From the publisher. It’s been several decades since yoga has become international. What unique things will remain in people in a few decades?
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Rome and New York
Over the past 8 years, since the beginning of Obama's presidency, this crisis has clearly emerged in the United States. With Hillary's seemingly inevitable rise to power, nothing would have stopped its development. Trump's surprise election victory could create new dynamics. To assess a country's chances of recovery, it makes sense to compare its current state with the history of the decline of civilization that preceded ours.
Why did the Roman Empire die? The outstanding thinker and historian Niccolo Machiavelli identified the following reason: “Of all the changes, the most important was the change of religion, for the miracles of the new faith were opposed by the habit of the old. And from their collision, confusion and destructive discord arose among people. If the Christian religion showed unity, then there would be less disorder; but the enmity between the Greek, Roman, Ravenna churches, as well as between heretical sects and Catholics, depressed the world in many different ways.”
Christianity in Europe changed long and painfully. From 313, when Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which equalized the rights of Christianity and paganism in Rome, and to the time of the founding fathers of the United States who crossed the ocean, creating a constitution and a Bill of Rights based on the TANAKH - what formed the basis of the Judeo-Christian civilization, as it recently began to be called, has passed more than 14 centuries. The savagery of the Middle Ages, the Inquisition, and the long religious wars that claimed a significant part of the population of Europe have passed. The Reformation occurred, forming Protestantism, the version of Christianity associated with the creation of modern Western states.
The fact that not all Christianity is capable of becoming a worthy basis for society is evidenced by the sad stories of Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Catholicism, with its rigid sexual ethics, little capable of change, after centuries of excesses of religious wars and auto-da-fé, is today quietly dying out in Europe and survives only in Latin America and Africa. Orthodoxy disappeared in a large part of the territory of Byzantium conquered by the Turks, and in the twentieth century it failed monstrously in Russia. After the coup of 1917, the inhabitants of this empire forgot about Christian humility and, with bestial cruelty, began to destroy their fellow citizens and their country. They succeeded in this and created what they have. Now the big question is: will Russian Orthodoxy in the new conditions be capable of reviving the faith and the people.
In modern America, a significant segment of the population is undergoing a process similar to the ancient Roman one - a change of religion. But he is moving in the opposite direction - now Christianity is retreating, and paganism, similar to the ancient one, is advancing.
Christianity is dying out faster in Europe than in the United States. There, in most countries, only 5-10% of the population has been attending church for a long time. According to a recent survey, 38% of Americans said they go to church at least once a week. Sociologists divide this figure in half and believe that in reality it is less than 20%.
Among the gods of neo-paganism taking root in America, which has not yet acquired an established name and is called either liberalism or progressivism, is global warming, which requires the sacrifice of modern economics to this idol; feminism, which rejects traditional gender roles and wants to see women in all aspects of life as men; anti-racism, which has become racism in reverse, suggesting preferential rights to non-white minorities and inequality of different racial groups before the law, as well as other, small but nasty idols. Among the most destructive consequences of the return to paganism is the adoption by American progressive society of ancient sexual morality.
Sociologist David Goldman talks about that - in the ancient world:
“Pederasty was deeply embedded in Greek religion and was, above all, a cult of youth. Even Zeus was not immune to her and kidnapped the lovely boy Ganymede... According to Greek legend, the gods turned Narcissus into a flower to punish him for his proud refusal to his old lovers.”
Another phenomenon of ancient morality is infanticide. Aristotle suggested in his Politics that children with physical disabilities should be killed. It is clear that this was a continuation of the Spartan practice of throwing newborns who seemed weak into the abyss. Gradually, the murder of children became common in Greece. Usually girls were killed. They were not used for sex; they were not fit to be soldiers. Macedonian poet of the 3rd century BC. Poseidippus of Pella wrote: “Even rich men always get rid of their daughters.” A study conducted in 200 B.C. in the Greek colony of Miletus, found 188 sons and only 28 daughters among the townspeople.
It is not surprising that gradually a severe demographic catastrophe broke out in Greece. The Greek historian Strabo (63 BC - 21 AD) described Greece during the period of its capture by the Romans as “an absolutely abandoned territory ... Roman soldiers settled in abandoned houses; Athens is peopled with statues."
The Greek general, later Roman educator Polybius (220-146 BC) testified that the disease of depopulation spread from the Greeks to Rome. Contemporary researcher John S. Caldwell writes:
“Literary sources, tombstone inscriptions and skeletal research show a decline in the population of the Roman Empire caused by voluntary control of family size through contraception, murder and expulsion of children.” Reading this, you begin to understand where the origins of the creepy fairy tale about a little boy, who, along with his brothers and sisters, were taken by his parents into the forest from time to time to be devoured by animals.
The problem of depopulation of Rome was solved by its rulers by relocating peoples from the outskirts and from outside the empire to the metropolis. In 376, the Roman Emperor Valens allowed the Goths, who promised to join his army, to cross the Danube and settle in the territory of his empire. But already in 410, the Gothic king Alaric captured and plundered Rome.
This was not yet the destruction of the “eternal city”, but only plunder. The destruction was carried out in 476 by the head of a detachment of barbarian mercenaries in the Roman army, Odoacer, who at the same time deposed the last ruler of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustulus. And the Western Roman Empire finally withered when Arabs settled in most of its lands by the end of the 7th century.
Today in America we are witnessing all the phenomena that we read about in the history of dying Rome. American society is split into irreconcilable camps, just like pagans and Christians in antiquity. In the last election, two million more people voted for Hillary than for Trump (although, according to the organization Vote Fraud, at least three million of those who voted are not US citizens and were not eligible to vote, and another four million died before the election. I’m sure - the ghosts voted mostly for Hillary). For many adherents of the new paganism, the defeat of the democrat was a real tragedy. Due to mass hysterics, college exams were canceled and classes were disbanded. Old friendships were crumbling, families were breaking up. The losing camp consists of a majority of blacks, over two-thirds of Latinos, unmarried women worried about the right to kill their children, college youth, homosexuals of both sexes, Muslims, Jews, and Chinese. The same coalition twice brought Obama to the presidency and has a great chance of growing and bringing another similar figure to the White House in four years. I expect that in 2018 we will see Michelle Obama, the obvious favorite of the liberal coalition, among the senators.
What can President Trump do to stop the neo-pagan trends sweeping the United States? Child murder is no less common in America today than in ancient Greece. They are late-term abortions, and they call it “Women’s Choice.” Babies are born crying. They are quite alive, and have been alive for several months in the mother's uterus.
The Supreme Court could outlaw child murder if Trump appoints conservative lawyers to fill vacancies on the court, as he has promised. Propaganda of homosexuality begins in America today in kindergartens, where children are taught about the naturalness of same-sex sex. Liberal lawyers overturned the results of referendums in several states that recognized only the union of a man and a woman as marriage. Conservative lawyers, as well as the emerging school reform, will be able to interrupt this widespread homosexualization of the country. What is important is Trump’s promise to stop the uncontrolled movement to the States of residents of states lying to the south of it. It is clear that if Mexicans and Venezuelans become large numbers of the US population, the country will become similar to Mexico and Venezuela.
In the period of decline, the Roman Empire was ruled by the Albanian dynasty, and later by the Germans. The US has already been president by a half-Kenyan raised in Muslim Indonesia, and the chief adviser to the former secretary of state and almost president for many years has been a Muslim raised in Saudi Arabia.
Trump's promise to limit the immigration of Muslims to America is encouraging. Let me remind you that such a resettlement was the final stage of the destruction of Ancient Rome.
Now, as in ancient times in Rome, non-citizens of the country are willingly recruited into the US army, attracting them with the prospects of citizenship. This causes problems. Thus, Palestinian Major Nidal Hasan (this one, however, was born as immigrants in the USA) shot 13 colleagues and wounded 30 at the Fort Hood base in Texas. The US liberal establishment tries not to notice such incidents. The Obama administration has ruled that what happened at Fort Hood was not terrorism, but a dispute at work. Trump's immigration reforms must bear fruit before a figure similar to the ancient Roman Odoacer rises in America.
The fate of the problems facing the new administration explains why today, when Trump is just preparing to take office and is selecting, admittedly, a worthy team, the liberal public is already hysterical, fearing that its neo-pagan program will be supplanted and traditional American values will be restored. And that Trump will fulfill his promise to “make America great again.”
Scientists at Altai State University stated that they have developed a drug that allows the body to activate the processes of production of its own stem cells, renew tissues and maintain them in the state of a biologically young organism. It took them about two years of work to do this. The substance that the researchers obtained will in the future form the basis of a youth drug.
In general, it has always been common for humanity to dream of immortality. Since ancient times, people have tried in various ways to prolong their youth and life. Thus, the ancient Greeks took milk baths to rejuvenate, and the ancient Romans drank the blood of gladiators fought in battles in the arena. In the Middle Ages, thousands of alchemists, along with the philosopher's stone, were looking for the elixir of immortality, and Chinese adherents of Taoism tried to develop a similar elixir within themselves. The history of such searches is extensive, but, alas, completely inconclusive.
The first scientific researcher in this area is considered to be the Russian and French biologist, Nobel Prize laureate in the field of physiology and medicine (1908) Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov. He is the founder of gerontology - a science that studies the biological, social and psychological aspects of human aging, its causes and ways to combat it. Mechnikov developed a whole theory of aging due to intoxication and recommendations for healing fermented milk drinks for rejuvenation.
During the Soviet years, scientists were also actively involved in research on life extension. For example, at the Research Institute of Medical Primatology in Adler, the former Sukhumi nursery, unique results were obtained on primates. It turned out that the level of the hormone melatonin, especially at night, falls over the years. Based on these data, a group of Ukrainian chronobiologists learned to determine the biological age of people. Soon the understanding came that it was not age that needed to be assessed, but the pace of aging. Scientists were led to this idea by the results of a unique modern study in which several thousand truck drivers participated. It turned out that this is the fastest aging profession.
Now the issue of aging has been taken up at Moscow State University. A major project to combat aging at the cellular level is led by the director of the Institute of Physical and Chemical Biology named after Moscow State University, academician Vladimir Skulachev. And it must be said that scientists have achieved phenomenal results. In addition, it is worth noting that average life expectancy has already increased significantly in the last couple of centuries, thanks to scientific advances such as the discovery of antisepsis, asepsis, vaccination and antibiotics, which have radically changed human survival. Such inventions are rightly considered revolutionary milestones in medicine. As a result, this resulted in an increase in average life expectancy from 35-40 to 75-80 years.
And now the latest breakthrough of Russian scientists is the invention of a substance that slows down aging. It is known that the drug is based on stem cells. According to scientists from Altai State University, aging is a disease that can be treated. According to them, the medicine causes the body to produce new cells. This function will allow the drug to be used not only as a “cure for old age,” but also for healing wounds and ulcers. In the future, with the help of this invention it will be possible to cure cirrhosis of the liver, stomach ulcers and restore the heart muscle after a heart attack.
“We are developing anti-aging drugs for bone marrow regeneration after chemotherapy in cancer patients, a hepatoprotector to support the liver, and drugs for women’s health. They are based on a substance that has hepatoprotective activity, slowing down the aging process and preventing age-related diseases,” said Ivan Smirnov, director of the university’s Research Institute of Biomedicine. According to him, experts have already tested the drug on the liver of laboratory mice, which from the point of view of chemistry and biology is 100% similar to human liver, and were satisfied with the result.
The scientist also noted that over the past few days the phones at the ASU and in the laboratories have not stopped ringing; people from all over Russia are trying to sign up to test the substance on themselves, but this is still prohibited.
“Now the substance looks like powder. The future drug may have several forms of use, both internally in the form of tablets and in the form of a cream or gel for the treatment of wounds and abrasions that heal instantly,” said Ivan Smirnov. According to him, scientists have a lot of work to do before the finished product is released. Whether the drug will be a medicine or a cosmetic will be decided in two years.
For several decades now, psychologists have been persistently interested in two modes of thinking: the one that triggers the portrait of an angry woman, and the one that triggers the multiplication problem. There are many names for these modes. I'll use terms originally coined by psychologists Kate Stanovich and Richard West to talk about two systems of thinking: System 1 and System 2.
System 1 operates automatically and very quickly, requiring little or no effort and giving no sense of intentional control.
System 2 allocates the attention needed for conscious mental effort, including complex calculations. System 2 activities are often associated with a subjective sense of agency, choice, and concentration.
The concepts of System 1 and System 2 are widely used in psychology, but I take this book further than most: it can be read as a psychological drama with two characters.
When we think of ourselves, we think of System 2—the conscious, intelligent self that has beliefs and makes choices and decisions about what to think and do. Although System 2 considers itself to be the protagonist, in reality the hero of this book is the automatically responding System 1. I believe that it effortlessly generates the impressions and feelings that are the main source of System 2's beliefs and conscious choices. System 1's automatic actions generate amazing complex patterns of thoughts, but only the slower System 2 can arrange them into an orderly sequence of steps. The following will describe the circumstances in which System 2 takes control, limiting the free impulses and associations of System 1. You are encouraged to consider these two systems as two entities, each with its own unique abilities, limitations and functions.
Here's what System 1 can do (examples ranked by increasing difficulty):
Determine which of two objects is closer.
Orient yourself towards the source of the sharp sound.
Finish the phrase “Bread with...”.
Make a grimace of disgust at the sight of a disgusting picture.
Identify hostility in the voice.
Solve example 2 + 2 =?
Read the words on large advertising billboards.
Drive a car on an empty road.
Make a strong chess move (if you are a grandmaster).
Understand a simple sentence.
Determine that the description “quiet, neat person, pays a lot of attention to detail” is similar to a stereotype associated with a certain profession.
All of these actions fall into the same category as reacting to an angry woman: they happen automatically and require little or no effort. System 1 capabilities include our internal skills that we share with other animals. We are born ready to perceive the world around us, recognize objects, direct attention, avoid losses and fear spiders. Other mental activities become quick and automatic after long practice. System 1 remembered the connections between ideas (the capital of France?) and learned to recognize and understand the subtleties of situations that arise during communication. Some skills, like finding good moves in chess, are learned only by experts. Other skills are acquired by many. To determine the similarity of a personality description with a profession stereotype requires broad linguistic and cultural knowledge, which many people have. Knowledge is stored in memory and we access it without conscious intention or effort.
Some actions on this list are completely involuntary. You can't stop yourself from understanding simple sentences in your native language or paying attention to a loud, unexpected sound; you will not forbid yourself to know that 2 + 2 = 4, or to remember Paris if someone mentions the capital of France. Some actions, such as chewing, can be controlled, but they are usually performed on autopilot. Attention is controlled by both systems. Orienting to a loud sound usually occurs involuntarily, using System 1, and then the attention of System 2 is immediately and purposefully mobilized. You may not turn around when you hear a loud offensive remark at a noisy party, but even if your head does not move, at first you pay attention to it anyway, at least for a little while. However, attention can be diverted from an unwanted object, and the best way is to focus on another goal.
The various functions of System 2 have one thing in common: they all require attention and are interrupted when attention is shifted. For example, using System 2 you can do the following:
Prepare for the start signal in the race.
Watch the clowns at the circus.
Hear the voice of the right person in a crowded, noisy room.
Notice the gray-haired woman.
Identify the surprising sound by rummaging through your memory.
Intentionally speed up your pace.
Monitor the appropriateness of behavior in a particular social situation.
Count the number of letters "a" in the text.
Dictate your phone number to your interlocutor.
Park where there is little space (unless you are a professional parking attendant).
Compare two washing machines by price and features.
Fill out a tax return.
Check the consistency of complex logical arguments.
In all these situations you need to be attentive, and if you are not prepared or distracted, you will cope worse or not cope at all. System 2 can change the functioning of System 1 by reprogramming the normal automatic functions of attention and memory. For example, when waiting for a relative at a crowded train station, you may be in the mood to look for a gray-haired woman or a bearded man, and thus increase your chances of seeing her or him from afar. You can strain your memory to remember the names of capitals beginning with the letter “N”, or the novels of French existentialist writers. When you rent a car at London Heathrow Airport, you'll likely be reminded that “we drive on the left.” In all of these cases, you are asked to do something unusual, and you will find that it requires constant effort.
We often use the phrase “be careful” – and it is quite fair. We have a limited amount of attention that can be divided into various actions, and if we go beyond the limits of what we have, then nothing will happen. The peculiarity of such activities is that they interfere with each other, and that is why it is difficult or even impossible to do several at once. It is impossible to calculate the product 17 24 when turning left in heavy traffic; It's not even worth trying. You can do several things at once, but only if they are easy and do not require too much attention. It's probably okay to talk to the person sitting next to you if you're driving on an empty highway, and many parents find, albeit with some awkwardness, that they can read a story to their child while thinking about something else.
Everyone is more or less aware of the limitations of attention, and our behavior in society takes into account these limitations. For example, if a car driver overtakes a truck on a narrow road, the adult passengers would quite reasonably fall silent. They know not to distract the driver; in addition, they suspect that he is temporarily “deaf” and will not hear their words.
By focusing on something, people essentially go blind, not noticing what usually attracts attention. This was most clearly demonstrated by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons in their book The Invisible Gorilla. They made a short film about a basketball game where the teams wear white and black jerseys. Spectators are asked to count the number of passes that the players in white jerseys will make, ignoring the players in black. This is a difficult task that requires your full attention. About halfway through the video, a woman in a gorilla suit appears in the frame, crosses the set, taps her chest, and walks away. She is in the frame for 9 seconds. Thousands of people saw the video, but about half of them did not notice anything unusual. Blindness occurs due to the counting task, especially due to instructions not to pay attention to one of the commands. Spectators who have not received this task will not miss the gorilla. Seeing and orienting are automatic functions of System 1, but they are performed only if a certain amount of attention is devoted to the corresponding external stimuli. According to the authors, the most remarkable thing about their study is that people are very surprised by its results. Spectators who do not notice the gorilla are initially sure that it was not there - they are not able to imagine that they missed such an event. The gorilla experiment illustrates two important facts: we can be blind to the obvious and, moreover, we do not notice our own blindness.
Summary
The interaction of two systems is a cross-cutting theme of this book, so it is worth briefly summarizing its contents. So, while we are awake, both systems are working - System 1 and System 2. System 1 works automatically, and System 2 is in a comfortable mode of minimal effort, in other words, only a small part of its capabilities is used. System 1 constantly generates sentences for System 2: impressions, premonitions, intentions and feelings. If System 2 approves of them, then impressions and premonitions turn into beliefs, and impulses into intentional actions. When everything goes smoothly—and it almost always does—System 2 accepts System 1's suggestions with little or no change. Typically, you believe your impressions and act on your desires, and this is usually quite acceptable.
When System 1 encounters difficulties, it turns to System 2 to solve the current problem through more detailed and focused processing. System 2 is mobilized when a question arises that System 1 doesn't have an answer to, as you probably did when you saw the 17 x 24 multiplication example. A conscious rush of attention is also felt when you are caught off guard. System 2 springs into action when an event is detected that disrupts System 1's model of the world. In its world, light bulbs don't bounce, cats don't bark, and gorillas don't walk on basketball courts. The gorilla experiment shows that attention is required to detect unexpected stimuli. Surprise or unexpectedness engages and directs your attention: you look closely and try to find an explanation in your memory for an amazing event. System 2 is responsible for constantly monitoring your behavior - it is thanks to it that you are able to remain polite when angry and attentive when driving at night. System 2 is activated if it detects that you are about to make a mistake. Remember how you almost blurted out something offensive - and how difficult it was for you to pull yourself together. In general, most of what you (your System 2) think and do comes from System 1, but when things get difficult, System 2 takes over and usually has the final say.
The division of labor between System 1 and System 2 is very efficient: it produces the best productivity with the least amount of effort. Most of the time, everything works well because System 1, as a rule, does its job well: it forms accurate models of situations and short-term forecasts, and also responds quickly and, most often, appropriately to emerging problems. However, System 1 also has its own distortions, systematic errors that it is prone to make in certain circumstances. As will be shown, at times she answers easier questions rather than the given ones, and is poorly versed in logic and statistics. Another limitation of System 1 is that it cannot be turned off. If you see a word in a familiar language on the screen, you will read it - unless your attention is completely absorbed by something else.
Actually, it all comes down to a fairly simple question: what is so special about us, what is our ultimate value? It's unlikely to be skills like arithmetic or typing, which machines have already surpassed us in. And it is unlikely to be rational, since machines are devoid of all these biases, prejudices and emotions that we have.
Perhaps we should consider qualities at the other end of the spectrum: radical creativity, irrational originality, even a dose of simple illogical madness, rather than rigid logic. A little Kirk instead of Spock. Until now, these qualities have been very difficult for machines to emulate: wild leaps of faith arbitrary enough to be predicted by a robot, let alone mere chance. Their problem is our opportunity.
I am not suggesting that we abandon reason, logic and critical thinking. In fact, precisely because we value so much the values we associate with rationality and reason, we should also value the opposite a little.
And I'm not a Luddite, quite the opposite. You see, if we continue to improve information-processing machines and make them adapt and learn from every interaction with the world, from every bit of data fed to them, we will soon have useful rational assistants. They will allow us to overcome some of our human limitations in translating information into rational decisions. And they will get better and better.
We must therefore strive to ensure that the human contribution to this division of labor complements the rationality of machines, rather than competes with them. Because this will always differentiate us from them, and it is this difference that will create our value. 
And if I'm right, we should encourage the development of creative thinking, irrational decisions, unusual ideas. Not because irrationality is bliss, but because a dose of illogical creativity will complement the rationality of the machine. It will save us a place on the evolution shelf.
Unfortunately, our education system is built in a completely opposite way. Like peasants in a pre-industrial mindset, our schools and universities are structured to produce obedient servants of rationality and to develop outdated skills in interacting with outdated machines.
If we take the problem that cars pose seriously, we're going to have to change that, and pretty soon. Of course, we will have to learn fact-based rationality and how better facts lead to better decisions. We need to help our children learn to work with the smartest of machines to improve their decision making. But most of all, we need to consider the long term: even if computers surpass us, we will remain the most creative building in the city, unless we completely suppress this aspect of humanity in ourselves.
Perhaps this is our chance to stay on the narrow path of evolution.