We live in an age when the most unobjectionable and necessary ideas for progress can give rise to paranoia and fear. If the most innocuous, unoriginal possible idea can fuel paranoia, how can we hope to have a sensible discussion about the future of our places?
as I’ve grown older, one of the things I’ve realized is that the primary driving force behind a lot of people’s beliefs is, as pratchett put it, ‘the overwhelming desire that tomorrow should be pretty much like yesterday was’. It takes a lot, like a lot Lot LOT, to get people to be willing to risk the unknown. people have this weird ability to look back at all of history, see how much things have grown and changed, and think to themselves “thank god that I live here and now, where things operate in the only possible correct way that was ordained by god. the past is nothing but barbarians dying of infections and the future is a dystopia that no one could possibly want or understand, but the way I grew up with is comfortable and makes sense. it’s the natural order.” this isn’t a terribly unique thought, but the ability to think it without realizing that every generation that came before you also believed that very same thing with as much conviction as you did is…let’s say it’s uniquely human.
When I was a kid, the future was supposed to be awesome and full of amazing technologies and solutions to all our present-day problems. Now I feel like these right-wingers have taken that all away, and now the future is, yeah, dystopian. I’m glad I don’t have any children…
But the present is full of amazing technologies: we have smartphones, and we have Facebook, and Wikipedia, and mass state surveillance, and toy quadcopters dropping bomblets… ok, so maybe all of that creates problems at the same pace as it solves others… but the tech is amazing!
Your wording here clarified some of this stuff for me. My brain works like…if anyone suffered preventably yesterday, and change can improve total well-being, put me on the change train. I read about people thinking that way, but it’s really hard for me to conceptualize. Thanks.
I’m glad you enjoyed it. One of my favorite philosophers/psychedelic enthusiasts/all-around crazy people, Robert Anton Wilson, gave me a bit of a gift in understanding this. He said that you can gain a lot of insight if you’re willing to sort people into two buckets: neophiles, who are excited and drawn to new things, and neophobes who are inherently afraid of new things and will reject them, often with violence. Of course this doesn’t work 100% of the time and it falls under what he would call a “useful fiction”, but it does seem to add value to the discussion even if it is imperfect.
