People I come in contact with are in shock. I'm in Massachusetts right now with my family. We shake our heads then talk of other things. There's nothing we can do about it. The People have spoken. We have given power to a man who says the Constitution can be bent to his will. When FDR wanted to increase the power of the government to help the country through the Great Depression, the Supreme Court fought him. Trump shouldn't have that problem.
If Trump's first job is to repeal the 22nd amendment prohibiting more than two terms, I'll be relieved that he's found something to distract him. Surely 13 states would hold firm against repeal. Massachusetts will stand firm, though early in the morning after the election we could hear fireworks going off.
Some friends are recommending we all read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari to clarify what's going on. I read the first fifty pages of this book last year and didn't like its flippant tone. Friends say it gets better and I should finish it. Maybe I will.
Anything I say here about the book is derived from Goodreads reviews and magazine pieces available online. I admit this is a poor way to appreciate a book, but I think I've gotten the gist. I like books that explain how we've gotten into our current mess. Harari starts with the Big Bang 13 billion years ago and quickly zips up to our genus, Homo, which separated from the apes two million years ago. Our species, sapiens, appeared two hundred thousand years ago. Harari says it was by dumb luck that sapiens and not one of the other Homos came out on top.
The book says that we evolved to be hunter-gathers and that trying to be farmers was a mistake. Farming allowed more people to exist, but their lives on average were shorter and nastier. With industrialization even more of us were able to work together to ruin our environment.
Harari's main thesis is that we're able to work together because we tell each other stories; stories about gods who protect us if we follow their commands, or stories that money has some intrinsic value. Gods, governments, and money are just myths we believe in as long as they serve a purpose.
Harari says the only real things for us are our bodies. It's biology vs mythology. Harari predicts that eventually science will reengineer our bodies so we can experience again the pleasure we felt during a successful hunt without the pain felt when the prey escaped and we starved. While we spend time in this brave new world, AI machines will take over and within a thousand years Homo sapiens will become extinct like millions of other species before us.
I'm not sure how all this explains the return of Trump. I understand those who voted for Trump feared continuing with the Democrats would have led to the end of life as they knew it: more immigrants, more boys being changed into girls, and a likely confiscation of weapons. Now it's the turn of the Democrats to fear the end of democracy and their social security checks being sent to Elon Musk.
I don't believe it's all biology. What about math? Math is real yet it it can't be touched. Love is real. I don't want engineered pleasure. AI has limits, unlike the human mind which so far has been limitless. There's something beyond us. I like to call that beyond thing God, for convenience.
In a follow up book Harari talks about lessons he’s learned from Buddhism: That everything changes. That nothing is permanent. I don't know if Harari mentions Buddha's teaching that suffering in this world is inevitable, but that there's a path out of suffering and that we must become righteous in order to follow it.
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| The Path of Right Hunting |
You know, I regretted reading your blogpost because it underscored my idea of 'tomorrow.' I read about his administrative choices for a couple positions, and the man reminded me of Goebblels for some reason; maybe his crazed look, I don't know; maybe I'm exaggerating.
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