12/21/2019
Hello Everyone,
Here are a few rather germane pages from my new book (publication anticipated next month), an adventure novel, entitled Higher Ground, the first in a series, called the Critical Mass Chronicles all based on the idea that humanity has reached Critical Mass…
These are two brothers discussing the contemporary world situation. Uri is a mathematician and Nicholay is a philosopher:
“Critical Mass depends on magnitude, number, on the how many in your original question!” Uri waited expectantly. He knew that his brother would get it, it just took a bit longer for him. Limited philosophers!
Nicholay mused, “So? Oh, I see, the old Hegelian thinking tool at work – a sufficiently large quantitative change makes for a qualitative change?”
“Actually, no,” replied his brother, “I was thinking about Einstein. You know, he redefined gravity as the effect that mass has on spacetime.”
“Speak plainly, your scientific jargon gives me a headache!” Nicholay was abashed!
“OK,” Uri stated, “According to Einstein, what we experience as gravity is really one of the effects of the great mass of the earth on our reality. The mass of the earth affects the spacetime that we live in. Gravity is an example of one of the ways the mass of the earth has an impact on our individual lives. A physical way. Another is our notion of time, which we consider as the earth rotating around the sun. This is also a function of the huge masses of the earth and the sun on our very tiny lives.”
“That sort of makes sense, I guess,” Nicholay said. “And I suppose the great moral mass is the sheer number of people alive today?”
“Yes,” Uri said, “10 billion now and predictions for many more. Humanity has reached Critical Mass. The mere fact that there are so many of us means that spacetime will be affected.”
“What do you mean? How will spacetime be affected?” queried his brother.
“I’m not sure yet, but I know that our human reality will be changed simply because there are so many people… I think the change will be in the way humans think, in the way we perceive the world,” mused Uri.
“Whatever could you be talking about?” asked Nicholay.
“Look,” Uri commanded, “The chief attribute that makes humans special, the main thing that sets us apart from animals, besides our opposable thumbs, of course, is our brains.”
“I’ll go with that,” his philosopher brother agreed, jokingly, “Humans are what they think they are until proven otherwise.”
“Yes, well, so what I am saying is that, since there are more people alive today than ever before, in fact, there are more people alive today than all the people who have ever been alive before, because of this fact, the human brain will be affected,” Uri paused, pondering his own thoughts.
“You mean,” Nicholay asked, no really getting it, “humans have reached critical mass because of the sheer number of human brains operating now? And that critical mass will cause some kind of fundamental change in the way people think?”
“Yes, yes, yes! I love it when you are brilliant, Kolya!” Uri exclaimed.
Uri continued, “Take the value of a single human life, for example, is it commensurate when there are 10 billion people alive as it is when there are 25 billion, or more? Will humans be able to sustain the moral value that every single human life is all-important when there will be so many individual human lives?”
Nicholay thought silently for a brief moment, then said, “I get it! The group, the big giant group, the whole human race, becomes far more important than the individuals that compose it. Sort of like, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, I guess. That’s going to turn things upside down, for sure.”
And then he asked, “And how does this great number of people alive today, more than ever, not only at one time, simply more than ever, what does this signify for your calculations?”
Uri, lost in thought, said, “It’s beautiful. Look, ever since Jeremy Bentham and John Mill put forth their Utilitarian Ethics based on the Greatest Good for the Greatest Number, you philosophers have avoided it like the plague. Even Jon Stuart’s son, John Stuart Mill, went totally Libertarian.”
“Yes,” Nicholay responded, as this was his territory now. “And the Western individualist credo has produced the world we know today. Not Utilitarianism, but good old individualism, with private property and individual liberties.”
Nicholay continued, “Capitalism, the great economic engine of modern times, is based on individuality, on selfishness, in fact. In 1776, Adam Smith published his Wealth of Nations and laid the foundations of the market economy squarely on the shoulders of the butcher and the baker, who selfishly market their wares to feed their families and, thusly, provide us all with meat and bread while achieving the common good.”
“Indeed,” smiled Uri, once again. “And all based on individual free will. If I recall, Smith postulated an Invisible Hand, in which many saw the hand of God, which guided the marketplace. All those individual wills somehow combine to produce a general will and the common good.”
But Nicholay would not be outdone on his own turf. “Wait, wait! It was Thomas Jefferson, also in 1776, who put forth the ideals of democracy – each individual, voting in his or her own self-interest, will provide for the common good. Almost every American believes this, as do all in the world who live in democracies.”
Uri concluded, “My point is that it is all based on individual decisions in favor of themselves.”
“Yes, Yes,” Nicholay observed, “the bedrock of Western society is individualism. Immanuel Kant invented his version of the Golden Rule just for that reason. But to continue such an individually oriented process will lead to total chaos now, with entire continents of people heading for higher ground!”
“Well,” Uri responded, “The advent of critical mass, I think, the result of so many human minds operating at once, will be that people will stop thinking, “It’s all about me” and begin thinking “It’s all about us.”
Uri let those words sink in.
Then he continued, “It likely means that the guiding moral principle for the future will be a new version of the Golden Rule – something like, Act so that everyone is accommodated. Or Act so that everyone is affected equally. Thus, decisions will be made on the basis of what is good for all. For this reason, we can now calculate what is good for all mathematically because the unknown, free will, is out of the equation and is replaced by a known, or a range of knowns…”.
“Uri, stop it!” cried Nicholay, “Come back to me and explain please!”
“Oh, yeah, well, since humanity has reached critical mass, that is to say that there are so many people alive at one time, we now know that everyone will tend to make decisions based on what is good for all, not just on the basis of what is good for themselves,” Uri said. And, as he looked at this brother, he could see Nicholay’s eyes glazing over. He knew from long experience that he had to explain a bit more.
“For example,” Uri tried to break through the fog I his brother’s mind, “That’s why you can no longer have a plastic straw to drink with. It might be good for you, an individual, but it is not good for the planet.”
Then Uri explained, “This is because the sheer number of humans alive has created the critical mass necessary to force all decisions to be made on the basis of what is good for the whole of humanity, not simply for individual members of humanity. Neither humanity nor the earth itself can any longer afford it.”
“A sobering thought, my brother,” Nicholay uttered.”
From Higher Ground by Jonathan Sanford Saul, publication anticipated in January 2020. Look for it!
