Economic growth and progressive dumbing down

In my book Far from equilibrium, I note that our civilization is deeply influenced by the so-called myths or beliefs of humanism, described by Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine, authors of The dark mountain manifesto. I usually state them as follows.

- Progress. There is no human problem that cannot be solved by science and technology. Those that have not yet been solved sooner or later will be, because the progress of technoscience is guaranteed and always for the better.

- Human centrality. Man was made in the image and likeness of God, and for this reason he is at the center of the universe.

- Separation between man and nature. Human beings are different (in the sense of superior) from other living beings, and are separated from them and from the natural world.

These three beliefs are false, but powerful. They limit our understanding of reality, and with that they lead us to a series of mistakes and unsuccessful actions. As a result, our civilization can only make sense of the world through stories based on them, especially when it comes to politics and economics.

A closer look at human history reveals the falsehood of these beliefs. We know from experience that technological and scientific progress, in addition to not solving all our problems, often creates new ones. There are no treatments without side effects. It is also clear that progress is not always for the better, as was proven, for example, by the explosion of the first atomic bomb.

The belief in human centrality is arrogant and borders on ridiculous, since it is more than obvious that we are not at the center of the universe, nor were we conceived in the image and likeness of God – which, by the way, is unknown to us.

Separation from nature is a belief that tries to justify a non-participatory and allegedly objective attitude, which makes us imagine that we can do whatever we want with the Earth without suffering consequences. This assumption has been refuted in many ways, especially by climate changes (many of which we ourselves have caused), whose effects directly affect us. The more evident climate changes become, the greater (and more useless) our denialism of them.

In philosophy, the concept of ​​progression is explicit in Hegel and Marx. Hegel’s thought focuses on the historical development of what he called “Spirit”, which is undoubtedly a type of growth. Hegel proposes stages or phases for this development, and tries to adjust them to reality. He intends to understand the world and its history based on deterministic conjectures, to which he attributes meanings. This is what happens with the beliefs or myths of humanism, to which we obey as if they were laws.

What is thought to be unlimited economic growth is an important example. For the economy of our societies to function as it does, it would be necessary that the three beliefs or myths to be true and irrefutable, which is clearly not the case. Even so, our economic environment operates as if they were true prescriptions, indifferent to the fact that they produce harmful side effects such as inequality, social exclusion and wars caused by disputes for resources and territories.

Experience shows that it is useless to try to convince the majority of people to abandon these beliefs, and that’s why our economy is condemned to be as it is. French philosopher Edgar Morin, writing on this subject, observes that unlimited economic growth can no longer be stopped, as this would provoke “crises that can reach extreme severity, as was the case of 1929, which led to Hitlerism and then to war.”

The economic crisis of 2008 [the subprime crisis] is another example. It resulted in the exacerbation of populism and the appearance of Trumpism, with all their deleterious effects. As we are trapped in absurdities of our own creation, let’s get some facts clear from the beginning.

According to Morin, in order to try to solve this problem, “we would have to stop growth to save the regulation of modern societies.” But maybe it is too much to expect that our political leaders, especially the most powerful ones, understand this so simple reasoning. This understanding requires the lucidity and intelligence they lack so much, as a result of too many years of disinvestment in education and culture.

In fact, what interests them most is taking and maintaining power, which implies worrying about smaller and immediate issues, such as those linked to economic thought in general. Furthermore, according to Frank Herbert, “all governments suffer a recurring problem: power attracts pathological personalities.” In turn, Bernard Shaw said that reasonable men adapt to the world, but unreasonable men want the world to adapt to them – exactly as stated in the myth of separation between man and nature.

That’s why there is much talk about degrowth, and there is a significant bibliography on the subject. Some of these texts include rationalizations and seem to propose the usual pendular change: from growth to degrowth – a clear manifestation of binary logic, which is inadequate for dealing with complexity.

According to Morin, “this complexity, in which growth and degrowth become inseparable, is more visible to the extent that experts, economists, technicians, politicians, academics and intellectuals are convinced that they have adequate means of knowledge.”

But they don’t have them. The knowledge of most of these experts, who could be included in the mainstream of technoscience, tends to be unaware of complexity and imagines that it is possible to write it off. This is what Morin says in his book Let us wake up!

Morin is now over a hundred years old, but understands all these phenomena very clearly, something that technologists and technocrats, especially many of those linked to AI, who have shown themselves to be incapable of. That’s why the crisis of perception in which we are immersed has been reinforced by the crisis of thought.

We should add the crisis of intelligence, as our progressive dumbing down is one of the factors that contributes to our self-destruction as a species. We need human intelligence, even though we know it is in decline. We badly need to rescue and improve it, as the unbridled dominance of artificial systems of thought is the greatest obstacle to the self-organization of living complex systems.