 |
Yuval Noah Harari
Historian, philosopher and the bestselling author
|
April 2020
The modern world has been shaped by
the belief that humans can outsmart and defeat death. That was a revolutionary
new attitude. For most of history, humans meekly submitted to death. Up to the
late modern age, most religions and ideologies saw death not only as our
inevitable fate, but as the main source of meaning in life. The most important
events of human existence happened after you exhaled your last breath. Only
then did you come to learn the true secrets of life. Only then did you gain
eternal salvation, or suffer everlasting damnation. In a world without death –
and therefore without heaven, hell or reincarnation – religions such as
Christianity, Islam and Hinduism would have made no sense. For most of history
the best human minds were busy giving meaning to death, not trying to defeat
it.
The Epic of Gilgamesh, the myth
of Orpheus and Eurydice, the Bible, the Qur’an, the Vedas, and countless other
sacred books and tales patiently explained to distressed humans that we die
because God decreed it, or the Cosmos, or Mother Nature, and we had better
accept that destiny with humility and grace. Perhaps someday God would abolish
death through a grand metaphysical gesture such as Christ’s second coming. But orchestrating such cataclysms was
clearly above the pay grade of flesh-and-blood humans.
Then came the scientific revolution. For scientists, death isn’t a divine decree – it is
merely a technical problem. Humans die not because God said so, but because of
some technical glitch. The heart stops pumping blood. Cancer has destroyed the
liver. Viruses multiply in the lungs. And what is responsible for all these
technical problems? Other technical problems. The heart stops pumping blood
because not enough oxygen reaches the heart muscle. Cancerous cells spread in
the liver because of some chance genetic mutation. Viruses settled in my lungs
because somebody sneezed on the bus. Nothing metaphysical about it.
And science believes that every
technical problem has a technical solution. We don’t need to wait for Christ’s
second coming in order to overcome death. A couple of scientists in a lab can
do it. Whereas traditionally death was the speciality of priests and
theologians in black cassocks, now it’s the folks in white lab coats. If the
heart flutters, we can stimulate it with a pacemaker or even transplant a new
heart. If cancer rampages, we can kill it with radiation. If viruses
proliferate in the lungs, we can subdue them with some new medicine.
True, at present we cannot solve all
technical problems. But we are working on them. The best human minds no longer
spend their time trying to give meaning to death. Instead, they are busy
extending life. They are investigating the microbiological, physiological and
genetic systems responsible for disease and old age, and developing new
medicines and revolutionary treatments.
In their struggle to extend life, humans have been remarkably successful. Over the last two centuries, average life expectancy has jumped from under 40 years to 72 in the entire world, and to more than 80 in some developed countries. Children in particular have succeeded in escaping death’s clutches. Until the 20th century, at least a third of children never reached adulthood. Youngsters routinely succumbed to childhood diseases such as dysentery, measles and smallpox. In 17th-century England, about 150 out of every 1,000 newborns died during their first year, and only about 700 made it to age 15. Today, only five out of 1,000 English babies die during their first year, and 993 get to celebrate their 15th birthday. In the world as a whole, child mortality is down to less than 5%.
Humans have been so successful in
our attempt to safeguard and prolong life that our worldview has changed in a
profound way. While traditional religions considered the afterlife as the main
source of meaning, from the 18th century ideologies such as liberalism,
socialism and feminism lost all interest in the afterlife. What, exactly,
happens to a communist after he or she dies? What happens to a capitalist? What
happens to a feminist? It is pointless to look for the answer in the writings
of Karl Marx, Adam Smith or Simone de Beauvoir.
The only modern ideology that still awards death a central role is
nationalism. In its more poetic and desperate moments, nationalism promises
that whoever dies for the nation will live forever in its collective memory. Yet this promise is so fuzzy that
even most nationalists do not really know what to make of it. How do you
actually “live” in memory? If you are dead, how do you know whether people
remember you or not? Woody Allen was once asked if he hoped to live for ever in the memory of moviegoers. Allen
answered: “I’d rather live on in my apartment.” Even many traditional religions
have switched focus. Instead of promising some heaven in the afterlife, they have
begun to put far more emphasis on what they can do for you in this life.
The only modern ideology that still
awards death a central role is nationalism
Will the current pandemic change
human attitudes to death? Probably not. Just the opposite. Covid-19 will
probably cause us to only double our efforts to protect human lives. For the
dominant cultural reaction to Covid-19 isn’t resignation – it is a mixture of
outrage and hope.
When an epidemic erupted in a
pre-modern society such as medieval
Europe, people of course feared for their lives and were devastated by the
death of loved ones, but the main cultural reaction was one of resignation.
Psychologists might call it “learned helplessness”. People told themselves it
was God’s will – or perhaps divine retribution for the sins of humankind. “God
knows best. We wicked humans deserve it. And you will see, it will all turn out
for the best in the end. Don’t worry, good people will get their reward in
heaven. And don’t waste time looking for a medicine. This disease was sent by
God to punish us. Those who think humans can overcome this epidemic by their
own ingenuity are merely adding the sin of vanity to their other crimes. Who
are we to thwart God’s plans?”
Attitudes today are the polar
opposite. Whenever some disaster kills many people –a train accident, a
high-rise fire, even a hurricane– we tend to view it as a preventable human
failure rather than as divine punishment or an inevitable natural calamity. If
the train company didn’t stint on its safety budget, if the municipality had
adopted better fire regulations, and if the government had sent help quicker –
these people could have been saved. In the 21st century, mass death has become
an automatic reason for lawsuits and investigations.
This is our attitude towards
plagues, too. While some religious preachers were quick to describe Aids as
God’s punishment for gay people, modern society mercifully relegated such views
to its lunatic fringes, and these days we generally view the spread of Aids, Ebola and other recent epidemics as organisational failures. We assume that
humankind has the knowledge and tools necessary to curb such plagues, and if an
infectious disease nevertheless gets out of control, it is due to human
incompetence rather than divine anger. Covid-19 is no exception to this rule.
The crisis is far from over, yet the blame game has already begun. Different
countries accuse one another. Rival politicians throw responsibility from one
to the other like a hand-grenade without a pin.
Alongside outrage, there is also a
tremendous amount of hope. Our heroes
aren’t the priests who bury the dead and excuse the calamity –our heroes are
the medics who save lives. And our super-heroes are those scientists in the
laboratories. Just as moviegoers know that Spiderman and Wonder Woman will
eventually defeat the bad guys and save the world, so we are quite sure that
within a few months, perhaps a year, the folks in the labs will come up with
effective treatments for Covid-19 and even a vaccination. Then we’ll show this
nasty coronavirus who is the alpha organism on this planet! The question on the
lips of everybody from the White House, through Wall Street all the way to the
balconies of Italy is: “When will the vaccine be ready?” When. Not if.
When the vaccine is indeed ready and
the pandemic is over, what will be humanity’s main takeaway? In all likelihood,
it will be that we need to invest even more efforts in protecting human lives.
We need to have more hospitals, more doctors, more nurses. We need to stockpile
more respiratory machines, more protective gear, more testing kits. We need to
invest more money in researching unknown pathogens and developing novel treatments.
We should not be caught off guard again.
The crisis is far from over yet the blame game has already begun.
Politicians throw responsibility from one to the other
Some might well argue that this is
the wrong lesson, and that the crisis should teach us humility. We shouldn’t be
so sure of our ability to subdue the forces of nature. Many of these naysayers
are medieval holdouts, who preach humility while being 100% certain that they
know all the right answers. Some bigots cannot help themselves – a pastor who
leads weekly Bible study for Donald Trump’s cabinet has argued that this
epidemic too is divine punishment for homosexuality. But even most paragons of
tradition nowadays put their trust in science rather than in scripture.
The Catholic church instructs the
faithful to stay away from the churches. Israel has closed down its synagogues.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is discouraging people from visiting mosques.
Temples and sects of all kinds have suspended public ceremonies. And all
because scientists have made calculations, and recommended closing down these
holy places.
Of course, not everyone who warns us
about human hubris dreams of getting medieval. Even scientists would agree that
we should be realistic in our expectations, and that we shouldn’t develop blind
faith in the power of doctors to shield us from all of life’s calamities. While
humanity as a whole becomes ever more powerful, individual people still need to
face their fragility. Perhaps in a century or two science will extend human lives
indefinitely, but not yet. With the possible exception of a handful of
billionaire babies, all of us today are going to die one day, and all of us
will lose loved ones. We have to own up to our transience.
For centuries, people used religion
as a defence mechanism, believing that they would exist for ever in the
afterlife. Now people sometimes switch to using science as an alternative
defence mechanism, believing that doctors will always save them, and that they
will live for ever in their apartment. We need a balanced approach here. We
should trust science to deal with epidemics, but we should still shoulder the
burden of dealing with our individual mortality and transience.
The present crisis might indeed make
many individuals more aware of the impermanent nature of human life and human
achievements. Nevertheless, our modern civilisation as a whole will most
probably go in the opposite direction. Reminded of its fragility, it will react
by building stronger defences. When the
present crisis is over, I don’t expect we will see a significant increase in
the budgets of philosophy departments. But I bet we will see a massive
increase in the budgets of medical schools and healthcare systems.
And maybe that is the best we can
humanly expect. Governments anyhow aren’t very good at philosophy. It isn’t
their domain. Governments really should focus on building better healthcare
systems. It is up to individuals to do better philosophy. Doctors cannot solve
the riddle of existence for us. But they can buy us some more time to grapple
with it. What we do with that time is up to us.
From
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου