As a child, I enjoyed “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” because my dad was a science fiction fiend. Lest people get confused, my family loved “Star Wars” as well, because that was the movie that my parents went to see right after they got married. For me, I loved the technology, travel, and possibilities that arose by observation and reporting, not to mention engagement with other species–whom we always imagine as slightly human, since we are human. However, the premise of those shows and many other science fiction series was that there were billions of people trying to make life better for everyone in the worlds, and they were willing to do anything to maintain peace and equilibrium on all planets, including earth. The last ten years have demonstrated that none of those premises is real, and that is not how we should describe the world in which we live.
First of all, so many people among the “elites” were raised in households that ruled with iron fists. No child was ever a child, but an extension of the parents and required to perform and present perfection at all times. This atmosphere could never raise humane individuals because to be human was to be average, and plebians were average, not “elites.” Most of the violence that the “elites” are enacting now is the result of decades of pent-up rage, and the “elites” are mostly vindictive for years of lessons aimed at perfection. Even if level-headed, kind individuals told them that they were attacking the wrong people, nothing works when one’s humanity has already been sacrificed at the altar of perfection.
Moreover, many “elites” maintain entitlement from being told that being a techie was “responsible” and “innovative” from pro-techie propaganda, and this has only increased since Bezos bought the Washington Post. Growing up in Austin, I remember thinking that techies were the pinnacle of intelligence, but as I got older, I realized that I was conditioned to believe that based on the presence of Michael Dell, who deliberately built his offices in a location where buses could not go. The University of Texas at Austin used to have a tokamak reactor, and I remember thinking that I wanted to be a physicist when I found that out, loving both math and physics without be exceptionally gifted at either. As I got older, I noticed that within the empire, not only did “smart” people become progressively meaner and colder, but that they really hated Black people, including migrants from African countries. I realized that even if I had the “skills” to hack it in that world, no one would want me there anyway, which would make my life exponentially harder to endure. People like that are rarely told, “No,” and refusing to accept impossibility keeps one entitled.
The development of the internet gave people the belief of invincibility, and they always wanted everything to be faster, but they never considered the price of speed. Back in the day, when the cotton gin came into existence, anyone rationally looking at the situation might think, “Oh, well, now we can end slavery and start paying wages because we can comb through more cotton than we ever could!” Sadly, plantation owners simply became obsessed with gaining even more slaves to go even faster to get even more money, because control, dominance, and wealth were all they ever desired. With the internet, the stock market is more volatile, saving money is more precarious, and companies have made it so that nobody can even make phone calls without having expensive plans that can go up in price at any time. Thanks to AI, millions of people will remain out of work and/or lose the jobs we have because the technoligarchs want even more money, despite the shortsightedness that prevents them from understand that without income, there is no spending power.
Most technology “research” could be summed up with this mindset: “It would be really cool if this thing did a thing.” Not “Would this help the majority of the planet?” or “How would people thrive if this thing were in existence?”, but “Hey, I can make a thing that does this!” Sex robots, AI, and automation have done little to improve the quality of life for many, but hype overcomes substance in the minds of techies. They even have the completely valid argument that no one will go back in time simply to avoid technology, and no one can reasonably argue with that. We can begin, and have begun, falling further into depression and turn to violence, which so many do in the depths of despair. I wonder how “cool” the techies would find that.
Finally, there are no new tech advances that the working class can access other than how to be scammed further, and all the regulatory agencies preventing that are being dismantled around the world, not just in the empire. Sure, cancer research is showing all kinds of new advancements–as long as one can get through the barriers of cost and access to health professionals. Great, biological research can create superplants–that no one can pay for because groceries all cost too much, and nobody has consistent land to farm. Rather than learn something, let AI do the research and writing, and leave the professors to rot! Instead of being a contractor, just run the machine that 3D prints housing! Feeding families and maintaining communities were overrated anyway, and I am confident that people will just “figure it out” once they get the message.
The point was never to create a more just, more humane world that we could all live in because most “elites” hate humanity and wish that the majority of us would die. Nobody wants hungry people who have no way of accessing food other than possibly working the fields they cannot travel to, except monsters who want everyone to go hungry to demonstrate the power they have over us. Nobody wants more people to be unhoused, except people who enjoy observing homelessness as a reminder of the power they have. Just like racism was never supposed to end, power was never supposed to end, and the lunatics running the planet think that every scrap of money that ever exists should be in their pockets or not at all.
What is the solution? There is no solution for the average individual just trying to live a life on the earth, trying to love others and join communities. Everyone telling us all to learn AI or frantically learn a trade is missing the point. Once we find solutions, the “elites” will attack that, too, because nothing makes viscerally unhappy people more gleeful than to destroy the happiness of others. They cannot change, and we cannot chase them because they have no idea how to stop themselves, share, or leave us alone. It is a sad reality, and the only thing anyone can do is chase the last little bits of joy we are able to find.
Chasing A Dying Empire 