- Joined
- Jun 13, 2016
I was feeling a bit depressed about this yesterday because that is exactly what seems to be the case. Hawkwind did a song called "It is the business of the future to be dangerous," but we can handle a dangerous future. Danger means purpose and meaning. History is all about humanity rising to overcome the dangers. We are heading for a world in which the future will be dominated by one of the following:
1. The West will continue its slide into a meaningless, degraded culture where hordes of isolated, atomised, powerless masses are herded by a small number of unaccountable and omnipotent elite technocrats who Know Better. This will become the dominant cultural paradigm for the rest of the 21st century. Mindless consumerism, addiction to the dopamine hit of likes on Instacrap or other more prosaic narcotics, no real meaningful progress in science or technology other than as a way to sedate the masses with prolefeed, artificial scarcity when Net Zero comes in, and hordes of economic and/or climate refugees who want to get in because even life as an atomised pod-dwelling bug-eating prole is preferable to starvation and endless resource wars or working for the Chinese (see below.)
2. The Chinese will export their worker-ant communism to be the dominant cultural paradigm. The masses will march in endless lockstep for the edification of the nomenklatura and degrade themselves with longer hours and less material wealth. They will do anything for just a crumb of social credit. There will be no meaningful progress in science or technology other than as a way to control and repress the masses, artificial scarcity because one's social credit score will act as a physical barrier to anything other than bare subsistence level, and developed economies will be swamped by hordes of economic and/or climate refugees who want to get in because even life in indentured servitude to Xi Jinping is preferable to starvation and endless resource wars or a nightmare of mental anaesthesis in the decadent West.
You might be thinking, "but what about Russia?" Sorry, but Russia is irrelevant. Vladimir Putin rules over a personality cult because he can't do anything else and once he dies or is deposed, Russia is just not economically or culturally heavyweight enough other than to throw its lot in with one of the above. At best it'll be part of a non-aligned group that incorporates the worst of both 1 and 2 above.
Tl;dr - our future is either freedom without purpose, or purpose without freedom.
Why do I think this is so? Well, have a look at modern Western culture, or what passes for it. It is utterly degenerate. Not because of drag queen story hour, cutting off your dick, and Love Island. Those are symptoms. No, it is degenerate because it is devoid of any transcendent meaning or purpose. We're not allowed to have a cultural identity or story; the cultural Maoists have seen to that because they know it is the glue that holds a society together. Our values are increasingly derided as racist and outdated but with nothing to actually replace them other than self-loathing and attention-seeking. We are told we mustn't have children because the planet is dying and it's not right to bring them into an already overpopulated world. We are told we mustn't be proud of our values because they are not worth the pride. We are told that our new values should be open mindedness, doublethink ("trans women are women" is the most visible example of that), and celebrating diversity. We are told that our culture is nothing and worthless and needs to be enriched by uncontrolled migration (who are really just there to be exploited as cheap labour). As a result, we are suffering a crime wave in the cities, increasing drug and alcohol usage, and increasing antidepressant usage because the future of the West is looking more and more like the heat death of the universe.
Think about just how quickly everyone slavishly complied with Covid-19 lockdowns. We were told it was just for a few weeks until the peak was over, but 15 weeks into it we're still subjected to restrictions. Restrictions which conveniently don't get enforced other than against the little people - sorry, the "gammons," the "deplorables," and similar epithets (the BLM protests really weren't socially distanced but went ahead anyhow) - and the justification for which is becoming increasingly scanty. Thirty years ago this would have caused outrage, but we're so anaesthetised by the 24 hour news cycle, social media, and being told what to think that we just don't care.
It applies on a pop culture level as well. The defamation of Luke Skywalker and other pop cultural heroes with remakes and reboots is deliberate and part of a larger plan to divorce the masses from any meaning in their culture because that's the glue that holds society together.
As a result, the West is heading for the cultural equivalent of the heat death of the universe.
Meanwhile, the Chinese are clamping down hard on everything. They have a purpose, and that is to give their lives for the Revolution and to expand across all the globe until the proletarians of all lands are free (to serve the nomenklatura). Their belt and road initiative is basically bribing the developing world to be on their side. They are depressingly attracting people by saying that freedom is overrated, look at the West. Social credit is attractive because it gamifies obedience and unthinking obedience at that. I remember reading a post by a Mainland Chinese player of the game Frostpunk about how the fact that the game treats as a bad ending that you survived the ice age by implementing total authoritarian rule as a symptom of "why you guys in decay." They are indoctrinated to the point at which they will take happiness in slavery over unhappiness in freedom.
The worst thing that could happen, of course, is that both 1 and 2 above become true. That we end up with 1984 for real - a small ruling class exercising power for its own sake by a combination of the carrot and the stick and that human nature invariably leads to this. Imagine an endless parade of twitch-mobs shrieking at people for social credit, forever. And it is invariable - as Orwell said, the Middle enlist the Low on their side to change places with the High only to thrust the Low back into their previous position of servitude.
Sometimes I hope that Greta Thunberg is right and that global warming becomes irreversible after 2030 and humanity dies out. There was a joke about the shortest science fiction story of all time I remember. It was as follows:
Indeed, that is the grade I would give humanity right now. We had the opportunity to revolutionise the world with the internets and freedom of information, and we squandered it on endless political squabbling and e-girls. We had the opportunity to bring about, at the end of the Cold War, a world where democracy and liberty became truly universal values, and we squandered it on self-doubt and navel-gazing and grievance-mongering. We had the opportunity to provide truly green energy in the form of properly developed nuclear power, and we squandered it in favour of fucking windmills because we were terrified of radiation. We had the opportunity to resurrect the space program and begin spreading to other planets, but we squandered it by telling ourself it was only any good as a test bed for nuclear missiles.
And now we are in a world where the future is 1984 by the carrot, or 1984 by the stick.
Well fucking done.
And on that bombshell, I'm going to go and have a sandwich and chase it down with a couple of Venlafaxine.
1. The West will continue its slide into a meaningless, degraded culture where hordes of isolated, atomised, powerless masses are herded by a small number of unaccountable and omnipotent elite technocrats who Know Better. This will become the dominant cultural paradigm for the rest of the 21st century. Mindless consumerism, addiction to the dopamine hit of likes on Instacrap or other more prosaic narcotics, no real meaningful progress in science or technology other than as a way to sedate the masses with prolefeed, artificial scarcity when Net Zero comes in, and hordes of economic and/or climate refugees who want to get in because even life as an atomised pod-dwelling bug-eating prole is preferable to starvation and endless resource wars or working for the Chinese (see below.)
2. The Chinese will export their worker-ant communism to be the dominant cultural paradigm. The masses will march in endless lockstep for the edification of the nomenklatura and degrade themselves with longer hours and less material wealth. They will do anything for just a crumb of social credit. There will be no meaningful progress in science or technology other than as a way to control and repress the masses, artificial scarcity because one's social credit score will act as a physical barrier to anything other than bare subsistence level, and developed economies will be swamped by hordes of economic and/or climate refugees who want to get in because even life in indentured servitude to Xi Jinping is preferable to starvation and endless resource wars or a nightmare of mental anaesthesis in the decadent West.
You might be thinking, "but what about Russia?" Sorry, but Russia is irrelevant. Vladimir Putin rules over a personality cult because he can't do anything else and once he dies or is deposed, Russia is just not economically or culturally heavyweight enough other than to throw its lot in with one of the above. At best it'll be part of a non-aligned group that incorporates the worst of both 1 and 2 above.
Tl;dr - our future is either freedom without purpose, or purpose without freedom.
Why do I think this is so? Well, have a look at modern Western culture, or what passes for it. It is utterly degenerate. Not because of drag queen story hour, cutting off your dick, and Love Island. Those are symptoms. No, it is degenerate because it is devoid of any transcendent meaning or purpose. We're not allowed to have a cultural identity or story; the cultural Maoists have seen to that because they know it is the glue that holds a society together. Our values are increasingly derided as racist and outdated but with nothing to actually replace them other than self-loathing and attention-seeking. We are told we mustn't have children because the planet is dying and it's not right to bring them into an already overpopulated world. We are told we mustn't be proud of our values because they are not worth the pride. We are told that our new values should be open mindedness, doublethink ("trans women are women" is the most visible example of that), and celebrating diversity. We are told that our culture is nothing and worthless and needs to be enriched by uncontrolled migration (who are really just there to be exploited as cheap labour). As a result, we are suffering a crime wave in the cities, increasing drug and alcohol usage, and increasing antidepressant usage because the future of the West is looking more and more like the heat death of the universe.
Think about just how quickly everyone slavishly complied with Covid-19 lockdowns. We were told it was just for a few weeks until the peak was over, but 15 weeks into it we're still subjected to restrictions. Restrictions which conveniently don't get enforced other than against the little people - sorry, the "gammons," the "deplorables," and similar epithets (the BLM protests really weren't socially distanced but went ahead anyhow) - and the justification for which is becoming increasingly scanty. Thirty years ago this would have caused outrage, but we're so anaesthetised by the 24 hour news cycle, social media, and being told what to think that we just don't care.
It applies on a pop culture level as well. The defamation of Luke Skywalker and other pop cultural heroes with remakes and reboots is deliberate and part of a larger plan to divorce the masses from any meaning in their culture because that's the glue that holds society together.
As a result, the West is heading for the cultural equivalent of the heat death of the universe.
Meanwhile, the Chinese are clamping down hard on everything. They have a purpose, and that is to give their lives for the Revolution and to expand across all the globe until the proletarians of all lands are free (to serve the nomenklatura). Their belt and road initiative is basically bribing the developing world to be on their side. They are depressingly attracting people by saying that freedom is overrated, look at the West. Social credit is attractive because it gamifies obedience and unthinking obedience at that. I remember reading a post by a Mainland Chinese player of the game Frostpunk about how the fact that the game treats as a bad ending that you survived the ice age by implementing total authoritarian rule as a symptom of "why you guys in decay." They are indoctrinated to the point at which they will take happiness in slavery over unhappiness in freedom.
The worst thing that could happen, of course, is that both 1 and 2 above become true. That we end up with 1984 for real - a small ruling class exercising power for its own sake by a combination of the carrot and the stick and that human nature invariably leads to this. Imagine an endless parade of twitch-mobs shrieking at people for social credit, forever. And it is invariable - as Orwell said, the Middle enlist the Low on their side to change places with the High only to thrust the Low back into their previous position of servitude.
Sometimes I hope that Greta Thunberg is right and that global warming becomes irreversible after 2030 and humanity dies out. There was a joke about the shortest science fiction story of all time I remember. It was as follows:
Galactic Report Card: Planet Earth said:
Indeed, that is the grade I would give humanity right now. We had the opportunity to revolutionise the world with the internets and freedom of information, and we squandered it on endless political squabbling and e-girls. We had the opportunity to bring about, at the end of the Cold War, a world where democracy and liberty became truly universal values, and we squandered it on self-doubt and navel-gazing and grievance-mongering. We had the opportunity to provide truly green energy in the form of properly developed nuclear power, and we squandered it in favour of fucking windmills because we were terrified of radiation. We had the opportunity to resurrect the space program and begin spreading to other planets, but we squandered it by telling ourself it was only any good as a test bed for nuclear missiles.
And now we are in a world where the future is 1984 by the carrot, or 1984 by the stick.
Well fucking done.
And on that bombshell, I'm going to go and have a sandwich and chase it down with a couple of Venlafaxine.
