Is this really the future? Sounds very bleak. I don’t feel much hope. What I really want to know is why? Why have so many become co-opted? Whose vision are we implementing? Is there the possibility of turning back?
Sadly I think it's pretty well baked into the cake by this point. Idealists will use any means and technologies at their disposal to pursue their utopia because they are the enlightened vanguard on the right side of history, as far as they're concerned. So while we may have passed "peak woke" for now in terms of what most people want to hear, the more relevant fact is that the ideology still defines the institutions in Washington, Silicon Valley etc. -- it doesn't matter what anyone thinks because the assumptions are all embedded in the bureaucracies and algorithms.
Some of the problem has been powerful people like Soros and Schwab, but probably the bigger factor is the systemic logic of technocracy itself, which assumes that humans are malleable and credentialed experts are capable of solving social problems. The persistence of any inequity or disparity is simply because enough money and experts haven't been thrown at the problem yet, so keep giving the managerial class more money, power, titles, prestige, etc. to "get the job done" and if that never happens it's just because of sabotage from bad people and that the solution hasn't been tried hard enough yet.
The situation is indeed rather bleak, but the hopeful thing is that many more people are aware and mobilized and trying to resist now than there were a year ago. Making the discriminatory algorithms, debanking, social credit systems, etc. into live political issues is the best hope for avoiding dystopia, or at least delaying the inevitable.
I would submit that what the ordinary individual thinks, can still matter until we go full totalitarian.
It is our thinking - our lack of confidence in our own abilities to get through life, get ahead, and help our neighbors do the same - that has led us to outsource our decision-making authority as free individuals to the technocrats and their political patrons as though they are omniscient and infallible, making ourselves vulnerable to their errors, greed, mendacity, and delusion.
That lack of confidence is the result of the conditioning we all experience in seemingly-benign ways, from our very first day in school where we were told to "be nice" and "listen to Teacher" - but hardly ever educated on the need to think independently with intellectual honesty, that our observations and the common-sense derived from them are an effective cross-check on the "experts" and "leaders".
This has been building for over a century, as we moved from farm to factory and office cube. The problem can be condensed into a simple exchange between technocrats and citizen:
"We're the experts - we Know Better."
"Yes you do - handle it."
We were led to open this door, but we did and do open it. We can close it.
If you legitimately believe that all, most, or even merely the most important racial, sexual, psychological, and cognitive differences are environmental, tossing aside human freedom in the name of human equality is entirely reasonable behavior.
Pretty naive to believe that all these major problems have a single cause. Lots of hubris to believe that you understand how to fix major human problems and that destruction of a culture and society is the answer.
If one were a faculty member in, say, a sleepy backwater Ivy League engineering school, how could one work with folks in communications to communicate the appropriate level of scientific discovery, balanced with the need for hype, institutional promotion, $$$, and some administrator's social program? Asking for a friend... Thanks!
Hard to sum up all the blurbs and press releases negotiating various stakeholders! At end of day researchers delving into fine print often need a shot in the arm summing up various significance & implications thereof! https://ivyexile.substack.com/p/social-justice-by-algorithm
No changes until it all collapses.... and it will. They will ride it to the end, then maybe a new beginning. The desire for control of others , however will always taint humanity.
Ivy Exile, I suspect you would enjoy a novel titled "Red Plenty" by Francis Spufford. A group of Soviet technocrats in 1962 are trying to use the new science of cybernetics to rationalize the USSR's command economy. One of the characters is a writer who has been asked to write a propaganda puff piece about what Soviet life will be like in 1980. His misgivings about the assignment remind me of the comments of a certain contemporary Ivy League PR writer.
Is this really the future? Sounds very bleak. I don’t feel much hope. What I really want to know is why? Why have so many become co-opted? Whose vision are we implementing? Is there the possibility of turning back?
Sadly I think it's pretty well baked into the cake by this point. Idealists will use any means and technologies at their disposal to pursue their utopia because they are the enlightened vanguard on the right side of history, as far as they're concerned. So while we may have passed "peak woke" for now in terms of what most people want to hear, the more relevant fact is that the ideology still defines the institutions in Washington, Silicon Valley etc. -- it doesn't matter what anyone thinks because the assumptions are all embedded in the bureaucracies and algorithms.
Some of the problem has been powerful people like Soros and Schwab, but probably the bigger factor is the systemic logic of technocracy itself, which assumes that humans are malleable and credentialed experts are capable of solving social problems. The persistence of any inequity or disparity is simply because enough money and experts haven't been thrown at the problem yet, so keep giving the managerial class more money, power, titles, prestige, etc. to "get the job done" and if that never happens it's just because of sabotage from bad people and that the solution hasn't been tried hard enough yet.
The situation is indeed rather bleak, but the hopeful thing is that many more people are aware and mobilized and trying to resist now than there were a year ago. Making the discriminatory algorithms, debanking, social credit systems, etc. into live political issues is the best hope for avoiding dystopia, or at least delaying the inevitable.
I would submit that what the ordinary individual thinks, can still matter until we go full totalitarian.
It is our thinking - our lack of confidence in our own abilities to get through life, get ahead, and help our neighbors do the same - that has led us to outsource our decision-making authority as free individuals to the technocrats and their political patrons as though they are omniscient and infallible, making ourselves vulnerable to their errors, greed, mendacity, and delusion.
That lack of confidence is the result of the conditioning we all experience in seemingly-benign ways, from our very first day in school where we were told to "be nice" and "listen to Teacher" - but hardly ever educated on the need to think independently with intellectual honesty, that our observations and the common-sense derived from them are an effective cross-check on the "experts" and "leaders".
This has been building for over a century, as we moved from farm to factory and office cube. The problem can be condensed into a simple exchange between technocrats and citizen:
"We're the experts - we Know Better."
"Yes you do - handle it."
We were led to open this door, but we did and do open it. We can close it.
https://thenayborhood.substack.com/p/cutting-to-the-chase
If you legitimately believe that all, most, or even merely the most important racial, sexual, psychological, and cognitive differences are environmental, tossing aside human freedom in the name of human equality is entirely reasonable behavior.
Pretty naive to believe that all these major problems have a single cause. Lots of hubris to believe that you understand how to fix major human problems and that destruction of a culture and society is the answer.
If one were a faculty member in, say, a sleepy backwater Ivy League engineering school, how could one work with folks in communications to communicate the appropriate level of scientific discovery, balanced with the need for hype, institutional promotion, $$$, and some administrator's social program? Asking for a friend... Thanks!
Hard to sum up all the blurbs and press releases negotiating various stakeholders! At end of day researchers delving into fine print often need a shot in the arm summing up various significance & implications thereof! https://ivyexile.substack.com/p/social-justice-by-algorithm
No changes until it all collapses.... and it will. They will ride it to the end, then maybe a new beginning. The desire for control of others , however will always taint humanity.
Ivy Exile, I suspect you would enjoy a novel titled "Red Plenty" by Francis Spufford. A group of Soviet technocrats in 1962 are trying to use the new science of cybernetics to rationalize the USSR's command economy. One of the characters is a writer who has been asked to write a propaganda puff piece about what Soviet life will be like in 1980. His misgivings about the assignment remind me of the comments of a certain contemporary Ivy League PR writer.
Thanks, John, that does sound rather apropos! Added to my cart, will check it out!