Monday, July 9, 2012

Shadows of Writing on the Wall

Writing appears on the wall:
A.I. machines will take away many more jobs.
As jobs vanish, sense of material entitlement based merely on existing will increase.
Genetic load and susceptibility to cataclysms will increase.
Dependence on centralizing mechanisms will increase.
National boundaries will be less recognized.
Loyalty to nations will diminish.
Whether by government or business, people will be more hierarchically organized and dependent and will become less expressive of individual (human) freedom.
Work and activities will be much more monitored by high technology.
Individual freedom will be more constrained.
Science for inducing control over mindsets via pleasure-distractions will flourish.
Politically induced right-think will be more enforced between competing demagogues.
Competition among demagogues will increase.
Old measures will less surely provide solutions.
Fallout will lead to increased factoring of environmental limits.
Literalisms of religions will be more discredited.
Purposefulness will be mocked.
Human freedom and dignity will be devalued.
The spirit of Will will be largely replaced by addictions, despair, and micro management.
Meaningfulness will tend to draw expresson only from those who empathetically intuit that something of the Cosmos is author of their persons and identities.
Spiritualists will tend more so than materialists to want to survive.
If these are the shadows of things that must be, then perhaps the meek will inherit the ant-pile, after all.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

The TSA is a make work agency that helps the Regime redistribute wealth to buy voters while at the same time weakening the US. However, note that it was started under Bush. So who's really looking out for America? I would rather people be paid to learn a real trade, so long as they' demonstrate competency. Problem is, you can't trust the government to test competency. If we can't divert these people to real trades, maybe we need special theme parks to permanently shelter them. Hell, put overpasses in it and have bureaucrats drive around and hand out quarters to the bums who "work" the overpasses. Quarantine dopers in permanent free-dope dopervilles.

Anonymous said...

Is it “social engineering” derivative of “hate speech” to advance with pre-judgmental words like “man” or woman” against those “freely consenting agents” who want to be “free” to raise themselves and their children to experiment with being like a woman in a man’s body, or vice versa, and etc etc? To be south-park politically correct, must one rigorously replace terms of gender with terms of metrosexuality? Must a man and a woman both be a “man-bear-pig” (or is it wo-man-bear-pig”)? To acquiesce that such is “objectively” or “fairly” right is to be so tolerant as to tolerate destruction of one’s identity of self-ness, as well as deconstruction of one’s family, town, country, and culture. It is to tolerate deconstruction merely for the sake of tolerating destruction. It is a walking pile of confused and buttery unworthiness, pretending to be principled, tipped by mindless feelings of the moment. It is to demand entitlement to be free to be blown in the wind, as if, to avoid accusations of “social engineering,” all the rest of society must be made to consent to so arrange its borders, institutions, and, indeed, its very language, as to provide a perpetually pleasant breeze. It is un-sanity that wants to bend the competent to be servants to the incompetent. It is a vortex made by a cacophonous, confused, and incompetent majority that is now sucking civilization down its drain. What comes after the elites of self-negating, deconstructive confusion? Answer: South-park humor, born out of phase-shifting social chaos. The joke of neo-majority incompetence seems to be on us.

Anonymous said...

Decent regard for humanity requires that we go back to decentralizing the allocation of economic rewards for valued production. However, regard for technology requires that we go forward in recognizing that many of the old jobs are being replaced by centrally managed robotics. More wealth will somehow need to be allocated to the service sector, but even that sector will eventually succumb to robotic A.I. New ways will need to be found to preserve decent humanity in the face of competition with A.I. What is to be done with those who lack initiative, capacity, or skill to compete with A.I. in order to produce valued goods? Reservation theme parks? 50's camps and safaris? How does a high tech society preserve individual initiative? Brain re-wiring? Personal A.I. assistants?

Anonymous said...

I look upon the beautiful word, chaos, as that out of which we evolve. Perhaps our only objective facts are based in mathematics, derivative of chaos --- or some mathematically conserving and common aspect of our subjective selves that is not itself amenable of being completely ruled by any particular perspective. If there is freedom, chaos seems to be its home. Nightmares often arise as some try, at all costs, to impose rule. I can relate to the creative destruction of chaos, but I don't view anarchy in itself as a worthy ideal or tactic for resisting despots. Rather, I think one needs to work with others to try to carve out and preserve such meaningful freedom within law as one is able. Problem is, such advice is far easier stated than followed. The difficulty is at least two part: Seeing practical contours for a better path, and then inspiring that such path be established and defended. Can we reasonably sense and trust that Romney is the guy with the needed talent and vision? Even if he is, the freedom path becomes ever less practical, given an electorate that is dumbed down, distracted, and easily enraged. There may have to be a whole lot of destruction before we can return to the meaningfully creative part. Entitlement-minded minorities may have to learn that they are not the only ones who feel justified in rage. I hope it is not so, but riotous rage may have to consume and extinguish itself before a new system for preserving freedom can be seen to rise from the ashes.

Anonymous said...

Obama's core supporters will never mind that he's a crook, as long as he's there crook! Moreover, since they claim not to have as much money, it's necessary and just, under Marcusian theory, that they be crooks, in order to negate the rulers and even the playing field. Problem is, most of the big (crooked crony) money has been in Obama's camp and it owns the media. Why? Because crooks, cronies, and cheats are aligned to steal from and cannibalize the middle class. To preserve independent thought and avoid "one-dimensional man," it's now the middle class that needs to fight back.

Anonymous said...

I don't think "Big Government" intelligently defines the problem. Eliminating "Big Government" cannot now solve the problem. The problem is that Government has become a commodity that is traded and sold among a new oligarchic international aristocracy that owns and runs both political parties. The aristocracy does not want to have to compete with yeomen; it wants them eliminated. This is so the new aristocracy can enjoy its wealth and privilege in unmolested comfort. Eliminating competition within America has been the model for America for 30 years, and if American engines of finance can push that model to swallow the world, they will. The problem is not competition and free enterprise. The problem is the cannibalizing of competitors and free enterprise by nation-run capitalists and international crony corporatists. How are voters pressing either party to address that problem? That is the problem, and it is not being addressed. Because it is not addressed, it will not soon, if ever, be solved.

Anonymous said...

Understand that the Communism Obama serves is Practical Communism (i.e., Socialistic Oligarchy), because the Ideal of Communism exists only in Fantasyland. The Practical Communism that is served by Thug-Obama is the one that is owned and operated by a corporate-governmental alliance of despots. It depends on eliminating the free-thinking, individually-armed middle class. This program is advanced by, for example, telling the middle class it is doing relatively just fine --- economically, socially, and politically.

Anonymous said...

Politics oftens seems comparable to monkeys in cages quarreling over bananas laced with dope. Democrats are the adolescent monkeys, who are happy to be caged, so long as they get free bananas, often laced with dope. Fundies are the marginally competent monkeys who don't mind the cage, but don't like dope being pushed on their kids. Tea Partiers (aka, fully developed human beings) are the ones who don't like being caged, deceived, or doped, and they don't accept that anyone else has a moral right to cage them. Libertines are the demented monkeys who think no one should cage them, but often believe they have a right to foist their dope onto the children of all others. Republicans are the cynical, corporatist monkeys who want to cage others, even though that means they also must submit to being caged, and even though it means management must be "flattened" so that management of everyone's affairs is controlled by only a very few at the top, thereby neutralizing all middle class potency.


All these monkeys spread out along vectors from a singular vortex of reference. Seeing patterns shooting out of a vortex of chaos, one may conceptualize that the vortex marks the source of a mathematically governed symmetry, which vectors and spins out from the crack where three principles meet, which principles may be geometrically represented as intersecting planes of: the undetermined (random); the pre-determined (natural laws); and the contemporaneously determined (consciously willed). The story of life, politics, and human civilization seems to abide in natural selection among the mix. The challenge to Tea Partiers is to become sufficiently aware that not every monkey wants to allow any other to become a fully developed human being.

Anonymous said...

The Left's arguments are usually centered on feelings. They feel people should not be shot, so they want to take guns away. They don't often think about what is necessary to protect a culture against despots. Since they're based in feelings, they often go over the top with tantrums, demonstrations and policies (like Fast and Furious). It would not be out of character for an over the top Leftist who was not getting his way based on his arguments to stage a tantrum-throwing frightfest. Such frightfests don't usually seem to be sparked in modern times by leaders who seek only to defend, rather than to undermine or incite, an armed and free thinking middle class.

Anonymous said...

Many people seem to have just enough capacity to sense the cognitive dissonance permeates the world, but lack capacity or will to make sense out of it. They seem unable to integrate and choose a worldview of their own. Rather, they must leap into a situation ("take a side") such that a worldview will be forced upon them, so they can peaceably submit to it. Thereafter, while they may often be mistaken, they need never be uncertain. The Aurora Joker is walking cognitive dissonance. No one could be "smart" enough to defend his murderous idiocy without first locking himself into it. Maybe he needed a forced and "structured environment" (lockdown) to put the demons in his mind and character to rest. Islam is an obvious example of a cult that forces minds to submit to collectivizing idiocy. Other cults that celebrate and force similar kinds of collectivizing idiocy are Communism and Liberal Fascism. Whatever may be his collectivizing religion or code, perhaps he will now remain locked up, tucked away with his murderous fellow travelers.

Anonymous said...

The main goal should be to protect the public. The adult public does not need to be protected from most users of drugs and alcohol. Most offenses of possession and use of drugs and alcohol, when not endangering the public, should be civil offenses at most, not crimes and not punishable by incarceration. If the mindset for punishing adult behavior could be changed, maybe prisons could focus on incarcerating dangerous people. When people are given criminal records for what should be, at most, civil offenses, their records tend to limit their opportunities for legitimate employment. Prison starts to look like a means for punishing people for being of less powerful political persuasions. The consequence is a down spiral that reinforces some of the bad results you have catalogued. The solution is not to waste money trying to rehabilitate the incorrigibly dangerous. The solution is to apply limited resources more intelligently.