Why Are We Here? - Musings on The Future of the Human Race

If automation replaces 70 percent of all possible human jobs, what do you think people will spend their time doing?

Assuming the best-case scenario where automation is used to remedy social divides: Some of us will get depressed because of their endless habit-turned-desire to sloth away and consume things. I don’t think we’re acting our true nature if we don’t create, we silence ourselves, shutting down entire parts of our identities. We make a habit of not becoming who we truly want to be.

Some will find peace in creating with nature. I hope I get to be part of this bunch. We need more of nature’s hospitality, tranquility. We also need more of nature’s unpredictability and more reminding that our entire species is dependent on its mercy.

Others will find peace creating online. I hope I continue to be part of this bunch, too. The Internet has given us an exciting playground, not only with its vast abilities to entertain, but also because there’s massive potential to transform it to the better.

Assuming worse scenarios where automation is used to deepen existing inequalities: A lot of us will lose sources of regular income. Along with it, we’ll lose the chance to become independent individuals and to build families. Few others will get richer, venturing further away from the realities and constraints of our shared, green-blue home, continuing their exploitation with even larger bites. I hope and pray this is not the case.

In such a case, what do you think the governance structure will look like?

It won’t look like the ones today. I’m insanely excited about what will happen once massive crowds start to demand more transparency and better chances for everyone. Perhaps some pessimistic friends won’t agree, but I don’t fathom a place for favoritism in governance in the future. Not only in a version where automation reigns with all its blaze and glory.

We can’t afford incompetence anymore if we want to continue inhabiting the earth. We need righteous, responsible and widely respectful decision-making with all the limited resources we have left.

I imagine small-scale systems where individuals voice their opinion in respectful and to-the-point ways, through tools that go beyond the lack of depth of mere voting. These systems will replace the consumerism-promoting, no-use walled gardens on our devices, re-defining what social media means. A lot of decisions will be made on much smaller scales. Larger units of governance will be there for conflict resolution, shared resources management and to facilitate decision-making with multiple stakeholders. On that level, we won’t fear of agreements made behind closed doors, because all decision-making will be transparent, documented up until the smallest factors that led to fully developed arguments pro and contra.

Journalism will be very different, too. It will be untied from its current ways of profit-making, protected so that its noble, independent and investigative character doesn’t fade.

In short, I think we’ll see much more grassroots, and much less giant bodies of organization.

Do you think it’s possible for technological advancement to outsmart human greed? Why?

Yes. Despite all that we have to endure mainly due to big tech, I remain optimistic about technology’s further development plane. In fact, I remain optimistic although I know that we’ll be faced with powerful global-scale crises. Technology will help us overcome most of it.

Sooner or later, all will be aware of the various alarms the earth is ringing. Some luckier ones will lose their seasonal luxury habits, whereas some will lose their home.

In the end, all will be confronted with the fact that somewhere along the way that led up to this forest-burning, snow-melting chaos of a home, there were some wrong decisions. We’ll start questioning ourselves and others in power. We’ll demand better and do better.

Will technology let us dodge Armageddon?

No. Someday, some creatures will also eat our descendants, in the shape of us, with the power they generate by burning our corpses.

At first, this was hard to digest. As I got older, I made peace with it. After all, ending up a nugget is probably not the worst that could happen.

What in life is truly objective and not subjective?

Respect for other living beings, hard work and the need for thoughtful progress. Also, that everything changes.

Is an individual purpose why we are here?

Yes and that purpose changes every day. I don’t like any of the motivational blurb out there, especially those about finding your purpose, because I don’t think there’s any one-size-fits-all solution yet. Not with the education systems we have, or with the economic realities we’re in. But if there was a solution, it would probably be related to developing an obsession for what interests you and pursuing it relentlessly.

Do we have free will?

Yes, because losing our belief in it will be a catastrophe for humanity’s systems of philosophy and theology.

I might change my mind as we continue to unravel the nature of our minds and if I get more capable in understanding the science behind it. In fact, many neuroscientists already agree that we have no free will. As researchers such as Benjamin Libet proved in the latest century, humans act on decisions long after they went golden-brown within the electrical bakery that is the human brain. In other words, all human decisions are the works of nothing else but some human brains firing up neurons here and there. No free will organ anywhere.

Is mind or matter more real?

Objectively, mind is more real. Einstein proved this in June 1905, in his paper titled On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, space and time measurements are never absolute. They depend on who’s measuring.

Intuitively, I agree. Mind is more real. You are what you think, you are how you focus, and all that. Protect your focus like your life depends on it.

Lead image: An earthling deciding whose reality to pursue: Mind or matter. Illustrated by kertburger.