For the past 2.5 years I have been heavily involved in improving Vega Strike Upon The Coldest Sea and am very proud to have been a part of this community. In parallel, I have been meditating a lot about the state of our world, the divisions, scum, hatred, intolerance, slavery, you name it... (but also the beauty, courage, knowledge, love). I know the world cannot be a perfect place, but it must also not allow for such an amount of ignorance towards humanity and towards the fundamental symbiosis between human beings and nature.
In the beginning of this year I have started researching some activism related information because I strongly feel that I want to contribute to a social change - which always must begin with oneself - and make my contribution to making this world a better place. One of my strongest arguments among friends has been that a money-based society artificially creates many evils, and the more I am getting involved in my next life project, the more I can see why. The next project I am endeavoring is about creating a money-less resource-based economy, where the absence of money does not allow for the evolution of greed, labor slavery, wars, crimes, technological imperfections, useless lawmaking, ecological destruction, and dominance of world's population and resources by the few.
I don't think this is a short-term goal. Maybe in a couple of hundred years human understanding will allow us to seriously start building a society that I and many like-minded envision. If you think this cannot be achieved then I encourage you to visit and take a look on www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/.
This consciousness already starts spreading like a wildfire through the help of the internet blockbuster Zeitgeist Addendum (and it's predecessor available at www.zeitgeistmovie.com/. The movie can also be watched with subtitles in many different languages (yeas, also with french subtitles ). It is unique in the sense that it not only points out wrongs but also offers solutions. Solutions that I want to be part of.
Therefore, I thank you for allowing me to be a part of this community where I have learned many things that will accompany my future steps. Special thanks to the developers for making this project happen, to all contributors for living up to the standards of freedom, and all of you exceptional individuals for making if worth making such a project like this exist.
See you around.
Pyramid
P.S. Watch out of world-wide Z-Day event on 15th March in your country.
Arcadian, Utopian, Technocratic movements and philosophies, these have been around for ages.
Thus, the first tough question for any new iteration of them that comes down the pike (Zeitgeist in this case) is- how will you succeed where every one of the numerous attempts before you has failed either to get off the ground in the first place or, once established, out-compete the long-running and highly-evolved conventional modern societies.
This site seems to indicate that this movement feels its edge comes from greater resource efficiency versus consumerist societies and most importantly technological advances of the future.
So first, my thoughts on the first possible advantage of non-consumerism. I am a very frugal person, not at all a consumerist, and I feel consumerism is as a way of life that it has become in the 'freeworld', plain dumb. But that is precisely why not being a consumerist is no long term advantage for a movement, consumerism is dumb, useless garbage, it is not an integral part of modern societies, they've lived without it in the past, they'll do it again whenever resources grow scarce and/or when a more frugal new societal structure begins competing with them successfully.
Technology on the other hand, together with the social DNA that is culture, and human population size, makes up the three pillars of human social evolution since at least the mesolithic. It is something to take seriously. However, I am still very skeptical on this point too, because it is based on prophecies of the paths, benefits and effects of technological progress beyond the conservative horizon. With some exceptions, like rocket engine space exploration, these kinds of predictions end up very wrong alot. I mean, look around and you don't see many flying cars and helpful robots. Even with those robots with their truly effective AI's being forecasted for so many decades now past and computer technology advancing rapidly and steadily even as all other areas of technology have remained at a near standstill, they still exist only in our fantasies and in ad campaigns for every other commercial software product, as a euphemism for "bloat ware". So for this technology to completely out-compete everything from dirt cheap sweatshop labor to the complex array of skilled labor is quite a prophecy, which maybe is fantasy, maybe is true or maybe would have become true if our society and "progress" wasn't already going to be crushed between our extreme and growing intricacies as well as inter-dependencies, and major weather upheaval, be it new and unnatural in cause or simply natural and nothing unlike what we see in the history books (but back in those days when human societies were more rugged and simple and natural resources were more accessible).
So that seems like allot of variables to me, but let's move past those now so that we can look at the second, equally important tough question- is where this movement and philosophy would take us, if it was successful, going to be someplace we would want to end up? I think that the picture the site paints, of a world free of crime, war, ecological damage, laws plus the need for them, most modern daily worries and asshole bosses, let alone needing to work at all, is going to deliver a yes vote from most of us freeworlders as well as many others in the 3rd world. That is, as long as we believe it. So should we? I am afraid I am a skeptic here again, as I would foresee one of a few very dark scenarios evolving if this kind of world society was ever realized:
Scenario 1:
The man behind the curtain. In the proposed future society, the vast bulk of agriculture, industry, transportation- those things on which our massively bloated modern populations and societies depend on for survival and that also require many of us to have mind numbingly boring jobs working in them, all of those things are fully automated. They no longer have to involve us, and they don't, we're completely out of the loop there. Control and management of these sectors is run by a close symbiosis between machines and human beings of advanced technical knowledge- engineers, scientists, technicians, etc. Advanced computers make most decisions, the technical folks make those that require the unique human creativity and flexibility not yet surpassed by those computers, advanced as they are. The theory goes that this means total freedom from corruption- unbiased machines with the assistance of well-meaning people, like everyone else in the society, only with the keys to the earth's entire human civilization. They are of course indeed folks with our best interests at heart, because in this world-wide Shangri-La of the future everyone has everything they need and want, and after all, it is "scarcity" that corrupts, and not power, right? Because rich folks have everything they need and want, and they always do the right thing, don't they? Well in this scenario, the technical elite wielding an absolute power turn out to not be so much better than our political or wealthy elite. In fact they are worse, because they don't need us, at all! Remember earlier that we don't have to work in factories, farms or distribution? Well guess what, that means we also have no control over any of those things, that is, those of us who don't understand and/or have the keys to controlling them. They can cut you off and let you starve, have your neighborhood demolished and then put in it's place perhaps the first advanced weapons factory the human race has seen in decades, to better control the long demilitarized and soft-as-a-babies-ass world. It is game over for individualism plus anybody they decide not to keep alive.
Scenario 2:
Human social and genetic degradation in vacuum of evolutionary forces of competition and natural selection over generations. Ideas and mutations under the guiding force of evolution through natural selection are how we got where we are. We need new ideas and mutations to adapt to our changing environment, but most of these new and somewhat random things are not beneficial. That is okay, as long as there is competition and natural selection to keep mistakes from compounding too heavily on top of one another. But in a society where people needn't do anything but seek out their own self-fulfillment and entertainment, there are no such evolutionary forces acting on them. So as generations pass, random changes in culture and at a slower pace, genetics, diffuses outwards in all directions at once. On the cultural level, this means the arcadian society breaks down, as people drift away from the common mindset and values. Petty rivalries and personal or group divides might start to form again, first along those remaining places where not everyone can ever be exactly the same and equal, like luck in love or aptitudes and talents. When crimes begin to erupt, there is no police force or social mechanics to deal with it. So they can either re-evolve or things fall into chaos, but either way, the arcadian society is no more and the world looks familiar to us again. But if by some magic trick the utopian society did hold together, genetic random mutations becomes a serious problem. There's nothing to select for smart, strong, healthy, friendly, creative or other human qualities. Except for sexual selection, but sexual preferences are also largely genetic, and would thus also suffer from the exact same issues. So in decades, centuries or millennia, you end up with dumb, weak, diseased, mute, sea squirts, surviving off of the legacy machine infrastructure that provides them with every biological necessity. Awesome.
Scenario 3:
The machine behind the curtain. This scenario is the least foreseeable but also the darkest and most classic. Since the plan is for both all of infrastructure and government to be handed over to advanced machines more capable and unbiased than people could ever possibly be, at some point in the future, we must assume that to do so these machines are capable of self-improvement. If they couldn't do that, then you would still need the technical folks who became evil in scenario 1, to write and install software updates and equipment upgrades as needed or as they became available. So now you have machines in total control of our civilization, aside from our precious personal freedoms at this point, from its brain to its body. They build things in factories, they build themselves in factories, they build factories, they design new things and factories, they design themselves. These facts make them definable as alive; taken as a whole, they are some new species of organism. They are now subject to evolution themselves. If it is advantageous for machines to stop wasting resources by providing them to humans that no longer offer them any advantage, those machines will be a more competitive strain versus the rest. If, not being biological, the earth's ecology offers no advantage to them, than there is no need to hinder their industry to protect it.
Anyone ever wonder if this is why we never hear reported sightings of any authentic and credible organic alien visitors, only machines that allegedly move in extreme ways that no organic crew could ever hope to survive?
Your text was extremely interesting to read. Thanks. I do have many concerns of my own regarding the way such a future society may look. True, there are dangers because corrupt and criminal forces will always be at work, no doubt. All of your scenarios are possible, however I do not think very likely. Still, more the reason to start at the very beginning and with tiny steps. This very beginning should be ourselves and our surrounding environment. And because evolution is a natural force, our society will change, and I can only hope that the change will be to the better.
human understanding will allow us to seriously start building a society that I and many like-minded envision. If you think this cannot be achieved then I encourage you to visit and take a look on www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/.
). It is unique in the sense that it not only points out wrongs but also offers solutions. Solutions that I want to be part of.
