Ένα νέο είδος ανθρώπου [η απώλεια της ευφυίας]
I remember, as a little child, the evenings we used to lay on the porch mantel staring at the uncountable stars and the deep black of the pure sky. Youngsters, grownups and teenagers would array knowledge, rumors, and thoughts freed and unfolded by the void of the darkness.
I was amazed by a certain discussion and still remember clearly: how would humans look after thousands of years?
The prevailing suggestion was that human head would constantly grow bigger, in order to fit all the amazing things that humans think and create. Arms, on the other hand, and legs, wouldn't be that strong, since most labor in the future will be done by machines.
Here though, forty five years after that starlit evening, we learn that human brain has decreased in the last 10.000 years. The multifaceted human that new how to move in large areas like it was his palm, new of every plant and every animal, the waters and the rocks, new about traps and tricks, medicines and cures, knew how to get honey and how to make cheese, but, above all, knew how to negotiate his position in his community at any time, and even more how to decorate, dance, sing, enjoy and communicate with his world of fantasy, well this human is long gone.
Today, each one of us is trained in specific sections of knowledge, and in the longest part of his life is executing commands. Even in the case that someone isn't occupied in some form of standardized labor, the specialized knowledge he uses, in the biggest part of it, it is saved on print or in digital hard-disks. Meanwhile, the way back home is always the same and street signs are there to help in case somebody's mind gets preoccupied. Most important though, is the fact that we don't need to negotiate our relation to other people, since we are conveniently leaning on the supposed self-sufficiency [αυτάρκεια], provided by our monthly salary and the normality of the State's laws.
No matter how paradox it might sound, the human kind, which we have self-complacently named Sapiens, will become extinct, not due to some major catastrophe, but instead due to the loss of the human substance, the one that made each person a polypragmon, responsible for the survival of his own and his community's, competent to judge and feel about everything like any other.
The human that executes commands and bends by will to coercion, the human who lives as a minimum part of a huge machine in fear that at some point some might decide to discard him as useless or expensive, is definitely a new kind of human.
