This was going to be a follow up to, though not too promptly on the heels of, my previous oil post(it may be wise to read that first, if you haven't). However the point I am circling around is two-fold, and this part has run quite long enough, so I'm posting it standalone. I may continue back around to oil or I may diverge to the environment. We'll see!
One thing I think is often mis-understood is the exact nature of 'Them'. The Man, whoever he is. Some like to believe that there are shadowy bodies of power-brokers, overseeing great conspiracies to rule the world. Others believe that it's just ordinary people at the top, with ordinary motivations of varying shades of morality.
One thing that's not often posited is that the truth is probably somewhere in between - there are shadowy bodies of unrepresentative individuals overseeing loosely collaborative agreements on how to exercise their vast power to run the parts of the world that concern them. I doubt, however, if their motivations are larger than their capacity for vision. This is key, because I strongly believe that you don't really get to positions of great power, if you are the kind of person who sees very far beyond yourself.
Vision, in entrepreneurial terms, means discovering opportunities of indefinite expansion. Expansion, as I've said before, is the sine qua non of economy. The very idea of value is predicated on a positive prediction for economic expansion. Empires rise as they master forms of expansion, and fall as their strategies for expansion are outdated by the consequences of that same expansion. Populations of all sorts of creatures follow the same pattern - boom and bust. Managing to avoid the bust is indeed an admirable skill, and rewards its holders very highly.
It's not really visionary though.
Great, world shaking thinkers and entrepreneurs have been distinct sets of people, I believe.
To come back to the point then, where the shadowy power brokers theory falls down is that there are no people that would be put in such a position of power, and see a way to use it for truly extrinsic achievement. Read a goodly spread of sci-fi authors, and the chances are good someone will have posited a really quite plausible set of steps to be taken from the present day to escape the closed loop of our existence. And that is only the most obvious example of vision.
And where is it to be seen among those who wield power? They threw away the plans for the Saturn rockets that got us to the moon, for Heaven's sake! They used a planetary lifetime's worth of free carbon-based energy to power an economy less than two centuries old and doomed to crash by the very nature of it's design!
Still, it is little wonder, after all. 'Waste and want' are the watchwords of our world. Little wonder those at the top of food chain direct things in similar mode. Any attempt to paddle in the other direction usually costs the exemplar everything, in personal terms. So great is the flow of humanity toward oblivion, that any attempt to signal for change requires complete dedication of the signaller's life. A high price.
So it's easy to say lions for lambs, but harder to step into those shoes and be anything but the same as those led, who turn out to be more sheep with the appetite of lions.
17 comments:
This is a frank analysis. There are definetly conspiracies, but there's not monolithic conspiracy. Rather, there is an ecology of conspiracies.
Regarding peak oil though, there's a good chance that it is a conspiracy, at some level, I highly recommend reading this.
I've fancied myself a world shattering thinker, that probably explains why I'm not that great of an entrepenuer.
I should also add, where intrinsic vision and extrinsic vision meet is in the pursuit of immortality and intelligence augmentation. This is the prize that you should be paying attention to, and I suspect the object of at least a few of the conspiracies thriving off collaspitalism.
"Rather, there is an ecology of conspiracies."
Yes and to paraphrase Swift: bigger schemes have smaller schemes, upon their backs to bite them, and the smaller schemes have lesser schemes, and so ad infinitum.
"Regarding peak oil though, there's a good chance that it is a conspiracy"
Yes, perhaps. Hard to believe that no one saw it coming, but it would be believable if we could find proof that most of those in charge for the last hundred years have been investing in real wealth instead of fiat money or the inflationary economy. Then there's motive to let it all explode and crash - absolute power in the post-apocalypse.
"I've fancied myself a world shattering thinker, that probably explains why I'm not that great of an entrepenuer."
My exact reason :D Thanks for the honesty.
"where intrinsic vision and extrinsic vision meet is in the pursuit of immortality and intelligence augmentation. This is the prize that you should be paying attention to"
I am, and I would be optimistic if I knew where the key point of attack was to get in on the ground (or at least first) floor. I'll just have to keep my eyes open and brain sharpened.
Patrick: I can imagine few things more troubling than immortality research in a world with a giant population! Seriously, we don't need this, and we shouldn't want it. You're going to die, deal with it and move on. No immortality science - please, please, please! If and only if we sort out the population, then you can have your immortality science - but even then you're going to die. There's no escaping it. ;)
Oh, and "ecology of conspiracies" - just a beautiful phrase, lovely. ;)
zenBen: I believe the problem is that our great thinkers (including the three of us! :D ) end up thinking themselves into private corners, so while there is vision to be had in the world, it doesn't get propagated.
That's where the internet can "save us" - in so much as we now have unprecedented opportunities to share information, ideas and visionary solutions, discuss them, find the problems in advance, and chart the way forward.
By the way, sorry to shut you down on the population issue, but we're not ready for this on Only a Game yet. For reasons that I hope will become clear, there are a few things that need to be discussed before we can really open this one up. Rest assured, though, it is coming. ;)
Let me take this opportunity to thank you for your continued involvement in the game - definitely a star player. :D
Best wishes!
I think the idea of immortality research goes hand in hand with a kind of cruel-to-be-kind utopianism, in that only the very naive would believe that a world with this kind of treatment would share it equally. And after that, things would rapidly decline for the short lived masses, until in the long term only the long-lived would be left. Self-administered evolution.
I have to say, I don't know how we could conscionably go down that road, but I can't see that it can happen any other way. Not in the long-term, if we have a long-term. It's part of a trend that's being going on since the Enlightenment (ironic term, that!), feeding ever more of the world's resources into the society at the top of the technological food chain, with the net purpose of prolonging the lives of the members of that lucky society. And the trend is accelerating.
Anything more enlightened (see the irony?) would be bucking the trend, which has no reason to happen spontaneously.
At least that's how I see it...
I think the elite are planning on "sorting out" the population issue by constricting the supply of oil so that a third of the population can't afford to eat, and they can probably knock off another billion with terminator tech, engineered wars and man-made viruses (including race based ones). I wish I was making this up, you should do some research into it.
Its not my "immortality tech", I'm not the one funding or doing the research.
A way out of this is to increase intelligence on terms where integration and benign values are expounded and propagated, and then immortality can come with free energy and other forms of limitless potential. This is all quite possible, or at least, has not been proved as impossible, so there's no need to bottleneck our prognostications. That said, I hope this benign intelligence explosion happens before Peak Food.
"I think the elite are planning on "sorting out" the population issue by constricting the supply of oil so that a third of the population can't afford to eat"
Ethanol subsidies in the US are a pretty good start along this road, I think, constricting the supply of cereals for food.
I was pleased to see a world-wide organisation backing Jatropha agriculture, notably in the Sahel and India. Still, even if all equatorial/semi-desert areas of the world pick this up and run with it, they can still be squeezed by the guys at the top.
Not a hopeful time, I think.
Even in economics there are visionaries who understand that what looks like a short term loss could be a long term return on investment, with interest. Economy is about growth, but its also about stability. In that way political vision is similar although expansion doesn't necessarily equate to material wealth. (But then, I am a strongly intrinsically motivated individual and tend to project this trait on others...)
I also believe that most people in power see far beyond themselves though it might be fair to say that many of these people think on the level of countries, or political blocks.
The US limiting the amount of oil sold in Euros is a balancing act, a horribly ugly story, but in other ways is not particularly small minded?
As for:
>overseeing loosely collaborative agreements on how to exercise their vast power to run the parts of the world that concern them
Thanks I enjoyed this formulation. :) I imagine most situations have rules that are simply too open ended. That said, I am not sure how much power an individual can hold... only how much power an organization and what its affiliates believe it represents can hold.
A small ps re: "immortality and intelligence augmentation"
>in that only the very naive would believe that a world with this kind of treatment would share it equally.
If its an anti-aging drug it's not likely to be shared (I did quite enjoy Robinson's prediction in the Mars trilogy). But if it's an information repository of sorts, there is a chance that it won't be completely controlled (though I assume there will always be elitist and exclusive cliques)
"Economy is about growth, but its also about stability."
I disagree with this. And the proof in the pudding also serves to indict those who steer the ship on the count of long-term vision.
Our world economy [for even if you want to, there's very little chance of not being part of the global economy] is designed to aggregate signifiers of wealth upwardsthrough a hierarchy, the stability of which is the only stability present. All the levels of the hierarchy need to have just enough disposable wealth to facilitate their work/labour, but they are not true aggregators until you get quite far up there.
And the folly of the paradigm is explicit in the reality of a world where we have a chance of wiping ourselves out completely, all for want of a little vision.
Ok maybe a lot of vision. And it is there, in spades. It just doesn't seem to be very relevant when the chips are down and someone wants to pursue votes instead of clean air.
I only read the first Robinson, but I really liked his ideas. Reading his prose was like playing Age of Wonders though - torturously predictable, but somehow addictive. And if we had the political will/spare change to colonise Mars, I could see us enacting that first book rather verbatim.
Enough oil in Alaska to power the U.S. for a long time - classified.
Lots of interesting stuff here...first thing I think I need to respond to is the comment "but there's no monolithic conspiracy" by Patrick.
I would tend to agree with this...but then again, what is a conspiracy but an idea that is shared by all the minds of those involved, in this case an idea that is shared but is kept private, behind closed doors, because those who believe it know that such ideas are unpalatable for the great unwashed masses (rightly or wrongly).
Check out what mister JFK said to all of America (before him and his brother were shot dead).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnkdfFAqsHA
That speech always makes me a little sad to hear considering what happened to him...
Also, check out for more on monolithic conspiracies :=D
http://zeitgeistmovie.com/
The end of that gets a bit way out...but the first part is interesting.
As regards these comments on oil. I saw an interesting video Ben sent me recently about the oil non crisis:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3340274697167011147
And I have to say, I did find the stuff about oil in Alaska interesting. But correct me if I am wrong, wasn't that oil being protected because of environmental concerns? (I could be way off on this).
Also, at one point this guy seems to be complaining about America using American money to pay of third world depth...which makes me wonder if the Americans do need to be lied to to make the world a better place?
My own opinion about the oil crisis? I have commented on this numerous times. There is a question here of easily accessible oil. America must control the cheapest most accessible oil to power its mechanized military. Those who can control these resources have the advantage militarily...hence those who control it will always win in any war (which doesn't go nuclear).
Thats what it is about...and America and those in power in America think that the Pax Americana is the best thing for the world. Unfortunately, they are now using this end to justify any means, which is how all tyranny begins.
The question we as citizens of the new global world must ask are, can we share wealth with poorer nations? (no more holidays in quaint parts of the world where one euro goes a long way). Who do we want policing this new world? An American system, a Chinese system, an Islamic system? (if Islam gets its claws in, maybe we will spend an eternity being married off to virgins...I always wondered if the arbitrary choice of 72 was somehow linked to the precession of the equinoxes and the world ages).
As captain planet used to always say "The Power is Yours!"
As for immortality...I think the only viable immortality is a spiritual immortality. Maybe its possible to live in space, and feed on the blood of human babies to maintain our physical shells...over the eons and eons though, I cant imagine that would be very exciting...no doubt you would invent some type of highly realistic game to play just to put off the boredom.
I don't know...I am blathering now more than normal...I shouldn't drink coffee! :)
On a lighter note...Captain Planet Saves Belfast!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQJrovKgrTw
Thanks for the input Kris, especially the zeitgeist movie. Its a powerful message, but unfortunately the lesson seems to be, one can only save oneself - there is no power now available to the common man to propose an alternative to what these people are doing.
Since I already feel emancipated by my intelligence, I'm not very cheered by the message at the end of the movie.
If I believed in coincidence, it would be a curious coincidence seeing that movie and the Lindsey Williams video (which Patrick alerted me to) within days of each other. Long ago, just after 9/11, I believed it was a set up, and soon I was convinced the US would go after Afghanistan and then Iraq, and they did. I was asking 'Cui bono?', following the money. It has been educational learning how simple my understanding really was.
Now, to get back to the post - who believes these people really have the vision to lead the world they control to persevere, flourish, continue developing indefinitely? Are they creating control structures in order to guide human potential to great and galaxy spanning achievement, or are they merely expanding a hierarchical but essentially limited power paradigm to its logical but limited end?
An even more frightening quesiton is: do these people have the vision to pursue a singularity without losing control and having it turn into something terrible?
I say: no.
Thats a problem that the greatest minds on the planet would have a lot of difficulty approaching, therefore, considering their track record, TPTB are probably going to doom us all to existential hell. A post-oil stone age would be the desireable scenario there.
"considering their track record, TPTB are probably going to doom us all to existential hell. A post-oil stone age would be the desireable scenario there."
Yes, Accelerando's Economics 2.0 didn't seem like too much fun!
A post-oil 'primitive' age might seem inevitable by the LATOC (Matt Savinar) reasoning, but then it all seems too obvious and convenient for TPTB to have missed, doesn't it?
Yes.
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