iv. Fiction, Empathy, Wisdom

The concept of error detection is important and a rare case where a Wikipedia link suffices for present intents and purposes. The short-form definitions of cognitive biases can help to highlight concerns within a field that is wrought by theoretical intelligence. List of cognitive biases act as stipulations, heuristics, or pitfalls of free and critical thought.

Ominous Fiction: la pop est surfaite

Literature and other creative works are worth examining not because they predict or directly warn against a certain future, but because they reflect and synthesize commentary from capable human minds in terms of the human condition itself. Dystopian and apocalyptic fear seems to dominate the fictitious landscapes of the future in popular culture in one capacity or another. Dystopian views can be macroscopic warnings from the perspective of fiction, yet I fear these create myopic forms of thinking due to the sensational or alarmist assumptions highlighted. To ensnare the attention of the reader, beholder, video game player, or audience, authors and creatives are aware that catastrophic dystopias are magnets. It’s the same reason that people are tricked into clicking on clickbait articles: they seem interesting.

Expanding upon how salacious entertainment ensnares attention, it’s good to remember that humankind has an inbuilt inclination to focus on ‘the odd item out,’ the flaw, the outlier. From an evolutionary perspective, we gained an advantage from avoiding anything that could threaten any aspect of life or livelihood. Livelihood can be thought of as including the presence of abundance in the resources that humans often value (food, healthcare, money, perceptions of happiness, feelings of socioeconomic security, social stability, a sense of control or agency regarding any immediate surroundings, and a sense of predictability in life). Happiness set points auto-adjust to individual baselines; a sense of predictability and familiarity create the illusion of control that contributes to feelings of security and happiness.

It’s also important to know that these variables can be made to appear to be threatened. Social media’s ability to manipulate moods and political leanings are one highly visible example. This is the same reason that clickbait articles can be so effective for advertisers buying web-based ad space. Other such examples of manipulation are embedded in the historic zeitgeist of humanity as evidenced through the arts. If life imitates art, the humans would be wise to create fewer visions of apocalypses and dystopias in their arts, games, movies, and books.

Like an inversion of the origin of web content, a contributor to a societal ‘darkening’ could come in the form of surveillance, propaganda, censorship, and subtler forms of control. Classic novels like Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, 1984, Clockwork Orange, and Neuromancer come to mind. China’s “Great Firewall,” America’s “PRISM” program, and or urban surveillance programs in the large cities of affluent nations are precursors to the more vibrant implementations that can be found through the lens of classic fiction.

Ominous Fiction: Les classiques sont mal compris

  • George Orwell’s 1984 – “Big brother,” the purported name of the leader of the surveillance state, has minimized learning, reading, and any vector of education that could lead to revolt. The regime behaves like an organism, protecting it’s own livelihood. To maintain control, indoctrination has spread to the extent that language is altered so as to control the flow of thought. Free thought, freedom of press, and many aspects of freedom (societal or bodily) are under intense strictures. The maintenance of this way of life comes partially from surveillance networks in constant use, enforcing these extreme controls.
  • Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World – A scenario much more like our reality has unfolded. Set in a false utopia, Juvenal’s concept of “bread and circuses” reigns. Pharmacology is used and encouraged to provide false feelings of wellbeing and happiness. The social norms and promoted use of pleasure serve to illustrate hedonism’s pitfalls to the reader while increasing the self-reported satisfaction of the society’s inhabitants within the book. Decreasing the need of individuals to have any cause for complaint is a strategy embedded in the creed Brave New World’s fictious warning. In the process of living within a blissful state within an ostensible Utopia, aspects of the human condition have suffered, and the population, uncomplaining, suffers from a severe collective case of what might be termed as the effects of broad-scale obscurantism.
It’s clearly a Brave New World
  • Ray Bradbury’s Farhenheit 451 – Often thought of as anti-censorship, this book more deeply calls into question the value of education and critical thought. In a world where firemen are called to burn books, a small enclave exists in the “underground” and compose a resistance. Consider that both before and after the existence of The Great Library of Alexandria, before the widespread production of paper, the Western/Gutenberg press, or literacy a commonplace skill, countless amounts of “writing” were curated through memory and oral traditions. The “memory palaces” employed by great people, polymaths, and many individuals within (or preceding) classical antiquity, are thought to be evidence of the widespread use of mnemonics among the educated. In this vein of thought, entire books were memorized by people who lacked the tools to transmit their memorized (or synthesized) knowledge into written and printed words that are essentially convenient for other people. Books and scrolls were once extremely valuable and exceedingly rare. Modern-day mnemonists know and use these ‘forgotten’ technologies. In the setting of Fahrenheit 451, the members of the underground society carry humanity’s libraries in their minds. Notably, the offloading of knowledge into books and the internet is a parallel to the unquestioning nature of a society that takes learning and knowledge for granted. The “overground” society of Fahrenheit 451 seems to have given up on itself – and the sophistication of its civilization through blind adherence – by giving up their capacities for critical thought.
  • William Gibson’s Neuromancer – An intentionally difficult book, Neuromancer often seems like a fugue inside of a fugue. Parallels to the dark side of society include corruption, extortion, nepotism, poverty and widespread use of drugs. In our world, the emergence of easily attainable and legal test chemicals are abused for intoxicating effects that are difficult to divide from the proliferation of megapharma and the pseudo-science remedies peddled by third parties. In this sense, the world in which we live features a parallel prone to escapism. Additional parallels are found with virtual reality, entertainment, and the constant bleeding of attention that seems to be in service of screens that appear as black mirrors when powered off. In Neuromancer, malware, ransomware, surveillance, and death loom as a result of a world polluted by industrialization and societal decay – all painted in early scenes. The confusing nature of the narrative and distinctly descript-yet-confusing writing style is thought to be very intentional metaphor for the difficulty found in navigating a reality augmented so heavily by technology. It’s a reality that William Gibson foresaw when he coined the term ‘cyberspace.’ Additional tech-centric concepts are often attributed to Neuromancer. Implantable and wearable biometric, biomedical, and connectivity devices, some kinds of drones, and various countercultures are predate their existences in our shared reality.
  • Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano – An automated society established seems unlike a false Utopia. One man has an existential crisis that results in the nervous breakdown of society itself, recreating the protests of the Luddites or the Saboteurs in the process. This story’s themes, often repeated, seems to echo in popular cinema and television through titles like “Fight Club” or “Mr. Robot,” though the themes are often “man vs. society and self” instead of the “society vs the fabric of society” found in Player Piano. In a post-modern world, man vs. reality, man vs. technology, and man vs. author (e.g. man vs his own creation of self resultant from engineered society) are newer forms of conflict that have become normalized.
  • Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale – A bleak future is painted in which extremism has exacted incredible degrees of oppression and control. Misogyny, violence, and control are highlights of the dystopian radicalization that elites mandate upon the proletariat. Dreadful yet highly effective entertainment, harkening both totalitarian regimes and historical fascism, the novel is yet another warning that uses the vessel of fiction as a means.

These kinds of stories are meant to forewarn of the human condition. They do not necessarily suggest or predict dystopias. Exemplifying the kinds of collective thought, inaction, or the corruptions of the human condition that can result in or lead to less favorable states are literary themes present among many other literary facets found within. It could be said that a dystopia is just the setting and scene.

Lateral Thought, Breaker of Chains

In the real world, extremist religious regimes often control information to maintain power. Quotidian (and much milder) misinformation campaigns are commonplace in the form of political ads and cancel culture. It isn’t a stretch to understand that controlling the flow of information, free speech, or something like freedom of press, are routes of control the thoughts of individuals and the societies they comprise – no matter their source. Social media is often ascribed as a primary source of misinformation and as a catalyst for contemporary manifestations of a technologically-driven interpersonal form of neo-tribalism.

A highlighted use of technology to combat these controlling forces is beautifully seen in a projects like the Uncensored Library – a server released by Reporters Without Borders for the wildly popular videogame Minecraft. The in-game structures of this instance of the game house a library that is filled with news and uncensored information. This workaround grants people who live in countries that experience government-enforced censorship some access to censored information. Other such wellsprings of information exist elsewhere in cyberspace. One version of such virtual Minecraft libraries is rumored to contain larger amounts of censored information, though confirming this rumor was (perhaps deliberately) elusive. The Minecraft server’s censorship workarounds include anti-surveillance tactics for end users, helping them remain safe after accessing and exiting these virtual venues.

Technology provides the most opportunities for misinformation and truth to be transmitted. Critical thought, once again, must prevail. Protestors and seekers of truth, globally, have become familiar with anti-surveillance tactics.

VaRiABILITIES

AI will surely be a factor in trajectories of humanity and civilization, though outside of theory, AI is best recognized as a factor instead of a deterministic or fatalistic force. There are many subjects surrounding the fate of civilization at the hands of civilization. Seizing upon the subject of AI as sensationalist lynchpin or a historical fulcrum prematurely would be a folly of assumption until this paradigm shift is observed. Instead of disassembling the topic at length, a few links to AI-related talks and interviews can help to edify. These are appetizers for good food for critical thought. It’s important to remember that a conscience/sentient AI, the widespread presence of general AI, common access to generative AI, and the widespread use a large-language model AI are each very different creatures. These aforementioned forms of AI are significant in descending impact. The predicted technological ‘Singularity’ refers to the first iteration of the most advanced form of AI, a sentient superintelligence. Enthusiasts hope/fear this will occur in the next few decades. The contrarians claim this will not occur until other events, like a widespread adoption of practical and cost-effective quantum computers are commonplace. The naysayers insist humanity will self destruct or an extinction-level event (e.g. asteroid impact, superplume eruption, collapse of biosphere) will preclude AI being a true concern due to centuries or millennia elapsing first

Peace, Truth of Empathic Utopias

The Empathic Civilization, by Jeremy Rifkin, paints a broad landscape of hope through a line of thinking that offsets the entropy found in and through humans and societies – the force of empathy. If an overabundant media backlog is a ‘good kind of problem’ in life, Rifkin has summarizes some of his theories in a TEDtalk for The Empathic Civilization. The last section of the book can be a sourcebook for contemporary hope. Evolutionary biology is heavily featured, and though the field is often criticized for the convenience of the answers it provides. The conclusions drawn by Rifkin, however, stand to reason without those evolutionary underpinnings. Divorcing the concept of evolutionary biology from the book’s overarching premise allows the core concept of empathy to nonetheless act as a saving grace, if collectively applied.

The proof and presence of mirror neurons, a proof of the innate presence of empathy in human beings, was and is a game changer for many fields. Rifkin suggests that empathy is the opposite of utopia. A utopia, he argues, implies a world without pain or suffering. He equates the traditional idea of a utopia (a perfected society), as an impossibility. Throughout the book, Rifkin proves that empathy is a motivating factor for the creation of ever-more sophisticated societies, replacing utopian ideals with the practical results of empathy as a driving force against the decay caused by entropy.

Entropy is a broad topic; the second law of thermodynamics is often extrapolated as a metaphor to describe the constant change of systems that move gradually toward disorder or disarray. In terms of futurism, entropy can describe how a constant effort must be made to slow the decline – or advance the ascent – of civilization.

Rifkin points out ‘to empathize is to civilize.’ Rifkin aligns these ideas with a very simply truth: if humans could unite in solidarity, major issues of worrying human concerns could be solved in very short order. Wars and conflicts would minimize; pride and greed would no longer act as confounding impediments to society. Rifkin calls for empathy to be triggered and brought out of humanity as a collective. Brining out empathic human traits could act to rebuild the damage that has already been incurred by the factors of societal decay (entropy) to repair, rebuild, and fortify civilization.

If empathy of any kind is somehow an act of caring and love, then the Beatles had it right, “…all you need is love…love is all you need.”

Wisdom, Noble Path’s Root

The Venus Project’s Answers – FAQ acts as a bastion for pro-utopian thought and pro-utopian trajectories. Helping to offset some of the realistic fears that many people have regarding humanity’s future can require some practical and feasible steps. Venus Project provides many; our action is required.

Estonia’s Digital Society, also previously posted, deserves promotion for Estonia’s elegant brilliance in this field. Estonia’ system of governmental paperwork cannot really be called a bureaucracy. Estonia’s system for governmental concerns like licenses, taxes, their version of social security numbers, and aspects of healthcare are all handled through the same system. The system is so secure that citizens can post their personal information freely on social media without any fears that their identities will be stolen or their tax information corrupted. Estonia offers it’s practices and solutions to other social groups or nations in order to spread their comprehensive solution for the betterment of humanity and its socieites. Since the PBS report How Estonia built a digital first government in 2018, the news of blockchain technology has only spread with the popularity of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or major smart contract platforms like Ethereum. Decentralized web platforms use similar technologies, provoking the beginning of the decentralization of the web.

Estonia’s policies, through the interviews in an e-Residency documentary, further promote some of the nation’s ideals. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas had shared a longer interview in How Estonia Became a Model for Digital Democracy (from Exponentially w/ Azeem Azhar). Promoting the adoption, globally, of such rational strategies will help us all. Streamlining the machinations of societies can act to facilitate the solidarity needed for the work and progress required for the most favorable varieties of outcomes that humanity desires most.

Similarly envisioned technologies, societal systems, and broad kinds of protocols were featured in the GovInsider.asia article Exploring the path to inclusive and sustainable societies: Insights from Estonia, Japan and Singapore. An incredibly progressive solution from the Japanese Government, known as ‘Society 5.0,” contends as a solution. An overview of Society 5.0 shows the kinds of socially-conscious integration of technology that is now possible. Like Estonia’s digital society and strategies calling for the redistribution of resources, these are clearly suitable at smaller scales for smaller pockets of humanity. Helping these solutions go mainstream and global require resources and effort to upscale. Global implementation is required. Inaction serves entropy. Meanigful action serves progress.

“The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play”

Arthur C. Clarke

Fully Automated Luxury Communism, as reviewed in The Atlantic, is a manifesto by Aaron Bastani that highlights the Utopian dream of a streamlined global society. The book of the same name shares many facets with utopia-seeking and empathy-minded brethren. By automating the means of production, most existential concerns that humanity can control can be, through FALC, cured. A more loving world involves the minimization of unnecessary forms of labor and suffering. ‘All work and no play’ clearly might do much more than ‘make Jack a dull boy.’

Effective Altruism is perhaps one of the better sources promoting grassroots activity, a cornucopia of information regarding how individuals and organizations can most effectively affect the kinds of change that will matter. The effective altruism movement is quite popular in Silicon Valley and

Pandora’s Box must remind us all that hope must prevail. Love, empathy, and care, in some capacity or manifestation, are the vessels through which hope can be sought through progress forged.

Investigative Strategy

Societal elements deserve more attention. Economics, technofeudalism, resources, population advances and decline, hygiene/medicine, birthrates, the ‘singles crisis’ of the affluent world, the rise of nationalism or fascism in modern forms (neo tribalism, mob mentality, deference of blame between social groups / lack of global solidarity, radicalism, extremism) need to be addressed. Society has the most control over the fate of society; the same is true of civilization. Rifkin’s points about entropy and empathy are compelling, and may act in parallel to thinking in other disciplines covered.

Individual elements must be attended to, as the quality of life and the characteristics of the life of individuals are what denote the quality of a society. The exacerbation of mild mental illness, ‘ipad kids,’ a chronic increase in single adults, popcorn brain, children refusing to attend school (absenteeism), the pathologizing of everyday life, hikkikomori (and the western mirror images thereof), the effects of chronic screen time, social media, video game addiction, pornography, and other connected-device misuse/abuse, escapism, alienation, autism, a decrease in social skill in affluent nations, et alia., these doom and gloom concepts that bombard the consumer tie in to the presence of psychological factors.

Big “what if” questions like catastrophic disasters (asteroid impact, superplume eruption, devastating pandemic) as well as catastrophic blessings (quantum supremacy is reached, longevity, formulating a redistribution of resources global peace plus spacefaring may have time and space to emerge, but first, additional consideration of culture are necessary.