The Kingdom of annihilation
Where is the hope? It might well reside in the beauty of the metamorphosis of an innocent caterpillar into a butterfly. In the last article, I shared with you, my dear reader, a few nuggets of optimism regarding humans' ability to find self-creation when self-destruction is the most obvious path we are on. Don't get me wrong, I do think we are on a pretty solid and fast highway toward self-annihilation if we don't act fast and well, and it can be depressing to see how ridiculously foolish and distorted incentives can guide us towards a wall.
While capitalism indeed lifted many people out of poverty, nation-states have been largely unable to cope with its inherent inability to exist without inflicting significant social and environmental damage on the very society it needs to apply wild market laws. Drug traffickers understand very well that a dead buyer is useless because their product usually kills their clients in a few seconds. Large food suppliers probably agree with this statement but tend not to care as cancer appears after several decades of intense consumption of their products. If you think I am suggesting that some drug dealers are potentially smarter than some employee-CEOs wearing suits and asking McKinsey for macro-economic tips, you are right.
As a result, the owners of a large portion of the capital, the winners of the power-law, find themselves in a weird situation where their market incentives are asymmetric with basic human safety rules and no longer follow any kind of ethical principles. That's how some people sell you GMO beef and garbage-enriched synthesis cookies that will give you cancer and pollute the world with micro-plastics, eventually harming their own families and loved ones. Short-term market incentives are distorted, and no strong institution is able to implement a "skin-in-the-game" rule where selling deadly products using deadly production processes causes death to the seller. Does that sound harsh? Now ask yourself if industrial food would be better if CEOs were forced to eat meals only made by their own companies.
Metamorphosis
Every social system has its antagonistic counterpart to exist within itself, and somehow needs it. Socialism would make no sense without voracious capitalists to fight against, and the US fight for a liberal world during the Cold War would have been slightly boring without the Soviets and their Marxist communist values, at the extreme opposite end of the ideas spectrum. I'm pretty sure we would have never seen space exploration if it was not for massive ego fight, and space ships may still be science fiction. The beauty of having an enemy is real. Similarly, the values of the Enlightenment exploded throughout Europe thanks to a group of isolated philosophers who probably had no clue that they were about to change the course of human history. They would have never existed if they had nothing to fight against.
Their self-creative process was born through their self-destruction as subjects of the kings and the church and reached its peak during the French Revolution. A few writers and philosophers had planted the seeds of freedom and raised the fight against obscurantism. It all started a few centuries before when Copernicus suggested a Heliocentric universe, and especially almost a century later when the Christian Church condemned Galileo for pushing in that direction. Science was fighting against religious obscurantism, and a group of marginal figures had taken a hostile, dark path that would later be known as the philosophy of the Enlightenment. The metamorphosis of society began with their own self-transformation and eventually led to explosive outcomes.
Ain’t no utopia
Unfortunately, the process of self-creation does not always follow a specific blueprint. Europe experienced its darkest hours during World War II, and the seeds of Nazism, a deadly ideology mixing ruthless science and genocidal views, were planted right after the Versailles Treaty in 1918. Harsh conditions of surrender imposed by the winning French contributed to the economic and political turmoil in Germany, creating fertile ground for the rise of National Socialism and hardcore populism. This destructive process eventually led to the birth of one of the most monstrous dictators in human history, as the dominated and defeated German society voted for a rebellious, warmongering, and genocidal leader.
Every social system brings forth its group of contrarians, who often form marginal and residual groups that do not gain fame or majority and fade away as history unfolds. During the Cold War, there were communists in the United States who fought for the Reds and spied for the Soviets. These marginalized individuals remained curiosities of history, interesting at an anecdotal level but with no significant global consequences.
However, at certain tipping points in history, where the paths of writing history and heeding our human quest intersect, some of these marginalized figures become the center of attention and transition from isolation to prominence almost overnight. I believe we are currently at such a crossroads.
And then, one day...
It becomes possible when things start resembling a simulation created by a junior programmer, a rather poor one at coding and when the silos of obscurantism begin to leak the desires for freedom and truth. Are we capable of reinventing ourselves? What is our hope as global warming becomes increasingly threatening? Globalization has brought not only perils but also potential solutions. As I mentioned in this article, empathy and emotions are shared indiscriminately worldwide at lightning speed, bringing every human into the global narrative of our species and exposing dysfunctions like never before. Our ancestors did not have personalized news feeds—actually, they had no news feeds at all—with leaks, papers, lobbying scandals, and schemes involving private gains and public debt. They were mostly ignorant of the internal machinery of the world. Could it be that their society had not yet entered the phase of metamorphosis?
Or perhaps the initial stages of this process were so marginal and hidden that they went unnoticed. I firmly believe that we have progressed beyond the marginal stage. Carbon emissions are reaching their peak, and renewable energies are cheaper than their oil-based counterparts. Nuclear fusion is making significant strides, and electric cars are no longer considered exotic. Even seemingly insignificant actions, like the construction projects of egocentric monarchs, now spark protests around the world. Small gains compound quietly each day, even as it appears that everything is engulfed in chaos. Sooner rather than later, the decades we are currently living in will be regarded as the pinnacle of social barbarism. Our society will no longer be seen as purely capitalistic but rather as a kind of "Kingdom of Absurdistan," where it is deemed natural to encounter hundreds of cookie varieties in supermarkets and witness the Winter Olympic Games taking place in the heart of the Saudi Desert. It may get darker before dawn breaks, but eventually, the light will emerge.
And if you feel pessimistic and anxious, never forget it is easier to get your attention by spreading fear.