Chicken Little Hatched a Luddite

At the recommendation of some facebook enthusiasts, I watched "The Age of Transitions" tonight, and arrived at the following opinions:

There were many factual arguments, but some of them were used to support positions that require a very narrow focus on only a few of the facts. For instance, the focus on eugenics, and connecting that to lowered birth rates, as though there were a group of people out there that were trying to kill us all off or dehumanize us, is illusory. While there have been extremely crazy people in high positions of power in various nations, I don't think that's different from the way it's been in primate (and human) history for as long as we HAVE history. The old maxim is that you'd have to be crazy to want to be king. The desire to control other people as a driving, superseding purpose is required to tolerate the public scrutiny, abuse, demands on your time, etc. Those who desire such power should never be allowed to have it.

We had a horrible period of history in the US of A, where we were funding fascists and dictators, and even violent overthrow of existing governments and replacing them with our own representatives. There's pretty good evidence that this strategy was developed with the guiding vision of former SS Officers, under the direction of what came to be known as the Central Intelligence Agency.

http://www.archives.gov/iwg/declassified-records/rg-330-defense-secretary/

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/summer00/art06.html

These documents acknowledge the facts. Nazi intelligence was instrumental to the formation of the CIA, and I would contend has triumphed throughout the military-industrial complex.

While these are facts, they are not ALL the facts. While sociopaths do exist, and they do hold significant influence, they can only hold such influence while it remains hidden.

I don't believe that technology is the enemy, or that human nature is defined by the substrate which supports it. The enemy is the vulnerabilities our organic substrate engender. Acquisitiveness, territorial dispositions, and other inherited inchoate demands dominate those of us who do not come to terms with them.

The biological engines created by our genes require fuels. Creation of and control over those fuels becomes a driving force for groups of people, and cultures (groups of people that follow specific rules and patterns of behavior derived from those rules) form among those groups. Clashes between groups and between cultures result in larger and larger availability of resources for people in dominant cultures, while other groups and cultures gradually lose influence and control and the rules that they follow, their rituals and customs, cease to have successful adherents.

Science and technology evolve to suit cultural imperatives. A culture with goals focused around dominance of resources to suit the requirements of biological bodies will likely create militaristic technologies, have aggressive and xenophobic tendencies. While more evolved strategies exist (cooperation, tolerance, abundant creation, etc.), they can only be successful if a dominance culture is not seizing the shared resources (particularly resources critical to military defense or offense).

Technology can engender strategies other than dominance, though, that are necessary to reduce pathological dependence on limited resources. Our ability to transform the physical universe around us, as well as our own bodies can generate more of the resources that we need while decreasing our need for resources (efficiency) and thus the justification for dominance.

The answer to dominance cultures is not to engage them in battle, that's what they are designed for. They are good at detecting and destroying perceived enemies, whether external or internal to their system. They are a difficult problem that is only aggravated by attempts to solve it; you lose by engaging them. Instead of fighting with their ideology and agents, the solution is transparency. Constantly film them. Constantly report to others. Create a culture of logical dialogue, don't allow threat (appeal to authority) or distraction (appeal to emotion) to prevent understanding or disrupt community, or prevent learning. Vote for repeal of acts which prevent transparency and for acts which increase citizen access (and customer access) to accurate information without allowing time for PR campaigns to create waves of disinformation.

Contrary to the opinions I saw in this documentary, I would say that information technology enhances transparency, and if net neutrality can be maintained, will represent a major blow to fascist dominance cultures allowing emergence of cooperative, intelligent cultivation of resources. As the dominance culture and its proponents die off, the rest of us can get on with the party.

I don't think a dark vision of the future under technofascism is likely, because all the trends involved actually undermine the requirements for its existence. So this documentary struck me as Luddite, aimed at spiritual "right-to-life" crowd, and I found its message repugnant, manipulative, dishonest: it struck me as a PR piece against the technologists and scientists who are undermining the dominance culture as they strive towards cooperative, knowledge based culture.

Science and technology serve cultural imperatives. When the culture is cooperative and knowledge-based, applications are developed with human interest at heart, instead of with resource protection at heart. As a race, we've seen a lot of the dark-side of technology, because we live in a dark, dominator culture. As that changes, we'll see more and more of the empowerment, enlightenment side of technology. I see a very bright future, and I'm not falling for the Chicken Little acts any more.