Modern human life is the story of increased efficiency.\u00a0 Harnessing ever increasing amounts of energy and directing our enormously expanded knowledge of the physical world around us we have been able to change the way humans live.\u00a0 We have produced enough food to make the whole world obese and we have created industries that provide modern wonders like cell phones and computers to virtually every man, woman and child on the planet.\u00a0 We have invented medicines and treatments that have increased the average human life expectancy by decades.<\/p>\n
But there is only one commodity that we haven\u2019t been able to increase and that is peace.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t mean the cessation of war.\u00a0 I\u2019m talking about tranquility or spiritual serenity or call it just plain peace.\u00a0 The amount of peace in our lives has been whittled down over the years until presently it\u2019s only experienced for short periods when we are cut off from the world around us.<\/p>\n
And that is profoundly wrong.\u00a0 Human beings need peace to thrive.\u00a0 And the way the modern world works is to strip away inefficiency from our lives.\u00a0 But along with the inefficiency, we have stripped away the things that gave our lives meaning and a sense of belonging to something permanent and valuable.\u00a0 We\u2019re expendable and obsolete almost as soon as we\u2019re grown.\u00a0 And every day machines are produced that make us even more obsolete.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t progress.\u00a0 It\u2019s a death cult.\u00a0 And it\u2019s the thing that is convincing me that we\u2019re approaching a breaking point.\u00a0 If this goes on, we will very soon reach a point where human beings will have to destroy the system that is trying to declare them superfluous or they themselves will be destroyed.<\/p>\n
Now that sounds melodramatic and apocryphal but I actually believe it to be true.\u00a0 And it doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019ll have to rise up and smash the factories and eliminate automation with sledgehammers.\u00a0 Political action is much more efficient.\u00a0 The people who are automating out of existence the careers of everyone will have to retool to alter their projects so that their products provide resources for humans in their careers.<\/p>\n
Now, you may ask how that\u2019s supposed to work.\u00a0 I really don\u2019t know but that\u2019s what has to happen.\u00a0 Human beings will not go quietly into that good night.\u00a0 This is our world.\u00a0 Being replaced by AI isn\u2019t something we should just sit back and watch happen.\u00a0 And that is why populist politics is growing in strength.\u00a0 Everyone is sick of the elites pushing for some sort of feudal future with AI replacing the middle classes and serfs kept around to cut the grass of the rich.<\/p>\n
You know come to think of it, maybe sledgehammers are the answer.\u00a0 A crowd armed with pitchforks and torches showing up at the headquarters of Google and burning it down would go a long way toward changing the way things are done in this country.\u00a0 Or maybe we institute a \u201cprogressive\u201d tax schedule.\u00a0 It works like this.\u00a0 If a tech company\u2019s products increase the number of middle-class jobs in an industry within a certain salary range your taxes go down.\u00a0 If they decrease the number of those jobs they go up.<\/p>\n
There, that\u2019s not so hard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Modern human life is the story of increased efficiency.\u00a0 Harnessing ever increasing amounts of energy and directing our enormously expanded knowledge of the physical world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3773,1560,1808],"class_list":["post-36494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-populist-revolt","tag-the-obsolete-man"],"yoast_head":"\n