Isaac Asimov's Vision of Humanity's Future | Foundation Ending Explained

One of the key facts about human beings is that each of us is individual and yet we live in societies that sometimes act as superorganisms, it is very difficult for one individual to steer the course of the whole species. This is sometimes a good thing there moments that the human spirit seems to join as one and great things can be accomplished. And this is sometimes also a bad thing, for example, man-lead climate change is an issue that scientists have known about for quite some time, but the human entity runs on oil, the actions of a single individual would have little impact to slow the rate of change. The organism moves on its own, even if everyone watching this video somehow finds a way to never contribute to fossil fuel emissions ever again for the rest of their lives this would essentially do nothing because the human entity is far too large. This is much akin to how the individual cells in your body make up you, but the individual cells themselves have no say over your actions.

Individuality itself is often heralded as one of the virtues of mankind, but individuality is also the cause of much of the turmoil in human society. Individuality leads to chaos, though many would argue that this is a necessary vice of a free society. Individuality and free expression are part of what makes life worth living. Often when free expression and individuality are stripped, as in both the modern and history fascist regimes of the earth, societal wellbeing, in general, goes down dramatically. Fascism does not breed progress of any kind, under these types of structures the soul of mankind bleeds. The happiest societies in the world emphasize individuality and freedom.

Beyond personal individuality, humans also have a tendency to break themselves into groups, sometimes based on traits that members of that group share, sometimes based on geographical association. Different groups of humans often find themselves at odds, competing for resources and power of all forms. With such groupings prejudice also forms, and as these groups persist throughout time generation prejudices and forms and differences between groups of humans start to be distorted in the eyes of opposing groups. This of course leads to many problems in society. If mankind could view itself as a homogenous group not divided by arbitrary lines the things we could accomplish could be great. Isaac Asimov deals with some of these ideas in his Foundation book series, and that is mainly what we are here to discuss today.

Thanks for watching!

Feel free to leave a comment like and subscribe!

Thanks For Watching!

[stianthomassen]

What I really like with Isaac is the positive way he present all these ideas that many others would have used as horror stories.

[couchpotatoe]

Man, Asimov was such a legend. Loved reading him, I should do so again at some point in the near future!

[normanlee]

The concept of a collective mentality composed of millions of minds (both human and alien) is also the plot of Childhood's End by Sir Arthur C Clarke. The concept of a massive mental collective as presented by both Clarke and Asimov are fascinating to ponder

[kuuro_]

Honestly I think the use of smartphones, the internet, and social media is us choosing to slowly merge one small step at a time. Each generation wanting to be more directly connected than the last. Sometime this century brain to computer interfaces will allow us to share memories, allowing us to learn directly from each other's experiences and making us all more similar to each other, until we just can't tell the difference anymore when we all have downloaded the same set of information, and simply decide to merge our processing power together.

[joegluntz]

A post-human hyberbeing in the form of a giant goddess: imagery right out of Evangelion. Everything I know about Foundation I’ve learned from this channel 😅 but on my own I’ve noted a few other shared motifs between Evangelion & Dune. It wouldn’t surprise me if Evangelion’s creator was a reader of these books

[maxziebell]

Even if it was portrayed in a dystopian way … the Borg collective develops a virtual landscape where the "drones" return to their individuality. When viewing that, I thought that a unified Humanity could also be implemented as a virtual abstraction layer. Allowing us to live in a free and individual way while prospering in our talents and interests, while still being unified. Hence, not being aware that we would be living in a galaxy spawning network (like the Borg) that uses our talents and problem-solving through an abstraction layer and drone bodies to act in the real world. Hence, leaving us totally unburdened by our collective actions outside our inner simulation. Each action of a drone could be a collage of decision made not by only one human but by many across the network. Wars could be fought or enemies defeated while we just thug along in our unwitting pursuit of personal happiness and freedom. Not that I wish for this, but it is an interesting thought!

[Yarblocosifilitico]

I've always seen Trantor and Solaria as distopic planets. Two ends of a spectrum yet eerie similar in that the inhabitants live lonely lifes. The alternative Asimov proposes is Gaia, but it still comes with a cost that Trevize has to weight very carefully.

[GlobTheDabGlob]

Your intro music always gets me dude! Love it.

[tuumef]

Nice depth you've explored! I'm in the fence. A unified humanity is a good idea in my book, but it depends on the nature of the hive mind. One accord, yet all still recognized as individuals, if that makes sense.

[sallyscrive]

I've read Foundation's Edge some years ago and being a Star trek fan, I was a little scared by the implications and the discovery of Gaia.
Although I understood the concept and it's a positive idea, I wasn't persuade that loosing my individuality would be all for the best.
It's an unsettling finale and I never read the rest of the books.

[MightyKingYoung]

This could be an Evangelion analysis and no one would know the difference.

Good work Quinn, love the videos!

[ThePathOfEudaimonia]

It's possible to be connected and "unified" within a complex network, but still retain individuality. We are already living this way as embodied brains within a complex, dynamical community with emergent properties.

[pikadasgalaxias]

Great video! The first part was a rare example of understanding the complexities of the human condition in a non biased way. I'm impressed!

[Complaints-Department]

I'm fairly certain there was still room for some form of individuality within the collective state of Galaxia I picture it like being plugged into the matrix/internet/VR Oasis where your conscious mind shares experiences with the collective and in turn can drawn upon the shared experiences of others without the loss of function of the individuated state of self awareness..
It would basically be like if every living thing was on social media, except as opposed to infinite noise there would be a way of filtering relevant information to suit the context and subjective requirements of the being in question.
A universal guardian angel that serves to comfort suffering and provide a network of feedback and communication so that no living thing would ever have to experience the terror of dying alone ever again.
Perhaps it could be spun in a dystopian light (or lack thereof) but I feel the dystopian scenario has been done to death, quite literally, it's time for more optimism in sci-fi.
I wanna see less dystopian visions and more utopian dreams

[TravisJohnsonncc]

I think we've got to get past the first step: abandoning the differences between people based on physical attributes and recognize us all as members of the same species. Then we'll be on our way to something great.

But, based on what I see on social media, I don't expect that to happen anytime soon.

[tunaste]

I love the idea of human kind merging together as one! And the best example of it I have ever read was The Last Question. No surprise it's also from Asimov.

[biteme]

I love the subjects and situations you choose for your videos. Your demeanor and how you lay it for us viewers in my opinion couldn't be done any better. We can see your effort and the time you put into them. I guess what im saying is.... We appreciate you and enjoy what you give us... Just goes to show what happens when you take pride in what you do and care about what you release as a final product. A true artist has the ability to remove the observer from there stress of daily bullshit. Even if for only a couple of minutes of psychological freedom. And that my friend is priceless.

[WhatAboutZoidberg]

Getting more and more excited to see how the show turns out. Im a new fan of The Foundation but it looks well done. Time to get reading though, so many insanely interesting questions proposed through this series.

[DataEntity]

I think the hivemind concept has only been superficially explored, lesser hiveminds, tribeminds remain largely unexplored;

The hiveminds explored are permanent structures that override their components whole being. But what about hiveminds that are only part time, like pooling of cognitive resources whenever needing to make difficult decisions.

Or hiveminds that operate on the level of collective memory. Being a culture based on sharing of key foundational memories to establish a pattern of culture.

Once you move away from a black and white image of individuality and a hivemind, you find a vast landscape of novel ideas.

[peterfmodel]

Asimov’s view about psychohistory changed a great deal over time, even if we only look at the original foundation books up to the 1950’s. For example, Asimov in his earliest stories used the term psychologist rather than psycho-historians. Its difficult to be certain when he first used the term psychohistorian as while the original text was not change when the novels were published, extra stuff was added, but the first use of the word psychohistory was probably in the prequel chapter added for the novels in the 1950’s.

The actual extend of the power of the psychohistorians also changed as Asimov wrote the novel, starting as normal people who happen to possess a superior knowledge but later became people with powers as great as the mule.

As for psychohistory, what was it. One error was it subverted individuality, which was not true. It required individuality to work, but attempted to change the direction the sum total of all the individualists to avoid total collapse of a civilisation. There was no evidence that in the world of the 2nd foundation wars would not occur and people would not engage in violence. In the novels this occurs a great deal. The 2nd foundation engineered a final massive space battle between the 1st foundation and Kalgan, the Kalganian war, for example.


Asimov was influenced by reading “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, by historian Edward Gibbon. He wanted to describe that event and then arrive at an answer to prevent these types of collapses in the future. Gibbon seemed to imply there were a number of causes of this decline, which if known, could ensure the empire would not fall. This was historically incorrect, but the idea was a powerful one and Asimov wanted to write a grand story describing how such cyclic falls could be averted. In the last chapter written, the 1st one in the novel, he describes the causes of the decline;

Gaal said, "As Trantor becomes more specialized, it becomes more vulnerable, less able to defend itself. Further, as it becomes more and more the administrative center of Empire, it becomes a greater prize. As the Imperial succession becomes more and more uncertain, and the feuds among the great families more rampant, social responsibility disappears. "

Now of course Asimov was criticised for writing a novel where people did not possess the ability to control their own fate and based on this criticism he tried to change his classic cannon, which I feel was an error. But apart from the individuals which were mind altered, which represents an insignificant number of people, everyone else still possess all the individuality that anyone would possess within the constraints of a civilisation. As for those affected, today’s civilisation can use social pressure and threats to achieve the same thing as being mind controlled by the 2nd foundation.

Thus the individual argument is either incorrect or irrelevant and misses the point of the original novel. Of course Asimov’s attempt to correct his so called error has muddied the waters so I suppose I can’t blame people for focusing on this individuality argument, but this was a novel about an entire civilisation, not individuals.