As a child I was intensely optimistic about the future. Modern technology, space rockets, moon bases, robots and interplanetary travel dominated my imagination and TV watching. I still remember the live broadcast of the first human stepping onto the Moon, the grainy black-and-white TV image a technological wonder in itself. But it was only four short years before NASA’s financial realities cut short my dreams of a manned moon base , with their endeavours diverted instead into the development of a reusable low-orbit taxi.
Over five decades later, during which our computing and robotic capabilities have exponentially grown, it’s likely that only a renewed, re-oriented version of last century’s Cold War will be the key driver for humans to return to our only natural satellite. War (or at last fear of defeat) has historically proven to be a formidable driver of human endeavour. I see nothing on the horizon which will change our basic urge to out-do the tribe living next door.
Irrespective of base political motivations, the spanner in the works of future progression for some nations won’t be technological limitations, but more their contemporary attitude to risk. As with modern combat, some governments will knee-jerk revert to a robotic presence in place of a human one for planetary exploration at the first inevitable fatalities, at least until space travel becomes as safe as atmospheric travel. This may never happen. Other countries, however, will have a different risk profile, where a nation state’s greater good will be achieved through heroic individual sacrifice. As with story-telling, conflict and its resolution will act as a heartbeat for the human condition.
My pessimistic attitude to human potential might be a natural development with an increasing tally of years. But it also seems globally prevalent amongst the younger Gen Z and Millennials. However, there is a personal upside to excessively collating assumptive snippets of our doom-laden prospects, whether they be geopolitical, financial, technological or social: It allows me to summarise a dystopian foretelling of our projected future with greater ease.
The resulting ~900 words below act as an initial frame of reference for a series of speculative fiction novels I’m writing. Yes, it’s a passive-laden exposition which will probably not appear at all, or only in fragmented form in Book #3. World-building dumps detract from telling a good story and certainly don’t rack up the tension for a reader. But, as with a previous post, I’m exposing something here which I hope will hook an audience and trigger a discussion on both this and alternative viewpoints. I can then adapt, improve, or even reject my in-progress creations.
You might be in need of an injection of optimism after reading this gloomy introduction. The man-made regression I’ve described below acts only as a feedback loop for my pessimism about humanity’s future. In contrast, I’m inordinately positive about the fate of the planet we’ve evolved on (or perhaps from). I’m certain she can take of herself, as she has before, given enough time. You only need to ask a dinosaur, or one of those Cambrian upstarts, or perhaps the other 99% of Earthly life which no longer exists. There, I knew I could cheer you up…
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Us and Them; the Haves and Have-Nots; Rich and Poor; the Senate and the Plebs; Lords and Serfs; Bourgeoisie and Proletariat; Toffs and Oiks; White and Black; the Elite and the Oppressed; onePercenters and UBIs. It had gone on for millennia. Now it was the turn of Rebirthers, Sustainers and Remainers to dance the human hierarchy fandango.
No matter what terms were used, or the perceived distance between their extremes, stark social divisions continued to exist and be willingly maintained. Money was the essential lubricant to grease the poles of success. It bought you goods to display, influence to barter and peer acceptance. But the squeezed middle had vanished now, paying the taxes the people above them could avoid by merging indistinguishably with the tangled networks they created, to support the people below them who had failed to understand a changing world, either through age, ignorance or intellect – sometimes all three.
Intelligence remained no indicator of success. Genetics was irrelevant to the selection of those culturally fittest. Opinion was all. Failure was other’s fault. Privilege was to be torn down, at least until you attained it to the same degree. The acronym’d sticking plasters of CDO, QE and UBI had kept the credit gravy train in motion as a creditable notion, banks and lawyers running rings around toothless watchdogs. The psychology of belief and trust – but mostly hope – had been a false mirage of success; a consensual hallucination where the only measures used and adapted were those that showed a rising graph, whether that was a share in a company that owned nothing, a flawed survey, or a government’s popularity.
Crypto and Defi had tried to bludgeon their way through to release the masses from government mechanisms to capture an under-served slice of every transaction, only to be turned against itself by capitalism, the splintering of tokens cleaving the purists into arguing factions. Applying political and financial controls using the last vestiges of international law-making then ensured the Ponzi pyramid wasn’t flattened. The establishment – after decades of lying to its lackeys they could succeed, finally convinced itself that classlessness could also apply to them, where old and new money was indistinguishable. The implicit rules were simple. If you had it, you were accepted. If you got caught, you were forgiven. If you lost it, then you were pushed.
The three most powerful nations had been chipping away at each other for almost two centuries with hubris and debt; social control and mass labour; deceit and guile. One saw the chance to strike and called in its debts. Credit had been a false mechanism for growth , a circular demon of packaged products that hid the essential nature of the consumerist systems that propped up prosperity. What people thought they had was built on either hot political air or a soulless algorithmic vacuum. The education, jobs and status they fought for were mirages created by the seats at the top who only wanted to take back – in small, less painful slices – what they’d first handed out in dollops for votes. Replacing soft humans with intangible wares made to coerce, imbue and retain biases made collecting taxes so much easier. Easy credit was only the smiling, delusional face of a coin whose obverse was downtrodden debt. This Janus Coin, whose minting was purposefully made trivial, had been tossed into the air by vaporous dreams of politicians and their economist lackeys, enabled by the greed of financiers. But it still had to be caught when it came down.
One fool saw its catching as a vote winner. They were dead by the time the credit was gone and the debts insurmountable. Reality intruded to evaporate the value that never really existed in companies that were just shells to circulate unicorn money amongst networks of lies and false promises.
Escaping from the dying mess of their own creations was hard, but necessary; and exclusive – but so what? Gullible hands and minds continued to build the rockets, carrying a promised ticket to ride in their hearts. For most it was yet another lie.
The richly departed soon discovered leaving was easy, but living upstairs was harder. So bubbling vacuum flasks were readied for the first hopeful believers. Paying (not just praying) to survive to play another day was the only way out for those who’d lost control of the structures they’d created, then lost control of themselves.
As they continued their lives in orbiting mirages, looking down at the mess they’d been responsible for, they waited in vain for the problems to solve themselves through simple attrition; watching for any challenges to erupt against their distant virtual hegemony. When they did, they still played out their power games, temporarily thawed family heads fighting it out via lawyers, bots and descendants, riposting one action with another on the facile board game that preyed on human foibles. For it still bore advantages to them and their offspring, all of whom wanted to remain surrounded by the riches denied to the billions they'd deliberately manipulated to their disadvantage, repeatedly recycling them from encouraged birth to a tax-saving, untimely death.
All of this was merely a foretaste of things to come. For there's much more to life than that which exists within the narrow purview of human biology and its conscious comprehension.
