Imagine a fantasy world in the not too distant future which is divided into three social classes – Upper, Lower and Tech.
To this add a second fantasy where everything is recycled.
A third fantasy is where all energy is sustainable.
Fourth fantasy - everything is made, grown and distributed by AI and robots.
Adjust the whole fantasy to make almost all Lowers disappear.
This could give us a world of, say about half a billion people or less. It would consist of Uppers with Techs to keep things going and a few Lowers for a certain amount of inevitable drudgery.
This is the Malthus-inspired fantasy world which seems to attract and motivate our Uppers and their useful idiots. It’s an ideal, half-buried in evasions and knowing hints laced with a dash of dark humour, but real enough as an ideal. They probably think it is, or could be, or ought to be technically feasible. More than an ideal perhaps.
As a political ideal, it certainly seems to be in the driving seat of global political trends in a number of key areas. There is not the slightest sign of it being rethought either.
Outrageously cynical, grossly over-simplified and far too conspiratorial perhaps, but in broad terms this is the global political ideal we have glimpsed over and over again for decades. It isn’t particularly well hidden. Malthus still rules those dark, dark places where comfortable people wonder what is to be done about the teeming billions.
Adjust the whole fantasy to make almost all Lowers disappear.
This could give us a world of, say about half a billion people or less. It would consist of Uppers with Techs to keep things going and a few Lowers for a certain amount of inevitable drudgery.
This is the Malthus-inspired fantasy world which seems to attract and motivate our Uppers and their useful idiots. It’s an ideal, half-buried in evasions and knowing hints laced with a dash of dark humour, but real enough as an ideal. They probably think it is, or could be, or ought to be technically feasible. More than an ideal perhaps.
As a political ideal, it certainly seems to be in the driving seat of global political trends in a number of key areas. There is not the slightest sign of it being rethought either.
Outrageously cynical, grossly over-simplified and far too conspiratorial perhaps, but in broad terms this is the global political ideal we have glimpsed over and over again for decades. It isn’t particularly well hidden. Malthus still rules those dark, dark places where comfortable people wonder what is to be done about the teeming billions.
4 comments:
The Uppers always stagnate over a generation or two, and become thick, thus the New Lowers. Also the whole point of being Upper is to have some Lowers to lord it over.Being over a bunch of automatons does not do it.
The Techs will wonder why they are supporting the Uppers and having got rid of them or usurped them, they will be the New Uppers.See above.
The Lowers always throw up a weirdo who by cunning, wickednass, great beauty or genius upsets the system.
So the Upper and Tech levels, with zero lowers, could exist for a generation or two, but stupidity, jealousy, avarice and plain cussedness will stir things up.
Plus the occasional very extreme solar event with resultant EMP, or asteroid strike, or Yosemite or Deccan Traps eruption.
Reasons to be cheerful? Nah.
Doonhamer - I agree, it won't work but ideals often don't. The damage done by merely having in the social background is the real problem.
"The Uppers always stagnate over a generation or two, and become thick"
Maybe this is what has happened already since WWII, or is happening before our eyes.
Imagine a disease made to seem so frightening that billions willingly submit to a new, not-fully-tested 'cure', which just happens to contain 'a little extra hidden ingredient'.
Then next year, when the second disease is released, the two parts combine, leading to death or infertility for all.
Of course, there's another injection available, which provides immunity, but this is reserved for the Uppers and a few Techs.
Ed - I wouldn't put it past certain regimes.
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