We need new phones, faster more reliable networks of internet, electric cars, longer lasting batteries, less fossil fuel dependence, more synthetic materials, recycling plastics, natural chemicals, desalination techniques to make ocean water “fresh”, more efficient household appliances, safer cars, radiation-less everything, city lights, highway lights, cameras everywhere to watch the public, track peoples’ movements, consumption patterns, thoughts and masterbation habits. Oh, and lots of medical devices to keep people alive without them having to exercise anymore because that is so strenuous and out-dated…except perhaps on a perfectly designed machine. Shoot, I forgot one more thing…we need gene-editing technology for agricultural purposes so we don’t deplete the topsoil in inefficient and unsustainable ways…besides, it probably won’t affect the natural cycle of life. The purpose of human existence is to dominate the earth by breeding into the tens of billions and adjusting as we go by making buildings for all of them to live in. We’ll have privacy in the form of their own tiny little room. It will be just like a big family and everyone has their own personal space. Except the poor…they don’t get shit. Fuck them. And meaning? We can create meaning for them as we go. If we need them to move from rural america and into dense urban apartments, we can create an advertisement that glamorizes it…yeah, glamour sells. We can take their life and their money with the right pitch. Let’s play some upbeat music too, they’ll totally fall for it.
This is the progress the modern world promises. Even sex isn’t your own…they have categories for your preferred sex life in apps. Don’t find the one you want? Impossible, they’ve thought of everything. Human endeavors are ceaseless in their variety and justification on the basis of “progress.” The fuck’d up thing is that the idea behind progress assumes there is a destination. The destination of nearly every one of the endeavors of progress in our fucked up world is not mentioned because it is nothing more than the accumulation of money. That is the truth.
“It is preposterous to call ourselves progressive without knowing what progress is and where such progress is leading us.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it one last time…real progress is ontological. Harmonizing humanity through the true understanding of our mutual condition.
“More money = Progress, is the equation we seemed to have derived uncritically. This is the fly in the ointment of progress. … Intellectual development, spiritual growth and psychological maturity are hardly recognized as parameters for measuring progress. Moral progress, social progress, cognitive progress are seldom attached any importance.”
I agree with my fellow human by the name of Akash Gadiya, even though he has a lot of a’s in his name. 4 out of 11 letters…over 36% He didn’t have much to say, but he said it well…https://medium.com/reflectionism/the-false-idea-of-progress-29223368e0a0
Unfortunately, the powers of the world imposes a technology-based world on all of us and the quest for money to survive is inescapable. Thus a Foucault-like “iron cage” imprisons us all from birth. The Super-structure mega-system has already established the meaning of your subjective life too! It adjusts as it needs to to keep the economic system alive. That is precisely what happened what happened when Los Angeles became a global capital. To turn the desert into an “oasis” as the promise was, developers sold the concept to midwest farmers to get them to come labor away on the idea that it would be a wonderful life in the sun near the beach and ocean. Nearly every modern social structure is a facade, a veil over somebody’s quest for wealth.
So what? Did you say “so what”? Stop reading and don’t ever come to this site again, you don’t belong here.
For those who didn’t say “so what” because you aren’t convinced that money is the greatest driver of all human activity, thank you..and I digress. It is simply really horrendous to think that giant technology systems will monitor the lives of future generations and control everything and yet pretend they are somehow free. To have the life courses of future generations set out in stone before they arrive and to use any social institutions to effectuate a world where they can’t create their own meaning and use the earth’s resources how they might collectively see fit is a sacrilege to the meaning of human existence. Naturally they will fight back…once they realize. I know AI systems will take that into account and keep a Matrixesque uber-narrative alive at all costs, but that is sickness. If you kill the life, just kill the body too.