Homo Deus: a brief History of Tomorrow

Particularly  telling  are  civilisation-style  strategy  games,  such  as  Minecraft,
The  Settlers  of  Catan  or  Sid  Meier’s  Civilization.  The  game  may  be  set  in  the
Middle Ages, in the Stone Age or in some imaginary fairy land, but the principles

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always  remain  the  same  –  and  they  are  always  capitalist.  Your  aim  is  to
establish a city, a kingdom or maybe an entire civilisation. You begin from a very
modest  base,  perhaps  just  a  village  and  its  nearby  fields.  Your  assets  provide
you with an initial income of wheat, wood, iron or gold. You then have to invest
this  income  wisely.  You  have  to  choose  between  unproductive  but  still
necessary tools such as soldiers, and productive assets such as more villages,
fields and mines. The winning strategy is usually to invest the barest minimum in
non-productive  essentials,  while  maximising  your  productive  assets.
Establishing  additional  villages  means  that  next  turn  you  will  have  a  larger
income that would enable you not only to buy more soldiers (if necessary), but
simultaneously  to  increase  your  investment  in  production.  Soon  you  could
upgrade  your  villages  to  towns,  build  universities,  harbours  and  factories,
explore the seas and oceans, establish your civilisation and win the game.
The Ark Syndrome
Yet can the economy actually keep growing for ever? Won’t it eventually run out
of resources – and grind to a halt? In order to ensure perpetual growth, we must
somehow discover an inexhaustible store of resources.
One  solution  is  to  explore  and  conquer  new  lands  and  territories.  For
centuries,  the  growth  of  the  European  economy  and  the  expansion  of  the
capitalist  system  indeed  relied  heavily  on  overseas  imperial  conquests.
However,  there  are  only  so  many  islands  and  continents  on  earth.  Some
entrepreneurs  hope  eventually  to  explore  and  conquer  new  planets  and  even
galaxies,  but  in  the  meantime,  the  modern  economy  has  had  to  find  a  better
method of expanding.
Science has provided modernity with the alternative. The fox economy cannot
grow,  because  foxes  don’t  know  how  to  produce  more  rabbits.  The  rabbit
economy  stagnates,  because  rabbits  cannot  make  the  grass  grow  faster.  But
the human economy can grow because humans can discover new materials and
sources of energy.
The traditional view of the world as a pie of a fixed size presupposes there are
only two kinds of resources in the world: raw materials and energy. But in truth,
there are three kinds of resources: raw materials, energy and knowledge. Raw
materials  and  energy  are  exhaustible  –  the  more  you  use,  the  less  you  have.
Knowledge, in contrast, is a growing resource – the more you use, the more you
have. Indeed, when you increase your stock of knowledge, it can give you more
raw  materials  and  energy  as  well.  If  I  invest  $100  million  searching  for  oil  in

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Alaska  and  I  find  it,  then  I  now  have  more  oil,  but  my  grandchildren  will  have
less of it. In contrast, if I invest $100 million researching solar energy, and I find
a new and more efficient way of harnessing it, then both I and my grandchildren
will have more energy.
For  thousands  of  years,  the  scientific  road  to  growth  was  blocked  because
people believed that holy scriptures and ancient traditions already contained all
the  important  knowledge  the  world  had  to  offer.  A  corporation  that  believed  all
the oil fields in the world had already been discovered would not waste time and
money searching for oil. Similarly, a human culture that believed it already knew
everything worth knowing would not bother searching for new knowledge. This
was the position of most premodern human civilisations. However, the Scientific
Revolution  freed  humankind  from  this  conviction.  The  greatest  scientific
discovery was the discovery of ignorance. Once humans realised how little they
knew  about  the  world,  they  suddenly  had  a  very  good  reason  to  seek  new
knowledge, which opened up the scientific road to progress.
With  each  passing  generation,  science  helped  discover  fresh  sources  of
energy,  new  kinds  of  raw  material,  better  machinery  and  novel  production
methods.  Consequently,  in  2016  humankind  commands  far  more  energy  and
raw materials than ever before, and production skyrockets. Inventions such as
the  steam  engine,  the  internal  combustion  engine  and  the  computer  have
created  whole  new  industries  from  scratch.  As  we  look  twenty  years  to  the
future, we confidently expect to produce and consume far more in 2036 than we
do  today.  We  trust  nanotechnology,  genetic  engineering  and  artificial
intelligence  to  revolutionise  production  yet  again,  and  to  open  whole  new
sections in our ever-expanding supermarkets.
We  therefore  have  a  good  chance  of  overcoming  the  problem  of  resource
scarcity. The real nemesis of the modern economy is ecological collapse. Both
scientific  progress  and  economic  growth  take  place  within  a  brittle  biosphere,
and as they gather steam, so the shock waves destabilise the ecology. In order
to provide every person in the world with the same standard of living as affluent
Americans,  we  would  need  a  few  more  planets  –  but  we  only  have  this  one.  If
progress and growth do end up destroying the ecosystem, the cost will be dear
not  merely  to  vampires,  foxes  and  rabbits,  but  also  to  Sapiens.  An  ecological
meltdown will cause economic ruin, political turmoil, a fall in human standards of
living, and it might threaten the very existence of human civilisation.
We  could  lessen  the  danger  by  slowing  down  the  pace  of  progress  and
growth. If this year investors expect to get a 6 per cent return on their portfolios,
in ten years they will be satisfied with a 3 per cent return, in twenty years only 1

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per cent, and in thirty years the economy will stop growing and we’ll be happy
with  what  we’ve  already  got.  Yet  the  creed  of  growth  firmly  objects  to  such  a
heretical idea. Instead, it suggests we should run even faster. If our discoveries
destabilise  the  ecosystem  and  threaten  humanity,  then  we  should  discover
something  to  protect  ourselves.  If  the  ozone  layer  dwindles  and  exposes  us  to
skin  cancer,  we  should  invent  better  sunscreen  and  better  cancer  treatments,
thereby  also  promoting  the  growth  of  new  sunscreen  factories  and  cancer
centres. If all the new industries pollute the atmosphere and the oceans, causing
global warming and mass extinctions, then we should build for ourselves virtual
worlds and hi-tech sanctuaries that will provide us with all the good things in life
even if the planet is as hot, dreary and polluted as hell.
Beijing  has  already  become  so  polluted  that  people  avoid  the  outdoors,  and
wealthy Chinese pay thousands of dollars for indoor air-purifying systems. The
super-rich  build  protective  contraptions  even  over  their  yards.  In  2013  the
International School of Beijing, which caters for the children of foreign diplomats
and upper-class Chinese, went a step further, and constructed a giant $5 million
dome over its six tennis courts and its playing fields. Other schools are following
suit, and the Chinese air-purification market is booming. Of course most Beijing
residents cannot afford such luxuries in their homes, nor can they afford to send
their kids to the International School.
3
Humankind  finds  itself  locked  into  a  double  race.  On  the  one  hand,  we  feel
compelled to speed up the pace of scientific progress and economic growth. A
billion  Chinese  and  a  billion  Indians  want  to  live  like  middle-class  Americans,
and  they  see  no  reason  why  they  should  put  their  dreams  on  hold  when  the
Americans are unwilling to give up their SUVs and shopping malls. On the other
hand,  we  must  stay  at  least  one  step  ahead  of  ecological  Armageddon.
Managing  this  double  race  becomes  more  difficult  by  the  year,  because  every
stride  that  brings  the  Delhi  slum-dwellers  closer  to  the  American  Dream  also
brings the planet closer to the brink.
The  good  news  is  that  for  hundreds  of  years  humankind  has  enjoyed  a
growing  economy  without  falling  prey  to  ecological  meltdown.  Many  other
species have perished in the process, and humans too have faced a number of
economic crises and ecological disasters, but so far we have always managed
to  pull  through.  Yet  future  success  is  not  guaranteed  by  some  law  of  nature.
Who knows if science will always be able to simultaneously save the economy
from  freezing  and  the  ecology  from  boiling.  And  since  the  pace  just  keeps
accelerating, the margins for error keep narrowing. If previously it was enough to
invent  something  amazing  once  a  century,  today  we  need  to  come  up  with  a
miracle every two years.

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We  should  also  be  concerned  that  an  ecological  apocalypse  might  have
different consequences for different human castes. There is no justice in history.
When disaster strikes, the poor almost always suffer far more than the rich, even
if  the  rich  caused  the  tragedy  in  the  first  place.  Global  warming  is  already
affecting the lives of poor people in arid African countries more than the lives of
affluent Westerners. Paradoxically, the very power of science may increase the
danger, because it makes the rich complacent.
Consider  greenhouse  gas  emissions.  Most  scholars  and  an  increasing
number of politicians recognise the reality of global warming and the magnitude
of  the  danger.  Yet  this  recognition  has  so  far  failed  to  change  our  actual
behaviour.  We  talk  a  lot  about  global  warming,  but  in  practice  humankind  is
unwilling  to  make  serious  economic,  social  or  political  sacrifices  to  stop  the
catastrophe. Between 2000 and 2010 emissions didn’t decrease at all. On the
contrary,  they  increased  at  an  annual  rate  of  2.2  per  cent,  compared  with  an
annual increase rate of 1.3 per cent between 1970 and 2000.
4
The 1997 Kyoto
protocol on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions aimed merely to slow down
global  warming  rather  than  stop  it,  yet  the  world’s  number  one  polluter  –  the
United  States  –  refused  to  ratify  it,  and  has  made  no  attempt  to  significantly
reduce its emissions, for fear of slowing down its economic growth.
5
All the talk about global warming, and all the conferences, summits and protocols, have so far failed to curb
global greenhouse emissions. If you look closely at the graph you see that emissions go down only during
periods of economic crises and stagnation. Thus the small downturn in greenhouse emissions in 2008–9
was due not to the signing of the Copenhagen Accord, but to the global financial crisis.
Source: Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), European Commission.

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In December 2015 more ambitious targets were set in the Paris Agreement,
which calls for limiting average temperature increase to 1.5 degrees above pre-
industrial levels. But many of the painful steps necessary to reach this aim have
conveniently  been  postponed  to  after  2030,  or  even  to  the  second  half  of  the
twenty-first  century,  effectively  passing  the  hot  potato  to  the  next  generation.
Current administrations would be able to reap immediate political benefits from
looking green, while the heavy political price of reducing emissions (and slowing
growth) is bequeathed to future administrations. Even so, at the time of writing
(January 2016) it is far from certain that the USA and other leading polluters will
ratify the Paris Agreement. Too many politicians and voters believe that as long
as  the  economy  grows,  scientists  and  engineers  could  always  save  us  from
doomsday. When it comes to climate change, many growth true-believers do not
just hope for miracles – they take it for granted that the miracles will happen.
How rational is it to risk the future of humankind on the assumption that future
scientists  will  make  some  unknown  discoveries?  Most  of  the  presidents,
ministers  and  CEOs  who  run  the  world  are  very  rational  people.  Why  are  they
willing  to  take  such  a  gamble?  Maybe  because  they  don’t  think  they  are
gambling on their own personal future. Even if bad comes to worse and science
cannot  hold  off  the  deluge,  engineers  could  still  build  a  hi-tech  Noah’s  Ark  for
the  upper  caste,  while  leaving  billions  of  others  to  drown.  The  belief  in  this  hi-
tech Ark is currently one of the biggest threats to the future of humankind and of
the entire ecosystem. People who believe in the hi-tech Ark should not be put in
charge of the global ecology, for the same reason that people who believe in a
heavenly afterlife should not be given nuclear weapons.
And what about the poor? Why aren’t they protesting? If and when the deluge
comes, they will bear the full cost of it. However, they will also be the first to bear
the  cost  of  economic  stagnation.  In  a  capitalist  world,  the  lives  of  the  poor
improve only when the economy grows. Hence they are unlikely to support any
steps  to  reduce  future  ecological  threats  that  are  based  on  slowing  down
present-day  economic  growth.  Protecting  the  environment  is  a  very  nice  idea,
but  those  who  cannot  pay  their  rent  are  worried  about  their  overdraft  far  more
than about melting ice caps.
The Rat Race
Even  if  we  go  on  running  fast  enough  and  manage  to  fend  off  both  economic
collapse and ecological meltdown, the race itself creates huge problems. On the
individual level, it results in high levels of stress and tension. After centuries of

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economic  growth  and  scientific  progress,  life  should  have  become  calm  and
peaceful,  at  least  in  the  most  advanced  countries.  If  our  ancestors  knew  what
tools and resources stand ready at our command, they would have surmised we
must be enjoying celestial tranquillity, free of all cares and worries. The truth is
very different. Despite all our achievements, we feel a constant pressure to do
and produce even more.
We  blame  ourselves,  our  boss,  the  mortgage,  the  government,  the  school
system.  But  it’s  not  really  their  fault.  It’s  the  modern  deal,  which  we  have  all
signed up to on the day we were born. In the premodern world, people were akin
to  lowly  clerks  in  a  socialist  bureaucracy.  They  punched  their  card,  and  then
waited for somebody else to do something. In the modern world, we humans run
the business. So we are under constant pressure day and night.
On  the  collective  level,  the  race  manifests  itself  in  ceaseless  upheavals.
Whereas  previously  social  and  political  systems  endured  for  centuries,  today
every generation destroys the old world and builds a new one in its place. As the