As the end of 2021 approaches, I decided to reflect on the bigger picture that lies in the background of this year’s blogposts. The issues in these posts are, of course, written within their contemporary context, but they are the products of long historical processes and transformations. I have often referenced the distant past to show how the present is different. This help us understand that many institutions and practices of modern life were not always the norm for the human race.
One way to grasp the bigger picture is to look at trends. Trends connect points of the past to the present and help us to project into the future. They help us discern whether we have made progress or not and where we are headed if we continue in the same way. A huge advantage we humans have is a strong collective memory of our life on earth thanks to our ability to pass knowledge and information from one generation to the next. This way we can study our history and discover the mega-trends and the tipping points that moved us from one historical phase to the next. That can be very instructive, besides being fascinating. That’s why we appreciate books like Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies,” Yuval Harari’s “Sapiens,” and the most recent “The Dawn of Everything” of David Graeber and David Wengrow.
For trends to take hold there need to be some underlying developments that change the flow of history as they push us toward a new direction. As we enter a new path, we are compelled to design and adopt new ways to optimize our chances for survival and success. The new ways may not necessarily be good for everybody. Sometimes, they may not be good for anyone. I am not sure we can judge the paths humanity has taken from a moral standpoint. But we can see what they have spawned and whether we can do better the next time we face a new path. So, here is my list of some of the powerful developments that took us into new paths.
The loss of egalitarian culture. It came with the emergence of agriculture and the founding of cities. It created hierarchies of power and the classification of people into rulers and ruled, upper-class and lower-class. It also brought the division of labor that further segregated people by social and economic status. Work was turned from a collaborative effort to a commodity item to be leased in the marketplace or even obtained through slavery. We still see this in the authority and power employers exercise over workers. And to claim a better place in the division of labor we strive for exclusive credentials, thus, creating a privileged meritocratic class.
Our elevation to God’s favorite creature. This belief completes the loss of the egalitarian culture. Not only we have various hierarchies within human societies; we also rationalize humans as the rulers of the planet. To buttress this privilege, we come to believe we are unique in being endowed with minds and emotions. Our survival and well-being take precedence over all other species.
The move from basic needs to wants of choice. This has been called the malady of infinite wants. The constant multiplication of wants we feel we have to meet puts pressure on natural resources, taxes our environment and turns other species into expendable resources. Satisfying as many wants as we can is another way to raise our profile and separate us from others, that is, it is another by-product of the loss of egalitarian culture. To produce what it takes to satisfy an ever-growing number of needs and wants makes it imperative that we produce at neck-breaking speeds and quantities, thus, leading us to the tyranny of efficiency.
The loosening of family and social ties. Over many centuries we have moved away from the institution of extended family to the nuclear family comprised of parents and children. In past traditional family environments, we had a network of relatives living in close proximity to support us in times of economic, health or other kinds of crises. Children would learn traditions and social and moral norms from a broader circle of people. The need for labor mobility, the development of impersonal markets and the rise of individualism unfettered by family constraints ushered in the break-up of extended families. Today’s digital technology brings people together online but it also facilitates distant communication. The more we can come together technologically the more we can distance ourselves physically. Our most immediate social ties used to be with people in our locale. Now they are with people scattered around the globe.
The greatest force behind all paths we have taken is, of course, our biological endowment with large and sophisticated brains. Our brains also happen to be curious and innovative in order to overcome obstacles and challenges thrown at us by nature and our own self-interests. Our brains seem though to always get overexcited about the new possibilities and frontiers they open for us and to ignore or miscalculate the potential dangers. When the hunter/gatherers invented agriculture, they had, in all likelihood, no idea what a new world order they were entering. The same way, as we are now at the cusp of mastering Artificial Intelligence, we may be ready to enter its world with the same ignorance or miscalculation.
The question is whether we have any capacity to shape our future based on what we know about the past or we are fated to stumble from one path to another and then struggle to make things right and find a new meaning. The good thing is the same curious and innovative brains that push us into new paths are also good in finding new meanings out of new realities.
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