(Fuente: nickoftime, vía starsinhereyes)
Is the American dream fading?
With more people living on the breadline in the US, we ask if it is time to abandon the American dream.
This TIME cover article bothers me in a number of different ways… The Westerner’s fear of death has gone on too long, and I hope it reverses before it’s too late. When will we realize that without death, there is no life? With no contrasting state, life looses all importance. As if modern society isn’t monotonous enough, with your cubicle work and your commute, and your grocery shopping and what-have-you, can you imagine it going on INDEFINITELY? Why would we ever want this? It’s clear to me that most likely WE don’t. Of course they do, everybody that’s aligned to welcome Singularity (the time at which our species will transform into something “unrecognizable” from our current state) is rich and powerful, so of course they’d hop all over the idea of never-ending life so they can rule the earth forever. You think the people in the middle class are gonna want to go on with their menial labor for corporate gains into infinity? Or is that not the plan, what is the plan? The article discusses two main components of singularity (bear with me here on how crazy they sound, they aren’t my theories) A.) superintelligent immortal cyborgs that arise when exponentially increasing technological advancement surpass the human intellectual capacity and so we’re forced to do shit like “scan our consciousnesses into computers and live inside them as software” (Represented by Raymond Kurzweil)and/or B.) Biological advancements, pursued by people that view death as “an illness like any other, and what do you do with illnesses? You cure them” using primarily telomerase, a process which reverses the depletion or isolated cells. (represented by Aubrey de Gray, whom I watched a TEDTalks lecture by a while back, which you may be interested in.) So back to my question, what is the plan? In the event of A, seeing as today not everybody even has access to a computer, how will everybody have access to “superhuman cyborg platforms?” and in the event of B, not everybody today even has access to the most basic health care, how will they afford telomerase? The simple answer to both instances: they don’t. As if class division isn’t extreme enough today, Singularity supporters are hopeful that by 2045 it will be tremendously worse… The upper class crust will have the technological and medical capabilities to go on living infinitely while.. what?.. the middle and lower class continue to reproduce and die and live menial, monotonous lives to make the immortal overlords infinitely rich over time? It’s just fucking absurd. “Kurzweil has…his own approach to life extension, which involves taking up to 200 pills and supplements a day.”
Maybe my analysis to the situation is flawed, and the dystopian future this advancement suggests to me is just my overactive literary mind? If anyone actually made it through reading this far I would love for your feedback because reading and contemplating the article has already consumed my whole morning and I’d like for it to amount to something. But here’s my closing thoughts; life extension, and the pursuit of such, is the most innately immoral action that I can think of. Both for the reason of indiscrepancies that will arise and for the simple fact that “life and death are two sides of the same coin,” without one the other is utterly without purpose. You can read the article for yourself here, masticate it, get back to me (though I’ll be on Tumblr very little tonight.)
EDIT:
I wish Alan Watts was here to read this article, the dude must be rolling over in his grave. I have him to thank for much of my capacity to analyze the topic.
Rolling his eyes upward, he put his tie back on. “Restored to my class,” he muttered.He thrust his face toward her and hissed, “True culture is in the mind, the mind,” he said, and tapped his head, “the mind.”
-Julian in Flannery O’Conner’s Everything That Rises Must Converge
"History shows that modern-day schooling started with the Industrial Revolution, but many still refuse to accept that the people who funded its inception did not have children’s education as their main priority. Men like Rockefeller and Carnegie wanted good obedient workers to take the jobs they needed filled. They didn’t want free-thinking students to reach their potential; they wanted a large dumbed-down class, just disciplined and smart enough to show up on time and work their factory jobs."
— 4 Reasons to Change the Way We Think About School (via jazzonia)
(vía thefacesblur)
"The rich talk about the rise of socialism to divert attention from the fact that they are devouring the basics of the poor and everyone else. Many of those crying socialism the loudest are doing it to enrich or empower themselves. They are right about one thing – there is a class war going on in the US. The rich are winning their class war, and it is time for everyone else to fight back for economic justice."
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(via azspot)
(vía parkstepp)
This reminds me of Immortal Techniques statement: “In fact, I have more in common with most working and middle-class white people than I do with most rich black and Latino people. As much as racism bleeds America, we need to understand that classism is the real issue. Many of us are in the same boat and it’s sinking, while these bougie Mother-Fuckers ride on a luxury liner, and as long as we keep fighting over kicking people out of the little boat we’re all in, we’re gonna miss an opportunity to gain a better standard of living as a whole.”
(Fuente: vlectronica)
"We walk straight! We walk tall! And we look at others in the face and say ‘I’m as good as you, you slimy bastard’… that’s my idea of the American mindset."
— Dr. Owen Ireland
Dr. Cornel West
