biological body, complete with biological

needs, desires and emotions. Elvis ate and drank and slept. Yet

Elvis was much more than a biological body. Like pharaoh, Elvis

was a story, a myth, a brand – and the brand was far more

important than the biological body. During Elvis’s lifetime, the

brand earned millions of dollars selling records, tickets, posters

and rights, but only a small fraction of the necessary work was

done by Elvis in person. Instead, most of it was done by a small

army of agents, lawyers, producers and secretaries. Consequently

when the biological Elvis died, for the brand it was business as

usual. Even today fans still buy the King’s posters and albums,

radio stations go on paying royalties, and more than half a million

pilgrims flock each year to Graceland, the King’s necropolis in

Memphis, Tennessee. Credit 1.21

21.

Brands are not a modern invention. Just like Elvis Presley, pharaoh too was

a brand rather than a living organism. For millions of followers his image

counted for far more than his fleshy reality, and they kept worshipping him long

after he was dead. Prior to the invention of writing, stories were confined by the

limited capacity of human brains. You couldn’t invent overly

complex stories which people couldn’t remember. With writing

you could suddenly create extremely long and intricate stories,

which were stored on tablets and papyri rather than in human

heads. No ancient Egyptian remembered all of pharaoh’s lands,

taxes and tithes; Elvis Presley never even read all the contracts

signed in his name; no living soul is familiar with all the laws and

regulations of the European Union; and no banker or CIA agent

tracks down every dollar in the world. Yet all of these minutiae are

written somewhere, and the assemblage of relevant documents

defines the identity and power of pharaoh, Elvis, the EU and the

dollar. Writing has thus enabled humans to organise entire societies in

an algorithmic fashion. We encountered the term ‘algorithm’ when

we tried to understand what emotions are and how brains

function, and defined it as a methodical set of steps that can be

used to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions. In illiterate societies people make all calculations and decisions in

their heads. In literate societies people are organised into

networks, so that each person is only a small step in a huge

algorithm, and it is the algorithm as a whole that makes the

important decisions. This is the essence of bureaucracy. Think about a modern hospital, for example. When you arrive

the receptionist hands you a standard form, and asks you a

predetermined set of questions. Your answers are forwarded to a

nurse, who compares them with the hospital’s regulations in order

to decide what preliminary tests to give you. She then measures,

say, your blood pressure and heart rate, and takes a blood test. The doctor on duty examines the results, and follows a strict

protocol to decide in which ward to hospitalise you. In the ward

you are subjected to much more thorough examinations, such as

an X-ray or an fMRI scan, mandated by thick medical guidebooks. Specialists then analyse the results according to well-known

statistical databases, deciding what medicines to give you or what

further tests to run. This algorithmic structure ensures that it doesn’t really matter

who is the receptionist, nurse or doctor on duty. Their personality

type, their political opinions and their momentary moods are

irrelevant. As long as they all follow the regulations and protocols,

they have a good chance of curing you. According to the

algorithmic ideal, your fate is in the hands of ‘the system’, and not

in the hands of the flesh-and-blood mortals who happen to man

this or that post. What’s true of hospitals is also true of armies, prisons, schools,

corporations – and ancient kingdoms. Of course ancient Egypt

was far less technologically sophisticated than a modern hospital,

but the algorithmic principle was the same. In ancient Egypt too,

most decisions were made not by a single wise person, but by a network of officials linked together through papyri and stone

inscriptions. Acting in the name of the living-god pharaoh, the

network restructured human society and reshaped the natural

world. For example, pharaohs Senusret III and his son

Amenemhat III, who ruled Egypt from 1878 BC to 1814 BC, dug a

huge canal linking the Nile to the swamps of the Fayum Valley. An

intricate system of dams, reservoirs and subsidiary canals diverted

some of the Nile waters to Fayum, creating an immense artificial

lake holding 50 billion cubic metres of water. 1 By comparison, Lake Mead, the largest man-made reservoir in the United States

(formed by the Hoover Dam), holds at most 35 billion cubic

metres of water. The Fayum engineering project gave pharaoh the power to

regulate the Nile, prevent destructive floods and provide precious

water relief in times of drought. In addition, it turned the Fayum

Valley from a crocodile-infested swamp surrounded by barren

desert into Egypt’s granary. A new city called Shedet was built on

the shore of the new artificial lake. The Greeks called it

Crocodilopolis – the city of crocodiles. It was dominated by the

temple of the crocodile god Sobek, who was identified with

pharaoh (contemporary statues sometimes show pharaoh sporting

a crocodile head).

The temple housed a sacred crocodile called

Petsuchos, who was considered the living incarnation of Sobek. Just like the living-god pharaoh, the living-god Petsuchos was

lovingly groomed by the attending priests, who provided the lucky

reptile with lavish food and even toys, and dressed him up in gold

cloaks and gem-encrusted crowns. After all, Petsuchos was the

priests’ brand, and their authority and livelihood depended on

him. When Petsuchos died, a new crocodile was immediately

elected to fill his sandals, while the dead reptile was carefully

embalmed and mummified. In the days of Senusret III and Amenemhat III the Egyptians

had neither bulldozers nor dynamite. They didn’t even have iron

tools, work horses or wheels (the wheel did not enter common

usage in Egypt until about 1500 BC).

Bronze tools were considered

cutting-edge technology, but they were so expensive and rare that

most of the building work was done only with tools made of stone

and wood, operated by human muscle power. Many people argue

that the great building projects of ancient Egypt – all the dams

and reservoirs and pyramids – must have been built by aliens

from outer space. How else could a culture lacking even wheels

and iron accomplish such wonders?

The truth is very different. Egyptians built Lake Fayum and the

pyramids not thanks to extraterrestrial help, but thanks to superb

organisational skills. Relying on thousands of literate bureaucrats,

pharaoh recruited tens of thousands of labourers and enough food

to maintain them for years on end. When tens of thousands of

labourers cooperate for several decades, they can build an artificial

lake or a pyramid even with stone tools. Pharaoh himself hardly lifted a finger, of course. He didn’t

collect taxes himself, he didn’t draw any architectural plans, and

he certainly never picked up a shovel. But the Egyptians believed

that only prayers to the living-god pharaoh and to his heavenly

patron Sobek could save the Nile Valley from devastating floods

and droughts. They were right. Pharaoh and Sobek were

imaginary entities that did nothing to raise or lower the Nile water

level, but when millions of people believed in pharaoh and Sobek

and therefore cooperated to build dams and dig canals, floods and

droughts became rare. Compared to the Sumerian gods, not to

mention the Stone Age spirits, the gods of ancient Egypt were

truly powerful entities that founded cities, raised armies and

controlled the lives of millions of humans, cows and crocodiles. It may sound strange to credit imaginary entities with building

or controlling things. But nowadays we habitually say that the

United States built the first nuclear bomb, that China built the

Three Gorges Dam or that Google is building an autonomous car. Why not say, then, that pharaoh built a reservoir and Sobek dug a

canal?

Living on Paper

Writing thus facilitated the appearance of powerful fictional

entities that organised millions of people and reshaped the reality

of rivers, swamps and crocodiles. Simultaneously, writing also

made it easier for humans to believe in the existence of such fictional entities, because it habituated people to experiencing

reality through the mediation of abstract symbols. Hunter-gatherers spent their days climbing trees, looking for

mushrooms, and chasing boars and rabbits. Their daily reality

consisted of trees, mushrooms, boars and rabbits. Peasants

worked all day in the fields, ploughing, harvesting, grinding corn

and taking care of farmyard animals. Their daily reality was the

feeling of muddy earth under bare feet, the smell of oxen pulling

the plough and the taste of warm bread fresh from the oven. In

contrast, scribes in ancient Egypt devoted most of their time to

reading, writing and calculating. Their daily reality consisted of

ink marks on papyrus scrolls, which determined who owned which

field, how much an ox cost and what yearly taxes peasants had to

pay. A scribe could decide the fate of an entire village with a stroke

of his stylus. The vast majority of people remained illiterate until the modern

age, but the all-important administrators increasingly saw reality

through the medium of written texts. For this literate elite –

whether in ancient Egypt or in twentieth-century Europe –

anything written on a piece of paper was at least as real as trees,

oxen and human beings. When the Nazis overran France in the spring of 1940, much of

its Jewish population tried to escape the country. In order to cross

the border south, they needed visas to Spain and Portugal, and

tens of thousands of Jews, along with many other refugees,

besieged the Portuguese consulate in Bordeaux in a desperate

attempt to get the life-saving piece of paper. The Portuguese

government forbade its consuls in France to issue visas without

prior approval from the Foreign Ministry, but the consul in

Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, decided to disregard the

order, throwing to the wind a thirty-year diplomatic career. As

Nazi tanks were closing in on Bordeaux, Sousa Mendes and his

team worked around the clock for ten days and nights, barely

stopping to sleep, just issuing visas and stamping pieces of paper. Sousa Mendes issued thousands of visas before collapsing from

exhaustion. The Portuguese government – which had little desire to accept

any of these refugees – sent agents to escort the disobedient

consul back home, and fired him from the foreign office. Yet

officials who cared little for the plight of human beings

nevertheless had deep respect for documents, and the visas Sousa

Mendes issued against orders were respected by French, Spanish

and Portuguese bureaucrats alike, spiriting up to 30,000 people

out of the Nazi death trap. Sousa Mendes, armed with little more

than a rubber stamp, was responsible for the largest rescue

operation by a single individual during the Holocaust.2

Credit 1.22

22.

Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the angel with the rubber stamp. The sanctity of written records often had far less positive effects. From 1958 to 1961 communist China undertook the Great Leap

Forward, when Mao Zedong wished to rapidly turn China into a

superpower. Mao ordered the doubling and tripling of agricultural

production, using the surplus produce to finance ambitious

industrial and military projects. Mao’s impossible demands made

their way down the bureaucratic ladder, from the government

offices in Beijing, through provincial administrators, all the way to

the village headmen. The local officials, afraid of voicing any

criticism and wishing to curry favour with their superiors,

concocted imaginary reports of dramatic increases in agricultural

output. As the fabricated numbers made their way up the

bureaucratic hierarchy, each official only exaggerated them

further, adding a zero here or there with a stroke of a pen. Credit 1.23

23.

One of the thousands of life-saving visas signed by Sousa Mendes in June

1940 (visa #1902 for Lazare Censor and family, dated 17 June 1940).

Consequently, in 1958 the Chinese government was told that

annual grain production was 50 per cent more than it actually

was. Believing the reports, the government sold millions of tons of

rice to foreign countries in exchange for weapons and heavy

machinery, assuming that enough was left to feed the Chinese

population. The result was the worst famine in history and the

death of tens of millions of Chinese.3

Meanwhile, enthusiastic reports of China’s farming miracle

reached audiences throughout the world. Julius Nyerere, the

idealistic president of Tanzania, was deeply impressed by the

Chinese success. In order to modernise Tanzanian agriculture,

Nyerere resolved to establish collective farms on the Chinese

model. When peasants objected to the command, Nyerere sent the

army and police to destroy traditional villages and forcefully move

hundreds of thousands of peasants onto the new collective farms. Government propaganda depicted the farms as miniature

paradises, but many of them existed only in government

documents. The protocols and reports written in the capital Dar es

Salaam said that on such-and-such a date the inhabitants of such-

and-such village were relocated to such-and-such farm. In reality,

when the villagers reached their destination, they found absolutely

nothing there. No houses, no fields, no tools. The officials reported

great successes to themselves and to President Nyerere. In fact,

within less than ten years Tanzania was transformed from Africa’s

biggest food exporter into a net food importer that could not feed

itself without external assistance. In 1979, 90 per cent of

Tanzanian farmers lived in collective farms, but they generated

only 5 per cent of the country’s agricultural output.4

Though the history of writing is full of similar mishaps, in most

cases writing did enable officials to organise the state much more

efficiently than before. Indeed, even the disaster of the Great Leap

Forward didn’t topple the Chinese Communist Party from power. The catastrophe was caused by the ability to impose written

fantasies on reality, but exactly the same ability allowed the party

to paint a rosy picture of its successes and hold on to power

tenaciously. Written language may have been conceived as a modest way of

describing reality, but it gradually became a powerful way to

reshape reality. When official reports collided with objective

reality, it was often reality that had to give way. Anyone who has

ever dealt with the tax authorities, the educational system or any

other complex bureaucracy knows that the truth hardly matters. What’s written on your form is far more important. Holy Scriptures

Is it true that when text and reality collide, reality sometimes has

to give way?

Isn’t it just a common but exaggerated slander of

bureaucratic systems?

Most bureaucrats – whether serving

pharaoh or Mao Zedong – were reasonable people, and surely

would have made the following argument: ‘We use writing to

describe the reality of fields, canals and granaries. If the

description is accurate, we make realistic decisions. If the

description is inaccurate, it causes famines and even rebellions. Then we, or the administrators of some future regime, learn from

the mistake, and strive to produce more truthful descriptions. So

over time, our documents are bound to become ever more precise.’

That’s true to some extent, but it ignores an opposite historical

dynamic. As bureaucracies accumulate power, they become

immune to their own mistakes. Instead of changing their stories to

fit reality, they can change reality to fit their stories. In the end,

external reality matches their bureaucratic fantasies, but only

because they forced reality to do so. For example, the borders of

many African countries disregard river lines, mountain ranges and

trade routes, split historical and economic zones unnecessarily,

and ignore local ethnic and religious identities. The same tribe

may find itself riven between several countries, whereas one

country may incorporate splinters of numerous rival clans. Such

problems bedevil countries all over the world, but in Africa they

are particularly acute because modern African borders don’t

reflect the wishes and struggles of local nations. They were drawn

by European bureaucrats who never set foot in Africa. In the late nineteenth century, several European powers laid

claim to African territories. Fearing that conflicting claims might

lead to an all-out European war, the concerned parties got

together in Berlin in 1884, and divided Africa as if it were a pie. Back then, much of the African interior was terra incognita to

Europeans. The British, French and Germans had accurate maps

of Africa’s coastal regions, and knew precisely where the Niger, the

Congo and the Zambezi empty into the ocean. However, they knew

little about the course these rivers took inland, about the

kingdoms and tribes that lived along their banks, and about local

religion, history and geography. This hardly mattered to the

European diplomats. They took out an empty map of Africa,

spread it over a well-polished Berlin table, sketched lines here and

there, and divided the continent between them. When the Europeans penetrated the African interior, armed

with the agreed-upon map, they discovered that many of the

borders drawn in Berlin hardly did justice to the geographic,

economic and ethnic reality of Africa. However, to avoid renewed

clashes, the invaders stuck to their agreements, and these

imaginary lines became the actual borders of European colonies. During the second half of the twentieth century, as the European

empires disintegrated and the colonies gained their independence,

the new countries accepted the colonial borders, fearing that the

alternative would be endless wars and conflicts. Many of the

difficulties faced by present-day African countries stem from the

fact that their borders make little sense. When the written

fantasies of European bureaucracies encountered the African

reality, reality was forced to surrender.5

The modern educational system provides numerous other

examples of reality bowing down to written records. When

measuring the width of my desk, the yardstick I am using matters

little. My desk remains the same width regardless of whether I say

it is 200 centimetres or 78.74 inches. However, when

bureaucracies measure people, the yardsticks they choose make all

the difference. When schools began assessing people according to

precise marks, the lives of millions of students and teachers

changed dramatically. Marks are a relatively new invention. Hunter-gatherers were never marked for their achievements, and

even thousands of years after the Agricultural Revolution, few

educational establishments used precise marks. A medieval

apprentice cobbler did not receive at the end of the year a piece of

paper saying he has got an A on shoelaces but a C minus on

buckles. An undergraduate in Shakespeare’s day left Oxford with

one of only two possible results – with a degree, or without one. Nobody thought of giving one student a final mark of 74 and

another student 88.

6

Credit 1.24

24.

A European map of Africa from the mid-nineteenth century. The Europeans

knew very little about the African interior, which did not prevent them from

dividing the continent and drawing its borders. Only the mass educational systems of the industrial age began

using precise marks on a regular basis. Since both factories and

government ministries became accustomed to thinking in the

language of numbers, schools followed suit. They started to gauge

the worth of each student according to his or her average mark,

whereas the worth of each teacher and principal was judged

according to the school’s overall average. Once bureaucrats

adopted this yardstick, reality was transformed. Originally, schools were supposed to focus on enlightening and

educating students, and marks were merely a means of measuring

success. But naturally enough, schools soon began focusing on

getting high marks. As every child, teacher and inspector knows,

the skills required to get high marks in an exam are not the same

as a true understanding of literature, biology or mathematics. Every child, teacher and inspector also knows that when forced to

choose between the two, most schools will go for the marks. The power of written records reached its apogee with the

appearance of holy scriptures. Priests and scribes in ancient

civilisations got used to seeing documents as guidebooks for

reality. At first, the texts told them about the reality of taxes, fields

and granaries. But as the bureaucracy gained power, so the texts

gained authority. Priests wrote down not just the god’s property

list, but also the god’s deeds, commandments and secrets. The

resulting scriptures purported to describe reality in its entirety,

and generations of scholars became accustomed to looking for all

the answers in the pages of the Bible, the Qur’an or the Vedas. In theory, if some holy book misrepresented reality, its disciples

would sooner or later find it out, and the text would lose its

authority. Abraham Lincoln said you cannot deceive everybody all

the time. Well, that’s wishful thinking. In practice, the power of

human cooperation networks rests on a delicate balance between

truth and fiction. If you distort reality too much, it will weaken

you, and you will not be able to compete against more clear-

sighted rivals. On the other hand, you cannot organise masses of

people effectively without relying on some fictional myths. So if

you stick to pure reality, without mixing any fiction with it, few

people would follow you. If you used a time machine to send a modern scientist to ancient

Egypt, she would not be able to seize power by exposing the

fictions of the local priests and lecturing the peasants on

evolution, relativity and quantum physics. Of course, if our

scientist could use her knowledge in order to produce a few rifles

and artillery pieces, she could gain a huge advantage over pharaoh

and the crocodile god Sobek. Yet in order to mine iron, build

furnaces and manufacture gunpowder the scientist would need a

lot of hard-working peasants. Do you really think she could inspire

them by explaining that energy divided by mass equals the speed

of light squared?

If you happen to think so, you are welcome to

travel to Afghanistan or Syria and try your luck. Really powerful human organisations – such as pharaonic

Egypt, communist China, the European empires and the modern

school system – are not necessarily clear-sighted. Much of their

power rests on their ability to force their fictional beliefs on a

submissive reality. That’s the whole idea of money, for example. The government takes worthless pieces of paper, declares them to

be valuable and then uses them to compute the value of everything

else. The government has enough power to force citizens to pay

taxes using these pieces of paper, so the citizens have no choice

but to get their hand on at least some bills. The bills consequently

become really valuable, the government officials are vindicated in

their beliefs, and since the government controls the issuing of

paper money, its power grows. If somebody protests that ‘These

are just worthless pieces of paper!’ and behaves as if they are only

pieces of paper, he won’t get very far in life. The same thing happens when the educational system declares

that matriculation exams are the best method to evaluate

students. The system has enough authority to influence

acceptance conditions to colleges, government offices and private-

sector jobs. Students therefore invest all their efforts in getting

good marks. Coveted positions are manned by people with high

marks, who naturally support the system that brought them there. The fact that the educational system controls the critical exams

gives it more power, and increases its influence over colleges,

government offices and the job market. If somebody protests that

‘The degree certificate is just a piece of paper!’ and behaves

accordingly, he is unlikely to get very far in life. Holy scriptures work the same way. The religious establishment

proclaims that the holy book contains the answers to all our

questions. It simultaneously forces courts, governments and

businesses to behave according to what the holy book says. When

a wise person reads scriptures and then looks at the world, he sees

that there is indeed a good match. ‘Scriptures say that you must

pay tithes to God – and look, everybody pays. Scriptures say that

women are inferior to men, and cannot serve as judges or even

give testimony in court – and look, there are indeed no women

judges and the courts reject their testimony. Scriptures say that

whoever studies the word of God will succeed in life – and look, all

the good jobs are indeed held by people who know the holy book

by heart.’

Such a wise person will naturally begin to study the holy book,

and because he is wise, he will become a scriptural pundit. He will

consequently be appointed a judge. When he becomes a judge, he

will not allow women to bear witness in court, and when he chooses his successor, he will obviously pick somebody who knows

the holy book well. If someone protests that ‘This book is just

paper!’ and behaves accordingly, such a heretic will not get very

far in life. Even when scriptures mislead people about the true nature of

reality, they can nevertheless retain their authority for thousands

of years. For instance, the biblical perception of history is

fundamentally flawed, yet it managed to spread throughout the

world, and billions still believe in it. The Bible peddled a

monotheistic theory of history, which says that the world is

governed by a single all-powerful deity, who cares above all else

about me and my doings. If something good happens, it must be a

reward for my good deeds. Any catastrophe must surely be

punishment for my sins. Thus the ancient Jews believed that if they suffered from

drought, or if King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia invaded Judaea

and exiled its people, surely these were divine punishments for

their own sins. And if King Cyrus of Persia defeated the

Babylonians and allowed the Jewish exiles to return home and

rebuild Jerusalem, God in his mercy must have heard their

remorseful prayers. The Bible doesn’t recognise the possibility

that perhaps the drought resulted from a volcanic eruption in the

Philippines, that Nebuchadnezzar invaded in pursuit of

Babylonian commercial interests and that King Cyrus had his own

political reasons to favour the Jews. The Bible accordingly shows

no interest whatsoever in understanding the global ecology, the

Babylonian economy or the Persian political system. Such self-absorption characterises all humans in their

childhood. Children of all religions and cultures think they are the

centre of the world, and therefore show little genuine interest in

the conditions and feelings of other people. That’s why divorce is

so traumatic for children. A five-year-old cannot understand that

something important is happening for reasons unrelated to him. No matter how many times you tell him that mummy and daddy

are independent people with their own problems and wishes, and

that they didn’t divorce because of him – the child cannot absorb

that. He is convinced that everything happens because of him. Most people grow out of this infantile delusion. Monotheists hold

on to it till the day they die. Like a child thinking that his parents

are fighting because of him, the monotheist is convinced that the

Persians are fighting the Babylonians because of him. Already in biblical times some cultures had a far more accurate

perception of history. Animist and polytheist religions depicted

the world as the playground of numerous different powers rather

than a single god. It was consequently easy for animists and

polytheists to accept that many events are unrelated to me or to

my favourite deity, and they are neither punishments for my sins

nor rewards for my good deeds. Greek historians such as

Herodotus and Thucydides, and Chinese historians such as Sima

Qian, developed sophisticated theories of history which are very

similar to our own modern views. They explained that wars and

revolutions break out due to a plethora of political, social and

economic factors. People may fall victim to a war for no fault of

their own. Accordingly, Herodotus showed keen interest in

understanding Persian politics, while Sima Qian was very

concerned about the culture and religion of barbarous steppe

people. 7

Present-day scholars agree with Herodotus and Sima Qian

rather than with the Bible. That’s why all modern states invest so

much effort in collecting information about other countries, and in

analysing global ecological, political and economic trends. When

the US economy falters, even evangelical Republicans sometimes

point an accusing finger at China rather than at their own sins. Yet even though Herodotus and Thucydides understood reality

much better than the authors of the Bible, when the two world

views collided, the Bible won by a knockout. The Greeks adopted

the Jewish view of history, rather than vice versa. A thousand

years after Thucydides, the Greeks became convinced that if some

barbarian horde invaded, surely it was divine punishment for their

sins. No matter how mistaken the biblical world view was, it

provided a better basis for large-scale human cooperation. But it Works!

Fictions enable us to cooperate better. The price we pay is that the

same fictions also determine the goals of our cooperation. So we

may have very elaborate systems of cooperation, which are

harnessed to serve fictional aims and interests. Consequently the

system may seem to be working well, but only if we adopt the

system’s own criteria. For example, a Muslim mullah would say:

‘Our system works. There are now 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide,

and more people study the Qur’an and submit themselves to

Allah’s will than ever before.’ The key question, though, is whether

this is the right yardstick for measuring success. A school principal

would say: ‘Our system works. During the last five years, exam

results have risen by 7.3 per cent.’ Yet is that the best way to judge

a school?

An official in ancient Egypt would say: ‘Our system

works. We collect more taxes, dig more canals and build bigger

pyramids than anyone else in the world.’ True enough, pharaonic

Egypt led the world in taxation, irrigation and pyramid

construction. But is that what really counts?

People have many material, social and mental needs. It is far

from clear that peasants in ancient Egypt enjoyed more love or

better social relations than their hunter-gatherer ancestors, and in

terms of nutrition, health and child mortality it seems that life was

actually worse. A document dated c. 1850 BC from the reign of

Amenemhat III – the pharaoh who created Lake Fayum – tells of a

well-to-do man called Dua-Khety who took his son Pepy to school,

so that he could learn to be a scribe. On the way to school, Dua-

Khety portrayed the miserable life of peasants, labourers, soldiers

and artisans, so as to encourage Pepy to devote all his energy to

studying, thereby escaping the destiny of most humans. According to Dua-Khety, the life of a landless field labourer is

full of hardship and misery. Dressed in mere tatters, he works all

day till his fingers are covered in blisters. Then pharaoh’s officials

come and take him away to do forced labour. In return for all his

hard work he receives only sickness as payment. Even if he makes

it home alive, he will be completely worn out and ruined. The fate

of the landholding peasant is hardly better. He spends his days

carrying water in buckets from the river to the field. The heavy

load bends his shoulders and covers his neck with festering

swellings. In the morning he has to water his plot of leeks, in the

afternoon his date palms and in the evening his coriander field. Eventually he drops down and dies.8 The text might exaggerate things on purpose, but not by much. Pharaonic Egypt was the

most powerful kingdom of its day, but for the simple peasant all

that power meant taxes and forced labour rather than clinics and

social security services. This was not a uniquely Egyptian defect. Despite all the

immense achievements of the Chinese dynasties, the Muslim

empires and the European kingdoms, even in AD 1850 the life of

the average person was not better – and might actually have been

worse – than the lives of archaic hunter-gatherers. In 1850 a

Chinese peasant or a Manchester factory hand worked longer

hours than their hunter-gatherer ancestors; their jobs were

physically harder and mentally less fulfilling; their diet was less

balanced; hygiene conditions were incomparably worse; and

infectious diseases were far more common. Suppose you were given a choice between the following two

vacation packages:

Stone Age package: On day one we will hike for ten hours in a

pristine forest, setting camp for the night in a clearing by a river. On day two we will canoe down the river for ten hours, camping

on the shores of a small lake. On day three we will learn from the

native people how to fish in the lake and how to find mushrooms

in the nearby woods. Modern proletarian package: On day one we will work for ten

hours in a polluted textile factory, passing the night in a cramped

apartment block. On day two we will work for ten hours as

cashiers in the local department store, going back to sleep in the

same apartment block. On day three we will learn from the native

people how to open a bank account and fill out mortgage forms. Which package would you choose?

Hence when we come to evaluate human cooperation networks,

it all depends on the yardsticks and viewpoint we adopt. Are we

judging pharaonic Egypt in terms of production, nutrition or

perhaps social harmony?

Do we focus on the aristocracy, the

simple peasants, or the pigs and crocodiles?

History isn’t a single

narrative, but thousands of alternative narratives. Whenever we choose to tell one, we are also choosing to silence others. Human cooperative networks usually judge themselves by

yardsticks of their own invention, and not surprisingly, they often

give themselves high marks. In particular, human networks built

in the name of imaginary entities such as gods, nations and

corporations normally judge their success from the viewpoint of

the imaginary entity. A religion is successful if it follows divine

commandments to the letter; a nation is glorious if it promotes the

national interest; and a corporation thrives if it makes a lot of

money. When examining the history of any human network, it is

therefore advisable to stop from time to time and look at things

from the perspective of some real entity. How do you know if an

entity is real?

Very simple – just ask yourself, ‘Can it suffer?’

When people burn down the temple of Zeus, Zeus doesn’t suffer. When the euro loses its value, the euro doesn’t suffer. When a

bank goes bankrupt, the bank doesn’t suffer. When a country

suffers a defeat in war, the country doesn’t really suffer. It’s just a

metaphor. In contrast, when a soldier is wounded in battle, he

really does suffer. When a famished peasant has nothing to eat,

she suffers. When a cow is separated from her newborn calf, she

suffers. This is reality. Of course suffering might well be caused by our belief in

fictions. For example, belief in national and religious myths might

cause the outbreak of war, in which millions lose their homes,

their limbs and even their lives. The cause of war is fictional, but

the suffering is 100 per cent real. This is exactly why we should

strive to distinguish fiction from reality. Fiction isn’t bad. It is vital. Without commonly accepted stories

about things like money, states or corporations, no complex

human society can function. We can’t play football unless

everyone believes in the same made-up rules, and we can’t enjoy

the benefits of markets and courts without similar make-believe

stories. But the stories are just tools. They should not become our

goals or our yardsticks. When we forget that they are mere fiction,

we lose touch with reality. Then we begin entire wars ‘to make a

lot of money for the corporation’ or ‘to protect the national

interest’.

Corporations, money and nations exist only in our

imagination. We invented them to serve us; how come we find

ourselves sacrificing our lives in their service?

5

The Odd Couple

Stories serve as the foundations and pillars of human societies. As

history unfolded, stories about gods, nations and corporations

grew so powerful that they began to dominate objective reality. Believing in the great god Sobek, the Mandate of Heaven or the

Bible enabled people to build Lake Fayum, the Great Wall of China

and Chartres Cathedral. Unfortunately, blind faith in these stories

meant that human efforts frequently focused on increasing the

glory of fictional entities such as gods and nations, instead of

bettering the lives of real sentient beings. Does this analysis still hold true today?

At first sight, it seems

that modern society is very different from the kingdoms of ancient

Egypt or medieval China. Hasn’t the rise of modern science

changed the basic rules of the human game?

Wouldn’t it be true to

say that despite the ongoing importance of traditional myths,

modern social systems rely increasingly on objective scientific

theories such as the theory of evolution, which simply did not exist

in ancient Egypt or medieval China?

We could of course argue that scientific theories are a new kind

of myth, and that our belief in science is no different from the

ancient Egyptians’ belief in the great god Sobek. Yet the

comparison doesn’t hold water. Sobek existed only in the

collective imagination of his devotees. Praying to Sobek helped

cement the Egyptian social system, thereby enabling people to

build dams and canals that prevented floods and droughts. Yet the

prayers themselves didn’t raise or lower the Nile’s water level by a

millimetre. In contrast, scientific theories are not just a way to

bind people together. It is often said that God helps those who

help themselves. This is a roundabout way of saying that God

doesn’t exist, but if our belief in Him inspires us to do something

ourselves – it helps. Antibiotics, unlike God, help even those who

don’t help themselves. They cure infections whether you believe in

them or not. Consequently, the modern world is very different from the

premodern world. Egyptian pharaohs and Chinese emperors failed

to overcome famine, plague and war despite millennia of effort. Modern societies managed to do it within a few centuries. Isn’t it

the fruit of abandoning intersubjective myths in favour of

objective scientific knowledge?

And can’t we expect this process to

accelerate in the coming decades?

As technology allows us to

upgrade humans, overcome old age and find the key to happiness,

so people would care less about fictional gods, nations and

corporations, and focus instead on deciphering the physical and

biological reality. In truth, however, things are far more complicated. Modern

science certainly changed the rules of the game, but it did not

simply replace myths with facts. Myths continue to dominate

humankind. Science only makes these myths stronger. Instead of

destroying the intersubjective reality, science will enable it to

control the objective and subjective realities more completely than

ever before. Thanks to computers and bioengineering, the

difference between fiction and reality will blur, as people reshape

reality to match their pet fictions. The priests of Sobek imagined the existence of divine crocodiles,

while pharaoh dreamt about immortality. In reality, the sacred

crocodile was a very ordinary swamp reptile dressed in golden

fineries, and pharaoh was as mortal as the simplest of peasants. After death, his corpse was mummified using preservative balms

and scented perfumes, but it was as lifeless as one can get. In

contrast, twenty-first-century scientists might be able to really

engineer super-crocodiles, and to provide the human elite with

eternal youth here on earth. Consequently the rise of science will make at least some myths

and religions mightier than ever. To understand why, and to face

the challenges of the twenty-first century, we should therefore

revisit one of the most nagging questions of all: how does modern

science relate to religion?

It seems that people have already said a

million times everything there is to say about this question. Yet in

practice, science and religion are like a husband and wife who

after 500 years of marriage counselling still don’t know each

other. He still dreams about Cinderella and she keeps pining for

Prince Charming, while they argue about whose turn it is to take

out the rubbish. Germs and Demons

Most of the misunderstandings regarding science and religion

result from faulty definitions of religion. All too often, people

confuse religion with superstition, spirituality, belief in

supernatural powers or belief in gods. Religion is none of these

things. Religion cannot be equated with superstition, because

most people are unlikely to call their cherished beliefs

‘superstitions’.

We always believe in ‘the truth’.

It’s only other

people who believe in superstitions. Similarly, few people put their faith in supernatural powers. For

those who believe in demons, demons aren’t supernatural. They

are an integral part of nature, just like porcupines, scorpions and

germs. Modern physicians blame disease on invisible germs, and

voodoo priests blame disease on invisible demons. There’s nothing

supernatural about it: you make some demon angry, so the demon

enters your body and causes you pain. What could be more natural

than that?

Only those who don’t believe in demons think of them

as standing apart from the natural order of things. Equating religion with faith in supernatural powers implies that

you can understand all known natural phenomena without

religion, which is just an optional supplement. Having understood

perfectly well the whole of nature, you can now choose whether to

add some ‘super-natural’ religious dogma or not. However, most

religions argue that you simply cannot understand the world

without them. You will never comprehend the true reason for

disease, drought or earthquakes if you do not take their dogma

into account. Defining religion as ‘belief in gods’ is also problematic. We tend

to say that a devout Christian is religious because she believes in

God, whereas a fervent communist isn’t religious, because

communism has no gods. However, religion is created by humans

rather than by gods, and it is defined by its social function rather

than by the existence of deities. Religion is anything that confers

superhuman legitimacy on human social structures. It legitimises

human norms and values by arguing that they reflect superhuman

laws. Religion asserts that we humans are subject to a system of

moral laws that we did not invent and that we cannot change. A

devout Jew would say that this is the system of moral laws created

by God and revealed in the Bible. A Hindu would say that Brahma,

Vishnu and Shiva created the laws, which were revealed to us

humans in the Vedas. Other religions, from Buddhism and

Daoism to Nazism, communism and liberalism, argue that the

superhuman laws are natural laws, and not the creation of this or

that god. Of course, each believes in a different set of natural laws

discovered and revealed by different seers and prophets, from

Buddha and Laozi to Hitler and Lenin. A Jewish boy comes to his father and asks, ‘Dad, why shouldn’t

we eat pork?’ The father strokes his long white beard thoughtfully

and answers, ‘Well, Yankele, that’s how the world works. You are

still young and you don’t understand, but if we eat pork, God will

punish us and we will come to a bad end. It isn’t my idea. It’s not

even the rabbi’s idea. If the rabbi had created the world, maybe he

would have created a world in which pork was perfectly kosher. But the rabbi didn’t create the world – God did it. And God said, I

don’t know why, that we shouldn’t eat pork. So we shouldn’t. Capeesh?’

In 1943 a German boy comes to his father, a senior SS officer,

and asks, ‘Dad, why are we killing the Jews?’ The father puts on

his shiny leather boots, and meanwhile explains, ‘Well, Fritz,

that’s how the world works. You are still young and you don’t

understand, but if we allow the Jews to live, they will cause the

degeneration and extinction of humankind. It’s not my idea, and

it’s not even the Führer’s idea. If Hitler had created the world,

maybe he would have created a world in which the laws of natural

selection did not apply, and Jews and Aryans could all live

together in perfect harmony. But Hitler didn’t create the world. He

just managed to decipher the laws of nature, and then instructed

us how to live in line with them. If we disobey these laws, we will

come to a bad end. Is that clear?!’

In 2016 a British boy comes to his father, a liberal MP, and asks,

‘Dad, why should we care about the human rights of Muslims in

the Middle East?’ The father puts down his cup of tea, thinks for a

moment, and says, ‘Well, Duncan, that’s how the world works. You

are still young and you don’t understand, but all humans, even

Muslims in the Middle East, have the same nature and therefore

enjoy the same natural rights. This isn’t my idea, nor a decision of

Parliament. If Parliament had created the world, universal human

rights might well have been buried in some subcommittee along

with all that quantum physics stuff. But Parliament didn’t create

the world, it just tries to make sense of it, and we must respect the

natural rights even of Muslims in the Middle East, or very soon

our own rights will also be violated, and we will come to a bad end. Now off you go.’

Liberals, communists and followers of other modern creeds

dislike describing their own system as a ‘religion’, because they

identify religion with superstitions and supernatural powers. If

you tell communists or liberals that they are religious, they think

you accuse them of blindly believing in groundless pipe dreams. In

fact, it means only that they believe in some system of moral laws

that wasn’t invented by humans, but which humans must

nevertheless obey. As far as we know, all human societies believe

in this. Every society tells its members that they must obey some

superhuman moral law, and that breaking this law will result in

catastrophe. Religions differ of course in the details of their stories, their

concrete commandments, and the rewards and punishments they

promise. Thus in medieval Europe the Catholic Church argued

that God doesn’t like rich people. Jesus said that it is harder for a

rich man to pass through the gates of heaven than for a camel to

pass through the eye of a needle, and the Church encouraged the

rich to give lots of alms, threatening that misers will burn in hell. Modern communism also dislikes rich people, but it threatens

them with class conflict here and now, rather than with burning

sulphur after death. The communist laws of history are similar to the

commandments of the Christian God, inasmuch as they are

superhuman forces that humans cannot change at will. People can

decide tomorrow morning to cancel the offside rule in football,

because we invented that law, and we are free to change it. However, at least according to Marx, we cannot change the laws of

history. No matter what the capitalists do, as long as they continue

to accumulate private property they are bound to create class

conflict and they are destined to be defeated by the rising

proletariat. If you happen to be a communist yourself you might argue that

communism and Christianity are nevertheless very different,

because communism is right, whereas Christianity is wrong. Class

conflict really is inherent in the capitalist system, whereas rich

people don’t suffer eternal tortures in hell after they die. Yet even

if that’s the case, it doesn’t mean communism is not a religion. Rather, it means that communism is the one true religion. Followers of every religion are convinced that theirs alone is true. Perhaps the followers of one religion are right. If You Meet the Buddha

The assertion that religion is a tool for preserving social order and

for organising large-scale cooperation may vex many people for

whom it represents first and foremost a spiritual path. However,

just as the gap between religion and science is smaller than we

commonly think, so the gap between religion and spirituality is

much bigger. Religion is a deal, whereas spirituality is a journey. Religion gives a complete description of the world, and offers us

a well-defined contract with predetermined goals. ‘God exists. He

told us to behave in certain ways. If you obey God, you’ll be

admitted to heaven. If you disobey Him, you’ll burn in hell.’ The

very clarity of this deal allows society to define common norms

and values that regulate human behaviour. Spiritual journeys are nothing like that. They usually take

people in mysterious ways towards unknown destinations. The

quest usually begins with some big question, such as who am I?

What is the meaning of life?

What is good?

Whereas many people

just accept the ready-made answers provided by the powers that

be, spiritual seekers are not so easily satisfied. They are

determined to follow the big question wherever it leads, and not

just to places you know well or wish to visit. Thus for most people,

academic studies are a deal rather than a spiritual journey,

because they take us to a predetermined goal approved by our

elders, governments and banks. ‘I’ll study for three years, pass the

exams, get my BA certificate and secure a well-paid job.’ Academic

studies might be transformed into a spiritual journey if the big

questions you encounter on the way deflect you towards

unexpected destinations, of which you could hardly even conceive

at first. For example, a student might begin to study economics in

order to secure a job in Wall Street. However, if what she learns

somehow causes her to end up in a Hindu ashram or helping HIV

patients in Zimbabwe, then we might call that a spiritual journey. Why label such a voyage ‘spiritual’?

This is a legacy from ancient

dualist religions that believed in the existence of two gods, one

good and one evil. According to dualism, the good god created

pure and everlasting souls that lived in a wonderful world of spirit. However, the bad god – sometimes named Satan – created

another world, made of matter. Satan didn’t know how to make

his creation last, hence in the world of matter everything rots and

disintegrates. In order to breathe life into his defective creation,

Satan tempted souls from the pure world of spirit, and locked

them up inside material bodies. That’s what humans are – a good

spiritual soul trapped inside an evil material body. Since the soul’s

prison – the body – decays and eventually dies, Satan ceaselessly

tempts the soul with bodily delights, and above all with food, sex

and power. When the body disintegrates and the soul has a chance

to escape back to the spiritual world, its craving for bodily

pleasures draws it back inside some new material body. The soul

thus transmigrates from body to body, wasting its days in pursuit

of food, sex and power. Dualism instructs people to break these material shackles and

undertake a journey back to the spiritual world, which is totally

unfamiliar to us, but is our true home. During this quest we must

reject all material temptations and deals. Due to this dualist

legacy, every journey on which we doubt the conventions and

deals of the mundane world and walk towards an unknown

destination is called ‘a spiritual journey’.

Such journeys are fundamentally different from religions,

because religions seek to cement the worldly order whereas

spirituality seeks to escape it. Often enough, the most important

demand from spiritual wanderers is to challenge the beliefs and

conventions of dominant religions. In Zen Buddhism it is said that

‘If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.’ Which means that

if while walking on the spiritual path you encounter the rigid ideas

and fixed laws of institutionalised Buddhism, you must free

yourself from them too. For religions, spirituality is a dangerous threat. Religions

typically strive to rein in the spiritual quests of their followers, and

many religious systems were challenged not by laypeople

preoccupied with food, sex and power, but rather by spiritual

truth-seekers who wanted more than platitudes. Thus the

Protestant revolt against the authority of the Catholic Church was

ignited not by hedonistic atheists but rather by a devout and

ascetic monk, Martin Luther. Luther wanted answers to the

existential questions of life, and refused to settle for the rites,

rituals and deals offered by the Church. In Luther’s day, the Church promised its followers very enticing

deals. If you sinned, and feared eternal damnation in the afterlife,

all you needed to do was buy an indulgence. In the early sixteenth

century the Church employed professional ‘salvation peddlers’

who wandered the towns and villages of Europe and sold

indulgences for fixed prices. You want an entry visa to heaven?

Pay ten gold coins. You want Grandpa Heinz and Grandma

Gertrud to join you there?

No problem, but it will cost you thirty

coins. The most famous of these peddlers, the Dominican friar

Johannes Tetzel, allegedly said that the moment the coin clinks in

the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory to heaven. 1

The more Luther thought about it, the more he doubted this

deal, and the Church that offered it. You cannot just buy your way

to salvation. The Pope couldn’t possibly have the authority to

forgive people their sins, and open the gates of heaven. According

to Protestant tradition, on 31 October 1517 Luther walked to the

All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, carrying a lengthy document, a

hammer and some nails. The document listed ninety-five theses

against contemporary religious practices, including against the

selling of indulgences. Luther nailed it to the church door,

sparking the Protestant Reformation, which called upon any

human who cared about salvation to rebel against the Pope’s

authority and search for alternative routes to heaven. Credit 1.25

25.

The Pope selling indulgences for money (from a Protestant pamphlet).

From a historical perspective, the spiritual journey is always

tragic, for it is a lonely path fit for individuals rather than for

entire societies. Human cooperation requires firm answers rather

than just questions, and those who foam against stultified

religious structures end up forging new structures in their place. It

happened to the dualists, whose spiritual journeys became

religious establishments. It happened to Martin Luther, who after

challenging the laws, institutions and rituals of the Catholic

Church found himself writing new law books, founding new

institutions and inventing new ceremonies. It happened even to

Buddha and Jesus. In their uncompromising quest for the truth

they subverted the laws, rituals and structures of traditional

Hinduism and Judaism. But eventually more laws, more rituals

and more structures were created in their name than in the name

of any other person in history. Counterfeiting God

Now that we have a better understanding of religion, we can go

back to examining the relationship between religion and science. There are two extreme interpretations for this relationship. One

view says that science and religion are sworn enemies, and that

modern history was shaped by the life-and-death struggle of

scientific knowledge against religious superstition. With time, the

light of science dispelled the darkness of religion, and the world

became increasingly secular, rational and prosperous. However,

though some scientific findings certainly undermine religious

dogmas, this is not inevitable. For example, Muslim dogma holds

that Islam was founded by the prophet Muhammad in seventh-

century Arabia, and there is ample scientific evidence supporting

this. More importantly, science always needs religious assistance in

order to create viable human institutions. Scientists study how the

world functions, but there is no scientific method for determining

how humans ought to behave. Science tells us that humans cannot

survive without oxygen. However, is it okay to execute criminals

by asphyxiation?

Science doesn’t know how to answer such a

question. Only religions provide us with the necessary guidance. Hence every practical project scientists undertake also relies on

religious insights. Take, for example, the building of the Three

Gorges Dam over the Yangtze River. When the Chinese

government decided to build the dam in 1992, physicists could

calculate what pressures the dam would have to withstand,

economists could forecast how much money it would probably

cost, while electrical engineers could predict how much electricity

it would produce. However, the government needed to take

additional factors into account. Building the dam flooded huge

territories containing many villages and towns, thousands of

archaeological sites, and unique landscapes and habitats. More

than 1 million people were displaced and hundreds of species were

endangered. It seems that the dam directly caused the extinction

of the Chinese river dolphin. No matter what you personally think

about the Three Gorges Dam, it is clear that building it was an

ethical rather than a purely scientific issue. No physics

experiment, no economic model and no mathematical equation

can determine whether generating thousands of megawatts and

making billions of yuan is more valuable than saving an ancient

pagoda or the Chinese river dolphin. Consequently, China cannot

function on the basis of scientific theories alone. It requires some

religion or ideology, too. Some jump to the opposite extreme, and say that science and

religion are completely separate kingdoms. Science studies facts,

religion speaks about values, and never the twain shall meet. Religion has nothing to say about scientific facts, and science

should keep its mouth shut concerning religious convictions. If the

Pope believes that human life is sacred, and abortion is therefore a

sin, biologists can neither prove nor refute this claim. As a private

individual, each biologist is welcome to argue with the Pope. But

as a scientist, the biologist cannot enter the fray. This approach may sound sensible, but it misunderstands

religion. Though science indeed deals only with facts, religion

never confines itself to ethical judgements. Religion cannot

provide us with any practical guidance unless it makes some

factual claims too, and here it may well collide with science. The

most important segments of many religious dogmas are not their

ethical principles, but rather factual statements such as ‘God

exists’, ‘the soul is punished for its sins in the afterlife’, ‘the Bible

was written by a deity rather than by humans’, ‘the Pope is never

wrong’.

These are all factual claims. Many of the most heated

religious debates, and many of the conflicts between science and

religion, involve such factual claims rather than ethical

judgements. Take abortion, for example. Devout Christians often oppose

abortion, whereas many liberals support it. The main bone of

contention is factual rather than ethical. Both Christians and

liberals believe that human life is sacred, and that murder is a

heinous crime. But they disagree about certain biological facts:

does human life begin at the moment of conception, at the

moment of birth or at some middle point?

Indeed, some human

cultures maintain that life doesn’t begin even at birth. According

to the !Kung of the Kalahari Desert and to various Inuit groups in

the Arctic, human life begins only after the person is given a name. When an infant is born people wait for some time before naming

it. If they decide not to keep the baby (either because it suffers

from some deformity or because of economic difficulties), they kill

it. Provided they do so before the naming ceremony, it is not

considered murder.2 People from such cultures might well agree with liberals and Christians that human life is sacred and that

murder is a terrible crime, yet they support infanticide. When religions advertise themselves, they tend to emphasise

their beautiful values. But God often hides in the small print of

factual statements. The Catholic religion markets itself as the

religion of universal love and compassion. How wonderful!

Who

can object to that?

Why, then, are not all humans Catholic?

Because when you read the small print, you discover that

Catholicism also demands blind obedience to a pope ‘who never

makes mistakes’ even when he orders us to go on crusades and

burn heretics at the stake. Such practical instructions are not

deduced solely from ethical judgements. Rather, they result from

conflating ethical judgements with factual statements. When we leave the ethereal sphere of philosophy and observe

historical realities, we find that religious stories almost always

include three parts:

1.

Ethical judgements, such as ‘human life is sacred’.

2.

Factual statements, such as ‘human life begins at the moment

of conception’.

3.

A conflation of the ethical judgements with the factual

statements, resulting in practical guidelines such as ‘you should

never allow abortion, even a single day after conception’.

Science has no authority or ability to refute or corroborate the

ethical judgements religions make. But scientists do have a lot to

say about religious factual statements. For example, biologists are

more qualified than priests to answer factual questions such as

‘Do human fetuses have a nervous system one week after

conception?

Can they feel pain?’

To make things clearer, let us examine in depth a real historical

example that you rarely hear about in religious commercials, but

that had a huge social and political impact in its time. In medieval

Europe, the popes enjoyed far-reaching political authority. Whenever a conflict erupted somewhere in Europe, they claimed

the authority to decide the issue. To establish their claim to

authority, they repeatedly reminded Europeans of the Donation of

Constantine. According to this story, on 30 March 315 the Roman

emperor Constantine signed an official decree granting Pope

Sylvester I and his heirs perpetual control of the western part of

the Roman Empire. The popes kept this precious document in

their archive, and used it as a powerful propaganda tool whenever

they faced opposition from ambitious princes, quarrelsome cities

or rebellious peasants. People in medieval Europe had great respect for ancient

imperial decrees. They strongly believed that kings and emperors

were God’s representatives, and they also believed that the older

the document, the more authority it carried. Constantine in

particular was revered, because he turned the Roman Empire

from a pagan realm into a Christian empire. In a clash between

the desires of some present-day city council and a decree issued by

the great Constantine himself, it was obvious that people ought to

obey the ancient document. Hence whenever the Pope faced

political opposition, he waved the Donation of Constantine,

demanding obedience. Not that it always worked. But the

Donation of Constantine was an important cornerstone of papal

propaganda and of the medieval political order. When we examine the Donation of Constantine closely, we find

that this story is composed of three distinct parts:

Ethical judgement

Factual statement

Practical

People ought to respect ancient

On 30 March 315, Emperor

guideline

imperial decrees more than

Constantine granted the

Europeans in 1315

present-day popular opinions. popes dominion over Europe. ought to obey the

Pope’s commands. The ethical authority of ancient imperial decrees is far from self-

evident. Most twenty-first-century Europeans think that the

wishes of present-day citizens trump the diktats of long-dead

kings. However, science cannot join this ethical debate, because

no experiment or equation can decide the matter. If a modern-day

scientist time-travelled to medieval Europe, she couldn’t prove to

our ancestors that the decrees of ancient emperors are irrelevant

to contemporary political disputes. Yet the story of Constantine’s Donation was based not just on

ethical judgements. It also involved some very concrete factual

statements, which science is highly qualified to either verify or

falsify. In 1441 Lorenzo Valla – a Catholic priest and a pioneer

linguist – published a scientific study proving that Constantine’s

Donation was forged. Valla analysed the style and grammar of the

document, and the various words and terms it contained. He

showed that the document included words which were unknown

in fourth-century Latin, and that it was most probably forged

about 400 years after Constantine’s death. Moreover, the date

appearing on the document is ‘30 March, in the year Constantine

was consul for the fourth time, and Gallicanus was consul for the

first time’.

In the Roman Empire, two consuls were elected each

year, and it was customary to date documents by their consulate

years. Unfortunately, Constantine’s fourth consulate was in 315,

whereas Gallicanus was elected consul for the first time only in

317.

If this all-important document was indeed composed in

Constantine’s days, it would never have contained such a blatant

mistake. It is as if Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues had dated

the American Declaration of Independence 34 July 1776.

Today all historians agree that the Donation of Constantine was

forged in the papal court sometime in the eighth century. Even

though Valla never disputed the moral authority of ancient

imperial decrees, his scientific study did undermine the practical

guideline that Europeans must obey the Pope. 3

—

On 20 December 2013 the Ugandan parliament passed the Anti-

Homosexuality Act, which criminalised homosexual activities,

penalising some activities by life imprisonment. It was inspired and supported by evangelical Christian groups, which maintain

that God prohibits homosexuality. As proof, they quote Leviticus

18:22 (‘Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a

woman; that is detestable’) and Leviticus 20:13 (‘If a man has

sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of

them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death;

their blood will be on their own heads’).

In previous centuries, the

same religious story was responsible for tormenting millions of

people all over the world. This story can be briefly summarised as

follows:

Ethical

Factual statement

Practical guideline

judgement

About 3,000 years ago God commanded People should avoid

Humans ought to

humans to avoid homosexual activities. homosexual

obey God’s

activities. commands. Is the story true?

Scientists cannot argue with the judgement that

humans ought to obey God. Personally, you may dispute it. You

may believe that human rights trump divine authority, and if God

orders us to violate human rights, we shouldn’t listen to Him. Yet

there is no scientific experiment that can decide this issue. In contrast, science has a lot to say about the factual statement

that 3,000 years ago the Creator of the Universe commanded

members of the Homo sapiens species to abstain from boy-on-boy

action. How do we know this statement is true?

Examining the

relevant literature reveals that though this statement is repeated

in millions of books, articles and Internet sites, they all rely on a

single source: the Bible. If so, a scientist would ask, who composed

the Bible, and when?

Note that this is a factual question, not a

question of values. Devout Jews and Christians say that at least

the book of Leviticus was dictated by God to Moses on Mount

Sinai, and from that moment onwards not a single letter was

either added or deleted from it. ‘But,’ the scientist would insist,

‘how can we be sure of that?

After all, the Pope argued that the

Donation of Constantine was composed by Constantine himself in

the fourth century, when in fact it was forged 400 years later by

the Pope’s own clerks.’

We can now use an entire arsenal of scientific methods to

determine who composed the Bible, and when. Scientists have

been doing exactly that for more than a century, and if you are

interested, you can read whole books about their findings. To cut a

long story short, most peer-reviewed scientific studies agree that

the Bible is a collection of numerous different texts composed by

different people in different times, and that these texts were not

assembled into a single holy book until long after biblical times. For example, whereas King David probably lived around 1000 BC,

it is commonly accepted that the book of Deuteronomy was

composed in the court of King Josiah of Judah, sometime around

620 BC, as part of a propaganda campaign aimed to strengthen

Josiah’s authority. Leviticus was compiled at an even later date, no

earlier than 500 BC. As for the idea that the ancient Jews carefully preserved the

biblical text, without adding or subtracting anything, scientists

point out that biblical Judaism was not a scripture-based religion

at all. Rather, it was a typical Iron Age cult, similar to many of its

Middle Eastern neighbours. It had no synagogues, yeshivas, rabbis

– or even a bible. Instead it had elaborate temple rituals, most of

which involved sacrificing animals to a jealous sky god so that he

would bless his people with seasonal rains and military victories. Its religious elite consisted of priestly families, who owed

everything to birth, and nothing to intellectual prowess. The

mostly illiterate priests were busy with the temple ceremonies,

and had little time for writing or studying any scriptures. During the Second Temple period a rival religious elite was

formed. Due partly to Persian and Greek influences, Jewish

scholars who wrote and interpreted texts gained increasing

prominence. These scholars eventually came to be known as

rabbis, and the texts they compiled were christened ‘the Bible’.

Rabbinical authority rested on individual intellectual abilities

rather than on birth. The clash between the new literate elite and

the old priestly families was inevitable. Luckily for the rabbis, the

Romans torched Jerusalem and its temple while suppressing the

Great Jewish Revolt (AD 70).

With the temple in ruins, the priestly

families lost their religious authority, their economic power base

and their very raison d’être. Traditional Judaism – a Judaism of

temples, priests and head-splitting warriors – disappeared. Its place was taken by a new Judaism of books, rabbis and hair-splitting scholars. The scholars’ main forte was interpretation. They used this ability not only to explain how an almighty God

allowed His temple to be destroyed, but also to bridge the

immense gaps between the old Judaism described in biblical

stories and the very different Judaism they created. 4

Hence according to our best scientific knowledge, the Leviticus

injunctions against homosexuality reflect nothing grander than

the biases of a few priests and scholars in ancient Jerusalem. Though science cannot decide whether people ought to obey God’s

commands, it has many relevant things to say about the

provenance of the Bible. If Ugandan politicians think that the

power that created the cosmos, the galaxies and the black holes

becomes terribly upset whenever two Homo sapiens males have a

bit of fun together, then science can help disabuse them of this

rather bizarre notion. Holy Dogma

In truth, it is not always easy to separate ethical judgements from

factual statements. Religions have the nagging tendency to turn

factual statements into ethical judgements, thereby creating

terrible confusion and obfuscating what should have been

relatively simple debates. Thus the factual statement ‘God wrote

the Bible’ all too often mutates into the ethical injunction ‘you

ought to believe that God wrote the Bible’.

Merely believing in this

factual statement becomes a virtue, whereas doubting it becomes a

terrible sin. Conversely, ethical judgements often hide within them factual

statements that people don’t bother to mention, because they

think they have been proven beyond doubt. Thus the ethical

judgement ‘human life is sacred’ (which science cannot test) may

shroud the factual statement ‘every human has an eternal soul’

(which is open for scientific debate).

Similarly, when American

nationalists proclaim that ‘the American nation is sacred’, this

seemingly ethical judgement is in fact predicated on factual

statements such as ‘the USA has spearheaded most of the moral,

scientific and economic advances of the last few centuries’.

Whereas it is impossible to scientifically scrutinise the claim that

the American nation is sacred, once we unpack this judgement we

may well examine scientifically whether the USA has indeed been

responsible for a disproportionate share of moral, scientific and

economic breakthroughs. This has led some philosophers, such as Sam Harris, to argue

that science can always resolve ethical dilemmas, because human

values always hide within them some factual statements. Harris

thinks all humans share a single supreme value – minimising

suffering and maximising happiness – and all ethical debates are

factual arguments concerning the most efficient way to maximise

happiness. 5 Islamic fundamentalists want to reach heaven in order to be happy, liberals believe that increasing human liberty

maximises happiness, and German nationalists think that

everyone would be better off if they only allowed Berlin to run this

planet. According to Harris, Islamists, liberals and nationalists

have no ethical dispute; they have a factual disagreement about

how best to realise their common goal. Yet even if Harris is right, and even if all humans cherish

happiness, in practice it would be extremely difficult to use this

insight to decide ethical disputes, particularly because we have no

scientific definition or measurement of happiness. Consider the

case of the Three Gorges Dam. Even if we agree that the ultimate

aim of the project is to make the world a happier place, how can

we tell whether generating cheap electricity contributes more to

global happiness than protecting traditional lifestyles or saving the

rare Chinese river dolphin?

As long as we haven’t deciphered the

mysteries of consciousness, we cannot develop a universal

measurement for happiness and suffering, and we don’t know how

to compare the happiness and suffering of different individuals, let

alone different species. How many units of happiness are

generated when a billion Chinese enjoy cheaper electricity?

How

many units of misery are produced when an entire dolphin species

becomes extinct?

Indeed, are happiness and misery mathematical

entities that can be added or subtracted in the first place?

Eating

ice cream is enjoyable. Finding true love is more enjoyable. Do you

think that if you just eat enough ice cream, the accumulated pleasure could ever equal the rapture of true love?

Consequently, although science has much more to contribute to

ethical debates than we commonly think, there is a line it cannot

cross, at least not yet. Without the guiding hand of some religion,

it is impossible to maintain large-scale social orders. Even

universities and laboratories need religious backing. Religion

provides the ethical justification for scientific research, and in

exchange gets to influence the scientific agenda and the uses of

scientific discoveries. Hence you cannot understand the history of

science without taking religious beliefs into account. Scientists

seldom dwell on this fact, but the Scientific Revolution itself began

in one of the most dogmatic, intolerant and religious societies in

history. The Witch Hunt

We often associate science with the values of secularism and

tolerance. If so, early modern Europe is the last place you would

have expected a scientific revolution. Europe in the days of

Columbus, Copernicus and Newton had the highest concentration

of religious fanatics in the world, and the lowest level of tolerance. The luminaries of the Scientific Revolution lived in a society that

expelled Jews and Muslims, burned heretics wholesale, saw a

witch in every cat-loving elderly lady and started a new religious

war every full moon. If you travelled to Cairo or Istanbul around 1600, you would

find there a multicultural and tolerant metropolis, where Sunnis,

Shiites, Orthodox Christians, Catholics, Armenians, Copts, Jews

and even the occasional Hindu lived side by side in relative

harmony. Though they had their share of disagreements and riots,

and though the Ottoman Empire routinely discriminated against

people on religious grounds, it was a liberal paradise compared

with Europe. If you then travelled to contemporary Paris or

London, you would find cities awash with religious extremism, in

which only those belonging to the dominant sect could live. In

London they killed Catholics, in Paris they killed Protestants, the

Jews had long been driven out, and nobody in his right mind would dream of letting any Muslims in. And yet, the Scientific

Revolution began in London and Paris rather than in Cairo and

Istanbul. It is customary to tell the history of modernity as a struggle

between science and religion. In theory, both science and religion

are interested above all in the truth, and because each upholds a

different truth, they are doomed to clash. In fact, neither science

nor religion cares that much about the truth, hence they can easily

compromise, coexist and even cooperate. Religion is interested above all in order. It aims to create and

maintain the social structure. Science is interested above all in

power. It aims to acquire the power to cure diseases, fight wars

and produce food. As individuals, scientists and priests may give

immense importance to the truth; but as collective institutions,

science and religion prefer order and power over truth. They can

therefore make good bedfellows. The uncompromising quest for

truth is a spiritual journey, which can seldom remain within the

confines of either religious or scientific establishments. It would accordingly be far more correct to view modern history

as the process of formulating a deal between science and one

particular religion – namely, humanism. Modern society believes

in humanist dogmas, and uses science not in order to question

these dogmas, but rather in order to implement them. In the

twenty-first century the humanist dogmas are unlikely to be

replaced by pure scientific theories. However, the covenant linking

science and humanism may well crumble, and give way to a very

different kind of deal, between science and some new post-

humanist religion. We will dedicate the next two chapters to

understanding the modern covenant between science and

humanism. The third and final part of the book will then explain

why this covenant is disintegrating, and what new deal might

replace it. 6

The Modern Covenant

Modernity is a deal. All of us sign up to this deal on the day we are

born, and it regulates our lives until the day we die. Very few of us

can ever rescind or transcend this deal. It shapes our food, our

jobs and our dreams, and it decides where we dwell, whom we love

and how we pass away. At first sight, modernity looks like an extremely complicated

deal, hence few try to understand what they have signed up to. It’s

like when you download some software and are asked to sign an

accompanying contract which is dozens of pages of legalese; you

take one look at it, immediately scroll down to the last page, tick ‘I

agree’ and forget about it. Yet in fact modernity is a surprisingly

simple deal. The entire contract can be summarised in a single

phrase: humans agree to give up meaning in exchange for power. Up until modern times, most cultures believed that humans play

a part in some great cosmic plan. The plan was devised by the

omnipotent gods, or by the eternal laws of nature, and humankind

could not change it. The cosmic plan gave meaning to human life,

but also restricted human power. Humans were much like actors

on a stage. The script gave meaning to their every word, tear and

gesture – but placed strict limits on their performance. Hamlet

cannot murder Claudius in Act I, or leave Denmark and go to an

ashram in India. Shakespeare won’t allow it. Similarly, humans

cannot live for ever, they cannot escape all diseases, and they

cannot do as they please. It’s not in the script. In exchange for giving up power, premodern humans believed

that their lives gained meaning. It really mattered whether they

fought bravely on the battlefield, whether they supported the

lawful king, whether they ate forbidden foods for breakfast or

whether they had an affair with the next-door neighbour. This created some inconveniences, of course, but it gave humans

psychological protection against disasters. If something terrible

happened – such as war, plague or drought – people consoled

themselves that ‘We all play a role in some great cosmic drama,

devised by the gods, or by the laws of nature. We are not privy to

the script, but we can rest assured that everything happens for a

purpose. Even this terrible war, plague and drought have their

place in the greater scheme of things. Furthermore, we can count

on the playwright that the story surely has a good ending. So even

the war, plague and drought will work out for the best – if not here

and now, then in the afterlife.’

Modern culture rejects this belief in a great cosmic plan. We are

not actors in any larger-than-life drama. Life has no script, no

playwright, no director, no producer – and no meaning. To the

best of our scientific understanding, the universe is a blind and

purposeless process, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. During our infinitesimally brief stay on our tiny speck of a planet,

we fret and strut this way and that, and then are heard of no more. Since there is no script, and since humans fulfil no role in any

great drama, terrible things might befall us and no power will

come to save us, or give meaning to our suffering. There won’t be a

happy ending, or a bad ending, or any ending at all. Things just

happen, one after the other. The modern world does not believe in

purpose, only in cause. If modernity has a motto, it is ‘shit

happens’.

On the other hand, if shit just happens, without any binding

script or purpose, then humans too are not limited to any

predetermined role. We can do anything we want – provided we

can find a way. We are constrained by nothing except our own

ignorance. Plagues and droughts have no cosmic meaning – but

we can eradicate them. Wars are not a necessary evil on the way to

a better future – but we can make peace. No paradise awaits us

after death – but we can create paradise here on earth, and live in

it for ever, if we just manage to overcome some technical

difficulties. If we invest money in research, then scientific breakthroughs

will accelerate technological progress. New technologies will fuel

economic growth, and a growing economy could dedicate even

more money to research. With each passing decade we will enjoy

more food, faster vehicles and better medicines. One day our

knowledge will be so vast and our technology so advanced that we

could distil the elixir of eternal youth, the elixir of true happiness,

and any other drug we might possibly desire – and no god will

stop us. The modern deal thus offers humans an enormous temptation,

coupled with a colossal threat. Omnipotence is in front of us,

almost within our reach, but below us yawns the abyss of complete

nothingness. On the practical level, modern life consists of a

constant pursuit of power within a universe devoid of meaning. Modern culture is the most powerful in history, and it is

ceaselessly researching, inventing, discovering and growing. At the

same time, it is plagued by more existential angst than any

previous culture. This chapter discusses the modern pursuit of power. The next

chapter will examine how humankind has used its growing power

to somehow sneak meaning back into the infinite emptiness of the

cosmos. Yes, we moderns have promised to renounce meaning in

exchange for power; but there’s nobody out there to hold us to our

promise. We think we are smart enough to enjoy the full benefits

of the modern deal, without paying its price. Why Bankers are Different from Vampires

The modern pursuit of power is fuelled by the alliance between

scientific progress and economic growth. For most of history

science progressed at a snail’s pace, while the economy was in

deep freeze. The gradual increase in human population did lead to

a corresponding increase in production, and sporadic discoveries

sometimes resulted even in per capita growth, but this was a very

slow process. If in AD 1000 a hundred villagers produced a hundred tons of

wheat, and in AD 1100, 105 villagers produced 107 tons of wheat,

this growth didn’t change the rhythms of life or the sociopolitical

order. Whereas today everyone is obsessed with growth, in the

premodern era people were oblivious to it. Princes, priests and peasants assumed that human production was more or less stable,

that one person could enrich himself only by pilfering somebody

else and that their grandchildren were unlikely to enjoy a better

standard of living. This stagnation resulted to a large extent from the difficulties

involved in financing new projects. Without proper funding, it

wasn’t easy to drain swamps, construct bridges and build ports –

not to mention engineer new wheat strains, discover new energy

sources or open new trade routes. Funds were scarce because

there was little credit in those days; there was little credit because

people had no belief in growth; and people didn’t believe in

growth because the economy was stagnant. Stagnation thereby

perpetuated itself. Suppose you live in a medieval town that suffers from annual

outbreaks of dysentery. You resolve to find a cure. You need

funding to set up a lab, buy medicinal herbs and exotic chemicals,

pay assistants and travel to consult with famous doctors. You also

need money to feed yourself and your family while you are busy

with your research. But you don’t have much money. You can

approach the local lumberjack, blacksmith and baker and ask

them to fulfil all your needs for a few years, promising that when

you finally discover the cure and become rich, you will pay your

debts. Unfortunately, the lumberjack, blacksmith and baker are

unlikely to agree. They need to feed their families today, and they

have no faith in miracle medicines. They weren’t born yesterday,

and in all their years they have never heard of anyone finding a

new medicine for some dreaded disease. If you want provisions –

you must pay cash. But how can you have enough money when

you haven’t discovered the medicine yet, and all your time is taken

up with research?

Reluctantly, you go back to tilling your field,

dysentery keeps tormenting the townsfolk, nobody tries to develop

new remedies, and not a single gold coin changes hands. That’s

how the economy froze, and science stood still. The cycle was eventually broken in the modern age thanks to

people’s growing trust in the future, and the resulting miracle of

credit. Credit is the economic manifestation of trust. Today, if I

want to develop a new drug but I don’t have enough money, I can

get a loan from the bank, or turn to private investors and venture

capital funds. When Ebola erupted in West Africa in the summer

of 2014, what do you think happened to the shares of

pharmaceutical companies that were busy developing anti-Ebola

drugs and vaccines?

They skyrocketed. Tekmira shares rose by 50

per cent and BioCryst shares by 90 per cent. In the Middle Ages,

the outbreak of a plague caused people to raise their eyes towards

heaven, and pray to God to forgive them for their sins. Today,

when people hear of some new deadly epidemic, they pick up the

phone and call their broker. For the stock exchange, even an

epidemic is a business opportunity. If enough new ventures succeed, people’s trust in the future

increases, credit expands, interest rates fall, entrepreneurs can

raise money more easily and the economy grows. People

consequently have even greater trust in the future, the economy

keeps growing and science progresses with it. It sounds simple on paper. Why, then, did humankind have to

wait until the modern era for economic growth to gather

momentum?

For thousands of years people had little faith in

future growth not because they were stupid, but because it

contradicts our gut feelings, our evolutionary heritage and the way

the world works. Most natural systems exist in equilibrium, and

most survival struggles are a zero-sum game in which one can

prosper only at the expense of another. For example, each year roughly the same amount of grass grows

in a given valley. The grass supports a population of about 10,000

rabbits, which contains enough slow, dim-witted or unlucky

rabbits to provide prey for a hundred foxes. If one fox is very

diligent, and captures more rabbits than usual, then another fox

will probably starve to death. If all foxes somehow manage to

capture more rabbits simultaneously, the rabbit population will

crash, and next year many foxes will starve. Even though there are

occasional fluctuations in the rabbit market, in the long run the

foxes cannot expect to hunt, say, 3 per cent more rabbits per year

than the preceding year. Of course, some ecological realities are more complex, and not

all survival struggles are zero-sum games. Many animals

cooperate effectively, and a few even give loans. The most famous

lenders in nature are vampire bats. These vampires congregate in

their thousands inside caves, and every night they fly out to look

for prey. When they find a sleeping bird or a careless mammal,

they make a small incision in its skin, and suck its blood. Not all

bats find a victim every night. In order to cope with the

uncertainty of their life, the vampires loan blood to each other. A

vampire that fails to find prey will come home and ask for some

stolen blood from a more fortunate friend. Vampires remember

very well to whom they loaned blood, so at a later date if the friend

comes home empty-handed, he will approach his debtor, who will

return the favour. However, unlike human bankers, vampires never charge

interest. If vampire A loaned vampire B ten centilitres of blood, B

will repay the same amount. Nor do vampires use loans in order to

finance new businesses or encourage growth in the blood-sucking

market – because the blood is produced by other animals, the

vampires have no way of increasing production. Though the blood

market has its ups and downs, vampires cannot presume that in

2017 there will be 3 per cent more blood than in 2016, and that in

2018 the blood market will again grow by 3 per cent. Consequently, vampires don’t believe in growth. 1 For millions of years of evolution, humans lived under similar conditions to

vampires, foxes and rabbits. Hence humans too find it difficult to

believe in growth. The Miracle Pie

Evolutionary pressures have accustomed humans to see the world

as a static pie. If somebody gets a bigger slice of the pie, somebody

else inevitably gets a smaller slice. A particular family or city may

prosper, but humankind as a whole is not going to produce more

than it produces today. Accordingly, traditional religions such as

Christianity and Islam sought ways to solve humanity’s problems

with the help of current resources, either by redistributing the

existing pie, or by promising us a pie in the sky. Modernity, in contrast, is based on the firm belief that economic

growth is not only possible but is absolutely essential. Prayers,

good deeds and meditation can be comforting and inspiring, but

problems such as famine, plague and war can only be solved

through growth. This fundamental dogma can be summarised in

one simple idea: ‘If you have a problem, you probably need more

stuff, and in order to have more stuff, you must produce more of

it.’

Modern politicians and economists insist that growth is vital for

three principal reasons. Firstly, when we produce more, we can

consume more, raise our standard of living and allegedly enjoy a

happier life. Secondly, as long as humankind multiplies, economic

growth is needed merely to stay where we are. For example, in

India the annual population growth rate is 1.2 per cent. That

means that unless the Indian economy grows each year by at least

1.2 per cent, unemployment will rise, salaries will fall and the

average standard of living will decline. Thirdly, even if Indians

stop multiplying, and even if the Indian middle class can be

satisfied with its present standard of living, what should India do

about its hundreds of millions of poverty-stricken citizens?

If the

economy doesn’t grow, and the pie therefore remains the same

size, you can give more to the poor only by taking something from

the rich. That will force you to make some very hard choices, and

will probably cause a lot of resentment and even violence. If you

wish to avoid hard choices, resentment and violence, you need a

bigger pie. Modernity has turned ‘more stuff’ into a panacea applicable to

almost all public and private problems, from Islamic

fundamentalism through Third World authoritarianism down to a

failed marriage. If only countries such as Pakistan and Egypt could

keep a healthy growth rate, their citizens would come to enjoy the

benefits of private cars and bulging refrigerators, and they would

take the path of earthly prosperity instead of following the Islamic

pied piper. Similarly, economic growth in countries such as Congo

and Myanmar would produce a prosperous middle class which is

the bedrock of liberal democracy. And in the case of the

disgruntled couple, their marriage will be saved if they just buy a

bigger house (so they don’t have to share a cramped office),

purchase a dishwasher (so that they stop arguing whose turn it is

to do the dishes) and go to expensive therapy sessions twice a

week. Economic growth has thus become the crucial juncture where

almost all modern religions, ideologies and movements meet. The

Soviet Union, with its megalomaniac Five Year Plans, was as

obsessed with growth as the most cut-throat American robber

baron. Just as Christians and Muslims both believed in heaven,

and disagreed only about how to get there, so during the Cold War

both capitalists and communists believed in creating heaven on

earth through economic growth, and wrangled only about the

exact method. Today Hindu revivalists, pious Muslims, Japanese nationalists

and Chinese communists may declare their adherence to very

different values and goals, but they have all come to believe that

economic growth is the key for realising their disparate goals. Thus in 2014 the devout Hindu Narendra Modi was elected prime

minister of India largely thanks to his success in boosting

economic growth in his home state of Gujarat, and thanks to the

widely held view that only he could reinvigorate the sluggish

national economy. Analogous views have kept the Islamist Recep

Tayyip Erdoğan in power in Turkey since 2003.

The name of his

party – the Justice and Development Party – highlights its

commitment to economic development, and the Erdoğan

government has indeed managed to maintain impressive growth

rates for more than a decade. Japan’s prime minister, the nationalist Shinzō Abe, came to

office in 2012 pledging to jolt the Japanese economy out of two

decades of stagnation. His aggressive and somewhat unusual

measures to achieve this have been nicknamed Abenomics. Meanwhile in neighbouring China the Communist Party still pays

lip service to traditional Marxist–Leninist ideals, but in practice it

is guided by Deng Xiaoping’s famous maxims that ‘development is

the only hard truth’ and that ‘it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or

white, so long as it catches mice’.

Which means, in plain language:

do anything it takes to promote economic growth, even if Marx

and Lenin wouldn’t have been happy with it. In Singapore, as befits that no-nonsense city state, they followed

this line of thinking even further, and pegged ministerial salaries

to the national GDP. When the Singaporean economy grows,

ministers get a raise, as if that is what their job is all about. 2

This obsession with growth may sound self-evident, but only

because we live in the modern world. It wasn’t like this in the past. Indian maharajas, Ottoman sultans, Kamakura shoguns and Han

emperors seldom staked their political fortunes on ensuring

economic growth. That Modi, Erdoğan, Abe and Chinese president

Xi Jinping all bet their careers on economic growth testifies to the

almost religious status growth has managed to acquire throughout

the world. Indeed, it may not be wrong to call the belief in

economic growth a religion, because it now purports to solve

many if not most of our ethical dilemmas. Since economic growth

is allegedly the source of all good things, it encourages people to

bury their ethical disagreements and adopt whichever course of

action maximises long-term growth. Thus Modi’s India is home to

thousands of sects, parties, movements and gurus, yet though

their ultimate aims may differ, they all have to pass through the

same bottleneck of economic growth, so why not pull together in

the meantime?

The credo of ‘more stuff’ accordingly urges individuals, firms

and governments to discount anything that might hamper

economic growth, such as preserving social equality, ensuring

ecological harmony or honouring your parents. In the Soviet

Union, when people thought that state-controlled communism

was the fastest way to grow, anything that stood in the way of

collectivisation was bulldozed, including millions of kulaks, the

freedom of expression and the Aral Sea. Nowadays it is generally

accepted that some version of free-market capitalism is a much

more efficient way of ensuring long-term growth, hence rich

farmers and freedom of expression are protected, but ecological

habitats, social structures and traditional values that stand in the

way of free-market capitalism are destroyed and dismantled. Take, for example, a software engineer making $250 per hour

working for some hi-tech start-up. One day her elderly father has a

stroke. He now needs help with shopping, cooking and even

showering. She could move her father to her own house, leave

home later in the morning, come back earlier in the evening and

take care of her father personally. Both her income and the start-

up’s productivity would suffer, but her father would enjoy the care

of a respectful and loving daughter. Alternatively, the engineer

could hire a Mexican carer who, for $25 per hour, would live with

the father and provide for all his needs. That would mean business

as usual for the engineer and her start-up, and even the carer and

the Mexican economy would benefit. What should the engineer

do?

Free-market capitalism has a firm answer. If economic growth

demands that we loosen family bonds, encourage people to live

away from their parents, and import carers from the other side of

the world – so be it. This answer, however, involves an ethical

judgement rather than a factual statement. No doubt, when some

people specialise in software engineering while others spend their

time taking care of the elderly, we can produce more software and

give old people more professional care. Yet is economic growth

more important than family bonds?

By daring to make such

ethical judgements, free-market capitalism has crossed the border

from the land of science to that of religion. Most capitalists would probably dislike the title of religion, but

as religions go, capitalism can at least hold its head high. Unlike

other religions that promise us a pie in the sky, capitalism

promises miracles here on earth – and sometimes even provides

them. Much of the credit for overcoming famine and plague

belongs to the ardent capitalist faith in growth. Capitalism even

deserves some kudos for reducing human violence and increasing

tolerance and cooperation. As the next chapter explains, there are

additional factors at play here, but capitalism did make an

important contribution to global harmony by encouraging people

to stop viewing the economy as a zero-sum game, in which your

profit is my loss, and instead see it as a win–win situation, in

which your profit is also my profit. This has probably helped

global harmony far more than centuries of Christian preaching

about loving your neighbour and turning the other cheek. —

From its belief in the supreme value of growth, capitalism deduces

its number one commandment: thou shalt invest thy profits in

increasing growth. For most of history princes and priests wasted

their profits on flamboyant carnivals, sumptuous palaces and

unnecessary wars. Alternatively, they put gold coins in an iron

chest, sealed it and buried it in a dungeon. Today, devout

capitalists use their profits to hire new employees, enlarge the

factory or develop a new product. If they don’t know how to do it themselves, they give their

money to somebody who does, such as bankers and venture

capitalists. The latter lend the money to various entrepreneurs. Farmers take loans to plant new wheat fields, contractors build

new houses, energy corporations explore new oil fields, and arms

factories develop new weapons. The profits from all these

activities enable the entrepreneurs to repay the loans with

interest. We now have not only more wheat, houses, oil and

weapons – but also more money, which the banks and funds can

again lend. This wheel will never stop, at least not according to

capitalism. We will never reach a moment when capitalism says:

‘That’s it. You have grown enough. You can now take it easy.’ If

you want to know why the capitalist wheel is unlikely ever to stop,

talk for an hour with a friend who has just earned $100,000 and

wonders what to do with it. ‘The banks offer such low interest rates,’ he would complain. ‘I

don’t want to put my money in a savings account that pays hardly

0.5 per cent a year. You can make perhaps 2 per cent in

government bonds. My cousin Richie bought a flat in Seattle last

year, and he has already made 20 per cent on his investment!

Maybe I should go into real estate too; but everybody is saying

there’s a new real-estate bubble. So what do you think about the

stock exchange?

A friend told me the best deal these days is to buy

an ETF that follows emerging economies, like Brazil or China.’ As

he stops for a moment to breathe, you ask, ‘Well, why not just be

satisfied with your $100,000?’ He will explain to you better than I

can why capitalism will never stop. This lesson is hammered home even to children and teenagers

through ubiquitous capitalist games. Premodern games such as

chess assumed a stagnant economy. You begin a game of chess

with sixteen pieces, and you never finish a game with more. In rare cases a pawn may be transformed into a queen, but you

cannot produce new pawns, nor can you upgrade your knights into

tanks. So chess players never have to think about investment. In

contrast, many modern board games and computer games revolve

around investment and growth. Particularly telling are civilisation-style strategy games, such as

Minecraft, The Settlers of Catan or Sid Meier’s Civilization. The game may be set in the Middle Ages, in the Stone Age or in some

imaginary fairy land, but the principles always remain the same –

and they are always capitalist. Your aim is to establish a city, a

kingdom or maybe an entire civilisation. You begin from a very

modest base, perhaps just a village and its nearby fields. Your

assets provide you with an initial income of wheat, wood, iron or

gold. You then have to invest this income wisely. You have to

choose between unproductive but still necessary tools such as

soldiers, and productive assets such as more villages, fields and

mines. The winning strategy is usually to invest the barest

minimum in non-productive essentials, while maximising your

productive assets. Establishing additional villages means that next

turn you will have a larger income that would enable you not only

to buy more soldiers (if necessary), but simultaneously to increase

your investment in production. Soon you could upgrade your

villages to towns, build universities, harbours and factories,

explore the seas and oceans, establish your civilisation and win the

game. The Ark Syndrome

Yet can the economy actually keep growing for ever?

Won’t it

eventually run out of resources – and grind to a halt?

In order to

ensure perpetual growth, we must somehow discover an

inexhaustible store of resources. One solution is to explore and conquer new lands and

territories. For centuries, the growth of the European economy

and the expansion of the capitalist system indeed relied heavily on

overseas imperial conquests. However, there are only so many

islands and continents on earth. Some entrepreneurs hope

eventually to explore and conquer new planets and even galaxies,

but in the meantime, the modern economy has had to find a better

method of expanding. Science has provided modernity with the alternative. The fox

economy cannot grow, because foxes don’t know how to produce

more rabbits. The rabbit economy stagnates, because rabbits

cannot make the grass grow faster. But the human economy can

grow because humans can discover new materials and sources of

energy. The traditional view of the world as a pie of a fixed size

presupposes there are only two kinds of resources in the world:

raw materials and energy. But in truth, there are three kinds of

resources: raw materials, energy and knowledge. Raw materials

and energy are exhaustible – the more you use, the less you have. Knowledge, in contrast, is a growing resource – the more you use,

the more you have. Indeed, when you increase your stock of

knowledge, it can give you more raw materials and energy as well. If I invest $100 million searching for oil in Alaska and I find it,

then I now have more oil, but my grandchildren will have less of it. In contrast, if I invest $100 million researching solar energy, and I

find a new and more efficient way of harnessing it, then both I and

my grandchildren will have more energy. For thousands of years, the scientific road to growth was

blocked because people believed that holy scriptures and ancient

traditions already contained all the important knowledge the

world had to offer. A corporation that believed all the oil fields in

the world had already been discovered would not waste time and

money searching for oil. Similarly, a human culture that believed

it already knew everything worth knowing would not bother

searching for new knowledge. This was the position of most

premodern human civilisations. However, the Scientific

Revolution freed humankind from this conviction. The greatest

scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance. Once humans

realised how little they knew about the world, they suddenly had a

very good reason to seek new knowledge, which opened up the

scientific road to progress. With each passing generation, science helped discover fresh

sources of energy, new kinds of raw material, better machinery

and novel production methods. Consequently, in 2016 humankind

commands far more energy and raw materials than ever before,

and production skyrockets. Inventions such as the steam engine,

the internal combustion engine and the computer have created

whole new industries from scratch. As we look twenty years to the

future, we confidently expect to produce and consume far more in

2036 than we do today. We trust nanotechnology, genetic

engineering and artificial intelligence to revolutionise production

yet again, and to open whole new sections in our ever-expanding

supermarkets. —

We therefore have a good chance of overcoming the problem of

resource scarcity. The real nemesis of the modern economy is

ecological collapse. Both scientific progress and economic growth

take place within a brittle biosphere, and as they gather steam, so

the shock waves destabilise the ecology. In order to provide every

person in the world with the same standard of living as affluent

Americans, we would need a few more planets – but we only have

this one. If progress and growth do end up destroying the

ecosystem, the cost will be dear not merely to vampires, foxes and

rabbits, but also to Sapiens. An ecological meltdown will cause

economic ruin, political turmoil, a fall in human standards of

living, and it might threaten the very existence of human

civilisation. We could lessen the danger by slowing down the pace of

progress and growth. If this year investors expect to get a 6 per

cent return on their portfolios, in ten years they will be satisfied

with a 3 per cent return, in twenty years only 1 per cent, and in

thirty years the economy will stop growing and we’ll be happy with

what we’ve already got. Yet the creed of growth firmly objects to

such a heretical idea. Instead, it suggests we should run even

faster. If our discoveries destabilise the ecosystem and threaten

humanity, then we should discover something to protect

ourselves. If the ozone layer dwindles and exposes us to skin

cancer, we should invent better sunscreen and better cancer

treatments, thereby also promoting the growth of new sunscreen

factories and cancer centres. If all the new industries pollute the

atmosphere and the oceans, causing global warming and mass

extinctions, then we should build for ourselves virtual worlds and

hi-tech sanctuaries that will provide us with all the good things in

life even if the planet is as hot, dreary and polluted as hell. Beijing has already become so polluted that people avoid the

outdoors, and wealthy Chinese pay thousands of dollars for indoor

air-purifying

systems. The

super-rich

build

protective

contraptions even over their yards. In 2013 the International

School of Beijing, which caters for the children of foreign

diplomats and upper-class Chinese, went a step further, and

constructed a giant $5 million dome over its six tennis courts and

its playing fields. Other schools are following suit, and the Chinese

air-purification market is booming. Of course most Beijing

residents cannot afford such luxuries in their homes, nor can they

afford to send their kids to the International School.3

Humankind finds itself locked into a double race. On the one

hand, we feel compelled to speed up the pace of scientific progress

and economic growth. A billion Chinese and a billion Indians want

to live like middle-class Americans, and they see no reason why

they should put their dreams on hold when the Americans are

unwilling to give up their SUVs and shopping malls. On the other

hand, we must stay at least one step ahead of ecological

Armageddon. Managing this double race becomes more difficult

by the year, because every stride that brings the Delhi slum-

dwellers closer to the American Dream also brings the planet

closer to the brink. The good news is that for hundreds of years humankind has

enjoyed a growing economy without falling prey to ecological

meltdown. Many other species have perished in the process, and

humans too have faced a number of economic crises and

ecological disasters, but so far we have always managed to pull

through. Yet future success is not guaranteed by some law of

nature. Who knows if science will always be able to simultaneously

save the economy from freezing and the ecology from boiling. And

since the pace just keeps accelerating, the margins for error keep

narrowing. If previously it was enough to invent something

amazing once a century, today we need to come up with a miracle

every two years. We should also be concerned that an ecological apocalypse

might have different consequences for different human castes. There is no justice in history. When disaster strikes, the poor

almost always suffer far more than the rich, even if the rich caused

the tragedy in the first place. Global warming is already affecting

the lives of poor people in arid African countries more than the

lives of affluent Westerners. Paradoxically, the very power of

science may increase the danger, because it makes the rich

complacent. Consider greenhouse gas emissions. Most scholars and an

increasing number of politicians recognise the reality of global

warming and the magnitude of the danger. Yet this recognition

has so far failed to change our actual behaviour. We talk a lot

about global warming, but in practice humankind is unwilling to

make serious economic, social or political sacrifices to stop the

catastrophe. Between 2000 and 2010 emissions didn’t decrease at

all. On the contrary, they increased at an annual rate of 2.2 per

cent, compared with an annual increase rate of 1.3 per cent

between 1970 and 2000.

4 The 1997 Kyoto protocol on reduction of

greenhouse gas emissions aimed merely to slow down global

warming rather than stop it, yet the world’s number one polluter –

the United States – refused to ratify it, and has made no attempt

to significantly reduce its emissions, for fear of slowing down its

economic growth. 5

Credit 1.26

26.

All the talk about global warming, and all the conferences, summits and

protocols, have so far failed to curb global greenhouse emissions. If you look

closely at the graph you see that emissions go down only during periods of

economic crises and stagnation. Thus the small downturn in greenhouse

emissions in 2008–9 was due not to the signing of the Copenhagen Accord, but

to the global financial crisis. In December 2015 more ambitious targets were set in the Paris

Agreement, which calls for limiting average temperature increase

to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. But many of the painful

steps necessary to reach this aim have conveniently been

postponed to after 2030, or even to the second half of the twenty-

first century, effectively passing the hot potato to the next

generation. Current administrations would be able to reap

immediate political benefits from looking green, while the heavy

political price of reducing emissions (and slowing growth) is

bequeathed to future administrations. Even so, at the time of

writing (January 2016) it is far from certain that the USA and

other leading polluters will ratify the Paris Agreement. Too many

politicians and voters believe that as long as the economy grows,

scientists and engineers could always save us from doomsday. When it comes to climate change, many growth true-believers do

not just hope for miracles – they take it for granted that the miracles will happen. How rational is it to risk the future of humankind on the

assumption that future scientists will make some unknown

discoveries?

Most of the presidents, ministers and CEOs who run

the world are very rational people. Why are they willing to take

such a gamble?

Maybe because they don’t think they are gambling

on their own personal future. Even if bad comes to worse and

science cannot hold off the deluge, engineers could still build a hi-

tech Noah’s Ark for the upper caste, while leaving billions of

others to drown. The belief in this hi-tech Ark is currently one of

the biggest threats to the future of humankind and of the entire

ecosystem. People who believe in the hi-tech Ark should not be

put in charge of the global ecology, for the same reason that

people who believe in a heavenly afterlife should not be given

nuclear weapons. And what about the poor?

Why aren’t they protesting?

If and

when the deluge comes, they will bear the full cost of it. However,

they will also be the first to bear the cost of economic stagnation. In a capitalist world, the lives of the poor improve only when the

economy grows. Hence they are unlikely to support any steps to

reduce future ecological threats that are based on slowing down

present-day economic growth. Protecting the environment is a

very nice idea, but those who cannot pay their rent are worried

about their overdraft far more than about melting ice caps. The Rat Race

Even if we go on running fast enough and manage to fend off both

economic collapse and ecological meltdown, the race itself creates

huge problems. On the individual level, it results in high levels of

stress and tension. After centuries of economic growth and

scientific progress, life should have become calm and peaceful, at

least in the most advanced countries. If our ancestors knew what

tools and resources stand ready at our command, they would have

surmised we must be enjoying celestial tranquillity, free of all

cares and worries. The truth is very different. Despite all our

achievements, we feel a constant pressure to do and produce even

more. We blame ourselves, our boss, the mortgage, the government,

the school system. But it’s not really their fault. It’s the modern

deal, which we have all signed up to on the day we were born. In

the premodern world, people were akin to lowly clerks in a

socialist bureaucracy. They punched their card, and then waited

for somebody else to do something. In the modern world, we

humans run the business. So we are under constant pressure day

and night. On the collective level, the race manifests itself in ceaseless

upheavals. Whereas previously social and political systems

endured for centuries, today every generation destroys the old

world and builds a new one in its place. As the Communist

Manifesto brilliantly put it, the modern world positively requires

uncertainty and disturbance. All fixed relations and ancient

prejudices are swept away, and new structures become antiquated

before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air. It isn’t easy to

live in such a chaotic world, and it is even harder to govern it. Hence modernity needs to work hard to ensure that neither

human individuals nor the human collective will try to retire from

the race, despite all the tension and chaos it creates. For that

purpose, modernity upholds growth as a supreme value for whose

sake we should make every sacrifice and risk every danger. On the

collective level, governments, firms and organisations are

encouraged to measure their success in terms of growth, and to

fear equilibrium as if it were the Devil. On the individual level, we

are inspired to constantly increase our income and our standard of

living. Even if you are quite satisfied with your current conditions,

you should strive for more. Yesterday’s luxuries become today’s

necessities. If once you could live well in a three-bedroom

apartment with one car and a single desktop, today you need a

five-bedroom house with two cars and a host of iPods, tablets and

smartphones. It wasn’t very hard to convince individuals to want more. Greed

comes easily to humans. The big problem was to convince

collective institutions such as states and churches to go along with

the new ideal. For millennia, societies strove to curb individual

desires and bring them into some kind of balance. It was well known that people wanted more and more for themselves, but

when the pie was of a fixed size, social harmony depended on

restraint. Avarice was bad. Modernity turned the world upside

down. It convinced human collectives that equilibrium is far more

frightening than chaos, and because avarice fuels growth, it is a

force for good. Modernity accordingly inspired people to want

more, and dismantled the age-old disciplines that curbed greed. The resulting anxieties were assuaged to a large extent by free-

market capitalism, which is one reason why this particular

ideology has become so popular. Capitalist thinkers repeatedly

calm us: ‘Don’t worry, it will be okay. Provided the economy

grows, the invisible hand of the market will take care of everything

else.’ Capitalism has thus sanctified a voracious and chaotic

system that grows by leaps and bounds, without anyone

understanding what is happening and where we are rushing. (Communism, which also believed in growth, thought it could

prevent chaos and orchestrate growth through state planning. After initial successes, it eventually fell far behind the messy free-

market cavalcade.)

Bashing free-market capitalism is high on the intellectual

agenda nowadays. Since capitalism dominates our world, we

should indeed make every effort to understand its shortcomings,

before they cause apocalyptic catastrophes. Yet criticising

capitalism should not blind us to its advantages and attainments. So far, it’s been an amazing success – at least if you ignore the

potential for future ecological meltdown, and if you measure

success by the yardstick of production and growth. In 2016 we

may be living in a stressful and chaotic world, but the doomsday

prophecies of collapse and violence have not materialised,

whereas the scandalous promises of perpetual growth and global

cooperation are fulfilled. Although we experience occasional

economic crises and international wars, in the long run capitalism

has not only managed to prevail, but also to overcome famine,

plague and war. For thousands of years priests, rabbis and muftis

explained that humans cannot overcome famine, plague and war

by their own efforts. Then along came the bankers, investors and

industrialists, and within 200 years managed to do exactly that. So the modern deal promised us unprecedented power – and

the promise has been kept. Now what about the price?

In

exchange for power, the modern deal expects us to give up

meaning. How did humans handle this chilling demand?

Complying with it could easily have resulted in a dark world,

devoid of ethics, aesthetics and compassion. Yet the fact remains

that humankind is today not only far more powerful than ever, it is

also far more peaceful and cooperative. How did humans manage

that?

How did morality, beauty and even compassion survive and

flourish in a world devoid of gods, of heaven and of hell?

Capitalists are, again, quick to give all the credit to the invisible

hand of the market. Yet the market’s hand is blind as well as

invisible, and by itself could never have saved human society. Indeed, not even a country fair can maintain itself without the

helping hand of some god, king or church. If everything is for sale,

including the courts and the police, trust evaporates, credit

vanishes and business withers. 6 What, then, rescued modern society from collapse?

Humankind was salvaged not by the law of

supply and demand, but rather by the rise of a new revolutionary

religion – humanism. 7

The Humanist Revolution

The modern deal offers us power, on condition that we renounce

our belief in a great cosmic plan that gives meaning to life. Yet

when you examine the deal closely, you find a cunning escape

clause. If humans somehow manage to find meaning without

deriving it from a great cosmic plan, this is not considered a

breach of contract. This escape clause has been the salvation of modern society, for

it is impossible to sustain order without meaning. The great

political, artistic and religious project of modernity has been to

find a meaning to life that is not rooted in some great cosmic plan. We are not actors in a divine drama, and nobody cares about us

and our deeds, so nobody sets limits to our power – but we are

still convinced our lives have meaning. As of 2016, humankind indeed manages to hold the stick at both

ends. Not only do we possess far more power than ever before, but

against all expectations, God’s death did not lead to social

collapse. Throughout history prophets and philosophers have

argued that if humans stopped believing in a great cosmic plan, all

law and order would vanish. Yet today, those who pose the

greatest threat to global law and order are precisely those people

who continue to believe in God and His all-encompassing plans. God-fearing Syria is a far more violent place than the atheist

Netherlands. If there is no cosmic plan, and we are not committed to any

divine or natural laws, what prevents social collapse?

How come

you can travel for thousands of kilometres, from Amsterdam to

Bucharest or from New Orleans to Montreal, without being

kidnapped by slave-traders, ambushed by outlaws or killed by

feuding tribes?

Look Inside

The antidote to a meaningless and lawless existence was provided

by humanism, a revolutionary new creed that conquered the world

during the last few centuries. The humanist religion worships

humanity, and expects humanity to play the part that God played

in Christianity and Islam, and that the laws of nature played in

Buddhism and Daoism. Whereas traditionally the great cosmic

plan gave meaning to the life of humans, humanism reverses the

roles, and expects the experiences of humans to give meaning to

the great cosmos. According to humanism, humans must draw

from within their inner experiences not only the meaning of their

own lives, but also the meaning of the entire universe. This is the

primary commandment humanism has given us: create meaning

for a meaningless world. Accordingly, the central religious revolution of modernity was

not losing faith in God; rather, it was gaining faith in humanity. It

took centuries of hard work. Thinkers wrote pamphlets, artists

composed poems and symphonies, politicians struck deals – and

together they convinced humanity that it can imbue the universe

with meaning. To grasp the depth and implications of the

humanist revolution, consider how modern European culture

differs from medieval European culture. People in London, Paris

or Toledo in 1300 did not believe that humans could determine by

themselves what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is

wrong, what is beautiful and what is ugly. Only God could create

and define goodness, righteousness and beauty. Although humans were viewed as enjoying unique abilities and

opportunities, they were also seen as ignorant and corruptible

beings. Without external supervision and guidance, humans could

never understand the eternal truth, and would instead be drawn to

fleeting sensual pleasures and worldly delusions. In addition,

medieval thinkers pointed out that humans are mortal, and their

opinions and feelings are as fickle as the wind. Today I love

something with all my heart, tomorrow I am disgusted by it, and

next week I am dead and buried. Hence any meaning that depends

on human opinion is necessarily fragile and ephemeral. Absolute

truths, and the meaning of life and of the universe, must therefore

be based on some eternal law emanating from a superhuman

source. This view made God the supreme source not only of meaning,

but also of authority. Meaning and authority always go hand in

hand. Whoever determines the meaning of our actions – whether

they are good or evil, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly – also gains

the authority to tell us what to think and how to behave. God’s role as the source of meaning and authority was not just a

philosophical theory. It affected every facet of daily life. Suppose

that in 1300, in some small English town, a married woman took a

fancy to the next-door neighbour and had sex with him. As she

sneaked back home, hiding a smile and straightening her dress,

her mind began to race: ‘What was that all about?

Why did I do it?

Was it good or bad?

What does it imply about me?

Should I do it

again?’ In order to answer such questions, the woman was

supposed to go to the local priest, confess and ask the holy father

for guidance. The priest was well versed in scriptures, and these

sacred texts revealed to him exactly what God thought about

adultery. Based on the eternal word of God, the priest could

determine beyond all doubt that the woman had committed a

mortal sin, that if she doesn’t make amends she will end up in hell,

and that she ought to repent immediately, donate ten gold coins to

the coming crusade, avoid eating meat for the next six months and

make a pilgrimage to the tomb of St Thomas à Becket at

Canterbury. And it goes without saying that she must never repeat

her awful sin. Today things are very different. For centuries humanism has

been convincing us that we are the ultimate source of meaning,

and that our free will is therefore the highest authority of all. Instead of waiting for some external entity to tell us what’s what,

we can rely on our own feelings and desires. From infancy we are

bombarded with a barrage of humanist slogans counselling us:

‘Listen to yourself, follow your heart, be true to yourself, trust

yourself, do what feels good.’ Jean-Jacques Rousseau summed it

all up in his novel Émile, the eighteenth-century bible of feeling. Rousseau held that when looking for the rules of conduct in life,

he found them ‘in the depths of my heart, traced by nature in

characters which nothing can efface. I need only consult myself

with regard to what I wish to do; what I feel to be good is good,

what I feel to be bad is bad.’1

Accordingly, when a modern woman wants to understand the

meaning of an affair she is having, she is far less prone to blindly

accept the judgements of a priest or an ancient book. Instead, she

will carefully examine her feelings. If her feelings aren’t very clear,

she will call a good friend, meet for coffee and pour out her heart. If things are still vague, she will go to her therapist, and tell him all

about it. Theoretically, the modern therapist occupies the same

place as the medieval priest, and it is an overworked cliché to

compare the two professions. Yet in practice, a huge chasm

separates them. The therapist does not possess a holy book that

defines good and evil. When the woman finishes her story, it is

highly unlikely that the therapist will burst out: ‘You wicked

woman!

You have committed a terrible sin!’ It is equally unlikely

that he will say, ‘Wonderful!

Good for you!’ Instead, no matter

what the woman may have done and said, the therapist is most

likely to ask in a caring voice, ‘Well, how do you feel about what

happened?’

True, the therapist’s bookshelf sags under the weight of Freud,

Jung and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental

Disorders ( DSM).

Yet these are not holy scriptures. The DSM

diagnoses the ailments of life, not the meaning of life. Most

psychologists believe that only human feelings are authorised to

determine the true meaning of our actions. Hence no matter what

the therapist thinks about his patient’s affair, and no matter what

Freud, Jung and the DSM think about affairs in general, the

therapist should not force his views on the patient. Instead, he

should help her examine the most secret chambers of her heart. There and only there will she find the answers. Whereas medieval

priests had a hotline to God, and could distinguish for us between

good and evil, modern therapists merely help us get in touch with

our own inner feelings. This partly explains the changing fortunes of the institution of marriage. In the Middle Ages, marriage was considered a

sacrament ordained by God, and God also authorised the father to

marry his children according to his wishes and interests. An

extramarital affair was accordingly a brazen rebellion against both

divine and parental authority. It was a mortal sin, no matter what

the lovers felt and thought about it. Today people marry for love,

and it is their inner feelings that give value to this bond. Hence, if

the very same feelings that once drove you into the arms of one

man now drive you into the arms of another, what’s wrong with

that?

If an extramarital affair provides an outlet for emotional and

sexual desires that are not satisfied by your spouse of twenty

years, and if your new lover is kind, passionate and sensitive to

your needs – why not enjoy it?

But wait a minute, you might say. We cannot ignore the feelings

of the other concerned parties. The woman and her lover might

feel wonderful in each other’s arms, but if their respective spouses

find out, everybody will probably feel awful for quite some time. And if it leads to divorce, their children might carry the emotional

scars for decades. Even if the affair is never discovered, hiding it

involves a lot of tension, and may lead to growing feelings of

alienation and resentment. The most interesting discussions in humanist ethics concern

situations like extramarital affairs, when human feelings collide. What happens when the same action causes one person to feel

good, and another to feel bad?

How do we weigh the feelings

against each other?

Do the good feelings of the two lovers

outweigh the bad feelings of their spouses and children?

It doesn’t matter what you think about this particular question. It is far more important to understand the kind of arguments both

sides deploy. Modern people have differing ideas about

extramarital affairs, but no matter what their position is, they tend

to justify it in the name of human feelings rather than in the name

of holy scriptures and divine commandments. Humanism has

taught us that something can be bad only if it causes somebody to

feel bad. Murder is wrong not because some god once said, ‘Thou

shalt not kill.’ Rather, murder is wrong because it causes terrible

suffering to the victim, to his family members, and to his friends

and acquaintances. Theft is wrong not because some ancient text

says, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ Rather, theft is wrong because when

you lose your property, you feel bad about it. And if an action does

not cause anyone to feel bad, there can be nothing wrong about it. If the same ancient text says that God commanded us not to make

any images of either humans or animals (Exodus 20:4), but I

enjoy sculpting such figures, and I don’t harm anyone in the

process – then what could possibly be wrong with it?

The same logic dominates current debates on homosexuality. If

two adult men enjoy having sex with one another, and they don’t

harm anyone while doing so, why should it be wrong, and why

should we outlaw it?

It is a private matter between these two men,

and they are free to decide about it according to their inner

feelings. In the Middle Ages, if two men confessed to a priest that

they were in love with one another, and that they never felt so

happy, their good feelings would not have changed the priest’s

damning judgement – indeed, their happiness would only have

worsened the situation. Today, in contrast, if two men love one

another, they are told: ‘If it feels good – do it!

Don’t let any priest

mess with your mind. Just follow your heart. You know best

what’s good for you.’

Interestingly enough, today even religious zealots adopt this

humanistic discourse when they want to influence public opinion. For example, every year for the past decade the Israeli LGBT

community holds a gay parade in the streets of Jerusalem. It is a

unique day of harmony in this conflict-riven city, because it is the

one occasion when religious Jews, Muslims and Christians

suddenly find a common cause – they all fume in accord against

the gay parade. What’s really interesting, though, is the argument

they use. They don’t say, ‘You shouldn’t hold a gay parade because

God forbids homosexuality.’ Rather, they explain to every

available microphone and TV camera that ‘seeing a gay parade

passing through the holy city of Jerusalem hurts our feelings. Just

as gay people want us to respect their feelings, they should respect

ours.’

On 7 January 2015 Muslim fanatics massacred several staff

members of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, because the

magazine published caricatures of the prophet Muhammad. In the

following days, many Muslim organisations condemned the

attack, yet some could not resist adding a ‘but’ clause. For

example, the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate denounced the

terrorists for their use of violence, and in the same breath

denounced the magazine for ‘hurting the feelings of millions of

Muslims across the world’.

2 Note that the Syndicate did not blame the magazine for disobeying God’s will. That’s what we call

progress. —

Our feelings provide meaning not only for our private lives, but

also for social and political processes. When we want to know who

should rule the country, what foreign policy to adopt and what

economic steps to take, we don’t look for the answers in

scriptures. Nor do we obey the commands of the Pope or the

Council of Nobel Laureates. Rather, in most countries, we hold

democratic elections and ask people what they think about the

matter at hand. We believe that the voter knows best, and that the

free choices of individual humans are the ultimate political

authority. Yet how does the voter know what to choose?

Theoretically at

least, the voter is supposed to consult his or her innermost

feelings, and follow their lead. It is not always easy. In order to get

in touch with my feelings, I need to filter out the empty

propaganda slogans, the endless lies of ruthless politicians, the

distracting noise created by cunning spin doctors, and the learned

opinions of hired pundits. I need to ignore all this racket, and

attend only to my authentic inner voice. And then my authentic

inner voice whispers in my ear ‘Vote Cameron’ or ‘Vote Modi’ or

‘Vote Clinton’ or whomever, and I put a cross against that name on

the ballot paper – and that’s how we know who should rule the

country. In the Middle Ages this would have been considered the height

of foolishness. The fleeting feelings of ignorant commoners were

hardly a sound basis for important political decisions. When

England was torn apart by the Wars of the Roses, nobody thought

to end the conflict by having a national referendum, in which each

bumpkin and wench cast a vote for either Lancaster or York. Similarly, when Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade in 1095,

he didn’t claim it was the people’s will. It was God’s will. Political

authority came down from heaven – it didn’t rise up from the

hearts and minds of mortal humans. Credit 1.27

27.

The Holy Spirit, in the guise of a dove, delivers an ampulla full of sacred oil

for the baptism of King Clovis, founder of the Frankish kingdom (illustration

from the Grandes Chroniques de France, c.1380 ).

According to the founding

myth of France, this ampulla was henceforth kept in Rheims Cathedral, and all

subsequent French kings were anointed with the divine oil at their coronation. Each coronation thus involved a miracle, as the empty ampulla spontaneously

refilled with oil. This indicated that God himself chose the king and gave him

His blessing. If God did not want Louis IX or Louis XIV or Louis XVI to be king,

the ampulla would not have refilled. What’s true of ethics and politics is also true of aesthetics. In the

Middle Ages art was governed by objective yardsticks. The

standards of beauty did not reflect human fads. Rather, human

tastes were supposed to conform to superhuman dictates. This

made perfect sense in a period when people believed that art was

inspired by superhuman forces rather than by human feelings. The hands of painters, poets, composers and architects were

supposedly moved by muses, angels and the Holy Spirit. Many a

time when a composer penned a beautiful hymn, no credit was

given to the composer, for the same reason it was not given to the

pen. The pen was held and directed by human fingers which in

turn were held and directed by the hand of God. Medieval scholars held on to a classical Greek theory, according

to which the movements of the stars across the sky create heavenly

music that permeates the entire universe. Humans enjoy physical

and mental health when the inner movements of their body and

soul are in harmony with the heavenly music created by the stars. Human music should therefore echo the divine melody of the

cosmos, rather than reflect the ideas and caprices of flesh-and-

blood composers. The most beautiful hymns, songs and tunes

were usually attributed not to the genius of some human artist but

to divine inspiration. Credit 1.28

28.

Pope Gregory the Great composes the eponymous Gregorian chants. The

Holy Spirit, in its favourite dove costume, sits on his right shoulder, whispering

the chants in his ear. The Holy Spirit is the chants’ true author, whereas

Gregory is just a conduit. God is the ultimate source of art and beauty. Such views are no longer in vogue. Today humanists believe that

the only source for artistic creation and aesthetic value is human

feelings. Music is created and judged by our inner voice, which

need follow neither the rhythms of the stars nor the commands of

muses and angels. For the stars are mute, while muses and angels

exist only in our own imagination. Modern artists seek to get in

touch with themselves and their feelings, rather than with God. No

wonder then that when we come to evaluate art, we no longer

believe in any objective yardsticks. Instead, we again turn to our

subjective feelings. In ethics, the humanist motto is ‘if it feels good

– do it’.

In politics, humanism instructs us that ‘the voter knows

best’.

In aesthetics, humanism says that ‘beauty is in the eye of the

beholder’.

The very definition of art is consequently up for grabs. In 1917

Marcel Duchamp took an ordinary mass-produced urinal, named

it Fountain, signed his name at the bottom, declared it a work of

art and placed it in a Paris museum. Medieval people would not

have bothered to even argue about it. Why waste oxygen on such

utter nonsense?

Yet in the modern humanist world, Duchamp’s

work is considered an important artistic milestone. In countless

classrooms across the world, first-year art students are shown an

image of Duchamp’s Fountain, and at a sign from the teacher, all

hell breaks loose. It is art!

No it isn’t!

Yes it is!

No way!

After

letting the students release some steam, the teacher focuses the

discussion by asking ‘What exactly is art?

And how do we

determine whether something is a work of art or not?’ After a few

more minutes of back and forth, the teacher steers the class in the

right direction: ‘Art is anything people think is art, and beauty is in

the eye of the beholder.’ If people think that a urinal is a beautiful

work of art – then it is. What higher authority is there that can tell

people they are wrong?

Today, copies of Duchamp’s masterpiece

are presented in some of the most important museums in the

world, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the

National Gallery of Canada, the Tate Gallery in London and the

Pompidou Centre in Paris. (The copies are placed in the museums’

showrooms, not in the lavatories.)

Such humanist approaches have had a deep impact on the

economic field as well. In the Middle Ages, guilds controlled the

production process, leaving little room for the initiative or taste of individual artisans and customers. The carpenters’ guild

determined what was a good chair, the bakers’ guild defined good

bread, and the Meistersinger guild decided which songs were first

class and which were rubbish. Meanwhile princes and city

councils regulated salaries and prices, occasionally forcing people

to buy fixed amounts of goods at a non-negotiable price. In the

modern free market, all these guilds, councils and princes have

been superseded by a new supreme authority – the free will of the

customer. Suppose Toyota decides to produce the perfect car. It sets up a

committee of experts from various fields: it hires the best

engineers and designers, brings together the finest physicists and

economists, and even consults with several sociologists and

psychologists. To be on the safe side, they throw in a Nobel

laureate or two, an Oscar-winning actress and some world-famous

artists. After five years of research and development, they unveil

the perfect car. Millions of vehicles are produced, and shipped to

car agencies across the world. Yet nobody buys the car. Does it

mean that the customers are making a mistake, and that they

don’t know what’s good for them?

No. In a free market, the

customer is always right. If customers don’t want it, it means that

it is not a good car. It doesn’t matter if all the university professors

and all the priests and mullahs cry out from every pulpit that this

is a wonderful car – if the customers reject it, it is a bad car. Nobody has the authority to tell customers that they are wrong,

and heaven forbid that a government would try to force citizens to

buy a particular car against their will. What’s true of cars is true of all other products. Listen, for

example, to Professor Leif Andersson from the University of

Uppsala. He specialises in the genetic enhancement of farm

animals, in order to create faster-growing pigs, dairy cows that

produce more milk, and chickens with extra meat on their bones. In an interview for the newspaper Haaretz, reporter Naomi

Darom confronted Andersson with the fact that such genetic

manipulations might cause much suffering to the animals. Already

today ‘enhanced’ dairy cows have such heavy udders that they can

barely walk, while ‘upgraded’ chickens cannot even stand up. Professor Andersson had a firm answer: ‘Everything comes back to the individual customer and to the question how much the

customer is willing to pay for meat…we must remember that it

would be impossible to maintain current levels of global meat

consumption without the \[enhanced] modern chicken…if

customers ask us only for the cheapest meat possible – that’s what

the customers will get…Customers need to decide what is most

important to them – price, or something else.’3

Professor Andersson can go to sleep at night with a clean

conscience. The fact that customers are buying his enhanced

animal products implies that he is meeting their needs and desires

and is therefore doing good. By the same logic, if some

multinational corporation wants to know whether it lives up to its

‘Don’t be evil’ motto, it need only take a look at its bottom line. If

it makes loads of money, it means that millions of people like its

products, which implies that it is a force for good. If someone

objects and says that people might make the wrong choice, he will

be quickly reminded that the customer is always right, and that

human feelings are the source of all meaning and authority. If

millions of people freely choose to buy the company’s products,

who are you to tell them that they are wrong?

Finally, the rise of humanist ideas has revolutionised the

educational system too. In the Middle Ages the source of all

meaning and authority was external, hence education focused on

instilling obedience, memorising scriptures and studying ancient

traditions. Teachers presented pupils with a question, and the

pupils had to remember how Aristotle, King Solomon or St

Thomas Aquinas answered it. Humanism in Five Images

Credit 1.29

29.

Humanist Politics: the voter knows best. Credit 1.30

30.

Humanist Economics: the customer is always right. Credit 1.31

31.

Humanist Aesthetics: beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. (Marcel

Duchamp’s Fountain in a special exhibition of modern art at the National

Gallery of Scotland.)

Credit 1.32

32.

Humanist Ethics: if it feels good – do it!

Credit 1.33

33.

Humanist Education: think for yourself!

In contrast, modern humanist education believes in teaching

students to think for themselves. It is good to know what Aristotle,

Solomon and Aquinas thought about politics, art and economics;

yet since the supreme source of meaning and authority lies within

ourselves, it is far more important to know what you think about

these matters. Ask a teacher – whether in kindergarten, school or

college – what she is trying to teach. ‘Well,’ she will answer, ‘I

teach the kids history, or quantum physics, or art – but above all I

try to teach them to think for themselves.’ It may not always

succeed, but that is what humanist education seeks to do. —

As the source of meaning and authority was relocated from the sky

to human feelings, the nature of the entire cosmos changed. The

exterior universe – hitherto teeming with gods, muses, fairies and

ghouls – became empty space. The interior world – hitherto an

insignificant enclave of crude passions – became deep and rich

beyond measure. Angels and demons were transformed from real

entities roaming the forests and deserts of the world into inner

forces within our own psyche. Heaven and hell too ceased to be real places somewhere above the clouds and below the volcanoes,

and were instead interpreted as internal mental states. You

experience hell every time you ignite the fires of anger and hatred

within your heart; and you enjoy heavenly bliss every time you

forgive your enemies, repent your own misdeeds and share your

wealth with the poor. When Nietzsche declared that God is dead, this is what he

meant. At least in the West, God has become an abstract idea that

some accept and others reject, but it makes little difference either

way. In the Middle Ages, without a god I had no source of political,

moral and aesthetic authority. I could not tell what was right, good

or beautiful. Who could live like that?

Today, in contrast, it is very

easy not to believe in God, because I pay no price for my unbelief. I can be a complete atheist, and still draw a very rich mix of

political, moral and aesthetical values from my inner experience. If I believe in God at all, it is my choice to believe. If my inner

self tells me to believe in God – then I believe. I believe because I

feel God’s presence, and my heart tells me He is there. But if I no

longer feel God’s presence, and if my heart suddenly tells me that

there is no God – I will cease believing. Either way, the real source

of authority is my own feelings. So even while saying that I believe

in God, the truth is I have a much stronger belief in my own inner

voice. Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Like every other source of authority, feelings have their

shortcomings. Humanism assumes that each human has a single

authentic inner self, but when I try to listen to it, I often encounter

either silence or a cacophony of contending voices. In order to

overcome this problem, humanism has upheld not just a new

source of authority, but also a new method for getting in touch

with authority and gaining true knowledge. In medieval Europe, the chief formula for knowledge was:

Knowledge = Scriptures × Logic.\*1 If we want to know the

answer to some important question, we should read scriptures,

and use our logic to understand the exact meaning of the text. For

example, scholars who wished to know the shape of the earth

scanned the Bible looking for relevant references. One pointed out

that in Job 38:13, it says that God can ‘take hold of the edges of the

earth, and the wicked be shaken out of it’.

This implies – reasoned

the pundit – that because the earth has ‘edges’ of which we can

‘take hold’, it must be a flat square. Another sage rejected this

interpretation, calling attention to Isaiah 40:22, where it says that

God ‘sits enthroned above the circle of the earth’.

Isn’t that proof

that the earth is round?

In practice, that meant that scholars

sought knowledge by spending years in schools and libraries,

reading more and more texts, and sharpening their logic so they

could understand the texts correctly. The Scientific Revolution proposed a very different formula for

knowledge: Knowledge = Empirical Data × Mathematics. If

we want to know the answer to some question, we need to gather

relevant empirical data, and then use mathematical tools to

analyse the data. For example, in order to gauge the true shape of

the earth, we can observe the sun, the moon and the planets from

various locations across the world. Once we have amassed enough

observations, we can use trigonometry to deduce not only the

shape of the earth, but also the structure of the entire solar

system. In practice, that means that scientists seek knowledge by

spending years in observatories, laboratories and research

expeditions, gathering more and more empirical data, and

sharpening their mathematical tools so they could interpret the

data correctly. The scientific formula for knowledge led to astounding

breakthroughs in astronomy, physics, medicine and countless

other disciplines. But it had one huge drawback: it could not deal

with questions of value and meaning. Medieval pundits could

determine with absolute certainty that it is wrong to murder and

steal, and that the purpose of human life is to do God’s bidding,

because scriptures said so. Scientists could not come up with such

ethical judgements. No amount of data and no mathematical

wizardry can prove that it is wrong to murder. Yet human societies

cannot survive without such value judgements. One way to overcome this difficulty was to continue using the old medieval formula alongside the new scientific method. When

faced with a practical problem – such as determining the shape of

the earth, building a bridge or curing a disease – we collect

empirical data and analyse it mathematically. When faced with an

ethical problem – such as determining whether to allow divorce,

abortion and homosexuality – we read scriptures. This solution

was adopted to some extent by numerous modern societies, from

Victorian Britain to twenty-first-century Iran. However, humanism offered an alternative. As humans gained

confidence in themselves, a new formula for attaining ethical

knowledge appeared: Knowledge = Experiences ×

Sensitivity. If we wish to know the answer to any ethical

question, we need to connect to our inner experiences, and

observe them with the utmost sensitivity. In practice, that means

that we seek knowledge by spending years collecting experiences,

and sharpening our sensitivity so we could understand these

experiences correctly. What exactly are ‘experiences’?

They are not empirical data. An

experience is not made of atoms, molecules, proteins or numbers. Rather, an experience is a subjective phenomenon that includes

three main ingredients: sensations, emotions and thoughts. At any

particular moment my experience comprises everything I sense

(heat, pleasure, tension, etc.), every emotion I feel (love, fear,

anger, etc.) and whatever thoughts arise in my mind. And what is ‘sensitivity’?

It means two things. Firstly, paying

attention to my sensations, emotions and thoughts. Secondly,

allowing these sensations, emotions and thoughts to influence me. Granted, I shouldn’t allow every passing breeze to sweep me away. Yet I should be open to new experiences, and permit them to

change my views, my behaviour and even my personality. Experiences and sensitivity build up one another in a never-

ending cycle. I cannot experience anything if I have no sensitivity,

and I cannot develop sensitivity unless I undergo a variety of

experiences. Sensitivity is not an abstract aptitude that can be

developed by reading books or listening to lectures. It is a practical

skill that can ripen and mature only by applying it in practice. Take tea, for example. I start by drinking very sweet ordinary tea while reading the morning paper. The tea is little more than an

excuse for a sugar rush. One day I realise that between the sugar

and the newspaper, I hardly taste the tea at all. So I reduce the

amount of sugar, put the paper aside, close my eyes and focus on

the tea itself. I begin to register its unique aroma and flavour. Soon I find myself experimenting with different teas, black and

green, comparing their exquisite tangs and delicate bouquets. Within a few months, I drop the supermarket labels and buy my

tea at Harrods. I develop a particular liking for ‘Panda Dung tea’

from the mountains of Ya’an in Sichuan province, made from

leaves of tea trees fertilised by the dung of panda bears. That’s

how, one cup at a time, I hone my tea sensitivity and become a tea

connoisseur. If in my early tea-drinking days you had served me

Panda Dung tea in a Ming Dynasty porcelain goblet, I would not

have appreciated it much more than builder’s tea in a paper cup. You cannot experience something if you don’t have the necessary

sensitivity, and you cannot develop your sensitivity except by

undergoing a long string of experiences. What’s true of tea is true of all other aesthetic and ethical

knowledge. We aren’t born with a ready-made conscience. As we

pass through life, we hurt people and people hurt us, we act

compassionately and others show compassion to us. If we pay

attention, our moral sensitivity sharpens, and these experiences

become a source of valuable ethical knowledge about what is good,

what is right and who I really am. Humanism thus sees life as a gradual process of inner change,

leading from ignorance to enlightenment by means of experiences. The highest aim of humanist life is to fully develop your

knowledge through a large variety of intellectual, emotional and

physical experiences. In the early nineteenth century, Wilhelm

von Humboldt – one of the chief architects of the modern

education system – said that the aim of existence is ‘a distillation

of the widest possible experience of life into wisdom’.

He also

wrote that ‘there is only one summit in life – to have taken the

measure in feeling of everything human’.4 This could well be the

humanist motto. —

According to Chinese philosophy, the world is sustained by the

interplay of opposing but complementary forces called yin and

yang. This may not be true of the physical world, but it is certainly

true of the modern world that has been created by the covenant of

science and humanism. Every scientific yang contains within it a

humanist yin, and vice versa. The yang provides us with power,

while the yin provides us with meaning and ethical judgements. The yang and yin of modernity are reason and emotion, the

laboratory and the museum, the production line and the

supermarket. People often see only the yang, and imagine that the

modern world is dry, scientific, logical and utilitarian – just like a

laboratory or a factory. But the modern world is also an

extravagant supermarket. No culture in history has ever given

such importance to human feelings, desires and experiences. The

humanist view of life as a string of experiences has become the

founding myth of numerous modern industries, from tourism to

art. Travel agents and restaurant chefs do not sell us flight tickets,

hotels or fancy dinners – they sell us novel experiences. Similarly,

whereas most premodern narratives focused on external events

and actions, modern novels, films and poems often revolve around

feelings. Graeco-Roman epics and medieval chivalric romances

were catalogues of heroic deeds, not feelings. One chapter told

how the brave knight fought a monstrous ogre, and killed him. Another chapter recounted how the knight rescued a beautiful

princess from a fire-spitting dragon, and killed him. A third

chapter narrated how a wicked sorcerer kidnapped the princess,

but the knight pursued the sorcerer, and killed him. No wonder

that the hero was invariably a knight, rather than a carpenter or a

peasant, for peasants performed no heroic deeds. Crucially, the heroes did not undergo any significant process of

inner change. Achilles, Arthur, Roland and Lancelot were fearless

warriors with a chivalric world view before they set out on their

adventures, and they remained fearless warriors with the same

world view at the end. All the ogres they killed and all the

princesses they rescued confirmed their courage and

perseverance, but ultimately taught them little. The humanist focus on feelings and experiences, rather than

deeds, transformed art. Wordsworth, Dostoevsky, Dickens and

Zola cared little for brave knights and derring-do, and instead

described how ordinary people and housewives felt. Some people

believe that Joyce’s Ulysses represents the apogee of this modern

focus on the inner life rather than external actions – in 260,000

words Joyce describes a single day in the life of the Dubliners

Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, who over the course of the

day do…well, nothing much at all. Few people have actually read all of Ulysses, but the same

principles underpin much of our popular culture too. In the

United States, the series Survivor is often credited (or blamed) for

turning reality shows into a craze. Survivor was the first reality

show to make it to the top of the Nielsen ratings, and in 2007

Time magazine listed it among the hundred greatest TV shows of

all time.5 In each season, twenty contenders in minimal swimsuits

are isolated on some tropical island. They have to face all kinds of

challenges, and each episode they vote out one of their members. The last one left takes home $1 million. Audiences in Homeric Greece, in the Roman Empire or in

medieval Europe would have found the idea familiar and highly

attractive. Twenty challengers go in – only one hero comes out. ‘Wonderful!’ a Homeric prince, a Roman patrician or a crusader

knight would have thought to himself as he sat down to watch. ‘Surely we are about to see amazing adventures, life-and-death

battles and incomparable acts of heroism and betrayal. The

warriors will probably stab each other in the back, or spill their

entrails for all to see.’

What a disappointment!

The back-stabbing and entrails-spilling

remain just a metaphor. Each episode lasts about an hour. Out of

that, fifteen minutes are taken up by commercials for toothpaste,

shampoo and cereals. Five minutes are dedicated to incredibly

childish challenges, such as who can throw the most coconuts into

a hoop, or who can eat the largest number of bugs in one minute. The rest of the time the ‘heroes’ just talk about their feelings!

He

said she said, and I felt this and I felt that. If a crusader knight had

really sat down to watch Survivor, he would probably have

grabbed his battleaxe and smashed the TV out of boredom and frustration. Today we might think of medieval knights as insensitive brutes. If they lived among us, we would send them to a therapist, who

might help them get in touch with themselves. This is what the Tin

Man does in The Wizard of Oz. He walks along the yellow brick

road with Dorothy and her friends, hoping that when they get to

Oz, the great wizard will give him a heart, while the Scarecrow

wants a brain and the Lion wants courage. At the end of their

journey they discover that the great wizard is a charlatan, and he

can’t give them any of these things. But they discover something

far more important: everything they wish for is already within

themselves. There is no need of some godlike wizard in order to

obtain sensitivity, wisdom or bravery. You just need to follow the

yellow brick road, and open yourself to whatever experiences

come your way. Exactly the same lesson is learned by Captain Kirk and Captain

Jean-Luc Picard as they travel the galaxy in the starship

Enterprise, by Huckleberry Finn and Jim as they sail down the

Mississippi, by Wyatt and Billy as they ride their Harley-

Davidsons in Easy Rider, and by countless other characters in

myriad other road movies who leave their home town in

Pennsylvania (or perhaps New South Wales), travel in an old

convertible (or perhaps a bus), pass through various life-changing

experiences, get in touch with themselves, talk about their

feelings, and eventually reach San Francisco (or perhaps Alice

Springs) as better and wiser individuals. The Truth About War

The formula Knowledge = Experiences × Sensitivity has

changed not just our popular culture, but even our perception of

weighty issues like war. Throughout most of history, when people

wished to know whether a particular war was just, they asked God,

they asked scriptures, and they asked kings, noblemen and priests. Few cared about the opinions and experiences of a common

soldier or an ordinary civilian. War narratives such as those of

Homer, Virgil and Shakespeare focused on the actions of

emperors, generals and outstanding heroes, and though they did

not hide the misery of war, this was more than compensated for by

a full menu of glory and heroism. Ordinary soldiers appeared as

either piles of bodies slaughtered by some Goliath, or a cheering

crowd hoisting a triumphant David upon its shoulders. Credit 1.34

34.

Jean-Jacques Walter, Gustav Adolph of Sweden at the Battle of Breitenfeld

(1631).

Look, for example, at the painting above of the Battle of

Breitenfeld, which took place on 17 September 1631.

The painter,

Jean-Jacques Walter, glorifies King Gustav Adolph of Sweden,

who led his army that day to a decisive victory. Gustav Adolph

towers over the battlefield as if he were some god of war. One gets

the impression that the king controls the battle like a chess player

moving pawns. The pawns themselves are mostly generic figures,

or tiny dots in the background. Walter was not interested in how

they felt while they charged, fled, killed or died. They are a faceless

collective. Even when painters focused on the battle itself, rather than on

the commander, they still looked at it from above, and were far

more concerned with collective manoeuvres than with personal

feelings. Take, for example, Pieter Snayers’s painting of the Battle

of White Mountain in November 1620.

The painting depicts a celebrated Catholic victory in the Thirty

Years War over heretical Protestant rebels. Snayers wished to

commemorate this victory by painstakingly recording the various

formations, manoeuvres and troop movements. You can easily tell

the different units, their armament and their place within the

order of battle. Snayers gave far less attention to the experiences

and feelings of the common soldiers. Like Jean-Jacques Walter, he

makes us observe the battle from the Olympian vantage point of

gods and kings, and gives us the impression that war is a giant

chess game. Credit 1.35

35.

Pieter Snayers, The Battle of White Mountain. If you take a closer look – for which you might need a

magnifying glass – you realise that The Battle of White Mountain

is a bit more complex than a chess game. What at first sight seem

to be geometrical abstractions turn upon closer inspection into

bloody scenes of carnage. Here and there you can even spot the

faces of individual soldiers running or fleeing, firing their guns or impaling an enemy on their pikes. However, these scenes receive

their meaning from their place within the overall picture. When

we see a cannonball smashing a soldier to bits, we understand it as

part of the great Catholic victory. If the soldier is fighting on the

Protestant side, his death is a just reward for rebellion and heresy. If the soldier is fighting in the Catholic army, his death is a noble

sacrifice for a worthy cause. If we look up, we can see angels

hovering high above the battlefield. They are holding a billboard

which explains in Latin what happened in this battle, and why it

was so important. The message is that God helped Emperor

Ferdinand II defeat his enemies on 8 November 1620.

For thousands of years, when people looked at war, they saw

gods, emperors, generals and great heroes. But over the last two

centuries, the kings and generals have been increasingly pushed to

the side, and the limelight shifted onto the common soldier and

his experiences. War novels such as All Quiet on the Western

Front and war films such as Platoon begin with a young and naïve

recruit, who knows little about himself and the world, but carries a

heavy burden of hopes and illusions. He believes that war is

glorious, our cause is just and the general is a genius. A few weeks

of real war – of mud, and blood, and the smell of death – shatter

his illusions one after another. If he survives, the naïve recruit will

leave war as a much wiser man, who no longer believes the clichés

and ideals peddled by teachers, film-makers and eloquent

politicians. Paradoxically, this narrative has become so influential that

today it is told over and over again even by teachers, film-makers

and eloquent politicians. ‘War is not what you see in the movies!’

warn Hollywood blockbusters such as Apocalypse Now, Full

Metal Jacket and Blackhawk Down. Enshrined in celluloid, prose

or poetry, the feelings of the ordinary grunt have become the

ultimate authority on war, which everyone has learned to respect. As the joke goes, ‘How many Vietnam vets does it take to change a

light bulb?’ ‘You wouldn’t know, you weren’t there.’6

Painters too have lost interest in generals on horses and in

tactical manoeuvres. Instead, they strive to depict how the

common soldier feels. Look again at The Battle of Breitenfeld and

The Battle of White Mountain. Now look at the following two

pictures, considered masterpieces of twentieth-century war art:

The War ( Der Krieg) by Otto Dix, and That 2,000 Yard Stare by

Tom Lea. Dix served as a sergeant in the German army during the First

World War. Lea covered the Battle of Peleliu Island in 1944 for

Life magazine. Whereas Walter and Snayers viewed war as a

military and political phenomenon, and wanted us to know what

happened in particular battles, Dix and Lea view war as an

emotional phenomenon, and want us to know how it feels. They

don’t care about the genius of generals or about the tactical details

of this or that battle. Dix’s soldier might be in Verdun or Ypres or

the Somme – it doesn’t matter which, because war is hell

everywhere. Lea’s soldier just happens to be an American GI in

Peleliu, but you could see exactly the same 2,000-yard stare on the

face of a Japanese soldier in Iwo Jima, a German soldier in

Stalingrad or a British soldier in Dunkirk. Credit 1.36

36.

Otto Dix, The War (1929–32).

Credit 1.37

37.

Tom Lea, That 2,000 Yard Stare (1944).

In the paintings of Dix and Lea, the meaning of war does not

emanate from tactical movements or divine proclamations. If you

want to understand war, don’t look up at the general on the

hilltop, or at angels in the sky. Instead, look straight into the eyes

of the common soldiers. In Lea’s painting, the gaping eyes of a

traumatised soldier open a window onto the terrible truth of war. In Dix’s painting, the truth is so unbearable that it must be partly

concealed behind a gas mask. No angels fly above the battlefield –

only a rotting corpse, hanging from a ruined rafter and pointing

an accusing finger. Artists such as Dix and Lea thus overturned the traditional

hierarchy of war. In earlier times wars could have been as horrific

as in the twentieth century. However, even atrocious experiences

were placed within a wider context that gave them positive

meaning. War might be hell, but it was also the gateway to heaven. A Catholic soldier fighting at the Battle of White Mountain could

say to himself: ‘True, I am suffering. But the Pope and the

emperor say that we are fighting for a good cause, so my suffering

is meaningful.’ Otto Dix employed an opposite kind of logic. He

saw personal experience as the source of all meaning, hence his line of thinking said: ‘I am suffering – and this is bad – hence the

whole war is bad. And if the kaiser and the clergy nevertheless

support the war, they must be mistaken.’7

The Humanist Schism

So far we have discussed humanism as if it were a single coherent

world view. In fact, humanism shared the fate of every successful

religion, such as Christianity and Buddhism. As it spread and

evolved, it fragmented into several conflicting sects. All humanist

sects believe that human experience is the supreme source of

authority and meaning, yet they interpret human experience in

different ways. Humanism split into three main branches. The orthodox branch

holds that each human being is a unique individual possessing a

distinctive inner voice and a never-to-be-repeated string of

experiences. Every human being is a singular ray of light, which

illuminates the world from a different perspective, and which adds

colour, depth and meaning to the universe. Hence we ought to

give as much freedom as possible to every individual to experience

the world, follow his or her inner voice and express his or her

inner truth. Whether in politics, economics or art, individual free

will should have far more weight than state interests or religious

doctrines. The more liberty individuals enjoy, the more beautiful,

rich and meaningful is the world. Due to this emphasis on liberty,

the orthodox branch of humanism is known as ‘liberal humanism’

or simply as ‘liberalism’.\*2

It is liberal politics that believes the voter knows best. Liberal

art holds that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Liberal

economics maintains that the customer is always right. Liberal

ethics advises us that if it feels good, we should go ahead and do it. Liberal education teaches us to think for ourselves, because we

will find all the answers within us. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as humanism

gained increasing social credibility and political power, it sprouted

two very different offshoots: socialist humanism, which

encompassed a plethora of socialist and communist movements,

and evolutionary humanism, whose most famous advocates were

the Nazis. Both offshoots agreed with liberalism that human

experience is the ultimate source of meaning and authority. Neither believed in any transcendental power or divine law book. If, for example, you asked Karl Marx what was wrong with ten-

year-olds working twelve-hour shifts in smoky factories, he would

have answered that it made the kids feel bad. We should avoid

exploitation, oppression and inequality not because God said so,

but because they make people miserable. However, both socialists and evolutionary humanists pointed

out that the liberal understanding of the human experience is

flawed. Liberals think the human experience is an individual

phenomenon. But there are many individuals in the world, and

they often feel different things and have contradictory desires. If

all authority and meaning flows from individual experiences, how

do you settle contradictions between different such experiences?

On 17 July 2015 the German chancellor Angela Merkel was

confronted by a teenage Palestinian refugee girl from Lebanon,

whose family sought asylum in Germany but faced imminent

deportation. The girl, Reem, told Merkel in fluent German that

‘It’s really very hard to watch how other people can enjoy life and

you yourself can’t. I don’t know what my future will bring.’ Merkel

replied that ‘politics can be tough’ and explained that there are

hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, and

Germany cannot absorb them all. Stunned by this no-nonsense

reply, Reem burst out crying. Merkel proceeded to stroke the

desperate girl on the back, but stuck to her guns. In the ensuing public storm, many accused Merkel of cold-

hearted insensitivity. To assuage criticism, Merkel changed tack,

and Reem and her family were given asylum. In the following

months, Merkel opened the door even wider, welcoming hundreds

of thousands of refugees to Germany. But you can’t please

everybody. Soon enough she was under heavy attack for

succumbing to sentimentalism and for not taking a sufficiently

firm stand. Numerous German parents feared that Merkel’s U-

turn means their children will have a lower standard of living, and

perhaps suffer from a tidal wave of Islamisation. Why should they

risk their families’ peace and prosperity for complete strangers who might not even believe in the values of liberalism?

Everyone

feels very strongly about this matter. How to settle the

contradictions between the feelings of the desperate refugees and

of the anxious Germans?8

Liberals forever agonise about such contradictions. The best

efforts of Locke, Jefferson, Mill and their colleagues have failed to

provide us with a fast and easy solution to such conundrums. Holding democratic elections won’t help, because then the

question will be who would get to vote in these elections – only

German citizens, or also millions of Asians and Africans who want

to immigrate to Germany?

Why privilege the feelings of one group

over another?

Likewise, you cannot resolve the Arab–Israeli

conflict by making 8 million Israeli citizens and 350 million

citizens of Arab League nations vote on it. For obvious reasons,

the Israelis won’t feel committed to the outcome of such a

plebiscite. People feel bound by democratic elections only when they share

a basic bond with most other voters. If the experience of other

voters is alien to me, and if I believe they don’t understand my

feelings and don’t care about my vital interests, then even if I am

outvoted by a hundred to one, I have absolutely no reason to

accept the verdict. Democratic elections usually work only within

populations that have some prior common bond, such as shared

religious beliefs and national myths. They are a method to settle

disagreements between people who already agree on the basics. Accordingly, in many cases liberalism has fused with age-old

collective identities and tribal feelings to form modern

nationalism. Today many associate nationalism with anti-liberal

forces, but at least during the nineteenth century nationalism was

closely aligned with liberalism. Liberals celebrate the unique

experiences of individual humans. Each human has distinctive

feelings, tastes and quirks, which he or she should be free to

express and explore as long as they don’t hurt anyone else. Similarly, nineteenth-century nationalists such as Giuseppe

Mazzini celebrated the uniqueness of individual nations. They

emphasised that many human experiences are communal. You

cannot dance the polka by yourself, and you cannot invent and

preserve the German language by yourself. Using word, dance,

food and drink, each nation fosters different experiences in its

members, and develops its own peculiar sensitivities. Liberal nationalists like Mazzini sought to protect these

distinctive national experiences from being oppressed and

obliterated by intolerant empires, and envisaged a peaceful

community of nations, each free to express and explore its

communal feelings without hurting its neighbours. This is still the

official ideology of the European Union, whose constitution of

2004 states that Europe is ‘united in diversity’ and that the

different peoples of Europe remain ‘proud of their own national

identities’.

The value of preserving the unique communal

experiences of the German nation enables even liberal Germans to

oppose opening the floodgates of immigration. Of course the alliance with nationalism hardly solved all

conundrums, while it created a host of new problems. How do you

compare the value of communal experiences with that of

individual experiences?

Does preserving polka, bratwurst and the

German language justify leaving millions of refugees exposed to

poverty and even death?

And what happens when fundamental

conflicts erupt within nations about the very definition of their

identity, as happened in Germany in 1933, in the USA in 1861, in

Spain in 1936 or in Egypt in 2011?

In such cases, holding

democratic elections is hardly a cure-all, because the opposing

parties have no reason to respect the results. Lastly, as you dance the nationalist polka, a small but

momentous step may take you from believing that your nation is

different from all other nations to believing that your nation is

better. Nineteenth-century liberal nationalism required the

Habsburg and tsarist empires to respect the unique experiences of

Germans, Italians, Poles and Slovenes. Twentieth-century ultra-

nationalism proceeded to wage wars of conquest and build

concentration camps for people who dance to a different tune. —

Socialist humanism has taken a very different course. Socialists

blame liberals for focusing our attention on our own feelings

instead of on what other people experience. Yes, the human

experience is the source of all meaning, but there are billions of

people in the world, and all of them are just as valuable as I am. Whereas liberalism turns my gaze inwards, emphasising my

uniqueness and the uniqueness of my nation, socialism demands

that I stop obsessing about me and my feelings and instead focus

on what others are feeling and about how my actions influence

their experiences. Global peace will be achieved not by celebrating

the distinctiveness of each nation, but by unifying all the workers

of the world; and social harmony won’t be achieved by each

person narcissistically exploring their own inner depths, but

rather by each person prioritising the needs and experiences of

others over their own desires. A liberal may reply that by exploring her own inner world she

develops her compassion and her understanding of others, but

such reasoning would have cut little ice with Lenin or Mao. They

would have explained that individual self-exploration is a

bourgeois indulgent vice, and that when I try to get in touch with

my inner self, I am all too likely to fall into one or another

capitalist trap. My current political views, my likes and dislikes,

and my hobbies and ambitions do not reflect my authentic self. Rather, they reflect my upbringing and social surrounding. They

depend on my class, and are shaped by my neighbourhood and my

school. Rich and poor alike are brainwashed from birth. The rich

are taught to disregard the poor, while the poor are taught to

disregard their true interests. No amount of self-reflection or

psychotherapy will help, because the psychotherapists are also

working for the capitalist system. Indeed, self-reflection is likely only to distance me even further

from understanding the truth about myself, because it gives too

much credit to personal decisions and too little credit to social

conditions. If I am rich, I am likely to conclude that it is because I

made wise choices. If I suffer from poverty, I must have made

some mistakes. If I am depressed, a liberal therapist is likely to

blame my parents, and to encourage me to set some new aims in

life. If I suggest that perhaps I am depressed because I am being

exploited by capitalists, and because under the prevailing social

system I have no chance of realising my aims, the therapist may

well say that I am projecting onto ‘the social system’ my own inner

difficulties, and I am projecting onto ‘the capitalists’ unresolved

issues with my mother. According to socialism, instead of spending years talking about

my mother, my emotions and my complexes, I should ask myself:

who owns the means of production in my country?

What are its

main exports and imports?

What’s the connection between the

ruling politicians and international banking?

Only by

understanding the surrounding socio-economic system and taking

into account the experiences of all other people could I truly

understand what I feel, and only by common action can we change

the system. Yet what person can take into account the experiences

of all human beings, and weigh them one against the other in a

fair way?

That’s why socialists discourage self-exploration, and advocate

the establishment of strong collective institutions – such as

socialist parties and trade unions – that aim to decipher the world

for us. Whereas in liberal politics the voter knows best, and in

liberal economics the customer is always right, in socialist politics

the party knows best, and in socialist economics the trade union is

always right. Authority and meaning still come from human

experience – both the party and the trade union are composed of

people and work to alleviate human misery – yet individuals must

listen to the party and the trade union rather than to their

personal feelings. —

Evolutionary humanism has a different solution to the problem of

conflicting human experiences. Rooting itself in the firm ground

of Darwinian evolutionary theory, it says that conflict is something

to applaud rather than lament. Conflict is the raw material of

natural selection, which pushes evolution forward. Some humans

are simply superior to others, and when human experiences

collide, the fittest humans should steamroll everyone else. The

same logic that drives humankind to exterminate wild wolves and

to ruthlessly exploit domesticated sheep also mandates the

oppression of inferior humans by their superiors. It’s a good thing

that Europeans conquer Africans and that shrewd businessmen

drive the dim-witted to bankruptcy. If we follow this evolutionary

logic, humankind will gradually become stronger and fitter,

eventually giving rise to superhumans. Evolution didn’t stop with

Homo sapiens – there is still a long way to go. However, if in the

name of human rights or human equality we emasculate the fittest

humans, it will prevent the rise of the superman, and may even

cause the degeneration and extinction of Homo sapiens. Who exactly are these superior humans who herald the coming

of the superman?

They might be entire races, particular tribes or

exceptional individual geniuses. In any case, what makes them

superior is that they have better abilities, manifested in the

creation of new knowledge, more advanced technology, more

prosperous societies or more beautiful art. The experience of an

Einstein or a Beethoven is far more valuable than that of a

drunken good-for-nothing, and it is ludicrous to treat them as if

they have equal merit. Similarly, if a particular nation has

consistently spearheaded human progress, we should rightly

consider it superior to other nations that contributed little or

nothing to the evolution of humankind. Consequently, in contrast to liberal artists like Otto Dix,

evolutionary humanism thinks that the human experience of war

is valuable and even essential. The movie The Third Man takes

place in Vienna immediately after the end of the Second World

War. Reflecting on the recent conflict, the character Harry Lime

says: ‘After all, it’s not that awful…In Italy for thirty years under

the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but

they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the

Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500

years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce?

The

cuckoo clock.’ Lime gets almost all his facts wrong – Switzerland

was probably the most bloodthirsty corner of early modern

Europe (its main export was mercenary soldiers), and the cuckoo

clock was actually invented by the Germans – but the facts are of

lesser importance than Lime’s idea, namely that the experience of

war pushes humankind to new achievements. War allows natural

selection free rein at last. It exterminates the weak and rewards

the fierce and the ambitious. War exposes the truth about life, and

awakens the will for power, for glory and for conquest. Nietzsche

summed it up by saying that war is ‘the school of life’ and that

‘what does not kill me makes me stronger’.

Similar ideas were expressed by Lieutenant Henry Jones of the

British army. Three days before his death on the Western Front in

the First World War, the twenty-one-year-old Jones sent a letter

to his brother, describing the experience of war in glowing terms:

Have you ever reflected on the fact that, despite the

horrors of war, it is at least a big thing?

I mean to say

that in it one is brought face to face with realities. The

follies, selfishness, luxury and general pettiness of the

vile commercial sort of existence led by nine-tenths of

the people of the world in peacetime are replaced in war

by a savagery that is at least more honest and

outspoken. Look at it this way: in peacetime one just

lives one’s own little life, engaged in trivialities,

worrying about one’s own comfort, about money

matters, and all that sort of thing – just living for one’s

own self. What a sordid life it is!

In war, on the other

hand, even if you do get killed you only anticipate the

inevitable by a few years in any case, and you have the

satisfaction of knowing that you have ‘pegged out’ in the

attempt to help your country. You have, in fact, realised

an ideal, which, as far as I can see, you very rarely do in

ordinary life. The reason is that ordinary life runs on a

commercial and selfish basis; if you want to ‘get on’, as

the saying is, you can’t keep your hands clean. Personally, I often rejoice that the War has come my

way. It has made me realise what a petty thing life is. I

think that the War has given to everyone a chance to

‘get out of himself’, as I might say…Certainly, speaking

for myself, I can say that I have never in all my life

experienced such a wild exhilaration as on the

commencement of a big stunt, like the last April one for

example. The excitement for the last half-hour or so

before it is like nothing on earth.9

In his bestseller Black Hawk Down, the journalist Mark Bowden relates in similar terms the combat experience of Shawn

Nelson, an American soldier, in Mogadishu in 1993:

It was hard to describe how he felt…it was like an

epiphany. Close to death, he had never felt so

completely alive. There had been split seconds in his

life when he’d felt death brush past, like when another

fast-moving car veered from around a sharp curve and

just missed hitting him head on. On this day he had

lived with that feeling, with death breathing right in his

face…for moment after moment after moment, for three

hours or more…Combat was…a state of complete

mental and physical awareness. In those hours on the

street he had not been Shawn Nelson, he had no

connection to the larger world, no bills to pay, no

emotional ties, nothing. He had just been a human

being staying alive from one nanosecond to the next,

drawing one breath after another, fully aware that each

one might be his last. He felt he would never be the

same.10

Adolf Hitler too was changed and enlightened by his war

experiences. In Mein Kampf, he tells how shortly after his unit

reached the front line, the soldiers’ initial enthusiasm turned into

fear, against which each soldier had to wage a relentless inner war,

straining every nerve to avoid being overwhelmed by it. Hitler says

that he won this inner war by the winter of 1915/16.

‘At last,’ he

writes, ‘my will was undisputed master…I was now calm and

determined. And this was enduring. Now Fate could bring on the

ultimate tests without my nerves shattering or my reason failing.’11

The experience of war revealed to Hitler the truth about the

world: it is a jungle run by the remorseless laws of natural

selection. Those who refuse to recognise this truth cannot survive. If you wish to succeed, you must not only understand the laws of

the jungle, but embrace them joyfully. It should be stressed that

just like the anti-war liberal artists, Hitler too sanctified the

experience of ordinary soldiers. Indeed, Hitler’s political career is

one of the best examples we have for the immense authority

accorded to the personal experience of common people in

twentieth-century politics. Hitler wasn’t a senior officer – in four

years of war, he rose no higher than the rank of corporal. He had

no formal education, no professional skills and no political

background. He wasn’t a successful businessman or a union

activist, he didn’t have friends or relatives in high places, or any

money to speak of. At first, he didn’t even have German

citizenship. He was a penniless immigrant. When Hitler appealed to the German voters and asked for their

trust, he could muster only one argument in his favour: his

experiences in the trenches had taught him what you can never

learn at university, at general headquarters or at a government

ministry. People followed him, and voted for him, because they

identified with him, and because they too believed that the world

is a jungle, and that what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger. Whereas liberalism merged with the milder versions of

nationalism to protect the unique experiences of each human

community, evolutionary humanists such as Hitler identified

particular nations as the engines of human progress, and

concluded that these nations ought to bludgeon or even

exterminate anyone standing in their way. It should be

remembered, though, that Hitler and the Nazis represent only one

extreme version of evolutionary humanism. Just as Stalin’s gulags

do not automatically nullify every socialist idea and argument, so

too the horrors of Nazism should not blind us to whatever insights

evolutionary humanism might offer. Nazism was born from the

pairing of evolutionary humanism with particular racial theories

and ultra-nationalist emotions. Not all evolutionary humanists are

racists, and not every belief in humankind’s potential for further

evolution necessarily calls for setting up police states and

concentration camps. Auschwitz should serve as a blood-red warning sign rather than

as a black curtain that hides entire sections of the human horizon. Evolutionary humanism played an important part in the shaping

of modern culture, and it is likely to play an even greater role in

the shaping of the twenty-first century. Is Beethoven Better than Chuck Berry?

To make sure we understand the difference between the three

humanist branches, let’s compare a few human experiences. Experience no. 1: A musicology professor sits in the Vienna

Opera House, listening to the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth

Symphony. ‘Pa pa pa PAM!’ As the sound waves hit his eardrums,

signals travel via the auditory nerve to the brain, and the adrenal

gland floods his bloodstream with adrenaline. His heartbeat

accelerates, his breathing intensifies, the hairs on his neck stand

up, and a shiver runs down his spine. ‘Pa pa pa PAM!’

Experience no. 2: It’s 1965.

A Mustang convertible is speeding

down the Pacific road from San Francisco to LA at full throttle. The young macho driver puts on Chuck Berry at full volume: ‘Go!

Go, Johnny, go, go!’ As the sound waves hit his eardrums, signals

travel via the auditory nerve to the brain, and the adrenal gland

floods his bloodstream with adrenaline. His heartbeat accelerates,

his breathing intensifies, the hairs on his neck stand up, and a

shiver runs down his spine. ‘Go!

Go, Johnny, go, go!’

Experience no. 3: Deep in the Congolese rainforest, a pygmy

hunter stands transfixed. From the nearby village, he hears a choir

of girls singing their initiation song. ‘Ye oh, oh. Ye oh, eh.’ As the

sound waves hit his eardrums, signals travel via the auditory nerve

to the brain, and the adrenal gland floods his bloodstream with

adrenaline. His heartbeat accelerates, his breathing intensifies, the

hairs on his neck stand up, and a shiver runs down his spine. ‘Ye

oh, oh. Ye oh, eh.’

Experience no. 4: It’s a full-moon night, somewhere in the

Canadian Rockies. A wolf is standing on a hilltop, listening to the

howls of a female in heat. ‘Awoooooo!

Awoooooo!’ As the sound

waves hit his eardrums, signals travel via the auditory nerve to the

brain, and the adrenal gland floods his bloodstream with

adrenaline. His heartbeat accelerates, his breathing intensifies, the

hairs on his neck stand up, and a shiver runs down his spine. ‘Awoooooo!

Awoooooo!’

Which of these four experiences is the most valuable?

If you are liberal, you will tend to say that the experiences of the

musicology professor, of the young driver and of the Congolese

hunter are all equally valuable, and all should be equally

cherished. Every human experience contributes something

unique, and enriches the world with new meaning. Some people

like classical music, others love rock and roll, and still others

prefer traditional African chants. Music students should be

exposed to the widest possible range of genres, and at the end of

the day, everyone could go to the iTunes store, punch in their

credit card number and buy what they like. Beauty is in the ears of

the listener, and the customer is always right. The wolf, though,

isn’t human, hence his experiences are far less valuable. That’s

why the life of a wolf is worth less than the life of a human, and

why it is perfectly okay to kill a wolf in order to save a human. When all is said and done, wolves don’t get to vote in any beauty

contests, nor do they hold any credit cards. This liberal approach is manifested, for example, in the Voyager

golden record. In 1977 the Americans launched the space probe

Voyager I on a journey to outer space. By now it has left the solar

system, making it the first man-made object to traverse

interstellar space. Besides state-of-the-art scientific equipment,

NASA placed on board a golden record, aimed to introduce planet

Earth to any inquisitive aliens who might encounter the probe. The record contains a variety of scientific and cultural

information about Earth and its inhabitants, some images and

voices, and several dozen pieces of music from around the world,

which are supposed to represent a fair sample of earthly artistic

achievement. The musical sample mixes in no obvious order

classical pieces including the opening movement of Beethoven’s

Fifth Symphony, contemporary popular music including Chuck

Berry’s ‘Johnny B. Goode’, and traditional music from throughout

the world, including an initiation song of Congolese pygmy girls. Though the record also contains some canine howls, they are not

part of the music sample, but rather relegated to a different

section that also includes the sounds of wind, rain and surf. The

message to potential listeners in Alpha Centauri is that Beethoven,

Chuck Berry and the pygmy initiation song are of equal merit,

whereas wolf howls belong to an altogether different category. If you are socialist, you will probably agree with the liberals that

the wolf’s experience is of little value. But your attitude towards

the three human experiences will be quite different. A socialist

true-believer will explain that the real value of music depends not

on the experiences of the individual listener, but on the impact it

has on the experiences of other people and of society as a whole. As Mao said, ‘There is no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that

stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of

politics.’12

So when coming to evaluate the musical experiences, a socialist

will focus, for example, on the fact that Beethoven wrote the Fifth

Symphony for an audience of upper-class white Europeans,

exactly when Europe was about to embark on its conquest of

Africa. His symphony reflected Enlightenment ideals, which

glorified upper-class white men, and branded the conquest of

Africa as ‘the white man’s burden’.

Rock and roll – the socialists will say – was pioneered by

downtrodden African American musicians who drew inspiration

from genres like blues, jazz and gospel. However, in the 1950s and

1960s rock and roll was hijacked by mainstream white America,

and pressed into the service of consumerism, of American

imperialism and of Coca-Colonisation. Rock and roll was

commercialised and appropriated by privileged white teenagers in

their petit-bourgeois fantasy of rebellion. Chuck Berry himself

bowed to the dictates of the capitalist juggernaut. While he

originally sang about ‘a coloured boy named Johnny B. Goode’,

under pressure from white-owned radio stations Berry changed

the lyrics to ‘a country boy named Johnny B. Goode’.

As for the choir of Congolese pygmy girls – their initiation songs

are part of a patriarchal power structure that brainwashes both

men and women to conform to an oppressive gender order. And if

a recording of such an initiation song ever makes it to the global

marketplace, it merely serves to reinforce Western colonial

fantasies about Africa in general and about African women in

particular. So which music is best: Beethoven’s Fifth, ‘Johnny B. Goode’ or

the pygmy initiation song?

Should the government finance the

building of opera houses, rock and roll venues or African-heritage

exhibitions?

And what should we teach music students in schools

and colleges?

Well, don’t ask me. Ask the party’s cultural

commissar. Whereas liberals tiptoe around the minefield of cultural

comparisons, fearful of committing some politically incorrect faux

pas, and whereas socialists leave it to the party to find the right

path through the minefield, evolutionary humanists gleefully jump

right in, setting off all the mines and relishing the mayhem. They

may start by pointing out that both liberals and socialists draw the

line at other animals, and have no trouble admitting that humans

are superior to wolves, and that consequently human music is far

more valuable than wolf howls. Yet humankind itself is not exempt

from the forces of evolution. Just as humans are superior to

wolves, so some human cultures are more advanced than others. There is an unambiguous hierarchy of human experiences, and we

shouldn’t be apologetic about it. The Taj Mahal is more beautiful

than a straw hut, Michelangelo’s David is superior to my five-

year-old niece’s latest clay figurine, and Beethoven composed far

better music than Chuck Berry or the Congolese pygmies. There,

we’ve said it!

According to evolutionary humanists, anyone arguing that all

human experiences are equally valuable is either an imbecile or a

coward. Such vulgarity and timidity will lead only to the

degeneration and extinction of humankind, as human progress is

impeded in the name of cultural relativism or social equality. If

liberals or socialists had lived in the Stone Age, they would

probably have seen little merit in the murals of Lascaux and