The world we've built models us as rational choice machines. It's time for a new model.

Welcome to New World Same Humans, a weekly newsletter on trends, technology, and society by David Mattin.

?? If you’d prefer to listen to this week’s instalment, go here for the audio version of New World Same Humans #34. ??

At the heart of this newsletter is the idea that if we are to understand the world we’ve built, we must look to ourselves and our shared, essential nature.

For more than three centuries a single story about that nature – about what a human being is – has predominated in the global north.

So this week, reflections on that story, how it’s shaped the world around us, and why it’s time to write a new one.

I’ll be back on Wednesday with another New Week Same Humans: news and super-fast analysis. But in the meantime find a comfortable spot, pour yourself a drink, lean back and read – or listen to! – this instalment.

?? Fast Download: A Design for Life

?? Our model of the human being is broken. The pandemic has locked us in a strange stasis. The big questions – about work, consumerism, the planet and more – that were raised back in March remain unanswered. We all know much needs to change, but the challenge feels overwhelming. We can get a handle on that challenge, though, if we understand that underpinning all the complexity is a single narrative. The story we tell ourselves about ourselves; about what a human being is.

?? Enlightenment humanism modelled humans as free rational deciders. That is, as beings that survey our environment, apply reason to discern our best advantage, and then choose accordingly. This model fuelled the emergence of parliamentary democracy and the consumer society. But it was never particularly accurate. And it is now outgrowing its usefulness.

?? If we are to build a new world, we need a new model. The free rational decider model is fuelling social systems and patterns of behaviour that no longer serve us. We need a new model. Here are notes towards that goal.

?? Humans are socially constructed. Enlightenment liberal humanism sold us on a conception of humans as sovereign individuals. In fact we humans are social creatures, inextricably bound to one another. We can exist only within the context supplied by a social collective. Our very sense of self, of being a person, is in part manufactured via a process that involves the group.

?? Humans are physically embodied. Liberal humanism models us as rational deciders. But evidence shows that reason plays only a limited role in our lives. Rather, we are physically embodied creatures with selves that are inseparable from that specific embodiment. We share a pre-rational evolutionary nature. We are moral and spiritual beings whose internal lives cannot be reduced to only algorithmic or rational processes.

?? Humans are embedded in the Earth environment. Enlightenment thinkers saw humans as apart from nature. Via the scientific revolution we set about bending the natural world to our own ends. That helped us make the world a better home for humans, but came at a cost to the planet. Now, we must acknowledge that we are not apart from the environment but embedded in it. We exist in a symbiotic relationship to the Earth environment specifically, and that relationship forms a necessary part of who we are.

?? This is just a place to start. If we are to build a new world in the years ahead, we must start with a new conception of what we are. This model is not presented as a conclusion, but only a place to begin.

?? Our model of the human being is broken

How long has it been since everything stopped in March? Fifty years, maybe 1,000? One day we’ll be able to look back at September 2020 and know what circle of pandemic fatigue we were stuck in. Right now, the progress bar remains unclear.

So we continue in this strange temporal whiteout. The big questions that emerged in the early days of lockdown remain unanswered. Is this the end of the office? The end of consumerism as we know it? The beginnings of a new, more sustainable way of life? A great pause or a reset?

The central challenge for anyone seeking answers is clear, and remains just what it was before the pandemic: overwhelming complexity. In important ways our world has become a single, interconnected system that is too complex for us to understand.

We all know that much needs to change. About our industry and consumption and its impacts on the planet. About the ways in which we conduct our democracies. And about how technology mediates the ways in which we relate to one another. But the challenge feels impossibly great. Meanwhile, across the last decade or so our investment in a shared narrative that makes sense of the chaos has eroded. In 2020, 4 billion internet users and more are each down their own private informational wormhole.

In this essay, though, I want to argue that there is a way to get a handle on the complexity. There is, despite appearances, a shared narrative underpinning all this; a story that runs like a common thread through the version of modernity we inhabit in 2020. It’s not a story about the world around us, but about ourselves. About what a human being is.

That story sits at the foundation of the systems we have built. But it was never true, and it is now outgrowing its usefulness. If we want to raise a new world out of the ashes of lockdown, we must abolish this story and write a new one.

?? Enlightenment humanism modelled humans as free rational deciders

What is this narrative?

It’s the story about humans bequeathed to us by Enlightenment liberal humanism. One that models a human being as a free individual rational decider.

Liberal humanism models humans as rational choice machines. That is, as beings that survey our environment, apply reason to discern our best interests, and then choose accordingly.

This model has done much for those of us who live in the global north. It shaped the creation of parliamentary democracy, which models citizens as sovereign individual rational voters. And it fuelled the emergence of consumerism, which models people as free rational buyers.

This model is how liberal democracy and consumerism make sense of humans. In 2020, it’s woven so thoroughly through our culture that its hard even to see.

Watching the hyper-consumers of 2020 – as they browse, buy and relentlessly commodify their own experience – an alien visitor to Earth might conclude that our embrace of this model has been absolute.

?? If we are to build a new world, we need a new model

The individual rational decider model fuelled the emergence of modernity as we live it in 2020.

But it was never a particularly accurate model. And, more important, its usefulness is now diminishing. That’s because this story is now helping to support social structures, and collective patterns of behaviour and attitude, that at best no longer serve us and at worst pose a threat to our way of life.

Changing these systems and behaviours feels an overwhelming challenge. But we can get a handle on that challenge when we realise that underpinning it all is the need to forge a new model of the human being; a new story about ourselves and what we are.

Here are brief notes towards such a new model. One that recognises three fundamental characteristics of the human animal: we are socially constructed, physically embodied, and embedded in the Earth environment.

?? Humans are socially constructed

Enlightenment liberal humanism sold us on a conception of humans as sovereign individuals. Each the hero of our own story, free to make of ourselves and our lives what we wish.

There is much good about this story. But scrutinise it even a little and it quickly becomes apparent that it is a fiction.

In fact we humans are inherently social creatures. If we are to survive, let alone flourish, then we must remain bound to others by networks of social ties which necessarily constrain our freedom of action and limit the range of personal identities available to us. We are not free to make of ourselves and lives whatever we might wish.

Indeed, as the philosopher Charles Taylor argues in Sources of the Self, humans can make little sense of themselves outside the context supplied by a social collective. Our very sense of self is in part manufactured via a process that involves the group. To isolate an individual entirely from any form of human collective would be – if such a thing were possible – to fatally damage their chance of becoming a person in any meaningful sense of the word.

The world we’ve built in 2020 too often ignores this truth. Instead, its hyper-individualism fuels toxic inequalities, and modes of consumption that serve the individual but damage society or the planet.

In 2020 we need a new model of the human being that better articulates all this. One that emphasises not only the importance of the individual, but also the collective context that makes individual life possible.

?? Humans are physically embodied

Liberal humanism is founded on a conception of humans as rational deciders.

This conception sits at the heart of parliamentary democracy and the consumer society. They are systems built on the idea that optimum forms of collective life emerge when rational agents are free to act as they wish.

Taken to its logical conclusion the individual rational decider model would see human minds as something akin to computers. And these days it’s common to hear humans described in just such terms. Indeed, there are those who think algorithms may soon supplant humans in the realms of politics and consumerism. After all, if people are just glorified algorithms, we may as well let more reliable algorithms vote or purchase on our behalf.

But this idea is another fiction. Yes, reason plays a role in our lives. But if anyone was in any doubt, then courtesy of behavioural economics there is now plenty of experimental evidence that this role is limited. Much human behaviour is not rational at all. And people rarely act based purely on an accurate and well-reasoned analysis of their own advantage.

Humans are not rational choice machines. Our minds are not a kind of software that can be replicated algorithmically. Seeing humans in this way has impoverished our politics and other important aspects of our collective lives.

Instead, we are physically embodied creatures with selves that are inseparable from this embodiment and everything that it entails. We share a fundamental, pre-rational nature that is the product of our evolutionary past. That means we are also moral and spiritual beings whose internal processes cannot be reduced only to rational calculation. The choices we make and behaviours we enact are functions of this entire self, and not only of reason.

The new story we tell about humans must acknowledge all this, and find new ways to accommodate – and celebrate – the parts of ourselves that transcend rational choice.

?? Humans are embedded in the Earth environment

Enlightenment thinkers were the inheritors of a long religious legacy that saw humans as apart from nature. They cultivated that legacy. The scientific revolution advanced the idea that we uniquely rational humans could, and should, master nature and turn it to our own ends.

We shouldn’t disparage these ideas in a simple-minded way. They fuelled our ancestors as they set about transforming a world of scarcity, illness and danger.

But that transformation came at a cost. Industrialisation and its consequences have touched every corner of the Earth, and now threaten to overwhelm the very environment on which they depend.

A broken conception of humans as apart from nature has helped this happen, and hindered our response. But even today this idea remains vigorous. You see it, for example, in the pseudo-colonial fantasy that humans may soon set up a permanent home on another planet, such as Mars. In reality, we do not even know how to transport people safely across the 55 million kilometres journey. Let alone how they might live anything resembling a human life once they got there.

That should serve to remind us of a powerful truth, and one that any revised model of the human being must accommodate.

Humans are not apart from the environment, but embedded in it. What’s more, we are embedded specifically in the Earth environment, which no human community – no humans beyond a handful – have ventured beyond. We exist in a symbiotic relationship to Earth, and that relationship is not a happenstance, but a necessary part of what we are. Earth-embeddedness is a part of the human identity.

We need a new ways of thinking about ourselves that acknowledge this.

?? This is just a place to start

Here, then, are notes towards a new model of the human being. That is, a model of humans as socially constructed, physically embodied, and embedded in the Earth environment.

If we are to build a new world – or even a revised one – in the aftermath of this crisis, then we must start with a new conception of what we are.

Like any model of the human animal, this one can never capture us in all our complexity and variation. But it describes important truths about who we are that the free rational decider model does not. And in those truths, we glimpse something of the new world we should strive for. One that does more to protect the rights of the collective, and constrains our culture of hyper-individualism. One that recognises the human animal’s capacity for moral and spiritual dignity, as well as rational choice. And one that remodels our relationship with the natural world so that it is circular, rather than extractive.

These notes are not, of course, put forward as though they are firm conclusions, or anything close. But only as a place to start.

New model army

Thanks for reading this week.

Much about our world feels up in the air right now. Whatever your model of yourself, it’s enough to make anyone feel off balance.

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I'll be back on Thursday with another New Week Same Humans. Until then, be well,

David.

David Mattin sits on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Consumption.