Reflections on the Accelerating Spiral
Coding the future.– Elon Musk asserts with enthusiasm that in ten years there will no longer be jobs for humans — where by humans he means, in general, humans not at the very top of the digitized food chain, and in particular humans other than himself. Avarice being a native illness of the soul, it is not surprising that those most severely infected with that virus will be most irresistibly inclined to shed every consideration of nobility or fellow-feeling in the name of protecting their own hoard by any means possible — though perhaps, in a self-preservational urge before the masses they fear, sugar-coating their diseased intentions with vague intimations of universal largesse or paternalistic magnanimity. “If only you leave it all to me, trust me, defer to me, I can ensure that you will always be comfortable and warm at night.”
Have any of these grand wizards of our future considered what will happen, morally and energetically, to a race whose younger generations have been divested of all social purpose, useful function, or daily occupation? If they have not considered it, then what fools would we have to be to blithely allow them to send us all down such an unprecedented path? If they have considered it, then the situation is even bleaker, for in that case they are acting not only from avarice and sociopathic stupidity, but from outright malice aforethought.
Freedom, Virtue, and Vice.— The essence of true republican liberty may be found not in Locke or Montesquieu, but in this aphorism of Pascal, from Section VI of Pensées:
We do not sustain ourselves in virtue by our own strength, but by the balancing of two opposed vices, just as we remain upright amidst two contrary gales. Remove one of the vices, and we fall into the other.1Pascal, Pensées, translated by W.F. Trotter, New York: Modern Library, 1941, §359.
In the case of collective entities, such as whole societies, the desired virtue is rational freedom, and the opposing vices are the self-corrupting perfectionism of absolute rule by the elites on the one hand, and the self-devouring licentiousness of absolute self-determination by the majority on the other. The practical manifestation of this collective virtue requires institutions of government that balance the permanent restraining wisdom of intractable principles with the temporal flexibility and policy oversight of popular representation.
“Remove one of the vices, and we fall into the other.” That is to say, remove the tendency to defer to the preferences of regional representation and popular oversight, and we fall into enslavement to an untethered committee of unchallenged experts; but remove the tendency to defer to permanent principles and historical reflection, and we fall into the slavish wantonness of demagoguery and irrational idol-worship. The former collapse makes the majority feel weak and miserable; the latter collapse makes them feel powerful and self-satisfied. In either case, the result is universal brutality by way of the generalized evisceration of both basic humanity and sober judgment.
Atoms.– Reduce us to nothing but miniscule parts of the infinite material mass, and we become meaningless, superfluous, and aware of being so — which is to say nihilistic in the full sense of not only directing ourselves toward, but actually craving, the nothingness. How do we reduce ourselves to nothing but miniscule parts of the infinite material mass? Education reduced to the government-directed modification of habits and propagandization of opinion. Knowledge reduced to information, and thus thought reduced to data-collection. Wisdom reduced to practical success and popular effect. The Good reduced to “goods,” which is to say released from any notion of hierarchy or unifying priorities, such that happiness becomes inseparable in men’s minds from material gratification, ease, and comfort.
