Four Revolutions

First came the cognitive revolution,

when homos became sapiens,

their bodies, thanks to evolution,

sometimes more shapely ‘uns

than minds like ours which all too often

are ugly, being cruel and mean,

with hearts that don’t, as they should, soften

for strangers whom we quarantine.

The agricultural one came next,

replacing all the hunter gatherers,

who by the change were surely vexed,

seeing farmers rather as

we see the men who with hi-tech

force us to change how we behave,

making of our lives a wreck

unless we surf upon their wave.

The scientific one, the third,

is not the last, though it is what

we’re now experiencing. We gird,

with new inventions we think hot,

ourselves, and hope we may survive

the damage it has done already.

Into its depths we all must dive,

from surfboards where we stand unsteady,

but it’s not certain we will rise

from even shallows to the surface.

That’s what all homo sapiens who are wise

should wonder — and makes me feel nervous.

If we survive the third, which I

think doubtful, we’ll be overtaken

by a fourth. The die is cast.

The krakens that we will awaken

will be the robots we create

to do what we do, only better,

making obsolete all hate,

which they’ll turn into a dead letter,

thus bringing to the planet peace,

protecting us from climate change,

while making sure that we don’t cease,

and have a future that’s long range.

— 

In “Revolutionary road: The pitfalls of political upheaval,” TLS, 7/12/24, Timothy Hall Breen, reviewing THE AGE OF REVOLUTION: And the generations who made it by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal and AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: Progress and backlash from 1600 to the present by Fareed Zakaria, writes:

On the eve of independence Thomas Paine assured American revolutionaries, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again … The birthday of a new world is at hand”. The moment promised an end to aristocratic privilege and the establishment of a republic based on the will of the people. Paine’s contemporary Gouverneur Morris, a wealthy New Yorker who eventually supported independence, was more skeptical about the participation of ordinary people in politics. Observing a crowd protesting British colonial policy, he grumbled: “The mob begins to think and reason. Poor reptiles! It is with them a vernal morning … and ere noon they will bite”. Morris played a central role in drafting the United States Constitution, adding on his own initiative the celebrated declaration “We the People”. But the document, while creating a stable federal government, simultaneously curtailed popular democracy – through the establishment of the electoral college, for example – and preserved the enslavement of African Americans.