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Markael Luterra's avatar

The Great Reset is a new Manifest Destiny, and I see it as all a continuation of Progress - which is the civil religion of technology-as-God that has permeated much of the human race.

Certainly there is a lot of propaganda, but from my perspective the propaganda only works because it speaks to people's belief in Progress. The "internet of bodies" and digital identities and Neuralink all sound cool to a generation raised to believe in a Star Trek future.

Of course, actual progress is coming to an end as we reach the limits of our finite planet, so the wealthy must convince the masses that their planned austerity and control is actually Progress to a better future.

We could be less vulnerable to this sort of manipulation if we could stop believing in Progress. If we could be OK with a world in which we live well and then die. A world in which it's OK for a pandemic to be beyond our control, or at least in which we recognize when our control attempts are ineffective and causing serious harm. A world in which we focus on the joy of being alive instead of devoting ever-larger proportions of our collective time and energy toward avoiding death. A world in which we find more joy in the return of springtime than in a shiny new gadget.

I awakened from Progress after six years of attempting to engineer cyanobacteria to produce hydrogen. It turned out that this was a much-overhyped idea with at least five insurmountable obstacles to real-world success, and yet the media was happy to report on every laboratory advance. Once I realized that the capacity for rapid evolution and growth within these 2.7 billion-year-old organisms far overwhelmed my attempts to make them do what I wanted, and I saw that green living solar panels would never make ecological or economic sense, I started to doubt the whole project of Progress. Now, how to awaken the others?

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Leo's avatar

I remember reading an excellent book "4 Arguments Toward The Elimination Of Television" and not understanding why the author saw what waa happening as such a disaster. I assumed that we would be able to keep our religion, our sense of community and our standard of living. What Western elites once did to indigenous people is now being done to us. Ultimately they will leave us with nothing but the clothes on our back. And if we are sex slaves, they may not even leave us with that. We must be reminded not just of our humanity,, but the awe and wonder of the non-human world. I remember regaining my sanity by being outside and truly seeing a sunrise and a sunset again. It reminded me of being a kid, long ago, outside looking for nests and snakes . Going outside again on long walks with my dog reminded me of what it is lije to be human.Your writings do the same thing

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