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Mar. 15th, 2011 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talonkarrdeHow ironic, then, that it’s science which will destroy the world.
It’s always been the one thing that the scientists have claimed will deliver us from our base instincts — the more we understood, they said, the more we could be better versions of ourselves. We would lose all of our cognitive flaws, our biases, our imprecise heuristics. We would become superhuman, with the processing power and memory of computers but with the morals of humans.
Oh, wait.
It seems so obvious now, doesn’t it?
At the time, though, it was simply what was right. Science has always been the great equalizer and the great uplifter, breaking down oppression and raising up those who had little means but a bright mind. In terraforming, science created worlds from dust; in faster-than-light travel, science brought worlds to our doorstep; in artificial-intelligence research, it made the world easier for our minds to comprehend and interact with.
And in advancing, it brought us more and more ways to destroy the world. Nuclear weaponry was the first, but it wasn’t long before chemical and biological agents were just as effective. Nanotechnology advanced until all you had to do was dump a single capsule on an enemy country, and it would reduce all the infrastructure to grey goo; computer viruses became instant, omnipresent annihilators of the super-connected world we all lived in.
But in the end, all the technology he needed was the understanding of the human mind and a delivery agent, a vector in which to reach as many people as possible. The funny thing is that both had already existed for hundreds of years when he did what he did - radio would've done, for God's sake, and we had understood for a long time how much dopamine worked on the brain.
So it wasn’t strictly science that destroyed the world. But it makes for a good line: it’s an easy externalization of a person’s fears and disappointments, even though science is simply the tool he’s using. The real reason he did it, I think, is the same reason that people destroy anything — themselves, other people, anything they can get their hands on.
People start destroying when they have no more hope.
Hope was Pandora’s gift to the rest of us, after all the plagues and diseases were released from the box. But hope was a plague too — it just happened to fight everything, including the other plagues. It allows us to survive through the most terrible times, but it also creates terrible times. The false hope of a military commander about to step into an ambush. The false hope of a teenager, about to embarrass himself in front of everyone at school. The false hope of a cancer patient that they'll be different from the others.
Hope is simply a way to keep going when everything rational tells you to stop.
We wonder what it was that pushed him over, that caused him to deliver the message that he did, the memetic idea that hope was meaningless and that only pleasure meant anything. We wonder what made him tick, what made him make the decision to release, for free, a drug that would endlessly stimulate a person’s dopamine receptors. We wish we knew how he found out, at the same time, how to electrically stimulate the same areas.
But we don’t.
All we have are the records of how a perfectly normal, happy, productive world changed overnight into a world of zombies who only believed in plugging in and drugging out. All we have are the aftereffects — the remnants of civilization who were able to resist the pull of the drugs, of the stimulation, who were able to believe that they could carry on.
But then, even they were robbed of their hope, and all we have are their bodies.
It’s always been the one thing that the scientists have claimed will deliver us from our base instincts — the more we understood, they said, the more we could be better versions of ourselves. We would lose all of our cognitive flaws, our biases, our imprecise heuristics. We would become superhuman, with the processing power and memory of computers but with the morals of humans.
Oh, wait.
It seems so obvious now, doesn’t it?
At the time, though, it was simply what was right. Science has always been the great equalizer and the great uplifter, breaking down oppression and raising up those who had little means but a bright mind. In terraforming, science created worlds from dust; in faster-than-light travel, science brought worlds to our doorstep; in artificial-intelligence research, it made the world easier for our minds to comprehend and interact with.
And in advancing, it brought us more and more ways to destroy the world. Nuclear weaponry was the first, but it wasn’t long before chemical and biological agents were just as effective. Nanotechnology advanced until all you had to do was dump a single capsule on an enemy country, and it would reduce all the infrastructure to grey goo; computer viruses became instant, omnipresent annihilators of the super-connected world we all lived in.
But in the end, all the technology he needed was the understanding of the human mind and a delivery agent, a vector in which to reach as many people as possible. The funny thing is that both had already existed for hundreds of years when he did what he did - radio would've done, for God's sake, and we had understood for a long time how much dopamine worked on the brain.
So it wasn’t strictly science that destroyed the world. But it makes for a good line: it’s an easy externalization of a person’s fears and disappointments, even though science is simply the tool he’s using. The real reason he did it, I think, is the same reason that people destroy anything — themselves, other people, anything they can get their hands on.
People start destroying when they have no more hope.
Hope was Pandora’s gift to the rest of us, after all the plagues and diseases were released from the box. But hope was a plague too — it just happened to fight everything, including the other plagues. It allows us to survive through the most terrible times, but it also creates terrible times. The false hope of a military commander about to step into an ambush. The false hope of a teenager, about to embarrass himself in front of everyone at school. The false hope of a cancer patient that they'll be different from the others.
Hope is simply a way to keep going when everything rational tells you to stop.
We wonder what it was that pushed him over, that caused him to deliver the message that he did, the memetic idea that hope was meaningless and that only pleasure meant anything. We wonder what made him tick, what made him make the decision to release, for free, a drug that would endlessly stimulate a person’s dopamine receptors. We wish we knew how he found out, at the same time, how to electrically stimulate the same areas.
But we don’t.
All we have are the records of how a perfectly normal, happy, productive world changed overnight into a world of zombies who only believed in plugging in and drugging out. All we have are the aftereffects — the remnants of civilization who were able to resist the pull of the drugs, of the stimulation, who were able to believe that they could carry on.
But then, even they were robbed of their hope, and all we have are their bodies.
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-16 02:42 am (UTC)This entry is chilling in a way. Definitely gave me a lot to think about!
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Date: 2011-03-18 04:45 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-03-17 10:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-18 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-18 02:10 am (UTC)Very thought-provoking stuff here.
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Date: 2011-03-18 04:50 pm (UTC)And I wonder how much we learn from each tragedy, that we will be able to prevent the next. And as such, if they will simply grow, bigger and bigger, until there are no more victims left.
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Date: 2011-03-19 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-18 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-18 04:50 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-03-18 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-18 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-19 02:34 am (UTC)I like this.
This is frightening...
Date: 2011-03-19 03:40 pm (UTC)The subjects invariably starve to death because they won't stop pushing the button. Ever.
Invariably.
A powerful piece.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-19 05:15 pm (UTC)