Op-ed: Godlike Technology Requires Democracy

 

Godlike technology requires democracy

 

Maybe every generation, throughout human history, has seen itself as embroiled with some myth-worthy foe, fighting for ultimate survival.  I suppose I would be remiss if I didn’t join the herd.  That said, in our times, there is a super-salient difference:  large-scale war will wipe us all out.  Today, we’re mortally interconnected.  The way things are going, full steam ahead, to use an outdated idiom still in use though things are changing so fast, we will have quite a menu of choices to exterminate our headlong species:  not only nuclear, but also biological, robot, quantum, or nano-conducted. 

 

How are we going to manage the vastly powerful tech, godlike really, that has and will come our way?  Quite soon, in a tick on the anthropological clock, let alone anything cosmic, humanity will have powers never imagined, just as you and I witness powers never imagined by recent generations.   Again, for imperative emphasis:  How are we going to manage these godlike powers?  It’s not just about the collapse of a nation state or even an empire anymore.  We’re talking the fate of humanity and the Earth itself.

 

As it stands, in our current woeful state, there are only two possible paths.  One is clearly dark.  The other is our only hope for planetary flourishing, even a paradise.

 

The first path available is fascism.  This is a strategy to maintain and expand power, centered on a cultish, charismatic dictator.  Think abusive control-freak husband whose wife is the entire population of a country.

 

History has suffered plenty of these malign egocentric thugs.  They consider themselves gods.  Misnomered as ‘strongmen,’ they are parasites, assailants with bottomless holes for hearts who ramp up their recklessness like drug addicts urgent to outrun a mounting physiological tolerance.  They suck up wealth and attention at everyone else’s expense.  Finally, in an unbridled fit of poor impulse control, it all goes over a lemming cliff.  Two words:  Napoleonic Wars.

 

Loosely, this is a continuation of what has pretty much always been.  It started with a bureaucratic theocracy in ancient Sumer (‘I am your God King!’) and paired with the upper body strength of war-bred masculinity.  This deadly duo has led to thousands of years of slaughterous chaos.  Fast-forward to where we are today:  macho egos who seek monuments and pinnacles while they bully the rest of us with might-makes-right. 

 

The Earth is flat.  The sky is red.  The election was stolen.  Bow down before me and embrace my beliefs and commands as your reality.  This is the loyalty test.  Pass it or suffer.

 

Let me play Cassandra for a moment, and state the far-too-obvious:  fascism, its primitive level of ethics tech, will take us into WWIII.    I say ‘ethics tech’ because ethics is a technology capable of advancing like any other tech. 

 

The only chance to advance our ethics tech, enough to properly manage our godlike powers, is democracy.  Adaptive and reasonable, a healthy democracy dares to face empirical truths (gasp).  One of these is that all sorts of humans are, well, human.  Humans think, feel and accomplish.  This has been quite a shock to over ten thousand years of god kings, superior races, males-should-lead, gays-as-evil, and so on.

 

Ten thousand years of this sludge.  Many generations in succession have passed down the curse.  The acculturative trap is deviously woven into social life at all moments and stages, effectuating an almost guaranteed trojan horse.  As soon as I was born, maybe before, I was being molded by this darkness.  You, as well.

 

Can we escape the acculturative trap?   We already have in part.  Women’s rights.  Gay Marriage.  Earth awareness.  Anti-slavery.  The very existence of human rights.  Without these huge, startling advances becoming more and more the norm, we are going to perish.  Control-freak narcissists will wither our souls into utter obeisance, then slay the whole species in a bellicose coup de grace.

 

Do you think world dictators will hesitate, when it becomes  practical, to put, let’s call it a ‘monitor & discipline’ chip, into the human brain?  When robot police and armies are economical and efficient to manufacture, assembled by other robots, do you think the dictators will wait a moment to put them on every street corner?  Better yet, why not a mandated ‘robot friend’ in every household?  Don’t worry, they can see through walls and hear the slightest whisper to better protect you …

 

Dictators want everyone to be thinking about them all the time.  They want puppet-applause and conspicuous approbation.  Guess what’s going to happen when they can ensure it by employing oppressive, omnipresent persistent surveillance?   I did that on purpose.  OOPS!

 

We have to plan now for the future of humanity and Earth.  Failure to advance our ethics tech means that we will be trapped, constricted more and more, as science allows greater control of body and brain.  This is a pivotal blip in time on which all future blips depend.  Choose democracy.  Make it our gift to the future.  A potential paradise or hell awaits our decision.

 

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