Socrates

Chapter 10: The Capitalism Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 10: The Capitalism Story

…by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. Adam Smith

The human mind (mine too) loves narratives. Stories. Stories are illusion. They are so powerful they invite delusion. Stewart Brand

The stories of science, technology, and progress are practically inseparable from the story of capitalism. And Capitalism is simply a relatively modern story told by great storytellers – be it Adam Smith or Milton Friedman. So, if money is the most popular story, then capitalism is likely the 2nd most popular one. And if we are to capture its story in a single word it is growth. But the key point is that capitalism requires growth not to deliver progress but to survive. So, if we halt growth capitalism won’t just halt – it will collapse. Therefore growth is the goal and progress is, at best, a byproduct.

There are many reasons why capitalism requires growth to survive – competition, demographics, unemployment, inequality, credit, mass production, energy consumption, etc. Fundamentally, however, capitalists go into business to make a profit. This means that if someone invests 100 dollars of capital they expect to receive back more than 100. And they are happy to repeat this process over and over again for as long as they can. Hence we call it capitalism – a self-sustaining system where capital gives birth to more and more capital. But if you start with 100 and end up with more than 100 we have growth because it measures the differences between your starting capital and what you end up with. That growth – or surplus, is the return on capital investment. If there is no return on investment there is no incentive to invest. So investment ends and the system collapses.

***

It was Protagoras who first claimed that “man is the measure of all things”. Capitalism replaced this inherent anthropocentrism with the free market so we can say that the free market is posthuman in the sense it doesn’t favor or put humanity in the center of its value system. Thus the free market became the measure of all things – be it material objects such as agricultural goods, consumer products, the animals, the water we drink and the air we breathe, or immaterial ones – such as political, religious, and other ideas or services. Since our value system reflects and is derived from our story and given that capitalism is our economic story, it is no surprise that growth has become the highest moral value in the realm:

you want democracy – make sure there is economic growth; want political freedom – don’t choke off growth; more opportunities for women and minorities – it comes with growth; more high-paid jobs – focus on growth; less pollution – don’t impede growth. That’s why Bill Clinton exclaimed: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

In short, in capitalism, never-ending growth is the most fundamental requirement. Everything else – be it political, social, legal, or ethical, is based on it and is therefore secondary. So, it is no surprise that when the story of Climate Change clashes with that of growth, growth always wins. Because the system is primed to self-sustain not to change or challenge itself. Furthermore, modern economics tells us that all products have a given value as well as alternative substitutes. And climate change, the environment, the animals, trees, rivers and lakes, even human beings have now become mere products within our global capitalist system. All in the name of growth, measured and valued within the story of the free market.

***

Capitalism is a complex story that gives birth to many other, smaller stories such as: the story of money, supply and demand, the “Invisible Hand”, “the Free Market”, “survival of the fittest”, “the lone entrepreneur hero”, “the myth of the self-made millionaire”, “the virtue of selfishness”, “egoism is altruism”, “the customer is always right”, “a rising tide lifts all boats” and so on. Those, in turn, have their own by-products such as short-term thinking, materialism, alienation, individualism, egoism, consumerism, planned obsolescence, environmental destruction, pricing everything but valuing nothing, and so on. Consequently, our relationship with life has stopped being mystical and never got to be scientific – it is economic. With one invisible hand – we save, and with the other – we destroy, all according to the “laws” of supply and demand, and the “virtue” of selfishness.

Epictetus and the Buddha both noted that events have no objective value. And if we look closely we ought to note that material things don’t have one either. Regardless of whether we are considering events or material things their value is subjective for it is derived by and created in story – the story we attach to them. The reality is we dream of owning and are willing to pay because of and for the story, not so much the product. The evidence is plentiful but perhaps best exemplified by the Significant Objects Project.

In 2006 journalist Rob Walker bought 200 thrift items for an average price of $1.25. These objects were all second-hand, they were not special or unique in any way, and had absolutely no intrinsic value of their own. Their unremarkable list included things like a plastic banana, a plastic motel room key, a small plastic bust of a horse head, and so on. Then Rob asked 200 authors to write a story about each of the items. Finally, Walker auctioned the items on eBay and received a total of $8,000 with an average “value” increase of 6,300% per item. [For example, the plastic horse head he bought for 99 cents was sold for $62.95 after a story was written for it.] Therefore it is not the product itself where value originates but the story attached to it. Change the story of a useless product and you change its value thereby making it valuable.

To conclude, capitalism is a story. A story that depends on growth and assigns a monetary value to everything in the world. A story that is reductionist in nature. Just like science reduced our universe to the physical world – i.e. physics. Similarly, capitalism reduces our universe to its market or monetary value – i.e. money. It tells how much something is worth as derived from the stories we tell. So it is story – first and foremost, that makes the difference for creating value, starting with the initial Angel investment pitch all the way to the final product and why we buy it. That is why Seth Godin claims that “Uber and Google achieved what they achieved because they were triumphs of storytelling, not because they were triumphs of technology. And so did Facebook.”

It is for this reason that Rolf Jensen also notes:

The highest-paid person in the first half of this century will be the storyteller. All professionals, including advertisers, teachers, entrepreneurs, politicians, athletes and religious leaders, will be valued for their ability to create stories that will captivate their audiences.

Nikola Danaylov: Technology Reveals Who We Are, Not The Future

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I recorded this virtual keynote for a corporate client about 10 days ago and decided to share it publicly. Hope you enjoy it 😉

 

Technology is a Mirror, Not a Crystal Ball; It Reveals Who We Are, Not the Future

 

The 1st atomic bomb was nicknamed “gadget.”

Does this say something about who we are? Or does it say something about the nature of technology and the power to do good or evil?

Today we live in a universe of ever-more-powerful gadgets and humanity has never wielded more technological power because we live in the most scientifically advanced century in the history of our civilization. The paradox, however, is that ours is also the most dangerous century not only for countless other species going extinct but also for our own existence.

But how can that be? Isn’t technology good both for us and the world in general? And, most importantly, what can we do about this? Those are the questions I want to focus on today.

But I want to begin by sharing a personal story.

In 2016, my wife Julie and I took a road trip through California. Needless to say, Los Angeles and San Francisco were among our points of interest. Now, if you were going by car as we were, chances are that the very first thing you will see upon entering LA is those makeshift camps of tens of thousands of homeless Americans.

Well, 2 years before our trip, Peter Diamandis published his best-seller “Abundance” and told us that the future is better than we think. In it, Diamandis claimed that we can solve all of humanity’s grand challenges with enough capital, technology, and “the right people” – whom Peter titled the new Technophilantropists. And, yet, there we were, in his hometown, in the one place in the world with probably the highest concentration of all of the above, and we witnessed shocking poverty, high rates of crime and homelessness, severe drought, environmental destruction, and crumbling infrastructure.

I got so shocked that I decided to do some research. Only to get even more shocked in discovering that if you calculate the cost of living the “Golden State” of California, is, in fact, America’s poorest, because perhaps 1 out of 4 live at or below the poverty line. So while California has the 5th largest economy in the world and the largest in the US, according to McKinsey’s, it ranks 46th among the states for opportunity, 43rd for fiscal stability, and dead last for quality of life.

This paradoxical situation raises many important questions. For example: How is it that poorer countries such as Canada, which have less access to advanced technology and much fewer billionaires, somehow end up having a happier, healthier, and longer-living population, free health care, lower crime rates, and lower degree of homelessness?

Peter claims his 3 requirements for abundance will help us solve humanity’s grand challenges but the current COVID19 challenge provides more shocking evidence against his claim. Because the United States has 2 ½ times the Canadian death rate.

And this leads us to the 3 most popular myths about technology:

The 1st myth is the myth of Tech Utopia or what Diamandis calls Abundance. That the future is better than we think.

We already saw that in California, abundance is a myth. And I have spoken in the past about how tech startups like Singularity University create scarcity to sell abundance while charging an arm and a leg. And how they pretend to be solving humanity’s grand challenges. Take Facebook. Facebook is not solving humanity’s grand challenges. All it does is micro-targeting of ads to sell you things. And so do Google, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon, and most others. All in all, if you think of it, despite their noble rhetoric there is very little saving the world and a whole lot of selling going on. This is why California is the disaster that it is today.

The 2nd myth is the myth of the new techno philanthropists – a few entrepreneurial nerds who will save the world by technological revolution, while making trillions of dollars. But this revolution is not your grandfather’s revolution. Because this revolution is market-friendly. This revolution is one that Venture Capitalists can invest in. This revolution is lead from the top, not from the bottom. This revolution is for-profit and registered in Northern Ireland, Luxembourg, or some other tax haven so that this revolution pays no taxes. And its greatest accomplishment so far is translating old-school consumerism into the digital realm.

But, of course, a revolution that merely replaces those on top is not a revolution at all – it’s a coup. Because there is no paradigm change. Thus, Silicon Valley gave us not only fake news but also fake revolution, fake change, fake friends, fake saving the world, fake ethics, fake privacy, fake freedom, and, as we can see in the streets of LA and San Fran – fake abundance and fake techno philanthropists.

The reality is that Big Tech is nothing more than a classic extractive industry. So if in the 20th century the biggest companies were mining fossil fuels, today the biggest companies are mining data. And just like mining companies devastated our natural environment, today, Big Tech is devastating our social environment. Just like in the 20 century terrible crimes were committed in the developing countries where we had colonialism and sometimes genocide. Today we have data colonialism and, in places like Myanmar, genocide powered by Facebook – with 10,000 dead and a million refugees. That’s why Amnesty International says that Facebook and Google are a threat to human rights. And, I say that the techno philanthropists are simply the new digital robber barons.

It used to be that biology was destiny. Today it may turn out that data is destiny. And, if it is indeed true that data is power, then absolute data about absolutely everyone, absolutely everything that we do, absolutely all of the time may turn out to be the absolute power. Because as Big Tech collects the data, as they classify, trade and sell it, what they are selling is not mere data. What they are selling is us. They are selling our identity. They are selling our values, they are selling our hopes, they are selling our dreams, and they are selling our fears. They are selling our past. And they are selling our future. Ultimately, they are selling our power of choice and self-determination. Because they believe that they know what is best for us.

Elon Musk once said that whatever disseminates power enhances democracy, and whatever concentrates power undermines it. I say that this unparalleled concentration of power is pushing us towards neotechnocracy. Neotechnocracy where those who make the tech tell us what to see and not to see, what books to read, what movies to watch, what to buy, who to have as our friends, where to go to school, where to live, where to work, whom to marry, who to believe, who to vote for, when to feel happy or sad. Because they are creating the greatest brain-washing propaganda machine the world has ever seen. And we are becoming a panopticon society where personal choice, privacy, and freedom are so threatened that even our dreams and thoughts are not likely to remain safe or private forever.

The neotechnocrats believe that all problems, including those created by technology, can and will be solved by more and better technology. And that they are the smartest and best people to solve them, while naturally making trillions of dollars. But creating a problem does not automatically create competence to solve the problem.

And so we get to the 3rd or perhaps the most popular and maybe even the most dangerous myth:

the myth that Technology allows us to see the future.

“Come and see this amazing new technology,” we often hear, “And you will see the future.”

I call this “the Crystal Ball” myth because I grew up with the witches and wizards’ fairy tales where magic crystal balls gave them the ability to see the future.

To evaluate the crystal ball metaphor, we have to first understand the etymology of the word technology – what it means and stands for, or at least what it used to mean and stand for. Then we can judge whether the etymological meaning of the word supports the above metaphor or some alternatives that I will propose.

The word technology comes from two Greek words – techne and logos. Techne means art, skill, craft, or the way, manner, or means by which a thing is gained. Logos means word, the utterance by which inward thought is expressed, a saying, or an expression. So, technology means words or discourse or a conversation about the way things are gained. In other words, technology is merely “how” we do things and not “what” we want or “why” we do them. Because it is not an end-in-itself. Instead, technology is merely a means-to-an-end, a tool.

That is why I want to propose a better metaphor: technology is a magnifying mirror. It doesn’t show us the future but merely reflects the present and, more importantly, it reflects who we are.

Technology is a mirror because it reflects the engineers, designers, entrepreneurs and users who create and use it. But it is also a mirror to humanity in general and our collective dreams, our hopes and fears, our knowledge and our ignorance, our privileges and our responsibilities, our strengths, and our weaknesses, our good, and our evil. But it is not a usual kind of mirror because technology magnifies and amplifies things, and hence it brings its own biases. Thus it always has unforeseen consequences. And the critical point here is that technology reflects our essence. So, in a way, the story of technology is the story of humanity. [Just like the story of humanity is often told as the story of technology – e.g., the claim that we are a “tool-maker.”]

Now, why do I claim that the crystal ball metaphor is dangerous?

The result of believing it is that most tech conversations are techno-deterministic and focus exclusively on fixing the technology while ignoring the fact that it isn’t produced in a vacuum. That it mirrors our political, social, evolutionary and cognitive biases. In other words, to use my metaphor, focusing exclusively on fixing the technology is like looking into a mirror, not liking the image we see, and then trying to fix that by polishing the mirror. But we have it upside down. Instead of focusing on the technology, we might want to invest some time and resources on improving ourselves instead – i.e., who we are being, what we are doing, and why we are doing it in the first place.

I will go as far as claiming that one of the keys to our future is keeping the right balance between exponential technology and humanity. So humanity must become exponential too. Not in the narrow technical sense. But in a broader philosophical sense with respect to wisdom, ethics, compassion, and strength of character in the face of ever-growing technological power and temptations.

Therefore, what I’m proposing is that, at the end of the day, it is not about the technology. It is about us and what we do. Because, one way or another, it is not a shift in technology we are living through; it is a shift in humanity.

So we can have the best possible how, but if we mess up our why or what, we will end up doing more damage than good. That is why technology is not enough. It is necessary, but it is not sufficient.

And there are many historical examples of how better technology did not make our lives better but worse. For instance, historian Yuval Harari called the Agrarian Revolution “history’s greatest fraud.” [Because in every way measurable – i.e., health, longevity, work hours per week, nutrition, infant mortality, etc., we were better off as hunter-gatherers. The Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution were also “frauds” in the sense that most contemporaries ended up worse off than they previously were. So, the story of progress, that technology is inherently good or that it always gives us freedom is incomplete and one-sided. And, if we are not careful, we are running the risk that our current technological revolution may turn out to be our epoch’s greatest fraud.

You can see that nowhere better than in Silicon Valley in general and Facebook in particular.

Take Silicon Valley. The way that many startups begin is usually by some new technology that they don’t know how to use and apply. In other words, they start with a “how.” For example, in the case of Google it was a new search engine algorithm called Page rank or, in the case of Facebook, a sexist platform that allowed nerdy freshmen to rank the profile pictures of their female colleagues. Then, usually after some angel or venture investment, startups “pivot” to monetize” their unique “how.” But this is like putting the cart in front of the horse where the cart is “how” we do something and the horse is “why” we have a cart in the first place. And when we have the cart driving the horse, in other words, when we have people serving technology rather than technology serving people, then we get the kinds of results that we’ve got.

Take Facebook, for example. After pivoting from female student pictures to a student social platform, Facebook became magic. Many tech gurus like Peter Thiel said that Facebook is the future. It was a magic utopia where everyone could socialize with everyone else everywhere around the world, easily and for free. But then it became manic because we realized how addictive it is, how it feeds our worst impulses, how it makes us both ADD and obsessive-compulsive. Eventually, with the Cambridge Analytica revelations and the Myanmar genocide, we realized it has become monstrous. And it is not hard to see that most technologies since the industrial revolution either already follow a similar path from magic through manic to monstrous or are in danger of doing that. And that is, of course, because we, humanity, are magic, manic and monstrous. And Technology reflects us. Examples abound, but I can’t think of anything better than plastic.

You see, in the early 20th-century plastic was literally marketed as the magic material. Because you could do almost anything out of plastic but cheaper, faster, and easier. And so we quickly became manic obsessive and did build nearly everything out of it. Today, it is not hard to see that we are neck-deep in the monstrous stage because whole areas of our oceans contain more plastic pieces than fish. And, to give you a tiny example of just how bad it has become, check this out:

we now produce 1,000,000 plastic water bottles per minute on our planet.

What is worse is that, at best, only 9% ever get recycled. The other 910,000 plastic bottles per minute end up in the environment. And, of course, water bottles are but a tiny fraction of the total plastic production on our planet. So it is no surprise that we are drowning in this originally magic, then manic, and now monstrous technology.

So, the question then is: “Why would AI be any different?!”

There are many cases where we can see that AI risks going from magic to manic to monstrous, where we can see that AI does not help us discover the future but reveals who we are.

Take Tay. Tay was an AI chatbot created by Microsoft in 2016 that was specifically designed for Twitter and launched to a fanfare of promises, including the claim about seeing the future. Well, in 12 hours, Tay became racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, and sexist. In 16 hours, Microsoft had to shut it down.

So, what I’m suggesting here is that it is not necessarily about the AI. It is perhaps most about the I. And the I, of course, stands for intelligence. The I stands for us. We are the I. We are the cake. The artificial part is just the icing on the cake. So all of those who are warning about the existential threat posed by AI is either misunderstanding or, worse, misrepresenting the issue. Because the dangers come not from the artificial part but from the intelligence part. That is why the AI doomsayers remind me to the African proverb which goes like this:

“The sheep will spend its entire life fearing the wolf, only to be eaten by the shepherd.”

That is why Frank Herbert started his 1965 classic novel Dune with a story about the people who turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free only to find themselves enslaved by other people with machines.

Look around the world today, and you will see that humanity is the greatest threat to humanity, not some alien or artificial intelligence. We have met the enemy, and it is us. Because humanity is the greatest threat to all life on our planet. We are the terminators for we are bringing about the 6th extinction. That is why Yuval Harari calls homo sapiens a mass-murdering species.

This is also why techno-solutionism is so dangerous. Because, as Dr. Matthew Cole says:

“Every time that technology tries to stand in for ethics, we do ourselves a disservice, […] we deny ourselves the opportunity for growth.”

Now, many will argue that technology does help us solve problems. I do not deny that. I myself absolutely love technology. But I do not worship it. All I’m saying is that technology, while necessary, is not sufficient. Especially when it comes to the major issues, we are facing today.

Take global warming. We know the science – it is pretty uncontroversial and conclusive.  And we do have most, maybe even all, the technology required to move beyond fossil fuels and meat consumption – 2 of the most damaging factors to our environment and our own health. And yet, we are not taking sufficient action. We’re hoping that someone else will give up driving cars or eating meat three times per day. Or that artificial intelligence will come and solve not only Climate Change but all of our problems.

In other words, our civilization is like an alcoholic with a failing liver. And technology offers us the hope that we can 3d bio-print a new liver just in time while failing to acknowledge our own self-destructive habits and our own responsibility, thereby failing to address the actual problem rather than the symptoms.

We are destroying ourselves and our planet, while putting our hopes and fears in things like God, or AI, capitalism, science, and technology:

Our techno-deity, aka “science and technology,” will save us.

Or the wrath of God-like super-intelligent AI will destroy us.

Or the invisible hand of the free market will raise all boats and bring about the best equilibrium.

0And we keep telling ourselves that convenient story. That convenient lie. So that we can keep avoiding an inconvenient truth:

That humanity is the greatest threat and hope for humanity. Not some omnipresent, all-knowing, almighty force residing outside of us.

That we may not be Gods yet but we are in charge already.

It is us who are the most powerful force on our planet. We are the real destroyers and creators. We ought to take both the credit and the blame for where we are today and the problems we have. It is us who are driving the train towards the trainwreck. Therefore, only we can move our foot off the gas pedal and hit the brakes to save ourselves.

We have to recognize that on the upside, our ever more powerful technology has clearly proven that the sky is not the limit. That everything is possible. That we can defeat poverty, infectious disease, blindness, cancer, aging, even death. We can have near-infinite access to solar energy that would provide us with unimaginable material abundance and comfort. In other words, for the first time in human history we have the technological means to build the closest thing to utopia. And the fact that humanity was able to design and produce a COVID19 vaccine in record breaking 10 months is but one of endless positive technological examples.

But we also have to recognize that technology is not enough. And so the opposite option: complete dystopia with global pandemic, climate collapse, failed states, civilization collapse and maybe even nuclear or AI Gigawar and extinction of the entire human race are also possible. Because technology is a double-edged sword.

So far I’ve mostly given you examples of how humanity is the problem. But the good news is that if we are the problem that means that humanity can also be the solution. We are in a position to influence the future. We have the power and the responsibility to make a positive contribution. So we should not merely wait and let the future happen to us but instead make it happen. In other words, we can drive change instead of being driven by it.

And, yes, we have to acknowledge that we are in a civilization-wide crisis. But that is not and should not be a fact that makes us simply fearful, passive and depressed.

Because, to quote Frank Herbert again, “fear is the mind killer.”

You see the Chinese word for crisis (weiji) consists of two characters: one signifying danger and another, which according to some interpretations, is signifying opportunity. The English word that we use comes from the ancient Greek word “Krisis” meaning to decide.

So the moral here is that we should not simply fear a crisis – due to its inherent dangers, but we should also embrace and try to make the best of it – due to the unique opportunity that is hidden within. And that is something we often forget – that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Because a crisis is a time to decide, to make a choice and to commit. An opportunity to reinvent ourselves for the better.

This profound realization – that there is always more than a single tragic path in front of us, can provide just enough optimism that, in the end, makes all the difference to those who need it most. Because desperation is a luxury we can’t afford, and hope is a duty we must fulfil.

It is also why Winston Churchill noted that “The optimist sees opportunity in every danger; the pessimist sees danger in every opportunity.” But my job here today is not to be an optimist. Or a pessimist. My job is to be a realist and to lay out the full horizon of both the dangers and the opportunities we are facing today. So the key here is that the obstacle is the way. Yes, sometimes it seems that the world is all going to hell. But great blessings lie ahead for those who know the secret to finding opportunity within each crisis.

So the first step is honesty. Because it takes brutal honesty to recognize the depth of the hole we have dug ourselves into. Honesty that it was us who dug the hole. And honesty that we cannot rely on a divine or technological miracle to save us.

The 2nd step is to look for hope in the fact that there is hardly anything absolutely unique in our predicament. That many other people, organizations, corporations and civilizations have failed and succeeded in similar situations. So we should seek the positive role models – to emulate them, and the negative ones – to learn from their mistakes.

So let’s look at 2 examples of corporate response to a crisis. The first one is Kodak and I suspect that many of you may be familiar with it. However, I still want to share it because it sets the context for the success of one of its major competitors and gives us a strategy about what we can do – personally – as employees, but also collectively, as corporations, nations and even as a civilization.

Plus, I do have a direct personal connection to Kodak because half of my wife’s family is from Rochester, New York, which used to be known as “Kodak City.” In 1996, Kodak had a 28-billion-dollar market cap and almost 100,000 employees. The company looked invincible. But the future will find us all. And it doesn’t matter if you are a billion-dollar company, a student, manager or salesperson in Canada or a Masai warrior in Africa. The real question is will we find the future?

Back in 1975, Kodak had invented the first digital camera. So, in a way, they had already found the future. But the problem was that Kodak wasn’t interested in the future because Kodak really loved the present. Kodak was in the paper and chemicals business, it did not pay them to disrupt their own business model, so they didn’t embrace digital photography. And in 2012 Kodak went bankrupt.

This is what disruptive change looks like. It means that after the meteorite strike, dinosaurs die out – no matter how big and strong they are, and a new species will rise to dominate the environment. This is where many of the dangers and opportunities we face today are. And some of us can see the meteorites coming. The question we need to answer is: are we going to see the meteorites as dangers or opportunities?

Because our greatest strengths are also our greatest weaknesses. So let me ask you this: Is your business or your professional career structured around providing THE answer, or THE solution to a problem? Because, in the age of Google, answers are free, but good questions can be priceless. Because the better the question, the better the answer. So the value creation is shifting more and more towards the questions.

Because it turns out that answers have a limited lifespan, so holding too tight to an answer can be at least very costly, if not outright deadly. That is why IBM was best positioned to profit from the personal computer revolution, but they missed it. Instead, Apple, Microsoft and Dell became giants. Later, they were best positioned to exploit the search engine revolution, but they missed it. Instead, Google became a giant. Google was best positioned for the social networking revolution but missed it. Instead, Facebook and LinkedIn became giants. Blockbuster was best positioned to benefit from the video streaming revolution but they missed it and YouTube and NetFlix became giants. German and Japanese car makers were best positioned for the electric car revolution, but they nearly missed it. Tesla is now emerging as the leader, though it is still too early to say how things will shape up there.

So, ask yourself this question: What am I missing? What is the question that I should be asking? That is where the next threat or breakthrough opportunity is hiding.

Let’s go back to Kodak. As I said before, in 1996 Kodak was 28 billion dollar company with 100,000 employees and 90% market dominance. Its main competitor was Fuji and Fuji was about 10 times smaller than Kodak. The most interesting thing however is that when Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012 at the same time Fuji was a healthy and growing 18 billion dollar company. So what was the difference? Why did Kodak die and Fuji prosper if both of them were paper and chemicals companies facing the same crisis?

The short answer is because Kodak tried to change themselves and Fuji, in contrast, reinvented themselves completely.

You see, when in the early 2000s Kodak saw the emergence of digital photography they decided to become a digital image company. In other words, Kodak wanted to change from analog to digital. Fuji, on the other hand, saw that digital is not a mere change but a symptom of a radically new world. So, they concluded that change is not enough. Which is why they decided to reinvent themselves completely and move in multiple and diverse  new markets. So originally 70% of Fujifilm’s profits came from film. Today it is less than 0.5% and the vast majority of profits for Fujifilm come from pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and healthcare.

It turns out that while photo film is nearly useless today the technology, the science and the expertise behind it can be very, very lucrative, provided that you can find a proper application. So the product – film, like most contemporary products, has a very limited lifespan but the science and technology behind it can be utilized to make an entirely new business altogether. For example, during their decades of developing color film Fujifilm have accumulated a library of 20,000 chemical compounds. Some of those compounds were used to preserve the film and protect it from fading. Well, it turns out that the same technology can be used in cosmetics to protect the skin from the sun and to help prevent sagging. Other compounds were applied in the production of LCD screens, computer storage devices and printing hardware. In fact, just last month Fuji announced a new highly sensitive and accurate COVID19 test, which was created using its proprietary photo-developing silver amplification immunochromatography.

So the question is, what was Fuji’s secret to reinventing itself?

And it is the philosophy of kaizen.

I don’t know if you are familiar with KaiZen but, like crisis, the Japanese concept of KaiZen consists of two characters: Kai and Zen. Those who are familiar know that Kai means change and Zen means good. So KaiZen literally means “change good.” But that is just the start. And the really interesting etymological meaning comes if we dig a bit deeper.

It turns out, that each of those characters themselves also consists of two parts. Kai consists of “self” and “whipping”. So when you think of the word change think of someone whipping themselves. So I can’t beat you up to force you to change. And you can’t beat me up to force me to change. We each have to do it ourselves.

Now, the character for Zen consists of 2 parts: top part designates a sheep, or a lamb, or a goat. And the bottom part stands for an altar. So, Zen is actually a lamb sacrificed on an altar. A sacrifice. That is what is most often translated as “good” because sacrifices are good for the Gods and good for the people who do them. So, putting it all together, the word KaiZen means to whip yourself and make a sacrifice. And that is change. And that is good. For we all need to take some punishment and make sacrifices to adapt to change and evolve if we want to thrive.

We live in an age of accelerating change and exponential technology. The riskiest thing we can do is to try to play it safe and stay the same. The safe thing now is to be different. To be a purple cow. To be remarkable. To take risks. To try what may not work. To not be afraid of failure. 

So, the question is: Are you personally, your business and our civilization in general going to be a Kodak or a Fuji?

Most importantly: Are we going to go extinct like the dinosaurs? Or, are we going to populate the universe, like Elon Musk is dreaming of?

Because my promise to you today is that the future will find us all, no matter where we are and what we do. But the question remains: Will we find the future?

You see, technology is pretty good at giving us what we want, but it is terrible at giving us what we need. It’s good at supplying information, even knowledge, but terrible at providing wisdom. It helps us live easier, more comfortable, and longer lives, but it does not tell us why we should live or what to do with our lives in the first place. Most importantly, technology does not make us happy. There is no app for happiness. In fact, during the current pandemic, we are using more tech than ever before, and we are more unhappy, more depressed, and more suicidal than ever before.

So, while AI may help us get whatever we wish, it is wisdom that helps us figure out what we should want [or not] in the first place. Intelligence can be useful only in that case. Because lacking the wisdom to know what we should and should not want but having the intelligence – be it artificial or biological, to get it is a path to self-destruction.

That is why all the significant existential challenges we face today – be it Climate Change, Environmental Destruction, Nuclear weapons, Soil Erosion, Species Extinction, Plastic, and Other Toxic Pollution, Ocean Acidification, even Pandemics etc. are without exception the same problem playing itself out over and over again. Namely, humanity’s technological power is out-pacing our wisdom to control and use it in a productive, safe, non-destructive, and non-suicidal manner.

Clearly, more powerful technology, not accompanied by a proportional growth in our own wisdom to utilize it, will make the gap bigger and therefore the above problems worse, not better. Therefore the greatest project of our civilization is not AI. It is humanity. And so we don’t need a moonshot. We don’t even need an Earthshot. We need a shot of and for humanity. Because humanity is the greatest project of our civilization.

And that is why we must go back to the original meaning of the word technology. Technology is merely a tool, a means to an end, never an end in itself. It is useful as a crutch, but, as with all crutches, we can become slaves to its use unless we condition and develop our own strength.

It can, therefore, enable just as much as it can disable us. It therefore can destroy and enslave us just as much as it can liberate and save us. Therefore, while technology may be the path to our salvation or the path to our destruction, it will not be the reason as per why we end up there.

Because technology reveals who we are, not the future. And if we put garbage in, we are going to get garbage out. Only this time it’s exponential. The same applies to stupidity, prejudice, or evil. Therefore, we can’t fix technology unless we take both personal responsibility – as individuals, and collective responsibility – as corporations, organizations, nations and even as a species. Because technology is a magnifying mirror, not a crystal ball.

So, to sum it up, what I’ve argued here today is simply this: Technology doesn’t create abundance on its own – but we can. It doesn’t create a philantropist revolution – but we can. And it doesn’t help us see the future – no one can. But together we can build a future with dignity and respect for all sentient life. A future we’re all proud off. A future where our children will inherit a safer, greener and freer world.

But to do all this we have to start before technology. We have to start with why. And the why is ethics.

The how, the technology, is only needed later.

Thank you!

Nikola Danaylov’s Virtual Keynote: How to Be a Futurist

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A few weeks ago I had a client who asked me to do a virtual keynote on futurism. The client was pretty happy how it turned out so I thought I’d share it publicly. This way you can hopefully enjoy, share and benefit from it too. 😉

How to Be a Futurist

Famous physicist Sir Isaac Newton saw our universe as a pool table. Given that everything follows the laws of nature, Newton argued, if one knows the direction and the force behind each billiard ball, or each particle in the universe, one will be able to predict the future and what comes next. Needless to say, this is a pretty deterministic view that leaves no space for personal freedom, not to mention that it turns us all into mere billiard balls.

So, in a way, it is not surprising that the most common question people ask as soon as they find out I am a futurist is to predict the future and what comes next?

Well, today we live in the age of Google. So answers are free. Good questions, however, can be priceless because the better the question that we ask the better the answer that we are going to get. So the value is moving away from the answers and towards the questions.

Therefore, the question about predicting the future and what’s next, popular as it is, needs to be put into proper context so that we can see if it is the right question to ask in the first place.

In quantum physics, there is this phenomenon called the “observer effect” also known as “the measurement problem.” It refers to the impact that the act of observing produces on a phenomenon thereby highlighting the inextricable dynamic relationship between the “subject” and the “object.”

In essence, the observer effect leads to a rejection of Newtonian determinism because it shows that we live in a universe whose present is not simply “the effect of the past” or “the cause of its future.” So Quantum mechanics tells us that nothing can be measured or observed without disturbing it.

Furthermore, quantum physics annihilates the possibility of a strict dualism between the subject and the object, presenting them in a dynamic relationship where each is relational and reciprocally constituting the other.

I believe the same points hold true about the present and the future:

  1. The present and the future do not follow a simple deterministic path.
  2. They are not simply the cause and effect of each other but are liable to exhibit the observer effect so they are influenced by us.
  3. They don’t have a dualistic relationship of simple opposites but share a dynamic relationship where each is relational and constituting the other. So we can’t really put a hard line between the present and the future.

And, thus, to paraphrase Albert Einstein in our current context, there is spooky action from the distance of our present and well into the future.

Now, some have called the future a chaos system. And we know that there are 2 types of chaotic systems:

Level 1 chaos does not react to predictions about it. The best example of level 1 is the weather. It is an extremely complex type of chaotic system but we can model it, make computer simulations and then come up with predictions about the weather in a particular location at a particular time in the future. And, right or wrong, the weather itself will not be influenced by our prediction, one way or another.

The future in general, however, is what is called a Level 2 chaotic system. And the problem with level 2 chaos is that it reacts to predictions and therefore can never be predicted fully. One example of that is the stock market.

Imagine we have a computer program or some other way to make a 100% accurate prediction about the price of oil tomorrow. As soon as word gets out, people will adjust their expectations and the market price of oil will react to the forecast which will consequently fail to materialize. This is even more true of political and other major complex chaotic events such as revolutions, terrorist acts, political assassinations, even pandemics. The French Revolution, the American Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Arab Spring were all predictably unpredictable. Because revolutions are by their very nature, and definition, unpredictable, since a predictable revolution never succeeds.

And that is why the future is always surprising in one way or another. Because, as I said before, it is entangled with the present in a dynamic relationship and hence it is responsive to everything we do or fail to do.

So what is futurism then and why should we care about it if it doesn’t help us predict the future?

Well, we do futurism not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand how our present is neither natural nor inevitable and to find more future possibilities than we can currently imagine. That is why, in contrast to astrologers and palm readers, good futurists don’t make predictions. At best, we can identify the major drivers and, if we’re very skilled and very lucky, most of their impact. But we remain humble because we know that the future will surprise us in many, if not most ways that matter.

In other words, when it comes to the future, we are all driving in the dark, but futurism or foresight is like turning on our headlights. It allows us to see the road ahead much further down as well as the obstacles that are either already there or are currently on the side but could potentially end up in front. And it helps us to keep going towards our chosen destination.

To put it in bullet points futurism helps us accomplish 3 main things:

  1. It helps us identify certain signals that can manifest as either dangers or opportunities or both.
  2. It helps us game out possible, probable and preferable future scenarios and prepare for them.
  3. It motivates us to envision and create our own image of the future.

Let’s skip 1 and 2 for a moment and focus on 3. And let me ask you a question:

What is your image of the future? When you think of the future, what do you see? And are you looking 2 months, 2 years or 20 years?

Because “the future” is different for each one of us since it doesn’t exist outside of our imagination and since we all have a different timeline.

So when Henry Ford asked that question, he saw a car for every family and mobility for the masses. When Steve Jobs asked that question, he saw tools for the mind that will change humankind. When Bill Gates asked that question, he saw a computer on every desk in every home. When Elon Musk asked that question, he saw a transition to sustainable energy and a multiplanet species.

But the question is what do you see?

Because the future begins first as an image or a story. So would you rather borrow that image from someone else or would you rather be the author of your own story? Because I’m not convinced that Steve’s, Bill’s or Elon’s image is the one best for us – be it personally or collectively. And since the future and the present are entangled that means that the future creates the present just as much as the present creates the future. As Futurist Barbara Hubbard pointed out “As we see our future, so we act; as we act, so we become.”

Now let’s go back to points 1 and 2 about identifying signals and gaming the consequent future scenarios. Some of the drivers here are things such as disruptive technology or global shifts such as climate change or demographics. One of the common elements among those is that at least in the short to medium term we can’t control them. And things that fall outside of our control make us uncomfortable because they are uncertain. Of course, one of the reasons people want to predict the future is because we find comfort in certainty. This helps us maintain a sense of control that provides the perception or, perhaps, the illusion of security. But uncertainty creates opportunity.

So, for example, two people can look at the exact same technological, demographic, political, natural, or scientific development and one can experience fear and confusion while the other can come up with a brilliant idea. And it is their respective image of the future aided by what I call a futurist mindset that often account for the difference.

Now, compared to luck, futurism requires us to do the work, to pay attention to signals and trends, and to keep ourselves open to the unexpected. So, the key is to relax and let the process work. A process of finding the tricky balance between the unknown and the things we can’t control – on the one hand, and the things we can focus on and act upon now to adapt to the unknown, avoid the dangers, and utilize the opportunities – on the other hand.

Of course, this is much easier said than done but let me share a couple of examples to help us see how the process works.

Think about surfing. A surfer does not control the waves but they can control their skill of understanding and riding the waves as well as their image of the future. So, a normal person sees a hurricane as a danger to be avoided. But to some surfers, that same storm is the ideal image of the future. When we see a 100-foot wave it looks deadly so the idea of voluntarily trying to ride that wave seems insane. But to a surfer, it looks like a unique opportunity. It’s the same storm, the same wave but we end up with 2 diametrically opposed perceptions and reactions to it where one person runs away, another runs towards it.

This example may be scary but the same principle works also in sailing and many other fields.

A sailboat captain cannot change the winds. Those are external forces of nature outside of her control. However, having studied the weather trends, including those of the winds, and knowing the characteristics of her boat, the captain can identify her preferable destination and then chart and execute a sailing itinerary to reach it. So a good captain with a sea-worthy sailboat can go anywhere she wants.

This is how futurism is supposed to work. And that’s why you can say famous hockey player Wayne Gretzky was a futurist. Because he couldn’t control the game, he couldn’t control his teammates let alone the opposing team, but he learned to identify signals and trends which allowed him to go as he said “not where the puck was but where the puck was going to be.”

In other words, futurism is a mindset that can be applied to any field. When you think like a futurist, you pay attention to what’s going on, you identify signals and trends, and then develop scenarios based on the likelihood that any of those can affect things you care about. You then develop timelines to estimate when these expected impacts will occur, because sometimes being too early is worse than being a little late. Finally, you play out a spectrum of actions to avoid the dangers and take advantage of the opportunities while constantly monitoring how the situation is changing. More or less, this is the gist of futurism.

That is why there is no such thing as predicting the future. By observing or refusing to observe, by taking a passive or active stance, but adopting someone else’s or by creating our own image of the future, one way or another, we create it.

So, asking: “What comes next?” Asking “What is the future?” are the wrong questions. Because we can’t stop the waves but we can learn to ride them. Just like we cannot control the wind but we can control the sail. A better set of questions to ask is this: What is my image of the future? What current trends or changes can threaten or help me create it? How can I take advantage of those so that I ride the waves rather than get drowned by them?

This is how having a futurist mindset can help us navigate and weather a crisis and guide us to prosperity both personally and professionally. But, within that process, the one element that makes the biggest difference both for ourselves but also for those around us is our image of the future.

Because there is no escape. One way or another, consciously or not, the things we do reflect and spread the image of the future that we have. And that image of the future determines not only our emotions but also our attitude. But our emotions and attitude motivate us to act or not to act. That is why time and time again our image of the future – be it personally or collectively, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And one of the best ways of changing ourselves today is by simply changing our image of the future.

So other futurists and technologists may talk to you about future shock and exponential technologies such as genetics, robotics, nanotech, AI, synthetic biology, blockchain, and NFT’s. Or they can geek about the distinction between a signal and a trend. But I would argue that we ought to start with our image of the future. It is then we should seek to identify signals and assess how trends may threaten or help us create it.

So, to conclude, a good futurist is simply a storyteller. Because as Cory Doctorow says, predictions tell us that the future is inevitable, but stories tell us that the future is up for grabs. That is why Frank Herbert warns us in Dune that to know the future for sure is to be trapped because the present becomes prison. And I would add that a future you can’t change, where we are all but billiard balls, is not a future worth worrying about. But a future we are free to reach for and create is worthy of our best.

Thank you!

Chapter 9: The Technology Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 9: The Technology Story

Technology improves the lives of people who can avoid being dominated by it and forced into debilitating addictions to it. Frank Kaufmann

The 1st atomic bomb was nicknamed “gadget.” Does this fact say something about who we are? Or does it say something about the nature of technology and the power to do good or evil?

I will begin this chapter by looking at the most popular myths about technology. I will then look at the etymological origins as well as several definitions of the term. Finally, I will conclude by arguing that story is the core technology of our civilization.

Perhaps the most popular and maybe even the most dangerous myth about technology is the myth that technology allows us to see the future.

“Come and see this amazing new technology,” we often hear, “And you will see the future.”

I call this “the Crystal Ball” myth because I grew up with the witches and wizards’ fairy tales where magic crystal balls gave them the ability to see the future.

Of course, Arthur C. Clarke’s famous 3rd law states that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that modern technology has become synonymous with the crystal ball from our old fairy tales. But the Crystal Ball perception of technology is not only a myth. It is also dangerous.

To evaluate the crystal ball metaphor, we have to first understand the etymology of the word technology – what it means and stands for, or at least what it used to mean and stand for. Then we can judge whether the etymological meaning of the word supports the above metaphor or some alternatives that I will propose.

The word technology comes from two Greek words – techne and logos. Techne means art, skill, craft, or the way, manner, or means by which a thing is gained. Logos means word, the utterance by which inward thought is expressed, a saying, or an expression. So, technology means words or discourse or a conversation about the way things are gained. In other words, technology is merely “how” we do things and not “what” we want or “why” we do them. Because it is not an end-in-itself. Instead, technology is merely a means-to-an-end, a tool.

That is why I want to propose a better metaphor: technology is a magnifying mirror. It doesn’t show us the future but merely reflects the present and, more importantly, it reflects who we are.

Technology is a mirror because it reflects the engineers, designers, entrepreneurs, and users who create and use it. But it is also a mirror to humanity in general and our collective dreams, hopes and fears, our knowledge and our ignorance, our privileges and our responsibilities, our strengths, and our weaknesses, our good, and our evil. But it is not a usual kind of mirror because technology magnifies and amplifies things, and hence it brings its own biases. Thus it always has unforeseen consequences. And the critical point here is that technology reflects our essence. So, in a way, the story of technology is the story of humanity. [Just like the story of humanity is often told as the story of technology – e.g., the claim that we are a “tool-maker.”]

Now, why do I claim that the crystal ball metaphor is dangerous?

The result of believing it is that most tech conversations are techno-deterministic and focus exclusively on fixing the technology while ignoring the fact that it isn’t produced in a vacuum. It mirrors our political, social, evolutionary and cognitive biases. In other words, to use my metaphor, focusing exclusively on fixing the technology is like looking into a mirror, not liking the image we see, and then trying to fix that by polishing the mirror. But we have it upside down. Instead of focusing on the technology, we might want to invest some time and resources, perhaps most of them, on improving ourselves instead – i.e., who we are being, what we are doing, and why we are doing it in the first place.

In fact, I will go as far as claiming that one of the keys to our future is keeping the right balance between exponential technology and humanity. So humanity must be exponential too. Not in the narrow technical sense. But in a broader philosophical sense with respect to wisdom, ethics, compassion, and strength of character in the face of ever-growing technological power and temptations.

Therefore, what I’m proposing is that, at the end of the day, it is not about technology. It is about us and what we do.

Because we can have the best possible how, but if we mess up our why or what, we will end up doing more damage than good. That is why technology is not enough. It is necessary, but it is not sufficient.

And there are many historical examples of how better technology did not make our lives better but worse. For instance, historian Yuval Harari called the Agrarian Revolution “history’s greatest fraud.” [Because in every way measurable – i.e., health, longevity, work hours per week, nutrition, infant mortality, etc., we were better off as hunter-gatherers. The Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution were also “frauds” in the sense that most contemporaries ended up worse off than they previously were. So, the story of progress, that technology is inherently good or that it always gives us freedom is incomplete and one-sided. And, if we are not careful, we are running the risk that our current technological revolution may turn out to be our epoch’s greatest fraud.

Because technology is pretty good at giving us what we want, but it is terrible at giving us what we need. It is good at supplying information, even knowledge, but terrible at providing wisdom. It helps us live easier, more comfortable, and longer lives, but it does not tell us why we should live or what to do with our lives in the first place. Most importantly, technology does not make us happy. There is no app for happiness. In fact, during the COVID19 pandemic, we are using more tech than ever before, and we are more unhappy, more depressed, and more suicidal than ever before.

So, while technology may help us get whatever we wish, it is wisdom that helps us figure out what we should want [or not] in the first place. Intelligence can be useful only in that case. Because lacking the wisdom to know what we should and should not want but having artificial or biological intelligence to get it is a path to self-destruction.

That is why all the significant existential challenges we face today – be it Climate Change, Environmental Destruction, Nuclear weapons, Soil Erosion, Species Extinction, Plastic, and Other Toxic Pollution, Ocean Acidification, even Pandemics, etc. are without exception the same problem playing itself out over and over again. Namely, humanity’s technological power is out-pacing our wisdom to control and use it in a productive, safe, non-destructive, and non-suicidal manner. Clearly, more powerful technology, not accompanied by a proportional growth in our own wisdom to utilize it, will make the gap bigger and therefore the above problems worse, not better.

And that is why we must go back to the original meaning of the word technology. Technology is merely a tool, a means to an end, never an end in itself. It is useful as a crutch, but, as with all crutches, we can become slaves to its use unless we condition and develop our own strength. It can, therefore, enable just as much as it can disable us. It can destroy and enslave us just as much as it can liberate and save us. Therefore, while technology may be the path to our salvation or the path to our destruction, it will not be the reason as per why we end up there.

In short, technology doesn’t help us see the future. It only allows us to see ourselves. And if we put garbage in, we are going to get garbage out. Only this time it’s exponential. Ditto with stupidity, prejudice, or evil. Therefore, we can’t fix technology unless we take both personal responsibility – as individuals, and collective responsibility – as corporations, organizations, nations, and even as a species. Because technology is a magnifying mirror, not a crystal ball.

The classic definition of technology is very important but there are further subtleties in the ancient Greek term as well as additional benefits in considering some contemporary definitions. For example, Kevin Kelly defines technology as “anything useful invented by a mind.” For Angus Fletcher “technology is any human-made thing that helps to solve a problem.” I want to bring these to your attention to stress the fact that technology does not have to necessarily be material in nature. Of course, if you are a software engineer you already know that. But we need to expand this awareness and recognize its implications.

If we combine Kelly and Fletcher’s definitions, technology is “anything useful invented by the human mind that helps us solve a problem.”

There are 2 types of problems and therefore 2 types of technology that we use: outward and inward. Outward technology is what we usually refer to when we evoke the term. It is the technology that helps us solve the problem of being human in a non-human world – e.g. survival – by solving problems such as thirst, hunger, cold, heat, safety, and security, etc. But inward technology is equally important for it helps us solve the problem of simply being human.

“The problem of being human?!” you may ask.

“Well, yes, indeed.”

We face the problem of being human when asking: “Who am I? What is the purpose of life? Why am I here? What is human? What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?”

All big questions with no obvious, if any answer at all. At the same time, we’re being pushed and pulled by our physical and intellectual nature, our passions of love and hate, our fear of death and rage against the dying of the light, our desire to have fun, help others, and make a difference. In short, being human is a problem in its own right. A problem each of us has to solve on our own. And the primary technology we use to solve that problem is called story. Because story is something useful invented by the human mind that helps us solve problems. And only story can supply answers to the above fundamental questions. That’s why Jeff DeChambeau defined story as “information processing technology.” And that’s is also why Robert McKee noted that “Story is about trying to make sense out of the confusion, chaos, and terror of being a human being.”

In conclusion, the most popular and powerful technology is not the wheel. It is not the internet. It is not even money, though money, as Yuval Harari has pointed out, is the most popular story because almost everyone believes in money. But, most popular or not, money is just another story – it doesn’t exist outside of our imagination for we can’t eat, drink or wear money itself. [Bitcoin doesn’t even have a physical representation but is entirely computer code.] So if money is a particular story and story is technology then story is, in fact, the most successful, most effective, and most popular technology. That is why you can have a civilization without the wheel. Even without money. For those are just 2 particular stories. But you can’t have one without story. Because story brings us together. No story, no civilization. As Jonathan Gottschall noted:

Story — sacred and profane — is perhaps the main cohering force in human life. A society is composed of fractious people with different personalities, goals, and agendas. What connects us beyond our kinship ties? Story. As John Gardner puts it, fiction “is essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and death, against entropy.” Story is the counterforce to social disorder, the tendency of things to fall apart. Story is the center without which the rest cannot hold.

Chapter 8: The Science Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 8: The Science Story

 

The universe is made of stories, not atoms. Muriel Rukeyser

***

About 13.5 billion years ago, matter, energy, time and space came into being in what is known as the Big Bang. The story of these fundamental features of our universe is called physics.

About 300,000 years after their first appearance, matter and energy started to coalesce into complex structures, called atoms, which then combined into molecules. The story of atoms, molecules and their interactions is called chemistry.

About 3.8 billion years ago, on a planet called Earth, certain molecules combined to form particularly large and intricate structures called organisms. The story of organisms is called biology.

About 70,000 years ago, organisms belonging to the species Homo Sapiens started to form even more elaborate structures called cultures. The subsequent development of these human cultures is called history. [Yuval Harari, Sapiens p. 3]

After Benjamin Franklin disarmed the Gods by inventing the lightning rod, science has been the means by which humanity has first dethroned and then replaced God altogether. Today, breakthroughs in big data, AI, synthetic biology, genetic engineering, and neuroscience are all pushing us closer to Godhood. Many scientists are confident that defeating aging, creating mind uploads, AI, GMO humans, and radically new engineered organisms are simply a question of “when”, not “if”. This is why Stewart Brand noted that we are already Gods so we might as well start behaving as such. And so we have.

Humanity has never wielded more power for we live in the most scientifically advanced century in the history of our civilization. Paradoxically, it is also the most dangerous century not only for countless species going extinct but also for our own existence. But how can that be? Isn’t science good both for us and the world in general?

In this chapter, I will spell out and deconstruct the science story. I will then look at its implications and finish by arguing that science on its own has not and cannot ensure our progress or future survival. An initial bullet-point outline of my ambitious and tricky argument could look like:

1. Science is unable to set its agenda and priorities. Those are set up by the political, economic, religious, and social systems that science occurs in. As Leto Atreides II says in Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune: “Knowledge, you see, has no uses without purpose, but purpose is what builds enclosing walls.”

2. Science is equally unable to decide what to do with its discoveries because it does not deal with purposes and has no morality of its own. To inform its priorities and to apply its discoveries science needs a story. And this story is the result of an alliance with some religious, political, or economic ideology. Thus, it is story that determines what is to be funded and what is to be done with scientific discoveries. For instance, the space race – in general, and the Apollo program of putting a man on the Moon – in particular, are a great example of doing science for clear political reasons.

3. We cannot properly understand the scientific revolution by studying the greatest scientists. To understand it better we must understand the political, economic, and religious agendas that shaped and gave birth to those. A key insight here is that, while individual scientists may be interested in “the truth” about how our Universe works, the real goal of modern science is not truth but power. [Hence the phrase, usually attributed to Francis Bacon, “scientia est potentia” – i.e., “knowledge is power.”] Just one example is Leonardo da Vinci who wrote everything in a mirrored code because he was not interested in scientific progress. Leonardo’s goals were a lot more prosaic: to make himself and his employer, the Prince, more powerful and more famous.

Furthermore, as a species, we humans prefer power to truth. That is why we spend far more time and effort trying to control the world than trying to understand it. Even on those rare occasions when we do try to understand it we do that in the hope our understanding will make it easier to control. So, clearly, we don’t seek knowledge. We seek power. Unfortunately, the more power we possess the greater the strength of character we need in order to use our power wisely, in a non-destructive manner. Alas, looking at the damage we’ve caused to the climate and biosphere, our growth in wisdom is evidently lagging far behind our growth in power. In the long run, that kind of ever-expanding unbalance is likely to turn out not merely destructive but even suicidal. Some say it already has.

4. The idea of progress is a relatively recent invention and, in fact, the concept predates actual scientific progress by 200 years. It was invented by Francis Bacon in the late 1500s and was conceived in very narrow Christian terms. Consequently, there are many issues stemming from the story of progress. But, what’s important is that today both science and capitalism are inseparable from progress – the idea that everything is always getting better. And that the next generation will necessarily be better off than the previous one. The idea that the pie will always grow bigger and things will always get better, however, goes against everything we know from science – be it physics, biology, chemistry, etc.

For example, how will a pack of wolves behave if they believe that the supply of sheep is always going to grow, no matter what the wolves do? And physics says that there is a finite amount of energy in any system, so it is impossible for things to keep growing infinitely. As Frank Herbert says in Dune: “The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.“

5. Today science is replacing religion by promising eternal life and technological salvation. Our leading scientific project – the Gilgamesh project, is aimed at defeating death. Concepts such as technological singularity, transhumanism, and dataism – the belief in big data, are on the path of becoming religions.

6. Just like oracles, prophets and priests spoke for God and religion, scientists speak for science. Because science, or the facts, can’t speak for itself. So, someone always interprets and speaks for them. That someone has a reason “why” and therefore a purpose that originates not inside but outside of science, in a story that they have embraced and rarely disclose. That is why all great scientists are also great storytellers. Just think of Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, Steven Hawking, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, etc.

7. Neither science nor reason can determine our moral values. They could, at best, inform them. And so they should. But there isn’t such a thing as an argument that is grounded exclusively and entirely in science or reason. Because science and reason can tell us how to act in accordance with our values. But they can’t tell us why we should act in the first place, what is the source of our values, and if or when we should and shouldn’t use science and reason. In other words, you can’t get an ought from an is.

That is why Pulitzer prize winner Toni Morrison noted: “Facts can exist without human intelligence, but truth cannot.”

Albert Einstein himself once said that there are no facts without theory. And what’s a theory you may ask?

A theory is simply a story.

So whether we call it truth or theory we need a story to put those facts into a context, to be able to see them in perspective, to rank and organize them, to make sense of and assign value to them. Science without story has no agenda, no priorities, no meaning, no direction, no value, and no use.

Must Watch: 5 Short Films About Technology

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Five absolutely must-watch satirical vignettes showcase the dumber side of modern technology.

“Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat…who needs the messiness of IRL human interactions when all we need is a thumb, a smartphone, and wifi or data to communicate? As anyone under 40 can surely tell you though, social media has its own drawbacks, and in 5 Films About Technology writer/director Peter Huang conducts a kind of anthropological study—exposing the dumber side of modern technology in a painfully hilarious, and very entertaining way. Funded by the BravoFact Canadian grant, the 5-minute anthology of bite-sized vignettes recounts different stories, linked by one common thread—smartphone usage and its malignant effects.

The five stories depict ordinary days in regular people’s lives. Whether it is the quest for the most popular picture on Instagram, or how addicted to our devices we are, the stories feel universal. Whom among us has not accidentally beamed porn through a car’s bluetooth connection? The very brief performances are strong enough to give us a little bit of insight into the characters’ minds, and let us identify with them. Every single person can recognize themselves in at least one of the vignettes, and some of the situations might even hit close to home for more than a few of us.

5 Films About Technology is not simply about calling out social media though. The creative choices of the director separate the film from the clichéd and overused idea that “social media = evil”. In writing to us about the film, Huang remarks that “Usually in Hollywood films, I feel like technology always feel wrong. It’s there for exposition but it’s not really how people interact. And there’s something to that there… because it’s legitimately now the major form of communication between people.” Thus, what is original in Huang’s vision is how modern technology is dealt with as a subject instead of just scaring us into deleting our social media accounts, or (who am I kidding) at the very least considering it for a second. There is an element of observant authenticity to the character interactions with their devices that traditional media still is having a hard time catching up to.

The craft of the film is effective in its goal to entertain, but also in furthering the film’s themes. The editing maximizes the laughs with brutal efficiency, catching us off guard and providing great pacing. The gags are mostly based on unexpected effects—the shorter the run, the funnier they are, and the rhythm keeps us engaged in the story by not allowing our attention level to come down. The film thus mimics in form the way we consume content on our devices—from the 1:1 ratio reminding us of the (now outdated) Instagram format, to the instant gratification delivered by the quick buildup to the climax of the joke. This is followed instantly by the beginning of the next story, as if we were scrolling through our social media feeds, speeding from one post to the next. Even the transitions from one story to the following are provided by the use of our devices, jumping from the content provider to the content consumer, using an app, surfing a website or with a simple phone call.

Fundamentally the appeal of the film is its satirical humor playfully mocking our modern solipsism, offering great opportunities to laugh at our own expense. This is not a revolutionary subject, but the film is distinguished by its thematic execution. Huang’s aforementioned choice of aspect ratio, and quick-hitting comedic editing serve to trap the audience in the characters’ lack of peripheral view, and see how centered on themselves they are. We jump into their digital hole and thus are just as surprised when something from outside of the frame happens. Paired with the dramatic Tchaikovsky score, a satiric complement to the character’s anxiety, the tone makes us laugh, but at the same time acts as a mirror that we might realize our reflection is hilarious, yet a bit sad.”

 

Chapter 7: The Human Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 7: The Human Story

The Earth does not belong to man; man belongs to Earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. Chief Seattle

We are story-telling animals. And all of history is the human story, our story. So, if today we are at the precipice of the singularly most disruptive change in how we live, how we organize ourselves collectively, and how we relate to the rest of the world, then we were led to this point by the story we have told ourselves – about who we are, where we’re coming from, where we are going and what is our proper place in the universe.

This story takes many forms and shapes – religious, secular, scientific, economic, literally, and artistic. But all tell of humanity’s “transcendence” of our animal origin, our growing mastery over “nature” [because it belongs to us, not the other way around] and a future of “abundance” [that is “better than we think”]. It is the teleological story of civilization, progress, humanism, and, most of all, a species whose manifest destiny is to become God.

What makes it dangerous is that we have forgotten it is a story. Because it has been told so many times by those who see themselves as rationalists or scientists, objective and impartial, true and good.

Up until the 20th century, all human civilizations took nature for granted. It seemed gargantuan and we never imagined we could damage, let alone threaten it. Today we are no longer so humble. Worse than that, even if progress in science and technology is a fact, progress in humanity is, at best, lagging. Because intellectually, technologically, economically, and scientifically humanity has progressed immensely. But psychologically or spiritually we have not moved that far. [As noted by Robinson Jeffers, human nature has no more changed in the last 10,000 years than the beaks of eagles.] And, unfortunately, while we have learned a lot about the birds, bees, fish, and oceans that doesn’t mean we’ll save, rather than destroy them all. [Ourselves included.] Especially since our current story tells us that the universe is ours for the taking and we are free to do with it as we please.

In fact, all of our current crises are self-created. If we look carefully at all the problems we are facing today we would realize that they are all the same. Things like nuclear proliferation, global warming, environmental degradation, and species extinction, even pandemics are all actually the same thing playing itself over and over again in different realms. Namely, humanity’s technological power far surpassing our wisdom to use it in a safe, productive, non-homicidal, and non-suicidal manner.

Yuval Harari notes that we jumped from the middle of the food chain, where we spent more than 2 million years, to the top only within the last 100,000 years. But because of our meteoric rise, we are ill-adapted to our current position of power and supremacy. And many of the calamities that followed – be it wars against other humans or the way we treat the environment, are due to that fact. Bears, wolves, lions, and sharks all evolved to be at the top of the food chain over many millions of years. And they are evolved to be in balance with each other and the world around them. We are not. This is why Harari argues that “Armed sheep are far more dangerous than armed wolves because they are not used to be in a position of power.”

We also moved from a view where “mother nature” was the all-powerful giver and taker to a view where we could and should “master” or “conquer” her. So now we are the wise giver and taker of life. And it is right and proper it is so. Because we are Homo Sapiens – the “wise man.” [A Freudian Oedipus complex at the scale of our civilization?!] And that is also a result of the myth that humanity isn’t a part of nature, but apart from it.

To be clear, our current human story consists of 4 main parts:

1. The story of progress.

2. The story of the supremacy and centrality of humanity.

3. The story of our separation from nature. [Are we a part of the world or apart from the world?]

4. The story of becoming Gods

The Industrial and Scientific Revolutions, Capitalism, Colonization and Imperialism, Climate Change and species extinction, soil erosion and ocean acidification, pandemics, Transhumanism, and Artificial Intelligence [AI] are all consequences and/or examples of the impact of our story. A teleological story of manifest destiny, transcendence, conquering nature, and, ultimately, the universe. A story that has brought us to our present and will guide and inform our decisions into the future. A story that gives meaning and value not only to us but also to the universe and everything in it. A story that can tip the scales towards extinction or survival.

The human story.

As E.O. Wilson noted:

Humanity … arose entirely on its own through an accumulated series of events during evolution. We are not predestined to reach any goal, nor are we answerable to any power but our own. Only wisdom based on self-understanding, not piety, will save us.

Part II: Our Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Part  II: Our Story

Gods always behave like the people who make them. Zora Neale Hurston, Tell My Horse

Before we have a story, any story, we must first have a storyteller. Therefore, the most important story, that which all other stories are derived from, the story-of-all-stories, is the story of the storyteller: the human story.

The human story has been written and rewritten several times already. The last time was somewhere between the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution when we dethroned God as the central authority in the Universe and took his place instead. Since then our story has spread the myth of the supremacy and centrality of the human being – of how we are the pinnacle of evolution, the supreme intelligence, and the masters of nature. And everything we have done since then, together with everything we are likely to do in the future, will stem from that story – the story of who we are, what’s our place in the universe, what we are here for, and where we are going.

It is, therefore, this story that is the cornerstone of our stunning progress and fantastic accomplishments. It is also the same story that underpins our failures and current predicaments – be it climate change, environmental destruction and species extinction, nuclear war, terrorism, pandemics, or even artificial intelligence. For it is this story that gave us Auschwitz and took us to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. And it is this story that will likely determine if we are going to go extinct like the dinosaurs, or if and how we might populate the universe.

Our modern challenges are not only new but also self-created. And exponential technologies – such as genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, big data, synthetic biology, 3D printing, crypto blockchains, and nanotechnology, are already causing both negative and positive change. But new kinds of challenges require new kinds of thinking. And self-created problems require first acknowledging and then learning from past mistakes. Finally, since we think in and are ruled by stories, we must rewrite the human story yet again. Because our current story is facing many new challenges. And recent events have shown it is starting to fall apart.

But before we can write a new story we must understand how the current story came to be, what are its main elements and what has been its impact. Only then can we hope to write a better story. This is not just a philosophical exercise but a question of survival for all life on our planet. Viktor Frankl, a Nazi Holocaust survivor, said it best:

Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

Chapter 6: The Biology of Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 6: The Biology of Story

Most people believe the mind to be a mirror, more or less accurately reflecting the world outside them, not realizing the contrary that the mind is itself the principle element of creation. Rabindranath Tagore

It is arguable whether it is proper for us to be classified as Homo Sapiens because it is arguable as per how wise we actually are. But, in this chapter, I will claim it is much less arguable that we are proper Homo Narrative. Because even before the time humans started to huddle around campfires, even before we were able to speak, story was at the core of what is human.

Human biology has evolved around and wired for 2 main types of stories:

The first one is the story our human brain tells us about the world and who we are in it. Because our brain has evolved to produce a single story of “reality”. And that story isn’t strictly true, comprehensive, or accurate. Rather it is a story designed to make sense to us. Because our brain is able to perceive only a tiny fraction of the universe around us. It has evolved to filter out a number of crucial details and take shortcuts into creating the story of the outside world inside our heads. And we have developed a variety of evolutionary, physiological, and psychological biases. Thus, according to neuroscientist Anil Seth, our brain’s story is a single, unreal, “hallucinated” story. And, since we are all hallucinating all the time, Dr. Seth claims that “reality is just a hallucination majority of people agree upon.”

In other words, reality is a story. A story that a sufficient number of people accept as true. Furthermore, we don’t just passively experience the world but we actively generate it. So it comes as much from within as it comes from without. Finally, story is the natural way in which the mind takes in data from the outside world and then processes it so that we can make sense of it.

The second type is the story we tell and hear from others. Because we are evolutionarily selected for being good storytellers and good listeners. This is due to the fact that story is the best way of communicating information, especially when we had no writing. So people who told the most captivating stories usually had the most crowded campfire and rarely went hungry. Those who remembered well the stories about the migration of the herds, the seasons of the year, the best ways of securing water, food, shelter, and fire, had the best chance of survival. Those who didn’t were less likely to survive and pass down their genes.

So whether it is perceiving and processing the world inside our heads, or sharing practical information with others, story is critical to human survival. And, in biology, things that provide benefit to survival get selected for.

Now that we have some general idea about the biology of story let us look at 2 interesting examples:

When my wife Julie was 7-years-old she had a problem with warts. The dermatologist gave her a prescription but it didn’t work. Then he gave her another one but that didn’t work either. He tried freeze-burning the warts with the same success. He kept trying different things but for over a year of treatment, the warts were not only still there but now spread from one to both hands. Finally, after trying everything else without success, the dermatologist said he had just received a new miracle treatment but Julie had to visit him monthly for 6 months and get a shot in her bum. Now, my wife has always been very needle and blood averse but she really hated her warts. So she had no choice but to do what she had to. And, after 4 or 5 months of injections, the warts were gone. Then on the last month, her mother asked the doctor:

“What is this new miracle treatment that finally managed to cure all my daughter’s warts?”

“Oh, that”, said the doctor. “That miracle treatment is called placebo.”

What is a placebo? Placebo is a story. A story about a medicine that you thought you took but never did. Yet it often works. Like my wife, many people experience either a measurable improvement in their medical condition or alleviation in terms of suffering, sometimes both. So, the story actually makes a medical difference in a measurable portion of the population. According to Dr. Matthew Bruke from Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, patients who believe a treatment will work and are treated kindly by a trusted clinician, do better. Take these factors away, and studies have found lower results for active treatments as well.

Current research also suggests that detailed treatment “rituals” – like injections or IV placebos, tend to lead to a stronger response than sugar pills. Other studies have found high placebo effects for long-accepted treatments such as surgery for shoulder pain and stents for angina, where researchers found no significant difference in patients who thought they received the procedure than those who actually did. In fact, Dr. Burke suggests that if those treatments were put through a placebo-designed trial today, they would have trouble getting approved.

It is hard to argue that placebo is not a fantastic example of the biology of story. Another fascinating case is that of memory champions who use a spectrum of tricks to help them remember. One of their most powerful tools, however, is inventing a fictional story that allows them to link chronologically a very long list of random and seemingly incompatible items. An interesting element of this fictional story is that the crazier and less plausible it is the easier it is to remember. Another one is that it turns out linking information to a narrative and a place may help memory more than linking information to a place alone.

I hope that the above examples have demonstrated that humanity is properly Homo Narrative because we have evolved and are wired for story. So much so that even when we fall asleep our minds can’t help it but keep spinning more stories that we call dreams. That is how fundamental the biology of story is to our species. As Jonathan Gottschall observed:

We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.

Chapter 5: The Importance of Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 5: The Importance of Story

It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story. Patrick Rothfuss

Stories are not just stories. Stories matter. Because, to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, if one has a sufficiently strong “why” one can endure any “how.” And the “why” comes not from facts or events. It comes from the story we attach to them. This desire for meaning is often stronger than our desire for survival because meaning provides motivation or indifference, even apathy. That’s how important story is.

For example, if one is suffering greatly one can decide that it is meaningless to go on and give up on life. Or, like Viktor Frankl, one can choose a story that attaches positive meaning to their suffering and thus be motivated to endure even the living hell of Auschwitz. This is true for individuals as well as larger groups of people, such as corporations, religions, or nations. As Frankl said:

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

In other words, we are free to choose our story even when we are not free to choose our circumstances. Because the story is our “why” while the circumstances are merely our “how.” And the story is what ultimately makes the difference. Because a story is something that helps us feel connected to a reason and, more importantly, to a purpose. Let’s look at some examples at both the individual and the collective level.

The Japanese island of Okinawa is home to some of the longest-living people in the world. One often-quoted reason behind Okinawan longevity is their concept of Ikigai. Ikigai comes from 2 words: iki – which means “to live,” and gai – which means “a reason.” So, literally, ikigai translates as a “reason to live”, “something that makes life worth living”, “a meaning for/to life”. Furthermore, Ikigai is pretty close to the French concept of raison d’etre. It is a sense of a personal mission and it is commonly believed that if one loses their Ikigai one dies. [A claim strongly supported by Victor Frankl’s own observations in Nazi concentration camps. See Man’s Search for Meaning]

Every great leader has a great story. For example, if you’re Socrates your story is: “I know that I don’t know.” If you are Buddha your story is “life is suffering”. If you are Mohamed your story is “there is only one God and his name is Allah.” If you are Martin Luther your story is “reformation.” If you’re Galileo your story is “And yet it moves.” If you’re Martin Luther King Jr. your story is “I have a dream”. If you’re the Beatles your story is “all you need is love”. If you are John Lennon your story is “Imagine all the people”. If you’re President Kennedy your story is “We shall put a man on the moon”. If you’re Steve Jobs your story is “think different”. If you’re President Bill Clinton your story is “It’s the economy, stupid.” If you’re President Obama your story is “Yes, we can.” If you are President Trump your story is “Let’s make America great again.”

In the case of larger groups of people – such as corporations, story is the glue that brings everyone together and motivates them to cooperate and overcome obstacles. And so, in the past couple of decades, the most successful organizations have come up with what’s been called a Massively Transformative Purpose [MTP]. [Salim Ismail, Exponential Organizations, page 53]

An MTP is the distilled essence of a story that captures who this organization is for and what’s its mission or purpose. For example, Google’s MTP is “organize the world’s information.” TED’s MTP is “ideas worth spreading.” Deep Mind’s MTP is “Solve intelligence. [Use it to make the world a better place.]” Calico’s MTP is “solve death.” Mark Zuckerberg’s foundation MTP is “cure all disease.” Doctors Without Borders’ MTP is “medical aid where it is needed most.” Elon Musk’s MTP for Tesla and SolarCity is to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy” while for SpaceX it is to “backup the biosphere by making humanity a multiplanet species.” Patagonia’s MTP is “We’re in business to save our home planet.” Lego’s MTP is “Inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow.” [Having an MTP is particularly important for Millennials for whom the story of money is often not a sufficient “why.”]

Larger groupings of people such as religions and nations also utilize the power of story to forge their respective religious or national identity. Thus Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism all tell their own mythical stories. And the more we believe in those stories, the more we identify ourselves as Jewish, Christian, Muslim or Hindu. But nations or ideologies such as Liberalism, Humanism, Feminism, Communism and Capitalism do it too. So, a Japanese identifies with the story that Japan – Nippon, is the “land of the rising Sun”. [Or “the land of the Gods.”] An American identifies with the story of “the land of opportunity” where everyone is free to pursue the “American dream.” A Chinese may identify with the story of Tianxia – or “all under heaven.” A communist may identify with the story of equality or “to each according to their need.” A capitalist may identify with the story of personal freedom, the “invisible hand” of the “free market” and the “virtue of selfishness.” A humanist may identify with the story that “man is the measure of all things” since humanity is “the pinnacle of evolution” and “the supreme intelligence” on our planet. Each of those levels requires a story in order to create, inform and guide the identities of its respective constituents. As Lisa Cron notes:

Story, as it turns out, was crucial to our evolution — more so than opposable thumbs. Opposable thumbs let us hang on; story told us what to hang on to.

Chapter 4: The Power of the Storyteller

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 4: The Power of the Storyteller

The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come. Steve Jobs.

Before we have a story, any story, we must first have a storyteller. And that storyteller is a god, because within their narrative they are all-powerful, almighty and omnipotent. That’s why religion is among the most powerful stories of our civilization. And, the storyteller of such a popular story is, of course, a god. Or the son of God. Or the prophet of God. Or in the image of God. He sets the rules and the laws, what is good and evil, what is right and wrong, what is and what is not possible. He tells us how to dress, what to eat, how to live, how to relate to each other, who must marry whom, how to bring up our children, where we are coming from, why we are here, what is the purpose of life and where we go after death. If we believe his story, we are going to not only listen to but also obey his “commandments.”

It is for this reason that nations and even corporations are also made by mythical stories. Because myth-making is team-building is nation-building is world-making – stories told on a different scale. The myth helps us make sense of the world as well as establish our proper place in it – whether as individuals, corporations or nations. It gives us both meaning and purpose. So, as long as we all believe in the same story, we will cooperate. And we are likely to obey the people who tell those stories. This is true not only in religion and politics but also in business, entertainment, music, art, science, etc. Because those who tell the most popular stories are the most powerful people. And ultimate success in telling a story grants access to ultimate power.

Up until now, it was humans who told stories. Naturally, those stories end up with humans being the central entity. But let us examine how our place in the story has changed through time.

Historically, we started with the story of animism where everything around us was imbued with a spirit [or a soul] and was, at least in some sense, holy and to be respected. There was no hierarchy among humans, animals, trees, stones, and rivers, and we were not above them in any way. One day we killed a wild animal to feed and clothe ourselves. The next day an animal could kill us to feed itself and its offspring. We had respect for all living things and considered them as equals in the great web of life.

Then the story of Theism brought hierarchy, and centralization of power, in the hands of many or one God. Since we humans – the storytellers, were naturally in the image of God [or God was in the image of us ;-] we placed ourselves just a step below Him, and all other animals got pushed down the ladder. The world became our “garden,” and everything in it was ours for the taking, including all “soulless” animals.

Finally, we came up with the story of the centrality of the human being – of how we are the pinnacle of evolution, the supreme intelligence – i.e. the sole measure, beginning and end of everything, and the masters of nature. So we made quick work of God and replaced him with us. Then we downgraded the animals even further down to the rank of mere Cartesian automata – machines unable to think, feel or suffer. [Or “resources” to be “harvested.”] Consequently, we could enslave and kill them for our pleasure, food or sport, by the billions, and without guilt. [Every year we kill over 70 billion animals and 1.3 trillion fish and other aquatic organisms.]

The idea that humans are or will be gods is a natural consequence of the power of the storyteller. Given that we are the storyteller, we are, by default, the heroes. Because no one is the villain in their own story. And that is why those who write the story [or history] are always good, benevolent, generous, right and wise. [It is also why we called ourselves Homo Sapiens – i.e., wise man. Because we naturally think we’re wise and because it was men who did the naming.] But now, with the rise of artificial intelligence, that may change again. And the day a computer can tell a sophisticated story – one that can make others laugh, cry and [most of all] believe, is the day humanity may lose control of the story. Because, as we already saw above, the storyteller inevitably ends up not merely as the hero but also as God, the most powerful entity or species. [And if that turns out to be the case, can we blame the Godlike AI’s if they come up with the story of AI-ism and end up treating humans the same way we “human-ists” treat animals?!]

In short, humanity’s power lies in the fact that we are the storytellers. If we lose our power to tell our stories we would lose everything. As Salmon Rushdie says:

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives – the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change – truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.

Chapter 3: The Power of Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 3: The Power of Story

We suffer not from the events in our lives but from our stories about them. Epictetus

The most powerful stories are stories about things that don’t exist. Because our fictive language gave birth to legal fictions, social constructs and imagined realities. So much so that today imagined things are more powerful than real things. Trees, rivers, fish, animals and even the climate depend on our imaginary constructs for their future survival. There is no money, law, justice, inalienable human rights, religion, love, friendship, capitalism, corporations, nations or humanity outside of our common imagination. Never-the-less it is such fictitious entities that will decide the fate of the world, ourselves included.

The more fictitious a story is, the more powerful that story is, provided it has a large enough number of people embracing it. Because stories that spread don’t just win – they change the world. This is true of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism as much as it is true of Communism, Capitalism, Humanism, Nationalism, Feminism, Trumpism, Black Lives Matter, Brexit, MeToo or human rights. For example, the most popular story on our planet is money. Because almost everyone accepts and therefore believes in money. But money, regardless of its form – be it gold, bitcoin or paper money like the dollar, is basically trust. Trust in a story, which in the case of bitcoin, doesn’t even have a physical representation but is entirely digital – i.e. fictitious.

In human civilization, not only everything but also everyone is a story. And that is true at every level we can think of – individually, collectively or globally, because each of those levels requires a story. The same person can embrace many different stories that give her meaning, which also set the spectrum of what is and what is not possible for her. For example, someone can be a mother, daughter, vegetarian, lesbian, police officer, Muslim, black and American – all at once. And each of those stories provides such powerful meaning that the person may be willing to kill, live or die for it. Thus, while our identities are little more than a hodge-podge of often contradictory stories, they determine our actions. But if we change our story we change our identity. And if we change our identity we change our actions, and therefore we change our future.

Conversely, people who have not embraced or have lost their personal story feel lonely, unmotivated, lack meaning, feel depressed and are at risk of suicide. But people who have discovered their “calling” have basically found a compelling story and decided to embrace it as their own. When many people embrace the same story we can have large-scale cooperation among millions of humans, who are otherwise all strangers to each other. Thus, the power of our civilization is built on the power of our stories – our belief in them, our desire to spread them and our willingness to live or die by them.

Losing those stories is not merely devastating but, both figuratively and literally, potentially mortal. That is why Jacque Ellul noted that to destroy someone is to destroy their story. And this is true of individuals as much as it is true of groups of people – be it ethnic groups, corporations, organizations or nations. Therefore, we ought to be very careful in rewriting our story. Because if we end up destroying it without offering a better alternative we can end up destroying our civilization. As the Dark Mountain Manifesto warns:

Human civilization is an intensely fragile construction. It is built on little more than belief: belief in the rightness of its values; belief in the strength of its system of law and order; belief in its currency; above all, perhaps, belief in its future. [The Dark Mountain Manifesto page 5]

The power of story is hard to exaggerate because stories inform and guide our relationship with each other, the rest of the world and even the future. The good news is that stories are told by storytellers. So we can choose to get in charge of our stories and gain power by becoming the storytellers. Taking responsibility for and, ultimately, rewriting our stories is the path to our new selves and therefore our new future. This is where the ultimate power lies. And that is why, both Plato and the Hopi Indians recognized the fact that “those who tell the stories rule the world.”