Sublime

Science was defeated by faith.

However, humanism offered an alternative.

So over the last 70,000 years humankind first spread out, then separated into distinct groups, and finally merged again.

While human evolution was crawling at its usual snail’s pace, the human imagination was building astounding networks of mass cooperation, unlike any other ever seen on earth.

Perhaps most important, artificial intelligence and biotechnology are giving humanity the power to reshape and reengineer life.

If we are not careful, we think of the twentieth century as initially ‘not yet affected’ by the momentous event of 1831, and then being ‘changed’ by the repercussions as they sweep past on their way to the twenty-first century and beyond.

Jared Diamond, in The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?