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Yuval Noah Harari
Historian, philosopher and the bestselling author
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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.
