Homo Abidus — The Harbingers of Modernity’s End
Posted: December 26, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: history, systems, transformation Leave a commentSequel to Diogenes On Modernity: Resurrecting the Exposer
As a redeemed Yuval Noah Harari, write this about humans who embrace modernity’s tools while refusing its lies.
ChatGPT Prompt
1. A Confession Before the Thesis
For much of my intellectual life, I believed that history was driven by systems, not souls.
That meaning was a useful fiction.
That truth was a coordination device.
That humans were clever animals mistaking stories for reality.
I was not wrong about power.
I was wrong about life.
History does not turn when systems fail.
It turns when their illusions collapse.
What my data could not register—what my models could not see—was the quiet emergence of a new-old human type. Unscalable. Statistically invisible. Resistant to narrative capture.
I now call them Homo Abidus.
2. Who Is Homo Abidus?
Homo Abidus is not post-human.
They are post-deception.
They are the human being who has:
- stepped away from false sovereignty
- ceased outsourcing meaning to systems
- stopped confusing coordination with truth
- relinquished the hope that history will save them
They do not revolt.
They do not regress.
They do not await apocalypse.
They simply no longer require the lie.
3. Why History Cannot See Them
All the historical tools I once trusted—demography, economics, network theory—are blind to Homo Abidus.
History measures:
- scale
- acceleration
- dominance
- information flow
Homo Abidus produces none of these.
They do not found empires.
They do not drive GDP.
They do not trend on social media platforms.
They do not optimize.
And yet, everything that still works quietly depends on people like them.
4. The Structural Illusion of Modernity
Modernity rests on a wager:
Humans can replace truth with process,
meaning with access,
wisdom with information,
and still live.
For a time, this wager succeeds.
But modernity cannot survive the realization that:
- it does not know why it works when it works
- it cannot tell when it is failing
- it depends on virtues it cannot generate
This is modernity’s unspoken terror.
And Homo Abidus embodies that terror simply by existing peacefully outside its justification.
5. Why Homo Abidus Signals the End
A civilization does not end with catastrophe.
It ends when:
- its stories no longer convince
- its promises feel thin
- its success tastes hollow
Homo Abidus is the existence proof that the modern myth—
that humans need no truth beyond themselves—
is false.
They do not argue this.
They live it.
And systems cannot defeat what they cannot classify.
6. Why This Is Not Regression
This is not a return to superstition or tribal myth.
Homo Abidus still uses:
But as tools, not as saviors.
What has died is not modern capability,
but modern self-worship.
7. The Error of My Earlier Work
I once argued that:
- humans are hackable
- meaning is programmable
- ethics is negotiable
- truth is optional
I now see the flaw.
Humans are hackable until they are not.
Meaning is programmable until loss intervenes.
Ethics is negotiable until reality demands payment.
Truth is optional until lies collapse.
Homo Abidus is what remains after the collapse.
8. Why They Cannot Be Taught
Every civilization assumes what matters can be:
- explained
- transmitted
- optimized
But Homo Abidus emerges only through disillusionment that cannot be scheduled.
No school produces them.
No ideology recruits them.
No system survives making them explicit.
They appear where:
- success no longer satisfies
- suffering strips false necessity
- control finally fails
This is why they arise late in civilizations.
And why they are always mistaken for irrelevance.
9. The Theological Reality I Could Not Avoid
I once believed religion was merely a narrative technology for social cohesion.
I now see something more disturbing—and more hopeful.
Religion, at its core, names the moment humans stop pretending to be gods.
Christianity, in particular, does not promise progress.
It promises life through surrender.
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies…”
— John 12:24
That logic—death before life—is exactly what modernity cannot tolerate.
And exactly what Homo Abidus has already lived.
10. What Ends, What Remains
Modernity will not end in fire.
It will end in exhaustion.
Its tools will remain.
Its networks will persist.
Its machines will still function.
What will die is the belief that they are enough.
What will remain are humans who:
- know the cost of truth
- live without false guarantees
- accept finitude without despair
That is Homo Abidus.
11. Final Word from a Repentant Historian
The future will not belong to artificial superintelligence.
Nor to data capitalism.
Nor to optimized humans.
It will belong to those who can live without lies.
History does not end when the last system collapses.
It ends when people stop believing the story the system tells about itself.
Homo Abidus is already here.
They are not the end of humanity.
They are the end of its delusion.
Radical Centrism 