This book consists of 1 1 chapters, and there are three major parts, namely:
Chapter 65438 +0 New Human Problems
The first part Homo sapiens conquers the world
Chapter II Anthropocene
Chapter III Human Characteristics
Part II: Wisdom gives meaning to the world.
Chapter 4 Storyteller
Chapter 5 A pair of enemies
Chapter VI and "Modern" Contract
Chapter 7 Humanist Revolution
The third part Homo sapiens lost control
Chapter VIII Time Bomb in the Laboratory
Chapter 9 Great Separation
Chapter 10 Sea of Consciousness
Chapter 1 1 Long live the trust data
Today, we are going to learn the first chapter, a new topic for mankind.
For thousands of years, human beings all over the world have faced the same three major problems-famine, plague and war-which will always be a great worry for human beings.
But in the past few decades, we have successfully curbed famine, plague and war.
1 biological poverty line
Famine is the greatest enemy of mankind for thousands of years. Open any history book casually, and almost everyone will read about the horror of famine and the crazy behavior that people do when they are hungry.
Old people at home will also recall the scenes of starvation during the famine.
An invisible fleet
The second biggest enemy of mankind is plague and infectious diseases.
The most famous epidemic is the Black Death, which started in East Asia or Central Asia in 14 and 1930. This plague army quickly spread through Asia, Europe and North Africa through rats and dances, and reached the Atlantic coast in less than 20 years. The death toll at that time was about 750-200 million, more than a quarter of the population of Eurasia.
Time has entered the twentieth century, and various epidemics continue to kill tens of millions of people. In just a few months, a Spanish flu infected about 500 million people (one third of the global population), resulting in about 50 million to 654.38 billion deaths.
In the past few decades, the prevalence and influence of epidemic diseases have been greatly reduced. 1979, the world health organization declared that mankind had won and smallpox was completely eradicated. This is the first time that mankind has succeeded in making an epidemic disappear completely from the earth.
3 break the law of the jungle.
The third good news is that the war is also disappearing.
In most areas, there are fewer wars than ever before.
In 20 12, about 56 million people died in the world, of which 620,000 died of human violence (6,543,802,000 died of war and 500,000 died of crime). In contrast, 800,000 people committed suicide and 1.5 million people died of diabetes. Now, sugar is more deadly than gunpowder.
A terrorist is like a fly trying to make a scene in a China shop.
1 the end of death
2 1 century, mankind is likely to really turn to the goal of immortality.
Although it is a minority, more and more scientists and thinkers openly say that the representative task of modern science is to overcome death and give mankind eternal youth.
The fields of genetic engineering, regenerative medicine and nanotechnology have made rapid progress. Some experts predict that human beings will overcome death by 2200, while others think it is 2 100.
2 the right to happiness
The second major problem in the future of mankind may be to find the key to happiness.
The happy glass ceiling has two pillars, which belong to the psychological and biological levels respectively.
On the psychological level, happiness depends on your expectations, not objective conditions. With the improvement of objective conditions, it is expected to continue to expand.
From the biological level, both expectations and happiness are actually controlled by biochemical mechanisms, not by any economic, social or political situation.
The pleasant feeling will soon disappear, and sooner or later it will become an unpleasant feeling. These are all the results of evolution. After countless generations, our biochemical system has been constantly adapting to changes to increase the chances of survival and reproduction, rather than happiness.
God of the earth
In the process of pursuing happiness and immortality, human beings are actually trying to elevate themselves to the status of God.
There are three paths for human beings to upgrade to God: biological engineering, biochemical engineering and non-organic biological engineering.
Can someone hit the brakes?
Once people realize that we are running towards the unknown at such a high speed, the general reaction is to hope that someone will step on the brakes and slow us down.
First of all, no one knows where the brakes are.
Secondly, if you don't know how to step on the brakes successfully, it will make the economy collapse and drag the society into the water.
Knowledge paradox
It is predicted that the goal of mankind in the 2 1 century is likely to be eternal life, happiness and divinity, which may make some people feel deeply angry or frightened, so it must be clarified:
First, it doesn't mean that most people will do it in 2 1 century.
Second, this is a historical prediction, not a political goal.
Third, pursuing doesn't mean getting it.
Fourth, the focus of this forecast is not to make a forecast, but to discuss the existing options.
Each of us was born in a specific historical reality, restricted by specific norms and values, and managed by a unique economic and political system. We will take our reality for granted and think that all this is natural, inevitable and unchangeable. But we forget that the world was created by a series of accidents. History has shaped not only our science, technology, politics and society, but also our thoughts, fears and dreams. "The past" stretched out a cold hand from the grave of our ancestors and grabbed our necks, so that we could only look in a certain future direction.
Learning history is to break away from the shackles of the past, let us look in different directions and begin to notice the possibilities that our predecessors could not imagine or did not want us to imagine in the past.
Studying history can't tell us how to choose, but at least it can provide us with more choices.