The 2010s will perhaps be remembered for the decline of critical thinking and the ascension of dependency. Only to be fast tracked into the 2020s. There was a time, in the before, even among partisan political voices, when we could juggle reason with ideology. A regard for some forms of critical thinking, or the placating of objections raised by libertarians and the opponents of said policies or desires. There was a conversation. An understanding of the dangers of too much power, or control.
This was a time, when most institutions and governments pretended or did care about censorship, surveillance and the right to choice and opinions. The threat for most individuals was understood to come from groups or governments that suppressed and imposed control on them. However it was framed, it was understood that human beings had rights. Those rights were mostly regarded and understood to be sacred. It’s why Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning became such contentions figures. Heroes for many in public, and even media.
The West, at least for a time, stood as if it was a champion for liberty and individual rights. Into the 21st century, it’s been the West that has become focused on big tech solutions for all things, and to homogenise society into a gentrified and allowable way of life. This has been achieved through bribery and ever so subtle sticks. But also, comfort.
Money has lost most of it’s value. It now exists as debt and fiat. Despite this, it’s now the most precious thing for humanity, that which all things are valued and done for. Everything in life requires money, and this means people will look the other way, decide their principles, morality and priority based on this belief. Government not only controls the printing press, it’s also the monopoly of the land. In the West, it’s generally the biggest employer, directly and through contracts and with welfare it supports and enables lifestyles from cradle to grave. People now regard their entitlements, that which comes at the expensive of others as being more important than rights. People also value income, and financial security above rights and any concept of principles.
In fact rights are fluid. Crisis and laws come about which either obviously or subtly shift what was once regarded as a right, into being denied. This can come via licensing, regulations or paywalls, to the outright prohibitions on things. The dangers, often imagined, or extreme in example are all that’s needed to stir up the mob. The professionals who work for the State, will enforce all and everything they are paid to.
There is also social credit. The death of critical thinking means that less people are capable of analysing a situation or concept without an emotional reaction. A reaction that generally reduces abstracts into soundbytes or simplified parameters. Instead of analysing or understanding laterally, depth of perspectives or wider implications the responses to all things generally revert to, more funding, ie more tax or debt money, another law or regulation to ban and prevent a thing. In short, the common response is the appeal to authority.
Anyone who challenges or questions a law, or attempts to publicly explore an abstract or decision are set upon by an emotional mob who only use slurs or argue from positions of feelings. Words such as “racist”, “Nazi”, “Fascist”, “Pedophile” and so on are thrown around with reckless abandon in place of any nuanced discourse. These words are used with such abandon, that the value of them is ruined. And, should anyone attempt to have a conversation publicly this is can be considered as ‘radical’ and thus dangerous.
Even those who wear the shirts of punk bands and cosplay as left wing, from the comfort of their corporate garnered lifestyles use the term, ‘radical’ as a slur. Somehow free speech, has become a ‘fascist’ or at the very least, ‘alt right’, red flag. For the left to reject free speech is an indictment of all things, once valued by the champions of left wing ideologies. The real, left.
Which brings us to the usage of ‘right wing’ as a slur among allowable argument points. As one who despises all forms of coercion, political or otherwise, I find it fascinating that politics has become so entrenched into one faction, the other side is now seen as pariah and viewed as an extreme danger. Yet, the commonality of both wings of government are rather similar. And, they are attached to the same beast. The monopoly of control. Whether a political regime or administration swings left or right, usually means little to most of the employees of that beast.
Big tech, technology in general was a promise for freedom. It turned out a lie. The more efficient a thing becomes, the more humanity uses it. Or, abuses. There is never enough. The compulsion to want more, to control nature, to organise, order and contain and force all things in life, is a deep routed need for many human beings. It’s not enough for a person to have a different opinion or way of life, they must be shamed, or coerced to be like everyone else. The frontiers are gone, it turns out Manifest Destiny is welfare, government jobs, corporations, AI slop and more data centres. Though, you can order from Temu or Amazon more Labubu’s. When that trend is done, and they are to buried in landfill above the fidget spinner, shopkins and beanie baby you can find another thing to spend debt on.
It’s a curious thing, we can watch in real time babies blown to pieces and gatekeeper established adults will claim antisemitic for any condemning the murder. Boats blown to pieces in international waters, assassination of unknown strangers based on assumptions by government which bases it’s legitimacy on the rule of law and concepts of due process. We see social media creatures gain prominent platforms and granted serious consideration by claiming that women should be subservient to men. We live in an age of endless moralist drives to ban media or censor it, either in the ongoing kidification of society, to protect children, even if they are not the intended audience or, under the guise of religious puritanism. To be supported by emotional appeals to authority, or bots. Those who criticise are stuck, the alternative, is to again, appeal to authority in a tug of war of begging the establishment.
The human body, your body is a domain which does not belong to you. Your access to medicine, food and how or what you do with it is decided and determined by professionals who make decisions based on cookiecut assumptions, metrics, regulatory determinations, greedy self interest and for insurance purposes. You are denied agency, because many want a public health state, the monopoly to guide, guard and control their body. It means everyone one of us are denied choice and options. Our bodies are controlled beneath the guise of, ‘common good’. To challenges this, or question the wisdom of any decisions, let alone the right of government and experts to know with a godlike omnipotence what is best for all or any, is considered to be conspiratorial. Reduced to an anti-social slur.
If not for what we ingest into the body, or do with or to it. That after all, is a cost to the public health system. Or Insurers. Therefore the collective decides on your behalf. As for your mental consumption, that is also to be regarded. If a thing, words, images or ideas may trigger or offend some, therefore it can be considered dangerous and hateful. To be offended, to offend and to challenges was once art and for literature. The indulgences of expression and philosophy. In the modern age of infinite diagnosis and ‘mental health crisis’s’, anything challenging and outside the normative parameters of mob think, or whatever satisfies intelligentsia, corporate or otherwise is an affront and can be censored, modified, redacted and removed from all existence. May I have permission to get that surgery, try that medication, to have the supplement? I will pay for it myself. “Denied!”
We have reached a fascinating cultural point, the meaning of media and properties from the middle to late twentieth century have now been modified and adapted to sooth a child like need for vapid spectacle and, to satiate the ever important appeal to authority. The once vaunted anti-establishment thinking, radicalism of the past is now avoided or down played as dangerous. Words, thoughts. Dangerous.
The decline of critical thinking is further diminished by the endless streams of slop fed before the eyes of those who have no time for anything other than social media, gaming and streaming shows. Enter, AI. Soon it will be a corporate or government job to merely prompt software. To request it write emails, generate forms, and the likes so that other agentic AI may read and respond. Perhaps a UBI already in place, or just another stage of senseless administration and ‘just because’ layers which human governance seems fixated with. To prompt an AI, so that it may brow beat humans on and bots alike on ‘saving the planet’, from within air-conditioned offices, while the data centres required chew up more power than ever needed for all of prior human history. The pollution is exported overseas, so you can feel good about it. They suffer, the poison is theirs, import the tech and junk. Feel good about it, net zero, renewables, whatever the lie. In Africa, Bangladesh is where they get to die. But YOU get to fill good, when you recycle and they take the rubbish. Mountains of Western trash towers in poor nations, carbon colonialism, pollution imperialism, as it was and ever shall be.
The obsession with software that only spies, or is pointless, leading to all appliances into becoming devices. More rare Earth dragged from the ground, with lengthy half lives, toxic and exhaustive mining, logistic lines that span the planet to manufacture so that a fridge may tell you, “the milks expired.” The human nose so mutated into redundancy we further become a French Bulldog of a species. Choice is one thing, in time this, and all things digital and with an interface and software that controls, spies and catalogues will be mandatory. It’s the march to the inevitable. The digital ID, the chip in the body, to be scanned, a QR code for each one of us, all dystopian and cyberpunk fears. Yet, here we are ever slowly sleep walking, or running in this direction. If we are all dependent, our religion is debt and adherence to the collective, we must do what is right, that’s to comply.
Why are we here?
Comfort, dependency. Cowardice. The indignity of belief in authority above all else. The the powerful, political or billionaires alike embraced to steer all of humanity into a betterplace, TM. Utopia..You can subscribe to it, not that you will have a choice.
The ancients once believed in Gods. The planet was governed by super beings, each with their own quirks and interests. Humanity has again discovered the gods. With mythologies and religious zealotry, desire for reward and vengeful retribution, these gods are both humans of wealth and political fiat, and the sacred institutions. The monopoly of state and too big to fails. The world exists for them. Just as humans once sacrificed, worshipped and prayed in the many temples of the past, you do so today. Your reward, access to debt, fiat, slithers of on controlled comfort, choice is dangerous. The sea of chaos is forbidden.
Joni Mitchell once said, “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” Parking lots, means “jobs” and “progress”. So, that’s all that matters, the gods hate Luddites, freedom, or anything for that matter which denies them control and power. And you, you love them for it. Because that lil French Bulldog has no choice now, but to sit on the lap, and live from vet visit to vet visit.
