The answer to the ultimate questions that humanity has always asked itself has not yet been given, nor can it ever be given in the affirmative. The only possibility for human beings to receive an answer is in the negative. The purpose of this book is to substantiate these two statements by showing the limitations—or, more precisely, the limited processing power—of our brain. To achieve this goal, it revisits the major milestones that have marked the history of humankind, not so much from the standpoint of events as from that of the evolutionary and cultural changes that have taken place over the centuries. The final Revelation will ultimately show the impossibility of giving an affirmative answer to the questions: “Who am I?”, “Why do I exist?”, and “What is the meaning of life?
The answer to the ultimate questions that humanity has always asked itself has not yet been given, nor can it ever be given in the affirmative. The only possibility for human beings to receive an answer is in the negative. The purpose of this book is to substantiate these two statements by showing the limitations—or, more precisely, the limited processing power—of our brain. To achieve this goal, it revisits the major milestones that have marked the history of humankind, not so much from the standpoint of events as from that of the evolutionary and cultural changes that have taken place over the centuries. The final Revelation will ultimately show the impossibility of giving an affirmative answer to the questions: “Who am I?”, “Why do I exist?”, and “What is the meaning of life?
The answer to the ultimate questions humanity has always asked has not yet been given, nor can it ever be given in an affirmative sense.
The only way human beings can receive an answer is in the negative.
The aim of this book is to argue these two statements adequately, showing the limitations—or, more precisely, the limited processing power—of our brain.
To achieve this goal, we will retrace the major milestones that have marked the history of the genus Homo, not so much from the standpoint of events as from that of the evolutionary and cultural changes that have taken place over the centuries.
We will thus understand how, step by step, without anyone’s intention, fortuitously and by chance, our intellectual capacity grew in parallel with the increase in the size and structure of the neocortex of our brain.
It all started there. If our “control center” had not undergone this evolution—so complex and so anomalous—we would not be here discussing anything at all. We would have neither speech nor language, neither science nor technology; we wouldn’t wear clothes, we wouldn’t live in heated homes, we wouldn’t eat cooked food, etc., etc.
So why talk about anything else? Why wander in a thousand directions if the origin of everything lies in that evolutionary act that, in a mere instant of cosmic time, transformed us from ordinary primates into thinking humans?
We will see that being “thinking beings” throughout prehistory and then history led us to develop myths, doctrines, and theories, up to today’s latest hypotheses about the origin of the universe and of life.
In every myth, doctrine, theory, and hypothesis one can find a crumb of truth—at first very tiny, now a bit more substantial, yet still only a crumb—while the greater part of the mystery that shrouds the planet and the entire universe remains unknown.
Unfortunately, that abnormal evolutionary act, besides allowing us to glimpse crumbs of truth, also enabled us to alter the delicate equilibria of the biosphere—and we did, oh, did we ever! We exploited to our advantage every extra neuron that grew in our heads, and the result of this activity is the ecological wreckage we see before our eyes today.
It was easy to break the machine, but it is impossible to rebuild it after so many of its gears have been destroyed.
A machine works only if all its internal mechanisms work. Otherwise, it becomes an inert jumble of iron and sheet metal.
We are only now realizing that
“everything in nature is connected” and that “this simple law has a corollary: the extinction of a species, besides being a tragedy in itself, has unpredictable consequences for the system of which that species is a part” (S. Mancuso, “The Incredible Journey of Plants”).
We are chasing the mirage of an entirely artificial world, yet, paradoxically, in designing it we draw on models from the natural world—and it could not be otherwise.
Even the so-called artificial intelligence now being implemented is made in the image and likeness of humankind. It receives inputs, has a memory, processes data through a processor, and provides outputs.
The “feelings” variable is a bit harder to implement and perhaps will not even be put on the drawing board, given its uselessness—if not harmfulness—for the technical–scientific aid we expect from robots.
The artificial meat currently under study is meant to replace the natural meat of cattle and pigs. But it must still try to imitate the form and taste of the latter.
The chimera of a completely artificial world entirely detached from nature is not even conceivable: we are made of flesh, blood, and neurons, and we know no other reality.
In other words, we can process only the data we possess, not those our limited senses do not detect.
This is a well-known concept in the history of philosophy. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, puts it this way: “[…] things that do not fall under the domain of the senses cannot be understood by the human intellect, except insofar as knowledge of them is derived from sensible things.” (Book I, Chap. III.) Despite this assertion, Thomas and many other philosophers built monumental ideological scaffolds founded almost exclusively on the ruminations of reason.
Nature proceeded according to a different logic. It entrusted everything to chance, after which the law of large numbers did the rest.
In the great cauldron of the cosmos, everything began to boil, and from the primordial broth life was born.
Across billions upon billions of celestial bodies, it would have been strange if, on one or more of them, the conditions for the origin of life had not come about, given the infinite number of collisions among the immense quantity of elements present in nature.
Then the time factor entered in. Over billions and billions of years, the first forms of life began to evolve according to the process so brilliantly intuited and described by Charles Darwin.
Faced with this boundless ocean of space and time, our presence on the planet Earth—and the disasters we have caused—amounts to very little.
I am well aware of this. But I am equally aware that our reality unfolds here and now and that this is the only life that it is ours to live. Rather than thinking about dimensions that do not belong to us, let us concentrate our attention on the disasters we have inflicted on the biosphere, on why we committed them, and on how we will be able to live with them in the future.
At the end of this analysis we will have the “revelation,” that is, we will understand the true role assigned to us by the direction of the spectacular performance within which we are living.
Above all, we will understand why it is not possible to give an affirmative answer to the ultimate questions humanity has always asked, but only a negative one.
In the body of the book you will find a great many quotations, some of them reproduced at length. Regarding this use of others’ thought, I recall what Freud said: “The author’s personality manifests itself in the choice of material and in the opinions that this suggests to him” (Totem and Taboo).
Bruno Cesare Antonio Sebastiani's Revelation: Address to the Malignant Cells is a provocative and deeply philosophical work that challenges humanity's most cherished assumptions. Framed within the author's "Cancerism" theory, the book argues that human intelligence - often celebrated as a divine spark for evolutionary triumph - may instead be a catastrophic error in nature's design. Sebastiani contends that the genetic mutations that expanded our neocortex set us on an irreversible path toward ecological devastation, likening Homo sapiens to malignant cells consuming the biosphere.
The book unfolds in seven chapters, each tracing a critical stage in humanity's journey: from the exit from the state of nature and the birth of myths to the rise of religions, the triumph of reason, and the limits of intelligence. Sebastiani draws on anthropology, evolutionary biology, and cultural history, citing thinkers from Rousseau and Darwin to Harari and Dawkins, to illustrate how our cognitive leap, once hailed as progress, has become a planetary liability. His analogy between genetic mutations in humans and oncogenic processes in cells is striking, and his critique of anthropocentrism is relentless.
What makes this work compelling is its blend of scientific insight and cultural critique. Sebastiani dismantles the romantic notion of harmony between early humans and nature, showing that exploitation began as soon as our ancestors acquired tools and abstract thought. He also explores the futility of ultimate questions, arguing that the answers humanity seeks can only be negative, and closes with a sobering "revelation": our intelligence is powerful enough to destroy the biosphere but too limited to restore its balance.
This book is not light reading; its tone is rigorous, its scope vast. Yet for readers interested in environmental ethics, philosophy of science, or the existential challenges of the Anthropocene, Revelation offers a bold, unsettling perspective. It is a call to humility, and perhaps to action, before nature's final verdict.