2020 CE
Began with an image of society as a single, unified organism. The study of global solidarity and convergence through technology led to the paradoxical conclusion: “To connect better, we must first divide better.”

The question

What matters, and what is worthy of our attention?

The universe is the reality that precedes all else. And so we explore space: the surface of the earth and the deepest ocean floor, planetary systems and galaxies beyond the atmosphere, the subatomic world nested within all of it. The principles by which space operates through time matter. The universe appears as a single current conforming to some arbitrary order—one not yet fully revealed, impossible to inventory in its entirety. Even with the added tension of quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle, the image of a cosmos running on its own remains somehow cold.

Life entered the universe as its stage. Life overcomes itself. It collides endlessly, fails innumerable times, and evolves by absorbing the very forces that brought it to ruin. Anti-fragility—growing stronger through shock—is a fundamental property of life. Physics tends to regard the increasingly intricate phenomena of life as transient: since the total entropy of the universe can only increase, all structure must eventually scatter and cool; life, in this view, has merely sidestepped that fate for a moment.

The human being is the prize specimen nursed in life’s cradle. What distinguishes us is cognitive capacity. Because we experience, remember, and narrate, we can fail many times and overcome ourselves many times within a single lifetime—without dying in the attempt. More remarkable still is that we cognize our own cognition. We do not merely react to stimuli; we are aware of what we have perceived. Metacognition defines human identity. Homo sapiens sapiens is the one who knows that he knows.

The human being who contemplates the universe becomes the universe. Born within the cosmos, we inscribe the cosmos within ourselves. At that moment, the cold expanse of outer space comes alive as the fullness of existence. The cosmos and the human consciousness that perceives it cannot be thought apart. And the human who has become the universe asks: “What matters, and what is worthy of our attention?” That cannot be known by taking the universe, life, and the human separately. Much less by subdividing them further.

In the end, what matters is the human gaze upon the universe. Where is human society within the cosmos headed? Will it comply with laws, like a universe reduced to physics, and gradually cool? Will it founder in the global catastrophe that desire has made? Human consciousness, contemplating the world, poses urgent questions—and then poses the question of which questions are urgent.

Intersubject axiology

The starting point of this inquiry is the question: what is the most fundamental universal value, the one underlying all derived values? It is an open question that will be answered differently depending on the convictions and philosophy of the one answering—it may even dissolve into a question of language. My first answer, in any case, was “the way people connect.” At the micro scale, this is interpersonal relationships and social interaction; at the macro scale, culture and narrative. These are what establish values in human society and among its members, and value exists only by way of them.

To illustrate from the opposing direction: the human animal, as a biological organism, requires an influx of energy to manage entropy—yet the sun, which drives the great majority of the earth’s energy cycles, is not therefore the most fundamental universal value. Those who thought so actually worshipped the sun. But sun worship, too, is a culture, a grand narrative, and a form of social interaction that structures everything beyond the sun itself. The sun burned before anyone worshipped it, but it was not then a “value,” nor did it constitute a “system of values.”

For a more plausible alternative: a practical-minded person might hold that food, clothing, and shelter are the most fundamental universal values. Material conditions exert enormous influence on culture and interaction, and the development of language—which first made the sharing of culture possible—must have served the ends of survival and reproduction. But the more important point is that food, clothing, and shelter can be obtained in countless ways, and it is good to have as many of those ways available as possible. Human beings, through the frame of culture and narrative, distinguish meat from fruit and connect caves and barns to different webs of meaning. They exchange views collectively and make choices together. Material necessity gave birth to culture, but culture now organizes material necessity. A system of values structures values. To say it somewhat hastily: for the human being, a system of values is given prior to value itself.

Internalisation

A new background that emerged during my research is the apparent internalisation of human society—especially since the Second World War. Historically, each human society treated the others as “exterior” and, in effect, as non-human. Evidence can be found in the linguistic practices of ancient civilizations that reserved the word for “human” for themselves alone; in religious traditions that depicted the leaders of rival peoples as demonic; and, more recently, in the discrimination against “less-than-fully-human” races. Between the human and the non-human, there has always been war.

Since the founding of international institutions and the recognition of universal human rights, it seems that humanity can no longer locate an “exterior” among itself. We are far from having merged into one, but there is a growing assumption that human beings are in some way connected, and that common ground can be found. Attempts to project non-humanity onto the disabled, the criminal, or political opponents continue, but these now appear to be kept in check by the superstructure of democratic order. From a military standpoint—nation-states still pressing against one another across shared borders—such a reading is imprecise, perhaps naïve. And yet I believe the possibility is wide open. This is a response to globalization, to the relative peace that has held in many parts of the world, and to the prevailing openness of mainstream culture.

The posture required to confront the exterior is entirely different from the one required to cultivate the interior. The exterior demands preemptive action—danger, aggression, conquest; the interior demands sustained stability, harmony, and integration. I find myself wondering whether the patriarchy—typically understood as arising from the private ownership of property—and the male-centered social order have been driven by the imperatives of exteriority that have until now prevailed. If so, gender roles may yet be overturned in the new, interiorized world order.

Society

The remarkable cognitive capacity of the human being originates in sociality. The large brain volume and elevated cognitive function of anatomically modern humans are the result of adopting social interaction as the primary instrument of survival. But what exactly is society, and why does it matter? Is society simply a gathering of many people? The word is used casually—”social problem,” “social awareness,” “social life”—yet its meaning remains surprisingly elusive.

Human sociality is captured with unusual precision in the Chinese character 人間, used in Japanese and Korean for “human being.” Just as 空間 (space) and 時間 (time) denote not a single point but the interval (間) between one point and another, 人間 (human) names not the individual but the between—the space between self and other.

The peculiar sociality

“I” is always in the realm of the Other. — Jacques Lacan

It is an illusion to feel that one was born as oneself from the very beginning. Our identities are ceaselessly formed by society. We are born into society only when someone names us. I do not reside in myself alone; I exist as a story between you and me. And it is through that relational story that we come to know ourselves. This means that we see ourselves through perspectives we share with others. The self I perceive—the ego—is constituted through metacognition. The self overcomes itself through the other.

“Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” — Matthew 18:20

Even God, it seems, requires two or three people gathered together, calling out his name. This is because God is a story shared within society. Society has organized itself around something that does not exist as a thing-in-itself yet is known by all—an instance of what is called intersubjectivity. The value of money, the existence of the state, and religious belief are all grounded in intersubjectively shared conviction.

These distinctive cognitive traits confer a special status on human sociality. Animals such as ants and naked mole rats, which live in colonies and are subordinate to the colony, are said to exhibit eusociality. Human beings also treat sociality as a core capacity, much as eusocial animals do. But eusocial animals cannot account for the flexibility and speed of human society. Human beings construct society through metacognition and intersubjectivity, and can therefore rapidly revise their rules, adapt, and evolve.

Human saturation

That the human species adopted sociality as its mechanism of survival means that society must mirror the natural environment—just as the wing of a flying bird mirrors the sky. A wing that cannot reflect the sky will fall. Human society, accordingly, metacognizes its ways of engaging with the natural environment and preserves and reproduces them at the level of intersubjectivity. The purposiveness of this social interaction reaches its apex in modernity and the scientific method. Through science, we have arrived at a deeper understanding of the natural environment than ever before.

Yet alongside this social purposiveness, another purpose has always run parallel: the internal social interaction of society with itself. People have had to navigate not only nature but one another, for other human beings are as much a part of one’s environment as nature is. In primitive tribal societies, organized hunting and sexual selection demanded high levels of social interaction; from the emergence of agrarian societies onward, so did the stratification of social classes. In this sense—society acting internally upon itself—the objectified society may be understood as the human environment.

What distinguishes the human environment from the natural environment is the face-to-face character of double-loop learning. Nature, once understood, does not deliberately alter itself. Knowledge of the natural world, once secured, and the intersubjectivity surrounding it, tends to endure. But human beings can metacognize the fact that they have been understood, and change their strategies accordingly. Knowledge secured about the human environment has an extremely short half-life unless kept secret. To extend it, one must not unilaterally read the other but arrive at political consensus through close deliberation. The human environment achieves stability only with the consent and support of its members.

In the modern period, society’s encounter with the human environment enters a new phase. For the great majority of citizens, occasions to face the natural environment have been dramatically reduced. Across the globe, every natural environment now falls under the influence of the human environment. This reality is best visualized by the geological concept of the Anthropocene: humanity, once parasitic on the earth’s surface, has begun to shape the earth itself. The greatest challenge society now faces is not nature but itself—the human environment. Yet we have long failed to treat the human environment as such, having attempted instead to analyze and control human beings as though they were the natural world. This attitude makes every problem more complicated.

Social convention

History begins with kings and slaves. In agrarian society, some tended the land and gathered the harvest; others seized it. What stabilized this dynamic was royal authority. The recognized king, rather than killing and plundering, protected and collected tribute. And behind every stable kingship there has always been religion. Religion introduced absolute authority to shield immature societies from uncertainty and shock. If iron and shields protected the state, doctrine protected the minds of the people. Religion conferred absolute authority upon the king while making clear that the source of that authority was not the king himself. Royal power and religious legitimacy made excellent partners. But this kind of authority homogenized social interaction into social convention.

Social convention is a monolithic intersubjectivity shared across an entire society. As tribes became cities, cities became states, and states became empires, a widely distributed social convention became necessary for the maintenance of social identity. Social convention simplifies recurring social interactions and minimizes cognitive overhead. It also encourages the activities of members that benefit society and prohibits those that do not—reinforced by religious doctrine. The social elements embedded in convention become “the way things are” and “the obvious,” enjoying the privilege of evading direct scrutiny or criticism.

Because the benefits of social convention and the authority to enforce it are unevenly distributed, specific groups or individuals can end up pressing the individual in society’s name. When a person who holds both power and legitimacy in the name of society harbors malice, they can suppress reason-based social interaction and manipulate members through violence and shame. This is the point at which society reaches authoritarianism.

The important question is whether social convention and authoritarianism still function as viable social mechanisms. The answer has long been in. The transformation of religion—arriving with Protestantism—gave way to the scientific investigation of nature and the capitalist economy: things that were not religion at all. People now know well that they must look at the world with their own eyes, without depending on authority. But old habits die hard. The human being who misses God ends up conferring authority upon objectivity or universal validity. Evolutionary theory led to eugenics; eugenics led to racism. Under the pretext of capitalism, nature and human beings are exploited indiscriminately. Clinging to values that were once temporarily important, petrified communities crumble and individuals become atomized. The individual, drawn into a private rationality of their own, strains after authority. The result is not seeing the world with one’s own eyes, but seeing only oneself.

Post-industry society

What redirects our attention—away from the task of realizing universal values for modern humanity and toward the organization of society—is industry, now approaching its limit point and completing itself. Industrialization, rooted in the Protestant command to investigate the laws of nature for oneself rather than deferring to authority, has passed through successive Industrial Revolutions—steam, electricity, information—to reach the present moment. Industrial society, fused with capitalism, shaped the defining features of modernity; to focus on its positive dimension, this can be summarized as a dramatic increase in productive efficiency.

The emergence of artificial intelligence, nurtured at the frontier of the information industry, draws attention as something categorically different from prior “inventions.” AI is expected either to crown the Third Industrial Revolution or to inaugurate a new one—because this technology automatically improves the infrastructure of various information technologies, and even improves itself: it is understood as the stage at which industry overcomes itself. The reason the outlook is so bright lies in the infrastructure connected to AI. The Internet of Things, the mobile ecosystem, smart cities, enhanced human-machine interfaces—a vast array of existing and newly developing infrastructures.

The problem left to humanity

Under ideal conditions, artificial intelligence could conclude the industrialization process and liberate human beings from all labor. In everyday life, citizens would be able to invest more time in building the life they want rather than solving the problems handed to them. AI is a Pandora’s box that sets every conceivable imagination in motion—and yet even examining this most optimistic scenario raises a cascade of questions. If industry now industrializes itself, if marginal cost converges toward zero and poverty no longer hounds the multitude, around what must society reorganize itself? Is industrial society prepared to revise its own identity?

We already face severe social problems—from inequality to environmental destruction—for which industry can offer no technical or professional solution. What creates the constraint here is not material poverty but the absence of civic solidarity and leadership, and the limits of representative democracy. For humanity to navigate smoothly through the transition in which the meaning of labor and capital is overturned, and to land softly in the post-industrial world, it is necessary to think carefully about the political structure and conditions of human society—the arena in which communication and decision-making take place across all domains, including technology.

Grant all these changes; assume that countless material problems improve beyond what we see today. The problem that then becomes both absolutely and relatively more prominent is the problem of the human society that must meet these changes. Politically, the prospect of the end of work is already driving widespread debate about universal basic income; data sovereignty and privacy violations are also challenges our society must resolve. Put differently, “How do we do this?” gives way to “How do we live together?” as the more pressing question. If the politico-economic questions of the past were about absolute scarcity and life-or-death struggle, those of the present are about how to deploy, distribute, and coexist with surplus. Industry has already collided with the limits of capitalism and reached the point of discarding useful resources simply because they cannot be monetized.

What is painfully lacking is the spiritual resources and leadership of human beings—the social resources and solidarity of society.

On project

Project
A collaborative or individual undertaking planned to achieve a specific purpose

That is the dictionary definition. But the reason “project” keeps reappearing in my writing is to effect a shift—toward treating the activities of life as experimental. A project, in this sense, is not so much an endeavor to achieve a purpose as it is an activity of searching for one. As in science, where the purpose of an experiment is not the absolute confirmation of a hypothesis but its verification and the formulation of what comes next. The goal of a project is not something assumed to be achievable; it is simply something worth attempting. What matters more is that through the activity of the project, life is carried incrementally forward.

If such activity has a single purpose, it is this: to make meaningful relationships. A meaningful relationship connects to John Dewey’s definition of growth: the individual’s transformation in the direction of social purpose. How, then, is “success” defined? However it is defined, it will be proportional to the impact made on people’s lives—including one’s own. Dewey held that learning is the linking of relationships between successive experiences, and that education is the design of those links. When we discover and enter into relation with who we were in the past, we learn and grow. And when that growth affects others in society, we succeed.