Introduction to a forthcoming book
so far untitled
A couple of months ago, I started writing a book.
Whereas my articles so far have been more topical, the book aims to be a philosophical yet practical look at the current moment in human history. I’m going to post fragments of it here.
I’ve outlined the whole thing and drafted several sections.
Below is the first fully finished section — the introduction.
Here we are.
It’s the 21st century.
Every day of human history has been a mixed bag of love, fear, innovation, violence, community, greed, and learning.
For hundreds of thousands of years, we expanded geographically until we reached every corner of the globe.
Civilizations have risen, fallen, eroded away, and became lost to time. They’ve done so in the past and they’re doing so now.
In the latest decamillenium (10,000 years), we’ve expanded in more ways than geographically.
We’ve consolidated and layered our knowledge. We’ve built cities, empires, systems of trade, and technologies. With time they grow more complex and sophisticated.
The last 200 years were the bloodiest yet in human history.
They were also, in many ways, the greatest-ever stretch of human progress. We learned to build, travel, cure diseases, and communicate in ways that separate this era from all before it.
From 1804 to 2022, the global population unfolded from one billion to eight billion.
Since the 1940s, we’ve developed enough atomic firepower to scorch the earth dozens of times. We learned we might bake the planet with greenhouse gases. We proliferated synthetic substances like plastic, pesticides, and processed foods. Capitalism has BOOMED. We built the first computers.
We built the internet. We got hooked on social media. We got podcasts and video streams. In 2022, as the world hit eight billion people, the AI revolution began.
Quantum computing is on the horizon.
I’m writing this in 2025.
The 21st century might be less bloody than the 20th. It could be less grandiose.
But it looks to be far more complex. All the changes that started in the 20th century—social, economic, environmental, and technological—are coming to a head.
That mixed bag of the human experience—the violence, innovation, love, fear, community, greed, constant learning, and whatever else is in there—is at a turning point. (I’m hardly the only one saying this.)
If we lean into the violence, fear, and greed, we could destroy our world. That’s one possibility.
If we lean into the love, connectedness, and wisdom required to save ourselves from ourselves, we could build a world based on beautiful values. Maybe not a perfect world, but something more in that direction.
That’s another possibility.
You might be reading this in 2030, 2035, 2050, or 2100 (if I may dream a little), looking at it as a snapshot perspective on the world in the 2020s.
If you are, I hope you’re smiling.