The Biological Schism and the Collapse of the Liberal Order

The contemporary global order is currently navigating an era of unprecedented disruption, driven by exponential advancements in technology and the life sciences. These profound shifts are fundamentally challenging the foundational social contracts that have governed human coexistence for centuries. As societies grapple with the implications of artificial intelligence and genetic engineering, established ideological frameworks are being pushed to their absolute limits. Understanding the trajectory of these developments is crucial for comprehending the future of human civilization and the potential dismantling of long-held egalitarian principles.

The Erosion of Human Autonomy

The modern political landscape faces extraordinary challenges that severely undermine the foundational agreements of contemporary society. Rapid technological leaps and biotechnological revolutions compel humanity to completely reevaluate established ideologies and social structures. Previously identified threats to the liberal worldview highlight the potential for permanent civilizational transformation. One major danger involves the complete loss of intrinsic human value in the face of automated systems. Another significant threat is the surrender of individual decision-making to external computational algorithms.

The Emergence of a Biologically Enhanced Elite

The global framework will likely still require individuals for specific creative and intellectual tasks, yet these systems will understand human psychology far better than individuals understand themselves. Consequently, external algorithms will make the most critical life choices, leaving the population entirely satisfied with this arrangement. This scenario might not inherently constitute a dystopian reality, but it will definitively mark the end of the liberal era. The third and most profound threat lies in the biological fragmentation of the human species into distinct castes.

The Dismantling of Egalitarian Ideologies

A minuscule fraction of the population will remain both indispensable and inscrutable, forming a highly privileged upper class of optimized beings. These enhanced individuals will possess unprecedented abilities and extraordinary creative power, enabling them to dictate the fate of the entire globe. The overwhelming majority of the population will never experience such an elevation and will consequently be relegated to a degraded lower caste. Such a biological division of humanity will completely obliterate the foundational pillars of liberal ideology.

The Illusion of Equivalent Human Experiences

The liberal system can certainly coexist with purely socioeconomic divides, as it prioritizes individual freedom over absolute equality. Nevertheless, liberalism operates on the core premise that all individuals possess an equal intrinsic value and identical moral authority. From this perspective, it is entirely acceptable for an affluent merchant to reside in a lavish palace while an impoverished farmer lives in a modest dwelling. According to liberal doctrine, the unique experiences of the impoverished farmer are considered just as valuable as those of the wealthy merchant.

The Insurmountable Biological and Financial Divide

This philosophy explains why authors dedicate extensive efforts to documenting the struggles of disadvantaged populations. When observing expensive theatrical performances depicting social injustice, affluent audiences deeply empathize with the suffering protagonists. The exact same logic applies on election day, when the ballot of the impoverished farmer carries the exact same weight as the ballot of the wealthy merchant. The liberal response to social inequality is simply to assign an identical value to all diverse human experiences. However, this elegant solution collapses entirely when an insurmountable biological chasm opens between the rich and the poor, surpassing mere financial disparities.

The Extreme Concentration of Global Wealth

The expenses associated with modern medical interventions and genetic analyses are currently astronomically high, rapidly consuming vast fortunes. This reality exists in a world where one billion individuals must survive on less than one dollar per day, while another 1.5 billion people earn merely between one and two dollars daily. Even if these impoverished individuals work tirelessly throughout their entire lives, they will never be able to finance such exorbitant genetic enhancements. Economic disparities are currently deepening at a breathtaking pace, further accelerating the social fracture.

The Historical Shift in Medical Objectives

In early 2016, the 62 wealthiest individuals on the planet possessed the exact same amount of wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion people. Given that the global population was approximately 7.2 billion at that time, this tiny group of billionaires collectively controlled the same resources as the entire lower portion of humanity. While the costs of basic genetic analyses will likely decrease over time, constantly emerging and highly complex new procedures will remain prohibitively expensive. As older treatment methods gradually become affordable for the masses, the elites will always remain several steps ahead in the pursuit of enhancement.

The New Era of Human Optimization

Historically, the wealthy always enjoyed numerous societal advantages, but a massive biological chasm between them and the poor never truly existed. During the previous century, nobles falsely claimed to possess superior bloodlines, but such assertions were pure fiction. In the future, however, society might witness actual, enormous gaps in physical and cognitive abilities between an optimized upper class and the rest of the population. The expectation that this equalizing process will repeat itself in the current century could prove to be mere wishful thinking, as medicine is undergoing a radical conceptual revolution.

The Relativization of Medical Progress

During the previous century, medical science aimed to heal the sick, which was an egalitarian project based on a normative standard of physical health. In the current century, medicine is increasingly focused on optimizing the healthy, representing a deeply elitist endeavor. Individuals will demand superior memory performance, above-average intelligence, and elite physical capabilities, rendering any cheap improvement as the new baseline. Consequently, the impoverished in the year 2070 will likely receive better medical care than people do today, yet the gap separating them from the wealthy will be vastly larger.

The Conclusion of the Mass Era

People typically compare themselves with their more fortunate contemporaries rather than their unfortunate ancestors, making relative improvements practically useless as a source of comfort. Explaining to an impoverished worker in a slum that they enjoy far superior medical care compared to their great-grandparents will hardly cheer them up. On the contrary, such rhetoric appears incredibly arrogant, as the affected individual will inevitably compare themselves with the optimized superhumans who dominate the world. Furthermore, despite all medical advancements, there is absolutely no guarantee that the poor of the future will be better cared for, as the state might simply lose its interest in the masses.

The Detachment of the Useless Populace

During the previous century, medicine benefited the masses because armies required vast numbers of healthy soldiers and the economy needed massive amounts of robust workers. Consequently, states established public health systems to guarantee the vitality of all citizens and secure national competitiveness. However, the era of the masses, and with it the era of mass medicine, is likely over, as algorithms are replacing human soldiers and laborers. Elites might soon conclude that improving healthcare for masses of useless impoverished individuals is entirely pointless, choosing instead to focus solely on optimizing a handful of superhumans.

The Inevitable Collapse of the Liberal Order

Even today, birth rates are declining in technologically advanced nations, leading to massive investments in the education and training of fewer and fewer children. Massive developing nations resemble a long train where the elites sit in the premium class enjoying superior care, while countless ordinary citizens suffer in the standard class. One must ask what the elites of the coming century would prefer to do other than simply uncoupling the useless standard-class wagons and continuing the journey with only the premium class. How can liberal convictions possibly survive in a world populated by superhumans possessing extraordinary physical, emotional, and mental capabilities?

The Search for New Ideological Foundations

The great human projects of the previous century aimed to guarantee a universal standard of prosperity, health, and peace for all people without any exceptions. The new projects of the current century also hope to serve all of humanity, yet because they are designed to transcend the normal baseline, they could create an entirely new caste of superhumans. If scientific discoveries and technological developments split humanity into a mass of useless individuals and a tiny elite of optimized superhumans, liberalism will ultimately collapse. In light of this monumental upheaval, the pressing question arises regarding which new religions or ideologies might fill the resulting vacuum.

It is absolutely crucial to understand how the subsequent evolution of our god-like descendants should be guided once the old moral standards lose their validity. Humanity currently stands at a critical crossroads that will irreversibly determine the biological and technological future for all upcoming generations.