New Philosopher

At a tech forum in Moscow back in 2013, Peter Diamandis, a lead player in just about everything ‘tech’ – life extension, space exploration, Singularity University in Silicon Valley – discussed the innovations that will drive human behaviour in the co

One way of looking at technology over the last century is to see a story of unalloyed, whirlwind progress, rapidly fulfilling some of humankind’s longest standing and most deeply held desires. Those desires include longevity (or even immortality, dep

The Classic of Filial Piety, a Confucian treatise, depicts a dialogue between Confucius and his disciple Tseng-tzu about the meaning and application of filial piety. In it, Confucius notes the importance not only of serving one’s parents when they ar

Adam Smith famously defined empathy as “changing places in fancy with the sufferer”. It’s often said that this capacity to imagine the life of another is the basis for human morality – or at least human morality insofar as it is encapsulated in the s

Years ago I spoke with a 16-year-old girl who was considering the idea of having a computer companion in the future, and she described the upside to me. It’s not that the robot she had imagined, a vastly more sophisticated Siri, was so inspiring. It’

A man walks into a mall. His eyes scan the crowds. Finally, he spots what he’s looking for: a teenage girl. Maybe 12 or 13 years old. Alone. “Wow, you’re really beautiful, you know,” he says. If she ignores him, dismisses him, or accepts the complime

The International Labor Organization estimated that 40 million people around the world were victims of human trafficking in 2016.That’s 5.4 victims of modern slavery for every 1,000 people in the world. Source: www.ilo.org In Africa and the Mid

You can walk to the beach from where we are staying. It’s a long peel of dun-coloured sand bordered by tidy rainbow summer houses, monotonous black and white condos, and monstrous blue McMansions that blister the length of the Delmarva Peninsula. On

A hypothetical scenario: you’re crossing the street in your neighbourhood when a muscle-bound young man in a sport utility vehicle shoots across your path, missing you by inches. You spend the next few minutes boiling with fury, ranting internally at

A recent study suggests that the big toe was one of the last parts of the human foot to evolve. The Cyrus Cylinder is the world’s first charter of human rights. After conquering the city of Babylon in 539 B.C., Cyrus – the first king of ancient Pe

Over time, the idea of ‘being human’ has surely meant – and will continue to mean – many things. There has never been just one answer. But one thing it ought to involve today is the ability to recognise that the question itself is a problem. We human

In my mind one of the defining elements of being human is the ability to care about others – not merely to say that we care, but to truly experience that caring; to have empathy. We have the capacity to feel the emotions others experience as if those

Escorting a group of children to the city one day, I became embroiled in a game they wanted to play called ‘laugh-o’. The aim of the game is to count the number of people who laugh out loud. Whoever heard the laughter first had to yell “laugh-o”. The

Many of the problems in the world today, when one reflects upon them, call for an answer to an ancient question: What is it to be human? I believe there is no single immutable answer. We humans are what we conceive ourselves to be, by which I mean tw

I was five years old when I first learned about DNA. My mother was talking to my sister about her ‘genes’. I was confused. She was wearing shorts, not jeans. But as soon as our mother explained that the genes you inherit have the same basic code, how

What does it mean to be human? The immensity of this question can be boiled down to an old principle proposed by the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel, which he attributed to fellow philosopher Baruch Spinoza: “Determination is negation.” But negation

In the summer of 2012, the same year that scientists fully decoded the genome of the bonobo, the last great ape, my partner and I were stalked by a female grizzly bear. We first saw her high above us in a field of huckleberry bushes as we hiked along

Do you have a sweet tooth? Do you struggle to resist the siren call of a chocolate fudge brownie or the allure of a bag of boiled sweets? Don’t blame yourself. Blame evolution. That’s what I do. I have a lifetime of experience grappling with my sweet

Consider this fact of modern life: nearly all of the technological products that we buy and use are designed with planned obsolescence in mind. They are built specifically to fail after a relatively short period – one year, two, maybe five. If you do

All human beings, says the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are born free and equal in dignity and rights. But who is the ‘human’ of human rights? The Universal Declaration, and other official human rights documents, take the answer to be self-

Almost two millennia ago, the Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger wrote a consolation letter to his mother, Helvia, on the occasion of his banishment from Rome. Seneca, who had been sent into exile to Corsica on the charge of having an affair with t

Why do humans think they’re the bosses of the world? It seems odd to think of humans as the bosses of the word, because there’s so much in it that we don’t control. Right now, as I’m writing this, it’s a hot and windy day outside. I’d like it to be

Between 1965 and 1985, the Western self was transformed. We turned from anti-materialistic, stick-it-to-the-Man hippies into greed-is-good yuppies. We would be surprised if an individual went through such an extreme metamorphosis. But an entire cultu

The decision was made instantly. My son Edward was in Rome for the second leg of Liverpool’s Champions League soccer semi-final on May 2. I was at home in Brooklyn, pretending to prepare for a class, but really watching the game. We are devoted fans

Late on a May evening in 1951, a four-year-old Aboriginal boy from Point Pearce Station on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula was diagnosed with tetanus. Dr Wallman ordered the boy be sent immediately to the Wallaroo Hospital, 70 kilometres away, desp

We’d just emerged from a long and rather liquid dinner on a barge along the Taedong River, in the heart of North Korea’s showpiece capital of Pyongyang. Two waitresses had finished joining our English tour guide, Nick, in some more than boisterous ka