The never-ending appeal of the magic man

Yuval Noah Harari begins his latest book Nexus with two allegories—the Greek myth of Phaethon's disastrous borrowing of his father's sun chariot, and the apprentice's disastrous mishandling of magic in the absence of his master in Goethe's The Sorcerer's Apprentice (ATU tale type 325). Both stories warn of the human tendency to acquire power more quickly than wisdom.

These cautionary tales apply too well to our current moment. Like Phaethon's careening chariot, we've already set fire to the planet. And like the apprentice, we're in the process of bringing a self-duplicating entity into existence, hoping to make our lives easier, but possibly ending ourselves instead.

Neither tale ends well for the main character, you'll notice: the apprentice is humiliated by the returning master, and Phaethon, at the height of his hubris, is struck by Zeus's thunderbolt, plummeting from the heavens to his death.

These tales also have limited practical utility because of the way in which they are resolved. Both invoke a deus ex machina—a literal deus in one case, a sorcerer in the other—to intervene and set things right. In neither case does the mess-maker, the allegorical stand-in for you and me, find his own way out of the catastrophe.

But they also reveal something deeply unhelpful about where we look for rescue when things spiral out of control.

A common theme in secular humanist writing holds that all the good things we once attributed to magical beings—all the love and care, the power to defend and to set things right when they go wrong—have always come from each other, from the individuals or communities around us. We encounter or create calamities, then (albeit awkwardly and incompletely) we collectively save ourselves.

That's the theory. And sometimes it even works.

Convenient catastrophes

The threat of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) to the ozone layer went from published hypothesis (Molina and Rowland, Nature, 1974) to discovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica (1985) to unanimous global agreement to phase out CFCs (Montreal Protocol, 1987) to implementation within a generation. Smallpox, polio, and the chemical weapons ban are a few examples of collective action tackling a global problem because the public and political will were musterable.

But addressing climate change and the risks of AI are arguably far bigger and more difficult, requiring greater sacrifice and political will, than any of those.

The phase-out of CFCs was made smoother by the ready availability of cheap alternatives and a relatively easy retooling by the major manufacturers of CFCs. In short, no one was inconvenienced overly much, so cooperation was possible.

Inconvenient catastrophes

By comparison, the climate crisis and the uncontrolled development of AI are both driven by our unquenchable love of convenience and shiny things. Fixing either one at this point would entail inconvenience and sacrifice. By the time both have played out, combining to create a complexly terrifying world, and it's finally obvious that solutions are desperately needed, where will we turn for salvation? Will we turn to each other? Seek the consensus of the scientific community? Work for international cooperation?

Not bloody likely.

During periods of uncertainty and fear, people exhibit a psychological bias toward authoritarianism, supporting strong, hierarchical leadership that promises order and stability. A 2011 study of American attitudes following the attacks of September 11 and the subsequent "war on terror" found that perceived existential threats heighten authoritarian tendencies, even when such tendencies directly contradict one's deeply-held democratic values.

In their seminal 1974 paper "Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases," psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman identified that cognitive biases including simplification bias drive people to prefer straightforward, black-and-white solutions over nuanced expert analyses, which often seem abstract or slow-moving. The more multifaceted a problem is, the more we want to turn it over to a single, strong, confident leader. (David Dunning and Justin Kruger invite you to notice the absence of competence from that list.)

This applies as well to problems on a personal scale. Self-help books, including the unending deluge of how-to-succeed-in-business titles regurgitating the same seven ideas, rely almost universally on the guru model, a single wizard granting exclusive access to his secrets.

When I brought together 27 writers for a book on nonreligious parenting and suggested to my editor that we include the names of two of the other major contributors on the cover, both of whom were subject matter experts, she shot it down immediately.

"People want to see one name," she explained. "It's a thing."

The worse things get

Crises also tend to increase tribalism, seeking safety within familiar groups under a single leader. Fuzzy agglomerations of foreign nations and institutions and experts are seen as "other," and leaders who play to nationalist or populist sentiments often gain traction by exploiting that mistrust. During the COVID pandemic, Brazil's Bolsonaro, for example, downplayed expert consensus on masks and vaccines while consolidating his personal power, the embodiment of Brazil's strength and defiance against global scientific "elites."

As global challenges intensify, reliance on international cooperation and expertise is critical but increasingly undermined. Authoritarian leaders capitalize on fear, distrust, and the human craving for certainty, offering the illusion of simple solutions while sidelining collaborative and evidence-based approaches.

Historical precedents and psychological research underscore the need to guard against this tendency, emphasizing the importance of strengthening international institutions and restoring public trust in expertise to counter the allure of authoritarianism.

Knowing this does nothing, of course. Like every attempt to countermand evolved human behaviors, warning those in thrall to a demagogue against the allure of authoritarians is like insisting to fans that shirtless Chris Hemsworth isn't attractive. Your arguments have no impact.

Still we persist in warning those in thrall to our once-and-future demagogue that democracy is in jeopardy!!1! as if they will surely collapse on the fainting couch at the very idea. But as reader Chris Peterson commented on a recent article, "I don't think most people care about democracy, which is why it's probably not a stable, sustainable governance model."

I currently work for a nonprofit fighting against that conclusion with all our strength. But it may well end up that the urge to entrust a complex future to a single magician is too strong.