(This is a continuation of Part I and Part II of the article.)
(by Peter Jakubowski)
to the book
"21 Lessons for the 21st Century"
(by Yuval Noah Harari)
Consequences of the Unified Physics relating directly to Harari's ideas and proposals
Now, I am going to update some of the most important ideas from the book "21 Lessons for the 21st Century".
In Chapter 1, we read:
"Obama has rightly pointed out that despite the numerous shortcomings of the liberal package, it has a much better record than any of its alternatives. Most humans never enjoyed greater peace or prosperity than they did under the aegis of the liberal order of the early twenty-first century. For the first time in history, infectious diseases kill fewer people than old age, famine kills fewer people than obesity, and violence kills fewer people than accidents. ...
But liberalisms has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face: ecological collapse and technological disruption. Liberalism traditionally relied on economic growth to magically solve difficult social and political conflicts. Liberalism reconciled the proletariat with the bourgeoisie, the faithful with the atheists, the native with the immigrants, and the European with the Asians by promising everybody a larger slice of the pie. With a continuously growing pie, that was possible. However, economic growth will not save the global ecosystem - just the opposite, it is the cause of the ecological crisis. And economic growth will not solve technological disruption - it is predicated on the invention of more and more disruptive technologies. ...
The liberal story and the logic of free-market capitalism encourage people to have grand expectations. During the latter part of the twentieth century, each generation - whether in Hongkong, Shanghai, Istanbul or Sao Paulo - enjoyed better education, superior healthcare and larger incomes than the one that came before it. In coming decades, however, owing to a combination of technological disruption and ecological meltdown, the younger generation might be lucky to just stay in place. ...
Could liberalism reinvent itself yet again, just as it did in the wake of the 1930s and 1960s crises, emerging as more attractive than ever before? Could traditional religion and nationalism provide the answers that escape the liberals, and could they use ancient wisdom to fashion an up-to-date world view? Or perhaps the time has come to make a clean break with the past, and craft a completely new story that goes beyond not just the old gods and nations, but even the core modern values of liberty and equality? ...
At present, humankind is far from reaching any consensus on these questions."
We only need to repeat Harari's question: "Do we need a completely new story?" in order to understand how serious our situation really is. A completely new story means to begin from a zero-point again. And that means first of all to develop and accept a new scientific background for our new story. Such a new scientific background can be that one presented in a short form here above. Now, let us update the "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" by including this new scientific background into the most important of Harari's ideas.
In Ch. 2. "Work: When you grow up, you might not have a job", we read:
"We have no idea what the job market will look like in 2050. It is generally agreed that machine learning and robotics will change almost every line of work - from producing yoghurt to teaching yoga. However, there are conflicting views about the nature of the change and its imminence. Some believe that within a mere decade or two, billions of people will become economically redundant. Others maintain that even in the long run automation will keep generating new jobs and greater prosperity for all. ...
We don't know of any third field of activity - beyond the physical and the cognitive - where humans will always retain a secure edge."
I think, it's not true; we know it. The third field of activities will inseparably connect the physical and the cognitive human activities: it is a responsible parenthood, giving life, basic education, and future social orientation to our own children inside of every Basic Family. Only in our Basic Families a future child will be growing up from the first Matter-Spirit quantum in maternal womb, gaining its own body and mind, to a conscious member of our lower or higher quantized community (see Table I above), contributing later to Matter, Spirit, and Global Consciousness of humankind.
What about our free will and our emotions? Harari writes:
"It turned out that our choices of everything from food to mates result not from some mysterious free will, but rather from billions of neurons calculating probabilities within a split second. ... After all, emotions are not some mystical phenomenon - they are the result of a biochemical process."
Both above was never true, and will not become true also in the future. We have to learn to understand what our brain quanta - and still more, what our superbrain quanta - are, physically and physiologically. Biochemical processes cannot reach higher (in the Quantum Spectrum of Matter-Spirit) than to the nerve cells. Brain quanta and superbrain quanta don't mean any calculations, and probabilities calculation is just an illusion of the hundred-years-old traditional quantum physics. Nature doesn't need such an illusion.
What is yet important to note in Chapter 2? Harari warns:
"By 2050 a 'useless' class might emerge not merely because of an absolute lack of jobs or lack of relevant education, but also because of insufficient mental stamina."
However, he also sees a solution of the problem:
"A related idea proposes to widen the range of human activities that are considered to be 'jobs'. ... Maybe we need to turn a switch in our minds, and realise that taking care of a child is arguably the most important and challenging job in the world."
We have to strengthen the last sentence, because taking "care of a child" is just an auxiliary job in relation to "growing up" a child, the true future job for all Basic Families around the World, independent of the parents "education and mental stamina".
In Ch. 3. "Liberty; Big Data is watching you", we read:
"As we mentioned in the previous chapters, scientific insights into the way our brain and bodies work suggest that our feelings are not some uniquely human spiritual quality, and they do not reflect any kind of 'free will'. Rather, feelings are biochemical mechanisms that all mammals and birds use in order to quickly calculate probabilities of survival and reproduction. Feelings aren't based on intuition, inspiration or freedom - they are based on calculations.
When a monkey, mouse or human sees snake, fear arises because millions of neurons in the brain swiftly calculate the relevant data and conclude that the probability of death is high. Feeling of sexual attraction arise when other biochemical algorithms calculate that a nearby individual offers a high probability of successful mating, social bonding, or some other coveted goal. ... Feelings are thus not the opposite to rationality - they embody evolutionary rationality. ...
We usually fail to realise that feelings are in fact calculations, because the rapid process of calculations occurs far below our threshold of awareness."
As we have noted in our update to Chapter 2, any calculation in our brain is just an illusion. Not only humans, other mammals, and birds, but also most of insects are not easy to catch. But the smallest insects have no brains able to calculate whatsoever. But they are able to use their maybe single nervous cell (often their entire body) to receive the necessary (energetic) impulse of "enemy's" proximity. An analogous impulse allows swarm members not to collide with each other. They calculate nothing. They have no idea of probabilities.
In summary, in Unified Science, feelings are not based on any calculations. They are a new quantum level of the Quantum Spectrum of Matter-Spirit (superbrains). And according to this Spectrum, it is false to think (and say) that the processes of feelings "occur far below our threshold of awareness." Those processes occur on the superbrain level, above the brain-quanta level, and they both above the biochemical nerve-cells level. Thus we have to correctly speak about our super-consciousness (instead of the traditional sub-consciousness).
On the other side, Harari puts quite open the hopelessness of the traditional point of view. He writes:
"Computer algorithms, however, have not been shaped by natural selection, and they have neither emotions nor gut instincts. ...
Indeed we have no idea what the full human potential is, because we know so little about the human mind."
In Ch. 4. "Equality; Those who own the data own the future", we read:
"In the longer term, by bringing together enough data and enough computing power, the data-giants could hack the deepest secrets of life, and then use this knowledge not just to make choices for us or manipulate us, but also to re-engineer organic life and to create inorganic life forms."
According to Quantum Spectrum of Matter-Spirit, any inorganic life forms is a nonsense. Any quanta in our Universe with sizes below the universal size of 5 nm remain always lifeless. All quanta with sizes above this membrane-quanta size remain alive as long (and only so long) as they somehow manage to receive energy transfer from outside. Without such positive energy transfer they disintegrate back onto the universal level of membranes, dust nanoparticles; (note here the important difference to the traditional thinking that our dead bodies and all other "dead" objects disintegrate to atoms).
In Ch. 5. "Community; Humans have bodies", we read:
"It is nevertheless worthwhile to consider Facebook's communal vision in depth, and examine whether once security is beefed up, online social networks can help build a global human community. Though in the twenty-first century humans might be upgraded into gods, as of 2018 we are still Stone Age animals. In order to flourish we still need to ground ourselves in intimate communities. For millions of years, humans have been adapted to living in small bands of no more than a few dozen people. Even today most of us find it impossible to really know more than 150 individuals, irrespective of how many Facebook friends we boast. Without these groups, humans feel lonely and alienated. ...
Your millions of brothers in the national family and your millions of comrades in the Communist Party cannot provide you with the warm intimacy that a single real sibling or friend can."
The above is exactly an observational confirmation of our theoretical quantization of the human communities (comp. Table I once more). This natural hierarchy cannot be replaced with any artificial "social-networks communities". Basic Family and Great Family will always stay also in the future at the life beginning of every mentally and physically healthy human being.
Yuval Noah Harari gives us here also an interesting summary of the point of view of data-bosses on us as the data producers and consumers:
"It and the other online giants tend to view humans as audiovisual animals - a pair of eyes and a pair of ears connected to ten fingers, a screen and a credit card. A crucial step towards uniting humankind is to appreciate that humans have bodies."
In Ch. 6. "Civilisation; There is just one civilisation in the world", we read:
"Since individuals belonging to different species cannot produce fertile offspring together, species can never merge. Gorillas cannot merge with chimpanzees, giraffes cannot merge with elephants, and dogs cannot merge with cats.
Human tribes, in contrast, tend to coalesce over time into larger and larger groups. Modern Germans were created from the merger of Saxons, Prussians, Swabians and Bavarians, who not so long ago wasted little love on one another."
This is one of the most significant misunderstandings in Harari's traditionally based knowledge. It relies on the very imprecise traditional-science definition of species. It is true, species can never merge. But different human tribes were never different species. They were just different communities of the same species, and it was the situation for the recent more than 6000 years (compare our Point 4. "Quantum Evolution of our own Species").
It is true: "There is just one civilisation in the world." However, it cannot be "managed" (neither politically, nor economically, nor culturally, nor socially, nor educationally) without our Quantum Hierarchy of communities. They have to "cooperate" directly with their quantum-level neighbors, up to 2 levels above (and below). Basic Family and Great Family are still "holly" units of any larger community, because they are the only communities directly responsible for an individual Homo sapiens, and they alone are able to deliver new members of all higher Communities. On the other side, the democratically chosen representatives of all ~150 Quantum Nations are the proper partners of the Continental Communities to organize and practically realize the Global World Community of our First Global Civilisation.
In Ch. 7. "Nationalism; Global problems need global answers" (partly considered already at the beginning of the article) we read:
"It is a dangerous mistake to imagine that without nationalism we would all be living in a liberal paradise. More likely, we would be living in tribal chaos. Peaceful, prosperous and liberal countries as Sweden, Germany and Switzerland all enjoy a strong sense of nationalism. The list of countries lacking robust national bonds includes Afghanistan, Somalia, Congo and most other failed states."
I agree with Yuval Noah Harari in that point. On the other side, he also understands that our present nationalism cannot be the same as in the 20th Century:
"Technology has changed everything by creating a set of global existential threats that no nation can solve on its own. A common enemy is the best catalyst for forging a common identity, and humankind now has at least three such enemies - nuclear war, climate change and technological disruption. If despite these common threats humans choose to privilege their national loyalties above everything else, the results may be far worse than in 1914 and 1939."
And Harari proposes the probably best solution:
"A person can and should be loyal simultaneously to her family, her neighbourhood, her profession and her nation - why not add humankind and planet Earth to that list? True, when you have multiple loyalties, conflicts are sometimes inevitable. But then who said life was wimple? Deal with it."
Let us note that the above proposal is exactly what we propose with our Demographic Quantum Spectrum of Human Communities. Yuval Noah Harari explains the necessity to accept this quantization with his own words:
"In previous centuries national identities were forged because humans faced problems and opportunities that were far beyond the scope of local tribes, and that only countrywide cooperation could hope to handle. In the twenty-first century, nations find themselves in the same situation as the old tribes: they are no longer the right framework to manage the most important challenges of the age. We need a new global identity because national institutions are incapable of handling a set of unprecedented global predicaments. We now have a global ecology, a global economy and a global science - but we are still stuck with only national politics. This mismatch prevents the political system from effectively countering our main problems. To have effective politics, we must either de-globalise the ecology, the economy and the march of science - or we must globalise our politics. Since it is impossible to de-globalise the ecology and the march of science, and since the costs of de-globalising the economy would probably be prohibitive, the only real solution is to globalise politics. This does not mean establishing a global government - a doubtful and unrealistic vision. Rather, to globalise politics means that political dynamics within countries and even cities should give far more weight to global problems and interests."
In Ch. 8. "Religion; God now serves the nation", we read:
"Billions of humans still profess greater faith in the Quran and the Bible than in the theory of evolution; religious movements mould the politics of countries as diverse as India, Turkey and the United States; and religious animosities fuel conflicts from Nigeria to Philippines. ...
So how relevant are religions such as Christianity, Islam and Hinduism? Can they help us solve the major problems we face? ...
Human power depends on mass cooperation, mass cooperation depends on manufacturing mass identities - and all mass identities are based on fictional stories, not on scientific facts or even on economic necessities. In the twenty-first century, the division of humans into Jews and Muslims or into Russians and Poles still depends on religious myths. ...
So in the twenty-first century religions don't bring rain, they don't cure illnesses, they don't build bombs - but they do get to determine who are 'us' and who are 'them', who we should cure and who we should bomb. ...
Humankind now constitutes a single civilisation, and problems such as nuclear war, ecological collapse and technological disruption can only be solved on the global level. On the other hand, nationalism and religion still divide our human civilisation into different and often hostile camps. This collision between global problems and local identities manifests itself in the crisis that now besets the greatest multicultural experiment in the world - the European Union."
I don't think, the EU crisis has really much to do with religious intolerance. We have to seek for the causes elsewhere, but not in the different religions of Europeans. Let me tell you just a short story. Recent Sunday (of September 2018), a windy and sunless day, I have been stranded in small, very old Dutch city of Urk in IJsselmeer. It was no rain at 9:30 o'clock, so I decided to walk across the picturesque city. I went landwards. At 9:45 I was just passing the old canals, separating the ancient (more than thousand years old) fishing village from the modern part of the city, when a church bell sprang to life. It was a small, modern church building on my right, so I turned right to read the info-table on the wall of the church. After a few seconds a second church bell started ringing, from nearby but different direction. And almost immediately a third one. In a half of minute six different churches, all located on that place not larger than 500 x 500 meters, are calling their believers to six different worships. Impressed by this bell ringing, I have suddenly noted that hundreds of ceremonially dressed people were streaming from all possible directions towards those churches. There were smaller and larger families, with three or even four generations of their members, most of them wearing traditional costumes, walking at a good pace, but without any hectic rush, following the bells call. After ten, fifteen minutes, before I have walked the place around, they all have already reached they destination places and started to pray and sing for their chosen God.
It was a very optimistic experience for myself, because I strongly felt that if 20-thousand-souls strong community of this single Dutch city is capable to join their faith in six different religious directions, I saw no reason why the remaining 500 millions of the Europeans should be incapable to develop the same religious tolerance.
In Ch. 9. "Immigration; Some cultures might be better than others", we read:
"The two key issues of this debate are the disagreement about immigration intolerance and the disagreement about European identity. ...
This will still leave open, however, the question of Europe's unique national identities."
The problem here is not the lacking answer, but the wrong question. European Union is a Continental Community. It consists of several different quanta of National Communities. There is no possibility, but also no need, to unify all of those natural Nationalities into an 'Europe's unique national identity'. And even the consideration of one or another national identity in regard of the present immigration wave is wrong on this place. There are no foreign nations immigrating to Europe in recent years. There are almost always only individuals, or small families, trying to save their lives or to assure a better life for their children.
True assimilation of immigrants can only be successful on the level of Big Families and Clans (for groups of immigrants), and of Basic Families (for single children and lonely young persons).
Imagine, we are constructing a city with Lego stones. Each Basic Family build her own house. Great Families build their houses preferably along the same street or around the same square. The Clans hold also together. Also the interconnected Clans build in a common District of their City. On the background of such a project, it is easier to consider different immigration scenarios. Immigrants are on the first sight different bricks on our building site. If we try to adopt them into our Basic-Family houses, we will recognize the difference between the local and the foreign bricks for many years. It will be much better to understand and accept the natural differences from the very beginning and to consider everyone of the immigrants as a member of its own Basic Family and Great Family and to assign to those Families their own parcel (of land) on our street, our square, in our District. They will use their own bricks to build their own houses, to collect more and more of the members of their own Big Families, living with us and between us, enriching, and not threatening our own style of life. It is clear that not every street, square, and district in our City can expand without limit. Thus the most acceptable places for immigrants to build their own "houses" have to be seen in young Districts and in young Cities. But it should be possible almost always and everywhere.
Of course, such imaginary scenario is just a way of thinking. Single immigrant children, coming to us without parents and other relatives, have to be temporarily "adopted" inside of our existing Big Families. But it is also possible without any discussion, and everywhere on the World. To imprison the immigrants in "concentration camps" is (in my opinion) not far from genocide. On the other side, any criminal activity of all citizens of our Street, District, and City, whether an immigrant or not, have to be treated with the same powerfulness of our justice.
And of course, I am not a naive optimist, thinking that the new scientific way of thinking alone could solve our global problems. But it could be a new beginning, an advantageous one in comparison to the present chaos and inhumanity in the immigration policy. Yuval Noah Harari puts also here his highly actual hope and question:
"If Europe succeeds in finding such a path, perhaps its formula could be copied on the global level. ...
If Greeks and Germans cannot agree on a common destiny, and if 500 million affluent Europeans cannot absorb a few million impoverished refuges, what chances do humans have of overcoming the far deeper conflicts that beset our global civilisation?"
In Ch. 10. "Terrorism; Don't panic": the author relieves our fear:
"Hence terrorists resemble a fly that tries to destroy a china shop. The fly is so weak that it cannot move even a single teacup. So how does a fly destroy a china shop? It finds a bull, gets inside its ear, and starts buzzing. The bull goes wild with fear and anger, and destroy the china shop. This is what happened after 9/11, as Islamic fundamentalists incited the American bull to destroy the Middle Eastern china shop. Now they flourish in the wreckage. And there is no shortage of short-tempered bulls in the world. ...
The success or failure of terrorism thus depend on us. If we allow our imagination to be captured by the terrorism, and then overreact to our own fears - terrorism will succeed. If we free our imagination from the terrorism, and react in a balanced and cool way - terrorism will fail."
In Ch. 11. "War; Never underestimate human stupidity", Yuval Noah Harari comes to the very point about humanity and war:
"In the great age of conquerors warfare was a low-damage, high-profit affair. At the Battle of Hastings in 1066 William the Conqueror gained the whole of England in a single day for the cost of a few thousand dead. Nuclear weapons and cyberwarfare, by contrast, are high-damage, low-profit technologies. You could use such tools to destroy entire countries, but not to build profitable empires. ...
Human stupidity is one of the most important forces in history, yet we often discount it. ...
Hence even rational leaders frequently end up doing very stupid things.
So how much should we fear a world war? It is best to avoid two extremes. On the one hand, war is definitely not inevitable. ... On the other hand, it would be naive to assume that war is impossible. Even if war is catastrophic for everyone, no god and no law of nature protects us from human stupidity."
It needs no comments by myself.
In Ch. 12. "Humility; You are not the centre of the world", Yuval Noah Harari takes his own Jewish nation as an example of the crass collective egotism.
"Most people tend to believe they are the centre of the world, and their culture is the linchpin of human history. ...
Needless to say that British, French, German, American, Russian, Japanese and countless other groups are similarly convinced that humankind would have lived in barbarous and immoral ignorance if it wasn't for the spectacular achievements of their nation. ...
Personally, I am all too familiar with such crass egotism, because the Jews, my own people, also think that they are the most important thing in the world. ...
From an ethical perspective, monotheism was 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. ...
Humans of all creeds would do well to take humility more seriously."
We should follow this emotional advice.
In Ch. 13. "God; Don't take the name of God in vain", we read this obvious declaration:
"To the best of our scientific knowledge, all those sacred texts were written by imaginative Homo sapiens. They are just stories invented by our ancestors in order to legitimise social norms and political structures."
And then we read the following statement:
"Of course, the cosmic mystery doesn't help us at all in maintaining the social order. People often argue that we must believe in a god that gave some very concrete laws to humans, or else morality will disappear and society will collapse into primeval chaos."
In contrast to Harahi's opinion, I think that the cosmic order of our cosmic home (our Cosmic Hierarchy), can help us to understand and better organize also our social order. The Demographic Quantum Spectrum of Human Communities is one of the mightiest tools of such new organization.
In Ch. 14. "Secularism; Acknowledge your shadow", we can follow a very interesting point of view:
"Religious leaders often present their followers with a stark either/or choice - either you are Muslim, or you are not. And if you are Muslim, you should reject all other doctrines. In contrast, secular people are comfortable with multiple hybrid identities. As far as secularism is concerned, you can go on calling yourself a Muslim and continuing to pray to Allah, eat halal food and make the haj to Mecca - yet also be a good member of secular society, provided you adhere to the secular ethical code. This ethical code - which is indeed accepted by millions of Muslims, Christians and Hindus as well as by atheists - enshrines the values of truth, compassion, equality, freedom, courage and responsibility. It forms the foundation of modern scientific and democratic institutions. ...
This is the deep reason why secular people cherish scientific truth. Not in order to satisfy their curiosity, but in order to know how best to reduce the suffering in the world. Without the guidance of scientific studies, our compassion is often blind. ...
Secular people are certainly proud of the uniqueness of their particular nation, country and culture - but they don't confuse 'uniqueness' with 'superiority'."
In Ch. 15. "Ignorance; You know less than you think", we read:
"As noted earlier, behavioural 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."
I agree with the first part of this statement (emotions over analysis), but I disagree with the second part of it; I think that emotions (feelings) - and the based on them heuristics - remain today and also in future the most important guide in human interactions. Our superbrains are much better in guiding us across the meanders of life than any rational analysis by means of our (relatively small) brains.
And what about our ignorance? Harari writes:
"Yet like many other human traits that made sense in past ages but cause trouble in the modern age, the knowledge illusion has its downside. The world is becoming ever more complex, and people fail to realize just how ignorant they are of what's going on. Consequently some who know next to nothing about meteorology or biology nevertheless propose policies regarding climate change and genetically modified crops, while others hold extremely strong views about what should be done in Iraq or Ukraine without being able to locate these countries on a map. People rarely appreciate their ignorance, because they lock themselves inside an echo chamber of like-minded friends and self-confirming news-feeds, where their beliefs are constantly reinforced and seldom challenged. ...
Most people don't like too many facts, and they certainly don't like to feel stupid. ...
The power of groupthink is so pervasive that it is difficult to break its hold even when its views seem to be rather arbitrary. ...
Even scientists are not immune to the power of groupthink."
I am sure, scientist are the world champions in groupthink. And Yuval Noah Harari has the insider's knowledge too:
"Revolutionary knowledge rarely makes it to the centre, because the centre is built on existing knowledge. The guardians of the old order usually determine who gets to reach the centres of power, and they tend to filter out the carriers of disturbing unconventional ideas. Of course they filter out an incredible amount of rubbish too."
In Ch. 16. "Justice; Our sense of justice might be out of date", we read:
"When we try to comprehend relations between millions of people across entire continents, our moral sense is overwhelmed. ...
The bitter truth is that the world has simply become too complicated for our hunter-gatherer brains."
It is the traditional hopelessness again. Our brains (and our superbrains) are growing again to their previous dimensions of the builders of pyramids and other gigantic achievements of humanity. Our further evolution is still possible. One of the first conditions for it to succeed is to develop a new vision of humanity for the coming centuries. The scientific background of such a vision has been given by Unified Physics, and its main credo is: our Universe is quantized.
In Ch. 17. "Post-Truth; Some fake news lasts for ever", Yuval Noah Harari gives an advice to scientists:
"In practice, the power of human cooperation depends on a delicate balance between truth and fiction. ...
The most powerful scholarly establishments - whether of Christian priests, Confucian mandarins or communist ideologues - placed unity above truth. That's why they were so powerful. ...
As a species, humans prefer power to truth. ...
Scientists, for their part, need to be far more engaged with current public debates. They should not be afraid of making their voice heard when the debate wanders into their field of expertise, be it medicine or history. Silence isn't neutrality; it is supporting the status quo."
I agree; it is exactly the reason for myself to write the present article.
In Ch. 18. "Science Fiction; The future is not what you see in the movies", we read:
"Most science-fiction movies really tell a very old story: the victory of mind over matter. Thirty thousand years ago, the story went: 'Mind imagines a stone knife - hand creates a knife - human kills mammoth'. But the truth is that humans gained control of the world not so much by inventing knives and killing mammoths as much as by manipulating human minds. The mind is not the subject that freely shapes historical actions and biological realities - the mind is an object that is being shaped by history and biology. Even our most cherished ideals - freedom, love, creativity - are like a stone knife that somebody else shaped in order to kill some mammoths. According to the best scientific theories and the most up-to-date technological tools, the mind is never free of manipulation. There is no authentic self waiting to be liberated from the manipulative shell."
As explained in Point 5 ("Our individual and global Consciousness"), our mind and body cannot be considered as separate components of our self (of our soul). The above description of the possible relations between our minds and the historical actions and biological realities has to be rethought again. I am just beginning with it for myself. It would be important to hear what the specialists in this domain of our knowledge have to say to the new quantized definitions of our consciousness (in Table VI).
In Ch. 19. "Education; Change is the only constant", we read:
"We have now run out of time. The decisions we will take in the next few decades will shape the future of life itself, and we can take these decisions based only on our present world view. If this generation lacks a comprehensive view of the cosmos, the future of life will be decided at random."
This appeal has to be taken most seriously from all problems considered in the present article. The traditional point of view of the Universe cannot help the next generation to make any successful decision shaping her own present and future life.
In Ch. 20. "Meaning; Life is not a story", we read:
"Who am I? What should I do in life? What is the meaning of life? Humans have been asking these questions from time immemorial. Every generation needs a new answer, because what we know and don't know keeps changing. Given everything we know and don't know about science, about God, about politics and about religion - what is the best answer we can give today? ...
Given everything we know about the universe it would seem utterly impossible for any sane person to believe that the ultimate truth about the universe and human existence is the story of Israeli, German or Russian nationalism - or indeed of nationalism in general. A story that ignores almost the whole of time, the whole of space, the Big Bang, quantum physics and the evolution of life is at most just a tiny part of the truth. Yet people somehow manage not to see beyond it."
In that context, the new nationalism is not better than the old one. We have to understand its natural, physical background so much more.
We read further by Harari:
"Thus, like all other cosmic stories, the liberal story too starts with a creation narrative. It says that the creation occurs every moment, and I am the creator. What then is the aim of my life? To create meaning by feeling, by thinking, by desiring, and by inventing. Anything that limits the human liberty to feel, to think, to desire and to invent, limits the meaning of the universe. Hence liberty from such limitations is the supreme ideal. ...
In practical terms, those who believe in the liberal story live by the light of two commandments: create, and fight for liberty."
I agree with that liberal story, but with a single, though decisive restriction: the natural limitations of the Demographic Quantum Spectrum of Human Communities cannot be abandoned. They are even necessary in our new story in order to allow us to understand ourselves, including our individual and global consciousness.
In Ch. 21. "Meditation; Just observe", Yuval Noah Harari shares with us an experience of his personal philosophy:
"I never react to events in the outside world; I always react to the sensations in my own body."
I would like to extend this observation with the philosophy of the Unified Physics: We never react to events in the outside world; we always react to our feelings, because the outside world stimulate the sensations of our bodies, and our bodies (physical sensations) and our minds (physical feelings) are not separable from our souls (our individual consciousnesses).
Here ends this fantastic book. Don't fail to read it soon. And remember: "We have now run out of time."