Isaac Asimov’s Vision of Humanity’s Future | Foundation Ending Explained
Quinn’s Ideas
One of the key facts about human beings is that each of us is individual and yet we live in societies that sometimes act as superorganisms, it is very difficult for one individual to steer the course of the whole species. This is sometimes a good thing there moments that the human spirit seems to join as one and great things can be accomplished. And this is sometimes also a bad thing, for example, man-lead climate change is an issue that scientists have known about for quite some time, but the human entity runs on oil, the actions of a single individual would have little impact to slow the rate of change. The organism moves on its own, even if everyone watching this video somehow finds a way to never contribute to fossil fuel emissions ever again for the rest of their lives this would essentially do nothing because the human entity is far too large. This is much akin to how the individual cells in your body make up you, but the individual cells themselves have no say over your actions.
Individuality itself is often heralded as one of the virtues of mankind, but individuality is also the cause of much of the turmoil in human society. Individuality leads to chaos, though many would argue that this is a necessary vice of a free society. Individuality and free expression are part of what makes life worth living. Often when free expression and individuality are stripped, as in both the modern and history fascist regimes of the earth, societal wellbeing, in general, goes down dramatically. Fascism does not breed progress of any kind, under these types of structures the soul of mankind bleeds. The happiest societies in the world emphasize individuality and freedom.
Beyond personal individuality, humans also have a tendency to break themselves into groups, sometimes based on traits that members of that group share, sometimes based on geographical association. Different groups of humans often find themselves at odds, competing for resources and power of all forms. With such groupings prejudice also forms, and as these groups persist throughout time generation prejudices and forms and differences between groups of humans start to be distorted in the eyes of opposing groups. This of course leads to many problems in society. If mankind could view itself as a homogenous group not divided by arbitrary lines the things we could accomplish could be great. Isaac Asimov deals with some of these ideas in his Foundation book series, and that is mainly what we are here to discuss today.
Quinn’s Website: https://www.quinnhoward.net
.
