One has to be a realist (is there any other way to perceive?) and feel disappointed by the state of the world. The ease with which people in vast numbers are swayed by nonsense and the readiness with which they (went all in to) support either a) a destructive mobster with a terrible track record, or b) a relatively impactful but now senile president – does it get more desperate than that? Could we make a worst case for humanity – how we have yet again fallen prey to populism, opportunism, tribalism and wishful thinking?
It says everything about our makeup. Humanity is an atavistic affair. We are putty in the hands of our worst instincts, which no matter our accumulated experience take over like a bad habit. We relapse like addicts, giving in to the same old vices: avarice, greed, power-mongering, short-term thinking, terror-driven politics, hatred, and all things corrosive.
The above statement sounds nihilistic, but is it, really? When you see the same story play out yet again, does it not shake you to the core and make you wonder: what the fuck have we learned all this time, over the millennia, and why are we so easily drawn back into this dreadful game? How can we be degenerating so quickly, over a measly 10-15 years, to the point where we find ourselves collapsing into the shadows of conflicts we’ve barely healed from? Why does the world smell like the early and mid 20th century again? How can our regression be so swift?
And how can anyone deny the reality behind this phenomenon? The polarization, the indoctrination, the blind loyalty, the irrationality and madness, all of it contributing to a world steeped in lofty words and nonsense – it tells a story for the ages. We argue with the aim to silence and/or eliminate, not to solve problems. We get carried away by the loudest among us, conflating a few good points with a ton of crap to make arguments that serve narrow interests and not our long-term prospects, all in the name of ideology driven by fear and loathing.
I mean, you have to be in serious denial to pretend that the human state of affairs is not a terror-driven, hate-powered setup. It consistently boils down to seeing and eliminating threats (an evolutionary trait?) in the name of our loved ones (our investment in biology), our material possessions (our physical investments) and the values we cherish (our abstracted selves). It doesn’t matter how sophisticated and civilized we are, we always devolve – with a little pressure and a few snarky calls to arms – to the lowest common denominator.
Our ethics and knowledge can shield us only so much. After a point, we (ab)use what we know to justify yet another power grab, another purge
And even though we tend to rise above the mess in due course, there’s something to be said about our ongoing tendency to relapse. It happens so easily, on such a vast scale, that it’s a telltale sign, if not a defining feature, of humanity at large.
The breakdown is part of life, of course. Entropy is an all-pervasive, natural effect, and humanity isn’t immune to it. Our ethics and knowledge can shield us only so much. After a point, we (ab)use what we know to justify yet another power grab, another purge, a fresh call to action against those whom we deem the enemy. We forego the privilege of working with one another and squander most of our progress so that we may assuage the fear that drives us. We are animals driven by tribal drama, and no God, no Allah, no Great Spirit, not even Science itself can polish those instincts clean. We have raised life on a number of issues in a way that has extended our upswings, prolonging the smooth and integrative moments of our affairs, but in the end we are locked firm into the universal circle of entropy.
It’s one of the cornerstones of the human state of affairs, this natural tendency to collapse to basic instinct.
Anyone who says otherwise is blowing hot air.
Yes, we need hot air, plenty of it, to raise our lofty ideas and keep working toward the extraordinary state of progress we are capable of, but we’d be fools to deem ourselves lofty by nature. Facts show that we are basic, well and truly defined by the downturn, and that our sophistication folds in on itself after a certain point to serve our base needs no matter how much we have learned. We keep evolving, prolonging the peace, the collaborative periods, the shared goals that open up the field, but we are bound by our emotions, and our emotions come from animal instinct. And animal instinct throws us for a loop whenever we leap forward.
The only way to escape this loop is to introduce a new program to our affairs.
I’m talking about a machine paradigm, a template that obeys the laws of an apparatus designed to function in a world that sustains it. I’m talking about an organism – in vague terms – that nourishes and augments its environs so that it may thrive.
To do that, we must change form, but that’s another discussion altogether.
In the meantime, the reality is this: We, the human animal, make progress in the wake of repeated tragedy.
By ‘wake’, of course, I mean not just the blazing path of achievement, but also the vigil we hold over our dead multitudes. We make progress in the wake of the life we destroy every time we fail to heed the lessons of the past.
As things stand, we are experiencing yet another cycle, finding ourselves well inside the downturn.
Best hold on tight. It will get worse before it gets better.
From your socratic Spin Doctor
