What was the principal take-away from the 20th century?
Atomic energy? DNA? Penicillin? Or, something from the world of art or philosophy or psychology? The title question leaves plenty of room for debate.
My answer is that the most important learning of the century was disabusing ourselves of the notion that some people are inferior. Put the other way round, the most important misconception of the last century was the belief that some people were superior.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the existence of superior individuals and groups was widely accepted. Although there were some who disagreed, far more were eager to believe that their own kind were exceptional, and they were willing to degrade and exploit those whom they saw as their inferiors. Belief in the validity of such judgmental comparisons underlay much of the manmade suffering for which the 20th century is rightly known.
Well into the last century:
* Imperial powers believed themselves superior to the peoples they colonized and exploited.
* The doctrine of White Supremacy took many forms, including Jim Crow and Apartheid.
* Gentiles deemed Jews an inferior race.
* Ethnocentrism was the norm.
* The rich looked down their noses at the poor.
* Male supremacy and patriarchy were all but universal.
* Dominion over the Earth was defended as a God-given right.
* Co-religionists typically believed their faith superior to others.
* Heterosexuals regarded their moral superiority as self-evident.
* People with physical or mental disabilities were stigmatized.
* Native-born citizens felt superior to immigrants, and earlier immigrants felt superior to later arrivals.
* Traditional hierarchies of class and caste persisted. White collar workers looked down on blue.
* The academic world both mirrored and reinforced these valuations. Intelligence tests were regarded as certifying mental superiority and were used to justify consigning low-scorers to low-status jobs.
No doubt further examples will come to mind. But before going on, it is crucial to get one thing straight. I am not saying that differences do not exist or that performance cannot be judged, let alone that competition is bad. Of course some golfers are better than others, some musicians have more fans, some nations have higher income per capita, and some politicians outpoll their rivals.
What I'm saying is that ranking higher on a particular scale does not support a more general claim of superiority as a person. The winners of a race in a track meet are not superior human beings. If you insist, you can say that Mary was "superior" in the 400 meter dash on Saturday, but really all that means is that she crossed the finish line ahead of her competitors on that day in that event. The gold medal is her rightful reward, but it doesn't mean that she's a superior person. Larger, broader claims to superiority are unfounded, unseemly, and, as the 20th century amply demonstrates, treacherous.
The trouble with the superior/inferior distinction is that it's used to confer or deny ancillary benefits, ones that go far beyond just rewards for winning a particular competition. Worse, claims to superiority are invoked to justify degradation, exploitation, and even the extermination of "inferior" individuals, groups, ethnicities, cultures and peoples.
Because untold suffering has been licensed by presumed superiority, my nominee for the most important takeaway from the 20th century is the hard-won realization that applying the superior/inferior distinction to persons or peoples is specious. Such comparisons are odious. They present a grave danger not only to those deemed inferior, but also to those who pride themselves on their superiority.
This is not to say that imperialism, colonialism, exceptionalism, racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, etc. have been eradicated. Hate-mongers and demagogues are constantly popping up and pandering to those who, doubting their own worth, hunger for assurances of superiority. American politicians, even those who know better, cultivate feelings of superiority by concluding their speeches with "America is the greatest country on Earth." While such nationalistic puffery used to be music to patriots' ears, it is increasingly cringe-making. To those who've come of age in a globalized world, exceptionalism rings false.
I can hear the objections already. Everywhere you look, some group, braced by a sense of its superiority, is demeaning or belittling those it regards as beneath it. Yes, such behavior persists into the 21st century, but increasingly it's met with skepticism if not condemnation.
Here's evidence of this change:
* Imperialism yielded to decolonization. The British, French, and others withdrew from Asia and Africa. Imperial designs of the Germans, Italians, and Japanese -- intoxicated with their presumed ethnic superiority -- led to the utter destruction of these would-be conquerors. The collapse of the Soviet Empire in the final decade of the century punctuated the end of empire.
* White Supremacy has become indefensible; the N-word unspeakable.
* Male supremacy and patriarchy are in retreat.
* Environmental protection and animal rights are gathering support.
* Homosexuality came to be seen as inborn, like heterosexuality. Lady Gaga's hit -- "Born That Way" -- sums it up.
* Disabilities were de-stigmatized and people with disabilities laid claim to equal dignity.
* By century's end, reflexive acceptance of entitlement and authority was out. Public skepticism, if not cynicism, toward anyone or any nation pretending to superiority was the new norm.
The hateful epithets that fell easily from people's lips until mid-century have lost legitimacy; they embarrass not their targets but those who utter them. The ethnocentrism of 1900 now seems myopic. In its place is the idea that different cultures, like different languages, are simply different. Each is a complex social system with its own strengths and weaknesses. Ethnic or sectarian differences are not grounds for exploitation or predation.
One person is no more superior to another than a dachshund to a poodle, a dog to a cat, or a butterfly to a rose. Persons, groups, nations are incommensurate.
Individuals and groups react negatively to being labeled inferior, and sooner or later they will get even with those who abuse them. As Shakespeare slyly points out in The Merchant of Venice, the victimized, once they gain the upper hand, are usually inclined "to better the instruction." To put it bluntly, condescension is a time bomb.
It cost millions of lives, but it seems to have dawned on us that a vital part of a good defense is not giving offense in the first place. What's more offensive than claiming superiority for your religion or country, and expecting others to welcome your tutelage?
Postscript and Preview
Learning from the past is hard enough. Foretelling the future is impossible. Still, we must take the long view if only because a glimpse of where we're headed can persuade us to change course to avoid a calamity.
So I conclude with another question and hazard another guess:
Which of the ideas that we now take for granted will do us the most damage over the course of this century? Or, putting it the other way round, for which of our delusions will our descendants most pity us?
To encourage you to formulate your own answer, I'll give you mine.
The 21st century will reveal that, like superiority, selfhood is illusory.
What I'm suggesting is that there really are no separate selves. The word self is itself a misnomer. Autonomous, stand-alone selfhood is an illusion. Not only are we not better than anyone else, our selves are so entangled and enmeshed with other selves as to make individual selves indistinguishable. Separate selves, like superior selves, are a dangerous delusion.
Senator Elizabeth Warren pleased some and angered others when she pointed out that none of us can do anything by ourselves. That "it takes a village." That's an understatement. Actually, each of us is a village. We've been internalizing our "village" since our first stirrings in the womb.
Not only can no one do anything by him or herself, no self can even be by itself. To exist is to co-exist. Absent human interaction, minds do not develop or they break down. That's why solitary confinement is torture. Our selves are either continually, communally co-created or they disintegrate.
During the current century we'll have to reconceive our relationship to smart machines as their creative intelligence overtakes our own. Dealing with this humbling development will change our sense of self even more profoundly than the 20th-century realization that we're not as special as we thought.
Reimagining human selfhood will take the combined efforts of philosophers, theologians, psychologists, neuroscientists, artists, and others. I'm sure that the answer I've broached here will give way to a succession of better ones. Coming to a new understanding of the relationship between individuality and collectivity -- between self and other -- and then reorganizing our social and political relationships accordingly will be the defining challenge and crowning achievement of the 21st century.
By 2100, we'll have very different answers to the age-old questions: Who am I? Who are you? Who are we? Our new answers will cause us, in partnership with the intelligent machines we build, to remake the world.
An expanded version of Robert W. Fuller's exploration of the future of the Self--and how our understanding of selfhood affects our sense of individuality, our interpersonal relationships, and our politics--is available as a free e-booklet here.