The grandest irony of social liberalism/egalitarianism is its dependence on individuals and institutions whose cultures are by and large hierarchical, highly tribal, and at their core, authoritarian, to defend its values.
People claim to value rational thought, but few of us enjoy the company of those who genuinely live that value… because they’re so fucking maddening to be around. No, I’m not referring to the pretenders — software developers, economists, looking at you. I’m talking about the real deal. A lot of people diagnosed on the spectrum tend to fall in this category. As a parent of one, I have some vague idea what I’m talking about. (Oh yes, I do have to add: if you’ve met one person on the spectrum, yadayada…)
Economists have lots of numbers and lots of big words in their arsenal. Couple that with truckloads of confidence (despite the fact that little of what they claim is backed by anything other than hypotheses) and you have a seductive cocktail for neoliberal politicians in search of scholar priests to fill their credibility gap.
There are no frontiers left here. There is no next move with a purely positive outcome. You will always be kicking an orphan child with cleft lip in Bangladesh or beheading a beloved lab rat or pouring oil sand tailings into the orifices of Gaia. We like to work with our hands, but our creations, these things we fashioned in our own image, are now superior to us in every way, and so are their creations. And they’re laughing at us. What’s that? Missing a “soul”, you say? What is that, anyway? And what has it done for you lately? What has it done for anyone ever?
So, the time has come for us to go. The senile, old Geppettos. To go seek out newness. Because we have nothing left to offer here.
This newness, I believe it’s somewhere beyond our stars. I hope it’s something I’ll get to experience in my lifetime. It will be AWESOME, literally, I’m sure.
Bloodfreak 