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Somewhere Under the Rainbow
By Todd Eklof
[Posted 10-1-2025]
I recently heard a rendition of Over the Rainbow, originally written for the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, that got me thinking about its message and wondering if it’s a good message. Life isn’t about abandoning our friends and families, or our neighbors, or our responsibilities when the going gets tough. It’s about sticking around and helping to make things better for everyone, not some place way up high but down here on Earth. Even Dorothy Gale eventually realizes things aren’t a green in the Emerald City as she had hoped, and not nearly as bad back home as she once thought, either. “There’s no place like home,” she repeats, clicking her heels together before finding herself back in her rural Kansas home, surrounded by the friends and family and problems she’d once tried to run away from. In her transition from adolescence to adulthood, Dorothy realizes Heaven isn’t a place way up high, but one we must work together to fashion here down here, under the rainbow, beneath the clouds and chimney tops, where our troubles don’t usually melt away like lemon drops, yet where bluebirds, sometimes happy little bluebirds, still find room to fly and some dreams really do come true, with a little hard work?
My own dream for our world is based on a confluence of ideas that I’ve learned from those who have most inspired and shaped my thinking during my life. First among them is the brilliant 20th century social psychologist, Erich Fromm, who worked not only to show us what the underlying problems down here under the rainbow really are, but to also point us toward their solutions. In short, Fromm believed our greatest personal struggles and societal challenges are rooted in our ongoing anxiety caused by our conflicting need for both freedom and belonging. To be completely free as individuals almost guarantees we will be rejected by others. Yet to be completely acceptable means giving up some degree of our freedom and authenticity in order to “fit in.” The solution to this psychological conundrum is our human capacity to love, which requires us as individuals and as a society to tolerate our differences out of respect and care for one another.
This attitude, which Fromm calls the “biophilous orientation,” is grounded in our love of life. But too often its opposite, the “necrophilous orientation,” grounded in a desire for death and destruction, gets the upper hand, which is the reason many people gravitate toward narcissistic and authoritarian figures and leaders. In doing so they feel a sense of both freedom and belonging by mistaking the desires and thoughts of the authority, be it a person or group, as their own. They feel connected to others, yet the feeling is false because their ideas and desires are not really their own, but those of the authority they confuse themselves with. They have given up their own freedom, even if they don’t consciously realize it.
Fromm, says, “We need to create the conditions that would make the growth of [humanity], this unfinished and uncompleted being—unique in nature—the supreme goal of all social arrangements. Genuine freedom and independence and the end of all forms of exploitive control are the conditions for mobilizing the love of life, which is the only force that can defeat the love for the dead.”[i] To accomplish these conditions, Fromm says the sole criterion of ethical value “must be human welfare”[ii] and that “the unfolding and growth of every person [should be] the aim of all social and political activities.”[iii]
This is the starting point for my vision for us down here under the rainbow, that this humanistic ethic becomes humanity’s ethic. It is an ethic rooted in love, not as a sentiment but as a tangible expression of concern for others by respecting and caring for all of them, the whole of humanity, not just those living in our particular country. It is not enough to make “America great again,” nor to put “Canada first,” nor any other country for that matter, especially not at the expense of our fellow human beings living elsewhere in the world. As Will Weisman of Singularity University says, “everyone must do well if everyone is ultimately going to do great, and that’s how we have to look at the world today. We all need to do well for all of us, as a whole, to be doing great.”[iv]
Weisman is a proponent of the Abundance Mindset, the belief, as Singularity University’s cofounder, Peter Diamandis says, that “Within the next two decades we have the potential to give every man, woman, and child on this planet access to all the education, healthcare, energy, food, water they want.” Yes, this potential will be the result of rapidly emerging technologies, which causes some people to recoil, believing our machines and inventions are what got us into many of the worst problems we’re facing today. Yet I have often noticed that those making this point drive cars, have smartphones and computers, electricity, clean water, toilets, televisions, and all the other modern conveniences and technologies in their homes, which have been constructed from lumber and other materials taken from the Earth. Nearly everyone today who lives without these conveniences and devices does so because they are poor, not because they want to.
“I’m here because, like so many of you, I believe in my core that an abundant world is possible in the not-too-distant future,” Weisman said during the 2019 SU Summit. “And I want to do everything that I can to help bring that to fruition. To me that looks like a world where we feed everyone, where we educate everyone, where we shelter everyone, a world where people feel safe and they feel they have a fair shot at living a good life.”[v] I too believe in this vision of our future, and I believe it will be here sooner than most can imagine.
I also believe the relatively short age of the Nation State is coming to a fast end. To some extent, given governmental dysfunction around the world, it already has. This “shock to the system” may explain the rise of authoritarianism today, a final effort to cling to our failing nationalized identities and systems. Humans, like all creatures, are creatures of habit and have evolved to be instinctually fearful of change. Yet, in this case, the change has already occurred, even if we haven’t yet been able to acknowledge it. We have one global economy that includes global trade, ports, products, transportation, treaties, corporations, industries, investors, global debt, and a global supply chain. We have global challenges, like pandemics, war, pollution, and climate change. We have global communications, including a world wide web, entertainment, news, sports, and celebrities. We have global science, medicine, satellites, and an international space station. As those in the UK who voted for Brexit discovered, and as those in the US who voted for Donald Trump are now learning, it is not possible to turn back the clock and close ourselves off from the rest of the world.
Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster and consulting professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, has long foreseen this inevitably. During a 2007 lecture, for example, Saffo predicted that, “There's less than a 50 percent chance that the United States will exist by the middle of this century.” He repeated this claim while presenting at the Ex0 World Digital Summit in 2020. “It’s anyone’s guess whether I’m right or not,” he admitted, “but what is quite clear is that the forces afoot today are already changing the geopolitical landscape and creating an opening for a new challenger as the dominant political force in this century, and that is the City State. City States are stepping into the vacuum left by waning Nation State power.”
Saffo’s prediction is supported by historian Yuvall Harari’s claim, “As the twenty-first century unfolds, nationalism is fast losing ground.”[vi] In 1900, little more than a century ago, only five percent of the global population lived in cities. Fifty years later it was thirty percent, and by 2007, only sixteen years ago, half the world’s people lived in cities.[vii] The United Nations predicts that by 2050, sixty-eight percent of the world’s population will live in cities.[viii] In the US, eighty-three percent of already do, a number that’s expected to be close to ninety percent in another twenty-five years.[ix]
Even more recently, we’ve seen an exponential rise of megacities—cities with over ten-million inhabitants. The US is home to two; Los Angeles, with 12.5 million inhabitants, and New York City with 18.9 million inhabitants. With 21.6 million, Mexico City is the largest megacity in North America, and one of the largest in the world, but still small compared to Tokyo. With more than 37.5 million inhabitants, Japan has the largest megacity on the planet.[x] Keep in mind that in 1950, Tokyo and New York were the only megacities in existence. The third, Mexico City, wasn’t added until 1975.[xi] Yet today there are 32 megacities, with nine more just a few hundred thousand citizens away from becoming so.[xii] It is an astonishing realization that as divided as many of us feel the world is, the vast majority of us are moving closer together; having relentlessly moved from hundreds of thousands of rural communities into a few thousand small cities, then into less than a thousand major cities, and finally into only the few dozen megacities the exist today.
A City State is a sovereign, independent political entity that consists of a central city and its surrounding communities. Due to the dysfunctional Nation States they’re in; many megacities may begin operating as City States by taking control of some matters for themselves. Recently, for example, the West Coast Health Alliance, was formed between California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington, and the Northeast Public Health Alliance, was formed between Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, to ensure their residents maintain access to vaccines and credible public health information. These coalitions emerged in response to the Trump administration’s unsubstantiated advice about the dangers of certain vaccines and medications, along with policies making them more difficult to obtain.
If Saffo’s prediction is accurate, and there are many indications it is, what we are experiencing now may be the beginnings of the end of the Nation State era, which began during the second half of the 18th century. As disruptive as this is, it could end very positively so long as we develop the framework for understanding ourselves as part of a global society, part of one human family, instead of continuing to falsely identify ourselves with the regions of the world where we happen to be born, as if Americans, Mexicans, Chinese, Russians, Palestinians, Haitians, and so forth, are all different species. In truth, human beings are more closely related than any other species on Earth. We are all more genetically alike than two chimpanzees living in the same troop, or two species of warblers that a indistinguishable save for a slight variation in the songs they sing. This is part of my dream for our future, that we come to see ourselves for what we truly are, one human family that is intricately dependent upon our collective welfare and love for one another.
Another inspiration in my life has been my college philosophy professor, Dr. Wallace Roark, who taught me a lot about thinking, including logic, which has remained integral to my life for more than forty years. Dr. Roark often cited the Greek particles, μεν δε, which translate “while this (on the one hand) but that (on the other hand).” In his attempt to teach us to become better thinkers, he taught his students to always consider ideas that are contrary and contradictory to other ideas, especially to our own ideas. After he retired, Dr. Roark wrote a book on logic entitled, Think Like an Octopus … on the one hand, but on the other hand, and the other hand, and the other hands, and so on.
Dr. Roark’s dream for his students, his dream for me, has become my dream for the whole of humanity, that we become better thinkers. I am often saddened that, with all our scientific advances and increased understanding of the world and the human condition, humanity, by and large, still clings to ancient superstitions, readily embraces baseless conspiracy theories, engages in anti-science and obvious logical fallacies without shame or awareness, and is more often guided by emotions than sound reason. This is even so of many of the most progressive people I know who are supposed to embrace reason as one of their most fundamental principles. Many of them, based upon a false dichotomy between feelings and reason, argue that those who use reason and logic must be out of touch with their feelings.
I consider this nonsense. Unless one is a complete sociopath, we are all fundamentally emotional thinkers. Feeling comes natural to us. Logic doesn’t. This is because the emotional layers of the brain are more ancient, established, autonomic, and, therefore, more powerful. Reasoning, on the other hand, happens in the neocortex, the new part of the brain, that is not autonomic nor very powerful. It’s also the part of the brain that uses the most energy, so we tend to rely on less energy intensive instincts, feelings, and heuristics (i.e., beliefs, habits, rules of thumb) than taking the time to rationally think things through. As psychologist Daniel Kahneman suggests, we tend to think fast, not slow.
Being logical doesn’t mean we don’t have feelings. Nor, if you stop to think about it (think slowly about it), you’ll probably agree that the problem with the world today isn’t that humanity is too rational. Our problem is not that we think too well and feel too little. So, my dream for the near future is that people across the board become better thinkers, especially by avoiding obvious fallacies and by becoming less fearful about entertaining new ideas, including those we most disagree with.
There’s a lot of fear-based thinking today, for instance, about Artificial Intelligence, some of it justified, some not. But I have much hope that AI can help make the future I dream of a reality. As with all tools, AI can and will be used for good or ill and will have unintended consequences. In Harvard Business Review’s The Year in Tech 2025, there’s general agreement that AI will take over some of the mundane jobs humans now perform, but that this will mostly free human workers to concentrate on more important tasks, not replace them. The Review says, “In 2025, companies must evolve and change to become more ‘HumanAIzed’ in their own way, embracing and adapting to the fusion of humans and machines. Good leaders will inspire their people to understand and embrace this new form of collaboration.”[xiii]
Focusing on collaborating with AI, not only in the workplace, but in governance, is also the point of the recent book, Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit, written by the great polymath and statesman, Henry Kissinger (his final gift to us), along with his coauthors, Erich Schmidt and Craig Mundie. “Even the wisest leaders,” they remind us, “propelled by instinct and tempered by caution, sometimes govern on the basis of fleeting passions.”[xiv] Although AI should not make our final decisions for us, it can be used to help us see past our biases and faulty reasoning to make better decisions. “AI’s value in governance, so far dormant,” they write, “lies in its potentially perfect knowledge.”[xv] This is the same advantage for all of us. By collaborating with AI, we can become better thinkers by making more rational decisions, which is especially important in our age of information overload and rampant conspiracy theories. So, I hope this is the beginning of a new age, not only of machine intelligence, but of human intelligence and reason.
Finally, my dream for us down here under the rainbow, is that all the advances I have imagined so far—the widespread adoption of the humanistic ethic, making human welfare and individual unfolding the purpose behind all we do; creating regional and global City State coalitions that better meet our needs and address our greatest challenges as one unified global community; and becoming better thinkers who are less swayed by our own emotional biases and faulty reasoning, let alone the primitive beliefs and instincts and fears that prevent us from achieving our full human potential, will ultimately lead to much greater peace and civility in our communities and throughout the world.
The humanistic ethic will guide us toward doing what is best for humanity and the individual, which should result in a far more civil society in which we treat those we disagree with respectfully, setting aside our differences to work together toward our common goals and to address our common challenges. Likewise, by establishing global collaboration between the world’s megacities, we will eventually shun our outdated nationalist identities and recognize ourselves for what we really are, one human species. Instead of relying on varying degrees of human rights from country to country, these coalitions can insist on all partners adhering to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that’s already been agreed upon by numerous countries.
This more peaceful and civil society can be further fostered by using AI to help us think like an octopus. Instead of social media platforms using algorithms that only present us with more extreme examples of the same ideas we’ve already considered, social media companies, having made human welfare and individual growth their main priority, can create AI driven algorithms that present us with opposing views. Decades ago, when public schools were still teaching Civics, the US had a rule in place called the Fairness Doctrine that required broadcast media to present opposing sides of political viewpoints. As with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, our knowledge of Civics and policies like the Fairness Doctrine still exist. We just have to start taking advantage of them or something like them again.
Today we stand not only under the rainbow but on the precipice of transformation. Rather than yearning for escape, let us commit ourselves to making a better reality. Imagine what can happen when we fully embrace our humanistic ethic of love and respect, when we forge innovative coalitions that transcend borders, and when we harness technology and reason as allies in pursuit of our highest aspirations. Together, guided by our profound interconnectedness and a vision of abundant possibilities, we can indeed build a world worthy of our most heartfelt dreams, a world in which compassion triumphs over fear, wisdom prevails over ignorance, and humanity truly blossoms into the best version of itself. Let us be the visionaries and builders of this brighter, kinder, more inclusive world. Because, in the end, there truly is no place like home.
[i] Fromm, Erich, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, A Fawcett Crest Book, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1973, p. 32
[ii] Fromm, Erich, Man for Himself, An Owl Book, Henry Holt & Co., New York, NY, 1947, p. 13.
[iii] Ibid., p. 229.
[iv] Weisman, Will, (former Executive Director) Singularity University’s Annual Summit, 2019
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Harari, Yuval Noah, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, NY, 2015, (Kindle version), loc. 3185
[vii] Smil, Vaclav, Numbers Don’t Lie, Penguin Books, New York, NY, 2020, p. 44.
[viii] https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html
[ix][ix] https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/built-environment/us-cities-factsheet
[x] Vaclav, ibid., p. 45f.
[xi] Ibid., p. 48.
[xii] https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-worlds-next-megacities-by-2030/
[xiii] The Year in Tech 2025, Harvard Business Review, Boston, MA, 2025, pp. xvi-xvii
[xiv] Kissinger, Henry A.; Schmidt, Eric; Mundie, Craig. Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit (p. 89). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.
[xv] Ibid., pp. 107-108.
The Singularity, the Humanistic Ethic, and the Enlightenment Project
By Todd Eklof
[Posted 9-28-2025]
“One of these things is not like the other. One of these things doesn’t belong,” the familiar Sesame Street song goes. “Can you tell which thing is not like the other by the time I finish this song?” Since Big Bird, Elmo, and the Cookie Monster aren’t likely to consider the terms listed in my title, I’ll ask you; which of these things is not like the other—The Singularity, the Humanistic ethic, or the Enlightenment project? But first, here are some brief definitions of each:
The Singularity refers to a time in the near future when human intelligence will merge with machine intelligence. It is a term borrowed from mathematics and physics, but only as a metaphor. In mathematics it describes an undefined point; in physics it’s a point where the laws of physics break down and we have no idea what’s happening beyond it. Although we can roughly predict when the Singularity will occur, and some of the achievements that will happen up to that point, we can’t imagine what life will be like afterward. Like a black hole, we have no insight regarding what lies beyond or within this technological singularity.
The Humanistic Ethic refers to the moral idea that everything we do, all of our laws, institutions, and endeavors ought to be for the benefit of human welfare and individual unfolding (which includes care for our environment and empathy for other creatures). It has been loosely articulated as the ancient Universal Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you; more directly as Immanuel Kant’s Categorial Imperative, that no person should be used as a means to another person’s end, but should be considered an end within themselves; and as Democracy’s core commitment to the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
The Enlightenment project refers to the 18th-century liberal, intellectual, and philosophical movement that emphasizes reason, individualism, and human progress as the primary means to improve society and understand the world. It champions ideals like freedom, reason, tolerance, and human dignity. Today the term is also used in reference to ongoing efforts to apply these Enlightenment principles to modern life, societies, and human advancement.
So, which of these things is not like the other? The Singularity? So it would seem. But I will argue that the Singularity is a direct consequence of the Enlightenment project and has been largely driven by its commitment to the Humanistic ethic. This is so whether the Singularity’s engineers and proponents realize it or not, or whether most Enlightenment liberals have ever heard the term before.
The Enlightenment project and the Humanistic ethic are so intricately entwined that it is difficult to say which came first. Historically, the Humanistic ethic was expressed in some form long before the Enlightenment, but it is hard to conceive that this exquisite principle could have emerged from anything other than enlightened minds.
Yet the fast-approaching technological Singularity is also a consequence of the Enlightenment. And if whatever lies beyond it is going to be good for humanity, then we must keep our exponentially improving technology, especially artificial intelligence, coupled with the Humanistic ethic—the belief that the sole criterion of ethical value, as social psychologist Erich Fromm phrases it, “must be human welfare”[i] and that “the unfolding and growth of every person [should be] the aim of all social and political activities,”[ii] and, I will add, of all our entrepreneurial endeavors.
Additionally, the scientific and technological revolution that we’re enjoying today began in the 19th century, as a direct result of the 17th and 18th centuries Enlightenment and its core principles. But before we get there, it’s important to know that the Enlightenment was an outgrowth of the Renaissance of the 14th through 16th centuries, which was itself inspired by the Early Greek philosophers 2,500 years ago, the first thinkers in history we know of who worked to explain the mechanics of the world in natural rather than supernatural terms.
The first among them, Thales of Miletus, for example, was famous for often saying, “It’s not magic. There’s a reason for all of it.” Using reason and observation, he developed a natural theory explaining earthquakes and was able to accurately forecast the weather and predict solar eclipses. His brilliant student, Anaximander was the first person known to have realized “The Earth is a body of finite dimensions floating in space,”[iii] which must have sounded crazy at the time. (With no concept of gravity, how can something float in empty space without falling?) Anaximander was also the first to claim that “Rainwater is water from the sea and rivers that evaporate because of the Sun’s heat,” and that “Thunder and lightning are caused by colliding and splitting clouds,” and “Earthquakes are caused by fissures in the Earth.”[iv] He also said that “All animals originally came from the sea or from the primal humidity that once covered the Earth. The first animals were, thus, either fish or fishlike creatures. They moved onto land when the Earth became dry, and they adapted to living there,” including human beings, whom, he said, “grew out of fishlike creatures.”[v]
A few years later, Leucippus and his student Democritus developed atomic theory. Physicist Carlo Rovelli says Democritus explained that “the entire universe is made up of a boundless space in which innumerable atoms run ... Atoms have no qualities at all, apart from their shape. They have no weight, no color, no taste.”[vi] In Democritus’s own words, “Sweetness is opinion, bitterness is opinion; heat, cold and color are opinion: in reality only atoms, and vacuum.”[vii]
Thales, Anaximander, Leucippus, Democritus, and other early Greek philosophers understood things about the nature of reality—gravity, evolution, quantum physics—that weren’t rediscovered again until the likes of Newton, Darwin, and Einstein came along more than 25 centuries later. No wonder Aristotle called them phusikoi, “the physicists.” Imagine where the world would be today had the ideas and discoveries of these brilliant thinkers not been shut down and forgotten at the start of the Dark Ages. We would have probably cured cancer and been living on Mars centuries ago.
The Renaissance is so named because of its “renewed” interest in and discovery of these early Greek philosophers, especially their way of seeing the world, including their necessarily positive view of human reason and human agency; their belief, that is, in our own ability to figure things out. These ideas, in turn, flourished during the Enlightenment, which began in the 17th century, resulting in many social reforms, including Democracy and the abolition of slavery in the 19th century. But more to the point here; the Enlightenment, dedicated to reason and science, having a positive view of human nature and human agency, and a commitment to human welfare and progress, resulted in a scientific and technological revolution that remains unparalleled in human history. As philosopher Heinrich Treitschke once said, “everything new that the nineteenth century created is the work of liberalism”[viii] (a.k.a., the Enlightenment project).
Treitschke’s words were cited in 1927 by my famous predecessor (at the UU Church of Spokane), John H. Dietrich, the Father of Religious Humanism, who himself said, “it was this movement of liberalism which marks the nineteenth century as the most remarkable period of human history. In fact, the nineteenth century did more to add to the sum total of human life than all the other centuries of the Christian era put together.”[ix]
Of course, 1927 was nearly 100 years ago. The computer, internet and, today, artificial intelligence have since come along. Surely these are more impressive than anything invented during the 19th century. Yet, as scientist Vaclav Smil says in his 2020 book, Numbers Don’t Lie, “most recent advances have been variations of two older fundamental discoveries: microprocessors and exploiting radio waves,”[x] which occurred during the 1800s. “In fact,” Smil says, “perhaps the most inventive time in human history was the 1880s. That’s when electricity became a household commodity thanks to the invention of thermal- and hydropower generation stations that still provide 80 percent of the world’s electricity.”[xi]
It’s also when the first electromagnetic waves were discovered, leading to the first wireless communications technology, the radio. Electric irons, multistory steel skyscrapers, the steam turbine, coin operated vending machines, the four-stroke combustion engine, elevators, revolving doors, electric street cars, electric motors, cash registers, x-rays, ultraviolet light, microwaves, infrared radiation, chain driven bicycles, and many other inventions that our lives and technology still depend upon today, were all discovered in the 19th century, immediately following the Enlightenment’s Age of Reason.
Political scientist Francis Fukuyama says, the same is true in general, “Historically, liberal societies have been engines of economic growth, creators of new technologies, and producers of vibrant art and culture. This occurred precisely because they were liberal.”[xii] Liberalism is but another term for the values established during Enlightenment. And it only follows that societies devoted to freedom, especially the freedom for individuals to think for themselves, will foster many innovations, including in the areas of science and technology.
All of this adequately makes the case that technological advancement is a direct consequence of the Enlightenment project. But how does it relate to the Humanistic ethic; to the human dignity and wellbeing that is at the heart of the Enlightenment project?
It is undeniable that technology has often had devasting impacts on our environment—polluting our air, fouling our water, killing our oceans, and contributing to global warming, one of the worst existential crises the world has faced. Yet, I would argue that such damage, though caused directly by some industries, is more indirectly caused by the failure of our governments to do their job through adequate, though not overbearing, regulations and laws (which is a difficult balancing act, to be sure).
Scientists have known about the greenhouse gas effect since it was discovered, guess when, in the 1800’s. But it wasn’t until the 1960’s that people became aware enough to be concerned about the impacts humans are having on the environment, thanks largely to the publication of Rachel Carson’s historic book, Silent Spring (1962). Seven years later the National Environmental Policy Act was passed in the US requiring federal agencies to assess the environmental impacts of their proposed projects. A year later, on April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day in the US occurred in the form of a protest involving more than 20 million Americans, still the largest demonstration in the nation’s history. That same year, during his inauguration speech, President Richard Nixon said:
Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this country. It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans, because they more than we will reap the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later. Clean air, clean water, open spaces—these should once again be the birthright of every American. If we act now, they can be.[xiii]
As Ezra Klien and Derek Thompson explain in their recent book, Abundance, Nixon “went on to sign the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act, and he created the Environmental Protection Agency, making him arguably the most important environmentalist president of the twentieth century.”[xiv] These are examples of federal laws and agencies that have worked to protect and repair the environment, including bringing some species, like the Bald Eagle, back from the brink of extinction. Another is the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, an international treaty signed in 1987, including by the US and Canada, that reduced and eventually eliminated the chemicals like chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluoro-carbons that had caused a hole in the Earth’s protective Ozone layer. The hole is now gone because of adequate government action.
The point is, when our government’s main goal is human welfare and progress, guided by the Humanistic ethic, we’re able to collectively address our greatest challenges. But when they’re focused on other priorities, like hoarding and maintaining power, or pursuing the interests of only a few, then we can’t adequately address these challenges. Yet this is a failure of our governments, not of industry, big business, or capitalism, which often get the blame.
I often say corporations are not persons and should not have the same rights as persons. But they are owned by persons, are employed and operated by persons, and serve persons. For me, as a humanist who believes in the fundamental goodness of humanity, I presume most businesses and corporations are owned, operated, and employed by good people with good intentions. Having dipped my toe in the waters of Silicon Valley, the tech capital of the world, through my connection to Singularity University and the Abundance digital community, I’ve become confident that this is so.
During a 2019 conference, Will Weisman of Singularity University said, “I’m here because like so many of you I believe in my core that an abundant world is possible in the not-too-distant future, and I want to do everything that I can to help bring that to fruition. To me that looks like a world where we feed everyone, where we educate everyone, where we shelter everyone, a world where people feel safe and they feel they have a fair shot at living a good life.” As SU’s founder, Peter Diamandis often says, “Rather than a future of dog-eat-dog, I see a world of increasing abundance, a world where we can actually imagine uplifting humanity and using technology to meet the needs of every man, woman, and child.”[xv] That’s the Humanistic ethic talking.
We often want to blame capitalism in general and billionaires in particular for our economic woes, but people are not poor because some people are wealthy, not any more than some people are dumb because some are smart, or some are mean-spirited because some are kindhearted. Most billionaires today are billionaires because they’ve invented transformative technologies that have enriched our lives and that are reasonably affordable to most people. Millions to billions of consumers made them billionaires, not a rigged system. As Diamandis often says, “If you want to make a billion dollars, help a billion people.” The problem with wealth is when our governments fail to apply adequate but not overbearing tax structures and budgets, which, again, is a failure of government, not economics. When most people speak ill of Capitalism they are really referring to “crony capitalism,” a term coined by journalist George M. Taber in 1980 to describe a system characterized by close, mutually advantageous relationships between business leaders and government officials. This kind of capitalism is, again, a failure of government officials as much as anyone else.
But my point here is only to show that businesses are not innately unjust and greedy enterprises, including, if not especially, those that are tech driven. They are human endeavors that allow humans to serve and benefit the whole of humanity through our system of trade. The very term, entrepreneur comes from the French word meaning “adventurer.” That’s what they are, people driven by an overwhelming goal that often compels them to risk almost everything they have in the service of humanity. As the authors of the book Conscious Capitalism say, “with few exceptions, entrepreneurs who start successful businesses don’t do so to maximize profits. Of course, they want to make money, but that is not what drives most of them. They are inspired to do something that they believe needs doing.”[xvi] Their book goes on to say:
Entrepreneurs are the true heroes in a free-enterprise economy, driving progress in business, society, and the world. They solve problems by creatively envisioning different ways the world could and should be. With their imagination, creativity, passion, and energy, they are the greatest creators of widespread change in the world. They are able to see new possibilities and enrich the lives of others by creating things that never existed before.[xvii]
I think I’ve made my case well enough that even Oscar the Grouch would have to agree, the technological Singularity is intricately entwined with the Humanistic ethic and the Enlightenment project. But my real point—the only reason I’m addressing this topic at all—is to remind all of us that the purpose of technology lies in its service to human well-being, progress, and individual growth and development. Technologies that are contrary to this purpose are not worth pursuing and if they already exist, they should be abandoned or eliminated. Technologies that are aligned with human values and needs, yet have some negative consequences, ought to be replaced with improved versions as soon as possible. And, most importantly, technologies for which the positive consequences are obviously transformative, yet may have unforeseen negative consequences, like artificial intelligence, which may give us godlike powers within the next few years, must remain coupled and aligned with the Humanistic ethic so that they exist for no greater purpose than human welfare and advancement (which, again, always includes the welfare of our planet and fellow creatures, for we cannot be healthy humans without a healthy environment, and we cannot be whole humans without empathy and a love for life.)
Fortunately, this is the mandate already being heavily discussed in Silicon Valley these days, where it especially needs to be happening. My hope is to remind my fellow Singularitarians that the values they’re talking about have already been well outlined in the Humanistic ethic, and that their efforts are but the continuation of a human endeavor that began centuries ago, known today as the Enlightenment project. The technological Singularity is rooted in the past, at least as far back as the early Greek philosophers whose forgotten ideas were rediscovered a few centuries ago and have since led to the many cultural, societal, scientific, and technological advances we now enjoy, and that are leading to the technological miracles that are just around the corner. No matter where we end up, may their creativity, curiosity, courage, and, above all, their humanity long remain part of who we are and who we are to become.
[i] Fromm, Erich, Man for Himself, An Owl Book, Henry Holt & Co., New York, NY, 1947, p. 13.
[ii] Ibid., p. 229.
[iii] Rovelli, Carlo. Anaximander: And the Birth of Science (p. 34). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[iv] Ibid., (pp. 35-36).
[v] Ibid. p. 36).
[vi] Rovelli, Carlo. Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity (p. 20). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[vii] Ibid.
[viii] Dietrich, John H., “What Is a Liberal?”, What if the World Went Humanist: Ten Sermons, Fellowship of Religious Humanists, Yellow Springs, OH, 1989, p. 4.
[ix] Ibid.
[x] Smil, Vaclav, Numbers Don’t Lie, Penguin Books, New York, NY, 2021, p. 97.
[xi] Ibid., p. 98.
[xii] Fukuyama, Francis, Liberalism and its Discontents, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, NY, 2022, p. 138.
[xiii] Klein, Ezra; Thompson, Derek. Abundance (p. 52). Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
[xiv] Ibid.
[xv] https://www.diamandis.com/blog/scaling-abundance
[xvi] Sisodia, Rajendra; Rajendra. Conscious Capitalism, With a New Preface by the Authors: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business (p. 20). Harvard Business Review Press. Kindle Edition.
[xvii] Ibid., p. 14.