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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32320 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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It's easy to tell about one's labors and days. More of a challenge with one's times. Especially our times. Why is that?

In Carbon times, there were a lot of smartasses thinking about the future. No wonder people knew little about their own era. Everything important was declassified on average in a century, and a lot of interesting things were revealed about great tank victories, assassinations of presidents, moon landings, contacts with reptilians and so on.

But, although people lived in the darkness, they knew some things about their present and past. For example, that a certain great tank battle really happened on such and such a date in such and such a place. Or that such-and-such a president had really been assassinated in such-and-such a city.

The rudiments of freedom remained with the people of that time, too. It was still possible to argue with each other and even with the officialdom, although it was connected to many risks.

And you could say anything you wanted about the future - they wouldn't kick you from there. That's why in Carbon they were constantly writing articles and novels about the coming epochs. They'd say they'd have it this way, and this way, and this way.

Well, here we are in the future. And it turns out that even with the most naive predictions of our ancestors, it is difficult for us to debate.

Because today we know nothing about the world. We don't know anything at all. But we can't talk about it - the very belief in the existence of "secrets" is strictly punished and is called "conspiracy" (yes, I'm alluding to my most famous punch-in, but I'll talk about it later).
The list of what we know for certain is very short. You can count it on your fingers with me. One hand will suffice.

[…]

That's it. No, really.
Thought there'll be something more? Check it on your own.

We do not know the answer to the rest of the questions that our inquisitive ancestors used to ask: whether machines think, what are the limits of technological growth, who has the real power over the world and the Cloud, what the exact political map of space looks like and who is the beneficiary here.

But not because anything is hidden from the people. Nothing needs to be hidden now.

The implant with the "QQoo" doesn't highlight excessively distant expeditions of human curiosity. We don't even know what our economic system is - feudalism? Capitalism? Post-capitalism? Meta-socialism? Maybe even some total klepto-corporate communism? I personally tried to figure that out for one of my punch-ins and couldn't.

The questions aren't posed like that anymore.

They're not posed like anything at all, because they've ceased to be raised.

– Pelevin, KGBT+

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