Hiatus is such a strange word. I’ve been seeing that word everywhere but have never used it myself. I’m not much of a farewell or come-back-again person, so this is a new one for me. I declare a state of post-hiatusness(?) and have every intention to continue doing this. But as I have said before, I’m the King of Expectations. So, let’s continue, shall we? I have the first part written here, so do give it a read.
It’s been a gruesome and a tiring year. So much so, that I have completely forgotten what this second part was supposed to be. I have a draft of it, sure, I can read it in the hopes of reminding myself, but frankly, the point has changed too much during the past year. The second part was supposed to be something about artificial intelligence, maybe about the world changing — or in short, just pandering to a group that really had no interest in changing the world. So, I’m officially changing the title of the post mid-post and adding a subtitle. Can you feel the edge? Am I edgy enough? No? Fine, here it goes.
WHY THE WORLD NEVER REALLY FUNCTIONED
And why it’s always been shit
Lately I’ve been feeling a burning sense of anxiety. It’s a pretty known emotion to me, something that I’ve been experiencing for most of my adult life. (Not that I’m an adult, mind you, but society says after you turn eighteen you’re an adult.) And here I am, mid-twenties, and wondering what went wrong.
Like with almost every child, I too had high hopes of the world and rosy expectations bordering on fantasy. I remember watching TV about the dangerous, yet hopeless, bad guys. Those Al Qaedians, Chechens, terrorists, heathens, the Chinese — in other words, things outside western culture — seeking to destroy all the good of the world simply out of spite. They were the bad guys but they didn’t know it. I desperately wanted them to realize that they were the bad guys. But you see, to my young innocent mind that might’ve been the case, when it fact the reality was different.
These groups of people weren’t the problem themselves. They were merely being a dangerous symptom of a much larger problem. The world had been moving at a threatening pace, and has been for quite some time, so much that every time someone didn’t agree with the decisions made by the West for the West, they were branded a specific type of outcast, usually in a coat of murder and paint of hate. No, they didn’t oppose the West out of spite, they wanted to oppose a dangerous world, and in their mind, danger and violence were the only solution. And in a modern world where taunting and flaunting your most powerful weapons (read: nukes) is standard procedure, you’ll understand when the rest of the world doesn’t see you as a benevolent overlord wishing everybody peace and quiet.
I wrote about how the world today was a consequence of the Cold War, but to sum it up like that is simply a thoughtcrime (thanks Orwell). The world today is a stage, indeed, but a stage for controlled chaos and managed non-order (not to be confused with disorder). But we’ve come full circle; where once upon a time speaking of disorder was lunacy, today mentioning stability brands you a lunatic. People have realized that beneath the shiny hood lies an engine that’s barely functioning.
But this world isn’t Brave nor New, and the year no longer is Nineteen Eighty-Four, and yet somehow we’re left with our fingers on our foreheads, scratching furiously, wondering what the hell went wrong. Nowadays, instead of discussing the situation in a rational manner, we have the Jewish Conspiracy, the Chinese Conspiracy, the Nasa Conspiracy, the NSA Conspiracy, the Big Bad Wolf Conspiracy, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there even was a Stockings Conspiracy. In other words, witch hunts are still around, but people still haven’t realized that witch hunts were never for hunting witches. They are for pinning blame and expressing anger.
Humanity is sterile. It has long since fallen afoul of its own clutches and has failed to lessen the grip. This is, in fact, a historical case as it’s happened plenty of times. Sure, the context is different in most cases, but almost every society has managed to destroy itself from the inside. Complacency, stagnation, anger. That’s more or less the order in which things happen. It’s a vicious cycle, a loop not so easily avoided or avoidable, but not unbreakable. And it’s not about recognizing the symptoms as it is with most problems. It’s about taking action against them, but in a manner that will not split the world into pieces. But unlike the Cold War where the threat was nuclear, the pieces left most definitely won’t be atomic in origin, but rather informational — where controlling the flow of information has the same devastating effect but in a much subtler manner.
I’m really fond of a story about a King whose well has been poisoned by an envious mage thus rendering the population dumb and stupid. When he returned after conveniently being on a hunt, the population was wreaking havoc on his lands, and to end the chaos he had to drink from the well and become like them in order for them to trust him again. I might’ve told this story before, but that’s basically it.
I used to think the moral of the story is that people don’t like different things. But I’ve grown to realize it might just be something else. A mob is almost always stupid, and ensuring they’re stupid makes them much easier to rule hence the mage’s poison. Its intended effect is not to simply make them blindly obedient but to render them unable to learn anything new and progressive, thus insuring they always stay in the same rut that they always have been. This might be a little bit on the nose here, but the solution for this is not as arcane as magic (since, you know, magic isn’t real — I’m looking at you Copperfield). The solution is as simple as peas and as hard as electing a rational POTUS. It’s education.
We as a species — Homo Sapiens that is — are born with an intellect. That is the chief reason why we have such long childhoods in contrast to every other species on the planet. A doe is able to start running mere moments after being born, while we can’t even sit on our asses for half-a-year. An intellect higher than other species gives us the possibility of doing more and learning more than every other species on the planet. We’ve long since discovered our penchant and thirst for knowledge, and the benefits that come from it. True, Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it wasn’t built by a group of blubbering idiots. And they weren’t an empty slate either, no, they built upon generations of previous accumulated knowledge, whether it was the walls of Uruk, or the Pyramids of Ancient Egypt, it doesn’t matter. But they had to learn something in order to build Rome — the eternal city.
So what did they do? The recognized that others might have more knowledge, took action on that, and ensured their creation would stand the test of time. Rome isn’t called the eternal city for no reason, am I right? Actually, no. Rome was torn apart several times. In fact, at least half a dozen times. Why? Good question. Because someone else didn’t want them to be on top. But were they on top? Even better question. Yes, but they became complacent, then stagnant, and then angry. At least during the later periods of the Empire. But what the shit does this have to do with today? The best question of them all.
Comparing today with the times of the Romans is like comparing rocket science with building slingshots. But there’s something serene about slingshots, isn’t there? Thing is, somebody doesn’t want you to know that there are alternatives to your daily life. That you don’t have to be indebted to banks, or buy things you’ll hardly ever need, that you don’t have to be flashy in order to gain attention. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that someone doesn’t even want you to be able to take part of a rational political discourse, maybe even discuss art, or learn new, life altering things. Someone wants you to live in chaos — but controlled chaos at that. And I’m not talking about evil overlords whose sole intent is your suffering, but rather, the most powerful people ensuring they remain in power. And the highest human power there is, is the government. And a government that’s loyal only to itself and regulated only by itself is frightening. And most important of all, that’s not some dystopian novel but a historical fact. That’s today.
See, after the Cold War and after the fall of Communism, something else changed, too. Capitalism gained a new face, too. It was no longer competing with Communism, but with itself. And some of its ideologies changed with that. Capitalism started with Liberalism, then turned to Neo-Liberalism, and then reached its final, or at least contemporary form, Post-Liberalism. This form is the one where chaos is maintained and controlled, and the aforementioned non-order is the new order. This is capitalism getting complacent. This is Capitalism eating itself, becoming Ouroboros — the always-hungry self-eating snake. That causes stagnation because there’s nothing else to eat. And I don’t need to point out any examples to show that people are angry. This new form of Capitalism is that arcane system that you somehow don’t understand. But it’s not impossible to understand, in fact, it’s not arcane at all. This snake is not a snake in the slightest — it’s human.
We’ve given name and a face to a problem that can be overcome. That might very well be the first step. Next, we should educate ourselves. Don’t you think it’s a coincidence that education is either very expensive or not worth it in most parts of the world? It’s either a joke or as arcane as this system most people can’t even begin to comprehend. There’s the problem. The world doesn’t function because people can’t understand it. It never did because people never understood it. Assigning values to physical things is only human, but if monetary values are the only concern people have then we’ll never understand the world around us. If education is money, and money is hard to come by, then education is hard to come by, too. And if education is a joke, then your knowledge is mostly comprised of jokes.
This way, the world will never function. But as always, things change. That’s the nature of all things, people included. We’ve come a long way in our short few thousand years, but we’ve a long way to go. And no, smartphones are not an efficient way to become smart, and education by itself isn’t the only solution, but it sure as hell is a good start.
Do you like meaningful discussions? Do you like to read about all sorts of things? Do you like to be a spoon? If your answer to all of these long-winded questions is yes, then this place is the place you should be! If you agree with my elaborate deduction, then you might as well click on buttons that show me you like and support me, but if you don’t, then that’s okay too! At least make sure you’re smart, okay?
