Imagining the Imaginable
Today, I am going to ask you to do something that's pretty easy, that is, to imagine the imaginable. As many of you know, particularly if you have access to a computer and can read this right now, we live in a first world environment. Running water, flowing electricity, roads, bridges, the internet, decent healthcare, all sorts of things like this. You probably worry about money or making ends meat, while other people in the world worry about food and water or whether or not lions are going to eat them tonight. Or whether or not mad men with bombs strapped to their chests will blow themselves up in the name of your religion. I understand it's pretty easy to imagine where you are now, and how easy it would be to go into a situation that would be bad. Unless you're a Sociopath or insane or something, then you probably have a hard time imagining what it's like to be in other people's shoes. Some of you may even literally have taken that statement to mean what it would be like to steal someone else's shoes and walk around in them. No. No stealing shoes.
But, in any case, I'm going to ask you to imagine something pretty easy. The idea that, no revolution is coming. That's right, no revolution is coming; not to the entire world, not to most countries, and definitely not to America. Maybe in some other country, like Syria, or Iraq, there's going to be a revolution, but here in America, the next few changes in our political process will not even get close to being a complete change in our government. When the Americans overthrew the British masters and thought to themselves, finally, we are free from oppression, they probably didn't consider raising the tax rate on the top 1% of the population from 36% to 39% to be among the amazing goals they achieved when they established this country. From democracy, to a foundation based on freedoms and justice, the idea that a government should be founded on these inherent principles, with a desire to help others, the idea, which may have not have been new, was among the first to really spread and solidify the idea that governments should be by the people, and for the people, and ignited the world to work towards these goals. We've never been perfect, and probably never will be, but we were founded on the goal of always attaining greater and greater rights, finding problems as they arose and changing the world around us, for the better. From freeing the slaves, to civil rights, to woman being able to vote, this country has come a long way from it's inception, and continues to get better every day, and to work towards that goal. Slow, subtle, incremental changes, on things no-one would have anticipated.
When Obama instituted the ACA, or Affordable Care Act, based on the heritage foundation's individual mandate solution, and completely gutted the individual mandate by making it a weird tax, which he said he would never implement, just the entire core principles to his own documents which he clearly didn't read, I'm fairly certain our founding fathers, our feminist leaders, our civil rights leaders, didn't consider a washed up piece of crap broken down health insurance bill to be among the things which should be included in their revolution. I'm fairly certain it wouldn't apply.
When the Republicans defeated the democrats in the civil war, and freed the slaves, I'm fairly certain they never expected to be accused of racism over voter ID laws. That many on the democrat side would view them as racists, despite not posing a single piece of racist legislation, and consistently outvoting the democrats on civil rights for even the last few decades. For more politicians to have changed sides in the last 4 years than the next 20 after civil rights, for the policies to have remained virtually identical on both sides (gun control, taxes etc.) yet somehow switch, and yet for all the ideas born out of the democrat's desire to oppress black people, from removing guns from civilian's hands to to generally making them more reliant on the government so as to have to follow their minority leadership rules, such as the Jimcrow laws, to actually be regarded as progressive. Not to say they are tah debilsz or that they are evil or what have you, but to claim that the other side is responsible for all your own wrong doing and that all their good things are your accomplishments, just seems silly, at best. Both sides have progressed tremendously, incrementally, and largely both are not racist to this day.
Yet, there is a belief by many, that a revolution would come. Perhaps this is simply due to it's romanticization; that, we as society carry a romanticized view of "Revolution", and how we will suddenly right all the wrongs of our previous society by sudden and violent overthrow. Indeed, movies tend to glorify this aspect, and never really tend to talk about what happens afterwords. That just 80 years later, we had a civil war, to determine the rights of people who's only difference was the colour of their skin, but 2 genes in their entire DNA strand. Or that 130 years later woman would finally get to vote. Or that nearly 200 years later civil rights would be guaranteed by law. There is a strange idea that, society will change overnight. Some grand gesture of violence and hate will fix all of our problems, as we bring the lamb to slaughter as our sacrifice, and that by putting all of the problems in the world on their head, and then cutting it off, we've somehow cleansed ourselves of the evil. When in reality, far more pressing and telling changes throughout history have subtly lead us to this point. That it's the day to day, not the one night of insane crazy violence, that leads to a better country, and a better planet. That everything we have now, from the running water to the electricity, was built on the backs of the billions who came before us, now, quite sadly literally the case, as well, what with how many are berried.
No, my friends, no revolution is coming; at least not a true one. If there's anything that could even resemble a revolution, it would be artificial in nature, forced because there were those who wanted something similar. Violently or not, no grand change, no grand differences, will really come about at this point, at least not in any short or measurable amount of time, with no real fundamental difference to our society even after they occurred. We're to the point now we're, most of the things we're looking for are logistical in nature. More food, more water, less dependence on oil, a better economy, less war on the planet, less crime, less bad things happening like hurricanes. None of this is really achievable through logistics alone, or by changing laws. Indeed, we are reliant on a new type of change, a physical change, an emphasis on mechanical differences, rather than some great law or logistics. That no matter our leaders or government, we simply can't survive without energy, clean water, and at this day and age, electricity. That certain, base needs, need to be taken care of, from medical to economical.
No amount of anger or violent temper tantrums, or non-violent temper tantrums, are really going to change this. You can huff and puff and blame the government if you like, but most of these problems simply stem from logistics, and in a capitalist society, is largely out of their control. Even the corporations are limited by the current scientific advancements, it's not as if they can magic cures or infinite energy generators into existence out of thin air. The Egyptians built the pyramids, but they did not have a single cellphone. Something grand, is not the same as something good, or complicated. They simply lacked the necessary infrastructure to allow for something with that level of finesse. And what good is a single cellphone for an emperor who'd have no-one to call? Technology and science isn't magic, it's something that develops over time. As we begin to understand patterns present in the universe, like gravity or energy, we begin to understand the world around us, and thus how to manipulate it to our goals. Science isn't some inaccessible concept unapproachable by the common man, it's relative and constant mechanical changes in the universe allow us to observe things on a simpler level, and this predict what will happen after a stimuli is applied, such as 1000 joules of kinetic energy to a 15 gram piece of lead, and largely determine it's impact. Something the average person can actually understand quite easily.
Technology does seem to progress over time, after all. No, the best society will not emerge out of some subtle change in logistics, but out of a change in how they operate mechanically in the world. With the development of things like nuclear power, say fusion, energy several orders of magnitude higher than others, possibly millions, with hundreds of earth's masses worth of fuel floating around our galaxy (like jupiter), makes it so near infinite energy could be possible in just the near future. At least so much energy that humans could never consume it during the course of the life of the universe. Not even at millions of times out current consumption. Essentially, a post scarcity Utopia. For instance, we barely have enough food to feed society as is. While in theory there's enough food to feed everyone, a percentage of that is rotten, too far ruined to be eaten, or something such as corn stalks instead of actual corn itself, which isn't generally considered edible. We have enough food supply for everyone, but barely enough to make it so our general inefficiencies don't exist anymore. Where as say, with 1 million times the energy, we could grow food indoors, with grow lamps; inside of buildings, with say aquaponics, and remove the need for land or soil at all, thus allowing us to grow potentially hundreds of times the food, in the same general area, by being able to build up. The total solar energy absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year. In 2002, this was more energy in one hour than the world used in one year. Growing that much food, or really any of our food, in doors these days, is practically impossible, since sunlight only comes in at one angle, and getting enough power to grow all the food in the world from alternative sources would be nearly impossible. That is unless, we had say, blackhole generators, or say fusion power. With that, suddenly, we could grow a nigh infinite amount of good. Or convert a nearly infinite amount of mercury to Gold, which is usually 10 times more expensive than real gold, due to nothing other than pure energy costs. But why stop there? Why not just grow food in a lab, and evne make complete meals in there, to already be perfect? Why not make say, graphene, hundreds of times better as a conductor or insulator, depending on it's type, flexible, possibly usable as a computer screen, and 200 times stronger than steel at 1/10th the weight? It's only object is price, largely due to energy. Why stop at creating some simple view of the world like growing food, when we could practically apparate it out of nowhere?
Where comes the fear of death when nanobots coursing through our bloodstream repair our DNA, replace our collagen with graphene, and make us nigh invincible and capable of living forever? When we can look like giraffes, or gorillas, or currently unimaginable things, like this. Or giant shoes! When we can live forever, absorb knowledge almost instantly due to our cyborg enhanced brains, and power everything infinetly, with machines doing 99.99% of the work for us, where does the need for communism come in? Where does the need for capitalism? When all you have to do is press a button and whatever you want comes in, what is the point to an economy, to a job? When people can be brought back to life, where does the problem of death come from? The reality is, technology, mechanically mastering the universe, will bring us the salvation we seek, a way to end wars, a war to end starvation, a way to no longer have to comprise with the world and the environment we're in.
And while fusion always seems to be 50 years in the future, we may be on the real verge to creating practical fusion, to power the earth, soon. Or blackhole generators. The start of a new generation, where old, petty ideas are completely thrown out the window. Not a revolution, just a progression of our skills to tap the nearly limitless potential that exists in the whole rest of the universe. To surpass a threshold we currently lack, to make work and jobs irrelevant. To go only as far as the mind can imagine, to not be weighed down by petty physical restraints. This is the world I envision. A bunch of people upset because they're guns are going to be taken away, or because those guys over there's guns won't be taken away, aren't going to have much effect in the grand scheme of things. What truly matters is, the progression of technology, and the ability to wait out that time. Just so long as we can make it the next 50 years... I ask of you, to imagine the imaginable, the attainable, the obvious, what has been right in front of our eyes the whole time, the single constant mankind has had since his first move away from the animals, from his first spear and bow and arrow, from his first fire, the thing which has fundamentally set us apart since our creation. That which we've all had with us this entire time.
Edited by Manoka, 20 February 2015 - 12:38 AM.