“The men who control the platforms that shape what billions believe have merged with the men who control governments and militaries”
Maria Ressa
Not a bad quote.
I just read it while reading about the "Doomsday Clock" moving another four seconds closer to midnight. Midnight being catastrophe for humanity, like global nuclear war. I don't know much about what goes into the calculations, but it is the closest it has ever been to midnight now, and I don't see it pulling back unless something dramatic happens causing us to shift our mentality toward peace and wellbeing as a species.
There is no money in peace and wellbeing.
Well, not no money, but it is far more lucrative to peddle war and illness, fear and loathing, addiction and violence. It is also easier to get people to behave badly, to get people to become apathetic, to get people to assume the cloak of nihilism, than have them put in the work to do better without guarantees it will work. People crave certainty.
And the certainty of falling into the abyss seems to bring many comfort.
Since I write about this stuff often and it is on an immutable, timestamped blockchain, I wonder if one day someone will look back at these words and see them as prophetic, or pathetic. And of course, I hope that I am wrong and the doom and gloom I see in the future for humanity, is replaced growth, prosperity and health for everyone. Yet, I just don't see it happening under the current conditions.
You might disagree, but I think they are pretty bad.
Sure, the news media might sensationalise stories for clicks and ad revenue, and social media might amplify it through incentives to drive the voices of the loudest, angriest and most polarising - but that is the view the entire world sees. And, where there is smoke, there is fire.
Of course, depending on our own local conditions, we might be more insulated from the reality than others, seeing a perspective that covers over the violence and tragedy that is increasingly spilling out into the streets, like the sludge into a waterway from an 1800s factory. But, we might also be on the proverbial frontlines of collapsing society, living as one of the billions in poverty, on the streets, addicted to drugs, witness to murder, perpetrator of violence.
Which is the reality?
Of course, reality from the perspective of experience isn't singular, since we each see a different slice and filter it through our unique biases, but there must be a fair amount of overlap, right? The people living in a leafy suburb with a farmer's market on the corner, and electric cars lining the roads - might have many commonalities. But, are they the same as those living in a ghetto, with a drug dealer on the corner and collapsed addicts lining the street?
There are still commonalities though, right?
People want to be appropriately safe, want to have access to education and suitable food. They want to be healthy and feel relevant and loved. They want to have a good life.
You'd think that we could all come together and work extremely hard to fulfil all the base needs globally, but instead, we are just a global resource to milk. Human resources - energy to feed into the machine to produce what the factory creates.
Power for the few.
We are a fuel source that gets crushed and burned to provide power for the few to control the resource more tightly, and with more efficiency, to turn the wheels and generate more power to control. Our commonalities don't matter to the few in control, because they already have access to what they need to keep on getting more of what they want. More power.
The problem with improving the system to make all lives better, is that while on average everyone will be far, far better off, it will also mean that there is far, far less power to control for the few. It will dilute that power into a more democratic system, because everyone will have more individually vested, will have more personal resources to influence the future. With all that power in the hands of the few, the masses have no influence.
Unless the masses refuse to keep playing this game.
Maybe wone day it will happen, and "we the people" will rise up, tip the machine over, and close down the factories that crush and burn us as fuel. But until that happens, we are just going to keep racing down the same path, ticking away the seconds to midnight.
I'd rather us go out with a bang, than a whimper.
But I would much prefer that we make the change and discover how brilliant we can be.
Taraz
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