If the world's democratic deficits are not addressed now we face a dystopia where climate chaos, wars, social injustice and technological tyranny threaten the very fate of humanity, says philosopher AC Grayling.
AC Grayling Photo: supplied
In his new book, For the Good of the World, Professor Grayling outlines the biggest challenges he believes the world faces and warns that nothing short of an urgent, united response is going to save humankind from hurtling towards a series of terrifying catastrophes.
Grayling tells Jim Mora people in power need to accept the cost of change and confront the challenges facing the planet before it's too late and that democratic mechanisms need to be strengthened, or governments face civil unrest and new "virulent forms of activism" by those pushing for change.
The doom of climate breakdown is now on the immediate horizon. “Too little is being done about it, even now," he says.
"The second big problem is that technology is racing ahead of our ability to understand it properly, control it properly, deal with it properly," Grayling says. "There are lots of technological developments that are very positive, especially in medical science, for example, but there are some which are very frightening.
“Invasion of privacy, undermining of our democratic processes through use of communication programmes on social media and on the internet. But one big one is autonomous weapons.
"All the major arms-producing countries in the world, the United States, China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, are investing hundreds of millions in weapons which operate themselves and not under human control and this is serious destabilising misapplication of technology.
“The final one, and the one that underlies our ability to deal with the climate and technology problem, is the fact that there is a serious deficit of justice and rights in our world – economic justice, human rights and of the opportunity for large populations around the world to have an effective voice in the government of their lives, and the making of laws that government them.”
He says this deficit is the reason governments aren't addressing the immediate dangers we face as a human race. The result of this is the real and immediate potential of events cascading into horrors beyond our control.
“We’re heading towards a series of catastrophes connected to one another during the course of this century unless we really do get our act together,” he says.
The current cultural quagmire of destructive ideologies, fear and ignorance is also blocking the potential to arrest the situation before it's too late.
“Of course, there are some people in all societies who do have that open-minded, open-armed approach to things and would very much like to see us being peaceful. But one thing we have to remember is that the reason that people hang on to their identity politics, their nationalism or religious ideology, is very often out of fear and ignorance of what is out there, what is unfamiliar or what other people do or might or take away from them.
“But what we forget is that national boundaries and religious commitments are all of them historical artifacts. They all arose at a certain point in history. Almost all national boundaries are a very recent origin, just over the last few centuries.
"The great religions of today are very young religions. Islam and Christian less than 2000 years old and they follow on from very different conceptions of what religion meant to communities before them. And they introduced new ways of thinking about these matters, which are rather similar in a way to nationalism, because they bring strong identity commitments with them too. We can try to find ways of living differently, anew and afresh with one another."
Grayling is hopeful however this a sense of impending doom will force people, by necessity, to re-valuate their positions.
"Perhaps the crisis that is impending in our world, from the climate threat, from the development of very dangerous technologies, at some point might force us to rethink these things, because our choice is two-fold and very simple. One is we do something about it, the other is they will do something about it to us, by the time we’re no longer capable of taking action.”
However, the signs are not good. Britain's Brexit referendum is one event that signals the dangers ahead for nation states and the populous who get it wrong.
He calls Brexit "a terrible historical mistake", seeing the European project as a benevolent attempt to unify nations within a trading zone where problems can be solved democratically while avoiding the possibility of war.
“The EU, for all its flaws and it has many, it needs reforms, it needs a lot of work… is 27 nations trying to work together with a lot of commonalities, economically and socially, in questions of rights and politics, it’s going to have a big task on its hands," he says
“But it’s a very noble task, adventurous and imaginative, a great project for peace.”
One issue that remains a concern for Grayling is relativism - the philosophical position that there exists no objective truth, and that all assertions of truth and and falsity, right and wrong, are ultimately subjective and change according to cultural context and the individual.
A better way to deal with disagreements would be to simply agree to peacefully co-exist in a pluralistic society, without subscribing to relativism. He uses the example of the Iberian Peninsula in Spain, where once Christians, Jews and Muslims all lived together under the principle of Convivencia, finding a way of living together.
“That takes a great maturity of mind and it takes a great deal of benevolence, of good will to try to achieve it,” he says.
In a world of increasing polarisation he says addressing particular hatreds and conflict must involve removing the structural basis that underpins these.
He says the bitter rivalry between Republicans and Democrats in the US is a classic example of a two-party state unable to resolve differences in society. The US' first-past-the-post voting system, which he calls very undemocratic, amplifies divisions, he says.
“The result of that binary position is polarisation. The divide between them becomes deeper and wider. Politics and political debate become sloganised, simplified and simplistic…
“Get rid of the structures that produce that, introduce proportional representation in elections, allow more political parties a say.”
Grayling's writings are informed by a principle of self-interest he coined in his own name - Grayling's Law.
It states that: "Anything that can be done will be done if it brings advantage or profit to those who can do it."
His corollary to Grayling’s Law, is just as negative: "What can be done will not be done if it brings costs, economic or otherwise, to those who can stop it."
It points to the fact change will be initiated and blocked according to the interests of those welding power in a world where economic interests rule.
Technological changes are advanced according to this principle and an element of these changes that concerns Grayling is the potential emergence of General Intelligence of computer systems and emerging technologies like brain-chip interfaces.
This is not the stuff of futuristic fantasy, and the technology is already being deployed. The potential to abuse those technologies is obvious and some possible scenarios are truly horrific, including its use for social control and a resurrection of eugenics.
“What are called brain-chip interfaces, that is, implanting chips into the human brain in order to control epilepsy or to control Parkinson’s, or to control traumatic memories, or to control mood, serious depression - these are things which are already in development, already in use in some cases," he says.
“The idea of brain-chip interfacing is a reality, neuroscience has developed it to this extent already and you can immediately see that it is a very short step from introducing chips to control mood and memory, for those very same chips to be used to control the people whose moods and memories those are. This is actually happening.”
“So now think about genetic modification of foetuses. If we think of Grayling’s Law here, if it can be done, then it will be done because there will always be people who can pay for it.”
Grayling points out if this was to happen we would see a divergence in humanity between those who have been modified as foetuses to genetically superior and people who were born normally. It could bring selective breeding of groups in society.
“This kind of division, all too likely, might result from some of these technologies.”
He says, according to research carried out at Oxford University suggest 45 percent or more of people could be left jobless due to artificial intelligence in the near future. There is rigorous debate on what’s going to happen to the nature of society in light of this.
“Optimists say the new technologies that are coming on stream all the time produce new jobs. In fact, what will happen is tasks will be taken over by machines, by AI, but the head work, the thinking work is needed to plan for those tasks and so forth, will still be done by humans.
“Whereas other people think we are going to see a big displacement, and 10 percent will be the least of it, of people out of employment. Therefore, society is going to have to rethink itself.”
Perhaps the most dramatic of all scenarios posed by Grayling is that of the emergence of a general intelligence (GI) evolving out of forms of AI, finally converging into one technological 'singularity'.
“This is quite controversial, as to whether this singularity will occur," Grayling says. "Now by this singularity we mean when an intelligent system becomes generally intelligent – a GI, human-like intelligence, only much greater. I pointed out a long time ago that intelligent systems, given the task of redesigning themselves, will be able to do so with increasing efficiency, at increasing rates of change, so it will get to the point where an intelligent general system could be making itself more and more intelligent every split second.
“Vastly more intelligent than human beings. The worse-case scenario there is that such a system says to itself 'what is the most irritating, destructive thing on the planet'. The answer would of course be human beings. It wouldn’t take this intelligence very long to find a way of getting rid of human beings in the interests of the rest of the planet and of itself.”
If GI did develop, pessimists say even if this doomsday scenario didn't happen, we would no longer be in control of our destinies.
Grayling says above all now we need good institutions and constitutions to protect against such scenarios, alongside climate breakdown, and ensure governance.
Forms of activism, some violent, will be the recourse of growing numbers of people if these fundamental issues are not resolved, he says.
“If the peoples and governments of the world today don’t get their act together and do something to address these problems, which are rushing at us like a runaway express train, if we don’t get our act together and do something about them, then as these changes become really imminent and looming right over us what will happen is you will get riots, uprisings, you will get activisms of a very virulent kind.
“And in the final analysis, even if they don’t work, then there will be catastrophes themselves that will overwhelm us.
“I say in the book, it may already be too late. It is the saddest words that anybody can say about anything. It’s too late.
“But even if it were, the idea of just giving up and throwing one’s hand up in despair. That’s not an option. While we live and breath we’ve got to argue and persuade, I’ve got to try and do something to make a difference, each in our own way.”
