Homo Deus: a brief History of Tomorrow

particular a commitment to provide the general public with education, health and
welfare  services.  Yet  the  core  liberal  package  has  changed  surprisingly  little.
Liberalism still sanctifies individual liberties above all, and still has a firm belief in
the voter and the customer. In the early twenty-first century, this is the only show
in town.
Electricity, Genetics and Radical Islam
As  of  2016,  there  is  no  serious  alternative  to  the  liberal  package  of
individualism, human rights, democracy and a free market. The social protests
that  swept  the  Western  world  in  2011  –  such  as  Occupy  Wall  Street  and  the
Spanish  15-M  movement  –  have  absolutely  nothing  against  democracy,
individualism  and  human  rights,  or  even  against  the  basic  principles  of  free-
market  economics.  Just  the  opposite  –  they  take  governments  to  task  for  not
living  up  to  these  liberal  ideals.  They  demand  that  the  market  be  really  free,
instead of being controlled and manipulated by corporations and banks ‘too big
to fail’. They call for truly representative democratic institutions, which will serve
the interests of ordinary citizens rather than of moneyed lobbyists and powerful
interest groups. Even those blasting stock exchanges and parliaments with the
harshest  criticism  don’t  have  a  viable  alternative  model  for  running  the  world.
While  it  is  a  favourite  pastime  of  Western  academics  and  activists  to  find  fault
with the liberal package, they have so far failed to come up with anything better.
China  seems  to  offer  a  much  more  serious  challenge  than  Western  social
protestors.  Despite  liberalising  its  politics  and  economics,  China  is  neither  a
democracy  nor  a  truly  free-market  economy,  which  does  not  prevent  it  from
becoming the economic giant of the twenty-first century. Yet this economic giant
casts a very small ideological shadow. Nobody seems to know what the Chinese
believe  these  days  –  including  the  Chinese  themselves.  In  theory  China  is  still
communist, but in practice it is nothing of the kind. Some Chinese thinkers and

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leaders  toy  with  a  return  to  Confucianism,  but  that’s  hardly  more  than  a
convenient  veneer.  This  ideological  vacuum  makes  China  the  most  promising
breeding  ground  for  the  new  techno-religions  emerging  from  Silicon  Valley
(which we will discuss in the following chapters). But these techno-religions, with
their belief in immortality and virtual paradises, would take at least a decade or
two  to  establish  themselves.  Hence  at  present,  China  doesn’t  pose  a  real
alternative  to  liberalism.  If  bankrupted  Greeks  despair  of  the  liberal  model  and
search for a substitute, ‘imitating the Chinese’ doesn’t mean much.
How  about  radical  Islam,  then?  Or  fundamentalist  Christianity,  messianic
Judaism  and  revivalist  Hinduism?  Whereas  the  Chinese  don’t  know  what  they
believe, religious fundamentalists know it only too well. More than a century after
Nietzsche  pronounced  Him  dead,  God  seems  to  be  making  a  comeback.  But
this is a mirage. God is dead – it just takes a while to get rid of the body. Radical
Islam  poses  no  serious  threat  to  the  liberal  package,  because  for  all  their
fervour, the zealots don’t really understand the world of the twenty-first century,
and have nothing relevant to say about the novel dangers and opportunities that
new technologies are generating all around us.
Religion  and  technology  always  dance  a  delicate  tango.  They  push  one
another,  depend  on  one  another  and  cannot  stray  too  far  away  from  one
another.  Technology  depends  on  religion,  because  every  invention  has  many
potential applications, and the engineers need some prophet to make the crucial
choice  and  point  towards  the  required  destination.  Thus  in  the  nineteenth
century  engineers  invented  locomotives,  radios  and  internal  combustion
engines. But as the twentieth century proved, you can use these very same tools
to  create  fascist  societies,  communist  dictatorships  and  liberal  democracies.
Without some religious convictions, the locomotives cannot decide where to go.
On  the  other  hand,  technology  often  defines  the  scope  and  limits  of  our
religious  visions,  like  a  waiter  that  demarcates  our  appetites  by  handing  us  a
menu.  New  technologies  kill  old  gods  and  give  birth  to  new  gods.  That’s  why
agricultural deities were different from hunter-gatherer spirits, why factory hands
fantasise  about  different  paradises  than  peasants  and  why  the  revolutionary
technologies  of  the  twenty-first  century  are  far  more  likely  to  spawn
unprecedented  religious  movements  than  to  revive  medieval  creeds.  Islamic
fundamentalists may repeat the mantra that ‘Islam is the answer’, but religions
that lose touch with the technological realities of the day lose their ability even to
understand the questions being asked. What will happen to the job market once
artificial intelligence outperforms humans in most cognitive tasks? What will be
the  political  impact  of  a  massive  new  class  of  economically  useless  people?
What  will  happen  to  relationships,  families  and  pension  funds  when

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nanotechnology and regenerative medicine turn eighty into the new fifty? What
will happen to human society when biotechnology enables us to have designer
babies, and to open unprecedented gaps between rich and poor?
You will not find the answers to any of these questions in the Qur’an or sharia
law,  nor  in  the  Bible  or  in  the  Confucian  Analects,  because  nobody  in  the
medieval Middle East or in ancient China knew much about computers, genetics
or nanotechnology. Radical Islam may promise an anchor of certainty in a world
of  technological  and  economic  storms  –  but  in  order  to  navigate  a  storm,  you
need a map and a rudder rather than just an anchor. Hence radical Islam may
appeal  to  people  born  and  raised  in  its  fold,  but  it  has  precious  little  to  offer
unemployed Spanish youths or anxious Chinese billionaires.
True,  hundreds  of  millions  may  nevertheless  go  on  believing  in  Islam,
Christianity  or  Hinduism.  But  numbers  alone  don’t  count  for  much  in  history.
History  is  often  shaped  by  small  groups  of  forward-looking  innovators  rather
than  by  the  backward-looking  masses.  Ten  thousand  years  ago  most  people
were hunter-gatherers and only a few pioneers in the Middle East were farmers.
Yet  the  future  belonged  to  the  farmers.  In  1850  more  than  90  per  cent  of
humans were peasants, and in the small villages along the Ganges, the Nile and
the Yangtze nobody knew anything about steam engines, railroads or telegraph
lines. Yet the fate of these peasants had already been sealed in Manchester and
Birmingham  by  the  handful  of  engineers,  politicians  and  financiers  who
spearheaded the Industrial Revolution. Steam engines, railroads and telegraphs
transformed  the  production  of  food,  textiles,  vehicles  and  weapons,  giving
industrial powers a decisive edge over traditional agricultural societies.
Even when the Industrial Revolution spread around the world and penetrated
up  the  Ganges,  Nile  and  Yangtze,  most  people  continued  to  believe  in  the
Vedas, the Bible, the Qur’an and the Analects  more  than  in  the  steam  engine.
As  today,  so  too  in  the  nineteenth  century  there  was  no  shortage  of  priests,
mystics  and  gurus  who  argued  that  they  alone  hold  the  solution  to  all  of
humanity’s  woes,  including  to  the  new  problems  created  by  the  Industrial
Revolution.  For  example,  between  the  1820s  and  1880s  Egypt  (backed  by
Britain) conquered Sudan, and tried to modernise the country and incorporate it
into the new international trade network. This destabilised traditional Sudanese
society,  creating  widespread  resentment  and  fostering  revolts.  In  1881  a  local
religious  leader,  Muhammad  Ahmad  bin  Abdallah,  declared  that  he  was  the
Mahdi (the Messiah), sent to establish the law of God on earth. His supporters
defeated  the  Anglo-Egyptian  army,  and  beheaded  its  commander  –  General
Charles  Gordon  –  in  a  gesture  that  shocked  Victorian  Britain.  They  then
established in Sudan an Islamic theocracy governed by sharia law, which lasted

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until 1898.
Meanwhile in India, Dayananda Saraswati headed a Hindu revival movement,
whose basic principle was that the Vedic scriptures are never wrong. In 1875 he
founded  the  Arya  Samaj  (Noble  Society),  dedicated  to  the  spreading  of  Vedic
knowledge  –  though  truth  be  told,  Dayananda  often  interpreted  the  Vedas  in  a
surprisingly  liberal  way,  supporting  for  example  equal  rights  for  women  long
before the idea became popular in the West.
Dayananda’s  contemporary,  Pope  Pius  IX,  had  much  more  conservative
views  about  women,  but  shared  Dayananda’s  admiration  for  superhuman
authority.  Pius  led  a  series  of  reforms  in  Catholic  dogma,  and  established  the
novel principle of papal infallibility, according to which the Pope can never err in
matters of faith (this seemingly medieval idea became binding Catholic dogma
only  in  1870,  eleven  years  after  Charles  Darwin  published  On  the  Origin  of
Species).
Thirty  years  before  the  Pope  discovered  that  he  is  incapable  of  making
mistakes,  a  failed  Chinese  scholar  called  Hong  Xiuquan  had  a  succession  of
religious visions. In these visions, God revealed that Hong was none other than
the  younger  brother  of  Jesus  Christ.  God  then  invested  Hong  with  a  divine
mission. He told Hong to expel the Manchu ‘demons’ that had ruled China since
the seventeenth century, and establish on earth the Great Peaceful Kingdom of
Heaven (Taiping Tiānguó). Hong’s message fired the imagination of millions of
desperate  Chinese,  who  were  shaken  by  China’s  defeats  in  the  Opium  Wars
and by the coming of modern industry and European imperialism. But Hong did
not lead them to a kingdom of peace. Rather, he led them against the Manchu
Qing  dynasty  in  the  Taiping  Rebellion  –  the  deadliest  war  of  the  nineteenth
century. From 1850 to 1864, at least 20 million people lost their lives; far more
than in the Napoleonic Wars or in the American Civil War.
Hundreds of millions clung to the religious dogmas of Hong, Dayananda, Pius
and  the  Mahdi  even  as  industrial  factories,  railroads  and  steamships  filled  the
world. Yet most of us don’t think about the nineteenth century as the age of faith.
When we think of nineteenth-century visionaries, we are far more likely to recall
Marx,  Engels  and  Lenin  than  the  Mahdi,  Pius  IX  or  Hong  Xiuquan.  And  rightly
so.  Though  in  1850  socialism  was  only  a  fringe  movement,  it  soon  gathered
momentum,  and  changed  the  world  in  far  more  profound  ways  than  the  self-
proclaimed  messiahs  of  China  and  Sudan.  If  you  count  on  national  health
services,  pension  funds  and  free  schools,  you  need  to  thank  Marx  and  Lenin
(and Otto von Bismarck) far more than Hong Xiuquan or the Mahdi.
Why  did  Marx  and  Lenin  succeed  where  Hong  and  the  Mahdi  failed?  Not
because  socialist  humanism  was  philosophically  more  sophisticated  than

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Islamic  and  Christian  theology,  but  rather  because  Marx  and  Lenin  devoted
more attention to understanding the technological and economic realities of their
time  than  to  perusing  ancient  texts  and  prophetic  dreams.  Steam  engines,
railroads,  telegraphs  and  electricity  created  unheard-of  problems  as  well  as
unprecedented  opportunities.  The  experiences,  needs  and  hopes  of  the  new
class  of  urban  proletariats  were  simply  too  different  from  those  of  biblical
peasants.  To  answer  these  needs  and  hopes,  Marx  and  Lenin  studied  how  a
steam  engine  functions,  how  a  coal  mine  operates,  how  railroads  shape  the
economy and how electricity influences politics.
Lenin  was  once  asked  to  define  communism  in  a  single  sentence.
‘Communism  is  power  to  worker  councils,’  he  said,  ‘plus  electrification  of  the
whole  country.’  There  can  be  no  communism  without  electricity,  without
railroads, without radio. You couldn’t establish a communist regime in sixteenth-
century  Russia,  because  communism  necessitates  the  concentration  of
information  and  resources  in  one  hub.  ‘From  each  according  to  his  ability,  to
each according to his needs’ only works when produce can easily be collected
and distributed across vast distances, and when activities can be monitored and
coordinated over entire countries.
Marx and his followers understood the new technological realities and the new
human  experiences,  so  they  had  relevant  answers  to  the  new  problems  of
industrial  society,  as  well  as  original  ideas  about  how  to  benefit  from  the
unprecedented  opportunities.  The  socialists  created  a  brave  new  religion  for  a
brave new world. They promised salvation through technology and economics,
thus  establishing  the  first  techno-religion  in  history,  and  changing  the
foundations  of  ideological  discourse.  Before  Marx,  people  defined  and  divided
themselves according to their views about God, not about production methods.
Since Marx, questions of technology and economic structure became far more
important  and  divisive  than  debates  about  the  soul  and  the  afterlife.  In  the
second  half  of  the  twentieth  century,  humankind  almost  obliterated  itself  in  an
argument  about  production  methods.  Even  the  harshest  critics  of  Marx  and
Lenin  adopted  their  basic  attitude  towards  history  and  society,  and  began
thinking about technology and production much more carefully than about God
and heaven.
In the mid-nineteenth century, few people were as perceptive as Marx, hence
only  a  few  countries  underwent  rapid  industrialisation.  These  few  countries
conquered the world. Most societies failed to understand what was happening,
and  they  therefore  missed  the  train  of  progress.  Dayananda’s  India  and  the
Mahdi’s  Sudan  remained  far  more  preoccupied  with  God  than  with  steam
engines,  hence  they  were  occupied  and  exploited  by  industrial  Britain.  Only  in

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the last few years has India managed to make significant progress in closing the
economic and geopolitical gap separating it from Britain. Sudan is still struggling
far behind.
In  the  early  twenty-first  century  the  train  of  progress  is  again  pulling  out  of  the
station – and this will probably be the last train ever to leave the station called