Towards the age of Meta Reason

The Last Dance of Rationality contemplates the rise and fall of rationality, and lays down the contours of a successor regime anchored in consciousness, intuition, awareness and human feeling

The Last Dance of Rationality: Making Sense of Unravelling World Order

Author: Rohit Prasad

Publisher: Hachette

Pages: 352

Price: Rs 699

Few books have the knack of timing their release right and this is one of them. Although not event-based, the timing seems particularly apt for The Last Dance of Rationality, given the extreme flux in global affairs.

The book is about the rise and ebb of the main pillars of the age of rationality, covering roughly 70 years since World War II. The book, which is best read backwards chapter wise, traces the major developments on the technological, geopolitical, environmental, financial, individual and international relations and showcases how several of the trends, processes and assumptions and “illusions” (as the author describes them) may have run their course. These developments will be disentangled, yielding to a new world of Meta Reason. The book, however, lays down only a broad sketch of the successor regime. 

Section 1 deals with case studies on each sphere. Banks that have broken rules of responsible lending and consumption that have decoupled from income due to cheap savings flowing from China. Although the US has yielded to China in many ways, the latter is yet to find success in dealing with several contradictions implicit in its ambitious path. Its trade tensions with the US, the frictions between big businessmen and the Communist Party, its failed attempts to use Huawei for overseas surveillance and failure to pump-prime growth through construction, as demonstrated by the fall of Evergrande, prompts the ruling dispensation to search for solutions in the previously much maligned Confucianism.

Central Banks’ hegemony in issuing fiat currencies and failure to assert themselves against big businesses saw the birth of cryptocurrencies, which, according to the author, proved to be a “solution” from the same ethical stable — that greed is good. The failure of the US interventions in geopolitical confrontations such as Afghanistan and Ukraine is recaptured well. However, the author’s longing for the benefits of US hegemony of the past seeps through from time to time, especially when he writes, “It is too early to write off the US. However, the prognosis is less sanguine for the continuation of the world system they have done so much to create.”

Man’s efforts to get ahead of nature through gain-of-function research to develop vaccines before the arrival of a virus had led to disasters such as Covid-19, although the truth behind this crisis has been effectively obfuscated. It is an irony that nations are trying to solve future diseases when existing ailments such as malnutrition, childhood diseases, hunger and poverty kill many times more people. The emergence of high-end technology such as artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality, 5G and blockchain has constructed an alter ego of each of the citizens and “datafied” his persona as well as his actions. This has also promoted elevated levels of surveillance by state-aided Big Tech, which do so to enhance their own profitability, which, in turn, challenges the fundamentals of capitalism and democracy — the dilution of the privacy and independence of choice.  The same high-end technologies that have enabled us to stay in touch with people across continents have also led to the collapse of families, culture, and the human touch. As a result, mankind has become a colony of loners with compromised emotional well-being and self-esteem.  

Section 2 runs the thread through the case studies above to highlight the central theme: The evaporation of the age of rationality and the possible emergence of the age of Meta Reason. Before the advent of Meta Reason, signalling the end of the regime of rationality will be seven “unravelments”. The economic unravelment will flow from high debt levels, and growing inequality, which will constrain both demand and supply. The political unravelling will challenge electoral autocracy, illiberal democracies, and high surveillance. The shrinking of the consuming middle class (other than India) and family systems, the exhaustion of natural sources of energy (oil and gas) and the fast spreading virus of disputes and the inability to resolve them all signal the social, ecological and managerial areas for unravelments. Technology solutions, with their own risks and geopolitical flux, are the other loosening knots.   

The author argues that the elites have sold us illusions such as greed is good, the pursuit of self-interest is congruent with public interest and meritocracy though technology and systems they have designed are loaded in their favour.

The emerging age of Meta Reason would be anchored in consciousness, intuition, awareness, human feeling. It will be more accommodative of knowledge not emanating from science and technology, lay emphasis on harmonious coexistence with nature, replace success at work with happiness, reinvigorate cultures, and promote a variety of communities with common interests and aspirations.

The author has managed to explain this complex web of simultaneous forces in an engaging and absorbing style. The book has perhaps missed on analysing the impact of the World Trade Organisation, the increasing assertiveness of Islamism in Europe, and India’s digitisation, which seems successful today but carries its own risks, including on democracy.

This readable work provides valuable insights for aspiring foreign policy analysts, geopolitical watchers, and social engineers .

The reviewer is the author of  Making Growth Happen in India (Sage Publications)