What is the existential risk of the century?

3 Nov 2023 · 1 min

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In this philosophical commentary, the speaker draws on Marshall McLuhan’s insight that violence stems from quests for identity, arguing that the digital frontier leaves individuals without a stable sense of self. He critiques the prevailing "authenticity" paradigm, describing it as a prison, and proposes a shift toward "profilicity"—a fluid, context‑dependent self‑presentation that enables "pattern‑breaking" rather than endless pattern‑making. While acknowledging external threats like climate change and nuclear war, he contends that the true 21st‑century existential danger lies in the collective psychological turmoil of billions of minds, a self‑destructive crisis that could annihilate humanity from within.

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As Marshall McLuhan correctly diagnosed, all forms of violence are quests for identity. When you live out on the frontier, you have no identity. If we stick with the authenticity paradigm on the digital virtual frontiers, we'll essentially have no identity because we will not yet have reperceived that authenticity is in fact a prison and profilicity is the prism, the ever-changing, ever-adapting, perceived differently in different contexts by different people. This is a paradigm shift that will allow us to move from relentless pattern-making to the more liberating pattern-breaking. Climate change and nuclear wars will be devastating, but at least these are problems of the outer world, issues that we can apply ourselves to. The confusion and crisis that could cause turmoil in 8 billion inner worlds could lead to the total destruction of humans from within. This is the existential threat of the 21st century, the real threat.