The Fifth Revolution

I want to tell you a story about the future of human progress. By way of a little examination of its past. Of a series of revolutions — hidden ones — spanning centuries. Which answer the question: “Where are we going, in these troubled and dark times? Where should we be going?”

Now, of course, my story will be crude, incomplete, and inelegant, too — but this is not a book, just a few words scribbled messily together.

The first revolution was about the creation of personhood. Think of Magna Carta — it limited the power of a king, granting nobles rights in exchange for legitimacy. Before this, the world was a place of arbitrary tyranny — and suddenly, rights existed. And because rights did, so too, could human beings who bore them. That was the creation of personhood.

Now, you are right to say that this was not a “revolution” in the sense that it spread through the globe at one time, from one place. Americans did not meet the test of the first revolution for a very long time — a nation founded on slavery did not fully create personhood, obviously. So what I mean by “revolutions” are changes in paradigms, or ways of thinking about, unifying, and organizing human life — which happen to different societies at different times, or, as we will see, not at all.

The second revolution was the birth of democracy. Once “people”, or human beings with rights existed, then the next obvious step was for them to talk about, negotiate, and dicker over whether those rights were being fulfilled, enjoyed, and exercised. Hence, the birth of modern “parliaments”, places where we parlay. In much Europe, democracy was born, in strange, little, difficult step, throughout the second millennium. In America, democracy was born in a struggle for independence. So through the second revolution, “people”, these new creations, came to be self-directed and self-governing things. They were being emancipated, in other words. But history was not nearly done yet.

The third revolution was the abolition of feudalism. During the French revolution, for example, democracy was born, and feudalism abolished — two revolutions at once. In much of Europe, feudalism was never abolished in absolute terms — only delegitimized, which served the same purpose. Now, society was open to a new ordering force — no longer rich noble and poor peasant, both below lord, master, and king. But what was that new ordering force to be?

The fourth revolution was what we think of today as “the industrial revolution.” Ironically, it was not really about corporations and machines at all — but something hidden below them: public goods. Without universities, labs, hospitals, libraries, etcetera, the “industrial revolution” would never have come to be at all. Let me give you a tiny example. All the machines of the industrial revolution could not have come to be without the physics labs of the universities the English and Dutch built, nor the libraries, nor the roads, schools, hospitals, and so on. So the fourth revolution was about society passing a true milestone: “people”, human beings with rights, joined together in democracies, learning to invest in themselves.

Think for a moment what a genuinely grand accomplishment that was. In all previous eras of human history, “investment” was not a thing at all, really. Kings built palaces, nobles built castles, and the kings and nobles of warring tribes fought one another for resources. These were zero-sum economies: I take from you, you take from me. But no one is better off that way over the long run, are they?

So during the fourth revolution, humanity learned its greatest and most stunning lesson yet. By investing in itself, in knowledge, in wisdom, in science, art, literature, reason, truth, the hard zero-sum boundary of all previous eras of human history could be broken. And so human life exploded upwards in quality like never before — an exponential line, almost straight skywards.

That revolution is the one we’ve been living for the last few centuries. But we are on the cusp of a still greater one. Let me describe it first, and then I’ll discuss it.

It is the fifth revolution. What I mean by the fifth revolution is that people can and should enjoy good lives, simply as a birthright, — without attaching them to “jobs”, “money”, “income”, status, power, or any of the other institutions and mechanisms of the past. Why? Because that has been the thrust and purpose of human history all along — it is what all the four previous revolutions were really about: human beings realizing themselves. First, they became “people”. Then, they joined together in democracies. Then, those democracies learned to invest in themselves. The goal of every revolution has always been to elevate and expand human life.

There are many ways that the fifth revolution is now finally becoming possible. There are instruments like basic income and basic assets, the idea giving people nest eggs at birth. Those are ways to ensure that people have finance. But finance is just one basic good, elemental to a good life. What are the others? Shelter, healthcare, education, media. But those are material things. Just as important are immaterial things — the ones that come from freeing people from depending on “jobs”, “income”, “work”, “money”, and so on. What are those immaterial things?

Real self-directedness. Genuine self-governance. True belonging, meaning, and purpose. Time. Creativity. Energy. Ethics. Let me give you an example. If you could do anything you wanted, and money were no issue, then and only then could we really say that you were really self-directed and self-governing. But that is also why you would find the most meaning and purpose in it, too. And in the end, we will learn, that only a society of such self-directed and self-governing people can ever really fully trust each other, genuinely enjoy being with one another, really feel a sense of belonging in one another — without the suspicion that the next person is competing for your “job”, “income”, “work”, or “money”.

(Now. I do not mean that money and work will go away. Quite the opposite. I mean that they will change. Money will be, as the Swiss are already experimenting with, a true public good — a thing that any citizen can hold in a central bank, not something that bankers issue to people, depending on their profit motive. When money can be centrally banked, there is no reason not to give everyone enough to live well on, at least in rich societies, which have already passed the point of a middle class living for everyone, with a saner distribution of wealth. The same is true for work. It’s not that people who don’t depend on “jobs” won’t “work”. It’s that they’ll be freer to do work that really matters. Solve great problems, write great books, tackle vexing issues. Or maybe just think about it all for a while. That’s work, too — only of a post-capitalist kind.)

I want you to see what I do for a moment — history in its broadest terms. What has this strange, improbably journey called human history really been, if we boil it down? It is really just the story of human beings, banding together in societies, learning, at last, to invest more and more of their time, energy, creativity, passion, insight, truth, and wisdom in themselves — instead of building palaces for kings, cathedrals for gods, or fighting wars to please emperors. That is all that the forward motion of human history has been, which we call “progress” today — and that is what it will continue to be, too.

(You are right, at this point to object, and say — “but what about slavery! Colonialism!” and so on. I am leaving out half of a story — but the other half has been well told elsewhere, and it is not the story of progress, but the story of what stopped it. It’s not that it isn’t important — it is that I don’t want you or I to fall prey to the mistake of leftism today: imagining that studying what stopped progress can somehow yield progress, instead of studying what caused progress.)

First, human beings were nothing at all — a tiny number of kings, a small number of nobles, and vast numbers of peasants. Then “people” were created. It took “people” to create “democracies”. It took “democracies” to create “prosperity” — investment, which we see as technology, that shattered the zero-sum boundary of war and strife. What will “prosperity” create?

Prosperity will create eudaimonia. And that is the fifth revolution. Lives will lived. Not only for those with status, money, power, pedigree, title — that is fourth revolution thinking — but simply for everyone who is a person, because they are a person. No, it won’t be easy, fast, or simple. It will be resisted tooth and nail by the forces of regress, ignorance, and folly. Still, societies which undergo the fifth revolution will be like, those that embraced all the revolutions before them, the ones that succeed, flourish, and grow. Those that don’t will fail, falter, and collapse — like America. History is a series of revolutions in progress. We are on the cusp of another. But not every society will turn its great wheel.

Umair
June 2018