Human self-destruction – NRC

How often, on average, does a person think about the end of humanity? I usually never do that myself. As a child I learned that the earth will be swallowed by the sun in five billion years, and that gave me a calm feeling. Our existence here is finite, but five billion years might as well be called endless.

These weeks I’m less relaxed. “We are approaching the most dangerous point in human history,” Noam Chomsky said this week New Statesman† “We are face to face with the prospect of destroying human life on Earth.” Chomsky was referring to the nuclear threat, but he might as well have been talking about this week’s apocalyptic IPCC report.

Philosopher Marjan Slob, whom I interviewed at the end of last year, called it ‘almost indigestible’ that all the beautiful things that people have created will ever be lost. “Look, that I’m going to die is a given, and I can make peace with that. But that we as humanity will disappear and that there will be no one left to celebrate the beauty of existence, that is such a deeply sad thought.”

Of course, we can try to console ourselves by thinking that other species will flourish after us, philosopher Justin EH Smith recently wrote in a statement. essay about the possibility of nuclear war. But such a mindset does not come to us. Smith found his own death a lot easier to put into perspective: at least the lives of others go on then.

I understand exactly what Slob and Smith mean, and at the same time there is something dizzying about their words. The idea of ​​the end of humanity is not only dramatic, but also hard to believe. Many things in life are so old and unchanging that you cannot imagine that they will ever disappear. The tie, for example, dates back to antiquity. Men all over the world wear ties, including Putin. There are very strict ideas about the acceptable width and way of wearing a tie. There is something reassuring about it: the tie is here to stay† But humans too, right?

uh, no. The odds of humanity self-destructing are greater than the odds of dying as an individual in a car accident, Australian politician and former economics professor Andrew Leigh writes in his recently published book What’s the Worst That Could Happen?† He refers to the philosopher Toby Ord, who considers all risks of human self-destruction (existential risk) added up and concluded that there is a one in six chance that humanity will wipe itself out before the end of the century. Leigh covers the biggest risks in his book: climate change, nuclear war, pandemics, runaway artificial intelligence.

One such risk is enough for a cascade of doomsday, but disasters are now upon us from all sides. That makes people around the world feel insecure and anxious, Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen said in a statement this week. interview† Liberal-democratic politicians must acknowledge and address her fears: now only the “bad guys” do that.

Gessen makes an important point: whoever is afraid wants to crawl under the wings of someone who promises to take away those fears. And that’s exactly what populists do. The worst thing is, writes Andrew Leigh in his book: the populists, once in power, will do little to reduce existential risk. People like Trump and Putin are not working on sustainability and nuclear disarmament. They are hostile to science, institutions and (international) cooperation. They promise security, but they offer disruption. That is not in the interests of their voters, even if they think they are being protected.

Totalitarianism, Leigh writes, is also an existential risk. We need democracy to protect humanity from self-destruction. Unfortunately, this form of government is under pressure in more and more places. We need to realize that democracy is fragile and not low-maintenance, Leigh says.

How often, on average, does a person think about the end of democracy? Less than would make sense. I am again reminded of Marjan Slob, who said to me: “Democracy is rigged with a lot of pain, effort and bloodshed, and it can also perish again.”

Floor Rusman ([email protected]) is editor of NRC