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For generation after generation humans have prayed to every god, angel and saint, and have invented countless tools, institutions and social systems – but they continued to die in their millions from starvation, epidemics and violence.
For the first time in history, more people die today from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals combined.
Like firefighters in a world without fire, so humankind in the twenty-first century needs to ask itself an unprecedented question: what are we going to do with ourselves?
Misfortune or stupidity on the collective level resulted in mass famines.
Today the main source of wealth is knowledge.
You fought for your country when you were eighteen, and paid your taxes when you were forty, because you counted on the state to take care of you when you were seventy.30
Material achievements alone will not satisfy us for long. Indeed, the blind pursuit of money, fame and pleasure will only make us miserable.
Indeed, it is an ominous sign that despite higher prosperity, comfort and security, the rate of suicide in the developed world is also much higher than in traditional societies. In Peru, Haiti, the Philippines and Ghana – developing countries suffering from poverty and political instability – fewer than five people in 100,000 commit suicide each year.
Achieving real happiness is not going to be much easier than overcoming old age and death.
happiness is nothing but pleasure and freedom from pain, and that beyond pleasure and pain there is no good and no evil.
For countless generations our biochemical system adapted to increasing our chances of survival and reproduction, not our happiness.
What some people hope to get by studying, working or raising a family, others try to obtain far more easily through the right dosage of molecules.
To attain real happiness, humans need to slow down the pursuit of pleasant sensations, not accelerate it.
