The Long Way Back to Ourselves

9.10

Great Synthesis

This final episode states the series' formula, shared fiction plus a new conversion of energy or information, and tests it on a counter-case: Britain abolished its slave trade in 1807 although, as Seymour Drescher showed, it stood at one of its peaks. The first half of the guiding question, how humans became what they are, can be answered; the second, what for, stays open because no mechanism optimizes a system for its members' well-being. The episode names three tools: recognizing fictions, telling knowledge from speculation, and asking who holds authority over your decisions. It ends with Albert Camus, whose reading that one must imagine Sisyphus happy holds only in cut-back form.