Needed a bit of optimism in my day, and thinking about this possible scenario made me feel better. Perhaps there’s light at the end of the tunnel?
Needed a bit of optimism in my day, and thinking about this possible scenario made me feel better. Perhaps there’s light at the end of the tunnel?
The light is an oncoming fascism train and you’re smiling at it like it’s the sun.
At the heart of Fascism is ignorance. Ignorance can be readily defeated, we just haven’t figured out the best way to do so in the information age with social media creating BS faster than facts. Time keeps going, and beyond the coming tide of Fascism, is something else. As long as we can stay informed, and educated, Fascism can be overcome. It’s never taken hold permanantly because it’s built on unstable bullshit and populism. It will come, it will pass, and when it does, whoever left will want to move avawy from the ignorance that caused this rise of Fascism in the first place.
You just sparked a memory in me of a future kinda-dystopian book I was reading. Unfortunately the name of the book escapes me at the moment (I think it was a Neal Stephenson book?) but there was this part that struck me hard. The gist is that there was one internet, like there is now, and it’s just a cesspool of ads and misinformation and all kinds of toxic garbage. The difference was, people who had money enough, would basically pay for “live curators” to filter their internet so they only saw things that were verifiably true, had no awful bigotry baked in, etc etc.
Naturally this was not something poor people could afford.
Anyway apologies for going off topic. The “we just haven’t figured out the best way to do so in the information age” reminded me of that.
Yeah, but it’s a rusty old steam locomotive thats running on a broken track. It’s not impossible they’ll make it to the station, but it’s gonna take some patience.
Maybe in this trolley problem, someone pulls the lever. Stanislav Petrov did the right thing, perhaps others will too.