Dominion

I’ll confess to a waning interest in the mercurial fluctuations of lines representing the price of stakes in publicly-traded businesses. The same for oscillations in the cost of capital for corporations, the yo-yoing of mis-measured macro aggregates, swings in borrowing costs for governments and even the ebb and flow in the figurative and literal fortunes of nations.

In short, a waning interest in figments of the human imagination, particularly to the extent they blind us and bind us, an absurd outcome considering why we created them in the first place: To facilitate cooperation in pursuit, ultimately, of a better lived experience.

We long ago lost track not only of the raison d’être for the various myths which order our existence, but also for the fact that they’re myths in the first place. Religions aren’t only real, they’re something to kill over. Nations something to die for. And money makes the world go ’round, as the trite old saying goes.

So, even if one wanted to focus only on the things “that really matter” — e.g., the alleviation of suffering among sentient beings — the discussion would everywhere, always and quickly come back to the things that don’t. We thrive or suffer, eat or starve, live or die, at the pleasure of gods, nations, corporations and money, none of which have any claim whatever on objective reality.

That’s one tragedy of our species, and it may be the death of us. As Yuval Harari put it, “As time went by, [humans’] imagined reality became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of [our objective reality] depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the United States and Google.”

A testament to the notion that we have this backwards is the concept of human rights and, more to the point, the deference we generally pay it in word, if not always in deed. In an objective sense, there’s no such thing as human rights. Far from being a “self-evident truth,” that bit in the Declaration Of Independence about men being “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” is self-evidently false. Just ask one of the 400 chattel slaves at Monticello. (Or one of the 200 people Thomas Jefferson held in bondage at his other properties.)

But we came around, eventually, to the idea that perpetuating a myth about God-given rights might serve a variety of purposes. So we floated it. Lo and behold, it had a lot of utility as a mechanism for enhancing cooperation and reducing overall human suffering.

Today, people who suffer very often couch their protestations in terms of human rights. Even when we’re deaf to the individual pleas, we recognize the concept as generally valid. But it’s regularly (habitually) subjugated to a long list of other imagined realities, including and especially religion, nations and money. You have rights. Unless they’re an affront to my god, in which case — and with apologies — I may have to cut off your head or blow up your family. You have rights. Unless they’re a threat to the ethnic purity of my nation, in which case — and with apologies — I may have to send you back to the “sh-thole” you came from. Or put you in jail. Or herd you into a gas chamber. You have rights. Unless they’re somehow an impediment to my wealth-building efforts. In which case –. And so on.

Indeed, I’d argue that most of our imagined realities are now working at cross-purposes with their original, organizational intent, at least if we believe the goal of cooperating was to make everyone better off. And that must’ve been the goal. Or at least a goal. Surely. Why do any of us do anything? To better our lot in one way or another.

Harari’s overarching narrative is a tale of dominion. “Myths give Sapiens the unprecedented ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers,” he writes.”That’s why Sapiens rule the world, whereas ants eat our leftovers and chimps are locked up in zoos and research laboratories.”

By now, though, the myths may be impeding our capacity to cooperate. Just about everything to do with money’s disputatious. Corporations still serve their intended purpose, but an ever expanding list of unanswered questions — Whose interests should corporations serve? Who’s responsible when they screw up? How should they be taxed? Regulated? Reined in? Unshackled? — is a growing source of societal discord.

And what of nations? There’s little doubt about their capacity to unite large groups of people in pursuit of common goals, but there’s internal disagreement about what those goals should be. And even in cases where nations reach domestic consensus on a set of national objectives, the pursuit of those objectives very often puts nations at odds with one another resulting, at best, in friction and at worst in wars. Neither outcome’s good for the species, the latter’s catastrophic.

As for religion — well, suffice to say there’s a strong case to be made that the cost to humanity from organized religion outweighs the gains, although it’s impossible to say for sure given the extent to which societies built originally around shared religious beliefs achieved much as a happy coincidence (i.e., as a result of the organization made possible by religion).

If Harari’s right that humanity’s dominion is the direct result of our capacity to cooperate at scale which is in turn attributable to our unique ability to share in common myths and collaborate around organizational fictions, then it’d be tragically ironic if those same myths and fictions are now detracting from our capacity to cooperate. It’d also be entirely inauspicious for the species.

Thankfully, I don’t have kids.