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Interview
7 March 2021 2.00 h

Eudald Carbonell

Archaeologist

“Homo Sapiens must tear down hierarchies and leaders”

In his new book, ‘Matèria vivent, vida pensant’ (Living Matter, Thinking Life), the archaeologist explores the future of humans, arguing that as a species we have to do away with hierarchy and leadership

Matèria vivent, vida pensant
Authors: Eudald Carbonell & Jordi Agustí Publisher: Cossetània Pages: 224 Price: 18.50 euros
“We need to redefine the framework of humanisation to classify ourselves as thinking and conscious animals socialised by technology”
“Irresponsible evolution and unconscious progress are our main shortcomings and COULD lead us to collapse as a species”
In the book, you say “we face chal­lenges that have never been posed with such a wide­spread species on the planet.” What are these chal­lenges?
The most im­por­tant is the so­cial­i­sa­tion of the sci­en­tific-tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion. Using tech­nol­ogy to in­tro­duce sci­ence into the so­cial re­la­tions of pro­duc­tion has com­pletely changed the way hu­mans adapt. Never be­fore has an an­i­mal species on the planet had such a large op­er­a­tional ca­pac­ity. Sec­ond, hu­mans are over­whelm­ingly in­ter­ven­ing in cli­mate change. Third, we have grown ex­po­nen­tially in num­ber. Fourth, we grouped our­selves in large urban con­cen­tra­tions in the Ne­olithic rev­o­lu­tion 8,000 years ago, and then again in the in­dus­trial rev­o­lu­tion over 200 years ago. And now in the sci­en­tific-tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion of the late 20th and early 21st cen­tury. We need to metabolise these changes or we’ll col­lapse.
You say we have a high prob­a­bil­ity of species col­lapse be­cause things have not gone well. What went wrong and how can we re­verse it?
Ho­min­i­sa­tion and hu­man­i­sa­tion have been an in­te­grated process. This means that bi­o­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion and so­cial, tech­ni­cal and cul­tural evo­lu­tion have gone hand in hand. Now, our abil­ity to adapt is tied to our op­er­a­tional con­scious­ness and at the same time to our crit­i­cal species con­scious­ness. The lat­ter is not so­cialised, it is still an emerg­ing con­scious­ness. It has taken us too long to re­alise the im­por­tance of this human ac­qui­si­tion, and our an­i­mal char­ac­ter has dom­i­nated our abil­ity to re­late. Ir­re­spon­si­ble evo­lu­tion and un­con­scious progress are our most im­por­tant short­com­ings and could lead us to col­lapse as a species. Real co­op­er­a­tive re­la­tions and con­scious tech­no­log­i­cal so­cial­i­sa­tion are needed.
What can a cri­sis like this coro­n­avirus pan­demic teach us?
Loss of di­ver­sity and mo­bil­ity may be at the root of this type of pan­demic. So the first thing we need to learn is to main­tain and in­crease this di­ver­sity. Ho­mogenis­ing the planet is a species mis­take. In this sense, glob­al­i­sa­tion is a great human error. We need to change the process of human adap­ta­tion. We must stop the de­struc­tion of di­ver­sity in the con­text of a col­lab­o­ra­tive but not ho­mo­ge­neous species. Covid may have taught us to im­prove our level of self-crit­i­cism, and if so, we’ll have made a lot of progress.
Does it mean that we have not been able to react quickly and ef­fec­tively to the pan­demic?
The lack of an­tic­i­pa­tion, the lack of plan­ning in a species that has great tech­no­log­i­cal and so­cial ca­pa­bil­i­ties is dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand. We’re able to gen­er­ate a plan­e­tary net­work, but we don’t un­der­stand what species in­ter­de­pen­dence means. It’s a con­tra­dic­tion that in­di­cates to us that the di­rec­tion of our species is hi­jacked by in­ter­ests of ex­trac­tive and non-in­clu­sive classes. We’re in the hands of in­com­pe­tence and com­pet­i­tive­ness, not species com­pe­ti­tion. A com­pe­tent and non-com­pet­i­tive species would have col­lab­o­rated from the out­set in plan­ning and es­tab­lish­ing sur­vival pro­to­cols, but this hasn’t hap­pened.
Does the fact that vac­cines have been avail­able in less than a year in­di­cate that we have evolved in the world of knowl­edge?
The so­cial­i­sa­tion of sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy are Homo Sapi­ens’ great adap­tive keys. Knowl­edge is the basis of cul­tural se­lec­tion that must even­tu­ally re­place nat­ural se­lec­tion. Human adap­ta­tion must take place in such a way that human goals are bal­anced with the func­tion­ing of our en­vi­ron­ment, but from a goal-dri­ven per­spec­tive and not by chance. This is the role of knowl­edge, and it must be the role of thought.
In the book, you in­sist we must get away from hi­er­ar­chies and lead­er­ship.
The de­struc­tion of hi­er­ar­chy is prob­a­bly the most im­por­tant ac­tion that Homo Sapi­ens can take to be or­gan­ised from a ra­tio­nal and con­scious per­spec­tive. Or­gan­i­sa­tion and co­or­di­na­tion are com­ple­men­tary, while the pyra­mid struc­ture is un­nec­es­sary co­er­cion. It can range from despo­tism to pa­ter­nal­ism, two human so­cial dis­eases that make us worse as a species. Lead­er­ship is fail­ure and shows the human in­abil­ity to achieve in­ter­de­pen­dence. Co-re­spon­si­bil­ity of the species is the an­swer against im­po­si­tion.
You also say that we need greater crit­i­cal con­scious­ness as a species.
Con­scious­ness is a human fact born out of the so­cial evo­lu­tion of in­tel­li­gence. Crit­i­cal abil­ity is an in­cor­po­ra­tion that we hu­mans have made, by in­tro­duc­ing doubt into all de­ci­sion-mak­ing that harms us as a group. Only an ed­u­ca­tion based on em­pir­i­cal knowl­edge and hu­man­is­tic thought, within the frame­work of tech­no­log­i­cal hu­man­ism, can lead us to an in­di­vid­ual prac­tice of a kind that is at the same time a col­lec­tive in­tel­lec­tual prac­tice. A crit­i­cal and in­ter­gen­er­a­tional so­cial ed­u­ca­tion and prac­tice would break down the mech­a­nisms of ed­u­ca­tional sep­a­ra­tion by age. Con­scious­ness must be in­cor­po­rated as soon as hu­mans have the ca­pac­ity to think for them­selves.
You say “we run the risk of los­ing our cul­tural di­ver­sity”? Why?
Not only do we run the risk of los­ing our cul­tural di­ver­sity, but what’s di­verse is al­ready in the process of dis­ap­pear­ing. We must take ap­pro­pri­ate mea­sures against this loss of di­ver­sity of cul­tures and lan­guages, which have been the keys to our evo­lu­tion­ary suc­cess as a unique hy­brid species for 40,000 years. If we lose cul­tural di­ver­sity, we lose the mem­ory of the human sys­tem that has been built through­out our evo­lu­tion.
“Our evo­lu­tion has been ran­dom and that has made us who we are and not what we want to be,” you say. Should tech­nol­ogy, rather than chance, change our course?
Ob­vi­ously, as a so­cial and tech­no­log­i­cal species, we must use our strengths to give us a spe­cific di­rec­tion. Most likely this hu­man­i­sa­tion is not pos­si­ble with­out tech­nol­ogy be­com­ing so­cialised, mean­ing it’s avail­able to every­one, and not only in terms of func­tional use, but also the knowl­edge re­quired, both the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal. Only this way can the con­trol of the elites and their power be avoided. A crit­i­cal tech­no­log­i­cal hu­man­ism as­sures us of a col­lec­tiv­ity in which in­di­vid­u­als can con­tribute what they know.
Is cli­mate change one of the as­pects that will most con­di­tion our fu­ture?
The planet is a struc­ture and a sys­tem that works by the laws of ther­mo­dy­nam­ics. Liv­ing things live in the bios­phere, but we need the hy­dros­phere, geosphere and at­mos­phere to sur­vive and re­pro­duce. Cli­mate change has oc­curred through­out the planet’s his­tory. When hu­mans did not yet exist, cli­mate change was al­ready fre­quent. The dif­fer­ence is that right now ir­re­spon­si­ble human con­sump­tion as well as the form and use of en­ergy are con­tribut­ing to the green­house ef­fect in a world of over seven bil­lion spec­i­mens and this is en­dan­ger­ing our fu­ture.
You spend a chap­ter talk­ing about ex­tinc­tion. Are we re­ally in a great mass ex­tinc­tion?
It’s called the Sixth Ex­tinc­tion. The last one, 60 mil­lion years ago, was in the Cre­ta­ceous pe­riod, when there was the ex­tinc­tion of a large num­ber of species, the best known being the di­nosaurs, which al­lowed the de­vel­op­ment of mam­mals, in­clud­ing our an­ces­tors. Ex­tinc­tion is a loss of di­ver­sity to which we hu­mans are con­tribut­ing. This is a dan­ger not only to en­dan­gered species. We should not con­sciously or un­con­sciously con­tribute to ex­tinc­tion, be­cause the re­sult­ing changes are against our in­ter­ests.
Why do you say that we Homo Sapi­ens of the 21st cen­tury strug­gle be­tween the re­al­ity of who we are and what we are un­aware we want to be?
We’re a liv­ing con­tra­dic­tion. We’ve not yet built the foun­da­tions that should un­der­pin what should make us human; not by our na­ture, but by our con­vic­tions. We need to re­de­fine the frame­work of hu­man­i­sa­tion to clas­sify our­selves as think­ing and con­scious an­i­mals so­cialised by tech­nol­ogy. This means that only in the frame­work of tech­no­log­i­cal hu­man­ism do we have the pos­si­bil­ity of fin­ish­ing the con­struc­tion of the human ed­i­fice.
You also think that the ed­u­ca­tion model must be changed.
Yes. The cur­rent sys­tem­a­tised ed­u­ca­tional model, while there are in­ter­est­ing ini­tia­tives, should be trans­formed. I’ve strongly in­sisted on the sub­sti­tu­tion of val­ues for crit­i­cal aware­ness. For an in­ter­gen­er­a­tional way of pass­ing on knowl­edge, for learn­ing based on the abil­ity to learn di­alec­ti­cally and linked to the logic of our so­ci­ety. An ed­u­ca­tion in tech­no­log­i­cal hu­man­ism that al­lows us to syn­chro­nise with our en­vi­ron­ment. An ed­u­ca­tion based on knowl­edge and species thought, to sub­stan­ti­ate col­lec­tive in­di­vid­u­al­ity and not to col­lec­tivise in­di­vid­u­al­ity or pro­mote in­di­vid­u­al­ism and com­pet­i­tive­ness but com­pe­tence and com­ple­men­tar­ity.
In the book you point out that “we have not yet found the path that will allow us to be truly human.” Are we close to find­ing it?
We must un­der­stand that the prac­ti­cal fact of hu­man­is­ing our­selves in­ex­orably leads us to de­hu­man­i­sa­tion. This means that when we re­place chance with logic we’ll take a di­rec­tion in our an­thropic growth, I mean a teleo­nomic goal. This goal-ori­ented di­rec­tion will allow us to trans­fer our an­i­mal­ity with the help of tech­nol­ogy and be­come an ar­ti­fi­cial pro­ject, dif­fer­en­ti­ated from the nat­ural in­er­tias that have built us. Prob­a­bly in this process we’ll gen­er­ate ar­ti­fi­cial human di­ver­sity and so­cialise tran­shu­man­ism, then we’ll re­alise that by be­com­ing human we have ceased to be human.

in­ter­view

in­ter­view Eu­dald Car­bonell

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