this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
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If I want to be blissed out until my body falls apart, I can do that now by turning my retirement account into a stockpile of fentanyl. I don't think its presumed that intelligent civilizations all just do this, for the same reason I don't believe modern human civilization will collapse on itself simply because we've discovered opium.
We struggle to confirm the existence of a ninth planet while. We're living in a solar system at the rural edge of the galaxy and we just found out black holes exist. Would we know what an advanced civilization would even look like?
We haven't even fully ruled out life on Mars, ffs. There could be a layer under the cloud system of Jupiter, Uranus, or Neptune that's absolutely teaming with life. The Great Space Whale Migration of Proxima Centauri could be happening right now and we'd never have a clue.
Do not sell the galaxy spanning race of sentient porn-loving starfish short just yet.
Tbf, turning your retirement account into pure bliss with Fentanyl greeeaaaatly reduces the amount of time you get to be blissed out. This hypothetical future likely had found a way to reach permanent bliss with as few downsides as possible
Might want to look up The Problem With Paradise
I hear they paved it and put up a parking lot
Funny, because the artist was describing a vacation he took in Hawaii.
I don't know how else he thought he was going to get there. A stairway?
Permanent bliss is a contradiction in terms and is its own, constant downside.
The key difference is that we still live in a society where, at least most people, have to work to live. If you spend your retirement on fentanyl the fentanyl isn't going to be the thing to make your body fall apart, assuming you get pure shit and are able to dose properly and not od your body can handle that for decades. What's going to tear your body apart is the poverty and deprivation of living on the streets after you lose your job. If you're in a fully automated post scarcity society and you're able to hook yourself up to one of these machines and live a long life I could see a majority of people doing that. Sure some people would object to it being meaningless, but in a post scarcity reality where God is dead, a robot can do anything better than you, and there's no conflict or competition for resources there isn't much meaning to be had anyway.
Take enough fentanyl and you will no longer feel the need to do either.
Reminds me of the short story "Nano Comes to Clifford Falls." Basically a replicator arrives in a small town, and is freely available to use. At first it's great, but then it's not. I won't spell it all out, but I remember it being framed as a kind of few facto civilisation/personal "test," and that some people just can't handle life without the struggle.
Kind of a problematic take, if I'm remembering it correctly, but story still had a big impact on me.
CW: attempted sexual assault, in case anyone decides to check it out.
I'm familiar with the story. It was popular in conservative circles in the same way "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" was popular.
I'm not stranger to tech pessimism, but - setting aside the fantastic nature of the premise - there's little to support the theory that economic surplus has been bad for social cohesion. Given enough free time, people tend to be remarkably creative and productive. And a great deal of modern social cohesion is predicated on a certain ambient abundance of energy, housing, etc.
To quote Alfred Henry Lewis
I hadn't thought of the story as explicitly conservative, but thinking about it again through that lens, I can definitely see it.
As for the quote, I remember hearing it as "barbarism" instead of "anarchy," but right you are. Actually, the search for more context lead me the full source (from his talk page), which is actually a really good read.
It’s not inherently conservative, just like the tragedy of the commons isn’t. However, its infuriate and most obvious takeaways are those that works appeal to a certain conservative mindset.