Humanly Unsustainable: Evolution, Technology and the Future of Sapiens

The Institute of Future and Innovation Studies at John Cabot University is organizing a meeting dedicated to interdisciplinary comparison, designed to encourage transversal reflection on particularly current and relevant topics entitled “Humanly Unsustainable: Evolution, Technology and the Future of Sapiens” which will take place on March 7th. from 4.30 pm to 7.30 pm.

The event was born from the debate sparked by the work Humanly Unsustainable. Capitalism Severely Harms Sapiens (Meltemi, 2025) by Luigi D’Elia and Nora S. Nicolaus, a transdisciplinary investigation into the human condition in the current phase of capitalism. The authors, going beyond the traditional socio-political and philosophical interpretations, propose an innovative analysis through the prism of biology and evolutionary psychology, questioning the relationship between the evolution of our species and contemporary economic-technological structures.

The discussion will focus on themes such as: the incompatibility between the bio-psychic limits of the human being and the pressures imposed by the economic and technological system; the construction of ecological and ontological niches and the growing gap between the natural habitat and the hyper-technological society; the metaverse as the outcome of a process of progressive de-poorisation of human experience. The concept of the hyperobject and the crisis of perception, i.e. the difficulty of the human mind in processing the systemic challenges of the present (climate crisis, war, inequalities). Finally, reflection will extend to the comparison of cultural models, from Western individualism to the cooperative philosophy of the Japanese Ikigai, with a view to exploring possible future trajectories for human coexistence.

This panel discussion will take the form of an open interdisciplinary dialogue. Participants will be asked to read the text in advance and offer their own reflections from their own field of expertise. The aim is not to analyse the book in its specific details, nor to dwell exclusively on the theses of the authors, but to develop a transversal reading of the contents, creating novel connections between different disciplines and perspectives.