What does it mean to say that we are living in a time of revolution?
Even political scientists can't agree on the meaning of “revolution,” but they can at least agree that surviving a revolution means surviving extraordinary change over a relatively short period of time. .
By that standard, we are definitely living in a revolutionary moment. The pace of change in both technology and culture over the past few decades has been staggering. But historically, is it really that rare? Things are always changing. Why are the digital revolutions so different? Is it about the scale and scope of change, or both?
Fareed Zakaria hosts CNN GPS He is also a columnist for the Washington Post. his new book, The Age of Revolutions: Progress and Reaction from 1600 to the Presentseeks to understand the present by situating it within this historical pattern of revolution that begins in the 16th century Netherlands and ends with the digital age.
We recently invited Zachariah. gray zone He talks about those patterns and why he thinks this may be one of the most revolutionary times in human history. Below are excerpts from the conversation, edited for length and clarity.As always, there's more throughout the podcast, so listen and follow gray zone Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.
Sean Illing
People may be surprised to learn that you consider the Industrial Revolution to be the “mother of all revolutions.” Why do we attach so much importance to this period?
Fareed Zakaria
Because it created the very modern world. The Industrial Revolution lifts humanity out of thousands of years of poverty, backwardness, and disease and accelerates the growth of living standards. It also gives us the idea that we are now a self-sustaining process of constant growth, or that we just expect the economy to grow each year more than it has in the past. And it was a completely new phenomenon.
This is because we are now able to do something that was previously thought to be technologically impossible: harnessing the energy of inanimate objects. The Industrial Revolution is actually an energy revolution, all of which completely reshape society as we move from an agricultural world to an industrial world.
People forget, but places like Harvard have been agricultural schools for as long as there's been an element of trade. why? This is because in colonial America, 95% of the population was engaged in agriculture. The Industrial Revolution brought about a social transformation from an agricultural society to a modern industrial society, completely overturning the politics of the time.
Sean Illing
The pace and scale of social change are crucial here, and perhaps the most important variable. The book opens with the famous quote from Marx and Engels that the soil is fertile for revolution, as the world in which people live continues to be upended and uprooted by capitalism. As much as they were right about that, and I think they were, that doesn't seem all that encouraging as the pace of change continues to accelerate.
Fareed Zakaria
Yes, absolutely. That's Marx and Engels. They were bad economists, but they were good social scientists. In the 1840s, they realized that the nature of capitalism is this constant progress and change, because it's always creating something new. And capitalism, they say, will inevitably create new wants and new needs.
So even when we think we have done all we can, we find that we need something new, and that new need leads the economy to new forms of dynamism and innovation. This is why they write that “all solids dissolve in air.” So what they're talking about is that any belief system that you have is going to collapse. The reason is that capitalism has changed the fundamental structures on which that belief system was based.
At the end of the book, I quote the great political columnist Walter Lippmann. He wrote in his 1929 that the central problem of our time is that the “acid of modernity” is essentially dissolving all belief systems, customs, and traditions. And the nature of modernity is that those acids never allow another belief system to be born or to sustain for long. Because they are dissolved. So we thought we were done with the software revolution that completely upended the economy, but now there's an AI revolution that's going to upend everything we thought we knew.
Sean Illing
Do you think we can look back and say that the digital revolution was the most revolutionary period in human history, in terms of how dramatically it changed human life, and indeed humanity?
Fareed Zakaria
I think so because I think what we're doing is even broader, faster and more disruptive. As you know, the industrial revolution is basically happening in a small number of countries clustered around the North Atlantic Ocean, so its scope is even wider. This revolution, by its very nature, is happening everywhere. When you go to India, you realize how smartphones have transformed the country. Poor farmers are now using smartphones to not only transact business in a different way, but also consume information and entertainment in a different way.
It's also happening faster. So it took a very long time for the first 100 million people to go online and use Google, and then it took about 2 months for ChatGPT's users to reach 100 million. We all know the statistics that it takes. So everything is accelerating.
But perhaps the most profound changes will come from AI and genetic engineering. Because, so far, to borrow Yuval Noah Harari's words for this point, what has really never changed throughout human history is basic mental abilities and basic physical abilities. Because there are two. Humans were just as smart. The brain hasn't changed much over the past 20,000 years, and neither has the human body. AI is now poised to dramatically increase the power of the human brain.
And we will be able to physically create humans who are far less susceptible to disease and capable of far greater physical performance. You're almost talking about the creation of Superman. There is clearly something very destructive about this idea that a person's basic mental and physical abilities can actually be changed.
Sean Illing
How did the Industrial Revolution change politics at the time, and how do those changes compare to the political turmoil of the digital age?
Fareed Zakaria
Because classical conservatism was fundamentally rooted in hierarchies of land, lineage, and religion, the right initially opposed the industrial revolution and the left favored it. It defended the aristocracy, the landed elite, the church, and the monarchy, all of which seemed to be destroyed by the Industrial Revolution. The left wing, on the other hand, represented merchants, liberals, and those opposed to the monarchy and the established church and its authority.
But by the end of the industrial revolution, a kind of new politics emerges. And the new politics is that the roles have been reversed. The right now supports the industrial revolution, or capitalism, because they believe it has only created a new plutocratic elite, and that they have no qualms defending that new industrial elite. Because I noticed it. And while the left has supported things like free markets and free trade, they have realized that it has led to massive inequality and forced labor for workers.
This change essentially created modern politics, which lasted for 150 years. The left wanted to regulate capitalism, and the right wanted minimal state intervention. That powerful framework is about to be overturned. But will it be that powerful a change? We don't know. Indeed, the current modern momentum, acidity, is just as strong, but the reason is that what we seem to be returning to is a kind of politics based on identity, culture, nationalism and national chauvinism. That means there is. Kind of special.
India is witnessing the rise of Hindu nationalism. Turkey saw the rise of a type of Turkish nationalism fused with Islam. In Russia, a type of orthodox Russian nationalism that sees Moscow as the Third Rome is on the rise. Han nationalism can be seen in China. That is, there are common themes, but they all manifest in completely different ways. And I don't think you can imagine the exact same common conversation or common allegiance that everyone would have to this one idea.
Sean Illing
We don't know what's on the other side of all this change, but what do you think the risks are at this point?
Fareed Zakaria
I think betting is really liberal democracy. Because what's happening at this point is people who are displaced, anxious, angry, radicalized, and the focus of their anger is basically destroying the system that created all this change, the world. Because it's about doing. You can't not invent AI. Globalization is so pervasive and interpenetrating that it is practically irreversible. Maybe we can do a little less, but for example, how can we stop the globalization of digital goods, which are increasingly becoming the most important goods?
So it's not a highly targeted environment, but politics is, and it tends to completely disrupt and undermine liberal democracies and make them completely illiberal, and this is happening in many places, not just the United States. This is a cause for concern. The worry is that one illiberal act will lead to another illiberal act.
Sean Illing
If the liberal era declines, do you think it's because liberalism devoured itself? It unleashed so much innovation, growth, change, and cultural disorientation, and the anxiety it created. Is it because it actually collapsed under qualitative?
Fareed Zakaria
That's a very clever way of saying it. But yes, you're right that it produced a very accelerated change, but then it turned out that we humans don't have the ability to sensibly navigate that level of change. We have given in to our fears and emotions and have failed to find a way to create a sense of ground and balance to get us through this time. I think I've experienced backlash before, so I'm ultimately not that pessimistic.
One of the most transformative periods in the Industrial Revolution was actually the Second Industrial Revolution from 1880 to 1920. Everything will be electrified: cars, telegraphs, movies. And look at the disorientation it created and the backlash it created. What did we get out of all this? We had communism, fascism, a world war, and the collapse of the world's three great empires in World War I.
We've been there before, and I think liberalism has certainly found a way to come back. This is because humans ultimately want to be free. They like progress. They want the fruits of liberalism. I continue to hope that what we are talking about is a temporary setback and not a permanent reversal.
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