Saturday, February 03, 2024

Ushuaia, the end of the world

Predicting the end of the world is tricky, considering that, from the Book of Revelations on, all the predictions have been wrong. Or have they? It depends on what you mean by, "the end."

I'm writing from Ushuaia, Patagonia, where signs around town proclaim it "the end of the world" in the sense that it's the southernmost city on Earth, from which both ancient inhabitants and recent Europeans could not establish themselves further south towards the real end, Antarctica.

Patagonia, with its stark beauty, inspires me to consider that our major civilizations up north are coming to an end in another sense: Modern governments, in two areas fast becoming critical to human existence, do not represent their citizens' interests in a democratic fashion. This is not to say that there aren't elements of democracy in the world, for instance in the current US national election voters enjoy some representation with familiar campaign issues like immigration and abortion. But as important as these issues are, they are not as important as the following two questions- stemming from foreign and tech policy- neither of which has the status of campaign issue:


1. Will our children and grandchildren inherit a habitable planet, or one turned into a toxic wasteland by nuclear war? As the next post ("Kissinger's nuclear war") suggests, this question will be decided with zero input from citizens at large. On the question of nuclear war, it will not matter whom or what you vote for, or even if you vote.

2. What sort of humans will we become as the species takes charge of its own evolution with emerging technologies in AI and biology? In one hundred years or less we may not be recognizable as human in the currrent sense. Scientists, the military and business interests are driving our evolution. No influence on the process is available to voters in the 2024 US national election or any other election in the world.

This lack of representation may not seem worth any agitation at the moment, but its impact will be in our faces soon enough, compounded and confused by a spreading international culture of warfare. The existential transformations about to envelop us in what future evolutionary historians might call the Cyber-Bio Event (CBE) should already be presented by mainstream media as equally as critical to our imminent future as immigration and abortion, or the Israel/Hamas and Russia/Ukraine wars. But don't expect that to happen soon.

What to do? Options are limited without widespread recognition by the electorate that the CBE will entail more than new AI toys and servile robots. Its impact on our species will be like millions of years of evolution compressed into a few generations- an atom bomb of evolution- and no one knows the outcome.

When or how public recognition of the situation might happen is unclear, but it will happen, and at that time people will want to be protected from out-of-control change, and they might also want to have a hand in creating the new type of human that we will become. Where will they be able to turn politically? If the Democratic and Republican parties have survived the ideological bankruptcy of the 2024 national election and want to get into the act, hopefully they'll have policy ideas to address the CBE beyond used-up labels like "left" vs. "right." We'll need a party focussed on what sort of species we will be. If such a party is not forthcoming, we might turn to groups outside established politics that can exert media and other pressures sufficient to produce a response to the realities approaching (as suggested below in Party or Foundation? and Gaian Mentalics Unite!). Such a group could be enabled by scientists who care and thinkers in general- a billionaire or two wouldn't hurt. Let's not end so easily.

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