Hi and welcome to capitalism, where everything is made up and only money matters. We used to be called feudalism, until somebody decided that we were too godly for the common masses, and that God should no longer decide who rules. But before that, we used to conquer people and make them our slaves, because that was morally sound and felt right. We have certainly gone through some existential crises before figuring out that we can’t figure it out and let it be figured out in the future. We have a confession to make. We have reached the future, and we have no idea how to do this anymore.
We live in the most peaceful times this world has ever seen. Apart from some armed conflicts, terrorist attacks, some political tensions, there has never been more peace on this war-torn planet. The oh-so-selfish human race which has orchestrated the biggest fuck-ups in history and tried to correct them by killing everybody(!), is now experiencing a new emotion. I would say ‘love’ but we all know that’s a lie. No, it’s experiencing progress.
Describing progress is not an easy task. It’s not something you put on a chart and expect everybody to understand the numbers being crunched from behind the scenes, no matter how many times you crunch them.
But there is a neat analogy to show its effect. If you somehow had a time machine — and you didn’t use it to form companies like Google of Microsoft — you would be able to take a guy from the middle of the 19th century and bring him today. When he would arrive, his mind would be blown. Everything he knew would be completely washed away by the awesome that is today’s modern day life. Today’s life would be surreal to him. Being able to communicate with everybody in the world at any time. Having any kind of information in the palm of your hand. Being able to fly faster and higher than any bird in the sky. Now that is magic.
Say that 19th century guy now has your time machine. Say he decides to abduct somebody that’s 150 years from his past. He takes somebody from early 17th century and brings them to his time. 17th century person says “Oh, neat!” and just isn’t all that impressed. 19th century guy is displeased by this and decides that he wants to really blow somebody’s mind because his time is awesome. So he starts up his time machine again and goes back further still. He now grabs somebody from the 1500s. Now 19th century guy is pleased. 1500s guy’s mind is blown. (I first read this on www.waitbutwhy.com and if you haven’t read their stuff before, now is the last moment before a ninja cuts off your head. You have 3, 2…)
See where I’m getting at? If 1500s guy wanted to blow somebody’s mind from the past, he would have to go not 300 years, but over a millennia. Why? Because not much progress has been made in that time compared to the progress from later centuries.
So to understand progress is to feel the improvement that the human collective has achieved in any given period of time. And the speed at which progress is reached increases over time. That means that more progress has been made in 2011–2016 than in 2001–2010.
What does all of this mean to the normal person of today? That if somebody from the future were to blow their mind, they don’t need to be taken 150 years through time. A mere 50 would be enough. Maybe even less, who knows?
Not that we’re acting like we’ve realized this. We prefer to look at cats on the internet and watch old reruns of shows. We’re not doing anything with the possibilities of today.
Well, that’s not quite true. More and more people band together for noble causes. More and more people realize that the world is not the pink place governments would have us think. We’ve just begun realizing the potential of living today. It’s no longer the same place that it was merely two or three decades ago. Long past are the days where if you couldn’t learn something you gave up. Long gone are the times where humanity was separated. We’re getting together in a way that couldn’t have even been conceived as an idea half a century ago. And the rulers of the world don’t like that.
Today’s world is the consequence of the aftermath of WWII. This might not make a lot of sense, but bear with me. After the Second World War, what remained was a devastated planet. History’s most powerful weapon had been deployed, and its effects were tremendous. All hail the glory of the Atom.
In the meantime, people were suffering, grieving, struggling. In order to rectify this, specific organizations and legal bodies were formed to enforce and keep the peace. They haven’t done a marvelous job, but in all honestly, it could have been way worse.
Not only that, but old empires fall apart. Entire systems rise and fall. The economy boosts, new technology is invented at an alarmingly fast rate. Did I mention space? No, I didn’t. We go to outer space! We invent computers! We do things that were deemed impossible less than a century before. We sure proved Lord Kelvin wrong.
But, there’s a downside to all of this. Humanity was in a Cold War. It was a very unique war, as far as wars are concerned. There hasn’t been a single war that in the end weighed more positive rather than negative, but this one was… peculiar to say the least.
The world was divided in East and West and instead of direct conflict, there had been ‘proxy wars’ instead. Examples of proxy wars are Korea, Vietnam, Afganistan, to name a few. But of course, we as humans can’t just stand still. We hail the Atom even more. Nuclear warheads practically start growing on trees. Not only that, but we make them intercontinental ballistic missiles. In short, we went M.A.D.
It was nuclear deterrence that kept the shaky peace in place. Mutually assured destruction is a very powerful concept, so powerful that they never wanted a computer that can make a retaliatory action. It always had to be a human. We never wanted to destroy the world. But we almost did. The Cuban missile crisis. I won’t get into it, but it was one minute to midnight. One measly minute to a nuclear apocalyptic midnight.
But progress never stopped. It took even bigger strides, it started sprinting, then leaping. Now it’s on the verge of flying. If there’s one thing that cannot be truly stopped it’s progress.
We finally live in times where advancement happens for the sake of advancement. We don’t need to start World War Three, or the Chilling War, so that we can put more funds in science. We’re finally starting to realize that progress happens because it wills so. Because people want it. Because people need it.
In today’s business climate, it’s far cheaper and easier to exploit poor countries rather than invade and conquer them. With the world becoming a global village and all, corporations can just move in, suck it dry, and then pack up shop and move out. If this doesn’t freak you out, I don’t know what will. This is what I meant by the consequence of the aftermath.
We’ve given entities which are literally soulless such profound personal attributes, that it’s shocking that we even think it’s okay. Let me elaborate on that. When you say, for example, Nestle, you don’t think of the people that comprise the entirety of Nestle, but you think of the company as a being that has wishes and desires and ambitions. This is terrifying to me. It chills me to the bone. Nestle is not the only example. There are countless others.
But these corporations try to keep in bound in the old system, a system that keeps the average individual in perpetuate blindness, and in that old system information definitely wasn’t accessible easily.This is where progress comes into play.
Progress has taken us to the next level. I’m talking about the internet. It fundamentally changed the way the world works. It’s no longer the segregated and separated place — it’s a place of uniformity. A very shaky uniformity, in the sense that everyone can do everything.
Since corporations tend to lobby the governments of every country, they have a habit of forming an environment that’s suitable to them. But for the first time in history, the individual is at least as powerful as the mightiest corporations of them all. For the first time our words can reach the largest audience imaginable. The whole world. It’s time we starting taking advantage of that, just as these soulless entities have taken advantage of us.
The world no longer functions the way it used to. It’s up to us to fine-tune it to the preference of humanity as a whole, rather than to the likings of a few greedy old men. And they are a few. That’s what we tend to forget. We think of these people as beasts and undefeatable, but they’re not. Together we can stand tall and stand proud.
We don’t have to go to war to improve. We can stop the exploitation of the poor and downtrodden. We can save the millions dying in Africa or stop the inequality that exists in every layers of society. All we have to know is that we can and will be heard. Individually we are powerful but together we are invincible!
Just take a look at what’s going on online every single day. There are individuals that exist outside the capitalistic socioeconomic hierarchy, and they have influence as much as the biggest companies in the world. They’re celebrities in a completely new sense of the word. They only have to continue being who they are and do what they do.
I’m talking about people from YouTube, Twitter — hell, even Facebook — maybe Medium, and all kinds of platforms. Just take a look at Kickstarter. It might not be the shining example, but it sure offered a whole new venue of funding. Patreon? That too.
And guess what happened? The classic media completely bashed people that had a strong online presence. The media tried to show that this was simply a phase, not too dissimilar to how a lot of people thought the internet was nothing more than the same, decades ago.
So, where are we today? In a world where not having an online presence is close to having only a half-existence, but not in a bad way. You do miss out on a lot of things — potentially — but it’s not scary, you can live a decent life, at the very least. But if you did embrace the strength of the internet, that would leave you with the world’s mightiest tool.
And what would happen if somebody tried to take that tool away from you? Why, #WTFU would happen, that’s what. If you were a youtuber that lives off youtube videos, some asshole from a godforsaken part of the planet can plant a copyright strike to make your life miserable. And who does that? Why, big online names that over time fell in the classic media category that prey on the weak and attempt to crush all opposition.
And that, my friends, is but the start. We’re not at one minute to midnight, but at one minute to infinite progress. We’ve been through a lot, as a species — as a whole — but there’s plenty more. We still have time.
But wait, we’re not done yet. What about the future? What does it bring? Will it be Orwellian, will it be Olympian? Or will nothing change? Stay tuned for Part Two, where I try to tackle what comes up next.
This guy is psyched to be living today. But he also thinks that the future seems really cool. Let’s just hope that we live long enough to see the future. If you’ve enjoyed this guy’s post and can’t wait for he second part, try clicking the follow button somewhere on this page. He’d appreciate that. He’d also like it if you’d follow him on Twitter. Come on, we both you know want that. Click, click, click. Whoosh. Brainwashed. You’re a zombie now.
