George Orwell (1984) and Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) presented the most influential future scenarios of the Twentieth Century. Orwell foresaw a grim regime in which three super-states controlled the world, whose elites kept the rest of the population in virtual slavery by tight controls, misinformation, continuous warfare, and torture.
Huxley envisioned one world government with stability as the supreme value, humans even more tightly controlled by conditioning rather than threat of punishment, and the whole immense machine planned out to the smallest detail. Huxley wrote, in 1958, a follow-up essay called Brave New World Revisited, in which he considered whether current events matched his predictions, and concluded that human society was, indeed, headed in that direction.
Who was right: Orwell or Huxley? Well, both and neither.
Orwell’s image of the world devolving into three huge superstates seems correct with the rise of China and United Europe challenging the supremacy of the United States. And even he did not foresee that the government would not have to mandate telescreens in all homes and public places as people would voluntarily buy and carry around with them everywhere their own personal telescreens!
Huxley prophesized that the current civilization’s program of progress and unlimited expansion would eventually run up against limits leading to war, famine, and ultimately a stable, controlled society. He also suggested that
the progress of behavioral science, refined by business advertising, would present precise methods to control people by conditioning rather than by force. Less wasteful and more salubrious for everyone.
Brave New World described the “Controllers” who organized the society and made the decisions. But as Tolstoy pointed out in War and Peace, historical forces control the so-called “powerful” people just as much as the “masses.” Despite the claims of conspiracy theorists, no individuals or groups control the world.
In the film Matrix, humans lived in an imaginary world while the aliens harvested energy or substances (not specified) from their bodies. And now many fear the rise of “Artificial Intelligence” and dread it taking over the world.
In fact this Alien or Artificial Intelligence with its own agenda and purposes has existed for at least six thousand years. Matrix, Terminator, and other such stories represent artistically what some call “The System.”
How did this mysterious “System” get started, and who controls it?
AI only seems new because of the new technology. People, somewhat like programmable computers, “download” and “run” cultural programs consisting of complex systems of memes. Analogously to computer programs, The System runs on human nervous systems as a program, or rather complex nested programs.
It arose from and operates as an intelligence of connected individual human intelligences. This artificial intelligence evolves with feedback, and continuously refines and improves its programming, like machine learning. It spreads through society like a computer virus via the internet.
Did someone or some humans start The System for their own purposes? Probably, but now no human or human group controls it. Certainly it goes back to prehistoric times since all the historical records (dating back to Sumerian civilization) show it already existing.
As in the story of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, those “failed initiates” seduced by and addicted to the potent drug of power, invented these human programs and organized society into castes with masters and servants, hierarchies of nobility, accumulation of capital (originally herd animals), and especially highly disciplined standing armies which cowed simple people into submission with ruthless beheadings, mayhem, burnings, looting and raping.
They developed city-states, then city-state empires, then nation-states and national empires. Now planetary interconnected industry and the supra-national financial debit-credit system link nearly every human community in the world.
Despite the propaganda of freedom in so-called democracies, the System controls people more tightly now than ever before.
The System has a definite agenda. For example, one program mandates that effectively all humans own cellphones, preferably smartphones. (George Orwell’s “telescreens.”) This allows precise tracking of everyone since these phones, by their nature, report the user’s location continuously. Also they allow detailed surveillance. Most smartphones have cameras on both sides as well as microphones, and a remote signal can switch these on and remotely access the data without the user’s awareness or consent, even if the phone is apparently off or on airplane mode, as long as the battery is connected.
Of course, one can encrypt the data stored on the phone but this would be realtime, unencrypted data. Would governments actually do this? Murphy’s law originally stated, “If it can happen, it will.”
Most countries in the world now require, in order to use sim cards, registration of name, address, and sometimes more: job and income, etc. They justify this as a way to prevent criminal activity involving cellphones. However, Mexico found that its registration laws did not reduce criminal activity and rescinded them. Then why do other “democracies” keep these laws? Why did the citizens allow them, since they clearly invade privacy? The service provider contracts directly with the user; what right has the government to butt in? Seems like all these governments follow an agenda from some supra-national source.
Even in those countries which do not require registration, in most cases they could easily figure out the true identity of the user. Most cellphone users agree to contracts which require name and bank account and also use the phones for purposes which require submitting forms with name and address – so they can be tracked anyway.
In addition, most people in these countries (USA, UK, Canada… ) own and drive an automobile, and authorities can easily track them by license plate recognition technology. Most also use satellite navigation equipment, which when used with a service like Google Maps, sends the user’s exact location.
To drive an automobile anywhere requires a license for which the operator must register name and address. In the USA now, in all fifty states, to obtain a driver’s license one must provide two “hard” proofs of residency.
Several organizations have shown the ease of manipulating people by means of memes on the internet, especially the various social media sites (Facebook for example), in elections of public officials.
Most people nowadays rely on the web for their source of information and news and many do not check very thoroughly to confirm that what they read is correct, especially trusted sources like Wikipedia, even though anyone can edit Wikipedia, and cheaply and easily set up an official looking website.
Even well established and famous newspapers and other media – whoever owns them has an agenda. “Who pays the piper (paper) calls the tune.”
Another aspect of the current program of The System: more countries instituting requirements for Electronic Travel Authorization: apparently the “new normal.” In typical mealy-mouthed bureaucratic fashion, they claim “this is not a visa.” But let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? If you have to apply for permission to enter a country in advance, show your ID, pay a fee, answer personal questions and wait for approval, that’s a visa, whatever you may choose to call it. Simply a way to weasel out of mutual agreements which allow citizens of certain other countries to enter freely. Furthermore, they will use AI to check the internet for references to the applicant’s history. So The System does not want people to travel freely; the sheep must stay in their pens.
Similar to the above: many countries now push the transition to the “cashless society.” No more anonymous spending. Every little transaction known and recorded forever. Every human will now leave electronic footprints of all her purchases from youth until death.
The System tested, with the Covid-19 event, the willingness of all countries in the world to bow down and follow the program – and they did, with few exceptions.
The program apparently aims to track every human being in the world – their location and actions, and connect that to their total history.
Why do all the people go along with this program? Because they feel like they have no choice, and for the rewards, like smartphones. And of course the old refrain: this is for your own good. We just want to take care of you…
Every human being has an equal right to the resources of this planet, but powerful gangs claim ownership and parcel out commodities to the others in exchange for work. Each human has a natural right to travel to and live in any part of the planet, but gangs put up fences to keep “their” people hemmed in, and others out.
Could we change or delete The System? Many wise people have contemplated this problem over millenia, and no one has found a solution.
Conspiracy theories divert peoples’ attention. People want to point the finger at the Jews, the Vatican, some hidden cabal of Freemasons or whatever. That sounds easy – just eliminate those people and groups… However, as history has shown, that doesn’t solve anything. Others will simply take their place. The fact is, strange as it may seem, nobody controls The System.
With a computer you might re-format the hard drive and re-install the operating system, but with humans you can’t do that – you can’t even do it with successive generations since the existing generations have to rear and educate the coming ones.
TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zones) outlines an approach that has existed since the beginning of the System – temporary pockets of freedom in isolated locations, sometimes more visible, sometimes less, but never lasting very long – without even the intention to last long.
However, as long as most people operate mostly automatically, The System will not die. If a majority of people “wake up,” they might stop The System, but you can’t force anyone to wake up (to consciousness); they have to do it themselves. At best, you can provide conditions to facilitate that, one of the functions of School.
Gurdjieff (Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson) symbolized The System by the “Organ Kundabuffer,” which Cosmic Engineers installed in humans because they needed their energy to “feed the moon.” It caused people to see everything backwards. They didn’t have first dibs on the energy produced by their organisms, in order to use it for their individual evolution – the higher authorities siphoned it off for Cosmic maintenance, much like in Matrix, if not so overt.
In his version, the “Organ” had outlived its usefulness and they had removed it, but its consequences continued by cultural transmission so that people functioned as if they still had it.
The “Unfathomable” sent various “messengers” over the centuries to help people wake up, and they did some good, but people always destroyed their work after they died.
He concludes by asking: could we somehow solve the unsolvable problem? The answer: people must realize that they and everyone around them will die. Which amounts to saying that they must wake up – in other words, he hasn’t solved the problem either. The conundrum states: if they realize that they will wake up, but they won’t realize that until they wake up.
Perhaps he’s right in saying that The System is no longer objectively necessary – if it once was.
In the end, people will serve Evolution, either automatically or consciously. Of course being conscious implies a decision – but even if you decide to work against Evolution, you still serve it on the large scale, just as in the myth, “God” created the “Devil” to serve him indirectly. You can’t get out of the Game.