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Broadly in Favor of Humans

2024-10-03 · letter vlog · John · 5:14 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning (also: History & curiosities) · mode: Personal essay · tags: self promotion, calendar ritual

John describes how little human life changed until about 300 years ago, compresses human history into one calendar year to show how recent and vast the industrial-age changes are, and argues that humans are neither simply good nor bad: he is broadly in favor of humans, expects we will survive our polycrisis, and thinks humanity is worth the hope and work.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Human life 300 years ago: farming, open fires, horse travel, no ice, recorded music or electricity

  • ★★ John says 300 years ago almost all humans were farmers or hunter-gatherers and cooked over open fires, as they had a thousand years earlier. — 00:00:05
  • ★★ John says carts were pulled by horses or pack animals and going from Beijing to Shanghai took about as long as a thousand years earlier, though roads were slightly better. — 00:00:14
  • ★★ John says back then there was no ice on hot days, no recorded music or electricity, and no way to hear a voice beyond earshot. — 00:00:24
  • ★★ John says information then could travel only as fast as humans, that is about as fast as horses. — 00:00:43

00:00:58 — Human history as one calendar year; the Industrial Revolution's recent, vast changes and today's work

  • ★★ John compresses the story of the species into a calendar year: humans appear around 300,000 years ago on January 1 and today is December 31 at 11:59 pm. — 00:00:58
  • ★ On that calendar, John says humans become the only hominid when Neanderthals go extinct in November, and Julius Caesar becomes emperor of the Roman Empire on December 28. — 00:01:10
    • a number in question (doubtful): "December 28th" — check against the recording
  • ★★★ John says the Industrial Revolution, which made ice in summer, blueberries in winter, modern medicine and faster-than-horse travel possible, began only this afternoon on the human calendar, about 10 hours ago. — 00:01:30
  • ★★ John says the human population took around 1,700 years to double between 1 CE and 1700 CE, but just 150 years to double again by 1850. — 00:01:41
  • ★ John says the human population has also doubled in his lifetime. — 00:01:56
  • ★★★ John lists what humans did in the last eight hours of the human year: flew to the Moon, raised greenhouse gases, deforested most of North America, cut child death 95%, eliminated smallpox, grew food supply, drove large mammals toward extinction. — 00:01:59 · child mortality
  • ★★ John says only around 12% of people now work in agriculture or hunting and gathering; most work in fields that did not exist 300 years ago, like paving roads, servers, oil rigs or YouTube videos. — 00:02:33 · YouTube

00:02:55 — Humans are bad at their new power but also much else; broadly in favor of humans; not optimistic yet hopeful we survive the polycrisis

  • ★★★ John says a common criticism is that humans are bad at having this much power; he agrees we are bad at it, a catastrophe, but also much else. — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ John says we must allow for complexity: humans have been both good and not nearly good enough at solving shared challenges, capable of great generosity and sacrifice and of short-sighted thinking and horrific violence. — 00:03:05
  • ★★ John cites Walt Whitman, writing amid industrialization, that we contain multitudes. — 00:03:24

  • ★★★ John says he is broadly in favor of humans: he likes the art we make, the things we figure out together and the ways we collaborate. — 00:03:30

    “I'm broadly in favor of humans.”

  • ★★★ John says none of this is unique to humans, but we are especially good at making art and figuring things out together, and we should celebrate that rather than conclude we just suck. — 00:03:38

  • ★★★ John says any simple narrative is untrue: humans are neither simply good nor simply bad but both. — 00:03:53
  • ★★ John says he is of course not optimistic about humanity long term: long term we're doomed. (playful) — 00:04:05
  • ★★ John confesses he is not feeling particularly optimistic about humanity in the short term and senses hard times ahead. — 00:04:10 · optimism
  • ★★★ John still thinks humanity will get through the polycrisis of climate change, growing violence and massive inequity, and survive our moment. — 00:04:25 · climate change, economic inequality
  • ★★ John says history shows we have been in a polycrisis for the entire industrial age, and yet here we are. — 00:04:37

00:04:49 — Humanity is worth the toil and hard-headed optimism; sign-off

  • ★★★ John says humanity is worth it: worth the toil of trying to make a better world and the hope and heartbreak of what his father calls hard-headed optimism. — 00:04:49 · Mike Green, optimism

    “what my father calls hard-headed optimism”

  • ★★ John says humans are new to this unprecedentedly powerful business and he has to believe we can get better at it. — 00:05:04

In the description and comments

  • ★ The description notes that Pizzamas, and with it the Pizzamas merch at pizzamas.com, is ending. — video description · Pizzamas
  • ★ In a reply to a viewer who wondered if they misheard, John confirms that 300 years ago almost all humans cooked their food over a fire. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: human nature · Industrial Revolution · optimism

Also: People: Julius Caesar (Roman statesman) · Mike Green · Walt Whitman

Works: Song of Myself

Organizations: YouTube

Concepts: agriculture · child mortality · climate change · deforestation · economic inequality · greenhouse gas · Hunter-gatherer · Megafauna · Neanderthal · polycrisis · smallpox · violence

Places: Beijing · Moon · North America · Roman Empire · Shanghai

Only in the description or credits: Pizzamas

Also centred on human nature: Zaatari: Thoughts from a Refugee Camp

Also centred on Industrial Revolution: The Molecule that Changed Everything

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