We need Dragons!

In Defense of Dragons: Why Humanity Needs a Common Enemy

The Unity Problem

What if our greatest weakness as a species isn't our tendency toward conflict, but our inability to unite against genuine threats? What if the very thing we fear most—a clear and present danger to human civilization—might actually be exactly what we need?

The Dragon Solution

Consider this thought experiment: imagine dragons suddenly appeared across the globe. Not the wise, ancient beings of fantasy literature, but pure predators—intelligent enough to be devastating hunters, but incapable of negotiation, reasoning, or coexistence. They hunt humans, they multiply, and they claim territory with no possibility of compromise or appeasement.

In such a scenario, humanity would face something it has rarely encountered in its modern history: a threat so unambiguous that political divisions would become irrelevant. There would be no debate about dragon rights, no complex geopolitical calculations about whether dragons might be beneficial to certain interests, no ideological framework that could rationalize their presence as anything other than an existential crisis.

Why Current Threats Fail to Unite Us

This stands in stark contrast to our current global challenges. Climate change, despite claims of scientific consensus, remains both politically divisive and scientifically incomplete—with significant uncertainties about timing, severity, and the effectiveness of proposed solutions. Pandemic responses fracture along ideological lines. Even potential threats like artificial intelligence generate fierce debate about whether they represent salvation or doom.

These issues, despite their potential to affect all of humanity, somehow fail to generate the universal cooperation that our species desperately needs. We filter every challenge through existing political, economic, and cultural divisions, finding ways to disagree even when the stakes appear existential.

The Clarity of Unambiguous Threats

Dragons would cut through this dysfunction like nothing else could. Faced with an enemy that cannot be reasoned with, bought off, or politically maneuvered around, humanity might finally discover what true cooperation looks like. The person advocating for dragon appeasement wouldn't be seen as holding a legitimate political position—they'd be recognized as a threat to human survival itself.

The dragon scenario reveals something uncomfortable about human nature: we seem incapable of uniting around positive shared goals or even around threats that leave room for interpretation. Instead, we require the kind of black-and-white clarity that our complex modern challenges rarely provide.

The Dark Side of Unity

Of course, this solution comes with obvious downsides. The unity forged by external threats often proves temporary and can enable authoritarian responses. Historical examples of societies united against common enemies frequently involve the suspension of freedoms and the scapegoating of internal groups. The cure might indeed be worse than the disease.

What We're Really Missing

But the thought experiment highlights a troubling reality: in the absence of an unambiguous external threat, humanity seems unable to coordinate effectively on challenges that require global cooperation. We are a species seemingly designed for tribal conflict, struggling to adapt our ancient instincts to modern existential risks that require unprecedented levels of international collaboration.

Perhaps what we really need isn't dragons themselves, but the clarity of purpose that dragons would provide—a shared understanding of what we're fighting for and against, free from the murky complexities that allow our current challenges to be endlessly debated while precious time slips away.

Is AI our dragon?