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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.

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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.