Rafael del Pino Foundation and United Nations Global Compact Spain
The Rafael del Pino Foundation y United Nations Global Compact Spain organised, 22 February, the III Edition of the go!ODS Awards. The most innovative initiatives that bring us closer to the achievements of the sustainable development goals of the global development agenda.
The event took place according to the following programme:
Welcome
Dialogue entitled "Technology and human evolution. Innovation and the great challenges facing humanity", in which the following will take part: Antonio GarriguesJurist, Honorary President of the law firm Garrigues. Juan Luis ArsuagaProfessor of Palaeontology. Complutense University of Madrid, Director of the UCM-ISCIII Centre for Human Evolution and Behaviour, Co-director of Atapuerca. Patricia GabaldónAcademic Director and Professor of Economics, IE University (moderator)
Presentation of the go!ODS Awards: Clara Arpa, President of the United Nations Global Compact Spain
go!SDG 2022 Awards Ceremony
The following institutions are the driving forces behind go!ODS, together with the United Nations Global Compact Spain and the Rafael del Pino Foundation:
Accenture | Asociación Española de Fundaciones | Atresmedia | European Commission | Cotec | El hueco | Endesa | Esade | Ferrovial | Fundación La Caixa | Fundación Repsol | Iberdrola | IE Business School | Ilunion ONCE | Impact Hub | Indra | Ineco | itdUPM | Prisa | Ship2B | SIC4Change | Telefónica | UNICEF Spain | Telefónica | UNICEF Spain
The award-winning projects in the III Edition of the go!ODS Awards were the following:
End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
- Project. First genetic reserves of wild relatives of crops in Spain.
- Winning Entity. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in alliance with the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos and the Dirección General de Biodiversidad y Recursos Naturales de la Consejería de Medio Ambiente, Vivienda y Agricultura de Madrid.
Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.
Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, facilitate access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
On the occasion of the 3rd Edition of the go!ODS Awards, on 22 February 2022, the Rafael del Pino Foundation organised the dialogue "Technology and human evolution. Innovation and the great challenges facing humanity", with the participation of Antonio Garrigues, jurist and honorary president of the law firm Garrigues, and Juan Luis Arsuaga, professor of Palaeontology at the Complutense University of Madrid, director of the UCM-ISCIII Centre for Human Evolution and Behaviour and co-director of Atapuerca.
Juan Luis Arsuaga: We were not born yesterday, but we have had thousands of years as homo sapiens and millions as hominids. There is one thing we can be sure will not change in the future. In Shakespeare's time there were no motor vehicles, aeroplanes, television, mobile phones, and yet the plays he wrote are still perfectly valid in today's world. What has not changed is the human soul and its fundamental aspects and it will not change in the future. For the same reason that we are still interested in the passions and illusions Shakespeare talks about, we can be sure that the human soul will not change in the future. Ambition, greed, love, jealousy, all those great passions of the human soul that make us understand a Shakespeare play, or Don Quixote, will not change. Despite all the things that technology has changed, they will still be present in the lives of generations to come. So business will have to keep in mind our aspirations, our yearnings and our certainties, which will be the same as they were in Shakespeare's time, in his passions and his greatness. That is what the future must be built around.
Antonio Garrigues: The problem is that we are at a time when technology is beginning to play an excessive, decisive role. This is a long-standing drama. Heidegger unleashed technology; Ortega a little less so, but he said that the mathematical man does not fit the integrity of knowledge, which goes much further. We cannot talk about technology if we do not connect it with human values, despite the bad news that philosophy has disappeared from the school curriculum. We cannot let technology envelop us in its brazenness because the human being is worth much more than all that. The fact that in Spain we have a technological deficit, that technology helps economic growth, is an issue that we cannot forget, but we cannot mythologise technology.
Juan Luis Arsuaga: Technology is not reversible, everything that is invented cannot be uninvented. That is one premise of history. The second is that the solution is never in the past. Nostalgia is a very human feeling, but that happy past is not real, it is the myth of the Amish, who have decided to live as they did in the 19th century, which was a horrible society. They embrace a predictable society, which produces a lot of tranquillity. That's why they seek the security that a predictable society provides. Ortega said that our parents give us life, but they give it to us without doing it; we have to do it ourselves. This did not happen in the old days, but it is the price of freedom. Among the Amish this concern does not exist. But that's not feasible. So you have to make your own life, and that's painful. Parents can't help their children to build their own life. This vital anguish is accentuated in the present because the future is more uncertain than ever, it changes very quickly, because we have abandoned traditional societies in which everything was given to you, even marriage. What is the recipe for overcoming this worry? Confidence in your abilities. You don't have to see the future as a threat if you have confidence in your abilities.
Antonio Garrigues: In the end, the goal of human beings is to be happy.
Juan Luis Arsuaga: There are studies that say that the highest rate of happiness is precisely in societies where you are not free, but I don't want that society for myself.
Antonio Garrigues: Human beings have to maintain their intellectual curiosity permanently. Connecting happiness with retirement, with stopping working, is a stupid idea, the idea of connecting human satisfaction with the idea of doing nothing. Technology has nothing to do with happiness, nor should it make us happier. It is knowledge, philosophy, effort, generosity, knowledge of others, being a good person that makes us happy. Goodness has a lot to do with happiness. Bad people are not happy; they may be rich, but they are not happy.
Juan Luis Arsuaga: Technology is neutral, but it is cumulative. You start with knowledge and you can only increase it. Put biology and computer science together and you have biotechnology. The next generation is already starting from there.
Antonio Garrigues: Is it possible to improve the human condition with transhumanism?
Juan Luis Arsuaga: That doesn't make any sense. The capacity to accumulate knowledge in our brains is as old as the Sumerian tablets. None of that is going to happen.
Antonio Garrigues: Transhumanism improves human conditions through technology and the manipulation of the brain.
Juan Luis Arsuaga: It is not going to happen because we have no notion of intelligence. When it is said that we are going to expand intelligence, the first thing to do is to ask ourselves what intelligence is. There is no single intelligence.
Antonio Garrigues: But some people are smarter and some are dumber.
Juan Luis Arsuaga: There is a Gaussian bell for each of the variables, but there is a genetic lottery of which each one of us is the result. Like a lottery, it is very distributed. Our understanding of being intelligent has changed over time. It used to be that a civil engineer was considered very intelligent. Then it came to be seen that he or she might be socially incompetent, or unmotivated. In the end, it came to be said that intelligence is knowing how to sell a second-hand car. Human intelligence is a machine that has grown and evolved basically to process social information, so that this machine, which was selected to survive in a group, can be applied to other systems and analyse other situations. It spends 24 hours a day processing social information. What we are most concerned about is others. A person without social skills would not be an intelligent person.
Antonio Garrigues: Has Atapuerca given you any insight into the human condition?
Juan Luis Arsuaga: We are a biological species that has evolved. Moreover, there has been a paradigm shift in intelligence. For a while we thought it was developed to solve ecological problems, such as hunting. Our brain is an organ whose function is to analyse systems and predict their behaviour. Previously the system was the ecosystem and our intelligence had developed to predict its behaviour. In primates, brain size correlates with group size: the larger the group, the larger the brain size. Solitaries have smaller brains. There is a correlation because the brain is a machine for processing social information.
The Rafael del Pino Foundation is not responsible for the comments, opinions or statements made by the people who participate in its activities and which are expressed as a result of their inalienable right to freedom of expression and under their sole responsibility. The contents included in the summary of this conference are the result of the debates held at the meeting held for this purpose at the Foundation and are the responsibility of their authors.
The Rafael del Pino Foundation is not responsible for any comments, opinions or statements made by third parties. In this respect, the FRP is not obliged to monitor the views expressed by such third parties who participate in its activities and which are expressed as a result of their inalienable right to freedom of expression and under their own responsibility. The contents included in the summary of this conference are the result of the discussions that took place during the conference organised for this purpose at the Foundation and are the sole responsibility of its authors.
