Tiddles: a counterblast, by Sackerson

Yuval Noah Harari is a ‘public intellectual, historian’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuval_Noah_Harari but since he is also said to be Klaus Schwab’s top adviser I shall refer to him as Tiddles, Blofeld’s cat (anonymous in the Bond films, Tiddles was producer Cubby Broccoli’s pet in real life.)

Embarrassingly, Tiddles completed his D.Phil. at my old college in Oxford in 2002 and I am sorry to say that for an intellectual his thinking on religion and transhumanism appears jejune and he does not seem to realise its implications. On the whole I prefer the anarchic yobs and Welsh drunks of Jesus in the late Sixties and Seventies, whose Junior Common Room once elected a goldfish as President on the grounds that like other leaders it went round in circles opening and closing its mouth (an interpreter was appointed to convey its rulings.) Bawling fools tend not to do much harm; it is the theoretical systematisers and world-reformers that led to the killing of countless millions in the last century.

Consider Tiddles’ facile remarks on religion in his 2017 Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/08/virtual-reality-religion-robots-sapiens-book

‘What is a religion if not a big virtual reality game played by millions of people together? Religions such as Islam and Christianity invent imaginary laws, such as “don’t eat pork”, “repeat the same prayers a set number of times each day”, “don’t have sex with somebody from your own gender” and so forth. These laws exist only in the human imagination.’

The Abrahamic religions postulate a God who both made the world out of nothing and set the rules for our behaviour: the Creator and Law-Giver; but according to Nick Spencer https://www.abc.net.au/religion/the-problem-with-yuval-noah-harari/12451764 , Tiddles’ position is that ‘There are no gods, no money, no human rights, and no laws beyond the “common imagination of human beings.”’

if we accept that moral laws have no basis, then consider what this implies for a thoroughly consistent rationalist: a world entirely without moral laws that are binding independently of our wishes and opinions. David Hume said in effect that one cannot reason from an ‘is’ to an ‘ought’; you can describe what people think is right and wrong, and even why they may think so, but there is no reason why you should privately adopt their view. In fact, it is convenient if you don’t: I should like everyone else to believe in queuing for the bus, so that I can jump the queue; this helps to explain why psychopaths are over-represented in positions of power. All that matters (if you have any care for yourself, and there is of course no reason why you should) is to work out how to minimise the negative consequences for yourself of society’s disapprobation of your actions.

This nihilism being so, it is difficult to explain why Tiddles is in Schwab’s caressing embrace. Schwab may have a grand vision for future society, but as nothing matters, there is no reason to help him bring it about.

Tiddles has expressed concern https://www.cbsnews.com/news/yuval-harari-sapiens-60-minutes-2021-10-29/ that in an AI data-gathering world humans are ‘hackable’, can be manipulated more comprehensively than ever before. Is this not the WEF’s plan, to design an environment full of blandly contented Stepford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stepford_Wives  people? Isn’t this what the Chinese are up to with their ‘social credit’ system https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-punishments-and-rewards-explained-2018-4?r=US&IR=T , intended to nudge their citizens relentlessly towards absolute conformity with the CCP’s commandments? What is the point of creating a perfect world, but not for us as we have previously and in differing ways understood ourselves?

The resistance to this nightmare heaven may have to come from the irrational, the superstitious, the emotional, the capricious, violent, stupid, human-hearted humans.

Dig your claws in, Tiddles, and leap off Schwab’s lap.