The Shutdown

Conserving resources for the next stair step of decline.

He doesn’t deal with psychos. That seems like quite a luxury these days.

Something very disconcerting happened to me recently: people who previously blew me off as a conspiracy nut have started taking my opinions a lot more seriously. It’s an odd feeling after years of accepting my role as a weirdo semi-pariah who had to constantly self-censor in order to fit in with people who let the TV tell them what to think. Every once in a while I would test the limits and stray into the kapu realm, and the typical reaction was that of stunned silence. The person in front of me might appear to still be listening, and for a while I was fooled into thinking that I was making progress. Unfortunately I was looking at just another overloaded NPC android maxing out it’s RAM in order to contain the dangerous code I had introduced before it had a chance to infect their CPU.

For as long as I can remember critical thinking has not only been labeled as uncool, but down right dangerous. The result is that most people today are really bad at it, like helpless passive bus riders being shuttled around on the information superhighway. They pretend to have opinions, but in actuality their entire personality is built around a heavily regulated plagiarism scheme. As soon as the source of their opinions (aka the Bus Driver) decides it is time a certain opinion is no longer useful they switch lanes together without a second thought. It’s quite impossible to have meaningful conversations with someone like that, and as a result we have an ultra-ironic epidemic of loneliness in a world that has never been more crowded.

Some say this is the result of a great number of beings who force-incarnated into human bodies in order to compensate for overpopulation (somewhere around 8.25 billion at the moment) but who’s spiritual evolution is more along the lines of cattle and other herd-following livestock. Now that we are rounding the bell curve of industrial civilization and about to fall down the staircase of decline this isn’t going to be a problem for much longer. Population rates in the industrialized world have already begun to shrink and without access to resources the third world will catch up sooner or later. It’s highly doubtful that we’re going to hit 9.7 billion by 2050 like the United Nations projection, and this has some serious implications for a world economy based on endless growth and unlimited resource extraction.

Most people aren’t ready to talk about that, but at least they have started asking why all all the promises of Progress seem to be turning into cruel jokes. There also seems to be a growing sentiment that our entire way of life is based on a faustian bargain with criminal elites, where we give them half of everything we produce in exchange for keeping the system afloat for the “ungrateful” masses. If everyone is implicated in the crime spree then the scam can keep going indefinitely, or at least until reality shows up with arrest warrants and starts kicking doors.

From an optimistic perspective the fact that a majority of citizens now believe the world is run by criminal elites is a sign that our collective consciousness has evolved, but this is not a difficult problem for the elites in question. Once enough of us inhabit the scarcity mindset all they have to do is create a series of opposing boogiemen and set the population against each other in a competition to decide who the “real” monsters are. This focuses all attention on a scripted reality television drama instead of the fact that our 401k’s are made of pure hopium and access to reliable grid power and clean water is now becoming an issue. Critical thinking takes practice, and without that practice it’s easy to fall for the plethora of alternatively-branded centrally coordinated messaging campaigns designed to ensnare the increasingly disgruntled masses. This might provide the illusion of independent thought, but it’s actually just a bunch of herd-oriented humans looking for yet another mass movement that has enough popular support to keep them in the cool-kids crowd.

So while it’s a bit of a shock to find that the limits of conversation can be pushed further than ever without immediately getting shut down, these people have already shown me who they really are and they will easily fall for the next set of bad ideas like baby ducks flowing into a storm drain. At least in the intervening years of practice I have discovered what does not work, and on the top of that list is the desire to control other people’s opinions. It was extremely difficult to overcome that habit, but discarding it has lifted a tremendous amount of suffering off of my shoulders and vastly improved my physical health. Wanting everyone to believe exactly what I believe makes me just as bad as the elites, and ultimately just as doomed to a spectacular conflagration when everyone else finally sees through the manipulation tactics and decides to strike back.

For now those of us who can think critically must continue pushing our way through the crowd of bad ideas, bad actors, and deranged psychos in the marketplace of ideas. It’s become impossible to function in society without the ability to successfully maneuver around the criminally insane, and all that we can hope to accomplish in such an environment is to leave some clues behind for those who still have some remnants of their discernment intact. Don’t be fooled by the bits of good news the machine spits out now and then. This isn’t time to break out the champagne and spike the football. The systems will have to break down a lot more before the silent majority will finally be forced to recognize the pickle we are in.

That might seem depressing, but keep in mind all the terrible things that happen when everyone runs for the exit at the same time. Instead of trying to change the world in a way that suits our egos, I recommend we use these precious final remaining weeks of this doomed era of unprecedented wealth to set ourselves up so that we can take a step back from the chaos ahead. The change is coming regardless of how well we argue our case, and getting the herd caught up with the details will be much easier once the worst part of the next step down is behind us.

If you enjoy my work and would like to make a donation you can do so through my Ko-Fi account. There is no paywall, and my sincerest thanks goes out to everyone who has chosen to contribute. -KVD