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Ordinary people may not understand artificial intelligence and biotechnology, but they can sense that the future is passing them by.
In 1938 the condition of the common person in the USSR, Germany, or the United States may have been grim, but he was constantly told that he was the most important thing in the world, and that he was the future (provided, of course, that he was an “ordinary person” rather than a Jew or an African). He looked at the propaganda posters—which typically depicted coal miners, steelworkers, and housewives in heroic poses—and saw himself there: “I am in that poster! I am the hero of the future!”
In 2018 the common person feels increasingly irrelevant. Lots of mysterious words are bandied around excitedly in TED Talks, government think tanks, and high-tech conferences—globalization, blockchain, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, machine learning—and common people may well suspect that none of these words are about them.
In the twentieth century, the masses revolted against exploitation and sought to translate their vital role in the economy into political power. Now the masses fear irrelevance, and they are frantic to use their remaining political power before it is too late.
Humans vote with their feet. In my travels around the world I have met numerous people in many countries who wish to immigrate to the United States, Germany, Canada, or Australia. I have met a few who want to move to China or Japan. But I have yet to meet a single person who dreams of immigrating to Russia.
Vaunted “human intuition” is in reality “pattern recognition.”
Referendums and elections are always about human feelings, not about human rationality.
Feelings are therefore not the opposite of rationality—they embody evolutionary rationality.
War spreads ideas, technologies, and people far more quickly than commerce does. In 1918 the United States was more closely linked to Europe than in 1913; the two then drifted apart in the interwar years, only to have their fates inextricably meshed together by the Second World War and the Cold War.
When the Islamic State conquered large parts of Syria and Iraq, it murdered tens of thousands of people, demolished archeological sites, toppled statues, and systematically destroyed the symbols of previous regimes and of Western cultural influence.13 But when its fighters entered the local banks and found stashes of American dollars there covered with the faces of American presidents and with slogans in English praising American political and religious ideals, they did not burn these symbols of American imperialism.
trust in the dollar and in the wisdom of the Federal Reserve is so firm that it is shared even by Islamic fundamentalists, Mexican drug lords, and North Korean tyrants.
People still have different religions and national identities. But when it comes to the practical stuff—how to build a state, an economy, a hospital, or a bomb—almost all of us belong to the same civilization.
When trying to outline their identity, people often make a grocery list of common traits. That’s a mistake. They would fare much better if they made a list of common conflicts and dilemmas.
For all the talk of the return of the nation, few Europeans are actually willing to kill and be killed for it. When the Scots sought to break away from London’s grip in the days of William Wallace and Robert Bruce, they had to raise an army to do so. In contrast, not a single person was killed during the 2014 Scottish referendum, and if next time Scots do vote for independence, it is highly unlikely that they will have to restage the Battle of Bannockburn.
The best-known sign of the success of state Shinto is the fact that Japan was the first power to develop and use precision-guided missiles. Decades before the United States fielded the smart bomb, and at a time when Nazi Germany was only beginning to deploy dumb V-2 rockets, Japan sank dozens of allied ships with precision-guided missiles—better known as kamikaze.
If the precondition for a successful war is the absence of enemies willing to resist the aggressor, it seriously limits the available opportunities. Indeed, when Russia sought to reproduce its Crimean success in other parts of Ukraine, it encountered substantially stiffer opposition, and the war in eastern Ukraine bogged down into an unproductive stalemate. Even worse (from Moscow’s perspective), the war has stoked anti-Russian feelings in Ukraine and turned that country from an ally into a sworn enemy.
Taken together, Russia’s wars in the Caucasus and Ukraine in the early twenty-first century can hardly be described as very successful. Though they have boosted Russia’s prestige as a great power, they have also increased distrust and animosity toward Russia, and in economic terms they have been a losing enterprise.
To realize the limitations of the Russian policy, one just needs to compare the immense economic progress of peaceful China in the last twenty years to the economic stagnation of “victorious” Russia during the same period.
Russian military actions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria may yet turn out to be the opening salvoes of a far bolder imperial drive. Even if Putin has not harbored serious plans so far for global conquests, success might fan his ambitions. However, we would also do well to remember that Putin’s Russia is far weaker than Stalin’s USSR, and unless it is joined by other countries such as China, it cannot support a new Cold War, let alone a full-blown world war.
Putin’s Russia lacks a universal ideology. During the Cold War the USSR relied on the global appeal of communism as much as on the global reach of the Red Army. Putinism, in contrast, has little to offer Cubans, Vietnamese, or French intellectuals. Authoritarian nationalism may indeed be spreading in the world, but by its very nature it is not conducive to the establishment of cohesive international blocs.
Whereas Polish communism and Russian communism were both committed, at least in theory, to the universal interests of an international working class, Polish nationalism and Russian nationalism are by definition committed to opposing interests. As Putin’s rise sparks an upsurge of Polish nationalism, this will only make Poland more anti-Russian than before.
Why is it so difficult for major powers to wage successful wars in the twenty-first century? One reason is the change in the nature of the economy. In the past, economic assets were mostly material; therefore, it was relatively straightforward to enrich yourself by conquest.
Yet in the twenty-first century only puny profits can be made that way. Today the main economic assets consist of technical and institutional knowledge rather than wheat fields, gold mines, or even oil fields, and you just cannot conquer knowledge through war.
Therefore, in a world filling up with saber-rattling and bad vibes, perhaps our best guarantee of peace is that major powers aren’t familiar with recent examples of successful wars.
Of course, if somebody does find a formula with which to wage successful wars under twenty-first-century conditions, the gates of hell might open with a rush. This is what makes the Russian success in the Crimea a particularly frightening omen.
In the 1930s Japanese generals, admirals, economists, and journalists concurred that without control of Korea, Manchuria, and the Chinese coast, Japan was doomed to economic stagnation.8 They were all wrong. In fact, the famed Japanese economic miracle began only after Japan lost all of its mainland conquests. Human stupidity is one of the most important forces in history, yet we often tend to discount it.
From an ethical perspective, monotheism was arguably one of the worst ideas in human history.
What monotheism undoubtedly did was to make many people far more intolerant than before, thereby contributing to the spread of religious persecutions and holy wars. Polytheists found it perfectly acceptable that different people worshipped different gods and performed diverse rites and rituals.
Jews began to make their remarkable contribution to science only once they had abandoned the yeshiva in favor of the laboratory.
secular people abstain from murder not because some ancient book forbids it but because killing inflicts immense suffering on sentient beings.
There is something deeply troubling and dangerous about people who avoid killing just because “God says so.” Such people are motivated by obedience rather than compassion, and what will they do if they come to believe that their god commands them to kill heretics, witches, adulterers, or foreigners?
It takes a lot of courage to fight biases and oppressive regimes, but it takes even greater courage to admit ignorance and venture into the unknown. Secular education teaches us that if we don’t know something, we shouldn’t be afraid of acknowledging our ignorance and looking for new evidence.
In the last few centuries, liberal thought developed immense trust in the rational individual. It depicted individual humans as independent rational agents and has made these mythical creatures the basis of modern society. Democracy is founded on the idea that the voter knows best, free-market capitalism believes that the customer is always right, and liberal education teaches students to think for themselves. It is a mistake, however, to put so much trust in the rational individual.
behavioral economists and evolutionary psychologists have demonstrated that most human decisions are based on emotional reactions and heuristic shortcuts rather than on rational analysis, and that while our emotions and heuristics were perhaps suitable for dealing with life in the Stone Age, they are woefully inadequate in the Silicon Age.
Not only rationality, but individuality too is a myth. Humans rarely think for themselves. Rather, we think in groups.
great power inevitably distorts the truth. Power is all about changing reality rather than seeing it for what it is. When you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail; when you have great power in your hand, everything looks like an invitation to meddle.
To claim that Ukraine does not exist as a nation and as an independent country disregards a long list of historical facts—for example, that during the thousand years of supposed Russian unity, Kiev and Moscow were part of the same country for only about three hundred years. It also violates numerous international laws and treaties that Russia has accepted and that guarantee the sovereignty and borders of independent Ukraine. Most important, it ignores what millions of Ukrainians think about themselves.
humans have always lived in the age of post-truth. Homo sapiens is a post-truth species, whose power depends on creating and believing fictions. Ever since the Stone Age, self-reinforcing myths have served to unite human collectives.
We have zero scientific evidence that Eve was tempted by the serpent, that the souls of all infidels burn in hell after they die, or that the creator of the universe doesn’t like it when a Brahmin marries a Dalit—yet billions of people have believed in these stories for thousands of years. Some fake news lasts forever.
When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one month, that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years, that’s a religion,
In the early 1930s left-wing Western journalists and intellectuals were praising the USSR as an ideal society at a time when Ukrainians and other Soviet citizens were dying in the millions from the man-made famine that Stalin orchestrated.
you cannot organize masses of people effectively without relying on some mythology. If you stick to unalloyed reality, few people will follow you. Without myths, it would have been impossible to organize not just the failed Maji and Jewish revolts but also the far more successful rebellions of the Mahdi and the Maccabees.
We believe that buying more stuff will make us happy, because we saw the capitalist paradise with our own eyes on television.
In history, the roof is sometimes more important than the foundations.
Why does the Indian government invest scarce resources in weaving enormous flags instead of building sewage systems in Delhi’s slums? Because the flag makes India real in a way that sewage systems do not.
However, most people don’t like to admit that they are fools. Consequently, the more they sacrifice for a particular belief, the stronger their faith becomes. This is the mysterious alchemy of sacrifice.
In order to bring us under his power, the sacrificing priest need not give us anything at all—not rain, or money, or victory in war. Rather, he needs to take away something. Once he convinces us to make some painful sacrifice, we are trapped.
The sacrifice is not just a way to convince your lover that you are serious; it is also a way to convince yourself that you are really in love. Why do you think women ask their lovers for diamond rings? Once the lover makes such a huge financial sacrifice, he must convince himself that it was for a worthy cause.
you can find plenty of Bernie Sanders supporters who have a vague belief in some future revolution while also believing in the importance of investing their money wisely. They can easily switch from discussing the unjust distribution of wealth in the world to talking about the performance of their Wall Street portfolios.
The universe does not give me meaning. I give meaning to the universe.
