Demise of the Modern Human

After investigating the causes of the 2008 financial crises, the report of America’s official Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission concluded that “The fault lies not in the stars, but in us” (Commission Staff 2011). A sustainable future demands a new human being; one more rational and focused, with a clear appreciation of what exactly is required to maintain a sustainable existence on Earth.

Charles Darwin explained the mechanism of natural selection in his 1859 treatise On the Origin of Species (Darwin [1859] 1999). His refined concept is now generally agreed to explain how a startling array of life-forms has emerged. The robust natural selection process will no doubt continue with or without human beings, and despite whatever damage we do to the planet. Humans are a product of this process, and are thus either some final twig on the tree of life in the genus Homo, or more hopefully an offshoot that will grow into a new and flourishing branch.

Regrettably, the odds are against us: of all the species that have ever swum, crawled, walked, or flown above the Earth, 99.9% are now extinct. ¹ To understand how we might improve the odds, we need to examine ourselves objectively.

What distinguishes humans is the presence of a penetrating intellect characterized by a deep pool of reflective, self-aware consciousness. This reflective consciousness, along with the propensity for prolonged attention, provides the basic scaffolding of the human mind and enables creativity and problem solving. All mammals, and many lesser animals, share six basic emotions: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise (“Six Basic Human Emotions” 2010). Functional magnetic-resonance imaging now makes it possible for us to see where these emotions originate within animals’ brains (Alemu Gedif 2012). But how these emotions are experienced and influences the ability to learn from basic emotional responses differs tremendously between and within species.

Humans have also developed a distinctive set of higher emotions. These most likely emerge from self-awareness, for each requires that a human individual think about what others are thinking and, in turn, what those others may think about the first one’s thoughts and actions. Higher emotions include embarrassment, guilt, shame, sympathy, and love. Expressing all of our emotions, in the context of the human ability to reason, creates the tapestry of human behaviors.

Hunter-gathers and modern executives share a motivational system outlined by Abraham Maslow (1968). After fulfilling “basic needs”—such as food, shelter, and clothing—people move on to try meeting “higher needs,” which include securing a stable living environment, achieving social recognition, and self-fulfillment. To help meet these higher needs, individuals seek psychological capital—in the form of approval and cooperation from family and peers—to build up their core strengths and enable them to realize their highest potential. Pursuing and attaining these goals make for mentally healthy, productive, and happy humans. Happiness, in the Greek sense of eudaimonia, is the desirable outcome attained by satisfying one’s multifaceted needs.

Pursuing happiness would be a fairly straightforward process, if only rationality was consistently dominant—but it is not. The power of rational thinking is limited and varies between individuals. It also fluctuates within a given person over time, and seems to have a genetic basis that limits its expression (Pinker 2002).

The human genome was forged on the African savanna during pre-history, and adapted to increase the likelihood of achieving immediate benefits for a limited group in a relatively short span of time. Human beings are a tribal species, and our perspective remains resolutely tribal (Wilson 2012).

Ultimately, the destiny of the human race is tied to the capacity of the human mind. The amplification of personal power realized through technology means that limits and flaws in rationality now have magnified consequences. The past 250 years of history demonstrate how easily and instinctively people use technology to enhance their own self-interest. Yet, over that same period, we have left a dissolute trail of waste, pollution, and pointless destruction, testimony to a darker side of human nature.

So what are humanity’s overarching flaws? Psychologists note that humans display mental mechanisms that not only lower the influence of logic but can also, paradoxically, jeopardize individual and collective security. These mechanisms often helped those humans who lived in simple Paleolithic tribes, when quick decisions fed by emotional response could mean the difference between life and death (Livingstone-Smith 2011). They include,

Psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (1981) established a cognitive basis for common errors humans make. Economist Richard Thaler later collaborated with Kahneman to explore a range of economic behaviors. Their collective work spawned the subdiscipline of behavioral economics, confirming Herbert Simon’s insight from the 1950s that human reasoning has certain distorted propensities and limits (i.e., bounded rationality; Simon 1957). The Prospect theory proposes that people quickly adapt to positive or negative feelings—what the authors term hedonic sensations—which result from attaining or losing some desired personal goal or condition. In other words, once something is attained, any positive hedonic sensations that may have been gained rapidly dissipate. This theory establishes that changes in income or wealth are weighed in relation to reference points—often relative to the perceived condition of one’s peers—as opposed to absolute levels (Kahneman and Tversky 1979).

These scholars also show that whatever state of well-being they may attain, individuals consistently view the risks involved in further actions vis-à-vis potential gains or losses in different ways. People dislike losses roughly twice as much as they desire equal-sized gains, leading to asymmetric behavior when evaluating risk. This result is illogical since it leads people to only assume additional risk when the potential gains they expect exceed potential losses by a factor of two or more (Kahneman and Tversky 1984).

Other research shows that individuals consistently overestimate their own chances of gaining positive outcomes from ventures that in fact have low probabilities. This leads to such irrational behavior as buying lottery tickets, gambling, or purchasing insurance for unlikely disasters (Steen 2004).

Such findings suggest that people have difficulty understanding and appropriately preparing for life’s genuine risks. The research cited above confirms that when people are presented with overwhelming amounts of information, they use “rules of thumb”—what psychologists call “heuristics”—to process information and make decisions more easily. This too leads to irrational behavior, since using cognitive shortcuts, when making important decisions, brings preconceptions and assumptions into play. Finally, once a decision is made, people tend to stick with it long after evidence emerges that underlying circumstances have changed (Hutchinson and Gigerenzer 2005).

The human mind evolved primarily to deal with a simpler type of existence than the one we face today. Many behaviors that had clear benefit long ago—reflecting and justified by the advantage they conferred in the process of natural selection—can today be detrimental to the well-being of an individual—and of humanity generally.

Does our species continue to evolve? One established fact is that, through time, the evolution process has involved stasis more than change. Once nature finds something that works in a given niche, an evolutionary equilibrium is attained. Mutations tend to fail since they are less fit than the average individual. Recent studies show that the human gene pool currently includes a huge number of rare, and probably new, mutations (Fu et al. 2013). A larger population, and a wide array of technological and social support systems, allows more genetic variants to appear without resulting in early death from the harsh pressures that exist in nature against even slightly detrimental genes.

One of the early criticisms of Darwinian theory was that genetic variation would be overwhelmed in large populations due to a high level of gene flow (Eisley 1958). Subsequent research has shown that significant adaptations for species arise in small, isolated populations that permit genetic drift toward some new, favorable characteristic (i.e., the “founder effect”). The global population of humans is increasingly integrated, with high gene flow neutralizing further natural selection. We have found our evolutionary niche and demonstrated our superiority as an adaptive life-form, and thus, human beings exist at present in relative equilibrium.

Unfortunately, analysis shows that our brain peaked in size at 1,500 cubic centimeters about 20,000 years ago and has since declined some 10% in volume (McAuliffe 2010). There are a number of theories as to why this happened, but one possibility is that natural selection for humans has shifted from individual to collective intelligence. Humanity’s natural selection dynamic now centers on the creativity and coordinated actions associated with networks of linked minds, and now favors the most adaptive networks.

Biologists have found that when physical attributes no longer serve some useful adaptive function, they atrophy and/or disappear. This raises the uncomfortable possibility that the adaptive power of the individual is being replaced by the more successful one of the cooperating group, gradually turning the individual into a subservient cog in a socioeconomic machine.

When our numbers were small, the benefits of human strengths outweighed our weaknesses, while the abundance and redundancy of planetary resources and natural systems masked our mistakes. Like the air we breathe, endogenous earth systems operate with an invisible hand we often cannot see or appreciate. This may suggest one simple remedy to improve the prospects for humanity’s survival: reduce our numbers. But the human condition has become too complicated to be resolved by any single easy solution. To explain, consider a few observations made by the man who first coined the “invisible hand” metaphor (Smith 1776).

Adam Smith witnessed the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and recognized that markets bring people together into vibrant, naturally regenerative, networks that impel and constrain people to gauge their actions through the eyes of others. Human interactions associated with market activity created a rising standard of living in context of probity, temperance, and fair dealing. Thus, Smith came to his conclusion that the pursuit of individual self-interest promotes the public good (Smith 1776). Late-eighteenth century England was characterized by stable communities and markets that were predominantly small and intimate, with buyers and sellers known to one another. Puritan ethics prevailed and, in the familiar transactions that took place, acted as a check on socially destructive greed through the ever-present higher emotions of embarrassment, guilt, shame, and sympathy.

While capitalist, free markets remain, the world of Adam Smith has vanished. Markets are now vast and impersonal—the shopping mall has replaced the corner store. We gained efficiency and lower prices, yet lost the friendly intimacy that once existed between small shopkeepers and their “steady” customers. We also lost the “eyes of others”—that sense that our behavior was continually watched and weighed against an ideal standard shared by the entire community.

In today’s society, a high level of mobility keeps many on the move and in so doing breaks the bonds of community. This further weakens the efficacy of shared virtues. Even if others do observe greed, their reaction may be one of indifference or even of approval rather than condemnation. Ours is an age of relativism and materialism.

Lehman Brothers was a collective intelligence network dedicated to making large sums of money, bringing together a set of like-minded individuals in a self-reinforcing community. Its business model was structured around leverage, meaning that it made short-term investments with $1 of its money and up to $31 of borrowed money. ² Such a strategy magnifies profits when an investment behaves as forecast, but when it does not, all can be lost. Involvement in the subprime mortgage market was the locus of Lehman’s undoing, but our concern is that this collective intelligence network created a subculture in which risky behavior was praised and rewarded (McDonald and Robinson 2009). A nurturing culture of greed, arrogance, and concealment of risk led to the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, precipitating the economic crisis of 2008. Such an outcome would not have happened in the days of Smith, because the “eyes of others” would have held such behavior in check.

The literature exploring this continuing crisis indicates that the observed behaviors of individuals pursuing their own interests do not always promote society’s interests. It further confirms that a small group of technologically empowered individuals with access to money have disproportionate power to wreak havoc within global commerce.

Economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff (2009) said it succinctly in the following passage:

The instruments of financial gain and loss have varied over the ages, as have the types of institutions that have expanded mightily only to fail massively. . . . Countries, institutions, and financial instruments may change across time, but human nature does not. (p. xxviii)

As capitalism matured, and humanity’s numbers increased, a growth dynamic based on continuously rising consumption developed. It hinges upon the observation made by the Prospect theory that people’s positive hedonic feelings start to diminish once some personal, social, or material goal appears safely attained.

Consumption decisions key off peers, so companies keep crafting new social-status products knowing that early adopters will create a peer-group dynamic that leads to increased sales. However, given the rapid desensitization to positive hedonic feelings that is generated by consuming new products, businesses must keep escalating product design, or inventing more and more products that appear to be “new,” simply to keep the process going and profits flowing. Each individual thus becomes trapped on the “hedonic treadmill,” a prisoner to their inborn desire to acquire the symbols of social status. For any one person, the harm done is minor, yet, magnified by our global population, the massive material throughput results in numerous and well-known global ills.

The “tragedy of the commons” is a well-documented phenomenon. It occurs whenever unrestricted access to a resource useful to humans makes it appear to have either an artificially low or zero cost. We presently have two major commons that are shared by all humans: the atmosphere and the oceans. The reason these commons are associated with tragedy is that, in such cases, humans pursuing their own self-interest in exploiting a zero-priced, shared resource tend to unthinkingly deplete or degrade it beyond redemption for future generations. In each instance, the small impact attributable to individual exploitation becomes deleterious to humanity when exploited by many.

Another issue facing us is the contexts in which humans naturally engage in altruistic behavior. Paleolithic human’s expression of familial or nonfamilial altruism endures for at most a couple generations (Dawkins 1989). ³ Yet, such limiting of intergenerational concern leads to a shorter-term planning horizon than that needed to address today’s global economic and environmental problems. For instance, over the past half-century, western citizens have endorsed rising public indebtedness. Citizens thereby enjoy greater consumption than could be provided out of current income. This boosts positive hedonic sensations (more goods and services) while reducing negative hedonic sensations (lower taxes), and is reinforced by the basic human predisposition for immediate gratification. However, at some point, any debt, even a public one, must be repaid. We then face a different set of conundrums; for as soon as we must repay, we necessarily experience a significant increase in negative hedonic sensations. Given that we dislike losses twice as much as welcome gains, we resist, which merely compounds our eventual suffering.

A similar argument can be made to explain the lack of general concern for depletion of earth’s scarce resources or damage to the biosphere. It could even help explain humankind’s enduring faith in the technofix solution—it is easier to brush off emergent problems if you believe that the necessary fix will surely be found when needed by some future generation that you are not too concerned about in the first place.

It has been suggested that our numbers are now so vast, and our industry so extensive, that a new geological age has been triggered: the Anthropocene. This concept is rooted not simply in our numbers but in our nature as well: we are seven billion individuals with insatiable wants, on our way to becoming nine to ten billion. This century’s fallacy is that actions that made perfect sense for the individual, when multiplied by our growing numbers, are producing an outcome that threatens the survival of our species. Like Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market, Earth itself has invisible sets of hands that, after nurturing human life into existence, have mainly stayed out of our way. Humans have gone far beyond the evolutionary success of any other species, and Earth is finally using its powerful invisible hands—the laws of physics operating within complex planetary systems—to guide us in a new direction or else relegate us to extinction.

Some might suggest our government ought to step in and save us; for democracy is government by the people and for the people. Yet, this is both its strength and its weakness, for the policies and actions of politicians are often dominated by the short-term concerns of people who, as we noted above, tend to dismiss or underestimate long-term dangers. Another reason to doubt that democratic governments will take the lead in instituting solutions to systemic problems is the cumulative effects of special interest groups. Each uses the political process to secure economic gain or other advantages for its own members. As a result, subsidies, tax rebates, trade protection, price supports, and vested-interest legislation accumulate in the legal code. Over time, politicians’ freedom to respond promptly to current conditions becomes increasingly constrained while the web of vested interests induces political gridlock. Like Gulliver in Swift’s novel, stable democracies can become potentially powerful giants tied up in the intricate threadwork of special interest Lilliputians.

But before we despair, it is crucial to note that scientific collective intelligence is opening a promising opportunity. Humans began to take control of evolution some 12,000 years ago in what is sometimes called the Agricultural Revolution: selective breeding of animals and hybridization of plants to suit our needs. ⁴ The accumulation of scientific knowledge, particularly over the past 200 years, has added greatly to human control over the processes of evolution. Consider only the implications of our having mapped the human genome. This 2001 event marked a new stage in human efforts to guide evolution: initiating a turn toward correcting or eliminating unwanted genetic traits and, in so doing, transforming ourselves.

As we noted above, evidence suggests that, for thousands of years, the human gene pool has remained in relative equilibrium; there is no basis to assume humans have become significantly more intelligent, and in fact, the brain has actually shrunk in size. But this situation may be about to change. Control over our own evolution is entering a profound stage, increasing the probability that humans will retain their dominant role in Earth’s evolutionary project.

The new direction can be seen in the promises of genetic, biocybernetic, neurological, nanotechnological, and pharmacological engineering of the human being. The panoply of research agendas across these fields is vast with collective implications hidden in fragmented developments (Church and Regis 2012; Mulhall 2002; Pickering 2010). Consider the following advances in genetic research alone.

Each of these innovations directly or indirectly affects the human gene pool. While only in the trial stages, germ-line gene therapy seeks to transform the genetic structure of sperm and egg cells to work toward such goals as eliminating disease-causing genes by inserting new ones (Carey 2012). Once established, this will move on to transform the human genetic structure to enhance other traits, such as athletic ability, attractiveness, and higher intelligence. The net consequence will be that engineered gene sequences will be passed on to future generations. This area of research will merge with complementary agendas developing in biocybernetic, neurological, nanotechnological, and pharmacological engineering of the human being. In other words, the broad area of scientific research known as bioengineering will have the effect of creating new and improved human beings. People will come to demand bioengineered enhancements, for their children if not for themselves, for those who receive such enhancements will have the greatest chance to live longer, be more productive, be stable, be successful, and have fulfilled lives.

Such a choice may come to be perceived as an inalienable right for all who live within free democracies, where the pursuit of happiness is considered a fundamental liberty. Certainly, this idea will resonate with the Paleolithic mind-set. And therein lies the danger.

Left to itself, bioengineering has the potential to turn humans into Paleolithic caricatures, a path that will be devolutionary. The genetic legacy from pre-history makes us value certain attributes in people: beauty, strength, athletic prowess, sexuality, dominance, acquisitiveness, to name a few. If parents are free to choose whatever genes they might wish upon their children, the cumulative impact of such choices will lead us down a path resembling Hollywood’s most frighteningly apocalyptic, science fiction movie. The short-term interests of the individual will overwhelm the long-term interests of humanity as an evolutionary species. Our monumental task is to guide this process in a manner constructive to our well-being today as well as our success as a species in the future. Fortunately, there already exists a core of bioethical standards for us to build upon, enabling us to limit bioengineering to common traits that enhance adaptation and survivability of both the individual and species (Beauchamp and Childress 1994).

Essential to the fate of both our species and our planet is a vision of what constitutes a human being sustainably superior to those now in existence. It should be remembered that the pseudoscience of eugenics focused on creating a better human based largely on perceived differences between racial groups, and the result was discrimination and genocide.

Bioengineering must focus instead on improving successful, adaptive traits that all people share: health, longevity, intelligence, and attention. The standard of success for each new modification of the human genome should be that one of these four traits is improved without diminishing any of the others. No benchmark other than this need be implemented. In time, we will have individuals that look forward to 100+ years of healthy, productive life, with focused, high intelligence bent toward solving the problems of individual and communal life.

The already highly successful adaptation of collective intelligence will be turbocharged by networks of such enhanced participants. Improving these four attributes is no guarantee of universal happiness; it merely enhances the probability that a higher percentage of the population will achieve this goal. There will be a continuum of gradual improvements toward creating an open-ended human construct I refer to as an “angel.”

Virtue is a concept that defies easy definition, but I think we can agree that someone who lives a virtuous life is a person who (1) expresses proactive skill in solving life’s problems, (2) demonstrates behaviors that are constructive to the integrity of human relationships, and (3) dedicates themselves to projects in life that are socially worthy. A person, therefore, who is virtuous, can well be called angelic. We need a preponderance of people who are not only virtuous but who also have the foresight to see what is needed to make collective human existence sustainable and who possess the willingness to see the project through.

Writing in the journal Foreign Policy, Francis Fukuyama (2004) expressed his objection to bioengineering in these words:

Efforts to rid ourselves of negative emotions could have unforeseen side effects, making us less than human. . . . If we weren’t violent and aggressive, we wouldn’t be able to defend ourselves. . . . If we never felt jealousy, we would also never feel love.

Note that bioengineering focused on enhancing intelligence, attention, longevity, and health has nothing to do with eliminating emotions.

There is a useful Greek metaphor of a charioteer driving a chariot led by two horses. One is well behaved and responsive to the driver, the other wild and uncontrollable. With such a team it is next to impossible to drive the chariot toward any desired destination. The ultimate goal of bioengineering is to strengthen the “horse” of reason so that it becomes an increasingly dominant influence. Emotions unchained have resulted in all the heinous acts of people in history. Emotions that are channeled, disciplined, and focused have resulted in all the great works of civilization. In every circumstance, control over one’s feelings is the key to whether they are expressed in a destructive or constructive fashion. While they must be nurtured into a suit of robust character traits, intelligence and attention enhance the development of self-discipline. Therefore, bioengineering greater intelligence and focus is seen as an essential prerequisite to “rein-in” all forms of violence and foster the expression of virtuous behavior.

A bioengineering project so dedicated is a necessary but not sufficient step toward improving the human condition. The author believes that human numbers have already become so great, and our impact so extensive, that this world has been forever changed. Scientists have observed that evolution is about adaptation, not progress. Humans have mistaken the trend toward greater complexity in the evolutionary story as progress. Thus, the idea that evolution includes some notion of improvement is uniquely human.

So is human existence about adaptation or progress? The answer is both for we possess the intellectual gift of weaving the two into one. We will only be a well-adaptive, progressive species if we choose a sustainable definition of progress. Sadly, this choice is beyond Paleolithic human’s capacity to make.

Two evolutionary paths lie before us. Humans can allow unfolding events to continue “naturally,” or we can take greater control of our own evolutionary “progress.” Because humans are inseparable from nature, whatever we do is “natural.” However, we humans are aware of the fact that we have significant strengths and serious weaknesses, and that our shortcomings, multiplied by our numbers, contribute to each and every mounting global problem. Through bioengineering, we now have the power to actively influence the direction of our own evolution. Doing so in a way that enhances those traits that we all share, and that make us more adaptive—is of critical urgency.

The question is whether the habits and modes of thinking that helped us survive in the distant past will lead the human race to self-destruction before ethically guided bioengineering turns us into creatures who, together, can sustain our own existence, and that of the biosphere we share.