TheOnion
I have had the good fortune to benefit from the critical thinking of those on Steemit I have been blessed to meet and converse with.
@cupidzero has posted a singular discussion of meritocracy, and in my contemplation of his work, I realized that this is not an isolated feature of society. I began to jot down a few thoughts in notepad, and soon, as is my wont, had written a screed so lengthy that even I, notorious for my walls of text, feel the need to break it into bite size chunks.
Here's the first bit:
Western civilization is no longer facing an existential threat. It is enduring extinction. It never had a chance of permanence. It is but the accumulated improvements of ancient systems of politics borne of eternal war, primitive technology, and rapine greed. Our species hasn't perfected civilization, on this I think we can agree.
While you can point to any number of superlative achievements, you must acknowledge that the vast and overwhelming achievement of western civilization today is a panoptic global police state with a war economy.
That is our penultimate achievement as a species. It is irreversible, and unsustainable.
But it isn't irreplaceable, and it's replacement is already underway. From the maker revolution, to the blockchain, technology antithetical to the concentration of resources; of power, might, and money; a rational progression of improving production and efficiency, burgeons ineluctably, and TPTB cannot maintain their civilization (they are it's primary beneficiaries) without technology.
Since they will not release their beneficial interest (I use this term in it's financial sense, and but wish I could with greater conviction in the philanthropic) in us, and cannot maintain that interest, either absent technological advance, or in the face of rational development (which releases their interest in practice, by nullifying it), they will lose their interest in us involuntarily, if they will not relinquish it voluntarily.
Western civilization has been doomed from the start. The question is not whether we can save it (and given where it's going, who wants to!), but what will replace it?
To be honest, it's not a question that will allow us to choose what that replacement will be, but that will let us know what's coming if we can answer it. Foreknowledge potentiates planning, which improves success. That's the best we're gonna get, because technology is driving evolution now, and even if we try, we can't prevent that development from being limited to what is possible.
Since the universal laws of nature (the revelation of which guides industry in turn, and that physical development determines the power of the individual, community, and all society) are ultimately rational, society will be also. Eventually.
Reason cannot validate just cause for the intemperate disparity in economic resources, because this is antithetical to the very laws of physics. The mechanism of osmosis demonstrates this, as ions in higher concentration on one side of a membrane disperse through that membrane into the lower concentration until equilibrium is reached.
This same tendency towards equilibrium can be found throughout the natural world, a remarkably ubiquitous consilience between every branch of science.
This forces technology to exhibit that very same quality in the course of it's evolutionary development, and we see that means of production of goods, money, and information are now being developed that inure to individuals via automation, and will soon no longer potentiate outlandish capital accumulation through the mechanism of capital investment in means of production, as those means are being dispersed to individuals, who will no longer require industrial production to have goods.
It isn't just the end of capitalism, but of capital.
It is inevitable.
I'll use the same tags in part II, and continue there.
I like what you have provided so far. I am not so optimistic that society will be entirely rational at some far flung point in the future, nor am I sure it should be (love for example is rarely rational at the beginning), though I would agree that the governance model should be. The role technology plays is definitely intriguing, and with the monopolists and governments hoarding beneficial technologies (at least, I am pretty sure they are) that could resolve a great deal of conflict, I am concerned they would rather see the world burn than lose control of it, and the world here should perhaps, as you suggest, be considered their beneficial interest. Will keep reading as it comes, thanks for the heads up!
You make a good point that there is a difference between a rational society, and a rational framework for social interactions. I take a long view, and given certain technological developments underway (Neuralink and geriatrics) I do expect that reason, as necessarily colored by our humanity, will at least be the dominant factor in society.
By definition, less reasonable societies will be less competitive. The rise of the West during the age of exploration exemplifies this, as the drive to eradicate competing cultures, while inhumane, was certainly undertaken for reasons by the conquerors. The dominance of the West was enabled by technological superiority, in turn driven by rational science.
It also shows that your concern regarding the propensity of conquerors (or would be conquerors) to destroy that which they cannot control is well placed. This is why transitions are so bloody, and it is certainly possible that delaying the transition is possible, and we can find plenty of examples that show this.
All the more reason to harden Steemit against such manipulations, and better weaponize it against those megalomaniacal conquerors, speeding it's seminal genesis of a post market economy.
Damn! These comments are with the rEsteem!
This is a very accurate quote!
Wow, some of your big words slowed me down but I muddled through.
My inclination for a while now has been to be ready and waiting on deck at my lifeboat station for the time when the USS Titandenburg slips under the waves in a gigantic fireball.
Odd as this may sound, your use of The Onion article gives me a warm fuzzy feeling, I'm not the only one who thought that.