Harari: how our technocapitalism has killed your soul

In our time we are immersed in a “powerful reality” that increasingly invades, pervades and conditions our lives. Until the first decades of the last century, our relationships and information were limited to personal contacts, school, political events, which imposed themselves almost without our participation, and the press, which told us, in a very partial way, about the world. Then came radio, then television, the Internet, the smartphone, and finally artificial intelligence (AI). Technology and information have become very powerful and highly invasive tools that overwhelmingly enter our lives modifying and, increasingly, shaping our minds, not for personal growth, but with the sole aim of conforming them to the multifaceted single thought, functional only and exclusively to the ruling classes.

Finance, multinational corporations, international institutions and governments (now almost entirely subservient to supranational powers) work relentlessly to develop a global society of control. As a result, the dignity, personality, humanity, formation and morality of the human being of the third millennium are constantly being raped by these particularly invasive socio-economic models devoid of any ethical message or respect for the human person.

We have, for some time now, entered the age of consumerism and hedonism; we have developed by pursuing the model of continuous growth, programmed obsolescence, efficiency, competitiveness, and now we have entered a new era, the transhumanist era.

Technology, digitization, and artificial intelligence are merging with human biology, with a single goal: the creation of the “superman,” a being whose physical, psychic, and mnemonic potentialities are multiplied to unimaginable levels to the point of hypothesizing... immortality.

Here appears a blatant contradiction of the “system” that has been bombarding us for years, through all the media, about the risk of overpopulation and environmental sustainability; we have been called by well-known futurologists “useless eaters” and “parasites of the planet” who consume without creating anything.

A question arises at this point: is it not the case that the superhumans, who may, perhaps, even become immortal, will be only a select “elite of the elect,” while everyone else will be relegated to the miserable role of subordinate class and servants... on a “fixed term” basis?

“You will have nothing left and you will be happy” is becoming a refrain of the World Economic Forum (WEF) that enters deeper and deeper into the collective imagination in order to prepare us for new future conditions, those well illustrated in the project called “Great Reset.”

Illuminating in this regard are the statements of famous transhumanist futurologists, first and foremost Yuval Noah Harari - an ideologue and point of reference of the WEF and its president and founder Klaus Schwab - who in his book “Homo Deus” makes some quite explicit and decidedly disturbing statements; we quote some of them:

“It will be necessary to intervene in our biochemistry and reengineer our bodies. We are working on that. It can be debated whether it is good or bad, but it seems that the second great project of the 21st Century--ensuring global happiness--will include a restructuring of Homo Sapiens from its foundations so that it can enjoy endless pleasure.”

“However, when technology allows us to reengineer human minds, Homo Sapiens will disappear....and turn into Homo Deus”

“For three hundred years the world has been dominated by humanism that sacralizes life, happiness, and the power of Homo Sapiens. The attempt to achieve immortality, eternal bliss and divinity merely takes long-standing humanist ideals to their logical conclusion.”

“No investigation of our divine perspectives can ignore our animal past or our relationships with other animals -- for the relationship between humans and animals is the best model we have for future relationships between superhumans and (mere) humans. Want to know how super-intelligent androids might treat humans ordinarily made of flesh and bone? Better start investigating how humans treat their less intelligent animal cousins.”

“How did Homo Sapiens come to believe in the humanist faith that the universe revolves around humankind and humans are the source of all meaning and authority?”

“And if indeed humanism is in danger, what will take its place?”

“Perhaps even the collapse of humanism will benefit.”

“There is no scientific evidence that, unlike pigs, sapiens have souls.”

At this point, we “humans”, what can we counter to this philosophy of materialist power where it seems there is no longer any place for either the soul or the traditional values of our humanism?

They want us to overcome those principles that, until now, have, at least in part, oriented us toward goodness and justice, toward a social life made up of relationships, in which feelings and ethics are still its founding pillar.

An alternative proposal is required that takes us back to those universal (ethical) values that transcend morality and even religion: the good, the right, the harmonious, the beautiful. They cannot be enclosed in any ideological or institutional enclosure, because they are inherent in our deepest essence as thinking beings, and in this nature of ours, we must seek the meaning and value: if any, of our existence.

In order to pursue this search for identity, both anthropological and individual, we must first try to understand whether ethics can contain its own intrinsic force capable of manifesting itself in real life energy that “acts” in the life of human beings.

In this period of great conflicts, social economic and cultural, it is important and necessary to draw attention to the fundamental concept of the nature of ethics understood as a primary and indispensable point of reference: where it originates, how it is formed, but above all what can give it logical meaning.

The last point is the most important, the most immediate and, perhaps, the most easily resolved (no dogmas, religious or moralistic evaluations, let alone scientific ones, just logic).

A few years ago, an article appeared in a national newspaper headlined, “Can ethics exist without God?”; this question summarized, perhaps, the fundamental concept about the meaning and meaning of life.

Values can exist “in nature” as (real) energy that directs and pushes in an ever-increasing and higher organization (evolution) that tends toward harmony (and thus toward God), or they can have only a relative value constructed by humans, functional only to good coexistence and survival of the species.

In this case, I would call them relative since different and varied are the cultures with their respective values:

there is no truly aggregating common denominator, nor are religions that instead of uniting, irreparably divide; their “truths” of faith represent more elements of conflict than of union since, it seems, the “revelations” have been more than one and not exactly concordant.

I find logical, at this point, the need to evaluate the problem from the only two possible points of view: as a believer (person of faith, in a general sense) or as an atheist (secular would be a misnomer in this case).

This distinction is important because it places us on two different and antithetical points of view and allows us to understand whether-and in which of the two views-ethics finds its logical justification.

Let us pose a simple example: a person walking in the evening on a deserted street sees a large bag on the ground, picks it up and finds a lot of money in it with the owner's papers.

A choice is imposed: to apply, or not, the value of honesty and thus justice?

Let us now evaluate the answer from the two points of view. Assumption: the street was dark and deserted, and the person is assured that he is unseen and, therefore, accountable to no one but himself.

Believer's point of view: I find it logical for the person to return the money, since not to do so would lead him away from the source of truth and justice that represents the true essence of life, the “harmonious” link with transcendence; to reject values is to refuse to participate in the “true” life. So better to remain in “harmony” with God than to go out and spend a few tens of thousands on futile and fallacious material things (I am not talking, in this case, about fear of God, fear of hell, etc., I am talking about being in harmony with God).

Atheist's point of view: I find it logical...that he should keep them; I see no plausible reason for him to give up so much money that could improve the quality of his life-it's the only one he has and, for him, it's the only one that matters.

Conclusion: without a connection to a higher reality or other than this life, values do not find in themselves an intrinsic consistency that would self-justify them.

According to this logic, if shared, a deeply ethical person either possesses a faith in a God that justifies him or, if consistent, he should abandon his values as a life ideal and follow an exclusively utilitarian and, therefore, selfish logic.

I intend to point out here, since a misunderstanding may arise, that I do not consider atheists to be thugs or potential criminals; on the contrary, the best and good-natured people I have found far more frequently in people who thought of themselves as nonbelievers (as the Parable of the Good Samaritan in the Gospels teaches).

I am, like many, a person “on a quest,” but I believe that a life without values is unacceptable and that values themselves cannot make sense if disconnected from an “ordering principle that acts,” understood as a tangible manifestation of a transcendent God.

The search for a symbiotic process becomes indispensable in order to seek an eventual attunement that will allow us to perceive a meaning that will orient us in our material life, toward goodness and harmony with the prospect of entering a truer and deeper reality.

If this prospect, which for many is the only one that gives meaning to our existence, were not there, then life, for what it can offer us, in its precariousness and limitedness, would be nothing but the most pointless of cruelties.

We do not know where the truth is, but surely beauty, goodness, and harmony are the only goals to be pursued in attempting to give value to our living.

With this in mind, the most important reference is surely the Christian message that enlightens us from the Gospels where intelligence, refinement of thought, modernity and humanity reach the highest levels conferring unparalleled dignity to the human being. Unfortunately, we have no certainty; on the contrary, the ugliness of the world is driving us further and further away from the perception that life is a wonderful experience worth living... anyway.

I believe that the ethical culture of the third millennium will be played out in the confrontation/dialogue between two lines of thought: faith and materialist and transhumanist rationalism/relativism; I wrote faith and not religion, since the latter, in its various forms, has created nothing but divisions and conflicts in the world, making itself the bearer of an absolute truth, which has nothing absolute about it at all.

Religions, especially religious institutions, to this day, represent nothing but a power that feeds itself and are far from any process that can grow true spirituality and dignity in people.

These reflections are more relevant than ever, because they allow us to understand the true nature of the ruling classes which, as in Harari's case, openly manifest themselves toward a purely materialistic and therefore necessarily utilitarian line of thinking; from them, we cannot expect any action in the interest, let alone respect, of the human community. It is in the philosophical and values dialectic, with this rationalist view of life, that we must succeed in demonstrating the possible primacy of the good and justice.

This cannot be implemented only through religions that have a predominantly dogmatic and indemonstrable position; by following a logical and with a careful empirical analysis of existence, I believe we can get to the point of demonstrating that it is not irrational to think of a transcendent reality that can involve us in a higher dimension that gives dignity and fills our lives with meaning.

At this point, it becomes vital to try to understand what kind of evolution human beings can move toward, with what potential and with what tools to find that meaning of life that grounds in ethics its most complete and fulfilling realization.

Either we can make these prospects attractive and motivating, or it will be the victory of transhumanism and the death of the soul.

Source: comedonchisciotte.org

Translation by Costantino Ceoldo