Money has become the demon-god of this world. There is little doubt of this in the early 21st century. Neoliberalism has become the driving force in civilization and now threatens to burn it to the ground by way of Climate Change. What immediately comes to mind is the Fermi Paradox and the most likely solution that technological civilizations quickly and inevitably self-destruct. Biological life may be just too stupid to survive. We believe we are intelligent, but this does not seem to be so. That old liberal saw that education solves all problems does not hold when the idea of truth itself is destroyed. The Orwellian firehose of falsehood that is now corroding the structure of our civilization is not being addressed. And I trace the evil back to simple greed.
The complexity of reality is such a hard feature to overcome both individually and collectively that we, as a species, may well be doomed. Our Darwinian survival strategy is based on fiction, not fact. We imagine the best possible future and then change this lie into truth. But if we look too far into that future, we find the opposite of life short circuiting the whole project. All are driven mad in this sense. I suspect an indefinite lifespan would bring sanity and It is the only path I can see; that our survival as a species depends on our survival as individuals. As long as we are submerged and slowly drowning in existential madness, there is no hope. If I die, we all die. If you die, we all die. We will cease to exist, and the universe will continue in silence. This is what our radio telescopes seem to be telling us. That the majority of our efforts as a race should be united and focused on reversing aging is an idea that does not exist. And so, I believe, as long as that idea does not exist, we certainly are doomed to extinction and perhaps far sooner than anyone imagines.
In terms of politics, there is no mystery if our organization is contemplated outside of the left and right cultural echo chambers. The closest humankind has come to a fully functioning society was undoubtedly the American mixed economy in the middle of the 20th century. Sadly, democracy as a collective check against institutionalized sociopathy is a concept the majority of humankind chooses to ignore, or at least is easily distracted from. The only device capable of interrupting the rise and fall of empire, the boom-and-bust cycle of capitalism, and the only path to a sustainable future. Calls for a “Green New Deal” and a “New Bretton Woods” go unheeded. Oligarchy, Autocracy, Plutocracy, in all their guises, and Fascism, are on the march again. Darwinian economics will end us like dinosaurs.
But…there is hope. Or I would not be writing this.
Ice on the Moon 