Magazine: Vilmos Csányi: ‘I am a very good old man’

Trade magazin’s Business Podcast, Future Talks with Szilvia Krizsó continues

– Does humanity still have a future?

– From a biological point of view humans are a young species, as the average age of the species is 10-12 million years. Humans are different from other species in that they have opened a new horizon of development with cultural evolution.

„We’ve become a population of single-person communities”

– What does this mean?

– Imagining things used to be very useful when our ancestors had to find the best way for killing an animal so that they can eat. After a while humans started sharing their thoughts with others – this is how languages were born. The small groups of people separated the ideas they deemed to be good from the bad ones. However, this system only worked while humans were living in small groups. Today 8 billion people can share their ideas in the media without any kind of control.

– What are the main dangers of this new phenomenon?

– Well, we invented the car but then realised that motor vehicles emit harmful gases, there are too many roads and horrific accidents…

– Would it be better for us to live a caveman life? There must be some kind of progress…

– Is it really progress what we call progress? We must solve a growing number of problems for more and more people. What are the new values that the modern lifestyle brought about?

– I think we have definitely made progress in one area: thanks to medicine, much more people can live a healthy life

– I don’t agree with you! Humans could always imagine the same amount of happiness for themselves whether they lived in a cave or a house. The brain’s capacity hasn’t changed. What we perceive as happiness today is the same thing as 100 years ago.

„I don’t believe that the future can be told”

– How can you turn the process of overpopulation around?

– It has already taken a U-turn! The average life expectancy is 70 years, but the number of babies born per family is decreasing from 3-4 to 1.2.

– In Hungary and China the government is urging couples to have as many babies as they can…

– If only one child is born in a family there will be too many old people one day and someone must work to support them. Governments are afraid that this won’t happen, so they want people to have more children.

– You and a colleague wrote a book in which you discuss the acceleration phenomenon, and mention drug use and obesity in connection with it.

– Early human communities consisted of 100-150 people. Everything was regulated and the rules didn’t allow taking drugs and ‘separating’ oneself from the community this way. Modern society protects everyone and provides everything – one can do whatever they want to, as long as they don’t set houses on fire, etc. Is this a good thing? No, because there is no control and humanity has developed in a way that it is the community that decides what is good and what is bad.

– Don’t you like this complete freedom then?

– I don’t like it, no. What we would need is a relationship between people which prioritises the community and not the individual.

– You are 86 years old. Supposedly you won’t live to be 186. Wouldn’t you like to know what the world will be like 100 years from now?

– If someone could tell me I would be happy to listen, but I don’t think it can be told. Even the words that could describe life 100 years from now don’t exist yet!

– Would you like to be a child today?

– No, thank you. I make a very good old man! //

This article was also published in 11/2021 of Trade magazin.