The book provides a scientific perspective on the history of how humans came to dominate the planet. The book’s biggest focus is on the three revolutions the cognitive revolution which started 70, 000 years ago; the agricultural revolution which started 12, 000 years ago; and the scientific revolution which started 500 years ago and shaped the destiny of our species and the planet.
Species – Animals belong to the same species if they tend to mate and give birth to fertile offspring.
Genus – Species evolved from a common ancestor. They, usually, won’t mate but can be induced to do so. Eg. Mule (Horse and donkey), and Liger (Lion and Tiger).
Homo Sapiens – “Homo” genus and “Sapiens” (intelligent) species. Some other members of our genus are, no extinct, Homo Erectus, and Homo neanderthalensis. Homo Sapiens’ closest living species are Chimpanzees.
The Cognitive Revolution
The rise of Homo Sapiens
The Homo genus has unusually big brains and big energy drains. Homo sapiens’ brain consumes 25% of energy at rest, 8% is the norm for other apes. The big brain is an even bigger cause of human infants which are born relatively prematurely (in terms of physical strength) compared to the other species. The long gestation period and the raising of the child implied that evolution favored strong social ties in humans. Regular use of fire started about 300, 000 years ago. The carefully managed fire was not only used to clear forests but can also be used for cooking food (faster to digest). Long intestines and large brains are both energy drains, it is hard to have both. Cooking food lead to shortened intestines and hence, our brains could grow bigger. As Homo Sapiens spread from East Africa to the Arabian peninsula, Europe, and Asia, they drove other Homo species like Neanderthals to extinction. Some interbreeding did happen but it was mostly the Sapien’s superior social skills that allowed them to tribe up and drove other Homo species everywhere into extinction.
The Tree of Knowledge
About 100, 000 years ago, Homo Sapiens migrated out of Africa but retreated after losing to Neanderthals. About 70, 000 years ago they tried again, and this time they succeeded due to the invention of language which allowed them to invent tons of things like boats, lamps, needles, etc. This Cognitive revolution allowed Homo Sapiens to dominate the earth. Anthropologists believe that our complex language was used more for gossip than to discuss where the prey was. And from there evolved the ability to create and believe in myths. The myths allowed us to collaborate and cooperate in large numbers in the form of tribes and now, in the form of nation-states.
A man can be convinced to die fighting for his nation for the promise of heaven; a monkey cannot be.
Religion is a myth; nation-states are myths; the Limited-liability corporation is a myth; the US declaration of independence is a myth; all are figments of our imagination. Unlike animals, trees, fish, and rivers, the aforementioned myths have no association with a real physical entity. These myths, surprisingly, allow believers to work together and collectively. These myths are not different from the primitive myths of the tribal men most modern people would laugh at. Homo Sapiens’ ability to believe in myths allows us to form big groups of millions of individuals who have never met each other. In other animals, groups are limited to the size of 25-30 animals who all know each other; such animals cannot form large groups. The other big advantage of passing myths via language is that it does not require any DNA mutations. Catholic & Buddhist monks pass on celibacy, not via genes but by imparting their religion (myth) to the followers, some of who, convert. And that’s probably how Homo Sapiens defeated Neanderthals. While Sapiens would have lost one-on-one combat, they could form much larger groups which Neanderthals could not.
A day in the life of Adam and Eve – The hunter-gatherer society
Except for the past 10, 000 years, Sapiens evolved in pre-agricultural hunter-forager societies. They shaped our psychological and social characteristics. These ancient foragers know a lot more about their surroundings than us. While we, collectively, as a human society know a lot more, individuals today know a lot less. Forager societies tend to end the wide and varied diet and hence, had a lower chance of malnutrition than the farmers who would eat a few staple crops. Their working hours were lesser(30-35 hours per week), and since they neither engaged in the domestication of the animals nor stayed in dense settlements, the epidemics were rare. Some anthropologists, therefore, call hunter-gather societies the original affluent society (ashishb’s note: This is not without its controversies). Little beyond that is known about these hunter-gatherers. They probably believed had animistic beliefs. No one knows whether they were monogamous or not, had a concept of private property or not, their festivals, and their taboos.
The Flood
About 45, 000 years ago, some Sapiens living on Indonesian islands figured out the art of building boats and eventually reached Australia. This was the first time, Homo Sapiens stepped out of the Afro-Asian ecosystem, and they wreak havoc on the isolated Australian continent ecosystem. 23 out of 24 species larger than 50 Kg became extinct within a few 1000 years. The marsupials, mammals with baby-carrying pouches, failed to adapt to the onslaught of humans. Their slow pregnancy cycles with few kids, lack of fear of humans since humans don’t look that harmful, and potential burning of the forests to set up agricultural land disrupted the food chain entirely.
Unlike the Afro-Asian animals who evolved with humans over thousands of years, the Australian animals were caught completely by surprise with no time, on the evolutionary scale, to adjust.
Climate change just worsened everything.
About 16, 000 years ago, the invasion of America happened via Siberia which was connected to North-western Alaska when the sea levels were lower. Unlike other species of Homos, Sapiens adapted to the harsh colder climate by sewing boots and thermal clothing. They thrived on eating juicy animals like mammoths which given low temperatures can be eaten over days. Around 14, 000 years ago, global warming melted the glaciers in Alaska which blocked the way to the rest of the Americas. And that’s when Sapiens ventured into the American continents. In 2000 years, Sapiens reached the southernmost point in America.
No animal had moved so quickly through variety of habitats virually using the same genes.
American fauna suffered. Mammoths (& mammoth ticks), Mastodons, and tons of animals which just like Australia, had survived in isolation from the Afro-Asian ecosystem faltered. Fossils had repeatedly pointed these disappearances to be about 12, 000 BC in the Americas and around 5, 000 BC in Hispaniola, both times when Sapiens entered the ecosystem. The same story has been repeated island after island.
First wave extinction: Sapiens as hunter-gatherers enter the ecosystem
Second wave extinction: Sapiens become farmers and forests are burnt and reduced to grasslands
Third wave extinction: Industrial revolution
Throughout the history, Homo Sapiens have been the deadliest species to enter any ecosystem.
The Agricultural Revolution
History’s Biggest Fraud
Agriculture started in about 9000 BC and domestication of crops was over by about 3500 BC. Today, we eat the same crops – Wheat, Maize, Rice, Potato, Millet, and Barley. Only a few species could be domesticated, and they were in the middle east, China, and Central America but not in Australia or Africa. And that’s where, independently, the domestication of crops started. Wheat went from an unknown crop to a crop that has spread everywhere on the planet. Human bodies were not designed for agriculture and farming. Wheat demand protection from pests, animals, and even other humans. The only advantage farming has is that it leads to more food per unit area and allowed humans to multiply exponentially. Overall, the agricultural revolution in the short run made the life of humans miserable, so, why did it happen?
The currency of evolution is not pain or misery but copies of DNA helixes.
The agricultural revolution leads to permanent settlements which allowed women to have more kids. Over time, as farmers multiplied they cleared, even more, land, reducing the scope for foragers even further. Just like the modern-day luxury treadmill, agriculture soon became a necessity to support the ever-increasing population. And there was no going back. Similarly, domestication of animals proceeded with slaughtering the most aggressive, weak, and economically unworthy animals first. Over time, domesticated animals evolved to be more economically worthy and more submissive. While just like wheat, animals like chickens, sheep, pigs, and cows spread over the world, were treated brutally. From repeated impregnation to castration, their life became miserable compared to life in the wild.
The evolutionary correlated with the individual suffering for animals and humans.
Building Pyramids
The food surplus exploded the population from 5-8 million in 10, 000 BC to 250 million in about 100 AD. The food surplus eventually leads to the emergence of bigger political orders like cities and nation-states. Rather than being based on some ingrained human characteristics, these were imagined human orders based on shared beliefs and myths. “All humans are created equal” is completely incorrect from a biological stance. Humans are born and they are all different from each other. Just like animistic beliefs are a myth, so are human rights. There is nothing biological about them. They only exist in our shared imaginations. A natural order is a stable order. If people don’t believe in gravity, apples would still fall. If people don’t believe in human rights, society will collapse. While some violence (police and army) is required to enforce an (imaginary) order, they have to believe in something to organize in favor of that. And same goes for the elites who rule. Christianity, capitalism, and democracy, all are imagined orders with a large number of believers.
Christianity, capitalism, democracy, all are imagined orders with a large number of believers.
The biggest lie though is to train a human right from childhood about the imagined order as a natural order. “God is one”, “People are equal because God created them that way”, and “Free markets are best because it is an immutable law of nature”. Over time, order is embedded in the material world, for example, individualism is enforced via private rooms. The imagined order heavily controls our desires. Considering the desire to travel abroad, a millionaire today might solve his relationship crisis by taking his wife on an expensive trip to Paris. In ancient Egypt, he would have built a tomb, which she always wanted.
A millionaire today might solve his relationship crisis by taking his wife to an expensive trip to Paris. In ancient Egypt, he would have built a tomb, which she always wanted.
The two of the biggest imagined orders of the modern world are romanticism and consumerism. Romanticism teaches us that we must have as many experiences as possible to fulfill our expectations. Consumerism teaches us that we must consume as many goods as possible.
The imagined order is inter-subjective. Radioactivity is objective, it happens whether you believe in it or not. An imaginary friend is subjective, since it exists only as long as you believe in it. Preciousness of gold is inter-subjective since it exists not only in your imagination (belief system) but also in the belief system of millions of others.
To change an inter-subjective belief system, one has to convince everyone else, and to convince everyone else; they have to believe in an even bigger imaginary order. For example, the existence of a particular company listed on the NYSE is an inter-subjective order. To make everyone else not believe in its existence either, one has to go to a bigger imaginary order (NYSE). There is no way out of the imagined orders. We have to believe in a bigger one to dismantle a smaller one.
Memory Overload
Unlike animals, humans pass a lot of information via teaching and not encoding it in the DNA. The empires generated a huge amount of information. The brain has a limited capacity to store information, humans die, and brains are best at storing social, topographical, and qualitative information. What empires want to store was numbers. And that’s how writing was invented by ancient Sumerians in about 3500 BC. The initial writing was only for record-keeping, therefore, it was a partial script. A full script can express almost everything that can be spoken. Sumerians also invested in the cataloging of this information and the schools where these scribes were taught. This new bureaucracy specialized a new compartmentalized way of thinking as opposed to the usual holistic thinking.
There is no justice in History
The American declaration of independence, empowered men over women, whites over blacks, and Native Americans. Many modern westerners scoff at one imaginary system (racial hierarchy) but believe that another one (different schools for rich and poor) is perfectly fine. Hierarchies allow two strangers to decide how to talk to each other. At the same time, they limit the potential of individuals.
Every imagined system disavows its fictional origins and claims to be natural and inevitable.
Racism in the US: Purity and pollution are used as a standard argument for all social hierarchies, some based on birth, some on race, and some on religion. In the US, white Europeans decided to import slaves from Africa since it was nearby, there was an existing slave market, and Africans had partial genetic immunity towards Malaria and Yellow Fever. This eventually was justified by the imagined order of white skin being superior to black. Such an imagined order is easier justification than saying that it is economically expedient to import slaves from Africa. Over time, this acted as a vicious cycle, where blacks are inferior and fueled by discrimination which further leads to poverty among blacks.
The hierarchy between men and women: One hierarchy more or less the same all around the world is the superiority of men over women. In many societies, women were seen as the property of men. And crimes like rape were property violations where marry-the-rapist was seen as a solution (ashishb’s note: This happens even today, even in the US). Of course, one notable difference between men and women is the womb but as we have seen in modern times, women can vote, live independently, and think for themselves, all of which is the imagined reality of ancient cultures, they were incapable of doing. Since almost all societies (even before having any contact) around the world put men above women, it cannot be a pure coincidence, there are theories about it. One theory is that men have more muscle power, the objection is why are women historically excluded from less strenuous jobs like politicians and priests. Another theory suggests that men are more aggressive and thus, better suited to be soldiers, and wars have dominated our history. This theory falls apart as well since historically, soldiers from the bottom rung never rose to the top. The top was reserved for the aristocrats. Another theory suggests that since women need cooperation from men during pregnancy, they have to become more submissive to the man they are bearing the child, so that, he sticks around. This theory falls apart since the support network does not have to be male. Bonobos have all-female support networks.
How did this happen that the species, Homo Sapiens, whose success depends on being more cooperative with each other has less cooperative individuals (man) dominate woman is still a mystery
Biology is willing to tolerate a wide spectrum of possibilities. Nature does not prohibit homosexuality; it’s the culture that labels it unnatural to restrict it. Something unnatural like humans doing photosynthesis just won’t happen.
Biology enables, culture forbids
The unification of Humankind
The Arrow of History
Unlike the self-consistent law of physics, cultures have internal contradictions in them. Solving them leads to change. The modern world continuously fights with contradictory ideas of equality and liberty. All cultures from a psychological perspective are “cognitively dissonant”. But the human worlds have unified and connected over time and have similar ideas, nation-states, a similar concept of monetary transactions (currency), and a similar legal system (international law). For a long while, humans still believed in “us” vs. “them”. Merchants, prophets, and conquerors to expand their territories or customers, believers, and subjects made us believe in a new imagined reality of the global brotherhood.
The scent of Money
A barter system does not scale. If there are 100 types of goods then the two parties who are exchanging the goods have to know C(100, 2) = 4950 combinations of exchange rates every day. Money ends up being a central mechanism to linearize the problem since every seller has to know the price of their good in a single currency. Of course, just like religion, money is an intersubjective reality that only exists in our imaginations. And it does not have to be coins or notes. In Nazi concentration camps, cigarettes were a currency. The only requirement is that it should easy to transport, and store, and has a wide enough acceptance.
Money is the most useful and efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.
The original form of money like Barley had an intrinsic biological value. Over time, we moved to unmarked gold and silver which had no biological value. Then marked gold and silver coins, so, no weighing is required to find the value. And then to fiat currency which had no intrinsic value, and then to electronic currency which had no physical existence. Money as a source of universal convertibility and trust has replaced priceless things like honor, loyalty, morality, and love. When we use money as a medium of exchange, we don’t trust each other; we trust money. When someone runs out of money, we run out of trust in them.
Imperial Visions
An empire is characterized by cultural diversity and territorial flexibility. All empires have engaged in the brutal slaughter and assimilation of the people outside their borders to extend their territory. Slowly, the newly acquired population forgets what they stood for. For example, in the 7th century AD, the Arab empire crushed Egyptians with an iron fist, today Egyptians think of themselves as Arabs. One major change which happened over time in the Imperial vision was that empires changed their imagined reality from “we are conquering you for our benefit” to a more benevolent “we are conquering you for your benefit”. Persian king changed from “Persian king” to “everyone’s king”. This was the first time in history, Sapiens were (pretending) to get rid of the “us” vs “them” feeling. These imagined realities of benefitting the Conqueror exist even today when the US presidents use F-16 to deliver democracy and human rights
These imagined realities of benefitting the Conqueror exist even today when the US presidents use F-16 to deliver democracy and human rights in Iraq and Syria.
Of course, this benefitting the conquered approach still assumed the inferiority of conquered. That’s why M.K. Gandhi, a London-educated, qualified barrister was thrown out of whites-only seats from a train.
Almost, all imperial empires follow the same style. First, they conquered territories. Then those territories adopt the new culture. Then the people of these territories demand equal stature. And then eventually empire flames out but the imperial culture remains (ashishb’s note: Christianity, Islam, English, and French are some of those cultural remnants which can be seen all around the world).
Not only all empires are founded on blood and used war and oppression to maintain themselves, but also they are the source of almost all modern cultures. There is no untainted authentic civilization that is without those sins.
The Law of Religion
Along with money and empires, religion is the third unifier of mankind. Religion is a system of human norms and values founded on the belief in a superhuman order. The religions which are universal and missionary like Islam and Christianity succeed in spreading themselves.
Religion legitimises imagined realities (like “Eating pork is sin”) by claiming them to be coming from a superhuman entity.
Origin of Religion
Animistic religions originated because hunter-foragers wanted to maintain the interests of other plants and animals (Eg. cutting a tree would anger the tree spirit, and it will take revenge). As Sapiens evolved into farmers, they desired absolute control over their animals. Gods acted as mediators. Sacrifice a lamb to a fertility god and the god will ensure a bumper harvest. As kingdoms and trade networks were established, multiple gods (like gods of war) appeared in a typical polytheistic fashion. While Animists thought Sapiens are just other creatures, polytheists treated the world as a reflection of the relationship between Sapiens and God. Polytheist religions like Hinduism believe that there is a supreme power that is devoid of any interest in the mundane desires of human beings. Therefore, a worldly human would not pray to that supreme power. They would, however, pray to a god with a sub-divided power like Lakshmi for wealth. Since these gods have only partial power, they have interests and biases, and it is possible to negotiate with them.
This plurality of gods results in open-mindedness, therefore, polytheists rarely prosecute infidels.
They don’t normally engage in conversion either. Romans, Egyptians, and Aztecs rarely send missionaries. When empires expanded locals were never asked to give up the gods, they can worship the new god along with the local god. Romans happily added Asian god Cybele to their pantheon. Though they refused to add monotheist Christ. Roman Emperors did force Christians to worship the Emperor’s protector god as a mark of political loyalty and prosecuted them when they refused. Romans prosecuted a few thousand Christians in three centuries, and Christians prosecuted millions of other Christians over the next 1500 years to defend their slightly different interpretation of their religion. Over time, some polytheistic worshippers started to believe that their god, while having interests and biases, is supreme. Christianity, an esoteric sect of Jews, whose leader Paul of Tarsus, claimed that the Jesus of Nazareth was their Messiah, and if he has incarnated in the flesh then his message is worth spreading to the world. The esoteric sect of Christianity took over the Roman empire. Islam, another monotheist religion, repeated this model of success. Since monotheists are usually more fanatical in their beliefs, they took over the world. Most of the world today outside of East Asia follows monotheism. Christianity, however, adopted most polytheist gods back as Saints. For example, Celtic Ireland uses to worship Brigid, today, Christian Ireland worships St. Brigid.
Monotheism also gave birth to Dualism. Dualism explains evil by saying that there are two powers – good and bad. This explains the existence of evil which mystifies monotheism but is itself mystified by the order which governs the universe (since “good” and “bad” have equal power). Zoroastrianism is a notable dualistic religion. Monotheists like Christians, Muslims, and Jews absorbed dualistic beliefs. They not only accepted the concept of a powerful Satan but also believed that god need help in its battle against Satan and labeled those battles Jihads and Crusades. Even the concept of Heaven and Hell is dualist in origin, with no mention in the Old Testament. Most modern monotheists are syncretic in their beliefs. Several natural law religions like Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Stoicism appeared as well. They disregarded the existence of super-human Gods and prescribed more in terms of the way of living to attain a good life. For example, Buddhism’s central teaching is that suffering arises from craving and the only way to liberate your mind from craving is to train your mind to accept reality as it is. Of course, since most Buddhists don’t spend their life attaining Nirvana but in the more mundane worldly tasks, they also go and worship in Boddhisatvas for bringing rain and even winning bloody wars in exchange for fragrance sticks and a gift of rice. Communism, Capitalism, and Liberalism are modern religions with
Buddhism’s central teaching is that suffering arises from craving and the only way to liberate your mind from craving is to train your mind to accept the reality as it is.
Worshipping The Man
Liberal Humanism is the most famous religion (“ideology”) which worships humans as being scared and with belief that they have certain basic “human rights” which cannot be normally withdrawn from them. A murder is effectively destabilizing the cosmos order and punishing the murderer brings nature back in order. Social Humanism thinks about humans in a collective way, it holds a strong belief in equality. Evolutionary Humanism, the most radical one, was popularized by Nazis, it thinks of humans as a mutable species and strongly believes that advancing the quality of the species and eliminating everything which is of lower quality should be the end goal of humanity.
The Secret of Success
While a globally interconnected society was inevitable (given the ability of humans to form large networks), the contemporary global society is one of the possibilities which got realized.
History has wide array of possibilities, many are never realized.
The success of monotheism, nationalism, and liberal humanism was one of the potential outcomes out of several possible ones. History is a complex level 2 chaotic system (Level 1 chaotic systems like the weather are unchanged when we try to predict, and Level 2 chaotic systems like the stock market react to predictions). Genes lead to organic evolution; memes lead to cultural evolution. Some scholars see culture as a mental parasite, as soon as one country is infected with nationalism, slowly, the surrounding ones catch the infection as well.
The Scientific Revolution
The Discovery of Ignorance
Before the scientific tradition, it was believed that religious books contained everything important. Scientific tradition, in western Europe, a part of the world that played little role in history till about 1500AD. The scientific tradition is willing to admit that a lot is unknown and even what’s known can be incorrect if new evidence to the contrary shows up. The focus of education has shifted from Theology to Mathematics and other “exact” sciences. Even the heavy emphasis on technology in the military is a recent phenomenon beginning in the 19th century. Most cultures used to believe that the golden age use to be in the past and hence, nothing much can be done to improve things. Scientific myth-busting fixed all that. Scientific progress has drastically elongated life expectancies. Scientific research, however, is almost always funded by entities that have their own social, political, or economic agenda. Science in itself cannot set its priorities, an ideology (religious, racial, or economic) determines the same.
The Marriage of Science and Empire
Western Europe and Britain which had played almost no important role in the history of human civilization till about 1500 AD started to emerge and Europe took over to become the economic powerhouse between 1750 and 1850. While the development of both modern science and capitalism in Britain in a mere accident. The similar social structures (and imagined realities) of France, Germany, the US, and the other western nations allowed them to quickly follow up and copy Britain’s success. Societies in India and China, the economic powerhouse of that era, were organized differently and hence, they could not do the same. While the Arab world, India, and China also produced intellectuals and scholars (which Europeans did study), it was only in Europe that these intellectuals worked alongside the capitalists towards for-profit initiatives. The Imperial voyages to distant lands would consist not only of the military but also of some scientists to make discoveries.
Europe’s biggest success was the marriage of modern science and capitalism.
This scientific mindset is illustrated by the example of Columbus vs. Vespucci. Columbus reached the Bahamas and the Americas in 1492, but he simply did not want to believe that there exists a new continent that the Bible and all other religious texts could have missed. Vespucci reached there around 1500, and he argued that this is a new continent unknown till then.
For the first time in the history of the world, a culture was making maps with empty areas marked for exploration.
Europeans did not have an exceptional technological edge in the 1500s over other cultures what made them different was their insatiable desire to explore and conquer. In 1492, Columbus reached the Caribbean; the local population was colonized, killed, and enslaved with an iron fist. And the Aztecs in Mexico knew nothing about it. In 1517, after hearing rumors about a powerful Aztec empire, 300 Spaniards landed in Mexico. An empire of millions, unprepared for interacting with unknown humans, did not perceive a threat from 300 Spaniards. They pretended to be the diplomats of the king of Spain and use that deceit to capture king Montezuma. They held him, hostage while planning out a coup. By the time, the Aztec elite revolted and kicked the Spaniards out; they had found huge support among subjected people, who preferred unknown Spaniards over Aztec rulers. That miscalculation was costly. Within a century, 90 percent of the local population was wiped out. The survivors were under an even greedier regime. The same story was repeated by the Spaniards with the Inca empire.
Lack of interest in the world beyond their empire ended up being costly for the Incas and the Aztecs.
The Ottomans, the Indians, and the Chinese heard about these stories but showed little interest in Europe. Their world revolved around their empires while the Europeans enjoyed the undisputed mastery of America and Oceania. The wealth and accumulated knowledge was then used to invade Asia. The detailed understanding of the local culture allowed Europeans to leverage and rule the populations far larger than theirs (ashishb’s note: The Spanish destruction of the Inca and Aztecs; and the British colonial rule of India have strong parallels, the author missed out on the right phrasing here which is divide and rule policy). While Imperialists claim that their empires were altruistic projects, a white man’s burden, the truth was locals were subjugated with an iron fist.
In 1764, Britishers conquered Bengal, the richest province of India, due to the policies of the British East India Company, a third of the population (about 10 million) died from 1769-73 in the Bengal Famine.
The linguistic basis of Indo-Aryan languages was further used to come up with the argument of a superior Aryan race – a race of tall, blue-eyed, blond, fair complexion, super-rational humans. They emerged in the north and invaded Persia and India, regrettably, degenerating themselves by intermingling with the locals (the core of Hitler’s argument).
The Capitalist Creed
Throughout human history, “economic pie/wealth is fixed in size and not growing” was a self-fulfilling prophecy. The idea of extending credit, therefore, was meaningless. The modern-day belief, based on The Wealth of Nations, is that individual greed is good for collective prosperity. While the idea of reinvesting profits to increase production further sounds trivial today, for a long while, humans believed that production and consumption are more or less fixed; and had it not been for the scientific revolution that would have been true. Many of the imperialist voyages could not have been easily funded by a single investor, and that’s what lead to the emergence of joint-stock ownerships and eventually stock exchanges (and bubbles). In many cases, the government came to the defense of the investors. In the Opium war in 1839 in China Britain fought the Qing dynasty for protecting the opium trade from India to China by British traders. Greek rebellions raised funds via bonds in London Stock Exchange, and when their fight against the Ottoman Empire started to lose momentum, the British Navy sent their ships to defend their bond investors by ensuring that Greece becomes free. The popular free-market doctrine wants us to believe that there should be no political interference in the market and that left to its markets would benefit everyone. Except that is only a half-truth, all the Atlantic slave trade, most of the colonization, and millions of deaths of slaves on the plantations happened because of free markets and not the government. The European middle class happily bought shares of the slave trading companies and made about 6% a year in the 18th century.
While Nazism killed millions out of burning hatred. Capitalism killed millions out of cold indifference coupled with greed.
The Wheels of Industry
The invention of the Steam Engine and further Electricity freed us from the day-night and winter-summer cycle of nature. The rise of industrial agriculture increased production drastically. And who will consume all this? Consumerism came to the rescue. All prior religions had encouraged austerity; consumerism encouraged conspicuous consumption. Capitalism won twice when people overconsumed since it allowed them to sell the cure for overconsumption later. The capitalists follow the commandant of “Invest” while consumers follow the commandment of “Buy”. Two sides of the same coin.
Consumerism is the first religion in the history of mankind whose followers do what they are asked to.
A Permanent Revolution
The Industrial Revolution turned timetables and assembly into a template for almost all human activities. With the advent of the railroad, local time differences across cities became a nuisance. In 1880, Britain legislated a single time for the whole country. Today a single family has more timepieces than an entire medieval country. The biggest change, however, is how the Industrial Revolution broke the family into individuals. Throughout human history, the family and the community were the biggest support system a human had. Even the kings maintained themselves primarily via the support of family heads. The market and the nation-state made a new offer to the individuals, free themselves from their families and become an individual, following our rules instead, they won. The sacred parental authority, the (lack of) right to choose a spouse, and all such family powers have been taken over by the nation-state.
Previously, bride and groom met in the family living room and the money passed from one father to another. Today, courting is done at bars and cafes and money passes from the hands of the lovers to the waitresses.
The nation and the consumer are the new imagined communities of our era that have replaced families. And just like money and human rights, these are inter-subjective realities that live in the minds of millions. Given that most wealth is not physical anymore, wars have become less profitable. Simultaneously, due to trade, peace has become even more profitable. We are living in one of the most peaceful eras in human history.
And They Lived Happily Ever After
History talks about facts but rarely talks about how has human happiness evolved. Studies have shown that people with more money, good marriages, better social support, and lower subjective expectations (vs. the reality) are happier. Illness decreases happiness in the short term. The subjective expectation is the most crucial aspect; advertisements make us miserable by increasing subjective expectations. The bigger question might be the meaning of life. From a scientific perspective, life has no meaning. But for our happiness, meaningless life is an unacceptable choice. It’s when our delusions about the meaning of our life synchronize with the collective delusions, that’s when we feel happy.
Its when our personal delusions about meaning of our life synchronize with the collective delusions, that’s when we feel happy.
Most of these studies take the “liberal” approach of believing that humans are the best to decide when they are happy or not. Religious leaders, as well as psychologists, disagree. For example, Buddhism believes that real happiness comes when one disassociates oneself from inner feelings and can just calmly observe them.
The End of Homo Sapiens
Till now all evolution has been evolutionary, and the future evolution will likely be Intelligent Design based designed in Laboratories. Either we will enhance human genes (ashishb’s note: CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing), we will add non-organic parts (cyborgs) or will create life from completely inorganic material based on Artificial Intelligence. Due to a massive PR risk around ethical issues, most of these debates have focused on targeting plants, targeting amputated humans, and building AI for targeted tasks.