What do we want to want?

Yuval Noah Harari ends his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind with the open question “What do we want to want?”, in regards to what humans should strive for in the long-term when we achieve god-like powers thanks to progress in bio- and infotech.

Here’s my take.

What do we want to want?

We should optimise for the aggregate, subjective well-being of all living beings. With well-being, partly consisting of pure chemical release of dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin — partly of a shared unifying desire as a species to transcend into an even higher state of all-embracing euphoria and accumulation of knowledge. The desire to fully understand the universe and the act of Being. Both collective meaning and vision, coupled with the pure sensation of euphoria.

One could argue, that striving for the chemical well-being (the actual enjoyable sensation in our bodies) — is futile. Especially when we consider the possibility of completely transcending into the realm of information technology, metamorphosing the human psyche to structures more effective than our current model of thinking. Is this transition possible without losing the idea of Us? Without losing the simple core belief that “We are humans”? Here is a clear choice we have to take if we want to set out at long term-strategy. Do we want this notion to be an end in itself? I would argue that we do. We should strive for the preservation of the notion of “Us humans”, even if we may very well leave the shell of Homo sapiens we inhabit today. I believe it’s paramount to sustain this shared feeling. As long as we manage to preserve this, the other part of the vision becomes bleak. If we can transcend into the realm of computers and information technology, it could be possible to let go of the desire for euphoria, as this is purely chemical. In a fully digitalised mind, we could free ourselves from the animalistic, primal urges rooting from the limbic system. These urges would completely lose their significance.

In the long term, what would be left is a fully digitalised human society and collective idea of identity where the absolute core axiom is the preservation of “Humans”, and full submersion in the acquisition of the seemingly infinity domains of knowledge.

This scenario assumes that we leave the domain of Homo sapiens, our bodies — to free us from primal urges. However, If we are never able to leave this domain, it is as mentioned in the beginning, of high importance to optimise for these urges as well.