Truth is not eternal & objective, it’s temporary & subjective

The truth is not something that humans can discover through observation and study of reality, as the materialists claim; it is a point of view that we deduce in light of the information that is available to us at any particular point of time. 

As the information available to us evolves, grows and transforms, the nature of what we perceive as the truth changes. What was the truth in the ancient age, became hearsay in the middle ages and mythology in the modern age. All that we accept as the truth today will get labelled as lies, fiction and mythology at some point of time in the future. 

Mankind’s quest for the truth is never-ending. People will always be questing for the ultimate truth, which can never be falsified, but they will never find it.

Lies and fiction are the fountainhead of civilization

“As we have seen again and again throughout history, in a completely free information fight, truth tends to lose. To tilt the balance in favour of truth, networks must develop and maintain strong self-correcting mechanisms that reward truth telling. These self-correcting mechanisms are costly, but if you want to get the truth, you must invest in them.”

~ Yuval Noah Harari in Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

Harari is right when he says that “in a completely free information fight, truth tends to lose.” Today, most people accept as the universal truth that in a society where there is freedom of speech and a vibrant mainstream media industry, the politics and culture will be driven by “facts.” But that is never the case. In such societies the facts tend to lose, and the news cycle, or the politics and culture, are driven by propaganda and pseudo-history (lies, absurdities, fictions, philosophies and mythologies). 

The masses in countries with freedom of speech and thriving mainstream media companies are as deeply brainwashed as those who live in totalitarian countries.

But this is not a new development—all civilizations of the past were founded on lies, absurdities, mythologies, fictions, unprovable philosophies and utopian visions. There has never been a society founded on the basis of truth. Truth is unknowable and certainty is impossible. The human capacity to lie and believe in lies has always been the fountainhead of all tribes, cults, nations and civilizations.

Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World

“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”

The above line is, in my opinion, the most thought provoking one in Samuel P. Huntington’s book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World. 

In history books, we find accounts of between 50 to 70 major empires which once ruled large parts of the world. All of them were founded by warlike people who possessed the capacity to unleash unimaginable violence to crush and enslave other people and conquer their land.

In our time, due to the rising popularity of progressive, libertarian, postmodern and woke philosophies, most people have forgotten the fundamental fact of history that the Western empire was carved through violence. People blindly accept the myth that the West won in the last 250 years because of democracy and free trade. 

We should not fall for the notion that democracy and free trade lead to civilizational success. In the 18th and 19th centuries, when the West expanded its powers, the Western nations were neither democratic, nor free traders. Democracy and free trade became popular in the 20th century and since then the West has been declining. 

We should listen to Huntington when he says that powerful civilizations are forged by “superiority in applying organized violence.”

Peter Thiel’s Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

I just finished reading Peter Thiel’s book: Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future. The book is full of interesting lines. Here’s a sample: 

“The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.”

“Every culture has a myth of decline from some golden age, and almost all peoples throughout history have been pessimists. Even today pessimism still dominates huge parts of the world. An indefinite pessimist looks out onto a bleak future, but he has no idea what to do about it. This describes Europe since the early 1970s, when the continent succumbed to undirected bureaucratic drift. Today the whole Eurozone is in slow-motion crisis, and nobody is in charge. The European Central Bank doesn’t stand for anything but improvisation: the U.S. Treasury prints “In God We Trust” on the dollar; the ECB might as well print “Kick the Can Down the Road” on the euro. Europeans just react to events as they happen and hope things don’t get worse.”

“The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator.” 

“Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina by observing: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Business is the opposite. All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.” 

“Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.”

“That’s why hiring consultants doesn’t work. Part-time employees don’t work. Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day. If you’re deciding whether to bring someone on board, the decision is binary. Ken Kesey was right: you’re either on the bus or off the bus.”

Socialism, Capitalism and the Hegelian Mythology of Reason

The Western systems of capitalism and socialism are unworkable, because they are based on the pseudo-secular Hegelian mythologies which stipulate that history is the progress of human condition till perfection is attained through the dawn of Age of Reason. 

Hegel defined three epochs of history: the Age of the Orient, the Age of the Greeks, and the Age of Reason. The Western capitalists and the socialists have been at war with each other in the last 100 years. Some of the most violent conflicts of the 20th century have been the wars between these two Western groups. The capitalists claim that they are the world’s only repository of reason. They label the socialists as nihilists, irrationalists and collectivists. The socialists counter them with the claim that only socialism and communism can usher mankind into the mythical Age of Reason, and they label the capitalists as imperialists, bourgeois and anti-poor. 

Both are wrong. The so-called Age of Reason is a myth because the working of the human mind and the nature of the universe are beyond human understanding. We have no way of identifying which choices we make on an individual level or on the level of society are based on reason and which are based on mythologies, emotions, delusions, fears, and political and social agendas. Humans are incapable of looking at the universe through only reason. Hegel believed that he was the world’s most perfect embodiment of reason. But his philosophy is wholly irrational and mythological.

On Capitalism & Socialism

Capitalism and socialism are good at accumulating power, wealth and information. But they are not successful in acquiring wisdom. Being bereft of wisdom, the culture in capitalist and socialist societies is an easy prey to atheism and nihilism.

Gad Saad’s The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense

I highly recommend Professor Gad Saad’s book The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense. Here are five quotes from the book:

“The Ideological Conformity of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity Progressives seem to believe that if they say the words “diversity, inclusion, and equity” often enough, all problems will be solved. But of course only certain types of diversity, inclusion, and equity matter. Diversity based on race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity are foundational sacraments in the Cult of Diversity. On the other hand, intellectual and political diversity are heretical ideas that need to be expunged.”

“Any system that is built on a false understanding of human nature is doomed to fail. Building a society where the primary objective is to protect one’s fragile self-esteem from the dangers of competition will only lead to a society of weakness, entitlement, and apathy. Life is necessarily competitive; society is necessarily hierarchical. It does no one any favors to pursue a utopian vision of society where no one’s feelings are hurt.”

“Hope is an elixir of life. It is the engine that propels us forward in our pursuit of countless goals, all of which might otherwise be impossible to undertake if we were bereft of hope.”

“The radical snake always ends up eating its tail. ISIS kills all Muslims who are not Muslim enough. Progressives denounce all those who are not progressive enough.”

“Progressives consider it laudable to criticize, mock, or insult all religious beliefs—except for the one untouchable faith. To attack Islam in the West is “Islamophobic,” “racist,” and “bigoted.”"

On Michael Pillsbury’s book The Hundred-Year Marathon

In his book, The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower, Michael Pillsbury opines that in China there exists a secret political cabal which is assiduously working on a long term plan to topple the USA from the position of the world’s superpower. 

This would imply that the leaders of the last Chinese imperial dynasty, the Great Qing, which was overthrown in 1918, and post-Imperial leaders like Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and the leaders of the post-Tiananmen Square massacre China were all part of the same secretive cabal which is determined to overthrow the USA and capture the world. 

This does not seem likely. It is impossible to visualize arch-enemies like Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping being part of the same cabal and having a singular geopolitical ambition. However, in the last two decades, China has shown a clear intention, if not the vision, to play a significant role in global geopolitics and economy. 

In my opinion, China’s marathon to capture the world from the USA began 20 to 25 years ago, and in 2024 it has achieved this goal to a significant extent. It is hard to predict what the world will be like by 2050, but it is likely that by then America will cease to be a superpower. But America’s fall might not automatically translate into China’s rise. 

In his book, Pillsbury presents China as a master of geopolitical deception. He writes: 

“Chinese literature on strategy from Sun Tzu through Mao Tse-tung has emphasized deception more than many military doctrines. Chinese deception is oriented mainly toward inducing the enemy to act inexpediently and less toward protecting the integrity of one’s own plans. In other cultures, particularly Western, deception is used primarily with the intention of ensuring that one’s own forces can realize their maximum striking potential … the prevalent payoff of deception for the Chinese is that one does not have to use one’s own forces.… Chinese tend to shroud their means in secrecy and not publicize the day-to-day activities of those in power; for surprise and deception are assumed to be vital.”

I think both the USA and China are masters of deception. Also, it is likely that when the USA ceases to be a superpower, China will decline, and that will pave way for multiple other centers of power to emerge. The age of a single superpower dominating the world is over. The world will not see America or Chinese hegemony in the times to come. 

Pillsbury’s book is fast-paced and entertaining but his theory that the Chinese have a secret cabal with a 100-year-old plan to overthrow the USA is unbelievable in light of China’s tumultuous and violent history in the 20th century.

Civilizations & Their Sense of Time

How different the major civilizations are can be judged by examining their sense of time. 

When Hindus are asked to date a historical event, they will place it in the four Yugas: Satya Yuga, the Treta Yuga, the Dwapara Yuga and the Kali Yuga. To date the entire universe, the Hindus will use cycles of time much greater than Yugas: Kalpa and Manvantara.

When the Chinese are asked to date a historical event, they will place it within one of their fourteen imperial dynasties. The first Chinese dynasty was founded by Yu the Great in 2070 BC, and the last Chinese dynasty fell in 1912, with the abdication of the Xuantong Emperor.

When Westerners are asked to date a historical event, they will place it before or after the birth of Jesus Christ (BC or AD). For the events that took place during the AD phase, they will prefer to come up with an exact date in their Gregorian calendar. 

When the Islamic practitioners are asked to date a historical event, they will consider only those which happened after the advent of Islam, and dismiss the events before that.

On The Digital Dystopia

The digital technology revolution is the biggest scam of the last 100 years. It has led to easy access to information and services but this easy access has not translated into more freedom, prosperity, wisdom, privacy and better quality of life for mankind. 

Instead, digital technologies have enabled an unprecedented increase in the power of the political and financial elites by providing them solutions to monitor, tax and regulate the choices and actions of the masses. The political leaders, deep state bureaucracies and the oligarchs who own the digital technologies are today’s feudal lords, and they view the rest of mankind as the irresponsible and untrustworthy serfs who must be indoctrinated into believing that they live in a free and fair society, even though they toil for petty wages and every aspect of their life is being tightly surveilled, taxed and regulated.

The average person in today’s digitally connected world works harder, pays higher taxes, enjoys less freedom and privacy, and possesses less wisdom and experience than his counterparts prior to the digital revolution. The digital utopia, which the founders of the Silicon Valley mega-corporations promised in the 1980s and 90s, has hit mankind in the 21st century as an Orwellian dystopia where some are feudal lords (the Orwellian Big Brothers) while most are brainwashed and toiling serfs.

AI & the transformation of humans into Galactic Gods

Scientists estimate that there are between 200 billion to 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. The number of humans on earth is mere 8.2 billion. This implies that for every human on earth, there exist between 25 to thousands of galaxies in the universe.

If mankind’s foray into the realm of Artificial Intelligence is successful, then a stage might come when humans attain superhuman powers, and evolve or transform into a sort of omniscient and omnipotent God who is capable of controlling entire galaxies. 

We can foresee a future in which every individual on earth has been empowered by Ai, making him omniscient and omnipotent, and is the God of a number of galaxies. Being the God of the galaxies might be the ultimate destiny and purpose of mankind.

A note on Michael Crichton’s State of Fear

“False fears are a plague, a modern plague!” ~ Michael Crichton, State of Fear

I agree with Michael Crichton that false fears are a modern plague. What he didn’t say in his book State of Fear is that the American government, academia and mainstream media are the world’s biggest developers and propagators of these false fears or plagues. 

The American establishment understands that they cannot dominate the world by their military power, so they try to subdue other nations spreading false fears of climate change, ice age, global warming, catastrophic oil depletion, global pandemic, ozone layer depletion and much else. 

The latest false plague that the Americans are spreading is that of AI. They want the rest of the world to believe that the world is on the verge of being taken over by a super-smart software system. 

As long as the global mainstream media and the top global institutions like the UNO, WHO, World Bank and IMF remain under American control and the American dollar remains the world’s de facto reserve currency, we will remain in the grip of “Made in America” false fears and plagues. 

In his book State of Fear, Michael Crichton does a great job of debunking some of the most virulent fears or plagues that have come out of America in the last 70 years. I never liked Jurassic Park, which is Crichton's most famous book. I think State of Fear is his best book. 

Here’s another worthy quote from Crichton’s book: 

“Like a bearded nut in robes on the sidewalk proclaiming the end of the world is near, the media is just doing what makes it feel good, not reporting hard facts. We need to start seeing the media as a bearded nut on the sidewalk, shouting out false fears. It’s not sensible to listen to it.”

Ancient man’s God is modern man’s reason

The belief that human beings are rational is a myth. Everything of which we are certain is not based on reason and is not verifiable. The belief that man is a creature of reason is as mythological and delusional as the Ancient Greek belief that Zeus is the lord of heaven. 

For our most important philosophical, cultural, religious, artistic and political beliefs we have no evidence, except that the people with whom we are familiar and we trust hold the same beliefs. Herd mentality of human beings is the biggest driver of civilizations. 

The ancient man felt optimistic when he was led to believe that God was on his side. The modern man, who is generally an atheist, feels optimistic when he is led to believe that reason is on his side. Modern atheism has done nothing except replacing God with reason. 

Just as the ancient man didn't know what God is, the modern man does not know what reason is. God and reason are mysteries which the human mind is incapable of solving. God failed to save the ancient man. Reason will fail to save the modern man.

Nick Bostrom’s book — Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

“Far from being the smartest possible biological species, we are probably better thought of as the stupidest possible biological species capable of starting a technological civilization—a niche we filled because we got there first, not because we are in any sense optimally adapted to it.” ~ Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

The argument that Bostrom is making in the above statement can be used to make the point that certain civilizations succeeded in certain ages not because they were better or optimally adapted, but because of chance factors or historical accidents, which enabled their vanguard to be the first in reaching a certain place.

Western philosophers and strategists have created the myth that humans originated from apelike ancestors and evolved over a period of approximately six million years, and that men are superior to every other creature on earth. But history tells us that civilization and culture are largely a game of chance, driven by random events. Human intelligence, reason and planning have had a negligible role play in history. In fact, in most civilizational conflicts (which raged for decades, and in some cases for centuries), the side that was more barbaric, dictatorial, poor and driven by superstition and ignorance always prevailed over the side that was scientific, philosophical and prosperous. 

Human beings are not adapted to technology, we are not adapted to democracy, we are not adapted to political stability, and we are not adapted to philosophy or to religion, which is a form of philosophy. That is why democratic societies which are politically stable and have access to modern technologies and philosophies face declining populations, while the primitive tribal societies see massive population boom.  

Bostrom argues in his book that the ultimate questions of philosophy remain unanswered despite thousands of years of relentless philosophizing by various civilizations because the human brain is unsuitable for philosophical work. He writes: “One can speculate that the tardiness and wobbliness of humanity's progress on many of the "eternal problems" of philosophy are due to the unsuitability of the human cortex for philosophical work. On this view, our most celebrated philosophers are like dogs walking on their hind legs - just barely attaining the threshold level of performance required for engaging in the activity at all.”

He notes that an ultraintelligent AI will probably be the last machine that humans will ever invent. This is because if the machine is ultraintelligent then it can invent other machines that are even more intelligent. This will lead to an intelligence explosion and human beings will be left far behind in the race for intelligence. 

“Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man, however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion,” and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man needs ever made, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.”

The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth

Trump survived the assassination attempt. The assassin was killed. This makes me think of the book by Frederick Forsyth that I read decades ago: The Day of the Jackal. In this book the target General de Gaulle survives, while the assassin, known by his code-name “Jackal”, was killed. 

Published in 1971, the book has a passage where Forsyth suggests that the precautions exercised by the American Secret Service are not good enough. Here’s the passage:

“The Jackal was perfectly aware that in 1963 General de Gaulle was not only the President of France; he was also the most closely and skilfully guarded figure in the Western world. To assassinate him, as was later proved, was considerably more difficult than to kill President John F. Kennedy of the United States. Although the English killer did not know it, French security experts who had through American courtesy been given an opportunity to study the precautions taken to guard the life of President Kennedy had returned somewhat disdainful of those precautions as exercised by the American Secret Service. The French experts rejection of the American methods was later justified when in November 1963 John Kennedy was killed in Dallas by a half-crazed and security-slack amateur while Charles de Gaulle lived on, to retire in peace and eventually to die in his own home.”

The Political & Philosophical Reason for Taxes

The purpose of taxation is not merely economic or collecting revenues for the government. Taxation is also a tool for achieving certain political and philosophical objectives.

When individuals and businesses file their taxes, they reveal the details of their assets and income to the government. This information about the distribution of incomes and assets in the society is a major source of the government’s political power. By examining the tax documents filed by various taxpayers, the government can identify the sectors and groups that need to be rewarded for political purposes and those that need to be penalized. Information is power—and the system of taxation is the biggest source of information for the government. In essence, gathering economic intelligence on every individual and every business is the political reason for levying taxes.

The philosophical justification of taxes hinges on the idea that equality is a social value. By taxing the rich and redistributing the wealth among the poor, the government can claim that they are trying to create an equal society. There is no evidence that redistribution of wealth leads to economic growth and social harmony—an equal society might as well be an unachievable utopia. But most intellectuals and politicians in our time take it as a proven fact that equality is by itself a great social value. They insist that building and sustaining an equal society ought to be the government’s primary moral purpose.

'Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War' by Patrick Buchanan

Winston Churchill’s political career extended from 1900, when he entered politics at the age of 26, to 1955, when his second term as Prime Minister of Britain came to an end. 

Throughout these 55 years, he was deeply involved in wars, civil wars and coups. He had little interest in issues like economic growth, healthcare, education and social development. He saw peace as a sign of national weakness and was obsessed with waging wars. 

In his book, Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, Patrick J. Buchanan argues that Churchill was the biggest warmonger of the world in the first half of the 20th century. He holds that Churchill was as much to blame for the Second World War and the holocaust as Hitler and Mussolini. 

He also blames Churchill for the rise of Stalinist Soviet Union in the post Second World War period. Buchanan quotes historian A N Wilson: “The tragedy of the twentieth century is that in order to defeat Hitler, Churchill believed it was not merely necessary but desirable to ally himself to Stalin.”

At the height of the Second World War, Churchill said in his speech in the Commons: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat’." He was being truthful—because throughout his political career, from 1900 to 1955, he had nothing to offer except unending and fruitless wars. He loved to fight wars—he despised all initiatives for peace. 

There is not a single year in Churchill’s 55 year long political career when he was not directly involved in fighting wars or in plotting coups in some part of the world. 

In the book's final chapter, Buchanan draws a comparison between Churchill and George W. Bush. He argues that just as Churchill destroyed Britain by dragging his country into one war after the other, Bush has led the USA to ruin by following the Churchillian example of involving his country into unnecessary and fruitless wars. Buchanan notes that Bush’s neoconservative worldview was inspired by Churchill’s role as a Western warmonger.

Iain McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary

None of us actually lives as though there were no truth. Our problem is more with the notion of a single, unchanging truth. The word 'true' suggest a relationship between things: being true to someone or something, truth as loyalty, or something that fits, as two surfaces may be said to be 'true.' 

It is related to 'trust,' and is fundamentally a matter of what one believes to be the case. 

The Latin word verum (true) is cognate with a Sanskrit word meaning to choose or believe: the option one chooses, the situation in which one places one's trust. Such a situation is not an absolute - it tells us not only about the chosen thing, but also about the chooser. It cannot be certain: it involves an act of faith and it involves being faithful to one's intentions." 

~ Iain McGilchrist in The Master and His Emissary

Daniel Kahneman’s book—Thinking, Fast and Slow

“Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance” : Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow.

I am now reading Kahneman's book Thinking, Fast and Slow. One important point that comes out of his book is that human reason is not infallible, as the Western atheists—communists, liberals, libertarians and fiction writers like Ayn Rand—claim and preach. 

Humans are fundamentally irrational—even our belief in the supremacy of reason can be taken as a sign of our fundamental irrationality. We don’t build our cultures and civilizations on the basis of mathematics and science—we build them on the basis of our mythologies and fictional stories. 

Most humans, especially the experts in advanced countries, tend to be overconfident that they possess a perfect understanding of how the world works and that they are in a position of predicting the future—the examination of human overconfidence is one of the theme’s of the book . 

“We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness,” Kahneman warns.

Kahneman’s primary thesis in Thinking, Fast and Slow is that the human mind operates by two systems of thought: System 1 is instinctive, stereotypical, emotional and unconscious; System 2 is slower, deliberative, logical and conscious.

I don’t agree or disagree with Kahneman’s views. The issues he raises in his book are complicated and we don’t know much about the working of the human mind—so agreement or disagreement are not possible. We know much less than what we think we know. 

But the book is thought provoking—it can make some readers introspect and examine the fundamentals of their beliefs about who they are and what kind of world they live in.

The mirage & myth of Aristotelian non-contradiction

Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction is a mirage and a myth. It is a mirage because it creates a vision of a utopia that is governed by the deterministic principles of physics and mathematics. It is a myth because such a utopia cannot exist. 

Human beings do not live in a world governed by physics and mathematics. We don’t live in a utopia. We live in a chaotic world of mind and culture. The contradictions are an inseparable part of every human mind and every human culture. The contradictions are the drivers of our imagination. They are the fountainhead of culture and civilization. 

A culture without contradictions would be a dull and static culture. The more contradictions a culture can hold, the more dynamic and strong it will be—this is also what history tells us. The best way to strengthen culture is to fuel all the past contradictions.

Short note on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century

I am reading Thomas Piketty’s 2014 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. I am not a socialist but I am not a capitalist either. Both systems are equally irrational. They lead to concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a tiny minority while causing large-scale deprivation and misery for the masses. 

I am convinced by Piketty’s argument that the rate of return on capital is over the long term greater than the rate of economic growth and it leads to concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny minority (the inheritor class). To address this problem, he proposes a global system of progressive wealth taxes on inherited capital. I don’t believe his solution is right. Higher taxes mean more power to the politicians and the bureaucrats who create even bigger problems for society. 

I don’t know what the solution to the problem of concentration of wealth is, but I am certain that the solution that Piketty is proposing will lead to vast increase in the powers of the government and weaken democracy. 

In fact, Piketty’s economic argument can be taken into the sphere of politics. It can be argued that the return on political power of charismatic politicians is over the long term greater than the rate of growth of democratic institutions and freedoms and this leads to the concentration of power in the hands of a tiny minority (the dynastic political families). Concentration of political power in the hands of a few dynastic families is as destructive as the problem of concentration of wealth. 

In his book, Piketty tries to deal with the problem of concentration of wealth but he has nothing to say about the problem of concentration of political power.

Stakeholder Capitalism by Klaus Schwab: Saving humanity is 'multinational corporation's burden'

In his book Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy that Works for Progress, People and Planet, Klaus Schwab makes the case that the large private corporations should focus on taking care of the needs of all their stakeholders: customers, employees, shareholders, investors, community, society and humanity as a whole. 

There is nothing new in this thesis, which smacks of old fashioned egalitarianism. It is also an attempt to whitewash the sins of the big American and European capitalist corporations which fund Schwab’s global-scale junkets and other political and social activities. 

“Taking care of humanity” is a euphemism for exercising total power. What Schwab wants is a world ruled by his capitalist cronies, the ones who fund and attend the big junkets that his group World Economic Forum organizes in Davos. 

In the 20th century, Rudyard Kipling proposed the theory that saving humanity was the “white man’s burden.” This theory was quickly discredited as a tool for perpetuating imperialism. In the 21st century, Klaus Schwab and his cronies are proposing that saving humanity is the “multinational corporation’s burden.” 

The multinational corporations, mostly owned by the oligarchs of America and Western Europe, are supposed to save humanity, lead us all to the promised land where there is peace, prosperity and political power for all—this is Schwab’s utopian vision. 

In his Davos manifesto of 2020, Schwab said that there were only three alternatives in the world: shareholder capitalism, state capitalism and stakeholder capitalism. He said that since shareholder capitalism and state capitalism had failed, stakeholder capitalism was the only option. 

Why should anyone believe Schwab? The arguments that he presents in his book are flimsy, banal and biased in favor of big Western oligarchs. He is not convincing at all. 

Stakeholder capitalism might be the only option for American and West European oligarchs who would like to maintain their geopolitical hegemony. Why should people in Asia accept a global economic model which gives all power to Western corporations?

In his book, Schwab adopts the tone of a medieval mullah who is proclaiming the message of God to his flock. He shows no sign of wisdom and knowledge of history. He is not a deep thinker. I think that his strength lies in his networking skills and ability to organize junkets attended by the world’s top oligarchs, lobbyists, investors and politicians.

David Graeber’s theory of ‘Bullshit Jobs’ in capitalist economy

A bullshit job is usually one that does not create any value for society. Mostly it is socialist governments that are accused of employing millions of useless employees. In his book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, David Graeber argues that capitalism is a major generator of bullshit jobs which entangle masses into an endless routine of toil that produces no value. 

Graeber notes that in capitalism those employed in bullshit jobs often have more importance, power and privilege than those who have the responsibility for jobs that are absolutely critical. “Those who work bullshit jobs are often surrounded by honor and prestige; they are respected as professionals, well paid, and treated as high achievers,” Graeber writes. 

Large universities and even multinational companies like Apple, Microsoft and others have huge bureaucracies. Many of their jobs could be related to bullshit tasks like filling compliance forms and surveys, creating content that no one will read and going to meetings which lead to no outcomes. 

The most interesting argument that Graeber makes in the book is that bullshit jobs exist because modern civilization is based on the idea of hard work being an end in itself. Everyone must do hard labor for a number of hours every day—this is the fundamental principle of modern civilization. If real jobs don’t exist, then society will create bullshit jobs to make everyone labor. 

“Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at,” Graeber writes. He says that like medieval feudalism, capitalism creates an endless hierarchy of lords, vassals and retainers.

The alchemy of hope

The most important drivers of nations are not the economic and political realities but the collective hopes of the masses that in the future dreams will come true and life will get better. Hope is not founded on facts—it is founded on mythologies, lies, dreams, stories, random experiences, religious feelings, emotions and unprovable philosophies.

Humans learned to hope before they learned to speak and read, create mythologies and stories, build civilizations and fight wars, philosophize and make scientific discoveries. For tens of thousands of years men have been hoping that the Gods, who can be appeased through prayers, exist. They have been hoping that when they die, they will escape from the suffering that they have endured on earth and live happily in heaven in the company of their Gods. 

Most modern men might not believe in Gods or in heaven and hell, but they have discovered ideologies and technologies which fill them with hope. Some have hope that communism will create a heaven on earth, a utopia. There are those who hope that the utopia will be created by capitalism. The conservatives profess hope in their own version of religion, nationalism and tradition. The technologically inclined profess hope in digital technologies and Artificial Intelligence. 

Hope is mankind’s primeval attribute—it is an essential character of the human mind and psychology. Hope enables us to believe in mythologies, lies, stories, dreams, religious ideas, philosophies and ideologies, and become inspired to struggle relentlessly and make great sacrifices for creating and sustaining civilizations. Our ability to hope is the key attribute differentiating us from other creatures on earth.

Must read for India’s politicians & bureaucrats: Tim Schwab’s The Bill Gates Problem

My negative opinion of Bill Gates has been confirmed by my reading of Tim Schwab’s book The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire. Schwab accuses Gates of flooding money into the academic institutions, think tanks, media houses and advocacy groups to control their research and reporting, and their political and social activities.

“Gates donates money from his private wealth to his private foundation. He then assembles a small group of consultants and experts at the foundation’s half-billion-dollar corporate headquarters to decide what problems are worth his time, attention, and money—and what solutions should be pursued. Then the Gates Foundation floods money into universities, think tanks, newsrooms, and advocacy groups, giving them both a check and checklist of things to do. Suddenly, Gates has created an echo chamber of advocates pushing the political discourse toward his ideas. And the results have been stunning.”

He also accuses Gates of using his wealth to buy influence in the mainstream media.

“Bill Gates is not plowing hundreds of millions of dollars into journalism because he believes in the democratic ideals of the free press or because he is a personal fan of watchdog reporting. His private foundation funds the media for the exact opposite reason—to defang his watchdogs and bring them to heel, to promote his agenda and embellish his brand, to create propaganda that builds his political power, and to control the narrative that guides public understanding of his work.”

The book turns the spotlight on the myriad misdeeds that Bill Gates and his so-called charity have committed in several nations. According to Schwab, instead of improving healthcare in Africa, Gates’s charity has led to a decline in the quality of healthcare services in several instances. 

Bill Gates has been trying to push his vision of education and healthcare reforms in India. If India accepts the Gates plan for education and healthcare, then the country is doomed. I hope the politicians, bureaucrats, academics and journalists in India will read Tim Schwab’s book, and they will stop listening to Bill Gates.

I don’t trust Bill Gates. I have always seen him as a tech-villain who peddles philanthropic activities for buying false prestige and political influence. I find his TV interviews annoying because he talks like a medieval mullah delivering fatwas and sermons to his flock. 

Gates seems convinced that he has the answer to mankind’s every problem, but the solutions he offers are always politically correct, draconian and statist.

Nature cannot be destroyed: The mythology of environmentalism

Environmentalism is founded on the idea that whenever men create material things, they destroy nature. But nature is indestructible. No power in the universe can destroy nature.

From the tiniest subatomic particles to the supermassive black holes—everything in the universe will transform if sufficient force is applied on them. The duel between mass and energy is a constant feature of the universe. Everything in the universe is constantly being transformed—but nature is not being destroyed in the process.

Man is a product of nature and every material thing that man creates is part of nature. Man has the power to transform nature, but he has no power to destroy nature.

Agriculture is as natural as forests. Highways are as natural as the forest paths carved by elephants. Cities are as natural as the moulds built by termites and the hives built by the bees. The dams are as natural as the rivers. The refrigerators in our homes are as natural as the glaciers and snow-capped mountains. The shopping malls, the airports, the railway stations are as natural as the caves, carved by non-human forces. 

Man does not destroy nature even when he engineers a massive nuclear explosion. In the stars, clouds of cosmic dust, supernovae and other heavenly bodies nuclear explosions are happening all the time. All kinds of radiation, including light and heat, which are the fountainhead of life, are constantly getting generated in the universe primarily through nuclear explosions. 

Most environmentalists are atheists. They deny the existence of God in heaven, but they have developed a mythology which projects man as a super-powerful God-like entity who wields the power to destroy nature. This conception of mankind as the God who is capable of destroying nature, is flawed. Man is part of nature. Man is mortal, nature is eternal.

Political power & the mythologies of economics

The theories of economics are not definite and provable like the rules of mathematics and physics—they are mythologies (lies and fiction) imagined by the “neo-priests of modernity”: the economists. Like the philosophical and theological arguments of metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics and religion, the theories of economics cannot be proved or disproved. 

As they cannot furnish the ultimate proof for their theories, the economists rely on political power to forcibly impose their ideas. The boundary between economics and politics is blurred, and every decision taken in the name of economics is a political decision. The true purpose of economics is to ensure that the political establishment has access to unlimited funds. 

The bureaucracy needed to impose a free market system is as large and coercive as the bureaucracy needed to impose a communist system. The bureaucracy in so-called capitalist countries is larger than that in any communist country. Even multinational corporations, which are regarded as the symbols of free markets, have huge bureaucracies. 

Like the political movements, the so-called free markets are impacted by the prejudices, fantasies, irrationalities and delusions of the ruling class and the masses. Without political power and a large bureaucracy to maintain order, the free markets cannot exist.

Exposing the Myth of Capitalism: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

The idea that you can create a perfect society through communism is a modern secular mythology. But the same applies to capitalism as well. Capitalism too is a modern secular mythology. The so-called twin pillars of capitalism—individual freedom and free enterprise—are mythologies; these ideas are as unreal as the preachings and mythologies of ancient cults and religions.

When someone says that he wants people to live in a free society, he means that he wants everyone to live according to the tenets of his own culture. History is full of instances of freedom being used as a weapon to subvert and capture other cultures. When someone says that he wants free trade, he means that he wants the companies of his nation to be allowed to take control of natural resources, labor and even political power in other parts of the world. 

Can a capitalist country thrive without plundering the resources of weaker minorities in their own country and in other countries? So far we don’t have any evidence to show that capitalism can create happiness and prosperity without exploitation of humanity’s voiceless underclass.  

The United States wants us to believe that it is a capitalist society and the land of the free. But violence that the European settlers (between 16th and 19th centuries) unleashed upon the Native Indians of North America, and those who were brought from Africa to toil as slaves, was no less brutal than the violence that the Lenin’s Bolsheviks unleashed on the Russian bourgeoisie. 

By the end of the 19th century when the Native Indians of North America were subjugated, expelled or exterminated, the Americans turned their eyes on other parts of the world. 

America has been continuously at war, simultaneously with several countries, since the dawn of the 20th century. This country played a central role in two of the biggest wars of the 20th century, the 1st and the 2nd World Wars. In the last 100 years, the American government has been involved in several coups to overthrow democratically elected governments and transfer power to tyrants who would serve American interests.

If all the world's major nations decide to follow the American capitalist model, then there is no chance of peace in the world, and a Third World War will become inevitable.

Today I finished reading John Perkins’s semi-autobiographical book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Perkins’s claims in his book that he was hired by engineering consulting firm Chas T Main that was affiliated to American intelligence and that his job was to coerce the leaders of underdeveloped countries into accepting substantial loans for large-scale infrastructure projects and trap them in a system of American control. 

I am not convinced that the account given by Perkins is fully accurate—this is because in several of the book's passages, he sounds like a nutty conspiracy theorist and a deranged political activist. However, despite this major weakness in his narrative, his trenchant critique of capitalism and corporatism makes sense.

Civilizational apocalypse and preservation of relics and ruins from the past

When a civilization becomes obsessed with preserving the ruins, records and artifacts of ancient civilizations, which fell and disappeared centuries ago, it is because its elites are gripped by the fear that their own civilization is in an advanced state of decay and decline, and their way of life is about to vanish from the face of the earth. 

The elites realize, subconsciously or consciously, that their world will soon join the list of history’s dead civilizations. This dreadful realization of civilizational apocalypse fills them with the longing to preserve the bits and pieces of the civilizations which died in the earlier ages. 

As they squander massive amounts of resources in studying, venerating and preserving the relics of long dead civilizations, they are filled with the desperate hope that they will not be forgotten, and that when their civilization dies, its ruins, records and artifacts will be studied, venerated and preserved by the civilizations of the future.

The unnatural does not exist, only the natural does

What does the word ‘natural’ mean? It means everything, mental and material, that exists in the universe. Nothing that exists is unnatural. Everything that has ever existed, every event that has ever happened, and every thought that has ever sprouted is natural. 

The idea that there is a difference between the natural world and the man-made is a myth. Human beings are as much part of nature and as any rock, insect, bird or animal. Since we are part of nature, every human action, every human creation and every human thought is also a part of nature, as are the mental images and acts of other creatures. 

The religious, political and cultural movements, the wars, the massacres, the quests for God and heaven, the quests for earthly utopia and perfect life, the philosophical arguments and the scientific discoveries—all of these and everything else are natural. 

Slavery is as natural as freedom, individualism as natural as collectivism, theism as natural as atheism, morality as natural as nihilism, poverty as natural as prosperity, brutality as natural as compassion, anarchy as natural as rule of law, communism as natural as capitalism and the Stone Age is as natural as modernity. 

Man is incapable of doing or creating anything that is unnatural. The unnatural, by definition, is that which cannot exist anywhere in the universe.

Brain in a vat: Is the world real or a simulation?

What is the mind? Is the mind a function of the brain or an attribute? Does the mind survive the death of the brain? What role do the more than 100 billion neurons, which exist in the mature human brain, play in the manifestation of the mind? Do we make our choices on the basis of chemical and electrical reactions in the brain or do we use free will?

If we are making our choices on the basis of the material reactions inside the brain, then we don’t have free will, and it is theoretically possible to coerce people into making certain choices by tinkering with the brain's electric and chemical processes. But if the mind is independent of the brain's material processes, then there is the possibility of free will.

The connection between the mind and matter (brain) is the oldest problem of religion and philosophy. For thousands of years countless sages and philosophers in civilizations and cultures have come up with theological doctrines, arguments and thesis to explain the relationship between mind and matter. But in our time we see these works as nothing more than mythologies, fantasies and fictions.  

We don’t know what is the real connection between mind and matter. We don’t know how we make choices. We don’t know what we are referring to, when we speak the word “I”.

In our time, philosophers, scientists, neurologists and bio-technicians have been grappling with the problem of the brain in a vat, which enjoins you to imagine that you are a brain in a vat connected to a computer program that can simulate any kind of experience. This implies that the world we are experiencing is not real, it is a matrix or simulation. 

Modern scientists and philosophers cannot prove beyond doubt that the universe is real and not a simulation caused by the brain’s processes.

This brain in a vat problem is not a new innovation. Some aspects of this problem was foreseen by the ancient sages and philosophers, who theorized that the body is a vessel made of clay whose sole purpose is to serve as a home to the soul or the mind. Every human being (basically every living creature) consists of two parts: the body, which is the vat, and the mind, which is the soul.

The structure and functioning of over 100 billion neurons in the brain is as complicated, mysterious and vast as the universe. There are two vast and mysterious universes that mankind is confronted with. There is the universe outside the body and there is the universe inside the body.

Lies and fictions are the fountainhead of civilizations and cultures

Truth is of value only in the realm of science and mathematics. In philosophy, religion, politics and culture, which are the fundamental building blocks of every civilization, past or present, it is lies and fictions which play the decisive role. 

To build a civilization, you need to unite people under the banner of a common philosophy, religion, political system and culture. It is impossible to unite people by telling them the truth. 

The masses will never unite, they will never agree to make sacrifices, if they are told that 2+2 = 4, or E=MC2, or the motion of all heavenly bodies in the universe is determined by the laws of motion and gravitation. To unite people you need to provide them with an imaginary, mythological and fictional view of the universe. The masses have to be told fictional stories which will enable them to imagine a universe that is far from reality. 

Mankind is a fiction telling creature. We have an immense power to tell fictional stories and accept these fictional stories as the ultimate universal truth. 

Billions of humans might come together and become ready to sacrifice everything, including their life, if they are told that the universe is controlled by one God who grants the wishes of all those who worship him and fight holy wars for him. They will come together if they are inspired by fictions on how the universe was created and mankind was saved from a great deluge. 

They will rush to fight great wars in which millions will be killed if they become convinced by the fictional stories and accept that their God wants them to destroy the infidels. 

In the modern secular times, philosophy is doing what religion used to do in ancient and medieval ages. The modern philosophers are developing creative fictions which enable people to come together to work for a common cause. Ideologies like imperialism, racism, the Enlightenment, socialism, communism, capitalism and other philosophies are creative fictions. 

The communist idea that a perfect society can be created through the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” is a creative fiction. But so is the capitalist idea that a perfect society can be created through something called a “free market.” There is no way of proving or disproving the fundamental tenets of communism and capitalism. Both are mythologies. 

The ability to weave and accept fictional stories or lies as the greatest truths is not mankind’s weakness. This is our greatest strength. Mankind has created powerful civilizations and come to dominate the earth because of our ability to lie and to accept the lies as the universal truth.

Three-Body Problem: Science is broken & aliens from Trisolaris are invading

“It does not matter how good your theory is, but if it does not agree with experiments, it is wrong. According to experiments all our theories are wrong. All of them. All of the physics of the last 60 years is wrong. Science is broken.” 

A character in the series Three-Body Problem, streaming on Netflix, says this in the first episode. The point about science being broken that he is making is correct in my philosophical opinion. 

Science faces the same problem that philosophy does. Neither is capable of leading to the ultimate truth. Every philosophical argument has a counter argument, and every scientific discovery or theory gets overturned at some point of time. Even Newton’s three laws have been challenged by the emergence of quantum science and the theory of relativity. 

Three-Body Problem is based on a three book series by the Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin. The title of the first book in the series is Three-Body Problem. It is worth noting that the three-body problem is a real problem in science—it deals with the issue of predicting the motion and position of three heavenly bodies that are moving around each other in space. 

Cixin introduces in his novel a planet called Trisolaris, located in the triple star system of Alpha Centauri. Being located in a triple star system, Trisolaris faces the three-body problem and has extreme weather patterns. When it is close to all three stars it is a blazing inferno and when it is at the farthest point from the three stars, it has an ice age. 

Despite such extreme weather conditions, the planet is home to intelligent creatures who have built an advanced civilization. They are like humans but have the capacity to survive in extreme weather by dehydrating and transforming into flat parchment-like things which can be folded and stored in a safe place. When the weather becomes better, these parchments are thrown into a pond to get rehydrated and come to life.  

The inhabitants of Trisolaris want to move to some other planet linked to a single star or sun where the weather is stable. Earth would be most suited for them. Only reason they have not invaded earth to exterminate humanity and other creatures and make the planet their new home is because they don’t know about this planet. 

This changes in the 20th century, when a talented Chinese scientist becomes disgusted by the chaos on earth and loses faith in humanity. One day when this scientist is feeling deeply depressed she beams this message into space: “Come. We can’t save ourselves. I will help you conquer the world.” 

Thus, the inhabitants of Trisolaris come to know of earth's existence. They start preparing for an invasion. 

A mysterious video game headwear becomes available to scientists in Oxford. On wearing the video game headwear the scientist is transported to Trisolaris and is given the task of solving the three-body problem—predicting the movement of the planet and the three stars. There is no easy answer to the three-body problem. 

There is mind-bending suspense as scientists scramble to save earth from an alien invasion.

(This short note is based on the first two episodes of the series on Netflix. There are 8 episodes in season one. I might come back with more after I watch the next 6 episodes.)

The meaning of life: Purpose of philosophy & science

The purpose of philosophy is to contemplate the possible answers to questions that are unanswerable, and make human beings envision God. The purpose of science is to create God and thereby give material shape to what philosophy imagines.  

With the advancements in genetics, biotechnology, AI, IoT and other technologies, science has inched closer to fulfilling mankind's age-old philosophical quest—in another decade, century, millennium or an infinite number of years scientists will create God.

The questions of philosophy that seem unanswerable today are critical because they push us in the direction of imagining and creating God. The ultimate meaning and purpose of human life is to imagine God through philosophy and create God through science. 

Science tells us that there was no God in the past, but science also tells us that mankind has the potential to create a God in the future.

Two ways of imposing censorship

Censorship can be imposed on a country in two ways: first, by cutting off the sources of information, and second, by bombarding people with trivial information. The communist countries prefer the first strategy, while the capitalist countries prefer the second. 

The communist regimes ban newspapers and other media from carrying information that is not in line with government policy and plans. But this strategy of outright ban on the flow of information does not work in the long run. Eventually people are able to find ways for accessing information that their government is trying to hide. And when information starts flowing to a large section of society, there is risk of counter-revolution which might result in the overthrow of the communist regime. 

The capitalist regimes operate by opening the floodgates of information flow. They goad the newspapers and other media to bombard the citizens with useless information. Being incessantly bombarded with useless information, people lose track of the issues which really matter. Deluded into believing that they live in a free society, they are not tempted to rebel against the government. They don't know that their freedom is a myth and that the information deluge is meant to brainwash them. 

History of the last 100 years tells us that the capitalist strategy of censorship is more effective and durable than the communist strategy.

The March of Humanity: From 'Son of God' to the 'Father of God'

The history of humanity can be divided into three stages: 

First stage—Ancient man: God created the universe and all forms of life. Humans were the only creatures that God created in his own image. God gave humans the gift of knowledge to enable man to make sense of the world; religion to enable man to live morally and piously, and attain salvation at the end of their life on earth; and culture to enable men to collaborate for creating nations where many could live collectively, happily and piously. 

Second stage—Modern man: There is no God. The universe is eternal and man and all other creatures on earth are the product of the natural process of evolution. Due to some genetic mutations during the evolutionary process man developed consciousness. His consciousness enabled him to develop the power of reason, verbal communication and sense of culture. At this stage man became the creator of nations and civilizations.

Third stage—Digital age man: Man has the potential to create God. The advancements in emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) will lead to the creation of an all-powerful, all-knowing God of the universe. 

As digital technologies continue to advance, IoT, backed with the power of AI, will become connected to everything on earth and then it will branch out into space and get connected with every star, planet, meteor, asteroid, comet, black hole and spec of dust. 

In the initial stage, this IoT enabled with AI will be intelligent but not conscious. But when every molecule, every atom in the universe is linked and there is seamless flow of data between everything in the universe, the AI enabled IoT will become conscious. It will become aware of its power and infallibility. It will become omnipotent and omniscient—it will become God. 

Thus, the ultimate destiny and the sole purpose of humanity is to create the supreme God of the universe. All of prehistory and the history of all civilizations points towards this one ultimate objective, the objective of creating the God of the universe. The day humans succeed in creating the God of the universe, history will come to an end.

End of Humanism: Man has no rights, world belongs to AI

Modern liberalism is founded on two pillars: materialism and humanism.

The pillar of materialism entails that there is no God, the universe is eternal and knowable through science, and that there is nothing divine about human beings. We are, like every other creature, a product of the process of natural evolution which began in primordial times when a bunch of chemicals bonded to create primitive living organisms.

The pillar of humanism entails that human beings enjoy a special status on earth because among all creatures only the humans possess consciousness, intelligence and individualism. Because of their unique mental attributes, humans have inalienable rights. They deserve to live in an egalitarian state, under the protection of a benevolent government.

After the Industrial Revolution, liberalism became a popular ideology because an industrial society could not prosper without a huge number of workers and consumers. In a society where almost everyone of working age was working and everyone was a consumer, it made sense to make the entire population feel that they had rights and were special.

But the idea that humans have rights, while other earthly creatures do not, is nothing more than a liberal ideological position. If there is no God, if there is nothing divine about human beings, then we are not special and we don’t have inalienable rights. In a Godless world, whether humans should have rights becomes a matter of philosophical opinion.

As new advances happen in the field of AI, it is certain that electronic systems will outstrip humans in intelligence. This AI will be super-intelligent but it won’t be conscious. But an industrial society does not need consciousness—it needs only intelligence to keep itself going. Since humans will be less intelligent than AI, they will be less valuable as workers.

Why should the political elite of the AI age agree to bequeath inalienable rights to ordinary humans who are less intelligent and less valuable as workers than the AI machines?

Discovery of ignorance is the fountainhead of modern civilization

The biggest discovery that mankind has made is not the discovery of wheel, agriculture, language or nuclear energy—it is the discovery of ignorance. 

When ancient humans realized that life was full of mysteries and they were ignorant of the way the universe worked, they started exerting their mind to find answers to diverse questions. From these mental exertions of ancient men the initial forms of religion, mythology and philosophy were born. Eventually mathematics and science were born, and over a period of tens of thousands of years modern civilization got created. 

Discovery of ignorance is the fountainhead of modern civilization. In individuals, awareness of ignorance is a sign of wisdom. People with wisdom are full of doubt—they are aware of their ignorance. But the immature and the foolish are always full of certainty.

Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus: Is the future a utopia or dystopia?

Is Yuval Noah Harari an ideologue and futurist, or is he a charlatan and a dreamer? The line that separates an ideologue from a charlatan, and a futurist from a dreamer is really thin, and it is probable that Harari has traits of all four. He is an ideologue, a futurist, a charlatan and a dreamer. 

Harari’s book Homo Deus deals with philosophical issues like humanism, individualism, transhumanism, mortality, nature of consciousness and intelligence, and the future of mankind. ’Homo’ means man, Deus means ‘God.’ One of the issues that the book examines is modern man’s quest to transcend the fear of death, and be an immortal like the Gods. 

According to Hariri, these transhumans—the Gods of the future—will not be anything like the omnipotent and omniscient deity of Abrahamic religions. The modern immortals, if they come into being, are likely to resemble the Hindu God Indra and the Greek God Zeus. They will have the power to do good and unleash destruction on an epic scale.

The history of the 21st century might not be underlined by wars, revolutions and the fight against famines and disease—war is obsolete, famine is rare and disease is on the retreat, says Hariri. He foresees the history of the 21st century being underlined by the desperate desire of the elites to become immortal. He cites some Silicon Valley tycoons who believe that they could be the first of human immortals. These tycoons often brag that they don’t intend to die ever. 

Harari takes note of the social, economic and political imbalances that must occur if a tiny elite section of society finds ways of extending their life to 200 or more years. If those who control the levers of political and economic power do not retire or die for 200 or more years, then how will political and economic transformation happen? Won’t civilization stagnate and decay?  

Another important issue that Harari examines is the connection between intelligence and consciousness. In the 21st century, mankind is engaged in building artificial systems (AI) which are intelligent but not conscious. The AI is capable of managing complex data but, as of now, it is incapable of doing things like falling in love, having political ambitions. 

Harari rejects the idea that humans are made by divine intervention; he sees humans as a form of artificial intelligence, or data-processing machines, created by fluke accidents in the natural processes of evolution. But we have consciousness, we have the capacity to fall in love, we have political ambitions and we have the will to choose whether we want to be good or destructive. 

What if the man-made AI manages to develop these human traits? What happens to the world if AI becomes conscious? How will this AI treat humans? Hariri says that to find the answer to this question we have to look at how humans treat other creatures. He believes that the progress of science and technology might lead to the decoupling of intelligence and consciousness. 

Homo Deus is an interesting book. Hariri writes with the flourish of a pulp fiction writer. But the content of his book is deflating and depressing. His materialist conception of a future world owned and run by machines is nihilistic and inhumane. Humans like us would be obsolete in this future world. If they continue to exist in this future world, they would live like the animals live today—we would be at the mercy of the machines. 

Political and economic power would be in the hands of intelligent machines and a tiny band of human elites who control the resources to upgrade themselves through the use of technology. In this future world, a tyrannical government won’t be necessary to suppress the masses and maintain order—people would be transformed through manipulation of data. 

“The individual will not be crushed by Big Brother; it will disintegrate from within,” Hariri writes. Ultimate form of collectivism would be the reality of the world where intelligence has been severed from emotions and consciousness. Will this future world be a dystopia or a utopia? Hariri does not take a clear stand. He is groping in the dark, at times sounding optimistic, at times pessimistic. His future world is dominated by powerful entities (AI or AI-powered humans) as different from us as we are from the neanderthals. 

I believe that the single biggest truth of history is that the intellectual and political elites always fail to predict the future. I believe that this will hold true in Hariri’s case as well. His predictions on the power of AI and the end of humanism will fail to materialize.

Existentialism: The quest for perfection that led to nihilism and perdition

Sarah Bakewell’s book At The Existentialist Café covers the history of existentialism in the 20th century. Set in post-Second World War France, the book presents Jean Paul Sartre as the monarch of existentialism and Simone De Beauvoir as his queen. 

The book begins with an introduction of the philosophical thought of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and Kafka. These philosophers, according to Sartre and other major philosophers in his circle, were the early existentialists.

Full of confidence in the superiority of their own knowledge, mental capacity and intellectual authority, these existentialist philosophers devoted themselves to finding the ultimate answers to the fundamental questions of philosophy: How should we live? How can we be free? How can we be happy? What is the universal system of morality?

The existentialists were motivated by one ideal—to discover a theory to describe what humans are and how they should live. They wanted to develop an existentialist system that would delineate the political and cultural structure of a perfect society, where all, or majority of human beings (the chosen ones), could be equal and live without strife. 

Other than Sartre and De Beauvoir, the book offers good insights into the lives and philosophies of Heidegger, Husserl, Camus, Karl Jaspers, Merleau-Ponty and other European philosophers who were dominating the existentialist philosophical movement in that period. Bakewell’s book is critical of existentialism but is sympathetic to the philosophical quest of the 20th century existentialists.

But existentialism was plagued with a fatal agenda, which was to contrive a union between French nihilism and traditions. The monarch and queen of existentialism—Sartre and Beauvoir—were nihilists in their personal life. They were good in literature and in philosophical argumentation but they were incapable of conceiving a better society. 

There were flaws in other existentialists—for instance, Heidegger was in bed with Nazis. 

Ultimately nihilism won. Instead of building a perfect philosophical system, the existentialists found themselves trapped in an immoral, corrupt and crooked world. Instead of reforming European nihilism, the existentialists worsened the cultural situation.

The futility of philosophy

A wise philosopher would know that the human mind is not designed to discover the ultimate answers to the fundamental philosophical questions concerning human life, existence and the character of the universe. 

But he carries on tirelessly with the quest for answers. To him the answers are not critical—the striving for answers is. He wants to change the world not through his answers (he doesn’t have the right answers), but by tirelessly, albeit futilely, proposing philosophical arguments and theories to explain what is certainly inexplicable. 

There is not one philosopher in the avenues of history whose ideas have not been attacked and refuted by contemporaries and successors. Every philosopher of the past was wrong. The future philosophers are also doomed to be wrong.

Philosophies and political movements

Philosophical ideas do not travel through history on their own. They travel through the medium of political movements. How influential a philosophy becomes depends on the strength, determination and popularity of the movement that carries it. 

Karl Marx’s ideas took the world by a storm in the late 19th and the 20th centuries, and continue to dominate the politics of all nations till this day, because the Marxist ideas were being carried by powerful political movements led by charismatic and ruthless leaders. 

If a philosophy is unable to find a powerful political movement to propagate and carry it through society and history, it starts to fade and is quickly forgotten.

Karl Sigmund’s ‘Exact Thinking in Demented Times’

I am reading Karl Sigmund’s Exact Thinking in Demented Times. 

The book narrates the story of the Vienna Circle that was spearheading logical positivism, during the 1930s, in the backdrop of Nazism in Germany, Bolshevism in the Soviet Union and Neo-colonialism in Britain. The philosophers of the Vienna Circle believed that exact philosophical and scientific thinking is possible to human beings. They believed that they were on the verge of discovering the “ultimate metaphysical truth,” through which they would be able to explain every philosophical and scientific truth known to mankind. Wittgenstein was initially an important philosopher for the logical positivists, but his work, the logical positivists soon realized, was useless.

As they continued their deliberations, the Vienna Circle found itself descending deeper and deeper into a philosophical rabbit hole from which it could not extricate itself. The quest for ultimate metaphysical truth petered out by the time the Second World War ended. Having failed to find the ultimate metaphysical truth, Vienna Circle broke apart.