What does it mean to be human? An exploration of Yuval Noah Harari's fictions

 

What human nature is has perplexed philosophers for a very long time. When Plato supposedly suggested that it was to be a featherless biped, Diogenes the Cynic plucked a chicken and said ‘Behold! I have brought you a man’. But the question itself is fundamentally flawed. There is no such thing as human nature.

Most humans share certain similarities, but this only describes what is normal for humans, not what the essence of humanity is. Whether or not He exists, God did not design us and so there isn’t a blueprint in a drawer somewhere in heaven which explains what humans are meant to be like. Instead, each of us is given characteristics by accident, some of which help us in life and some of which hinder us. I am the way I am, not because I am close to or far from an ethereal standard, but because I am the result of long, chaotic causal chains.

The closest thing to a definition of human nature would be a biological one, i.e. if your DNA could be mixed with the DNA of another human to produce fertile offspring, then you are a member of the species homo sapiens. But generally when people invoke human nature, they are merely summarising their experience of humans. Some will say ‘It is human nature to be kind’ and others will say ‘It is human nature to be cruel’, and both will have countless examples to back up their perspective. That’s because humans are both kind and cruel. Evolution has implanted both kind and cruel instincts in most people’s minds because sometimes it pays to be empathetic and sometimes it pays to be murderous. Which instincts are actualised and utilised depends on the circumstances.

The idea of human nature serves the social function of separating us from them. Evolution taught us to be suspicious of those outside our tribe, which helps to explain why the names many hunter-gatherer tribes and even some modern nations give themselves simply mean ‘the people’. Foreigners come from the slopes of the uncanny valley. Over the millennia we have learnt to be more open and understanding, but the xenophobic instinct remains. This was horrifically demonstrated by Nazi Germany, who took away the rights of any who didn’t meet their standards of purity. It still exists today, not just among racists but also among liberals. Somewhat ironically racists  are seen as lacking a portion of their humanity, making them not fully human and therefore deserving only hatred and revulsion. Perhaps we can look forward to the day when humanity’s xenophobic instinct will be focused almost entirely on xenophobia itself. But instead of dismissing other people as monsters, it is far more rational to accept that they are as human as you are. If you don’t like something that they believe or do, then you need to try to understand how they came to be that kind of human.     

 

Consciousness

Even if human nature is a fiction, perhaps there is something special about our species, and a good place to start looking is our minds. You could say we are conscious in two ways: firstly, we are aware of the external world and its patterns; secondly, consciousness is mental processes concerning other mental processes, and as such exists as a kind of supervisor. Our senses generate a vast amount of information (the first way in which we are conscious), of which only a part is looked at by the higher mind (the second way in which we are conscious).

There are two ways in which something comes to the attention of the higher mind: firstly, the higher mind seeks out information (for example, you subconsciously know that this text is black, but only become conscious of it now that I mention it); secondly, the subconscious alerts the conscious to something (for example, an urge to look over your shoulder).

Humans certainly excel at understanding the world, particularly in the past 500 years. Science is the first deliberate attempt to increase our awareness of the world as far as possible, even to the point of discovering things such as quantum mechanics which our minds simply didn’t evolve to understand (knowing that it is possible for something to exist and not exist at the same time would not have helped our ancestors on the African plains). But consciousness in this sense is hardly unique to humans. Everything except the simplest of animals needs to have an internal model of the external world if they are going to survive. Indeed, because many animals have much better senses than us, you could argue they have a much richer and more accurate model of reality than humans normally do.

Perhaps humans are unique in being conscious in the second way, but even this is doubtful. A chimpanzee in a Swedish zoo was known for carefully making piles of stones which he would then later throw at visitors in fits of rage. In other words, he knew he would be angry and want stones when the zoo opened, so he made plans accordingly. This would have required having thoughts about his emotions and desires, i.e. a higher mind reflecting on other mental processes. He was not just reacting to external stimuli, but practicing self-reflection.  

People far more intelligent than me have written volumes about the nature of consciousness, so I’ll stop there and move onto an aspect of humanity which is arguably more mysterious.

 

Sapience

Anatomically modern humans evolved about 200,000 thousand years ago. We were conscious, intelligent, social, tool-using animals. To a passing alien, we may have been an interesting species, but not one which was likely to make much of an impact on the planet. Then about 70 to 50,000 years ago, something changed in our minds. Anthropologists call this the arrival of ‘behavioural modernity’, which is characterised by symbolic thinking, among other things. Yuval Noah Harari calls it nothing short of the ‘Cognitive Revolution’.

According to Harari, this is when we stopped living solely in objective, physical reality and created a new layer of reality on top of it. The world became alive with a myriad of spirits. This allowed us to break down the barriers between tribes. We had probably lived in groups of no more than 150 people, but anyone could potentially share in the same inter-subjective reality. If two people from different tribes gave thanks to the same spirits, they could trust each other and work together. The cooperative capability of humanity expanded enormously. After we settled down and started building civilisation, this new layer of reality became populated with gods, nations and corporations, and our ability to work with large numbers of strangers became more refined and powerful.

Harari calls these ‘inter-subjective realities’, or simply ‘fictions’. For our purposes, let’s call the ability to create and believe in these ‘sapience’. Whereas sentience (which literally means the ability to feel) is often equated with consciousness, sapience captures the uniquely human experience of living in both objective and inter-subjective realities. We’ll see if sapience lives up to its literal meaning of wisdom by the end of this essay.

In keeping with the assertion at the beginning of this essay that there is no such thing as human nature, sapience is a normal rather than essential characteristic of humans. A small minority of humans only live in objective reality and struggle to see the entities everyone else is familiar with. Fantasy and suspending disbelief, particularly for protracted periods of time, are alien to them. This doesn’t necessarily make them uncooperative or handicapped, but it does force them to play along or risk being seen as mad. Alternatively, they could leave society, which from their perspective has gone mad, and become sagacious hermits. Today, they are most likely to simply admit they don’t understand the world and why people are so passionate about imaginary things.

The big question which I want to try and answer in this essay is: where did sapience come from? How did a species rooted in objective reality come to believe in imaginary things, and in so doing restrain its xenophobic instinct and build a global civilisation? If we can find an answer, we can better understand the nature of sapience and what that means for we 21^st Century humans.  

Language is a plausible candidate. When a chimpanzee band splits into two, the new bands quickly lose familiarity with each other and become rivals. Chimpanzee bands rely on close kinship and friendship, so distant relatives are strangers. However when a human band splits in two, they will continue to speak the same language. Although they may eventually diverge into two languages, the evolution of language is usually a slow process, so the two tribes could potentially understand each other for centuries. Distant relatives don’t seem so strange, and there is little to distinguish between the two tribes. Maybe they even consider themselves parts of the same tribe. If they thrive and expand into other bands’ territories, a single language with minor variations could be spoken across a wide area.

However this doesn’t explain the creation of inter-subjective reality – conceivably a complex language could only be concerned with objective and personal subjective realities, and not invisible spirits. And more importantly, sharing the same language may not be sufficient for trust and cooperation. Brits and Americans both speak English, but Brits still find Americans baffling and at times quite scary. The two countries cooperate where their values and interests overlap, not because of sentimentality over the English language.

Terence McKenna’s Stoned Ape Theory was that the human mind evolved thanks to our ancestors consuming hallucinogens, in particular mushrooms. The theory has serious flaws, for example McKenna argued that eating mushrooms had the evolutionary advantage of making their vision sharper and libidos more aroused – things I doubt many shroomers would recognise. But it is an interesting idea, not least because mushrooms have been shown to stimulate the growth of new, stable connections between neurons in the brain, meaning that the shroomer will come to believe new things while high and continue to believe them long after. McKenna was living proof of this, as he earnestly maintained that mushrooms were in fact aliens trying to communicate with humanity through psychedelic experiences (he was a very intelligent, knowledgeable and eloquent man, but also absolutely nuts). It’s possible that through epigenetics the consumption of hallucinogens slowly changed the structure of the human brain so that we became able to believe in things we had never actually seen.     

Another reason we may believe in imaginary things is because it’s better safe than sorry. For much of our history humans were prey, so we evolved to assume that an unexplained rustling in the bushes was something that wanted to eat us. This is called hyperactive agency detection. It’s easy to see how this instinct could have led our ancestors to believe that the whole natural world was alive and conscious, with whispering trees, sleeping mountains and angry storm clouds. Natural phenomena came to be seen as the actions of invisible spirits, who may have been benevolent or may need to be placated.

Death may have forced us to question if the visible world was all there was. If humans struggle to accept that all that waits for us is oblivion, especially when life is nasty, brutish and short, then you need to construct a worldview that explains how a person can be alive while being visibly dead. Despite what some atheists may think, I suspect religious belief today is more closely connected to how strong worldviews given to us as children can be, rather than existential angst. But perhaps trying to deal with death forced our ancestors to create a reality separate from the visible, objective one.

Harari doesn’t really talk about how inter-subjective realities came to be. As a historian he is more interested in their implications, and so perhaps he is happy to leave their mysterious origins to anthropologists and opinionated bloggers. But in 21 Lessons for the 21^st Century he elaborates on how they work: “false stories have an intrinsic advantage over the truth when it comes to uniting people. If you want to gauge group loyalty, requiring people to believe an absurdity is a far better test than asking them to believe the truth. If a big chief says ‘the sun rises in the east and sets in the west’, loyalty to the chief is not required in order to applaud him. But if the chief says ‘the sun rises in the west and sets in the east’, only true loyalists will clap their hands” (p.239).

Could domineering chiefs demanding loyalty have created sapience? We have good evidence that hunter-gatherer societies were quite egalitarian. If a chief started spouting absurdities, they’d probably replace him with a more sensible one. Even if the chief was able to convince/force his tribe to believe his absurdities, like a Palaeolithic Big Brother, why would other tribes come to believe them too?

 

Authority

A flaw common to many of the ideas above is that they may explain how an individual or a tribe might come to believe in an invisible world, but they don’t explain how such beliefs would spread beyond the tribe. The miraculous thing about sapience is that it breaks down the xenophobic instinct and builds supra-tribes out of many small ones. If beliefs weren’t able to spread beyond the tribe, then we’d probably live in a world comprised of 150-member tribes, each with their own unique mythology. If some tribes developed agriculture and other technologies, perhaps they could spread their beliefs simply by multiplying and forcing other tribes off their land, but without long distance trade technological progress would be even slower than it was in our timeline. The city-state would probably be the highest stage of civilisation we could reach – building an empire would be a pipe dream.

In terms of the Fermi Paradox (the question of why we seem to be the only civilisation in a vast and ancient universe), sapience may be one of the biggest filters a species has to overcome. Given that xenophobia is a natural and useful trait for most animals, maybe it’s rare even for intelligent species to become cooperative.

Imagination is the foundation of sapience. Pre-sapient humans were intelligent, and also usually had a lot of free time (they may have only spent 5 hours per day hunting and gathering), so they probably speculated about the world’s mysteries. What moves the sun, why does it rain and what happens when we die? They probably came up with lots of imaginative answers. But they couldn’t hope to know for certain. They could only imagine possibilities. At most an individual might become convinced that one possibility is the right answer, and if he is persuasive enough others might come to believe too. But how did we leap from lots of maybes to unwavering belief among thousands and millions of people?

How do you convince your tribe that you know how the world works behind the scenes, but you only have weak evidence or none at all? You have to convince them that you have special access to knowledge that they don’t, in other words, that you are an authority – not in the political sense, but in the wider, epistemological sense. These were the first shamans, who claimed to be experts in entering, navigating and communicating with the spirit world.

These shamans broke down barriers between tribes, because other tribes would want to benefit from their knowledge. Perhaps someone would hear about another tribe’s shaman and try to imitate him to become their own tribe’s shaman, but if he didn’t know the shaman’s secret techniques or simply wasn’t very convincing, his own tribe would probably be willing to set aside their differences with the neighbouring tribe (at least occasionally) in order to learn from their shaman how to placate the nature spirits, talk with their ancestors and maybe even glimpse the divine. Although they are not familiar with the members of the other tribe, the fact that they trust the same shaman must mean that they are trustworthy. Slowly but surely the two tribes would coalesce into one, united by their shared mythology which was underpinned by their belief in the authority of their shamans. If they thrived and spread into other territories, their belief in the authority of their shamans would keep the tribe culturally united for a long time.  

The belief in authority became fundamental to our organisations, worldviews and identities. Proof that Jesus was the messiah can be found in the Holy Bible, which was written and compiled by divinely inspired sages. We know for sure that Peugeot exists as company because it is written in special documents created by those with the necessary legal expertise. I have no direct experience of Australia, but I say I know it exists because I trust the authority of map-makers, the media and people who say they’ve been there. Without authority, we could still build organisations, worldviews and identities, but not on a large scale.

Harari says that if we can identify one trend in history, it is the gradual coming together of humanity into one culture. Indeed, once we developed sapience, this was probably inevitable – it will keep on breaking down barriers between tribes until there is only one tribe left. Sapience is excellent in helping the diffusion of technologies, and many technologies are excellent at keeping people connected, creating a virtuous cycle. Of course this process is painful and even uses xenophobia – usually it takes the form of an empire conquering what it considers to be barbarians and then pressuring them to forget their former identity and adopt the empire’s supposed civilisation, like a predator digesting its prey.    

The trend towards unity has its ebbs and flows, and we seem to be experiencing an ebb at the moment. But we’re very close to achieving unity – every country in the world takes part in the same economic system, uses the same science and will be impacted by climate change. Politics just needs to catch up. Unity shouldn’t and can’t wipe away national identities, just as national identities shouldn’t and can’t wipe away our personal identities. Sapience allows people to trust multiple authorities, which is why our identities usually have many layers.

In my previous post, I called centralisation and fragmentation two of the most important forces in human history. If a group can convince people that it is an authority using a powerful enough idea, it can build and direct a system that extends far beyond their local area. If a widely respected authority is discredited, the systems built around it start to fragment. People will then start looking to other authorities for guidance, often authorities who had been centralising forces in the past. For example nations are some of the most enduring ideas in history, created from the fusion of numerous tribes. When a supranational idea such as communism or neoliberalism is discredited, people often turn to authorities who paint a worldview with the nation at the centre, with devastating consequences.

However it is only a matter of time before an authority with a centralising idea more powerful than the nation rises again, and it will probably be one that tries to unite the species. We can probably look forward to the identity ‘human’ becoming a powerful force in the 21^st Century, although under whose authority it remains to be seen.  

 

Wisdom

How does sapience relate to consciousness? You could argue that becoming sapient involved us becoming less conscious and learning to ignore some realities. To be sapient is to feel certain about things you cannot actually be certain about. The world used to be full of mysteries, but instead of exploring or embracing those mysteries we plastered over them with fictional certainties. Whereas a fully conscious human might believe that the universe is indifferent to him so he can do what he wants, a sapient human will insist that the universe has an objective (if invisible) meaning which gives him a defined purpose. Only with philosophy and eventually science did humanity learn to see and explore mysteries again. Harari goes even further, claiming that even today humanity remains a ‘post-truth species’, hopelessly allured by cosmic dramas in which humans play an important, if not leading, role. 

I take the opposite view: that it was humanity’s desire for truth which made us sapient. The first shamans developed their rituals to try to uncover the mysteries of the world, and people wanted to learn about their discoveries and even see them for themselves. In this sense the advent of sapience was the first scientific revolution. Even before they became gatekeepers of the spirit world, shamans were probably highly valued members of society because of their knowledge of plants – which ones healed, which ones were fun, and which ones killed. Knowledge was important for survival, especially in the strange lands beyond the Great Rift Valley where humans had to adapt to environments they had not evolved in and you could not always trust your instincts. It was natural for people to seek and value knowledge, and it was only a matter of time before knowledge of the heavens and the afterlife was sought.

Although the shamans and their successors believed that they now knew how the world worked, modern science has shown that the world works by natural processes without supernatural intervention. The fact that people are still willing to believe in fictions today (such as Christianity, nationalism and Peugeot) seems to have convinced Harari that we are predisposed to believe in fictions. But I would say this is like arguing that because the sun has always risen it will definitely rise tomorrow. The shamans and their successors had to base sapience on very inaccurate worldviews because they had very limited tools at their disposal. Some of these inaccurate worldviews have persisted into the scientific age because they are stubborn and/or useful – if Peugeot’s executives read Harari’s books and realised that Peugeot was a figment of their imagination, they probably wouldn’t shut the company down. But this does not mean that we can’t base sapience on accurate worldviews.   

Humans have been moulding the world as we see fit for millennia, but we have only become acutely aware of our own power in the past few centuries, leading to the evolution of ideologies such as liberalism, socialism and fascism. These ideologies have often fallen into the pitfalls of pseudoscience, and Harari predicts they will become less relevant in the future as humanity loses control of its destiny. Nonetheless they are an improvement on previous worldviews because they are based on the scientifically attested fact that humanity is the most powerful species on the planet.

Inter-subjective realities are used as tests of loyalty, but that is not their origin or primary function. We can still use something like the reality of climate change as an inter-subjective reality because we can cooperate around it. Like other inter-subjective realities, we can use climate change as a test of loyalty – if you believe what the scientists say then we can work together, if you don’t then shut up and fuck off. The fact that this is happening disproves the idea that sapience must be based on fictions.

As Harari himself notes, humans usually seek to understand the world in order to control it better. Therefore, contrary to being a ‘post-truth species’ as Harari claims, we have always been interested in discovering truth. It is simply that for the vast majority of history, like with many other things, we haven’t been very good at it. For millennia we have cooperated around fictions because we didn’t have anything else, but we don’t have to rely on them forever. Humanity is almost old enough to stand up without their support.

Is it human nature to value truth? No, a Daily Mail reader is no less human than a New Scientist reader. But we are unique as a species which has the urge to push the boundaries of knowledge. All life tries to spread as far as it can geographically, but this isn’t enough for humans – we feel the need to explore in every dimension we can think of. 500 years ago a critical mass of knowledge was reached, accelerating knowledge-creation to the point of giving us god-like powers. But for at least 50,000 years, we have known the value of knowledge, which shaped us into a distinctively ultra-cooperative and slowly unifying species.

Will Trump Cause the Collapse of Civilisation?

Civilisations can and do collapse. The Late Bronze Age Collapse was so total that in Greece the art of reading and writing was lost, and people came to believe that the palaces that had fallen into ruin had been built by giants. The collapse of the Roman Empire left Europe in the hands of weak kingdoms which relied on local feudal lords for a millennium.

Many people assume that our civilisation is somehow immune to this, that the progress of the past few centuries must mean that there can only be continual, never-ending progress into the future. This complacency betrays an ignorance of both history and the threats to our civilisation, and will allow those threats to hit us before we can prepare sufficiently. History is not a straight line. It has overall trends, but it has its ebbs and flows. And as our technologies become more powerful, those ebbs and flows become more extreme.

As you may have noticed, we are experiencing what we could call a nationalist revolution. It is happening all over the world, from Brazil to Italy to Hungary to Turkey to India, but is exemplified (at least for me) by Britain voting to leave the EU and Trump becoming President in 2016. At the time of writing in early 2020, it still isn’t clear what the fate and consequences of this revolution will be. Broadly there are three possibilities:

1)      It renders itself irrelevant and unpopular. Governments cannot solve the problems we face, from derelict communities to global crises, by severing ties with other nations. Once this becomes clear, support will shift from nationalists to more progressive, outward-looking movements.

2)      It achieves a kind of balance with the global system whereby its constituent parts are better protected and the system is more resilient as a whole, which seems to be one of the revolution’s goals. Previously centrist voters would see the appeal of nationalism, making it the new norm and giving far right groups even more confidence. Trade wars and tough immigration policies become more acceptable, and human rights and international organisations more suspicious. Global institutions still exist, but remain far too weak to prevent the slow descent into ecological meltdown.

3)      Nationalism pushes its agenda so thoroughly that the global economic system breaks down. International trade and cooperation become fragile or even non-existent. Countries become very insular in their outlook, relying on national identity and fear of the outside to maintain social cohesion as incomes fall and sea levels rise. Wars rage over dwindling resources, and the temptation to push that big red button grows ever stronger.

I’m cautiously optimistic that it will be the first possibility. Nationalism is probably too detached from reality to either work or cause catastrophe. Before either happened, economic and political forces would compel nationalist leaders to row back. Will Trump cause civilisation to collapse? I doubt it. At least, not directly.

With or without nationalism, the global system is still heading towards collapse. It is built on extreme individualism, which means allowing corporations to dig up and burn fossil fuels because it turns a profit. An individual’s right to make more money is sacred and inviolable. Nationalism is merely an obstacle that needs to be removed before the system can be fixed. If green internationalist parties come to power in the next few years, that will be when the real work begins.

There are two big problems with fixing the system. Firstly, the timing. We have until 2030 to halve our carbon emissions as a species if we’re going to stand a chance of avoiding going over the 1.5 degrees threshold. In order to achieve that, climate-focused governments need to be in place around the world and successfully reducing emissions by the end of 2020. Will we be able to beat nationalism by then?

Secondly, is fixing the system even possible? For years liberal-minded politicians have hoped that the problem will be solved by tweaks to the system, such as by subsidising solar panels. This has not worked, as evidenced by the inexorable rise in emissions. The problem is the system itself. Neoliberalism cannot get us out of the climate crisis. It forbids large-scale intervention from the government, and instead demands that problems – even global, extinction-risking problems such as climate change – be solved by individuals. Many people have descended into climate malaise because they cannot see how 7 billion individuals can coordinate themselves to beat the crisis. The answer is to see climate change as a systemic problem, rather than buy into neoliberalism’s worldview.

Although there are still some socialist countries (democratic or otherwise), the idea of free trade is the foundation of the global system. Will we be able to whip out the tablecloth out from under the tower of glasses, or will we just smash everything? Gorbachev tried to reform the Soviet Union and in so doing hastened its collapse, leading to Russian GDP almost halving, the Yugoslav wars and the rise of Putin’s nationalistic oligarchy. State control was the foundation of the Soviet Union. By trying to relax state control, the Soviet Union ceased to function well enough to survive. If we end neoliberalism, will the global system collapse? If so, then we appear to be in a Catch 22. Neoliberalism is leading us towards collapse, but getting rid of neoliberalism will also lead to collapse. Perhaps our civilisation is simply ripe for collapse.

Transubstantiating the Foundations

Well that’s a depressing idea, but before we resign ourselves to cannibalising our children let’s look a bit closer at the nature of system collapse and see whether this idea holds up. Everything from atoms to galaxy clusters are systems, including single-celled organisms, human beings and empires. You are a system composed of many smaller systems, and you are also a node in much larger systems. A system is a network of many individual parts that interact with each other in such a way that the network continues to exist. The foundations of a system are how its constituent parts interact with each other. A strong system will keep the connections between parts strong, so that they don’t weaken or leave the system.

The system grows until it inevitably hits the reasons why it can no longer expand, which manifest themselves as physical limits and barriers which make the system distinct from things outside it. Growth stops and its shape becomes relatively stable. But circumstances change, sometimes due to an inadvertent by-product of the system growing, sometimes due simply to the passage of time. Eventually the system will find itself in circumstances which weaken the connections between individual parts, making the system as a whole less effective, which in turn weakens the connections more, and so on. It might be a quick collapse or long and drawn out, but systems cannot survive changing circumstances forever.

Generally speaking, systems react to impending collapse by doing what they’ve always done but more vigorously. Imagine an army that has won many battles, but has finally met an enemy that is stronger than them. After it becomes apparent they cannot win, the soldiers flee for their lives. What will the general do? Quite likely, his instinct will be to continue barking orders, but even more loudly. He will only know how to do certain things, because that is the way he’s been trained and they have always worked in the past. So he will continue doing what he does best, even though the mechanics of the system have been broken and his soldiers ignore his meaningless orders.

Another example of system obstinance in the face of crisis is the collapse of the Mayan civilisation. According to archaeologist Professor Arthur Demarest, before their collapse the Maya expended great effort building enormous, ornate temples. What we might mistake for a Golden Age was actually the Mayans panicking and pleading with their gods to stop giving them misfortune. From their perspective, placating the gods with temples had always worked, but in reality spending more time building temples only hastened their demise.

Another, more down to earth example is leaves in autumn – the red and yellow colours are in fact a sign of photosynthesis in overdrive, as the trees try to absorb as much energy from the sun as they can as the days get shorter, until the leaves become redundant.

Another, more topical example is how governments continue to enact neoliberal policies such as tax cuts despite the fact neoliberalism is now obsolete and dangerous. And so money that needs to be spent on developing green technology and building green infrastructure is instead spent by billionaires on bigger mansions – our civilisation’s equivalent of the Maya’s useless temples.

Most systems, be they inorganic, organic or even human-made, will continue doing what made them successful in their prime until they die. But humans are different from most other systems. We can form a fairly accurate picture of the world in our minds, and use that to find the best path to our goals. If we see that we are heading towards disaster, we can change course. Let’s go back to the general of the defeated army. Instead of simply bellowing his orders more loudly, as an intelligent and innovative being who understands how his men think and who has a strong desire to keep the system intact, perhaps he can find another way of bringing his men back into formation.

Can we, as intelligent and informed people, pull that trick on our civilisation? Can systems radically reform themselves in order to adapt to the circumstances without collapsing? Bear in mind that we are not talking about simply changing direction, we are talking about altering the fundamental connections between people, changing the very nature of the system. This may be relatively straightforward for small groups of people, but we need radical reform on a global scale. 

We’ve already mentioned glasnost and perestroika, attempts to reform a large system which did not go well. But history has another, even more ambitious example which arguably succeeded: the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity. For centuries the foundations of the Empire had been faith in Rome’s military strength, its Republican political system and later its divine emperors. By the time Constantine converted, the Empire had been wobbling for some time and people were looking for fresh ideas. Authority shifted to the priesthood of the cult of a Jew who had been executed by the Romans. Now, paradoxically, to be Roman was to be Christian. The rise of the Church was accompanied by a radical change in how people had to relate to those in power – fear of and loyalty to Rome was replaced by fear of and loyalty to God. Whereas before you could pick and choose your cults, now there was only one game in town and its priests had a lot to say about how you should live your life. Disparate tribes became one congregation.

But obviously it wasn’t a smooth transition. Taking the eucharist did not prevent the Visigoths and Vandals from sacking Rome, and indeed some historians argue that Christianity was one of the factors behind the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Radical reform cannot save the whole of a crumbling system, so some things will need to be sacrificed. But what we call the Byzantine empire (or the Basileia Rhōmaiōn as they called themselves) lived for another thousand years after the fall of the Western Empire, thanks in no small part to the renewed identity, unity and drive that Christianity gave them. Christianity was the salvation of the Roman Empire, politically if not spiritually.

Could we pull off a similar revolution? Possibly, but bear in mind that the Roman Empire may have had a population of about 90 million at its peak. We have to reform a system with a population of 7 billion. The Romans had to sacrifice Rome itself. What would we have to sacrifice?

Calm down, dear

Some of you may be thinking – isn’t this all a bit dramatic? A shift in values and economic models does not require an apocalypse. The shift from Keynesian social democracy to neoliberalism in the 80s, while painful and chaotic in some places, was not a cataclysmic event. While many of the specifics are still be to agreed, we broadly speaking know what we need to replace neoliberalism with: a world where states are interventionist, enact evidence-based policies and are willing to cooperate internationally. There are politicians who understand this, we just need to get them into office. Whipping the tablecloth out from under the tower of glasses is a false analogy.

This viewpoint does not understand how radical a change to our lives the climate crisis necessitates. Getting politicians who understand the scale of the problem into office is just the first hurdle. Firstly, we need global cooperation as we have never seen before. A global ban on fossil fuel extraction would quickly be rendered meaningless if one country ignored it. The United Nations was founded on mutual fear, but if the crisis is to be solved nations will have to rise above tribalism and genuinely try to solve the problem together. This will require moving more authority to global institutions, and away from nation-states.

Secondly, the tough decisions that will need to be made will raise fundamental questions about how we organise our societies. Take for example air travel: because our battery and solar panel technology will probably never be good enough for a plane to be able to fly without fuel, air travel would not be possible in a zero carbon world. Of course not even the most radical green government would completely ban air travel, but if their policies led to a sharp decrease in the number of flights, that leads to the question: who should be given those plane seats? Naturally the rich will continue to fly as though nothing had changed, but why should the poor be asked to forgo seeing the world, because of a crisis not of their making? A frequent flyer tax would be a good start, but even if people only made 2 flights per year, that would still be too many. Perhaps we could ration out plane seats, but how could we ensure this was done fairly and without succumbing to complete state control over daily life?

The shift from social democracy to neoliberalism was a shift of emphasis onto elements of culture (individualism), society (businesses) and psychology (greed) which had been influential for a long time before the 80s. The shift we need in the 2020s is not merely a return to social democracy. We will need to forge new kinds of relationships within and between communities, governments and global institutions. We need to replace profit as the supreme value. And we somehow need to do that in a matter of years, before we trigger global warming’s vicious circles.    

The Lifecycle of Empires

Many kinds of cycles in history have been proposed, including economic cycles, psychological cycles and even biological cycles. I think you can argue there is a cycle based on a simple idea: that the two greatest forces in human history are centralisation and fragmentation.

Yuval Noah Harari argues that some 70,000 years ago humanity went through a cognitive revolution that allows us to cooperate with people outside our tribe thanks to ‘inter-subjective realities’. For example a French knight and an English knight may not know each other, but thanks to their shared beliefs they trust each other enough to go on crusade together.

However a capacity for shared beliefs is not enough to forge an empire. To bring many tribes together, you need a strong idea – one that appeals to many diverse people, fits into how they see the world, has a concrete goal and justifies a particular group to lead the charge.  ‘Rome’s strength will civilise the world’, ‘We worship God and so He smiles on our empire’, ‘The proletariat taking control of the means of production is the next stage of history’. History’s greatest empires have been driven by ideas that allowed them to adapt to and take advantage of their technological, social and psychological circumstances.

Once the empire has some success, the idea behind it becomes more persuasive, and there becomes a virtuous circle between the strength of the idea and the strength of the empire. Eventually, as the economic strength of the empire reaches its limit, the idea begins to lose its strength. ‘Rome is just another empire who couldn’t conquer the world’, ‘God did not protect us from the heathens and doesn’t seem to be in a hurry with the Second Coming’, ‘Communism is a cynical power grab by bureaucrats’. The idealistic façade drops as reality becomes harder to ignore, and the empire becomes weak.

Fragmentation is the default for humanity. It is the instinct to preserve ourselves, our family and our tribe, and the belief that anyone outside that tribe is suspicious. Xenophobia is deeply ingrained in our minds because for millions of years it was a successful strategy. Humanity’s strength lies in overcoming that xenophobia with inter-subjective realities. But centralising ideas are precarious things, as you might imagine any attempt to get millions of apes working together to be. Once the idea is discredited, the force of fragmentation will pull the empire apart.

Whether you’re a peasant or an aristocrat, while the empire is keeping you safe, you will give the empire what support you can and you won’t rock the boat. But once it stops making you feel safe, you will stop caring about the empire and do what you can to protect your interests yourself. As the empire fragments, people will start looking for new ideas. Some of these will justify and reinforce the fragmentation, but some might be centralising ideas which herald the birth of a new empire.

This is a cycle that can be seen throughout history: an empire flourishes in an age of idealism, but once it starts to suffer defeats and seems to become unable to deliver its promises, morale goes down, leading to an age of cynicism and realism as the empire declines. But it should be noted that idealism and realism are not mutually exclusive. For an empire to flourish, the idea behind it must at least appear to be grounded in reality. And an age of realism is fertile ground for new ideas.

Clearly we’re currently living through an age of realism and fragmentation. The neoliberal order, underpinned by American military might, reached its peak in the 90s. The centralising idea behind it was ‘A global and free market will make everyone richer’. In 1992 Francis Fukuyama was confident enough in the power of that idea to declare the end of history. In the 21^st Century it reached its limits. The failure of the War on Terror proved not only that the American military was not as effective as it thought it was, but also that its priority was merely to secure oil for itself. The 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent austerity made a lot of people question whether they stood to gain from neoliberalism. Trump’s belief in isolationism is perhaps proof that the neoliberal order has fragmented. If he struggles to see the point of NATO, which is the closest thing the USA has to an actual empire, then why should the world follow America’s lead? Neoliberalism is dying, and those who still defend it are hopelessly dreaming of a return to a time when ‘things made sense’.

Clearly nationalist movements around the world are exploiting and encouraging this fragmentation. But some of the Left also seem to want further fragmentation by giving people greater control over their communities. As a bleeding heart lefty myself I’m not unsympathetic to this, but at the same time it’s clear that in many cases people already have too much control over their communities. Areas outside cities in England need more wind farms, and more and cheaper housing, but residents concerned about house prices prevent these from being built. Nimbyism can only be cured by centralisation. A deepening of democracy could only work if it was accompanied by a heightening of democracy, that is, if people were more engaged with global institutions. Indeed, to move beyond our age of fragmentation, perhaps the centralising idea we need to rally around is as simple as ‘Through international cooperation, lets tax the superrich and use the revenue to stop climate change’.  

The Birthplace of Progress

If systems are generally obstinate in nature and cannot easily transform themselves, how does evolution work? Systems are simply replaced by other systems which are more adapted to the circumstances. These more adapted systems are often born on the periphery of the original system. They are heavily influenced by the original system, and thus inherit at least some of the features which made it successful, but they are nonetheless different in nature because circumstances on the periphery are tougher or simply different.

In human-made systems, the periphery is often geographical. Take for example the spread of civilisation in the Iron Age. When the Persian empire ruled the known world, Greek civilisation flowered on its periphery. Alexander the Great defeated the Persians, and although his empire fell apart after his death, Greek dominance from India to Italy was unquestioned for centuries. On the periphery of the Greek world was Rome, which went on to build an empire which stretched from Scotland to Kuwait. Thus did civilisation spread from the Middle East to Western Europe.  

Having been imprisoned by Mussolini’s regime, the Marxist thinker Gramsci wondered why the world’s first communist revolution had taken place in Russia, which had barely moved past feudalism at the time, and not in the industrial heartlands of Europe as Marx had predicted. He developed the idea of ‘cultural hegemony’ – the bourgeoisie of advanced capitalist societies were able to prevent revolution because they were able to plant their values in the minds of the rest of society. Another way of saying this is that the connections between people in the capitalist system were stronger than Marx had hoped, and this meant that despite its flaws it was resilient. This does not mean that capitalism was the most adapted system to the circumstances, only that new ideas could only flourish on the periphery of capitalism, such as in Russia. Communism proved to be a good adaptation to the industrial world (again, despite its flaws), helping Russia to conquer Eastern Europe, become a nuclear power and even pressure capitalist societies to treat their workers better.

Being on the periphery does not guarantee that you have better or even good adaptations. Britain was on the periphery of the Roman world, but the Romans can’t take much credit for the world-spanning empire that sprang from that island over a thousand years after the legions left. The periphery is mostly populated by creatures that are hungry to scavenge the corpse of the system, such as bacteria and barbarians.

As the Western Roman Empire struggled to hold onto its territories and increasingly relied on mercenaries to guard its borders, communities were forced to shift their focus onto their localities because they could no longer rely on support from the empire. This was the beginning of feudalism and of the fragmentation of the system. Eventually the Germanic tribes conquered the Western Roman Empire, but because they didn’t have any strong ideas or organisational structures, Western Europe remained weak and fragmented. It look a long time for strong, centralised kingdoms, let alone empires, to emerge from the ashes.    

What is on the periphery of neoliberalism? Because it is a global system, we have to think in dimensions other than geographical, but here are some possibilities:

1)      China certainly used to be on the periphery, until Deng Xiaoping partially opened the country up to the global system. Since then it has grown into an economic powerhouse and taken its place among the leading players of the global economy. Neoliberals had long believed that democracy was necessary to keep the state from overreaching its bounds, but Milton Friedman maintained that individual freedom is more important than democracy. China went from being communist to the private sector accounting for about 60% of GDP – a huge leap in individual freedom in Friedman’s terms, and one which has clearly helped China. If free market miracles are possible without democracy, then could neoliberalism afford to ditch democracy? This has no doubt been in the back of the minds of would-be demagogues across the world, who have started to test democracy’s fortifications for cracks. Despite massive tree planting initiatives, it has yet to be seen whether China’s model is a good one for the Anthropocene.

2)      Nationalist movements have been on the social periphery for decades, and were largely mocked until they gained confidence in 2016. Their ideology, if it can be called that, is fragmentation. Neoliberals are trying to use them to prop up their system, in much the same way as the Roman Empire paid Germanic tribes to guard its borders as it grew weak – a strategy that did not end well for Rome.

3)      Movements such as School Strike 4 Climate and Extinction Rebellion can mobilise large numbers of people and give voice to their passion, but lack the organisation to be influential by themselves.

4)      International organisations, most notably the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, were sponsored by countries to further their own interests, although of course they ignore them if it suits them. But in doing so, they created an architecture above the geographically-limited nation-states which could form the basis of a global government. In my Master’s thesis I argued that having an elected parliament would give weight to the United Nations – if you’re a government that claims to respect democracy, it would be hard to ignore the rulings of a global parliament. But that isn’t realistic in the near future, not least because a significant proportion of the world’s population still lives under autocracy (thanks China). Nonetheless, the General Assembly could take the role of legislature if national governments agreed to execute its will. Perhaps the UN could take inspiration from the Vatican’s reign over Medieval Europe - despite Europe being fragmented at the state level, the Church was a centralising force that Europe’s kingdoms obeyed solely because of its ideological/cultural power. This is the kind of empire we need to build. With the backing of popular green movements and the scientific community, the United Nations is probably the institution most likely to end the climate crisis.

Who will come out on top? In the short term, it will be whoever takes opportunities and risks. In the long term, it will be whoever builds an empire with strong foundations. To build a successful empire, you need at least one (preferably all three) of these ingredients:

1)      The latest technology – Harari argues that this is one of the least important factors in building a successful empire, yet it is hard to imagine the Roman, Ottoman, British and other empires even existing had they not used more sophisticated technology than their enemies. For much of history, it was military technology which mattered most, and to a lesser extent transportation technology. But information technology has played an underrated role in many empires, and in today’s hyperconnected world, who wields it the most effectively could win – especially given how it can empower the second ingredient.

2)      Organisation – knowing the talents of those who have the same goals as you, and building roles, processes, rules and communication networks for those people so that you can work together well. Harari argues that this is by far the most important factor in whether one group can dominate another, and with good reason. For all of history thus far the best technology we have had is the human – a flexible computer which even comes with two nimble hands. Technological developments could be seen as just add-ons, ways to make the human even more useful. So the most powerful machines are those made out of humans working well together, whether they are organisations within society or society itself. As discussed in another post, if a group with the right talents become the leaders of society, they can make society survive and thrive in new circumstances. As artificial intelligence becomes better, organisation will become a less important factor, as those with the technology will rely less on other humans.

3)      A motivating idea – empires cannot be built without sacrifice. An empire can’t promise that every individual will benefit from it, because it would fall apart as soon as some sacrifice was needed, so instead empires are based on ideas. Liberalism, and in particular neoliberalism, are ideas which are thinly veiled self-interest, but nonetheless are ideas which people are willing to sacrifice for. An empire must convince people that the success of the empire is an inherently good thing and good enough to override self-interest. One would hope that Earth’s survival is motivating enough.

Conclusion

Our civilisation is currently going through a choke point – we’re powerful enough to wreck the planet, but we’re not yet powerful enough to live self-sufficiently in space. Whatever happens in the 21^st Century, I’m confident that our inventive nature will prevent humanity from going extinct. I’m even confident that civilisation in some shape will survive, even if only in bunkers. The real question is how many people will die early deaths. Millions? Billions? If this map of a world 4 degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels (a possibility by 2100 if no climate action is taken) is even just slightly accurate, the transition to such a radically different world is unlikely to be smooth and peaceful.

For countries such as Britain, more frequent flooding will be a problem, but the real danger is that the state will become violently xenophobic. When there are hundreds of millions of refugees trying to cross the channel, it will become next to impossible to persuade anyone that opening the borders is the right thing to do. Whether by denying them help, or by actively deterring them with violence, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that some of the most developed nations will commit the most devastating genocides in history. If you’re thinking ‘I’m already in a developed nation, so at least I’ll be safe’, beware that a country anxious about its survival in a crumbling world will likely toss away any citizens it considers insufficiently useful, normal or loyal.

The stakes have never been higher. Civilisations have collapsed before, but never has humanity been faced with the possibility of a loss of life of this magnitude. Precisely because we are the most powerful civilisation in history, our collapse would be the most catastrophic and there’s no telling how far technology and society would plummet. If there is a chance that tearing down a system based on free markets and sovereign nation-states will save civilisation, then it is absolutely worth the risk. The fact that we are facing global collapse proves that we are a global civilisation – it’s about time we acted like one.

Since I started writing this essay, Bernie Sanders has dropped out of the race to be the Democratic candidate. If anyone was going to at least start radically reforming the neoliberal order, it would have been him. A self-declared socialist becoming President of the United States would have been like Constantine’s conversion. But that’s no longer on the cards, at least for another four years. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, we can’t wait that long. And even if we did wait, there is no guarantee that a socialist USA would be strong enough to save the planet. The American-backed neoliberal order is already weakening and fragmenting. Our best chance is therefore a new green, globalist order to emerge from the periphery and quickly secure the world as the neoliberal order collapses. The alternative is a fragmented nationalist order which will not provide the coordination needed to stop climate change, and even if we manage to put nationalism back in the box in the 2020s it will only re-emerge with a vengeance when the impacts of climate change become severe.

The transition to a green, globalist order would no doubt be chaotic, but it need not be destructive. As mentioned earlier the collapse of the Soviet Union caused a lot of pain, but at the same time it was miraculous: against all expectations, the superpower collapsed without a single nuclear weapon being launched. This proved that in the nuclear age, a powerful system can collapse without ending the world, although of course the fact it didn’t happen once isn’t a guarantee that it can’t happen. We have to be careful, clever and determined, but we can change the world. 

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Anime I can recommend

I've watched my fair share of anime (including many I would never admit to watching), but here is a selection, in no particular order, of anime even newcomers to the medium would enjoy. 

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid

Some dragons decide to disguise themselves as humans and live in modern-day Japan. The most heart-warming show about lesbian dragons you’ll ever see. My personal favourite.

Konosuba

Hilarious comedy set in a fantasy world, following the misadventures of incompetent adventurers. A bit puerile at times.

Attack on Titan

Epic and bloody. The remnants of humanity are protected from man-eating Titans by gigantic walls, but the Titans are a complete mystery.

Death Note

Dark, clever, but a bit emo. A teenager finds a supernatural notebook with deadly powers. He resolves to use it to make the world a better place, but is quickly driven mad.

Psychopass

Dystopian future where the government monitors everyone’s mental health, and if it becomes too bad you are labelled a ‘latent criminal’.

Kado: the right answer

If you liked Arrival, you’ll like this. A mysterious being arrives on Earth. There’s a twist in almost every episode, which makes for gripping viewing.

Yuru camp

A show about adorable high school girls who like camping. Very relaxing to watch.

Re:Zero

Imagine Groundhog Day but set in a fantasy realm, quite bloody at times and with a fantastically insane villain. 

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Absurd but immensely enjoyable. We first meet the heroes fighting for a hole in the ground, but their battles grow bigger and bigger until they are fighting on an impossibly large scale.

Saint Young Men

The ultimate odd couple, out-going Jesus and introspective Buddha decide to go on holiday to Earth, and rent a flat together in Tokyo. Hilarity ensues.

K-on

A show about some high school girls who start a band. Simple fun with very likeable characters.

Made in Abyss

Adventure distilled. A town has built up around a mysterious hole in the ground, filled with monsters and treasures – a beautiful but very dangerous world. It’s built on the basics of any good adventure story, but it’s very distinct. Not for children.

Space brothers

In the near future, two brothers try to become astronauts. Very easy to watch, although prepare for very many flashbacks.

Karaki Jouzu no Takagi san

A boy is constantly teased by an adorable girl in his class, completely oblivious to why she’s doing it. 

Hinamatsuri

A yakuza adopts a telekinetic girl. Absurd comedy ensues.

In another world with my smartphone

With each episode, this anime outdoes itself in how terrible it is, making it strangely watchable. Generally the episodes follow this pattern: the main character encounters a problem, he solves it in two minutes with zero risk, struggle or skill, and then girls argue over who will marry him. It seems to have been made for five-year-olds who get boob jokes. 

Arslan Senki

An epic tale of the prince of a kingdom heavily based on pre-Islamic Persia.

Parasyte

A gruesome horror about an alien who takes over a teenager’s hand, but said alien’s complete lack of a conscience makes for some very funny moments.

From the New World

Set a thousand years after a minority of people gain telekinesis. An interesting concept and world, and it has a great ending.

Little Witch Academia

Essentially ‘Harry Potter The Anime’. It has very imaginative animation and Akko the main character is adorable. Watch the first two OVAs – the TV series is not as good.

Barakamon

Light-hearted and heart-warming. A grumpy calligrapher exiled to a remote island rediscovers his creativity thanks to some local children.

Interspecies Reviewers

A man, an elf and a hermaphrodite angel take it upon themselves to review as many brothels as they can, and of course each brothel is staffed by a different fantasy race. This is basically hentai, but even if that’s not your cup of tea it’s still great fun to watch.

Films

Studio Ghibli films

Especially Princess Mononoke if you consider yourself pro-environment.

Your Name 

The hype is completely deserved, but brace yourself for an emotional punch to the stomach half-way through.

Akira 

Like Matilda, except set in a post-apocalyptic dystopia on the brink of revolution and with a brilliantly nightmarish ending.

Paprika

Same basic premise as Inception, except colourful, wacky and imaginative. And whereas Inception is very rational, Paprika captures the madness of dreams.

Night is Short, Walk on Girl

A film about the joys of alcohol.

Will Philosophers Save the World?

Humans have many personality types, as you’ll know from your friends and from online quizzes. These personalities were a result of our evolution, and each one would have been useful to our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Although some may have been more useful than others in different contexts, each would have been valued as necessary for the survival of the tribe. Just as some people are night owls and some are morning larks because both would have been needed to keep watch at different times, sometimes aggressive people would be needed, sometimes negotiators, sometimes planners, sometimes mystics, etc.

Then about 11,000 years ago, people started farming. And very few people like farming. It’s back-breaking and menial work, and for most personality types they cannot fulfil what they see as their role in society. It’s no wonder then that people tried to claw their way out of farming and into a more comfortable profession. But given that the vast majority of people need to keep farming to avoid mass starvation, only personality types that can successfully fulfil a social need will be able to escape the farms.

The first people to do this were probably shamans, who may have been the most respected people in the tribe before the agricultural revolution and managed to keep hold of their position. Göbekli Tepe, a mysterious complex which was built around the time of the agricultural revolution, seems to be some sort of temple. In the Bronze Age, smiths, merchants and warriors emerged. Then later came the artists, bureaucrats, politicians, teachers, philosophers, etc. Societies became more complex as more aspects of human psychology were expressed and empowered.

In my mind’s eye, this is reminiscent of a lava lamp. As the wax at the bottom heats up, globules form, separate and rise upwards. We could then call these groups globules, and history can be seen from this perspective as the history of globules competing with one another for the dominant position. Each globule has its own talents, goals and perceived role in society. Individuals in the same globule will usually work together to further their mutual interests, forming institutions such as churches, parliaments, universities, trade unions, etc.

Globules sometimes form alliances: by using their different talents in concert, they can become more influential than they would have been on their own. The most successful alliance between globules in history has been between warriors and priests. Max Weber called the state the monopoly of legitimate violence – warriors provided the violence, priests provided the legitimacy. Nonetheless, like in all marriages, there were arguments over who would be on top. For most of its history, warriors dominated the Roman Empire, but by the time Alaric the Visigoth sacked Rome priests were in the ascendency.

A dramatic shift happened 200 years ago, when the Industrial Revolution led to many people moving to cities to work in factories. In Marxist terms this was the creation of the proletariat, but from this perspective on history we could call this the rapid expansion of the smith globule, replacing the farmers as the foundation of society. Smiths are those who use technology to produce goods, which encompasses everything from making swords with a smelter, making cars with machinery and making software with a computer. But like with farming, not everyone is suited to being a smith, creating widespread alienation. Only a minority of people are smiths by nature, yet most people are forced to work and think like smiths by economic circumstances.

The Rise of Politics

Another important change happened 200 years ago. Politicians have existed since ancient Greece, but they rarely gained full control of the state. However after the American and French revolutions, politicians controlling the state started becoming the norm. Politicians claim to represent the People – winning an election is generally the best way to prove this, but many 20^th Century politicians were so confident that they represented the People that they saw no need to confirm with the People that this was actually the case. Their commitment to an ideology was supposedly proof enough.

Harari argues that humanism can be classified as a religion, and that liberalism, communism and fascism can be considered different sects of that religion. We can explore why he’s wrong in another post, but if he is right, then politicians are the priesthood of humanism. After the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, humanity began to see itself as the force that shaped the world, rather than God. Politicians, as representatives of the People, were in the unique position of being able to try to embody humanist ideas. As such, they were able to replace priests as the globule that provided the state with legitimacy. At the same time, they were able to cut the head off of the warrior globule, sometimes literally. The aristocracy (the descendants of the most successful warriors) were rendered historically irrelevant. In most cases this takeover has been so successful that politicians completely control the direction the state takes, although warriors sometimes refuse to take orders from politicians, leading to coups and military juntas.

Politicians aren’t necessarily good leaders. Priests only had to represent God, who made His will clear in His Book. But because politicians try to represent millions of people who have different interests and values, parliaments can resemble a church trying to organise a crusade while at the same time going through a schism. At their core, politicians are influence traders – using their talent for rhetoric they try to persuade you to give them your influence (e.g. your vote), which they will then exert on the apparatus of the state in your name. However not only does this come into conflict with their attempts to embody humanist ideas (even the most idealistic politician looks cynical sometimes), this also leaves them susceptible to influence from other globules. This is helped by the fact that ‘the People’ is not a monolithic entity, and people will generally view a globule more favourably than others, perhaps because they align with their values and they would join that globule if they could. This is how even in democracies vested interests seem to call the shots.

How did merchants become kings?

Historically, merchants have played a vital role in bringing societies out of a dark age, making new connections and spurring technological and social change, and being greatly respected as a result. The Beaker People were likely merchants who brought bronze working to Neolithic Western Europe. After the Bronze Age collapse, the Phoenicians rebooted civilisation by building a trade network across the Mediterranean. In both these cases, having spurred change, the merchant globule was supplanted by the warrior globule which was better at using the new technologies to their advantage: bronze-wielding Proto-Indo-European warriors swept across Europe after the Beaker People, and the Phoenician colony Carthage was eventually defeated by the warrior-centric Romans.

The equivalent golden age of merchants in the modern era would be the 16^th to 19^th Centuries, with the Portuguese explorers, and later the Dutch and British Empires. Although priest-backed Spain was the first to take advantage of the discovery of the New World, it was the merchants who broke down the narrow worldview of the Middle Ages. And they took advantage of how vast and rich they discovered the world to be, creating outfits such as the Dutch and British East Indian Companies.

Eventually the merchant era came to an end. Both of these companies came to be nationalised by their respective states. The European empires declined and new, state-centric ideologies emerged. Just like in the Bronze and Iron Ages, it looked like that the merchants, having built a new world, would be supplanted by those who could most effectively use violence in that new world. The fear of what the implications of this would be is exemplified by George Orwell’s 1984.

Yet this didn’t happen. The state-centric ideologies fell apart, and we are now faced with the opposite problem: increasingly weak states unwilling to do anything which might displease the merchants. A huge amount of thinking and writing has already gone into trying to explain this, but from this perspective on history I think we can point to four reasons:

1)      In previous ages merchants have been influential but quite small in the scale of their operations. A merchant would rarely own more than one ship. But developments in accounting and finance in the Renaissance and early modern period led to the emergence of a new form of organisation called a company. These allowed merchants to greatly expand the assets and employees at their disposal, making them much bigger fish in the social pond.

2)      The invention of nuclear weapons made the warrior globule terrifyingly powerful, but for that very reason they are forced to be extremely careful when making threats. So rather ironically, becoming more powerful has made them less influential, because the moves they can make when dealing with a threat are limited. Although nuclear war is certainly a possibility, the warrior globule is no longer as reckless as it used to be, creating the most peaceful period in human history. Merchants thrive in such a peaceful world, since it makes it much easier to break down economic barriers between nations, which now need to find prosperity through trade not war.

3)      Scientists have a better relationship with merchants than they do with the state. The bedrock of our civilisation is science, and so those who can stimulate scientists’ brains the most effectively will have the technological advantage. Scientists require freedom of thought in order to work well, which is not something anxious states can always provide. The Soviet Union’s reliance on bureaucracy and state-control of information flows led to the Chernobyl disaster, which Mikhail Gorbachev believes was the cause of the Soviet Union’s collapse. By contrast, merchants will usually give scientists as much freedom and resources as they can afford if they think their research will make them money.

4)      Merchants created their own ideology: consumerism. It is the idea that happiness can be found by spending money on products. It’s quite a shaky proposition, not least as it’s responsible for the rise in obesity and environmental deterioration in recent decades. Consumption will give you a dopamine spike, so to avoid dissatisfaction, you need to speed up your consumption so that the gaps between fleeting pleasures are minimised. In extreme cases, people will prioritise working so that they can spend more money over spending time with friends and family, leading to relationship breakdown. Consumerism could be seen as an attempt to make the world addicted to giving money to merchants, which they use to ensure that they remain the dominant globule. In fact there is a contradiction between consumerism and neoliberalism - it can be dangerous to make people consumerists and then limit how much they can consume, as the UK found out in 2011 when people smashed shopfronts and stole TVs in response (at least partly) to austerity. But consumerism speaks to people’s material desires, penetrating even the Soviet Union in its final years, making it a successful strategy despite its flaws.

This is not a conspiracy. Merchants are consumerist true believers, and perhaps this explains why they pursue economic growth at whatever cost. They believe that they only need another million in the bank, another vintage car to show off, and then they’ll be happy – but they never are.

To claim that there is a conspiracy among the business elites would be to give them too much credit. The reality is that they are far too disorganised and short-sighted to come up with a secret evil plan for the world. They are quite open about their plan for the world: the free market. In other words, merchants free to do as they please. Ever since the 2008 financial crash, the flaws of the free market have become increasingly obvious, from melting glaciers to food banks.

Of course to lay the blame at the door of everyone with a knack for business would be a gross oversimplification. The guy who runs your local Indian restaurant is probably not a member of the business elite. The only way we could say he is socially dominant is that the prevailing wisdom says that the government should give him as much freedom as feasible. There’s nothing wrong with giving small businesses leeway to grow if they work well. It’s the most powerful merchants who are wrecking the world. 

Most merchants do not support nationalistic or xenophobic movements – why would they, when they profit so much from an open, peaceful, interconnected world? However some individuals seem to understand the usefulness of xenophobia and use the resources at their disposal to actively spread it, notable examples being Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers. The merchants did not create nationalistic movements, but some encourage them and all stand to benefit from them. Nationalism is very convenient for the merchants, because it redirects anger that would otherwise be directed at them because of the free market’s flaws. Sadly that anger is instead directed at the most excluded members of society, and those who are trying to improve the welfare of everyone.

Nationalism gives merchants the opportunity to slip lower taxes and weaker regulations into government policy, shiny packaging for policies which would otherwise be seen as flagrant money grabs. And with the Left busy defending itself from nationalism, there is no consensus within the electorate to stop the merchants from being so irresponsible, greedy and heartless. However, this conflict does have the effect of galvanising the Left into action and making it crystal clear in their minds that they need to win.

Who can rival the merchants?

Philosophers have a talent for critical thinking, their goal is to solve the world’s mysteries, and they see their role as generating ideas that their tribe can use. For most of human history they were probably shamans, like the priest globule. Only in the Iron Age did they emerge as a distinct group. Although the ancient Greek philosophers might spring to mind, I would argue that Jesus of Nazareth and Siddhartha Gautama were among the most important members of this globule in history. They generated ideas which priests subsequently used to become the dominant globule for over a thousand years. Under the reign of Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, philosophers became theologians, put to work finding justifications for their religion’s contradictions.

The invention of the printing press and the discovery of the New World made people re-examine old certainties and broke the shackles that tied philosophers to religion. Allured by the mysterious world now opened up to them, philosophers developed ‘natural philosophy’, which would evolve into science. Science is a refined form of reflecting on the world, and is itself an astounding achievement - it is the first conscious attempt to increase consciousness as far as possible, and so is arguably the most important step in the evolution of conscious life since the eye. For the first time, philosophers used ideas about the material world in order to benefit society materially. Traditional, non-natural philosophy is closer to art than to science, because although they may claim to be describing objective reality, philosophical treatises reflect the philosopher’s personality and subjective worldview (this of course includes this essay). But science can be said to be a branch of philosophy insofar as philosophy is the pursuit of knowledge through questioning, critical thinking and logic.

In 1690 John Locke said “I shall always have the satisfaction to have aimed sincerely at Truth and Usefulness, though in one of the meanest ways. The Commonwealth of Learning, is not at this time without Master-Builders, whose mighty designs, in advancing the Sciences, will leave lasting Monuments to the Admiration of Posterity ... ‘tis Ambition enough to be employed as an Under-Labourer in clearing the Ground a little, and removing some of the Rubbish, that lies in the way to Knowledge”.

Philosophers and merchants have always been close, since they share a passion for exploration, albeit one being more interested in intellectual exploration and the other more interested in the geographical kind. Philosophers are constantly hungry for new ideas, and merchants would often bring fresh ones from faraway lands. The relationship between these two globules became crucial in the Age of Exploration and it was cemented in the Industrial Revolution, when science started being used to develop technology which could then be used to make money. Thus did the marriage of philosophers and merchants become the foundation of our civilisation.

Only recently has the marriage started to strain. The most obvious sticking point is climate change. Along with the residents of Greenland and Vanuatu, scientists are among those most keenly aware of the impact of greenhouse gases. They cannot ignore the continually building evidence that humanity is changing the planet’s climate and the implications this will have for our survival. Despite the warnings from scientists, the merchants continue to act irresponsibly.

Either because merchants see the marriage failing, or much more likely because they are very unaware of the world they’re living in, they have found more ways to anger the scientists. They have pressured governments to reduce investment in education, shifting the funding burden onto students. Merchants are being allowed greater say in what students are taught. Some merchants (usually the same ones who support nationalist movements, mentioned above) encourage the spread of unscientific worldviews, such as climate change denial. The aim (or at least consequence) of this is that fewer people trust scientists, despite the fact our civilisation is built on science. This is summed up in Michael Gove’s infamous proclamation during the EU referendum campaign that the British People had had enough of experts. This could be interpreted as a declaration of culture war. As fewer people trust scientists, their ability to influence politicians is hampered.

Thankfully many people still do trust scientists, as evidenced by the millions taking to the streets preaching Greta’s simple message of listen to the scientists. Currently in the UK most people still trust scientists. The fact that we will need follow scientists’ guidance to get out of the climate crisis may be sufficient for them to rise to become the dominant globule. Perhaps for most young people authority has already shifted from the merchants to philosophers, so it is only a matter of time before this is reflected in our politics. As I write, the world is hunkering down amid the coronavirus outbreak, and government scientists are on all our screens – and politicians and people in general are listening very carefully.

In addition to having the respect of many people because of the many wonders they have created, scientists have in their arsenal a global network. They are already used to working together to rigorous standards to find consensus, through universities, conferences and journals. Such a network could help them outmanoeuvre the merchants, whose instincts favour competition over cooperation.  

In the long term, if our civilisation survives long enough to become reliant on a Dyson swarm for energy, we may need scientists to be the dominant globule to survive – in the alien environments of space and the other planets, the only way to adapt is through knowledge and technology. Given that our civilisation is built on science, perhaps it is inevitable that scientists will one day become the dominant globule, because the other globules will only misuse it.  

Today, as throughout history, philosophers see themselves as advisors to society, particularly its most powerful members. This means they rely on advocates who are less temperate and better communicators than they are. As mentioned, priests have used philosophers’ ideas to help themselves climb to the top, and more recently politicians have used pseudo-science to justify their ideology, the most obvious example being the Nazis using now thoroughly debunked theories on race. If philosophers are going to become the dominant globule, they will need to make sure that they control the application of their ideas.

But what ideas can philosophers rule by? You can’t rule by quantum mechanics, just as you can’t rule by mysticism. The ideas must speak to people’s needs and desires, just as consumerism and religion do. We already have recommendations on healthy and environmentally-friendly lifestyles, but these often come across as stern and a little masochistic. And because our lives are complex and constantly changing, there seems to be a constant stream of pronouncements on specifics, which is annoying and hard to keep track of. Instead of just offering a list of commandments, scientists should instead offer the promise of a better world.

What would a world ruled by philosophers look like?

Would it be a utopia? No. Scientists are still human after all. And being the dominant globule comes with a serious drawback: sociopaths are attracted to your institutions. If you’re a sociopath in ancient Assyria, you become a soldier and butcher your way up the ranks. If you’re a sociopath in medieval Spain, you become priest and burn as many heretics as you can. If you’re a sociopath today, you become a merchant and invest in industries you know will kill your grandchildren. Mad scientists who build doomsday devices for their own sadistic pleasure are currently confined to over-the-top science fiction, but if scientists were to become the dominant globule they would be wise to make as many precautions as possible to ensure responsible use of technology. Allowing sociopaths to wreak havoc, aside from the human cost, will sow the seeds of the globule’s downfall as it has done with others.

Plato’s vision of philosopher-kings was one of an unaccountable, aristocratic elite who knew what was best for everyone, including even who should have sex with whom. This is as unlikely to work today as it was in Plato’s time. Instead, philosophers should work to mimic the merchants. Currently merchants influence politics by methods including lobbying, making donations, owning media outlets, becoming politicians and threatening to move to another country. Philosophers’ greatest strength is their persuasion, but it needs to find more and better ways of using that strength effectively to guide government policy. Modifying the merchants’ tactics to play to philosophers’ strengths could allow them to replace the merchants as the globule who dominates the politicians without the need for anything recklessly heavy-handed. By heavily influencing politics while keeping it democratic, philosophers could push society in the right direction while ensuring that the government is held to account and seen as legitimate. It would also allow the merchants to keep some influence. It’s almost impossible to kill a globule. The Soviet Union tried to eliminate the merchants, but they undermined communism from the black market. Globules are necessarily useful and influential in society, or else they wouldn’t exist as a distinct group. Better to keep them in the tent pissing out, rather than outside pissing in.   

Why do merchants put such effort into controlling politicians? Because they fear the state. While money can buy you almost everything under the sun, it is rather meaningless in the face of the state when it is wielding ‘legitimate violence’. Merchants are generally just afraid that the state will forcibly take away more of what they see as their rightful property by taxation. But they also have the French and Russian revolutions in the back of their minds. So the merchants try to sap the state’s strength, which also means that the philosophers and other globules need to rely more on merchants. At the same time they are trying to turn the state into a guard-dog that protects them from the rabble (as a character in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy puts it, “That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves”). If we can describe the politician and the merchant globules as being in a marriage, then it is an abusive one. The politicians can do better.

Philosophers and politicians could be a good match. The philosophers need the state to flourish, to be well-resourced and well-organised if it is going to fight climate change and win. If the state invested more in universities and other scientific institutions, in return the philosophers could provide the state with the new technological power it needs. With politicians’ legitimacy as representatives of the People, and philosophers’ legitimacy as founts of knowledge and proven problem solvers, they could be formidable if they stood side-by-side. Compared to the merchant-politician marriage, a philosopher-politician marriage would hopefully be a more balanced and reciprocal relationship. Instead of trying to starve the state, they would probably try to buttress it.

Of course not all scientists and academics are left-wing. If they become the dominant globule, we can still expect there to be disagreements among them over the direction society should take. Harari argues that science is by nature neutral and the same technologies can be used to build very different societies – “the engineers need some prophet to make the crucial choices and point towards the required destination” (p.313, Homo Deus). I agree that science as an abstraction and technology as objects are neutral, but does the engineer need the prophet? What if he has his own ideas about how his technology should be used? What if he has the confidence to become a prophet himself? Knowledge for the betterment of the community is a value that is essential to the philosopher globule, and although there are of course arguments over what constitutes ‘betterment’ and ‘community’, it’s hard to see how anyone could rationally argue that not fighting climate change would benefit any community in the long run, or that fighting climate change would not involve large-scale initiatives by states. With terrifyingly big problems like climate change, the direction should be clear and the arguments should be about the precise methods (both political and technological). Philosophers do not need to servilely offer statistics and gadgets for others to use as they please. They can lead society by illuminating the path laid by evidence.

Whereas the merchants are currently leading us to climate catastrophe, if the philosophers take the reins they might be able to instead steer us towards a post-scarcity economy. The implications of eliminating poverty and possibly even work are well-trodden by other writers (and I’ll taking about it more in other posts). But this has revolutionary implications for the globule perspective. As hunter-gatherers, everyone’s personality was also the role they played in society. In the Agricultural Revolution, economic circumstances squeezed the vast majority of people into the role of farmer, and then in the Industrial Revolution they were squeezed into the role of proletarian. But once we become sufficiently technologically (and so economically) developed, the pressure will be lifted and people will be free to fill the social role that feels most natural to them. In the social lava lamp, there will no longer be a block of wax at the base, but simply free-floating globules reminiscent of (but not exactly like) our hunter-gatherer past. In such a society, I would expect the artist globule to expand significantly, as people who had always wanted to spend their lives creatively found that they could now afford to. But while this would no doubt be a happier society than today’s, it would not be an anarchist utopia – we would expect the globules at the top to keep on wrestling each other over the throne, as they have done for millennia.

It’s not inevitable that the philosophers will come to dominate society. If we suddenly improve our ability to escape Earth’s gravity well and build extra-terrestrial colonies, we could find ourselves on the brink of a new Age of Exploration led by the merchants, just as they led the last one. Perhaps because industrial civilisation is characterised by constant technological revolution, merchants will always be in the lead because they are best placed to sell and exploit new technology – they are in their element when they are remaking the world, and modern technology could allow them to never stop. And although the Gods of the Iron Age may be dead, we shouldn’t discount the possibility of the priests rising again on the back of new, supposedly science-based religions. Two thousand years ago the priests discovered that philosophers’ ideas are mightier than the sword, and philosophers now are much more numerous and organised than they were back then. If the philosophers don’t try to take the mantle of leadership using their own ideas, we’ll never know if they can.   

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