Is our future one of utopia or dystopia?
Yuval Noah Harari’s “Homo Deus” makes fear and yearn for the future.
Cover of “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow” by Yuval Noah Harari
Harari, Y. (2017). Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Signal McClelland & Stewart. 513 pages.
Overview
Our species has come a long way since our hunter-gatherer times. We have populated every continent, explored the depths of the deepest oceans, and ventured into space. We have aggressively fought off wars, plagues, and famines during our brief time on Earth, but what will be the next biggest obstacles? Yuval Noah Harari, professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, asks such questions in “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.” His answer: “humanity’s next targets are likely to be immortality, happiness and divinity” (p. 24), all of which are about turning homo sapiens into human gods, the “logical conclusion” of humanism, which prioritizes “life, happiness and power” (p. 75).
Homo Deus has three parts. Part one explores the relationship between humans and animals; if we want to understand how super-intelligent machines and cyborgs will treat lesser-intelligent humans, we should look to our past and current treatment of animals. The second part investigates how humanism came to dominate and the political and socio-economic consequences of humanism’s ideals. And the third part explores our contemporary age and the current predicaments of humanism and progress.
The three goals
This blog post will focus on how well Harari addresses the goals of immortality, happiness and divinity in addition to the thought-provoking questions he poses to readers.
Immortality
Humans doubled their life expectancy with improvements in diet and medicine to cure, restrain, and mitigate previously incurable illnesses in the twentieth century. These changes led to larger populations and a growing proportion of older adults in industrialized societies. With life expectancy continuing to rise, Harari asks, what would that mean for marriage, having children, getting your first job, going to school, and reaching other life’s milestones?
Healthier populations mean longer lives. Dramatic societal and attitudinal shifts and intergenerational conflict can ensue. Younger people attempting to gain a foothold in the job market may find it harder having to compete with an elderly generation forced to retire later. These demographic changes may stall growth and innovation since young people are generally more ambitious and creative, suggests Harari (p. 29-30). It is a concerning thought that forces us to consider everything from our own life’s plans to how policymakers must restructure public pensions and long-term care programs. The dependency burden will continue to grow, and governments must act quickly.
Yet, despite these advancements in health, Harari forces us to reconsider our understanding of medicine: it has not extended our lives but has instead prolonged our death (p. 31). We may never reach immortality, but, in the meantime, modern medicine has, without doubt, improved our standard of living, helping us capture more happiness from our finite lives. For instance, Harari shares a case where US military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder had their depression symptoms reduced after brain implanted chips regulated their emotions (p. 333). There have also been significant improvements in diagnostics. A pharmacy opened in 2011 in San Francisco where a robot provided prescriptions to clients with a perfect success rate, unlike human pharmacists who can only dream of such perfection (p. 369). Seeing the possible pain and suffering a human pharmacist may erroneously inflict on a patient, it should not surprise anyone that technology threatens to upend all types of professions, no matter how cognitively demanding, blue or white collar. We are all vulnerable.
Happiness
Harari encourages us to think about the happiness goal scientifically. From an evolutionary biology perspective, happiness can be thought of as orgasmic sensations and bliss, whether indulging in delicious food or satisfying our sexual needs. Our happiness is measurable through a combination of hormones and other biochemical reactions in our brains and bodies. But there is one fundamental flaw with chasing and achieving eternal happiness: we would be discouraged from continuously attempting to improve ourselves and the world around us if we were happy and content all the time (p. 43). Our species evolved never to be perpetually happy. If we were permanently happy, we would be complacent and die. Or we would be replaced by those striving for more of everything we find desirable, such as food, mates, resources, money, and power. For such reasons, this goal, no matter how appealing, may be impossible and illogical to achieve.
However, it would be wrong to think of happiness in narrow scientific terms like biomarkers. Harari drives this point home by saying that our subjective experiences are more important than we realize. They influence our politics, ethics and society at large. For instance, torture and rape are horrible because they are ethically and morally disturbing. We cannot merely rely on measuring the effects of torture and rape by analyzing biochemical reactions in the victim because science does not help us answer the vaguer, tougher questions about our values and morals (p. 135-136).
Therefore, we turn to fictions for such complicated, vague issues for guidance and control. Harari says that we invented corporations, nations and money to serve us, though he asks: “why do we find ourselves sacrificing our lives in their service?” (p. 206). It is a particularly profound question. In the developed world especially, our notion of happiness requires scrutiny. Most people feel depressed or anxious working a job that brings no satisfaction, stimulation, autonomy, or pride. Yet, many of us force ourselves up and out of our beds every day to earn money to pay for an absurdly expensive home in the suburbs year after year until retirement, which may be unnecessary since our freedom is limited with additional ailments and medical issues as we age. And, as mentioned earlier, we will have to work longer than ever before to retire safely. Serious reflection on our work arrangements is required if we believe we can be happier despite our accomplishments and technological progress.
Divinity
When we think of divine intervention, we may think of paranormal forces as the causes for earthly phenomena beyond our scientific and technological control or understanding. Divinity makes us acknowledge and contemplate our smallness and insignificance. But that is changing.
Religion, a type of fiction, has always been about order, and science has always been about power (p. 231). Our ability to turn ourselves into living gods is already underway in research labs around the globe as scientists attempt to extend our power and control over ourselves and the universe. Better brains and bodies are one thing, but what could be the societal effects?
Harari discusses how our economic and political systems will change dramatically in the coming decades and that some of the changes are already visible. A good example is how goods and services have become hyper-specific to satisfy consumers’ demands. For instance, a business developed software to match a client’s personality type with customer-service agents appropriate for their personality (p. 462). Though it helps satisfy consumer demand, it raises privacy concerns about the client’s level of data on record and how the data is used, stored, and shared. Many companies rely heavily on rich information from their clients, sometimes knowing more about the client they know of themselves.
Or consider the challenges democracies face today regarding information, censorship and misinformation. Anyone who’s ever used social media has likely experienced the vitriol of trolls, fake news, or irrelevant information propagation. Misinformation, harassment and censorship are severe threats because they can dramatically influence public opinion and, consequently, our institutions.
Harari underscores how these recent developments change power dynamics within and between societies. In the past, power meant having access to information, whereas now it is about knowing what to ignore (p. 462), he explains. Those with true power have a free and robust conscious, uneasily swayed by whatever the algorithms deem essential; they will thrive in this new misinformation age. Governments, meanwhile, struggle to keep pace with these shifts and may continue to fall further behind as they are far too rigid and uncreative (p. 438).
The most important question
All these technological advancements have dramatically improved our livelihoods despite the novel social challenges that may arise. But what happens when our species becomes militaristic or economically obsolete to super-intelligent machines or cyborgs (p. 408)? Seriously, it’s no laughing matter. Like futurists and science-fiction enthusiasts, Harari ponders over this frightening question as its importance continues to grow.
The super-rich and wealthy will be those who inherit their wealth or those who own the means of production. These means of production may include technologies, offices, intellectual property rights, shares, stocks, the labour force, etc. With advancements in genetics, these same elites could genetically engineer their offspring and themselves to be superhuman. These genetically superior lifeforms might live forever, have incredible physical strength and vigour, high IQs, and even superb social acumen, allowing them to in school, business and government. On the other hand, the poor are left with inferior genes to suffer from disease and incompetence. Such a tilted reality is not ideal for society’s overall well-being. The dominant group would likely exploit the other or design a system where only high-status individuals may thrive – many would argue this is already happening even though gene-editing technology is not yet pervasive among the rich. There is no need for morals. Harari says it might be like the nineteenth-century European treatment of Africans: complete indifference (p. 408).
To call these ideas frightening would be an understatement. Even if this dystopian existence becomes our reality, would the poor and powerless be aware of it? Would they be drugged, brainwashed or manipulated into thinking their lives are better than at any point of human history or beaten into submission by elites? Today’s authoritarian regimes adopt the latter approach ruthlessly. Their attempt to mould a ‘perfect society’ can include internet and media control, pervasive surveillance, facial recognition, and even points systems to reward state-favoured behaviour. Could western liberal democracies head in a similar direction, or would it be more like a Brave New World?
There may be hope, however. Harari floats the idea that we may be paying more attention to lower life forms, like animals, because we recognize that we will soon become inferior to hyper-intelligent, non-conscious algorithms (p. 116). No matter the direction we are heading, it certainly begs the question: will the elite have a moral hangover and sympathy for the poor? After all, slavery in the United States ended with the help of free abolitionists, and colonialism slowly dwindled after the Second World War because world powers valued sovereignty, dignity, and self-determination. Liberalism, rationality, and individualism are powerful values and ideas (p. 358) probably worth fighting for in this new age, even though the merits of these principles are denigrated by left-leaning critics emphasizing that they originate from a bunch of “dead white guys.”
What is lacking?
Despite the challenging questions and limited predictions peppered throughout the book, “Homo Deus” can be tiresome to read, not because of the complex subject matter but because of the repetitiveness and poor organization.
“Homo Deux,” I believe, is a sequel to Harari’s 2014 book “Sapiens,” and it’s unbearably repetitive. For example, he repeats the points on the discovery of ignorance (p. 248), collective fictions and mass organization of people (p. 199), religion as a means of legitimatizing political order (p. 211), the importance of finance and credit systems for continued growth (p. 59 and 238-235), and our increased specialization of work and the consequent downgrading of our mental skills and abilities (p. 422-423). These similar arguments and facts make “Homo Deus” uninteresting to anyone who remembers “Sapiens” well. Readers can expect the author’s newer ideas in the third part of the book, which, unfortunately, does not make up much of the book’s overall content.
Secondly, the book is challenging to follow because of its loosely strung-together ideas. Harari’s argument gets lost repeatedly with interspersed, interesting facts as he blends historical knowledge with present-day facts. Many ideas make us ponder the broader socio-economic and technological trends gripping our world. Still, it would have been better had Harari organized his book according to the arguments surrounding humanity’s next three main goals: immortality, happiness and divinity. Of course, predicting the future is a fool’s errand. But dedicating more time to investigating today’s socio-political issues accompanied by advancing technology and how policymakers and society may address their implications would have made for a more enjoyable and helpful read.
Overall Impression
This book may be an excellent place to start for those unaware of the types of technological developments underway. However, for anyone who regularly reads the news or is part of the labour force, you may already be aware of the dramatic changes shaping society, business and politics (even if you read the book when it was first published).
Automation is approaching. Monotonous and simple skills and tasks are easily replaceable. Society must create jobs or social welfare policies to ensure humans can perform better than computers (p. 380) if we refuse to become obsolete. And with the threat of elites rigging business practices and electoral systems to their favour, it is our responsibility to prepare for and hedge our bets against a possible dystopian future by relentlessly scrutinizing new technological developments as they unfold.
The most valuable insights from “Homo Deus” are in part three for those interested in questioning the future according to today’s patterns. Though parts one and two are entertaining, readers should probably visit Harari’s previous book for a more detailed discussion on the topics and questions he addresses about humanity.
If there is one piece of useful advice we can take from “Homo Deus,” it would be, as mentioned earlier, that those who will strive in the future (mis)information age will be those who know what to ignore and where to focus their attention.