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Interview
5 November 2023 2.00 h

Eudald Carbonell

ARCHAEOLOGIST

“If we want to survive, we have to dehumanise”

Our consciousness can self-destruct, but it can also avoid it by generating a tendency for transformation
You say we’re head­ing for col­lapse?
It’s al­ready hap­pen­ing. In my book El futur de la hu­man­i­tat (The Fu­ture of Hu­man­ity) I set out how to avoid col­lapse in 10 points that re­call the 10 com­mand­ments.
Do we need lead­ers?
Lead­er­ship is bi­o­log­i­cally back­ward. It’s in the past of so­ci­eties that have noth­ing to do with those of the sci­en­tific and tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion. Fifty years today are like 10,000 years in the past. An­i­mals liv­ing in groups use lead­er­ship but we, as ra­tio­nal an­i­mals, have evolved and see that lead­ers can be the worst thing there is.
But what can be done in a so­ci­ety as ma­nip­u­la­ble as ours?
So­ci­eties have al­ways been ma­nip­u­la­ble; the best con­structed fake news in his­tory, at least in the West, was Adam and Eve. Through re­peat­ing it, peo­ple end up with hope through faith. Ra­tio­nal­ity is harder to in­te­grate into so­cial processes as it de­pends on logic, on ask­ing the right ques­tions. As con­scious hu­mans, the first thing we do is mis­in­form, to get a se­lec­tive ad­van­tage. Those with fire do not ex­plain how they make it, which helps them grow in power.
How do we re­verse this?
The cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem can­not solve the prob­lems it has gen­er­ated. It’s ex­hausted be­cause it’s 300 years old and has no chance of grow­ing in ac­cor­dance with so­cial func­tion­ing, and any sys­tem that does not solve the prob­lems it gen­er­ates ends up col­laps­ing.
What is the so­lu­tion?
One of the 10 com­mand­ments I men­tioned ear­lier is col­lec­tive in­di­vid­u­al­ity. It’s a mis­take that we don’t lis­ten to peo­ple, and it’s im­por­tant to lis­ten, es­pe­cially when you have is­sues you’re not sure you can solve. When we don’t lis­ten, peo­ple be­come in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic. “No one lis­tens to me, I’m bet­ter off by my­self,” is in­di­vid­u­al­ism. We need col­lec­tive in­di­vid­u­al­ity, build­ing what is com­mu­nal from the in­di­vid­ual. Fu­ture com­mu­nism, as so­cial in­ter­de­pen­dence and sol­i­dar­ity, should be based on peo­ple feel­ing heard as the pro­tag­o­nists of col­lec­tive his­tory.
To so­cialise thought?
And crit­i­cal think­ing. If every­one acts in a way that al­lows change and trans­for­ma­tion, you can change the world. In other words, the world must be changed based on peo­ple. And right now if the whole world, with the pos­si­bil­i­ties of mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tion and tech­nol­ogy, starts doing the same every­where, trans­for­ma­tion is pos­si­ble.
But could AI be a threat to us?
I’m con­vinced of it, but this will be good. For an ul­tra­hu­man mech­a­nism that we have made to ex­tin­guish us, so that our con­scious­ness, our work, main­tains a bal­ance with the planet, would be the most log­i­cal thing.
Has the sys­tem reached its end?
We’ve pushed the sys­tem to the limit and now it will col­lapse; it can­not be fixed. Once it has col­lapsed, all these el­e­ments we are now dis­cussing can be put into op­er­a­tion.
Is our species de­signed to sur­vive?
In our species and that of any an­i­mal, con­scious­ness has evolved for sur­vival. In the same way that our con­scious­ness can self-de­struct, it can also avoid it by gen­er­at­ing a ten­dency for con­tin­u­ous trans­for­ma­tion. In the fu­ture we’ll be able to trans­form our­selves to take on a type of non-human en­ergy adap­ta­tion that goes be­yond the prin­ci­ples of the nat­ural forces we know. And that will de­pend a lot on gen­er­a­tive and cre­ative AI.
Will this give rise to a new species?
There could be many species by the end of the cen­tury. Many will not want to be mod­i­fied, due to con­ser­va­tion­ist or re­li­gious reser­va­tions, and while re­li­gion was fun­da­men­tal in us be­com­ing human, its dis­ap­pear­ance will be fun­da­men­tal to de­hu­man­ise us; if we want to sur­vive we must de­hu­man­ise.
Is our fu­ture to con­quer the cos­mos?
If we want to sur­vive we have to con­quer space. For life to thrive, the fun­da­men­tal fac­tor is re­pro­duc­tion, and find­ing a place to do so is the foun­da­tion of our fu­ture.

In­ter­view ar­chae­ol­ogy

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