Who Over What
Tues, Sep 15, 8:57 PM via email:
“How do we build the future?Start by defining the human values that deserve attention and then create the future that supports those values. Don’t create a future that denies them.”
- Steve Wozniak
Defining deserving human values is no small task. Although we haven’t been around for very long in the grand scheme of things, we humans have cycled through all manner of values, principles and beliefs in our time. For starters, then, we need a foothold.
Immanuel Kant was an 18th century German philosopher who looked pretty much the same as any other wig-wearing guy of the time period. What made him particularly special in our eyes, though, was an essay serving as an answer to the question Kant is so famous for helping put forward. What is Enlightenment was published in 1784, and sums up its own title as “humankind’s emergence from its self-incurred immaturity.”1 This supposed coming-of-age moment for our species birthed a system of thought called humanism, which has had rather significant implications over time, and is largely responsible for our way of life today. Let’s break this down for a moment.
Enlightenment and Humanism
In older times, it was standard practice to come up with stories to explain things we simply didn’t understand. Bad weather was the fault of some god in a web of mythology, dragons and sirens roamed unreachable lands, and people were burned at the stake because their ideologies didn’t match those of others.
Enter science. Knowledge became a hot commodity, especially as it concerned fundamental human qualities. Our cumbersome versions of phycology, anthropology and neuroscience paved a road for humanism, which allowed people, above all else, to understand each other. Gone were the days of religious and ethnic crusades, replaced with a moral narrative that deemed things like genocide unethical.
The self-disciplining that humanism provided was aided by the early days of globalization. More room for travel and trade meant people were exposed to different cultures, and were able to write about it for anyone who couldn’t make the trip. Even a peek into just how many kinds of people there were out in the world helped us come to the conclusion that just because someone’s different doesn’t mean they’re inferior. Today we call these basic human rights.
So What?
The benefits of humanism have been prevalent, starting with keeping humans around for longer. When Kant wrote his book, the global average life expectancy was about 30 years. With a newfound interest in ourselves and the birth of modern medicine, the child mortality rate plummeted, significantly improving overall life-expectancy numbers. While far fewer infants were dying, mothers were also surviving childbirth at a much greater rate than they were just a few generations before. Today, it doesn’t matter how old you are – you can now expect to live longer than ever before. Today, that number keeps growing. About half of the babies born in the U.S. in 2007 are predicted to live to 104.2
We’ve gotten richer, too. In 1820, close to 90 percent of the world was in extreme poverty. But with an uptick in access to trade and globalization, between 1820 and 1900, global income tripled. Between 1900 and 1950, the world’s income tripled again.3 With this growth, periods of inequality are expected. But while this inequality has naturally leveled itself out in the past, it’s up to us to make sure that trend continues as technology begins to outpace us.
Measuring Disorder
To sum it up, humanism has done a lot for us. Though no one would have known at the turn of the 19th century, the cosmopolitanism they saw as a result of globalization’s beginnings also served a much greater purpose: resistance to entropy.
Entropy as a concept is a product of 19th century physics. More or less, it refers to everything’s tendency toward disorder. This can all get very boring very quickly, so instead of lulling you (and myself) to sleep, I’ll leave it to Steven Pinker, who sums this up well in Enlightenment Now:
“If you walk away from a sandcastle, it won’t be there tomorrow, because as the wind, waves, seagulls, and small children push the grains of sand around, they’re more likely to arrange them into one of the vast number of configurations that don’t look like a castle than into the tiny few that do.”4
At a micro level, the more diverse and interconnected a system becomes, the more resilient it becomes against entropy. We can bring this concept into the real world, observing how globalization has provided us with more robust systems of government and diplomacy, resulting in the longest peacetime in modern human history.5 6
The problem here is that the structure holding us together is changing. Until now, humanism and globalization have acted as binding agents for humanity, keeping us interconnected and largely understanding of one another. Modern technology has changed this totally. The newfound connectivity the internet has afforded us means globalization in the traditional sense has become pointless. Unfortunately, the new digital age of globalization doesn’t necessarily need to bring humanism along for the ride. This means we’re at risk of losing the human values that got us here in the first place.
We’re already seeing the effects of this today. Even as interconnected as we’ve become over the last decades, we’re as isolated as ever. A recent Cinga study found a staggering 3 in 5 Americans reports being lonely or isolated.7 In the direction we’re heading, this will affect much more than just personal relationships.
This brings us back to the start. As technology becomes more specialized and interconnected, as we make more and more technology better at performing tasks than even ourselves, we need to keep in mind the values we hold closest. If we don’t create things that enable these values, we run the risk of losing track of our own humanity.
Kant, Immanuel. An Answer to the Question: 'What Is Enlightenment?" Penguin, 2009.
“We'll Live to 100 – How Can We Afford It?” World Economic Forum, www.weforum.org/whitepapers/we-ll-live-to-100-how-can-we-afford-it.
Roser, Max. “Economic Growth.” Our World in Data, 24 Nov. 2013, ourworldindata.org/economic-growth.
Pinker, Steven. Enlightenment Now. Penguin Books Ltd., 2019.
Duffield, John S. “Explaining the Long Peace in Europe: the Contributions of Regional Security Regimes.” Review of International Studies, vol. 20, no. 4, 1994, pp. 369–388., doi:10.1017/s0260210500118170.
Pinker, Steven. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Penguin Books, 2012.
“Loneliness Is at Epidemic Levels in America.” Cigna, www.cigna.com/about-us/newsroom/studies-and-reports/combatting-loneliness/.