The Future of Humankind

John is a scientist, novelist and philosopher of science who is the author of the highly acclaimed COSMOSAPIENS – Human Evolution from the Origin of the Universe, which was awarded the Network Book Prize in 2016. His new book is an evaluation of what the future might hold for the human species. In the first part, he considers various predictions for our extinction through natural disasters, warfare and accident, population explosion and climate change, and artificial intelligence. The second part looks at potential survival through space colonisation, extending health span, and prospects for physical immortality. Part 3 is devoted to technological attempts to transform the human, while in Part 4 John sets out his own forecast ‘based on projecting into the future of the distinct pattern revealed in COSMOSAPIENS.’

As in his previous book, John’s treatment is thorough and measured, and he has made a point of consulting relevant experts in the various fields to test his arguments and conclusions. However, I found his discussion of the recent pandemic relatively uncritical of the mainstream consensus, while he fundamentally questions the consensus around climate change – see below. He takes at face value company estimates of the safety and effectiveness of their vaccines, which, in the case of Pfizer at least, are misleading, as the release and analysis of the clinical trials documents through freedom of information demands shows (see my review of Naomi Wolf in the previous issue). The absolute effectiveness in relation to the control group is in fact far smaller than the relative effectiveness quoted. Nor did the vaccines prevent infection and transmission, as originally claimed. Moreover, John makes no mention of the suppression of early treatment or official statistics on vaccine adverse events and excess mortality, which governments have done their best to ignore – see below for my reviews of Pierre Kory on ivermectin and Bobby Kennedy on the history of bioweapons and the role of gain-of-function research (John mentions on p. 35 that scientists may in future be able to make harmful bacteria more deadly, when this has in fact been going on for decades in BSL labs around the world). In addition, governments equated death with Covid with death from Covid, artificially inflating fatalities and ignoring the fact that many of the people who died were over the average age of death and had two or more comorbidities.

I am less sanguine than John on the spectre of nuclear holocaust, of which he gives a good historical account. He might well have updated this section in the light of current developments driven in my view by the neoconservative foreign policy establishment in Washington seeking to maintain global American hegemony. They have admitted that the purpose of the war in Ukraine is to weaken Russia as a strategic competitor - while Ukraine itself is devastated in the process. Much of the aid sent supports the US arms industry, and Black Rock has already signed a $1 trillion reconstruction deal with the Ukrainian government. The same people make money from war and from reconstruction – see Jeffrey Sachs’ Substack (https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/wgtgma5kj69pbpndjr4wf6aayhrszm) , Michael Brunner’s article in the Asia Times (https://asiatimes.com/2024/03/this-is-the-way-the-west-ends/) and Alfred de Zayas’ articles on Counterpunch (https://www.counterpunch.org/author/alfred-de-zayas/) for informed critiques. The grand chessboard geopolitical game is a very dangerous one, and these same Washington people are envisaging war with China during this decade.

As also articulated by Charles Eisenstein in his book Climate: A New Story, John is sceptical about claims that human-induced climate change – and especially CO2 emissions - is an existential threat, as depicted by David Wallace-Wells. Jacob Nordangard (https://drjacobnordangard.substack.com/p/jacob-nordangard-on-the-origins-of) describes the history of this research going back to immediate post-war period and sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation as part of a strategic campaign for bringing about centralised world government (the other main plank is health and biosecurity). John systematically sets out definitions and influences on climate (pp. 49 ff.), also reporting on the IPCC assessments, deconstructing some of their claims in relation to actual evidence. As Charles also pointed out, reasoned debate has descended into mutual recriminations, and counter-arguments put forward by scientists such as Judith Curry have been ignored. There is also a very well-funded global warming and sustainability industry with an inherent and self-interested bias against dissidents. As is the case with Covid-19, scientists who question the consensus are treated as heretics, and their careers suffer accordingly. A recent film, Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmfRG8-RHEI – features many such dissident scientists presenting their case, but for the non-expert an informed critique of their arguments would also have been useful in order to weigh up claims against evidence. A recent scientific statement can be found in Steven Koonin’s book Unsettled (2021) where he states that ‘projections for future climate and weather events rely on models demonstrably unfit for purpose.’ Interestingly, some climate scientists agree with him but dare not say so in public for fear of recrimination. John himself has lost old friends as a result of his position.

Space does not permit a detailed discussion of John’s even-handed treatment of prospects for space colonisation, AI, technological immortality, cryonics, transhumanism, post-humanism, and neural uploads based on questionable physicalist assumptions. In his final part, he discusses the nature of scientific predictions and advances his own view based on his analysis of patterns in human evolution, recapping the argument of his previous book. He traces the development of primaeval thinking through to philosophical and scientific thinking, highlighting the advance of reflective consciousness and the underlying pattern of complexification. He notes the basic duality in human nature – co-operation versus competition, selflessness versus selfishness, altruism versus aggression – arguing that there is increasing realisation that peaceful cooperation is the only long-term option: ‘in the not-too-distant future, this rapidly increasing reflective consciousness that generates cooperation, altruism, complexification, and convergence will prove more powerful than the instinct that generates competition, aggression, hierarchism, and divergence.’ (p. 215) He calls this the fourth stage of human evolution, and his vision resembles that of Teilhard de Chardin, and indeed of Peter Deunov, and postulating that by moving beyond science into metaphysics ‘human cosmic consciousness will be able to comprehend such a higher reality.’ Sages and saints have already attained this fourth stage - this may well be the subject of a further volume.