Wisdom and Change
By: Drunk Plato
Tags: Essay, Philosophy, Wisdom, Culture, Morality

Who gives us our dreams and our morals? Is it our society? Do we journey through life and find them? If we are lucky, our parents start us out with some that help us navigate the world. We pick up more as we grow, as our minds adapt to the environment and social conditions. Our cultural values evolved over many generations and were faced with constant opposition. This was for our benefit. There was time to adapt to the change and tradition, to prevent the erroneous introduction of new, untested values.

We now live in a different world — one in which our morals are updated at what seems to be a monthly pace. The acceleration has been disorienting for many. The younger one is, the more comfortable they are with the acceleration. They can adapt to a fluid world where virtue and values change so quickly there is almost no reason for any to exist. We are reaching a point where tradition can no longer be accepted in this new world. It moves too slowly, or not at all.

But we are going somewhere. Somewhere we don’t quite seem to understand. Yet we move forward, hurling ourselves through time, redefining our morals, rewriting our history, and living only in the present. The past is now offensive. It’s as if we’ve forgotten how cultural development occurs — through time, but the past must go. All must be redefined through the lens of now. If only we had held onto the traditions and virtues of the past. There was something in them that we threw aside in our haste to get to somewhere. The speed of acceleration was all that seemed to matter. Changing, transforming, destroying.

I’ve always feared the technological singularity, concerned that the acceleration would be impossible to maintain, and all would be torn apart under the forces of change. I mainly focused on technology’s effects on the external world. That we would have self-driving fleets of cars. That tens of millions of jobs would be performed by robots and AI. That we would have more digital experiences than physical. But one aspect that I didn’t seem to focus on was what would happen to our morals, culture, and traditions.

I feel as though we’re seeing but a preview of what this acceleration will bring. A battle is coming — a cultural revolution that will eradicate all tradition and will simply be change. The stampede will lose track of why it began and continue until there is nothing left to hold onto. The cultural repercussions of this can be seen today. The speed of communication is one of the culprits. We don’t understand how to cope with it. There’s too much information to process, so we create simple narratives for a complex world. There will be no preventing the decline, the inertia is too great. Many people understand this fact. In our blind pursuit of change and efficiency, we are faced with impending collapse.

The same men and women who pushed us to this end are trying to escape it. They have seen wildfires on the horizon and have convinced us to run into it. Lies have been given to keep us running. And we run. And run. And never look back at what is driving us forward or see where we are going. We are distracted from the deeper truth. It was lost in the confusion of information. There can be no stability in a world that is forced to change so quickly. Chaos is the only future we have.

I used to believe that if enough of us realized we were on the path to self-destruction, we could put our feet into the ground and stop it, but there will be no ground to plant our feet into. We have to face the consequences of our ignorance. We are biological beings subjected to technological acceleration without the appropriate wisdom. And somehow, we are expected to adapt and change as quickly as technology does. It cannot happen.

As I said, I think it’s too late for wishful thinking. We are going to hit the wall. The only question that remains is if we can break through, and what happens on the other side? The effects of the impact itself cannot be predicted, but I expect it will be destructive. Once we have faced this tribulation, what will those who make it through decide to do? There will be a choice. There must be a choice.

Will we remain as humans, rekindling our balance with nature, or will we leave biology behind and embrace the neon future? The neon future is one where we accept a post-human world where technology is god. It already is. So what is there to do? Can we muster our strength like the heroes of myth and stand up to the gods that no longer serve us? An awakening is occurring, and there will likely be utter and complete chaos during this time. From this chaos, if we can tap into humanity’s creative potential, we can find order and survive this turbulence.

We have been wandering through the desert for a long time. Some will be able to enter the Promised Land — a land flowing with milk and honey. But once we crash through the wall, break through the filter, those who remain will be those who are ready for a new way of life. And the great irony of this new way is that it is very much like the old way. Tradition cannot die, because those who lose tradition find themselves eradicated by their own hubris. And those who keep tradition will survive the turmoil ahead. For wisdom comes with time, and our ancestors passed down their wisdom. We would be wise to hold it close.