sortiwa
BY SOFO ARCHON
This is the transcript of a spontaneous talk.
If you take a good look around you, you will soon come to realize that our world is becoming more and more like a technological dystopia, like those described in some of the most popular dystopian fiction books.
Take the internet, for example. The internet is an amazing discovery. It is a great tool that can help people to connect with each other. Yet, although we are connected through the internet, nowadays people are feeling perhaps more lonely than ever before. And part of the reason why they’re so lonely is the internet itself, because people spend more time online than connecting with people in the real world.
Consider also the fact that the internet is the place where both the government and corporations are tracking pretty much every one of our activities. They know where we live, what we do, what we prefer doing, what our tastes are. And so they can predict our behavior or manipulate our behavior. Corporations, for example, do it through showing us targeted ads or information that they believe will make us stay stuck on their websites, social media platforms, and so on.
As far as ads are concerned, we are constantly being bombarded by them. We see ads all the time on our electronic screens, on billboards, on walls. Everywhere, companies are trying to manipulate us into buying stuff that we don’t really need. Ever since we were little children, marketers have been trying to exploit us so that they can make a profit.
And if you dig deeper than that, you will see that marketers are just doing their business. They do what they can to survive in our fiercely competitive economic system.
This system is based on consumerism. People need to be constantly selling and buying stuff for that system to keep going, which has tremendously negative effects both on our psychology as well as the environment. We are over-extracting and over-consuming Earth’s resources in order to keep the system going. And we are constantly on the search for the next product or service to buy that will supposedly make us feel better, thus neglecting our true needs and wasting our lives on superfluous things.
Also think about the media, and especially the mainstream media, which is trying to present us with very biased information on purpose in order to manipulate us into, for example, voting for this or that politician or political party.
Politicians themselves are being bought and sold. They are themselves controlled by the economic elite — not all of them, but the vast majority of them.
Our democratic system is a farce. It’s a scam. People don’t truly have enough power in their hands in this system. They have only the power to vote for their favorite politician or political party every few years. And those politicians and political parties are doing very different things than the ones they promised.
In addition, consider the wars that are being constantly made. Consider the war going on right now against Palestine or the war between Russia and Ukraine. People are dying unnecessarily because of the geopolitical power that nations desire.
Also consider that half of the human population is living in poverty and about a billion people are starving, when we have the technological capacity to feed every person on Earth. In fact, more than half of the food being produced is being wasted, and that food on its own is enough to feed every hungry person alive.
Consider how many people are homeless, while a few people have so much money that could end homelessness just like that. One percent of the global population owns half of the world’s wealth.
Also consider that people who expose corrupt governments, such as Edward Snowden or Julian Assange, are prosecuted for just doing journalism, for just pointing out the truth.
Consider the fact that so many people are working in sweatshops and mines, in horrible conditions, just to earn a few pennies. Even in the Western world so many people are struggling to make ends meet, so many people are living paycheck to paycheck, and they are doing menial, tedious, meaningless work that brings them immense suffering and keeps them under a constant state of stress.
And then consider the constant destruction that people are causing to Earth. Right now, all life support systems are in decline. Think of the pollution that is killing so many people, especially people who are living in poor areas of the world, particularly in the Global South. Consider that so many people don’t even have potable water to drink, when everybody could have clean water. The sea is being poisoned with pollutants. Plastic is nearly everywhere. In only a couple of decades, it is estimated that there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans.
So if you think about it, the world that we are living in is not too far from the dystopian worlds portrayed in many fiction books. And the worst thing is that most people don’t realize it because this is their life. This is the normalcy of their everyday life. They’re used to it. They’re conditioned to live like that. And they think this is how things are supposed to be. Just like fish swimming in the sea do not notice water because they’re swimming in it and have never been outside of it.
So it is very difficult for people to see the grim reality that we’re living in. And those who can see often choose to escape this reality through taking pills, drugs, so that they can just forget what is going on in the world or so that they can numb themselves to the pain of the world because it feels unbearable.
And this numbness and this apathy only support the power of the people who are high on the political and economic ladders, who want to control us for their own selfish gratification. And those people are victims too — victims of a rigged and unfair socioeconomic system. Yes, they’re on the top, but they are suffering as well because in this world everything is connected. In some regards, they might be suffering less, but in other regards, they’re suffering more. You cannot control and hurt someone else and feel well with yourself. Everyone is to some extent being affected by this reality that we are living in.
But if things continue on this trajectory, the pain will intensify dramatically. So what can we do about it?
Well, we need to wake up. We need to pay attention to the world and see what is truly going on. And we need to gather the courage to speak out, to raise awareness about what is going on. We need to, in a sense, become all activists in one form or another.
People also need to engage in civil disobedience. We should stop obeying this unfair, unjust, destructive system that we’re living in. A lot of grassroots movements need to be formed. We need to take collective action to create new systems — new economic systems, new educational systems, new legal systems, and so on and so forth.
If people would collectively wake up, things could be turned upside down overnight.
Now, whatever we do, no matter how much positive change we make, the world will never become a utopia. It will never become perfect. But we can try to go as close to utopia as we can.
Imagine that people design systems where they can collaborate with each other and share Earth’s resources so that everyone can have enough without damaging Earth. Imagine how much more happily and more peacefully and more in harmony with Earth we would live.
Would that world be a utopia? Of course not. But it would be as close to a paradise as one can get.
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