In Meyer’s thinking, the shift in perspective from “the human being as a soul” to “the human being as an organism” explained “why the trend of history is in the direction of democracy.” As science overtakes civilization, Meyer assumed a new global recognition of equality and democratic fellowship rooted in the basic fact of our overwhelming similarity as fellow organisms. The divisions that haunt society, politics, and economics based on class, wealth, liberality, race, and so on would become ridiculous: “In real world-wide human life, the differences among individuals are entirely swamped by their likenesses. To him who accepts the scientific view that human society is a group of organisms, it is an absurd proposition to divide… into… classes.…”

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 1158