Pandora wrote:I see the opposite happening through pushing of human rights agendas worldwide. Also, happiness through dependency (by global banks and corporations). Money is politics and even ethics-neutral, it goes where there is opportunity. In the globalized world, there will be max happiness, but not true freedom because everyone will pay the cost for it. Be careful what you wish for, or you just might get it.
Pandora wrote:The way things are going (with advancements in technology, mass media, and medicine), everyone will eventually be cometely enslaved and lobotomized, either genetically, chemically, or ideologically; or a combination of all three. Even concepts like happiness and freedom themselves will change. You may be a slave in reality but you’ll be “free” to think within the ideological limits of your genetically pre-designed and chemically controlled and environmentally reinforced mind. A fish is still free to swim from one side of the fish tank to another, and may as well imagine itself freely and happily swimming in an ocean.
Pandora wrote:For those who’re worried about max world happiness, don’t worry, the global pharma/food companies will fix that problem for you. You can be assure you’ll be happy and till the day you die.
This is very similar to what I have been saying for a very long time. It is the inevitable way that modernity has been following since the so-called "industrial revolution". Now, this process has reached a point where the very much accelerated development gets even more accelerated. The title of one of my threads is the question: "
Can we slow down the modern velocity?". If the answer is "no", what does this mean for the future? It is likely that this does not mean that the people will sit there and be sad, no, they will likely be happy according to their situation in general and their spiritually limited capabilities in particular.
One of the examples could be a cyborg with many artificially optimized muscles and joints but a consciousness that does not work better and more than the consciousness of a dog.
The above example was already anticipated in the last decades of the 18th and the first decades of the 19th century when Johann Wolfgang von Goethe studied the real Faust, designed his story of Faust and wrote it down. And his Faust of the second part died, because he had reached his goal.
Another example could be the humans of the end of history as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel described it in his main work "Phänomenologie des Geistes", published in 1807.
A further example could be the "last men" who became famous in 1883: "'Wir haben das Glück erfunden' — sagen die letzten Menschen und blinzeln." - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. ("'We have discovered happiness' — say the last men and blink.")
However, these humans or "post-humans" will not be unhappy. They will live without history (compare the text in my second thread: "
Thinking about the END OF HISTORY") and without work (compare the text in my first thread: "
Will machines completely replace all human beings?"). We - the current humans - think that this will be very sad, and we are absolutely right about that. But they will not think so. And they will not think much but believe much on a very low level. They will be almost absolutely dependent and very naively believe in the opposite.
To me, this development is the most probable one for the future (although presignals have been becoming apparent since the beginning of our modernity). One of the presignals of this situation in the future is the increasing replacement of the human nature by the artificially human technology, thus machines.
The humans will have merely two options or chances in order to stop the continuation of this development or, at least, to slow down the modern velocity. One option or chance is the avoidance of the complete replacement of humans by machines, because this complete replacement will lead to the lost of the human control over the machines, so that the machines will control or even kill the humans. The other option or chance is a huge catastrophe in the very near future that will lead to a new beginning, provided that there will be enough survivors of that catastrophe. The difference between this two scenarios and the most probable scenario is that the humans will not lose their relatively freedom and the extent and independence of their consciousness in the case of the said two scenarios and the exact opposite in the case of the most probably scenario. What will be the worst case scenario then?
