The Human Game: all bets are off

If you read only one book in 2019, let it be this one: Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?  by Bill McKibben This four-part narrative frames the continued existence of the human species as a collective game played on a board, the earth, in a cosmic casino. If you shy away from topics that focus attention on the toll our existence is having on the planet, then you'll definitely have to bear the discomfort. But I heartily invite you to withstand the blows. Our continued ignoring of the increase in climate change has forced the game to two imperatives: 1) keep it going and 2) keep it human.

McKibben gives the Koch brothers and their advocacy groups credit for "committing treason against an entire planet," and for supporting the denial of climate science. These manipulations have prevented us from developing solutions formed from political will. But there is plenty of blame to go around and Silicon Valley moguls are equally deluded through their embrace of the ethos promoted by Ayn Rand. This is a bizarre allegiance considering that Rand's political beliefs represent "...toxic overshoot of a natural and appropriate reaction to the totalitarian threats of the blood-soaked twentieth century." 

As if the geological force exerted by human existence wasn't enough, part three, The Name of the Game will leave you positively unnerved. Here the focus is on the progenitors of artificial intelligence, and the logical consequences of its unregulated development. McKibben posits that genetically altering humans before they are born will only rob human life of meaning.

"Sometimes we need to engineer ourselves: hence Prozac. But you can stop taking Prozac. You can't turn off the engineered dopamine receptor. That's you, and you will never know yourself without it. As climate change has shrunk the effective size of our planet, the creation of designer babies shrinks the effective range of our souls." 

Before reading this section I had only a cursory understanding of the reach of AI (artificial intelligence). But McKibben deftly illustrates its capacity to make irrelevant human life as we know it. The promoters of the technology seem to have weird obsessions for lengthening lifespans indefinitely, and as he notes:

"A world without death is a world without time, and that in turn is a world without meaning, at least not human meaning."

Just when you can't handle one more bit of bad news, part four is called: An Outside Chance. The stakes couldn't be higher, ecological hell or post human meaninglessness.

"If we are to build the political will to deploy renewable energy fast enough, we'll need a bulldozer for reshaping the zeitgeist. That's the job of movements." 

It is the method by which the active many can overcome the ruthless few, but clearly:

"You can't spend your entire life building movements--almost by definition they burn bright and then burn out." 

We have it in us to take the steps to save ourselves because the human game is a team sport and our impulse is toward solidarity. Even with its final hopeful message, I found this book a sobering work to digest, but the writing is so timely and the style so plain-spoken that its urgent message cannot be ignored. Now if only those titans of industry got it, too.