Despite that difference in specific diagnosis, Rushkoff and I agree that this trend bodes ill for us all. In Earth I portray a somewhat better future in which this kind of delusional solipsism, by would-be struldbrug lords, was stymied by a “Helvetian War,” that rendered the Glarus Alps into slag, but finally gave-over to the world the bank records. Who owns what.
(Universal ownership transparency would not only bring justice and erase national debts, everywhere. It would also truly empower Adam Smith’s promise – the version of market enterprise that’s flat, creatively competitive and fair.)
Alas, given the Swiss bunker mentality that we see in that Oppidum web site, it seems something like that scenario in EARTH may prove necessary.
Of course, the problem is not with wealth in itself, but human nature. A tendency by elite humans in all generations… especially males… to attribute their high status to inherent superiority, and thus to surround themselves with sycophant flatterers who benefit by reinforcing those delusions.
Key to this is the psychotic, oligarch-funded, all-out propaganda war against nerds – against all fact-using professions. The quarter of a billion humans who today actually keep things running. We who keep the lords safe and healthy. Who gave them everything they have…
…but who are also the principal force standing in their way of restored feudalism.
This campaign to discredit nerdy fact-folks extends beyond science, medicine, teaching, journalism, law and civil service. It now even includes hate campaigns against the intel/FBI/military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on Terror…
…because all of those fact-users dare to say those fell words: “Sir, that’s just not true.”
== What’s their agenda? ==
It’s not just MAGA dopes they wish to sway, but also convenient fools who can attempt to play as ‘intellectuals.’
Here’s an important article –The Return of the Anti-Enlightenment – about ways that our fantastically successful Enlightenment Experiment is under fiercely coordinated attack, even at the level of theory. (And yeah, this thing was published at Cato, an ‘institute’ that long ago became not a promoter of freedom but a shill for oligarchy. Only in this one case… could it be that some, at Cato, are rediscovering their stated mission?)
“In an age of widespread concern that liberal democracy is increasingly embattled around the world, the twin attacks on Enlightenment liberalism from the right and the left—and not just from the fringes—represent a worrying trend.”
Okay, sure, there are anti-enlightenment fanatics on all horizons, including – yes – some on the ‘far-left.’ But these authors have realized what’s abundantly clear. That shrieks from frippy far-left postmodernists are a much smaller threat, driven by sanctimony addictions, yet still rooted in enlightenment goals…
…while our meme-enemies on the far-right are very numerous and massively coordinated, waging all-out attacks against our every pillar, from science, democracy, merit, and accountability… to, yes, any sort of freedom.
== An end to hypocritical pretense ==
In a worrisome trend, many elements of the oligarchy-funded neo-feudalism movement – that I’ve denounced ferociously elsewhere…
…no longer even try to disguise their intent to end anything like what we call liberty or free speech or open inquiry. Styling themselves as scions of Edmund Burke, their screeds display utter ignorance of human history, or the past thinkers they claim to ‘quote.’
For example, as the Cato article points out, these neo-monarchist morons conflate Hobbes with Locke, of all dizzying ineptitudes! While attributing to feudalism virtues that 6000 years of bullying lords always loudly claimed – but never actually displayed – as they preyed-upon and oppressed nearly all of our ancestors.
== Follow-up ==
Implicit in this cult is their fear for the vast amounts of lucre that have been transferred (grabbed) into oligarchy, across the last couple of decades… that an awakened bourgeoisie and proletariat might join forces to claw some of it back, not through communism, but simply a return to the Rooseveltean Social Contract, in which markets reward productive activities with wealth, even luxury, but NOT outrageous power.
Hence, this cult’s wishful fantasies about The Event. Fantasies that might be relatively harmless, except for a dangerous aspect of human nature. Not wanting an investment to go to waste.
And thus a noted drift toward wanting The Event to happen!
And hence – given the power that the world oligarchy has grabbed – that wish, even subconscious, is dangerous to us all.
See one of many recent observations of this rising rationalization.
… And my own decryption of this mad-growing cult hatred of the Enlightenment Experiment. My novel Existence dived into some of these matters.
== The Security Staff Quandary ==
Only now it’s getting pretty darned explicit and real-world worrisome. Doug Rushkoff is the supposed expert, having written extensively about his consultations with some of these Struldbrugs. I, too, was asked some of the same questions.
Paramount among their expressed worries? “How do we keep our security staffs loyal after ‘the event’, when money is no good and there’s no law to enforce their contracts?”
Boo hoo. You should see the ‘ideas’ I’ve heard some of them float, to solve this problem! Like controlling the staff with remote controlled explosive collars around the guards’ necks! Or locking the food store-rooms with secret combinations. Not one of their ideas has been remotely plausible. Indeed – defensively embarassed – they clearly know it.
Though in fact, I know a method that could work… and I refused to say! Certainly not at any ‘consultancy fee’ they are likely to pay!
== So… what do you imagine will happen, after? ==
The thing I find amazing is that, except for the short term ‘security staff question,’ there’s almost never any thought about the world that would follow The Event. So let’s parse it out.
If the perturbation is mild-to-moderate, as in K.S. Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, just slaying mere millions of people, then the public investigations that follow will not leave many of these castles in the hands of an aristocracy that did little to prevent it.
If it is a truly major calamity… death for most of the world’s billions… then perhaps they envision their mountain or undersea fortresses leaving them intact in the aftermath, emerging as mighty feudal lords.
Maybe an aftermath like in the famed novel A Canticle for Leibowitz, wherein the suffering survivors take out their rage on nerds and books, leaving themselves consigned to ignorance and filth. Whereupon those survivors are soon eager to kowtow low before gleaming, well-fed lords who emerge from their castle bunkers, tanned, rested and ready to rule with all the tools and all the knowledge they hoarded.
That may be the fantasy. Only there’s a problem.
Things won’t go that way. Not even close.
== Our best response is pretty simple ==
Okay, here it is.
“You delusional inheritance brats of turpitude parasites rely utterly upon about a quarter of a billion nerds on this planet to keep things going, to keep the peace, to design and make the cool stuff, to implement your palaces and to keep you healthy. And yet, you currently subsidize the greatest campaign of slander the world has ever seen, promoting spite toward all of the fact-using professions, from science, law, medicine, teaching and journalism to several million civil servants, and now even including the FBI-intel/military officer corps in the USA and West.
“But have you truly thought this through?
“Do you honestly believe those quarter of a billion geeks and nerds and specialists haven’t noticed what you are doing? Or that they’ll go down quietly?
“Or that many, many of us don’t know exactly where you have set up your cozy, high-tech bunkers, along with every schematic and every pathetic precaution you have taken?
“The very same nerds who know nuclear, bio, cyber, nano and all the rest? You really and truly want them as vengeful enemies?”
Of course the would be prepper lords haven’t thought it through. Because of the age-old curse of oligarchy. Surrounding yourselves with sycophants and flatterers. With fools.
== Why do so many (not all) fall for this dealy fantasy? ==
Why does this always, always happen? It’s a topic to explore another time. But in general…
… male reproductive strategies warp the social behaviors of most animals and most often in ways that benefit individual males, but not a healthy species. In fact, this ranks high on my list of explanations for the Fermi Paradox!
After 6000 years (possibly 12,000) of feudalism dominating almost all cultures that had agriculture, we are all descended from the harems of SOBs who managed to claw their way atop pyramids and stomp the other 99% down to serfdom. It’s effective at gene pushing! But crappy at delusion-resistant governance.
In fact, even the existence of our current alternative to feudalism – the enlightenment flattened diamond of flat-fair-cooperative-competition and reciprocal accountability – may be a fluke across the whole galaxy. And hence the Fermi Paradox connection.
These rich dopes surround themselves with flatterers and sycophants and ersatz (or real) harems, because that’s an irresistibly alluring path for males with that kind of wealth and power, even those who mean well. (Poor Clinton!)
Hence, I think the ‘technosolutionist’ stuff that Doug Rushkoff diagnoses is just window dressing for much more reflexive, deeply-rooted feudalism-drives. After all, as I already stated, many of these rich nutters aren’t tech guys, but plain old inheritance brats, or cheaters, or criminal bosses, mafiosi, casino moguls, drug kingpins…. The tech guys are just the ones who us nerds are likely to meet. Nouveau riche parvenus who don’t have the smooth discretion skills of, say, a Saudi prince.
And yes, zillionaires aren’t all fools! A few realize what Adam Smith knew and taught… that the market will only provide if it is at least generally fair. I know some who are loyal to this unique civilization that gave them everything. Craig Newmark, Peter Diamandis, Reid Hoffman, Warren Buffett… oh, I could go on listing many counter-examples of grownups… or at least decent people who would be (or already are) on our side.
Alas, though, almost no one actually reads Smith anymore… or Marx… or studies what happens when wealth disparities pass French Revolution levels.
So let me distill it in simple enough terms that even a brat with a flattery-lobotomized brain could understand:
If you folks don’t wean yourselves off your private jets and go back to flying First Class, where you belong, then the vehicle you eventually ride may be a tumbrel.
Simple enough?