'Incompatible'

Editor:

I enjoyed reading the recent “Field Notes” by Barry Evans on Jared Diamonds’ Guns, Germs and Steel (Feb. 6).

Reminded me of reading it 25 years ago. The deep history of humans expanding around our planet over tens of thousands of years, reaching the climate calming period of the Holocene and agriculture, developing cities and states.

It was so well written that I next read Diamonds’ The Third Chimpanzee and then Collapse. Evolutionary biology, real deep time humans-on-earth history, and the dangers we face due to the consequences of our actions.

Probably learned more from those three books about broad human history than from any college class.

Recently I finished reading a book Nexus (2024) by Harari, that gave me the same feeling of excitement. I had just learned a great deal of vital human history! The history of our information sharing, from spoken stories to the printing press and on down the timeline to our 21st century.

Humans excel because of our ability to cooperate in large numbers through language and storytelling. But information is not truth. Many of our foundational beliefs are simply “inter-subjective stories/myths/fictions” that we all agree upon; therefore, they seem to “work.” Such as our money, national borders and religions.

With hunter/gatherers the small group size naturally allowed communication and were democratic. Large-scale democracies require communication. Books, newspapers, radio, television all functioned well in later history.

Now in the 21st century, the technology revolution, in social media’s search for eyeballs, clicks and profit maximization, turns to sensationalism and outrage as the candy that attracts. Truth and reality, which take more effort to sort out, are not a goal.

Democracy seems incompatible with our new technology where information/misinformation/disinformation are one. Extremism sells, there are no self-correcting mechanisms as there are in science, thus dictatorships flourish.

Robert Fornes, McKinleyville