Progress Comes To A Halt

[Sir Duncan Crumb (His Lordship) No.22343946]

My copy of this book is nearly 100yrs old and the one beside it is older still.

OR
my 2nd attempt at a "Shape Of Things To Come was better than 84 and BNW," thread

[Sir Duncan Crumb (His Lordship) No.22343951]

[Sir Duncan Crumb (His Lordship) No.22344155]

>>i keep meaning to write an essay about this

SOTC : THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME
VS. 1984, AND BRAVE NEW WORLD

1) THE VILLAINY OF THE GOVERNMENT (OR: THE DEPRESSIVE NARRATIVE OF POWERLESSNESS)
2) THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE AIR, AS: "THE TOTALITARIAN DICTATORSHIP OF THE PRESS"
3) THE SOCIETY OF POLYMATHS AND THE UTOPIA OF THE FUTURE
4) UTOPIA STEMS FROM THE MAXIMALIZATION OF THE SELF, NOT THE MASS CONFORMITY OF IDEOLOGY UPON A SOCIETY

I will not insult the reader by pretending to do a review of a piece of literature that I am suggesting they might read for entertainments sake, rather my view of SOTC is to highlight and relay the context that I have observed came about with the emergent dystopian dichotomy presented by the comparison of 1984 to BRAVE NEW WORLD - a thing we are all culturally familiar with - as to point out that there is a third and far more superior work which belongs in and surmounts this dichotomy: that of H.G. Well's SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME.


1) THE VILLAINY OF THE GOVERNMENT (OR: THE DEPRESSIVE NARRATIVE OF POWERLESSNESS)
The dystopian narrative is the intellectual failing; we often find ourseves drawn to read to understand the world of the future and the means by which we arrived where we are, the dystopian misery; the hopelessness of life and the villainy of government, is reinforced bitterly in both 1984 and BRAVE NEW WORLD (BNW) but is absent entirely in SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME (SOTC),

indeed: that question is posed to the reader in imagined far-future of SOTC,"how did nobody alive at the time perceive and prevent the terrible tings from occurring?" and the answer is given, "there was no governmental office whose job was to examine and predict and work to mitigate and avoid the terrible things from occurring," and this undercuts the depressive dystopian leanings given to us in the other two books, 1984 and BNW, where "the government" is presented as an all-powerful all-seeing all-controlling operation, which as an intellectual failing we are often inclined to project onto the world around us - no matter the reality of the world around us; as like a sad urbanite in America or China suffering from paranoia we imagine black helicopter all 'round and the government watching us though hidden cameras in our toilets, believing that all things that go on are going on with intent. The 'depressive nature' of this perception held by us is perhaps a subject far more complex than can be assayed in this text, and I have remarked on it elsewhere that it seems moreso as an inborn disposition that we have to "project order and intent" onto chaos, thereby inadvertent lending a gravitas of "control control and total responsibility" onto whomsoever and whatsoever happens to exist as the status quo in the world to which we are born.

[Sir Duncan Crumb (His Lordship) No.22344158]

Of this point I am strongly reminded of that famous interview H.G. Wells conducted with Josef Stalin where Stalin, through a translator, attempted to articulate his view of capitalism as not an ideology or commanded force but a simple chaos of anarchism; that is: capitalism 'as' anarchism (see: anarchy in production), which I feel is far more to the truth of things vs. that conspiratorial leaning of which dystopian lends itself so well.


Now, it is to first of all comprehend the rudderless nature of things in our world that bestows upon the observer a more complete toolset by which to ascertain the causes and origins of the lamented bad and stupid and evil things that occur in the world:

How is it that humanity blunders into one chaos after another when we are such an intelligent species possessed of genius and equanimity, at lest most of us possess this disposition. Simply: there is no office of central planning by which to project ahead and run through the consequences of one action and foresee and mitigate the potential disasters brought about by the release of some commercial product into the society - what were the consequences of Amazon to the High Street to jobs to government revenues, what were the consequences of Twitter or Facebook on elections, culture and psychology. How did nobody take one look at those enterprises and immediately work to mitigate the obviously terrible consequences that occurred? There was no governmental office tasked with that job.

Admittedly the case of SOTC is made far better today, in the hindsight of the truth of the anarchism of capitalism in light of the last twenty years, than it was in Wells own lifetime - that is: the egregiousness and constant wrecking ball of unfettered chaos was not as great or as constant then. Looking back to the 1930's after nearly 100 years of currency debasement demonstrates the scale; for instance a simple basic house in 1960 worth $£30,000 is now worth £2,500,000 and an illusion of profit is presented in this but the reality is that the currency has simply become more and ore worthless and that the value of the commodity has remained stagnant, that is: inflation and debasement of the currency - a hallmark of a collapsing economy devoid of life blood, i.e. devoid of new production and new resource and stuck cretinously trying to maintain the genius of others centuries past whilst being incapable of new advancement.
Well, anyway, that is the first point:
the recognition that the "bad in the world" is caused by chaos and no control, rather than the predisposition that the "bad in the world" is cause by conscious malintent of persons around us and as if the King is just a villainous creature who revels in abusing his subjects and running his own economy into the ground. Communism, I do not think, ever understood the reality of the latter.

[Sir Duncan Crumb (His Lordship) No.22344161]

2) THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE AIR, AS: "THE TOTALITARIAN DICTATORSHIP OF THE PRESS"
The second point I observed was that of the 'name' of the "global entity" which is ultimately destroyed the by utopian society that SOTC builds towards, Wells presents this in a fair and straightforward account; an instance of so-called "hydraulic terrorism" I suppose, whereby the Dictatorship of the Air is literally a Dictatorship of persons who control the airfields and the war planes and so trade and transport cannot be accomplished without them and thus they fall into total world power completely accidentally. This is good metaphor for business as it is, considering the shipping lanes and global trade in the 1800 and 1700's, but I think the metaphor has a far more interesting take on it which would not and could not have missed or unintended by Wells in his own day,

That being the "Airwaves" as the medium, in his own time, of instantly transmitted wireless propaganda by which any narrative can be drummed into the brain of a society by child-like repetition - anybody, no matter how powerful or wealthy they are, can be destroyed utterly by the press in a matter of days and perhaps eve assassinated as consequence of libels believed by vigilante types; anyway - this a thing well established when Wells wrote and published and is not, I believe, a stretch of imagination on my part. Indeed, so old is the libel of the press that General Washington himself remarked on it in is Farewell Address in the 1700's, that the press is "checkered with abuses," that is: that the abuses are so constant that every second square is black,"

Now it is these two particular lynchpins;
1) chaos rather than design,
2) dictatorship of propagandists,
that the world of SOTC begins to take shape as a true image of the world around us today far more than the dystopian powerless narratives given to the simpleminded in 1984 or BNW:

We understand 'how' the world ticks on as it does, we understand 'how' the people in proxy control of small portions of the chaos ended up in their positions, we know they are not evil monsters with malicious intent but normal Men far out of their depth to build and steward a prosperous true planetary civilization, and in the third and final point we understand how to resolve all of these things - as Wells concluded.

[Sir Duncan Crumb (His Lordship) No.22344164]

3) THE SOCIETY OF POLYMATHS AND THE UTOPIA OF THE FUTURE
The reader may be humorously reminded perhaps, as I was, of that story of the young Lucius Cornelius Sulla; very young and only at the office of Quaestor at that time in his life, when he visited King Jugurtha and talked the King into clapping irons onto his own wrists and surrendering himself to Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

This, in many ways, is the resolution to the Dictatorship of the Air, as Wells figured it. I kind of look at this in a comical light but really a more serious thing is being relayed by Wells; a great difference, that is, between those dystopian others and this work, that is: the resolution to things is a peaceful and clean and amicable thing, and not some mad riot in the streets with bodies hanging from lampposts as always Revolution is painted as by the embittered sorts.

Indeed, little time is given to this affair in the book, as it is a simple thing with no fanfare or "broadcast from the great leader". But how is it achieved?

Again, here is the genius: the society, through education and technology which had come about during the dictatorship but which the dictatorship had not really realized or utilized or been interested in, had suddenly found itself with the means to raise up the entire planet by education to train every child in the methods of logic and problem-solving by which every human could meet, rival and then greatly exceeded the greatest geniuses of all prior human history, so as to produce a truly planetary civilization of polymath geniuses to whom the problems of the world were self-evident upon examination and of which there would be no petty egotism or foolishness of short-term gains to stand in the way and impede the long-term resolutions.

Now, all of the problems humanity faces today resembles this impasse or impediment. We are a century moved forward from Well's own day yet our education system is a century behind, far worse in fact, for having ignored many key discoveries; notably personal psychology for instance, as well as finance and all other relevant things. When humanity move forward from the stagnancy it will be by no other means than a manner of planetary uplift in which Wells relays, to the extent that humans in the past would look like hapless pitiful cretins by comparison to, say, a generation educated in the discoveries and intellectual toolsets by which to recognize and remedy all of the problems gripped by the common person today.

[Sir Duncan Crumb (His Lordship) No.22344166]

I mean to say not that Wells is prophetic in this regard and to be 'emulated' but that his concordance with the only means to resolve the problems faced by humanity is both accurate and inevitable, that is: a society of technocrats who with to control and trick humans, through ideology o religion or propaganda threat, into 'acting' 'as if' they were intelligent whilst being unintelligent will be at a massive disadvantage and total ineptitude by comparison to a society which truly 'is' intelligent - and will be, anyway, squandering themselves in futility and never achieving much of anything:

We are talking about human capital, essentially, and the maximalization of our chief greatest natural resource; which is Man,that is to say: which is Our Own Self and our recognition of our placement among the galaxies. Without recognition and maximalization of the self; indeed of the species, we shall be in the Dictatorship of the Air being shunted around like farm animals or infants as problems create problems and we all lament the misery of life, and when it changes it shall change only by the manner relayed here and we will at the point already be the Masters of Destiny, as they say, because............... for the finality of this text, the final point:

4) UTOPIA STEMS FROM THE MAXIMALIZATION OF THE SELF, NOT THE MASS CONFORMITY OF IDEOLOGY UPON A SOCIETY
It is the self; ones own potential, and the maximalization of it, that matters in all times. The external society; those foolish animals who seek to coerce and inflict ideology upon 'other people', this thing called Politics, is a small minded lunatic trying to force its paranoid will upon the seething gestalt and all its ambitions collapse into ruin because it does not possess the former.

I have run out time to write, unfortunately! But I hope this short text will encourage the reader to pick up a copy of THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME and consider the elements of that book as to the application of the notions conveyed by contrast to the dystopian misery relayed otherwise in our contemporary culture, to shake off that sense of personal powerlessness toward the material.


Valete.
id.aug.