The Fourth Rational Revolution

By Yue Wen (Ivan) Zhang

Within human behavior, two philosophies of rationality are widely accepted: instrumental rationality, in which each person subjectively decides which tool-or instrument-works better for their needs, and value rationality, unconditional moral valuations that according to a society are "right."

In this fascinating book, Ivan Zha

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Aug 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781685152079

Yue Wen (Ivan) Zhang

Yue Wen (Ivan) Zhang, born on the Inner Mongolian grasslands of China, believed the most that the sky was the limit which gave him the maximum amount of strength and willpowers in overcoming difficulties that went beyond imagination and accomplishing tasks that included the missions impossible. In the 20 years that followed, in spite of his endeavors that made his diamond business an international recognition, he did not stop where he had achieved. Now putting his business ventures aside, he chose to embark on a new quest, a quest to demand for the answers to all his questions concerning the human race and its relationship with the universe, that with the environment, with other species and among themselves. "The Fourth Rational Revolution" records every step of his thoughts as his great mind travels.

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PREFACE

A Note to Cover:

Dreams Are the Seeds of Change

by Jia Lu, oil on canvas, 2019

This is the first time I have been commissioned to paint the cover of someone else’s book. At first, I was a little surprised when my good friend Yue Wen (Ivan) Zhang asked me to do it. My style of work appeared to have nothing in common with The Fourth Rational Revolution, so I wondered, Why did its author choose me?

After discussing the book with Ivan, however, I realized that he had made the right choice after all. Not only does our work share common concerns, but we have similar views of the world. His writing resonated in my subconscious and carried my thoughts aloft, where an image that had appeared many times in a dream took up residence in my mind. I seemed to have found my inspiration.

Yet I did not expect for the cover design we finally chose among several sketches to be that image I had seen so many times in my dream. You might say it’s a coincidence, but I believe that resonance was created by a shared sense of helplessness and worry.

A careful reading of The Fourth Rational Revolution confirmed my judgment. After running the numbers and discussing the theory, the author comes to an alarming conclusion: that the way we now live leads to a dead end! I believe everyone living today has some sense of the crises we face, but they may not have appreciated the seriousness revealed by Ivan’s careful analysis. That is really where our sense of helplessness and worry comes from.

The true value of a book or a painting is revealed in its spirit, and the appeal of that spirit determines, in the end, the work’s style. The difference between a book and a painting is how meaning is expressed; one uses words and the other, images, but their artistic value is the same: they both embody beauty and creativity and, most importantly, a sense of responsibility and taking charge. One of the motivations behind all forms of art is a concern for the future of mankind and a desire for the survival of our species, the seed from which all spiritual meaning grows.

The creation of a work of art is a process requiring the artist to transform irrational feelings into living images through careful observation, analysis, and understanding. The seeds that appear on the cover of this book represent the deeply buried desire in both the author’s and my heart to understand life and the world around us. Each seed is a life whose purpose is to endure. One seed today may become ten, a hundred, a thousand, even ten thousand seeds tomorrow. Given a century, they might cover the entire globe in a sea of green.

From another point of view, as Mr. Zhang has pointed out in his book, we live in an age where profit and efficiency are worshipped like gods, in which God is dead and the infallibility of science have become hallmarks of our thinking. In such an intellectual environment, all our hopes are placed in material things, allowing us to destroy our own home in the blind pursuit of more, leaving us in our present crisis.

In fact, even though we are spiritual beings adrift in a vast universe, our rationality has only just emerged like a sprout from its shell. If we view ourselves as merely the citizens of different nations or the members of different races, we will never adapt. We must look across the wide expanse of time and space and seek an escape route, for we may be the only creature in our solar system granted the ability to think rationally. For our rare species to survive in the long term, our tender shoots of rationality must grow into a tall tree and branch out across the globe, extending into the universe.

We must rethink our responsibilities to this small, blue marble we call home, because just like Rodin’s The Thinker, we are seated before the gates of hell.

— Jia Lu, November 2020

PREFACE

British historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889–1957) told the following story in his book A Study of History.

In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl the Norwegian navigator sailed from the Port of El Callao, Peru, to La Roa in the Polynesian Islands with a crew of five. The purpose of their voyage was to discover if ancient Indians had really crossed the Pacific using only primitive technology. It took the men 101 days, and they covered 4,300 nautical miles, only to be greeted by a terrible conundrum on arriving at their destination the morning of August 7.

Through their binoculars, they could see the distant island welcoming them with palm trees swaying in the wind. Their enticing destination stood in the distance, but between them raged a jagged reef and the churning sea around it. They knew if they hit the reef, their craft would break apart instantly, and the men might be torn to bits on the sharp rocks. Or perhaps the sailboat would remain intact, and the waves might carry them over the top. Perhaps their fates would deliver them onto the island safely. But on that morning, neither the explorer nor the crew could predict which of these possibilities might come to pass and whether they were to live or die.

Toynbee concluded, The experience of these six young Scandinavian navigators on August 7 symbolizes the severe test facing modern humanity as a whole. The ark of civilization has sailed the sea of history for five or six thousand years, but it now approaches an insurmountable reef.¹

Toynbee’s metaphor is not unreasonable, for mankind’s path out of its current situation is indeed difficult to forecast. Thanks to a rich material world, on the one hand, we possess a seemingly unlimited supply of resources. On the other hand, surrounded by fast-changing technology, we seem to have entered a great period of rapid development. Thus, under the temptation of wealth and greater prosperity, people only care about the vibrancy and beauty just beyond their grasp and pay scant attention to the fatal risks that lurk beneath their feet.

There is evidence that our planet has been struck many times by objects from space that have wiped out most of its inhabitants. Simply extrapolating, another apocalyptic catastrophe is not entirely unreasonable. The latest threat, however, is not an extraterrestrial one; our biggest worry is now man-made catastrophes. The most devastating of these are endless wars over property, resources, power, and so on. Wars. Data shows that humanity has endured more than ten thousand years of war in recorded history alone.

This is not to say that we are unable to live peacefully. However, we are no less cruel and barbarous in our pursuit of wealth, social position, and greed than when we are on the battlefield. The men that fight in wars are the same men who buy and sell stocks on Wall Street. The death of a broker jumping out a window following a market crash is the same as the death of a fighter pilot bailing from his burning cockpit.

As to natural resources, including food and the environment, we may have already reached a limit or even overdrawn our account in the worst projections. And yet our total population on Earth continues to increase. Under this model, we appear already on the road to extinction.

I’m not trying to make up or exaggerate how dire our situation has become; even without the armed conflicts, and notwithstanding that natural resources are nearly exhausted, with fifteen thousand nuclear warheads at the disposal of some lunatic, all it would take is the accidental push of a button to destroy the entire human race not just once, but many times over. Professor Toynbee, therefore, pointed out, The amazing fact is that for the first time in history, we face a fate so critical that life and death teeter on a knife’s edge.²

The goal of this book is to call for a rational evaluation of our behavior. I believe it is our rationality that makes us fully human. Without it, we are merely a species of strong-armed, reckless thugs.

To identify the major problems facing humanity and to uncover their root causes, I will introduce my views in four chapters, along with recommendations for possible solutions. I hope thereby to create a new intellectual movement around rationality.

1 Arnold Toynbee, Historical Research, translated by Guo Xiaoling, et al., Shanghai People’s Publishing House (2016), pp. 913, 914.

2 Toynbee, ibid., p. 892.

CHAPTER ONE

ANNIHILATION

If we examine our behavior over the course of our history, we may be surprised to find that striving toward a bountiful life leads to a death trap: if we do not stop, death is inevitable. But out of either our ignorance or a lack of will, day-to-day problems ensnare and draw us deeper into this trap. Even the few who realize the danger may not be able to turn aside. What renders them helpless is they have no way to know how to change without understanding the causes of our problems. Even if they see the dead end before them, they, too, seem driven toward annihilation.

Section I: Toward Extinction

We read news every day about natural-resource crises, environmental collapse, ecological disasters, and energy shortages, along with ever-more-dire warnings from experts and authorities. It seems inevitable that nature will eventually wipe out the human race. This is the first indication of our dash toward extinction: the antagonistic relationship between the human race and nature.

A) Our Species Upsets the Balance of Nature

The term ecology refers to a state of equilibrium in which all species depend on one another and coexist in balance. In classical Chinese, it was called shengtai: the conditions for life. As its name implies, if we follow it, we live; we die if we don’t. It’s a matter of life and death if we as a species choose to live in conformity to its rules. All things may appear, given the right conditions, and may vanish when those conditions are no longer available. A living species may arise, given the right environment, and disappear when that environment vanishes. The planet’s ecology is an organic whole composed of all living things, and a healthy ecology must be a dynamic and balanced system. That balance is achieved in three ways:

First, balance is achieved by living creatures acting to restrain one another. Nature has given rise to hundreds of millions of biological species, each very different but all linked by the intricate and complex interdependent network that makes up the food chain. Every kind of organism survives by relying on other organisms to supply food or synthesize nutrients, and so all have their own natural predators. This natural predator limits the growth of its prey and thereby sets the stage for the balanced development of all species. For example, when a plant is threatened by rapidly multiplying insects, birds that feed on the insect will flourish, limiting the insects’ spread and protecting the plants. When the population of birds soar, raptors, snakes, and cats that feed on birds will grow in number and restrict their proliferation. Herbivores limit the overgrowth of vegetation, and carnivores check the population of herbivores. The availability of vegetation determines the success with which herbivores breed and ultimately the population of carnivores, so the ecology attains balance automatically. Species compete with one another for land, nutrients, moisture, and sunlight, and after hundreds of millions of years of competition and evolution, those at a disadvantage are eliminated, and those who adapt to the environment, climate, and soil survive. The winners occupy their own niche and limit the others’ growth. All plants, animals, and microorganisms thereby come into ecological balance.

Second, ecological balance is realized by the general ability of each species for self-cleaning and healing, governed principally by their metabolism; all living creatures breathe, absorb nutrients, and discharge waste. A healthy ecology is one that permits the timely processing of waste into energy. The total biomass on the planet is enormous, and at every moment, it produces vast quantities of waste in the form of fallen leaves, dead animals, excretions, carbon dioxide, etc. After weathering, oxidization, dissolution, and decomposition by microorganisms, these wastes become tiny particles