Accident in Progress
The stray wagon
Hello, my dear friends, this is Kostas. I was a bit off because I was building something beautiful. This is my new website called Lazy Baker. Check this out! You may not understand the storytelling of pieces because it is written in Greek, but I would like to know how you liked the site from an aesthetic point of view. But enough with the prologue, let’s get into the piece!
Life is often like a “stray wagon,” whose course is so close to derailment, and yet there is nothing we can do to stop its speed. This uncertainty of life is at times pounding us mercilessly.
In a broader picture, we have international instability. Trump, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Brexit, and the flare-up in the Middle East are sufficient examples of an illusion of stability. Perhaps we are experiencing the consequences of the most aggressive cycle of capital, perhaps again our vices for power and supremacy are to blame.
Whatever it is, modern man has at his disposal the power to magnify but at the same time to annihilate. Science progresses and brilliant minds are baptized helpers of human evolution. Man can now modify nature by whatever means and manner he wishes. He is capable of building a city in a few weeks, tackling a pandemic in just 2 years, and predicting the future of a well-defined problem with an error accuracy of 0.01. And I didn’t mention the power of artificial intelligence. A power with 2 sides. Our digital footprint is such that one good programmer with the right data is enough to create an effective AI. A frighteningly simple statement, I’d say.
This is where the disaster comes in. Covid was dealt with so effectively because the pharmaceutical companies and research staff worked together with the interests around the world being the same. After the pandemic, however, interests were again colored and research was fragmented under the wishes of monopolies. In addition, about AI, a professor at our university felt it necessary to state that just as there is a treaty on nuclear weapons, there should soon be an international action on artificial intelligence as well. In fact, he emphasized that to build nukes you need a lot of money, but to build a malicious AI you only need a computer and a sharp mind. That’s pretty much it for exploiting science. Oh, I forgot about climate change — in another article.
Overall, I would say that the international scene depends on whether Biden falls down a ladder and withdraws from the race for the American elections, whether the rich will continue to get richer, how much the gap between the West will widen and East, as well as when will the greed of the oil companies stop. Some of these events look like a “stray wagon.”
Now on a microscopic level, we have the uncertainty of every day. How likely is it that I will leave the house and a Chaniotian will land with his car on my porch? (The answer is very possible). How likely is it that I’ll catch the bus, find the gym empty, and drink beers in the evening? If I talk about dreams and goals, I ask the most uncertain question, “What do I do after university?” My advice? Be flexible. Plans are good, but life is full of twists and turns. You have to learn to adapt, not to think too much about the whys but to act by defining those whys as new unheard data. To flow as life flows. Embody the chaos of everyday life and don’t try to exorcise it with labels and excessive eccentricity. Not everything happens to you but to all of us. We’ve all been rained on by a car, we’ve been licked, and we’ve had coffee spilled on us. You are the uncertainty after all. One flawless, the other bright.
At a macroscopic level, these changes are slow to appear. Each one of us makes no difference, many of us together do something. It is our duty to deal with what is happening around us, to educate ourselves, to think, to worry, and to act in an organized manner. And maybe then we can put the “stray wagon” on a safer course.
First published here.
