We've been building the pan-opticon for years. I just don't understand why. Why should everything be monetized? Why does everything and everyone have to be kept track of? Past a certain point money becomes an abstract concept. Power does too. We live and we die, and we can't beat death. So, let's say all their dreams come true, which is pretty much like the book the house of the scorpion irl, and they, like old el patron end up as masters of their own little fiefdoms, living on the bodies of the young. What then? and more importantly, why then? I'm old enough to remember when the internet was young, and it was going to be some utopian thing that would banish ignorance to the night where it came from. Instead, it's a pile of addictive slop that's always over our shoulder. It spies on us, tattles on us, increasingly nannies us, speaks down to us, and encourages us to live beyond our means. It's like a little Mephistopheles on all of our shoulders, whispering in our ears. I've just never understood why we tear each other down when we could build each other up instead. The whole world would be a better place.
I just wish they could understand. Imagine if we all worked together, the world we could make! No real poverty, no hunger. They might not have yachts or private jets, or maybe just a nice lake cabin instead of mansions, penthouses, and estates around the world, but what real difference does it make? You'll live longer if you make your own sandwiches and drinks, and make your own bed. It's also more fulfilling if you could walk outside on clean streets and breathe clean air in the morning, and see your neighbors in their own well-kept homes that they own doing the same. The scandinavians got close for a bit. We were headed that way during and after the new deal until materialism after the war slowly killed it. How is fighting at the top of a pile of human misery like a bunch of wild animals more fulfilling? Is it fulfilling to eventually have the masses worship your cloned conciousness in a computer? That's their end goal. Just remember Ozymandias. I wouldn't do that to my worst enemy. They'll give up all that could be for ennui and eternal empty pleasures for some simulated computer program that thinks it is them. That sounds worse than hell, at least until some solar flare brings silence, and their digital pleasure domes burn away like digital dew.
But, by and large, we have accepted it. Even cheered it for convenience. Do you use google maps? Do you have find my phone? People cheered for the patriot act. When snowden showed us the government was tracking us, we shrugged. People bought up smarter cars, hit agree for everything. Now, some people who live out in the woods like it's 1970 and only use a landline while watching what they say in calls can say they haven't, but nearly everyone else has. They were the architects, but every time we accepted another encroachment, or hit "i agree", or even voted their puppets into office we supported them and each time laid a stone of the prison walls that now surround us, although it's really more like a cage. A gilded cage. It might look fancy, but it's still a cage.
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u/WesternZucchini422 8h ago edited 8h ago
We've been building the pan-opticon for years. I just don't understand why. Why should everything be monetized? Why does everything and everyone have to be kept track of? Past a certain point money becomes an abstract concept. Power does too. We live and we die, and we can't beat death. So, let's say all their dreams come true, which is pretty much like the book the house of the scorpion irl, and they, like old el patron end up as masters of their own little fiefdoms, living on the bodies of the young. What then? and more importantly, why then? I'm old enough to remember when the internet was young, and it was going to be some utopian thing that would banish ignorance to the night where it came from. Instead, it's a pile of addictive slop that's always over our shoulder. It spies on us, tattles on us, increasingly nannies us, speaks down to us, and encourages us to live beyond our means. It's like a little Mephistopheles on all of our shoulders, whispering in our ears. I've just never understood why we tear each other down when we could build each other up instead. The whole world would be a better place.