From this historical perspective, it becomes clear that the challenges are not just political or regulatory, but above all civilisational. The challenge for humanity is to live in harmony with planetary boundaries and to humanise artificial intelligence.

From a long-term historical perspective, we are at the beginning of the age of the Anthropocene and Transhumanism, an age in which humans themselves are decisively changing the Earth ecologically and at the same time putting themselves into a new technological co-evolution. In view of all the opportunities and threats associated with this, the ontological question arises as to what man, his freedom and his responsibility are in such an age. It justifies thinking about a future civilisation and its order.

Paradigm shift and polycrisis 

An order is based on fundamental values, on the basis of which norms, rules and institutions are created to enforce this order across different events and developments as well as preferences and interests. An order thus simultaneously draws the line between the private and public spheres, between what may be and what should be. It defines an abstract balance between freedom and responsibility, which gives rise to a general trust that in turn stabilises the order itself. In practice, trust arises when people take their responsibility – and they do so in freedom, otherwise it would be control, but not responsibility.

It is rare for orders, the most fundamental level of societal organisation, to collapse. Crises of order are the result of mostly paradigmatic upheavals, i.e. changes to the prevailing world view, which lead to a loss of trust in institutions because they no longer do what they are supposed to do: namely regulate the peaceful coexistence of free individuals in a responsible society. The resulting (super)fragility at the level of order leads to a „polycrisis“, a strong systemic tendency to crises at downstream levels. Climate change and artificial intelligence are such paradigm shifts. They require new concepts of freedom and responsibility in order to overcome them in a new civilisation, and thus a corresponding order.

Digital freedom in Transhumanism

In a 1999 interview, the British artist David Bowie responded almost prophetically to the question of whether the internet was not merely a tool, saying that the internet would instead establish a completely new civilisation („alien civilisation“) because it would fundamentally change communication and relationships between people – and therefore society itself. Investor Peter Thiel believes that the point at which humans and machines are practically indistinguishable from one another (the so-called „Turing Test“) is a turning point in the history of human civilisation. For the first time, artificial intelligence enters into competition or co-evolution with humans by making autonomous decisions and learning, allowing it to develop independently, i.e. independently of humans.

Digitalisation in general is leading to a compression of space and time and, as a result, to a radical decentralisation: information can be used and generated in real time at any time and from anywhere. Sociologist Andreas Reckwitz calls this the „society of singularities“ (2017). In a social sense, there is an alienation of the individual from society in that „society“ is reduced to spontaneous, anonymous relationships and the individual can only see and love themselves in the mirror of society – like a narcissist. In contrast to this decentralisation, new centralities – platforms and large artificial intelligence models – are developing to collect data and train artificial intelligence. Meredith Witthaker, CEO of the messaging platform „Signal“ and apologist for strict digital privacy, sees artificial intelligence as a business model born out of mass surveillance („I see AI as born out of surveillance“, Financial Times, 28 September 2024), just as Shoshana Zuboff described it in „Surveillance Capitalism“.

Conclusion: When autonomous artificial intelligence and alienated humans increasingly merge into hybrid entities in transhumanism, the question of human freedom is raised in a completely new civilisational dimension.

Ecological responsibility in the Anthropocene

The consequences of human action are usually limited in space and time. In a state, people become citizens by regulating the interplay of freedom and responsibility in a civil society order. Climate change, however, externalises the consequences of our actions beyond the borders of countries and generations. The Federal Constitutional Court has stated that the rights of future generations to freedom must be taken into account and safeguarded in today’s actions. However, the reasoning and consequences of this judgement are not trivial. Philosopher Peter Singer, for example, has stated the impossibility of global ethics. Mancur Olson has also pointed out the limits of collective action („Logic of Collective Action“, 1965): the size and anonymity of a group essentially determine the rational incentive of individuals to act responsibly. Responsibility is therefore not simply a question of reason or ethics.

Harvard economist Dani Rodrik has identified a trilemma among the political paths currently being taken, which constitutes a conflict of objectives between „combating climate change“, „reducing global poverty“ and „maintaining the industrial prosperity of the middle class“ (Project Syndicate, 2024). Climate change is thus „globalising“ issues of freedom, responsibility and justice that were once internal to society. Ultimately, this also affects the prevailing growth and trade paradigm of globalisation.

Conclusion: When climate change and globalisation combine in the Anthropocene to become a question of human survival, the question of human responsibility is posed in a completely new civilisational dimension.

A civilisation of global cooperation   

Freedom and responsibility are, as argued above, central categories of order in any civilisation. In the age of the Anthropocene and Transhumanism, however, the balance between freedom and responsibility cannot be restored so easily because two essential concepts of „order“ are affected at their very core: society and the state. The binding force of the digital society is weaker, and the ecological reach of the state is less than would be necessary to find solutions within the existing regulatory framework. People move between radical freedom detached from the context of society and radical responsibility detached from the primacy of the state. It is no coincidence that libertarianism and authoritarianism are experiencing a political renaissance at the same time. However, a democratic space does exist between digital escapism and ecological apocalypse. An (ordo-)liberal order aims to prevent libertarianism and authoritarianism by (re)establishing a balance between freedom and responsibility that is dialectical, as it were: more individual freedom always requires more civil responsibility, just as, conversely, more civil responsibility always allows for more individual freedom. The synthesis is a more highly developed civilisation, but not a new human being, as ideologies and doctrines of salvation want to create. In their book „The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty“ (2019), Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson describe how freedom can only assert itself on a very fine line between state and society and that only then both the state and the society can become stronger together.

The political globality of the challenges of climate change and artificial intelligence requires a normative universality of solutions. Fortunately, there is no world government that can enforce these solutions. – does not exist. A less far-reaching, but perhaps ultimately better, because more liberal and innovative, substitute for this are forms of cooperation. Cooperation becomes rational above all when the time horizon of joint action increases gaining room for a positive-sum future. This presupposes that humanity begins to play „long-term games“ instead of „short-term games“ and sets itself corresponding goals. Advanced civilisations have always been characterised by the ability to cooperate and have developed successful forms of culture and cognition, as the evolutionary psychologist Joseph Henrich (2015, 2020) has shown. They are also societies in which trust prevails and solidarity is practised. In this sense, the US historian Timothy Snyder even considers solidarity to be a higher form of freedom – and here the circle closes. „No man attains freedom alone. […] Solidarity (…) turns freedom into justification,“ he writes in his book „On Freedom“ (2024). Not surprisingly, in this definition he sees freedom as „our“ – humanity’s – only chance to meet the challenges of the future. A divided and polarised society cannot ultimately be free and just because there is no longer any trust in it and no one is prepared to take responsibility.

This also applies at a global level. At a time when there would be enormous welfare gains through global cooperation, especially in the fight against climate change and in the development of artificial intelligence, the world is falling back into geopolitical disorder. Much therefore depends on the extent to which it is possible to develop forms of global cooperation between different normative orders in the midst of geopolitical confrontation. In a less rule-based world, cooperation, which must then be achieved through negotiation, can only succeed from a position of strength and reciprocal fairness. In turn, a democracy must develop forms of civil freedom and responsibility. Europe, the continent of the Enlightenment, is predestined by history and experience to translate an order of freedom and responsibility into forms of cooperation.

New progressive networks in a Hayek-Schumpeter world  

Knowledge and discovery play a central role in the development of civilisation. Paradigmatic upheavals make it impossible to extrapolate empirical knowledge from the past into the future. For fundamental, mathematical-logical reasons, we do not know how complex systems will behave if they expand or change – even slightly. They develop characteristics that cannot be predicted, often not even intuitively anticipated. The world as it appears to us always consists of three levels: the obvious – mostly representations of the existing order -, the hidden – potentials that lie beneath the order – and the invisible – possibilities that are still unthinkable in the current order. The third level contains the real innovations, while the new forms of change are located between the second and third levels.

In such transitions, we find ourselves in a Hayek-Schumpeter world, in a world of limited knowledge about the future and the renewal of a decaying present. Incomplete, fundamentally limited knowledge about complex interrelationships therefore restricts the possibility of setting the framework for progress by means of regulation. In contrast, it becomes more important how a society deals with risk, how it creates trust and develops co-operation. In the border area between the disintegrating present and the as yet non-existent future („liminality“), established possibilities for action and organisation are lost without new ones being added. These are new progressive networks that overcome the inertia of the status quo by no longer acting in old, no longer valid assumptions, but in new ones that already describe the new world. It is often narratives that reduce uncertainty, increase trust and encourage cooperation.

The path to a new civilisation often leads via information networks that emerge through normative agreement, in a sense „preforms“ of order, as the historian Yuval Noah Harari shows in his book „Nexus“ (2024). Information networks gain interpretative sovereignty over events and thus create formative narratives. In this way, they influence the progress of civilisation. Daron Acemoglu – in agreement with Harari and Henrich – has emphasised the importance of institutions, cultures, and social equilibria, especially in times of fundamental change (see Acemoglu, „Culture, Institutions, and Social Equilibria“, 2024). He describes „culture“ as a society’s repertoire of cultural techniques for dealing with and shaping change. Culture programmes, institutions format a society and predetermine possible social equilibria. Joseph Henrich shows that it is often combinations of non-conformism and cooperation that are successful in terms of civilisation.

In this sense, the future does not simply emerge, but grows – in and out of progressive networks. They become nuclei of change that are stable, open and progressive – stable so that they themselves do not disintegrate, open so that they can grow and progressive so that they themselves are formative. They then serve as an example, compass and vehicle for progress. To do this, however, they must point far beyond the spirit of the times and be both utopian in their goals and concrete in their solutions. A new spirit of freedom and responsibility that promises progress already prevails in them. A new civilisation is possible, as Erich Fromm, for example, argues in „Haben und Sein. The Mental Foundations of a New Society“ (1976). At a time when cognitive activities can also be taken over by artificial intelligence and material needs are reaching their ecological limits, a shift in focus from the mode of existence of having to a mode of existence of being can open the way to a new civilisation. The path to this requires a new perspective, not from the constraints of the present, but from the possibilities of the future.

Henning Vöpel ist Vorstand des Centrums für Europäische Politik (cep). Zwischen September 2014 und Oktober 2021 war er Direktor und Geschäftsführer des Hamburgischen WeltWirtschaftsInstituts (HWWI).

Zuvor war er Senior Economist am HWWI und zeichnete verantwortlich für die Forschungsbereiche Konjunktur und Weltwirtschaft. Seine Forschungs- und Themenschwerpunkte sind Konjunkturanalyse, Geld- und Währungspolitik, Finanzmärkte und Digitalökonomie.

 


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