Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Right, how I see this panning out is this way... we're screwed. Me, you, your family, your friends, people you've met, people you know, the people you pass in the street, the Z-List celebrity you keep locked in the cupboard under the stairs that you don't think I know about, 'Betty Ford Clinic' indeed... Strangely, this screwedness probably includes a lot of people you see on TV. Most politicians are screwed. Almost all musicians are screwed. Michael Jackson wouldn't have been screwed until quite recently but now his complete madness and the allegations, whether true or not, of his kid's-pants-rummaging have landed him squarely into the screwed category.
I've been browsing transhumanist and extropian websites a bit today, mainly inspired by reading Warren Ellis columns, as these seem to be things Warren Ellis likes a lot. And just as $cient*l*gy is a religion that only the rich should approach, it seems transhumanism is likewise a philosophy that only the insanely rich can benefit from.
The last time I sailed the internet in search of these topics I found a lot of stuff that was the equivalent of bullied geek revenge fantasies through more hardware, the unpopular kids that got bullied at school would upload their brains to flawless steel bodies and go in search of the jocks that kicked the crap out of them before partying out eternity. What little I've looked at today sounds both more measured and mature. But it's a rich kids sport.
I'm not sure when I accepted the screwedness of a large proportion of the human race. I suspect it was 2000-2001, it might have even been post September 2001 when a lot of us saw those twin towers fall and our main reaction was "Oh shit, what's Dubya going to use this for?" I don't blame Dubya for this screwedness, but he was the lens for a vast acceleration of the screwedness. It's possible that, come the day, he might be chucked to the screwed-over hoards to be ripped apart while the unscrewed make their escape.
Basically, around this time a new phase in history began. Humanity is dividing in to two races, you can call them what you want, the Morlocks and the Eloi if you want, but it's more brutally honest to call them the screwed (that's us remember), and the screwers (in my original draft I called them the fucked and the fuckers and I was tempted to keep it, but some people react very strangely to perfectly honest words so I decided to moderate my language slightly to try and avoid giving them an excuse to ignore the meat of it. Mmm, meat...). Here's how I think it's going to work.
There are people on this planet that you cannot convict of any crime. No matter the proof they have the money and power to bury you so thoroughly that even conspiracy journals will most likely think it was natural causes. Within the next ten to fifteen years you will know each and every one of these untouchables by name. They will be open and blatant about it. And why not, you cannot touch them so they have nothing to fear. They will have learnt from the state of (mainly) American politics at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, their teachers were Clinton and Bush, Rumsfeld and Campbell, their tests are marked by Blair and Cheney. They will still use the courts because they are in many ways socially conservative, and will need to reassure themselves that they are doing things the proper way. No one but the screwers believe this.
Within a decade of that government gives up the pretence of being for the people and becomes the means by which the screwers manage the screwed. Now, this isn't necessarily a completely bad thing. Taxes are proportionally lower than today, but only because the screwers not only control most of the wealth they also control all the means of production. They can therefore be kind to their vanquished foe. If they took all of our money and all of our food and we die, then they have to subdivide amongst themselves and fight. They will learn a measure of generosity because it will ease their own survival. Some of us will be looked on with the same condescension as some of us look towards the Third World or Arab countries today, where some of us mistake difference for backwardness. You will get charity from the screwers, Comic Relief for the screwed. Their culture will move away from whatever remains of screwed culture but at the same time, elements will remain the same, in twenty-five years time there will still be a publication that likes to pretend it writes for the left which has a fat idiot on who thinks that goatee beards are a good idea spouting bilge. The screwers will choose certain parts of the planet to be for them and them alone. They might claim some historical reasoning behind this but they wouldn't need to. They won't take Israel or any of what are Arab lands today. Too 'hot'. The screwed inhabitants of these lands will be forced out, if they're lucky, or killed, if they aren't. There won't be any outcry. One of the nice things about this world is that, when the screwers talk to the screwed, they've abandoned the current pretense of pretending it's for the screwed's own good. But there is less and less actual communication between the screwers and the screwed.
Once there is a clear demarcation zone between the screwers and the screwed, enforced by law, then you'd see the screwers really embrace the things their money can buy. Religions will become openly about money, as I said earlier, the phoney religion can thrive in this environment and the others will adapt. Genetic engineering will become the norm. Cornea implants to allow instant access to the net/TV/databases, personality backups kept in junk DNA stores in hair follicles, age-retarding, age-reversing, sex-changing, new-sex-developing. With the screwed having to do things by the slow, ugly, old-fashioned way of trial and error we will see our status downgraded to the point where a screwer who kills a screwed will merely earn some mild tutting for a waste of material. But there will be scientists and philosophers on hand to prove that we don't feel pain or fear death like the screwers (i.e.: real people) do. We are there to service the screwers, as Eric Lehnsherr so nearly remarked, the overrace can't be expected to clean their own toilets and take away the garbage.
By their own standards the screwers of a quarter-century hence aren't bad, indeed for survivals sake they will have to turn to loosely left-of-centre for survival, the rabid right-wing government of a Sharon or a Bush would be wildly destabilising in the rarefied world of tomorrow. But when I say left-wing it's left wing compared to them, centrist is probably the best we could hope for.
Stress comes due to the scarcity of resources. You will be able to identify the screwers as, once we reach Hubbert's Peak, they'll be the ones who have petrol for their cars and have no restrictions placed on their rights to travel. And, if that comes before they are segregated from us, they'll kill any number of us necessary to get it. We could well have wars which no one, not even the most rabid right-winger, could seriously deny was a war about oil. Maybe it's already happened.
So, perhaps something like a mission to Mars should be welcomed and encouraged. The sooner the screwers see virgin territory (it lacks oil and coal of course, but we're pretty much ready to start making more use of the energy the sun gives out) the sooner they'll be happy to leave earth and us behind. We become a spent, zoo planet being watched over with benign eyes by the posthumans from Mars. It will be the posthumans that go on to meet the future, whether that destiny is to create something like the United Federation of Planets or something that may be positive instead. The human race will go on, but we won't even be mentioned in the footnotes. Without the screwers looking over our shoulders and grabbing the first thing that looks promising, we might even be able to have some halfway decent sort of life.
This is the broad brushstrokes of how I think things will turn out. I don't think it can be avoided now and I don't think the masses will win, even though the screwers will largely consist of Americans and Chinese. All that cannot be guessed is how bloody the transitional period will be.
I've been browsing transhumanist and extropian websites a bit today, mainly inspired by reading Warren Ellis columns, as these seem to be things Warren Ellis likes a lot. And just as $cient*l*gy is a religion that only the rich should approach, it seems transhumanism is likewise a philosophy that only the insanely rich can benefit from.
The last time I sailed the internet in search of these topics I found a lot of stuff that was the equivalent of bullied geek revenge fantasies through more hardware, the unpopular kids that got bullied at school would upload their brains to flawless steel bodies and go in search of the jocks that kicked the crap out of them before partying out eternity. What little I've looked at today sounds both more measured and mature. But it's a rich kids sport.
I'm not sure when I accepted the screwedness of a large proportion of the human race. I suspect it was 2000-2001, it might have even been post September 2001 when a lot of us saw those twin towers fall and our main reaction was "Oh shit, what's Dubya going to use this for?" I don't blame Dubya for this screwedness, but he was the lens for a vast acceleration of the screwedness. It's possible that, come the day, he might be chucked to the screwed-over hoards to be ripped apart while the unscrewed make their escape.
Basically, around this time a new phase in history began. Humanity is dividing in to two races, you can call them what you want, the Morlocks and the Eloi if you want, but it's more brutally honest to call them the screwed (that's us remember), and the screwers (in my original draft I called them the fucked and the fuckers and I was tempted to keep it, but some people react very strangely to perfectly honest words so I decided to moderate my language slightly to try and avoid giving them an excuse to ignore the meat of it. Mmm, meat...). Here's how I think it's going to work.
There are people on this planet that you cannot convict of any crime. No matter the proof they have the money and power to bury you so thoroughly that even conspiracy journals will most likely think it was natural causes. Within the next ten to fifteen years you will know each and every one of these untouchables by name. They will be open and blatant about it. And why not, you cannot touch them so they have nothing to fear. They will have learnt from the state of (mainly) American politics at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, their teachers were Clinton and Bush, Rumsfeld and Campbell, their tests are marked by Blair and Cheney. They will still use the courts because they are in many ways socially conservative, and will need to reassure themselves that they are doing things the proper way. No one but the screwers believe this.
Within a decade of that government gives up the pretence of being for the people and becomes the means by which the screwers manage the screwed. Now, this isn't necessarily a completely bad thing. Taxes are proportionally lower than today, but only because the screwers not only control most of the wealth they also control all the means of production. They can therefore be kind to their vanquished foe. If they took all of our money and all of our food and we die, then they have to subdivide amongst themselves and fight. They will learn a measure of generosity because it will ease their own survival. Some of us will be looked on with the same condescension as some of us look towards the Third World or Arab countries today, where some of us mistake difference for backwardness. You will get charity from the screwers, Comic Relief for the screwed. Their culture will move away from whatever remains of screwed culture but at the same time, elements will remain the same, in twenty-five years time there will still be a publication that likes to pretend it writes for the left which has a fat idiot on who thinks that goatee beards are a good idea spouting bilge. The screwers will choose certain parts of the planet to be for them and them alone. They might claim some historical reasoning behind this but they wouldn't need to. They won't take Israel or any of what are Arab lands today. Too 'hot'. The screwed inhabitants of these lands will be forced out, if they're lucky, or killed, if they aren't. There won't be any outcry. One of the nice things about this world is that, when the screwers talk to the screwed, they've abandoned the current pretense of pretending it's for the screwed's own good. But there is less and less actual communication between the screwers and the screwed.
Once there is a clear demarcation zone between the screwers and the screwed, enforced by law, then you'd see the screwers really embrace the things their money can buy. Religions will become openly about money, as I said earlier, the phoney religion can thrive in this environment and the others will adapt. Genetic engineering will become the norm. Cornea implants to allow instant access to the net/TV/databases, personality backups kept in junk DNA stores in hair follicles, age-retarding, age-reversing, sex-changing, new-sex-developing. With the screwed having to do things by the slow, ugly, old-fashioned way of trial and error we will see our status downgraded to the point where a screwer who kills a screwed will merely earn some mild tutting for a waste of material. But there will be scientists and philosophers on hand to prove that we don't feel pain or fear death like the screwers (i.e.: real people) do. We are there to service the screwers, as Eric Lehnsherr so nearly remarked, the overrace can't be expected to clean their own toilets and take away the garbage.
By their own standards the screwers of a quarter-century hence aren't bad, indeed for survivals sake they will have to turn to loosely left-of-centre for survival, the rabid right-wing government of a Sharon or a Bush would be wildly destabilising in the rarefied world of tomorrow. But when I say left-wing it's left wing compared to them, centrist is probably the best we could hope for.
Stress comes due to the scarcity of resources. You will be able to identify the screwers as, once we reach Hubbert's Peak, they'll be the ones who have petrol for their cars and have no restrictions placed on their rights to travel. And, if that comes before they are segregated from us, they'll kill any number of us necessary to get it. We could well have wars which no one, not even the most rabid right-winger, could seriously deny was a war about oil. Maybe it's already happened.
So, perhaps something like a mission to Mars should be welcomed and encouraged. The sooner the screwers see virgin territory (it lacks oil and coal of course, but we're pretty much ready to start making more use of the energy the sun gives out) the sooner they'll be happy to leave earth and us behind. We become a spent, zoo planet being watched over with benign eyes by the posthumans from Mars. It will be the posthumans that go on to meet the future, whether that destiny is to create something like the United Federation of Planets or something that may be positive instead. The human race will go on, but we won't even be mentioned in the footnotes. Without the screwers looking over our shoulders and grabbing the first thing that looks promising, we might even be able to have some halfway decent sort of life.
This is the broad brushstrokes of how I think things will turn out. I don't think it can be avoided now and I don't think the masses will win, even though the screwers will largely consist of Americans and Chinese. All that cannot be guessed is how bloody the transitional period will be.
