The world is changing, and institutions are working frantically to ensure that nothing fundamental changes. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle in which the machinery of (i.e. self-)preservation becomes an engine of destruction.
We have built a civilisation capable of transforming an entire planet, yet incapable of managing the consequences.
The absence of violence is not necessarily peace. From personal relationships to international affairs, insecurity persists when attempts to resolve conflict reproduce the conditions that generate it.
Things do not exist first and then form relationships. They emerge through relationships that sustain them. Identity, time and existence arise from differences that can never be completely resolved.
Is artificial intelligence conscious? The deeper question is whether complex mathematical structuire is conscious; what happens when physics, mathematics and technology converge.
We mistake the brain for the seat of intelligence and the individual for its owner. Both depend upon a much larger system.
When humanity finally runs out of idiots to put in charge, it turns to Captain Fractal. Armed with decades of systems thinking, a ridiculous hat and a dangerous understanding of consequences, he sets about un-fucking civilisation.
As the world approaches catastrophic conflict, wealth and power remain invested in preserving the arrangements driving instability. Asking for peace has become almost absurd, while preparing for destruction is considered perfectly sensible.
We have spent billions of years becoming what we are, yet our political and economic systems increasingly reward the destruction of the complex relationships that sustain us. What we stand to lose is beyond calculation, and the tragedy is how unnecessary so much of it is.
The paradox is how to preserve a planetary civilisation’s capacity for emergent self-regulation without irreversibly surrendering it to the political, economic and technological artefacts, entities and systems established to manage and control it.
We mistake the world we inherit for a world that must be this way. History, habit and collective belief conceal a more uncomfortable truth: our civilisation is simply what did happen, not what had to happen.
Technology, corporate power, political division and institutional decay are undermining civilisation. Understanding how these forces reproduce themselves is the beginning of change.
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