Humans 2.0

A utopian humanifesto

We live in an era that magnifies unhappiness. The 24-hour news cycle mines endless sources of misery and transmits them into our pockets. Social media algorithms heighten loneliness and addiction while rewarding and amplifying outrage and envy. The principle of idiocracy — that dimwits have no issue declaiming their every thought while the intelligent hesitate to contribute — brings pervasive despair as we perceive we are swimming in an ocean of stupidity. Micro-video formats, TikToks and reels, foreground the shallow and idiotic while splintering attention spans.

Don’t get me wrong. I feast on reels featuring clever dogs, mean cats, and snowboarding toddlers. But I do so chiefly as an antidote to the misery generated by the rest of modern life. And these reel fests spawn long-term unhappiness as you realise you have wasted yet another chunk of your precious existence on the consumption of fluff rather than the creation of substance.

Added to all this, the Information Age has become the…