The Past, Present and Future of Humankind
At the intersection of philosophy, evolution and technology
Ever since I was a child, I was obsessed with the idea of examining life in the attempt to understand its meaning and, to my best knowledge, live the best way I can.
It’s somewhat peculiar because, at that time, when I should have supposedly just absorbed information based on the nearest external factors (school, family, environment), I found myself jumping in a well of counterculture ideas, almost organically seeking answers to tough questions.
As expected, my primary source of information was reading.
And so I began tinkering with classic literature to immerse in the stories of others and appreciate differences, in history to trace back our roots, and later on, in philosophy to get a good grasp of the world, society and the human psyche.
We all know that the journey of understanding life and trying to draw meaning from it has always ignited the best minds across many generations.
But just as great philosophers and thinkers dedicate their lives constructing and deconstructing ideas, why shouldn’t everyone else give it a try? After all, we are all the leaders of our very own lives.
So to attain more clarity about life, I started to delve deeper into how philosophy, evolution and technology have shaped us into the human beings we are today — and how they will transform us in the future.
Thinking about thinking
My first interaction with philosophy was, of course, with the Greek masters Plato, Socrates and Aristotle.
On a side note, only many years later was I truly able to digest the teachings of these masters, it was obvious how their influence would prompt me to investigate the things I was doing, feeling and observing for decades to come.
From Socrates, the one dictum that has remained imprinted in my memory will always be:
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” — Socrates
These famous words which have inspired generations of intellectuals were actually uttered by Socrates at his trial for impiety and corrupting youth, for which he was subsequently sentenced to death, as described in Plato’s Apology.
A strong advocate of “knowing thyself”, Socrates really believed in one’s ability to recognise the limits of what we know, which ultimately equals to nothing.
“The first philosophical priority is to know yourself.” — Socrates
Statements like these are indeed fundamental to the understanding of what it means to be human, but according to other thinkers, the philosophy of self-knowledge is even more tricky.
For instance, the 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes believed that a human being was self-sufficient and ought to encounter the world with skepticism.
German philosopher Immanuel Kant highlighted the importance of bodily experiences and desires that happen in the material world — and how our intellect develops through them.
Thomas Hobbes, on the other hand, claimed that the best way to understand other people was to introspect hence learn to appreciate what motivates others by studying our own thoughts closely.
And if we fast-forward to the modern times, psychologist Bruce Hood gives us an even more nonconformist view. The professor argues that the self is just an illusion, a social construct that has been developing over time thanks to the relationships we are building with other people.
In a Psychology Today article, Hood states that “the experience of the self is an illusion — it does not exist independently of the person having the experience, and it is certainly not what it seems.”
So the next obvious question is: do we ever get to know who we really are?
Well, perhaps we don’t.
The concept of self-knowledge will always be a subject of debate in many areas including philosophy and psychology, but hopefully, the acknowledgment of our limited grasp on the self will enable us to understand the world better, accept other points of view, and exchange information in a way that stops being delivered solely through our subjective lens.
Besides, considering there’s more to the “self” than just a philosophical angle — and biochemistry hasn’t even entered into the picture at this point, then it really seems impossible to be the beholders of that elusive wisdom.
Life: a concoction of dual realities, myths and stories
For starters, Yuval Noah Harari is one of the skeptical thinkers who claims that humans know very little about who they actually are.
An Israeli historian with posh Oxford education and a penchant for Vipassana meditation, Harari has become incredibly popular thanks to his bestseller trilogy Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus and 21 Things for the 21st Century.
I’ve personally read all his books and was thoroughly intrigued by his provocative and profound ideas revolving around the relationship between humanity and technology.
Armed with bold ideas, clarity, and almost a compulsive way of writing, Harari imagines a rather bone-chilling world where humankind will exist at the intersection of biotechnology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) — view which will completely reshape the role of Homo Sapiens in the world.
In his first book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Harari allows the reader to travel viscerally all the way back to the African savannah, where the earliest species of humans developed millions of years ago. Throughout the book, the author depicts a clear account of how ever since, humans haven’t stopped being busy (evolving).
What’s remarkable is that during this process of evolution, our species has been fundamentally shaped by three major revolutions: the Cognitive Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, and the Scientific Revolution.
These revolutions have essentially empowered humans to do something no other species has done before: crafting stories and connecting around ideas that do not exist in the physical world.
And Harari’s account of the Cognitive Revolution puts particular emphasis on the ability to tell these stories.
“What enables us alone, of all the animals, to cooperate in such a way? The answer is our imagination. We can cooperate flexibly with countless numbers of strangers, because we alone, of all the animals on the planet, can create and believe fictions, fictional stories. And as long as everybody believes in the same fiction, everybody obeys and follows the same rules, the same norms, the same values.” — Yuval Noah Harari
Naturally, the concept of collective storytelling as part of binding society and creating a common culture has been analysed by many other scholars — and one that shares similar views with Harari is Jonathan Gottschall, an American literary scholar specialising in literature and evolution.
Known for his book The Storytelling Animal, Gottschall makes a good point that humans have been ‘storifying’ their entire existence to solidify relationships, build communities and essentially encourage pro-social behaviour.
Understanding that we’re part of a bigger narrative is definitely not a new idea, but it’s still important to look at it from a collective perspective, and know its implications in our evolution — to acknowledge its power to define humankind.
So, can technology and humanity co-exist?
Today, the assumption that humans have access to their innermost being continues to permeate the popular culture — and liberalism reinforces it by making us believe that with free will, we can all listen to our desires, choices and make decisions independent of anything else.
Science, on the other hand, boldly steps in to add that all human behaviour functions by the cause-and-effect law — and everything we feel, do or think is actually a result of our biochemistry and millions of years of evolution.
According to Harari, “Humans certainly have a will — but it isn’t free. You cannot decide what desires you have. You don’t decide to be introvert or extrovert, easy-going or anxious, gay or straight. Humans make choices — but they are never independent choices. Every choice depends on a lot of biological, social and personal conditions that you cannot determine for yourself.”
Similarly, in his book 21 Things for the 21st Century, Harari reinforces the very idea that people don’t know themselves very well.
In order to successfully hack humans, you need two things: a good understanding of biology, and a lot of computing power. The Inquisition and the KGB lacked this knowledge and power. But soon, corporations and governments might have both, and once they can hack you, they can not only predict your choices, but also reengineer your feelings. To do so, corporations and governments will not need to know you perfectly. That is impossible. They will just have to know you a little better than you know yourself. And that is not impossible, because most people don’t know themselves very well.
However, in Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, the author makes predicaments about how future versions of AI might enhance humans and help us better understand our desires and plans far better than we do on our own.
Yes, it seems that in the future humans will change — but so will technology. And the sync between the two will be revolutionary to say the least.
Although there are plenty of scary predicaments about the future under the reign of tech, maybe it’s not all going to be about algorithms taking over our lives and the end of humanity as we know it.
Technology can have a positive impact if humans know how to leverage it and reap its benefits.
In a small measure, IoT (Internet of Things) and AI are already in our homes, offices and daily life (see Alexa or Tesla & Amazon), but in the future, its goal should be to solve collective problems such as life-threatening diseases or natural disasters, improve the livelihood of communities in developing countries, help create an educational system that helps us learn things in a more sustainable way, and even offer an alternative solution to how we access information.
Better yet, AI could even be groundbreaking on an emotional level.
In this respect, Alain de Botton, author, philosopher and founder of The School of Life imagines a world where technology can help us correct our emotional blindspots and move us up the Maslow pyramid towards self-actualisation.
As the world is evolving at an unprecedented pace, maybe the future of humanity really depends on us becoming more empathetic and introspective.
Although I am no luddite, I do believe in the benefits of disconnecting from technology for the purpose of living an authentic life where you can build solid relationships and think on your own two feet (without Google as an aide).
But that’s not to say technology is bad. On the contrary, we need technology as much as we need old wisdom — to give us access to ideas buried deep inside us.
And on this note, it’s only right to leave you with a video narrated by Botton in which he shares a glimpse of that philosophy.
Socrates will be a piece of wearable emotional technology that will make up for our failures of self-knowledge in real time. We imagine it as a kind of wearable life coach, with the total understanding of our mental health, who we are, and what we need to thrive emotionally.
At key moments, Socrates will be on hand to temper our excesses and correct our emotional blind spots. It will know when we’re getting to an angry outburst and counselors wisely before it’s too late.
It will sense mounting panic and be on hand immediately with the most soothing insights humanity has ever had. It will ween us away from unhelpful desires and compulsions towards more fruitful and enriching pursuits. It will know when we need an extra challenge. It will ensure that we can at all times be the best version of ourselves.
