Notes on Homo Deus
Homo Deus: A Brief History of the Future by author Yuval Noah Harari makes you reconsider what you think you know about being human.
Here is my quick review of the book: I loved it! Just like his last two. But instead of just reviewing the book, I want to share my thoughts on some of the things that stand out for me in relationship to pain management.
Real quick though, this book isn’t for everyone. If you’re uncomfortable having your political, religious, philosophical, and general concepts of self challenged, then you will find this book disturbing on more levels than the author intends.
This book is a warning. It is trying to get us to pay attention, Like a passenger in car asking the driver to slow the hell down. You can’t take the turn you need at this speed.
I believe it also is a celebration of how far we have come and how far we can go. So let me throw this out there, if you cling to your belief structures like a life vest in an ocean of myths, this book is going to make you very upset, and it is going to deflate the concepts that keep your ego afloat. However, if you are looking for a better understanding of what are real challenges are right now, then buckle up because the twists and turns of history, science, psychology are going to make your head spin.
For those with short attention spans, below is a glimpse at the highlights of the book. For those who would prefer listening, here is a link (Yuval Noah and Steven Pinker) to a conversation with the author and Steven Pinker. My thoughts on how this applies to pain management follow.
-We’ve conquered- War, Plague, and Famine as the major mortality issues for humanity and next on the agenda for we will conquer death or become God-like in the pursuit.
-Spoilers: There is no soul, self, or free will as far as science is concerned and to believe so is to live in a fantasy world where you will be easily manipulated.
-The brain contains more than one mind and none of them knows what the other is thinking or why; and most of what you believe about the world (which includes yourself) is a confabulation (bullshit rationalizations) of these minds independent operations.
-The religion evolution went kinda like this: from nature to gods to a single god to nationalism to humanism and now data. Long live Data! In algorithms we trust!
-All medical science leads to augmentation science. We will be upgraded. Or at least the rich will be.
-Algorithms are everywhere and will rule us and we will like it because we are blind to the deeper realities of our existence.
-The AI of the future will know us better than we know ourselves and we will either be their pets (if we are lucky) or their pests (if we are not lucky).
-The next class system will be based on human and super human.
Part 1:
Why Are We Killing Ourselves?
After reading Homo Sapiens and 21 Lessons for the 21st century, I felt prepared for the author’s diagnosis of the current state of humanity and prognosis for its future. It’s not all doom and gloom by any means, just the end of humanity as we know it. Technically speaking it could be seen more as the continued transformation of humanity.
The book’s opening argument is that humanity has conquered War, Famine, and Plague as the major factors of human mortality. That’s 3 of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. Who doesn’t think that’s a good thing? To make its point the book presents some disturbing information on mortality that I had to stop and look into myself.
1. More people die from suicide then violent deaths.
2. More people die from poor eating habits than starving.
3. By 2050, 50% the population of earth will be considered overweight.
Here are some mortality per year (2017) numbers from the CDC.
Heart disease-647,457
Diabetes-83,564
Alcohol related deaths- 72,500
Suicide- 47,085
Overdoses 47,450
Vs
Homicides- 19,510
Firearm Homicides- 14,542
Mass shootings- 335
The top half of these numbers are all self inflicted. The CDC website reports: childhood obesity has tripled since 1970; alcohol related deaths have doubled since 1999; suicides have increased by 30% since 1999; and overdoses are up 137% (200% in relation to opioids).
The articles I came across reported that the majority of criminal acts that lead to violent acts involve the sell or pursuit of drugs. That means for the purpose of buying drugs to alleviate pain or making money by selling drugs to people who are in said pain. What about mass shootings? I think the majority of mass shootings are perpetrated by people who are on one level or another mentally ill and suffering from some sort of psychological and emotional pain.
The common denominator for all these fall on spectrum of pain management. Drugs are used for (I am including alcohol here) reducing some kind of pain. Mental (emotional or psychological) and/or physical pain. Sure, lots of people use drugs and alcohol recreationally, but if drugs and alcohol are the recreation or needed to have any recreation, then odds are high that there is a hidden suffering not being addressed. What we are really doing is self medicating.
It would seem that a large number of people are under a daily burden that is inescapable without chemical assistance. Drugs and alcohol for the most part are our escape. So is sugar, or in general bad eating habits.
Why are we so sad, anxious, and disturbed when we live in the least violent and most prosperous age of human existence?
How many cavemen do you think killed themselves? I’ve asked this question to a few people and the answer I get back is none (note none of those people were anthropologist). While not scientific, the question makes a point. When life and death were a daily concern, people were to busy figuring out how to stay alive to consider killing themselves. When purpose was easily defined as don’t die today, people worked hard at staying alive everyday.
It can be argued now that we no longer hunt or are being hunted we are haunted by an inner nature that no longer fits our environment.
The natural state of humans is to be concerned about getting killed, about having enough to eat. So, we naturally worry about things. In fact, its a feature of the brain. When the mind isn’t engaged in a particular task, the Default Mode Network kicks in. This is the part of our brain that has a tendency to ruminate and make us anxious. Its the portion of the brain calmed by meditation and attention training (quick self promotion: this is what I teach).
Worrying is a survival feature. Those who didn’t worry, didn’t live long enough to reproduce. Unfortunately, just because the natural threats no longer stalk us, doesn’t mean this feature for survival is no longer working.
The exterior environment may have changed, but our inner environment hasn’t quite caught up. We were born to solve problems. I mena real concrete problems. As in identifying the best tree to climb to sleep in so your a late night snack. We didn’t evolve to solve math problems or philosophical problems. Those are abstractions made possible by leisure and extreme access to resources. Those are fairly recent add-ons to the humanities skill set. We evolved to solve physical issues.
Our emotional and psychological health is tied more to our physical capacity for adaptation than being able to think your way out of an emotional problem.
In a way, life has become too easy and we have lost our resiliency. Our ability to deal with challenge, discomfort and uncertainty has shriveled like an atrophied muscle. Much like cell deteriorating effect of zero gravity on an astronaut’s physiology, the lack of constant physical strain/challenge has made us mentally and emotionally weaker.
We now suffer from pain that we do not understand how to properly address. We have evolved to solve problems in an environment that no longer exists.
Instead of staying alive as the main function, we now are struggling with staying happy.
Our culture that has provided us a safer world has not prepared us to deal with ourselves. We wrestle and struggle with our thoughts and feelings. This leaves us with deep questions about worth and purpose that need to be addressed.
We are the most resource rich culture in history and we are killing ourselves hand over fist. It would appear that the more prosperous we become, the more likely we are to lose hope. What could possibly save us from ourselves?
This is important to appreciate because Yuval’s argument for humanities next agenda (now that we have conquered war, famine, and plague) is that we are going to conquer Death itself and transform humans into gods.
Considering how bad we are at handling our feelings now, I wonder what kind of gods we will become.
Part 2
Kill The Gods, Long Live Data (continued in a week or so)