Where are we going?

Some final thoughts on the “Reset” stuff — mine and de Tocqueville’s

There is a short animation that came out recently about the “Great Reset” aka Covid operation and how it could evolve into some kind of permanent totalitarian dystopia. The film has some moments, but I think that, in the end, they get it wrong. The future is more Brave New World than 1984, although perhaps a mix of the two, with Mad Max, Blade Runner and a few other dystopias thrown in would be a more accurate prediction. 

Also, the film feels now slightly anachronistic, because since 2022 it seems we have moved on from pandemics to war, school shootings and transgender overdrive, and a bit of global warming alarmism too. People can’t keep too many worries in their mind at the same time, so I guess the pandemic stuff had to take a little break.

That said, the global reaction to Covid was indeed a wake-up call to many people, because they saw how quickly our society could turn authoritarian with the flip of a switch, with the flimsiest of excuses, and basically everywhere, with nowhere to run to. And if we don’t have even basic freedoms in the West, then what good is it for? Isn’t “freedom” the whole selling point of the West?

But even if there was a form of totalitarianism during those two years (and which in some cases continues albeit in milder forms), it was a soft totalitarianism. You didn’t get shot or sent to the Gulag if you didn’t take your medicines. You just lost your job, or couldn’t have dinner, or had to stay in your room: the global government more as a loving mommy who sometimes has to be strict. The point was not so much about forcing you to do things, but about convincing you that this was the right approach. Alexis de Tocqueville got it right, almost 200 years ago:

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.

Modern man lives in isolation from his countrymen. In fact, it fair to say that he has no countrymen at all. When his “countrymen” can actually be from any country, from Eritrea to Nepal, when being Spanish or Italian or German or even Eritrean is just a matter of geography and paperwork, what real country does he have? But it’s not just that, of course. The extreme individualism of the West has reached a point at which man is also aloof from his community, his neighbours, and in many cases, even his own family. Tocqueville goes on:

Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

Indeed, what remains? As I said, the authority of a parent, but as Tocqueville beautifully adds, with the intention not of making the child grow up, but to remain in perpetual childhood. And what is not modern man if not a child that never grows up?

The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

So there. I think we are at that point now. The Great Reset was not exactly a plan to create a global Gulag. Nor was it a plan to reduce the world population by half, or whatever is the number desired (they can get that through other means, and in fact, birth rates keep going down). But it was created to make you accept the new products they are bringing out — one, the mRNA vaccines, which are really just a gateway drug for the mainstreaming of genetic manipulation of humans, and two, a new form of digital identity — digital cash, the “metaverse”, AI, digital passports, implants and other technologies are just many aspects of this same general idea.

The other day a friend showed me one of these new AI toys. You type in some words and the bot creates a silly story for you. The first attempt wasn’t very memorable, so to make the story a bit more exciting, in his second attempt, my friend typed in a few new random words, one of which was “killer”. Instead of coming up with a story, the bot replied some excuse that it is programmed for peace, understanding and tolerance and could not create a story that promotes or shows violence. (There goes the idea of using it to create the next best-selling mystery thriller.) Meanwhile, on the sidebar, the same search engine was showing all kinds of news about school shootings, war, and random criminal attacks.

I thought it was very representative of the world we live in.