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Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus - A Brief History Of Tomorrow. Fantastic book, and I'll bring forth one key topic it discusses - the belief system of humanism.
Humanism says that all meaning comes from the individual, whereas before morality was dictated by gods. Humanism makes the claim that instead of looking for outside sources of meaning, what actually matters is what we think and feel, our subjective experiences. This becomes evident in phrases such as “the customer is always right,” “the voter knows best,” and “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The rise of humanism started in the late 18th century, and the term has been used since early 19th century. Friedrich Nietsche famously wrote God Is Dead, by which he meant with the Age of Enlightenment, the triumph of scientific rationality over sacred texts, humanity no longer needed God. Harari identifies 3 different sects of humanism: liberal humanism, social humanism and evolutionary humanism. All 3 arose in the 19th century, with the French Revolution, Karl Marx, and Charles Darwin.
Liberal humanism values individuals over everything else, it embraces reason, ethics, arts, secularism, freedom, autonomy and social justice. It can be thanked for things like universal suffrage, the emancipation proclamation, the rise of democracy and capitalism. The American settlers sought liberation from Britain. The French revolutionaries sought liberation from their aristocratic rulers. Liberal humanist: I know best. I should have the freedom to choose however I like.
Social humanism also finds the human experience as the source of morals and meaning, but it also promotes social equality, safety, health, welfare and education for all of its citizens. Socialist humanist: Institutions know best. The Party knows better than you do — shut up and listen.
Evolutionary humanism believes in the same core humanist values, but does not find all experiences to be equal. It argues that if human experiences are what matter, then stronger, deeper and more complex feelings matter more. Being able to improve and evolve as a race is paramount for deeper understanding, more beautiful arts, more advanced science and technology. Evolutionary humanist: Natural selection knows best. Use it to prune our race and become supermen.
In the 20th century, the three sects of humanism clashed. Western liberalist humanism fell to Nazi evolutionary humanism in the 30s, which fell to Soviet socialist humanism in the 40s, which fell back to liberal humanism again in the 90s. This is obviously not where it ends, and Yuval argues we're in the midst of the next shift. Once humanism is dead, we have two options: techno humanism, which leverages technology to keep humans relevant, and dataism, which prioritizes algorithms above all. Yuval thinks dataism is the only realistic choice, offering several studies saying that humans are no different than biological algorithms anyway. Techno humanism attempts to keep humans relevant, but in a world of AIs and posthumans, the human identity might become meaningless.
What's also interesting to notice is the recent rebranding of liberalism by some people into something reprehensible, often by the very people who keep touting about its merits. Anyways, a great read. Yuhal clearly covers way more stuff in great detail in the book, so if any of that sounded interesting, be sure to grab it. 4/5
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