Harari Gets it Wrong Part 1
1. Harari the Changeling
Yuval Noah Harari is something of a changeling. Depending on who he’s talking to, he’s either urging billionaires to jump on the Transhumanist Express while it’s still at the station; or, conversely, a somber-voiced Jeremiah warning the plebes about their dire roles as future “bio-hack” experiments. Unfortunately Harari’s role as revisionist historian and technocratic prophet fails to stand up to close scrutiny. Here’s an example of how he comes across as a post-Enlightenment moralist, brows all furrowed…
“One central project (of the 21st century) will be to protect humankind and the planet as a whole from the dangers inherent in our own power. We have managed to bring famine, plague and war under control thanks largely to our phenomenal economic growth, which provides us with abundant food, medicine, energy and raw materials. Yet this same growth destabilizes the ecological equilibrium of the planet in myriad ways, which we have only begun to explore.”[1]
But—wait for it—as one reads on through either Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind or Homo Deus: A Brief History of the Future, not one but several Hararis come out. And not all of them convinced that the Enlightenment was a positive step forward for humanity. Deeply suspicious of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “social contract” of liberalism and even more so of the doctrine of humanism. And a little contemptuous of anyone in the herd having “individuality.” One can’t help but find lurking beneath his various guises a deep misanthropy that echoes the World Economic Forum philosophy. You know, the belief that if only humans were severely reduced in numbers, tightly controlled in all their activities, biologically strip-mined and constantly monitored, we could “save” the Earth. And of course, the billionaire eco-saviours will be there to reap all the profits. “You will own nothing, but you will be happy!” And who will own everything? It’s like an elder activist friend of mine is fond of saying: “What do the rich want? Everything!”
2. Re-engineering the Brain
Our destabilization of ecological balance is not limited to the planet itself. We as humans are part of this planet—what we do to it we do to ourselves. Well before the doubling of drug overdose rates in some parts of the world during Covid lockdowns,[2] modern societies were hip-deep in disillusionment, leading to a historically unprecedented epidemic of depression. Harari gets this right:
“Despite our unprecedented achievements in the last few decades, it is far from obvious that contemporary people are significantly more satisfied than their ancestors in bygone years. Indeed, it is an ominous sign that despite higher prosperity, comfort and security, the rate of suicide in the developed world is also much higher than in traditional societies.”[3]
And what would Harari have us do? What is the way toward equilibrium—dare I say it, some grasp of inner peace? Studying the Bible, the Koran, or the Tao? Volunteering at a food bank? Mentoring a younger person? Serving something higher than ourselves? Well, not quite anything as inward as all that:
“If science is right and our happiness is determined by our biochemical system, then the only way to ensure lasting contentment is by rigging this system. Forget economic growth, social reforms and political revolutions: in order to raise global happiness levels, we need to manipulate human biochemistry.”[4]
“It will be necessary to change our biochemistry and re-engineer our bodies and minds. So we are working on that. You may debate whether it is good or bad, but it seems that the second great project of the 21st century—to ensure global happiness—will involve re-engineering Homo sapiens so that it can enjoy everlasting pleasure.”[5]
Okay. You know what I’m going to say this time. Harari gets it wrong! He is ignoring more than three decades of experience in the clinical use of SSRI (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor) anti-depressants, which have proven through repeated studies to be little or no better than placebo, rife with unpleasant side effects, and addictive to boot. “SSRIs significantly increase the risk of both serious and non-serious adverse events. The potential small beneficial effects seem to be outweighed by harmful effects,” concluded one meta-study. [6] As Dr. Peter Breggin reports about the “black box” FDA warning for Zoloft (circa 2010), it “specifically warns about the increased risk of medication-induced suicidality during “the initial few months of a course of drug therapy, or at times of dose changes, either increases or decreases.”[7] But if you’re lucky, instead of attempting to kill yourself, you’ll get off with one or more of the black box’s laundry list of galling physical complaints:
“The following symptoms, anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility aggressiveness, impulsivity, akathisia (psychomotor restlessness), hypomania, and mania, have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for other indications, both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric.”[8]
As Robert Whitaker writes in his astonishing exposé of anti-depressants, Anatomy of an Epidemic, “From a scientific point of view, it is apparent today that the chemical imbalance hypothesis was always wobbly… Yet a societal belief in chemical imbalances has remained… ‘The evidence does not support any of the biochemical theories of mental illness,’ concluded Elliot Valenstein, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Michigan…”[9]
Following on the pioneering work of Dr. Abram Hoffer, the founder of orthomolecular medicine, we might modify this conclusion slightly by saying that his research into schizophrenia demonstrated the role of basic amino acid imbalances—particularly the B vitamin niacin—in mental illness.[10] But this could be described as a nutritional deficiency rather than the lack of certain neurotransmitters, as in the hypothesis used to justify treatment with SSRI drugs. Dr. Hoffer’s trials demonstrated startling improvements in schizophrenic patients treated with mega-doses of vitamins B3 (niacin) and C. Given that Dr. Hoffer was a biochemist, his research suggests that there’s no need to reinvent the brain’s biochemistry, just rebalance it with freely available natural agents.
Though you might think Dr. Hoffer would thus have been welcomed as a great healer in psychiatry, his research during the mid-1950s coincided with the highly profitable drug industry just then taking off with the sale of tranquilizers and anti-anxiety medications such as Miltown. This meant that Dr. Hoffer had to be relegated to the fringes of the medical profession, despite his clinical successes. “In a medical profession that ‘knows’ vitamins do not cure ‘real’ diseases, the young director of psychiatric research was a dissenter,” notes one biography.[11] Full disclosure: After a disastrous and life-threatening experience with an addictive SSRI drug, I consulted Dr. Hoffer and finally found the first consistent relief from depression I had ever experienced using his high-dose niacin treatment.
But don’t worry, says Harari, the way out of our psychological dilemmas is to just re-engineer our brains. How’s that working out so far? Harari seems to think the human body is just a simile for a computer’s “plug and play” (and we all know how that usually works out) or some biochemical Lego set that only needs the pieces redesigned to make us all, not only better, but—eventually—gods! (More on this in Part 2.) So just how is the plug and play working out so far? A Yahoo report published February 11, 2022 gave us a progress report on the transhumanists’ wet dream—Elon Musk’s neuralink technology:
“Out of a total of 23 monkeys implanted with Musk’s Neuralink brain chips at the University of California Davis between 2017 and 2020, at least 15 reportedly died.”[12]
Wait. It gets worse.
“Pretty much every single monkey that had had implants put in their head suffered from pretty debilitating health effects,” said the PCRM’s research advocacy director Jeremy Beckham. “They were, frankly, maiming and killing the animals.”[13]
A complaint was filed with the US Department of Agriculture, “accusing UC Davis and Neuralink of nine violations of the Animal Welfare Act.”
Neuralink chips were implanted by drilling holes into the monkeys’ skulls. One primate developed a bloody skin infection and had to be euthanized. Another was discovered missing fingers and toes, “possibly from self-mutilation or some other unspecified trauma,” and had to be put down. A third began uncontrollably vomiting shortly after surgery, and days later “appeared to collapse from exhaustion/fatigue.” An autopsy revealed the animal suffered from a brain hemorrhage.[14]
Now, to be fair, Musk has made much of the fact that a key motivator for him is the technology’s potential for treating people with traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries. But does such a goal justify the torture and terrible suffering of lab animals like these monkeys? And Oh!—there’s Harari’s favourite plaything again, biochemical engineering—which in Musk’s experiments is said to hold hope of curing depression and other mental health disorders. The old debunked chemical brain cure again.
Last but certainly not least, there’s that ahem, pesky issue of profit as a motive: “connecting humans to the internet for everything from music streaming to near-telepathic communication,” where Musk’s buddies Google and Zuckerberg can harvest, repackage and sell your biological and social data ad infinitum. “Musk previously said that he hoped to begin human trials in 2021, but that goal has been pushed back to 2022.” Based on these findings, “the brain chips may be nowhere near ready.”[15] In this context Harari proves himself adept at hedging his bets, admitting that, “Given our past record and our current values, we are likely to reach out for bliss, divinity and immortality—even if it kills us… Adopting these particular projects might be a big mistake… My prediction is focused on what humankind will try to achieve in the 21st century—not what it will succeed in achieving.”[16]
Stay tuned for Part 2: “Harari and Co. in the Quest for Immortality”….
[1] Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Signal/McClelland & Stewart, 2015 (2017 ed.), p. 23.
[2] In my home province of British Columbia, “In 2021, there were 2,224 suspected illicit drug toxicity deaths, the most ever recorded in a year. This represents a 26% increase over the number of deaths seen in 2020 (1,767),” another record year for overdoses. Source: BC Coroners Service, “Illicit Drug Toxicity Deaths in BC, January 1, 2011–December 31, 2021.” https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/birth-adoption-death-marriage-and-divorce/deaths/coroners-service/statistical/illicit-drug.pdf
[3] Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Signal/McClelland & Stewart, 2015 (2017 ed.), p. 38.
[4] Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Signal/McClelland & Stewart, 2015 (2017 ed.), p. 45.
[5] Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Signal/McClelland & Stewart, 2015 (2017 ed.), p. 49.
[6] “Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors versus placebo in patients with major depressive disorder,” Janus Christian Jakobsen, Kiran Kumar Katakam, Anne Schou, et al., BMC Psychiatry 2017; 17:58, National Library of Medicine, PubMed Central, February 8, 2017: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5299662/
[7] Dr. Peter R. Breggin, “Antidepressant-Induced Suicide, Violence, and Mania: Risks for Military Personnel,” Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Volume 12, Number 2, 2010, p. 112.
[8] Dr. Peter R. Breggin, “Antidepressant-Induced Suicide, Violence, and Mania: Risks for Military Personnel,” Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Volume 12, Number 2, 2010, p. 112.
[9] Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, Broadway Books, New York, 2010 (2015 ed.), p. 78.
[10] Robert Sealey, Robert G. Smith and Andrew W. Saul, “Abram Hoffer's 60 Years of Research and Discovery of the Orthomolecular Approach to Psychiatry,” Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, January 17, 2019: http://www.orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v15n03.shtml
[11] Orthomolecular Medicine Hall of Fame biography of Dr. Abram Hoffer, International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine: https://isom.ca/profile/abram-hoffer/
[12] “‘Extreme Suffering’: 15 of 23 Monkeys with Elon Musk’s Neuralink Brain Chips Reportedly Died,” Wren Graves, Yahoo Entertainment, February 11, 2022: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/extreme-suffering-15-23-monkeys-205653491.html
[13] “‘Extreme Suffering’: 15 of 23 Monkeys with Elon Musk’s Neuralink Brain Chips Reportedly Died,” Wren Graves, Yahoo Entertainment, February 11, 2022.
[14] “‘Extreme Suffering’: 15 of 23 Monkeys with Elon Musk’s Neuralink Brain Chips Reportedly Died,” Wren Graves, Yahoo Entertainment, February 11, 2022.
[15] “‘Extreme Suffering’: 15 of 23 Monkeys with Elon Musk’s Neuralink Brain Chips Reportedly Died,” Wren Graves, Yahoo Entertainment, February 11, 2022.
[16] Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Signal/McClelland & Stewart, 2015 (2017 ed.), pp. 64, 65, emphasis in original.