The Rise of Useless Homo Sapiens

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change — Charles Darwin

It was not long ago, we abandoned our chimpanzee and gorilla grandparents evolving into intelligent human species. And then for millions of years, we had been evolved not just biologically, but how to cooperate, communicate, and collaborate effectively — conquering the world over all other myriads of species on the planet. Therefore, as an individual, it is not at all surprising for me to resurrect the age old questions like — what am I doing here? what is my purpose as an individual in the bigger picture? what is the goal of humankind as a whole? are the human species still evolving? will there be an evolution of a new class of humans? Not the biological evolution of human species I am talking about. The tell tales of rich vs poor, strong vs weak, intelligent vs dumb humans, that are in some way diverging into, let’s say, useful vs useless human species I am talking about.

Let’s see what is happening today. We are witnessing a remarkable change to global humanity. For the first time after separating our ways from our gorilla grandparents a million years ago, we are moving towards the unification of humankind, making everything interdependent and interconnected. The humankind is thriving for exploration as a unified global workforce. For what purpose though? we already conquered the world, isn’t it?

The quest for humankind's exploration never stops, not until we reach the singularity. We believe in the unified global force to accelerate the exploration of such a goal. But why are we hurrying so much? We have been exploring the world for a million years, and we have billions if not trillions more ahead. And more importantly, aren’t we being a little unconscious about the unintended consequences of such unification? Did we ever think of an insignificant, animal inhabited, virus from the hinterland of Wuhan, can reach tens of thousands of miles of far-flung Florence in a matter of few days? and shake the entire planet within a span of a few weeks? Can we foresee a mere domestic violence that may happen in the future nowhere in the middle of Missouri can reflect a catastrophic collapse of Kuala Lumpur, a place that is halfway across the globe? If it were a decentralized world, the virus would be dead, the day it was inhabited. Instead, it killed hundreds of thousands of people and hospitalized millions across the globe. Do you think the invention of Aeroplanes is to blame here? How about ships? Donald Trump? or Xi Jinping?

None. There is something more than that. It is because the world has become a single point of failure with its unification of humankind. Something that is bringing everything physically together, making the world more vulnerable than ever before. Something that is in charge of the world — the quest for exploration. I am not saying the exploration is a new trait the humankind is acquiring. I am questioning the rush for the exploration. Don’t you think we still have at least a billion years ahead before an asteroid destroying our planet? A million years ago, we started our exploration from somewhere in the south-central corner of an African savannah in the stone age abandoning the grandparents of our kind, traveled the world and got separated into virtual worlds after the ice age, re-discovered our cousin species across the globe a 500 years ago, and we are now back to where we started. Are we on the cusp of leaving another species behind? with this hasty quest for exploration?

Let’s see from the economic perspective. Out of nearly four hundred thousand dead from the virus this year, how many of them do you think are rich? how many are, quote unquote, intelligent? and strong? almost none. I am not referring to the multi-billionaires or even billionaires. Of course, if there is any as such, I am sure your social media will be flooded with the death news articles of the ‘psychopath’ Jeff Bezos or your favorite pop singer Taylor Swift. No, I was only asking about the dead millionaires from this virus. You can count them with your fingers. Why? because we need these people for our progress. To accelerate our quest for reaching the singularity, we can’t afford to lose these people. The entire world will mourn after them even if none of us are related to them. Therefore, we need to save these species. We need to pour millions and billions in their bank accounts so that they are safe from any such danger. On the other hand, did anyone care about the four hundred thousand “menial income”, “non-intelligent”, “weak humans”? Yes, we deeply expressed our condolences and moved on.

In the 21st century, the problem that humankind is facing is neither the food nor the survival. It is the economy. How many people do you think are dying from being skinny or of hunger today? In fact, people are dying because they are fat. Of course, you would immediately jump to the so-called shithole countries as described by our lunatic ‘big brother’ Donald Trump, suffering from these issues, but they will eventually achieve what the developed countries achieved so far. Instead, let’s focus on the rich and futuristic East Asia and Northwestern worlds. If these governments or the big-tech organizations want to solve global hunger, poverty, and healthcare issues, instead of pouring their intelligence and the resources in their quest for exploration, all the world problems will be solved and humankind can live happily for at least once since the beginning of our time. Even if we spent a small percentage of resources poured for building Facebook or Space ships, we could have saved at least a hundred thousand people. Isn’t it? The answer is absolutely, yes, but the modern corrupted capitalistic creed begs to raise the question of why? Why do we have to waste our valuable resources on these poor, unintelligent, and weak species when they cannot contribute enough in our quest for exploration? Therefore, aren’t these human species useless in the bigger picture of our humankind's purpose? The utilitarian capitalism is eager to give you a clear answer to this question.

What’s particularly more bothering me is that we think humankind is moving towards positive progress. In his book ‘Enlightenment Now’, psychologist Steven Pinker draws a series of such positive conclusions from thousands of years of scientific data. Yes, for thousands of years we have been through a lot. We raged wars out of stupidity. We gave away the power of humankind to God for a thousand years. We were on the verge of bringing apocalypse by changing the climate. However, with the scientific revolution, we realized what we have become and changed our focus in a new direction. But then what stopped us from helping our own kind? What made us dump trillions of dollars in creating military bases to fight our own species instead of using it to make them our allies? What made us pour billions of dollars on building Instagram and TikTok instead of solving global hunger? Did we just accept that these human species are just useless and we don’t have to care for them? We have kept our morals for a million years since we abandoned our gorilla grandparents. Did we lose these morals yet again for our hasty quest for exploration? Are we on the verge of separating our ways into two isolated worlds again? Let’s say in the near future we will reach Mars. Will these useful human species move to Mars, the new-found land, and abandon the useless human species on Earth just like we abandoned our grandparents in the African jungle? And then the self-centered president of Mars will call the Earth as a shit-hole planet?

In his book, ‘Homo Deus’ Historian Yuval Noah Harari prophesies the fate of homo sapiens with the revolution of 21st-century intelligent algorithms. He goes on to foresee the new classes of unworking humans whose jobs may be replaced by AI algorithms, and engineering superhumans whose genetics are modified through biotech algorithms. He continues to question what happens when these algorithms take control of homo sapiens? As we can already witness that as an individual, we are already on the verge of losing our own importance. Forget about these useless human species I have been jibber-jabbering about. Take the multi-billionaires Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk for example. Even with such power, they don’t have any freedom in controlling their own founding organizations. He continues to predict the threat from these big-tech algorithms, organizations, governments, policies, and systems. I am not even talking about such futuristic machines taking over humankind. I am talking about “the useful” humans taking over “useless” humans. If these useful human species are going to take over the purpose of all of our humankind, and pretend that the existence of the poor, unintelligent, weak humans is not worth comparing to the overall purpose, then what would be the fate of these useless human species? Should they just live their lives far away isolated from the useful human species? just like we left our grandparents in the African jungle and evolved into what we are now, will these useful human species settle down on extraterrestrial worlds and abandon the useless human species on this messed up Planet?