Who Are We?

Who and what are we, that we have created a digital revolution engulfing the entire world? I take an evolutionary perspective influenced by E.O. Wilson’s sociobiology and by primatologists such as Richard Wrangham and Franz de Waal and propose we have evolved a core set of primitive drives. These include the pursuit of pleasure, power and dominance, the capacity to be empathic and protective, the need to control, the fear of death, our need to affiliate with those like us, our drive to be curious and to understand, our drive to be led and protected, our hunger for novelty and our feeling of never being satisfied.

Cultural expression of these drives has differed over history, but these basic human drives are universal. Culture is taught through family, education, and increasingly through media and is expressed in the dominant beliefs and practices of modern day. The digital world is the newest expression of these drives, especially the drives for control and power, for immediate gratification, and for the new, different and better.

Humans have a dual nature consisting of a Better Angels (good) side and a Crooked Timber (evil) side. All human interactions are based on the conflict within us created by the opposing pulls of these two sides. In all literature, from Zoroastrian Asha vs. Druj, or the Upanishads, or Plato, Beowulf up to Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter, the conflict between good and evil is acted out in every culture, person, and relationship and is manifested in social structures. The third chapter of The Digital Revolution explores the literary, spiritual, religious and scientific manifestations of these two sides.