Bleak Days
When I was a child, the USA had a base in Iceland. It was an American territory and hard to get into, but as kids we used to brag about having been in America that day if we went there.
This was during the ‘80s, when having the Americans around felt safe, at least to a kid who only grasped the threat of the mushroom cloud on the horizon in an abstract way. Because, though, that threat felt real and close, and the world’s largest “Aircraft carrier” in the world would not be spared, it still felt almost like Mio Min Mio in the Land of Faraway.
Yet I somehow never thought I’d grow up to be older than thirty-eight.
We trusted them to keep the peace, trusted them to keep our soil free from the mushroom cloud. Maybe the trust was misplaced even back then, to be fair. It was never really their job to keep the peace. They just took it upon themselves and I’m sure they gained their fair share for doing so, good or bad.
Times have changed.
At this point I can’t tell if I’m just getting older and therefore more prone to scepticism, critical thinking mixed with bleakmindedness, or if the world is actually going mad, being turned upside down, where nothing is the way it was, the way you feel it should be.
Did we somehow forget the lesson the years between 1939 to 1945 taught us? Did we leave our humanity somewhere along the way? Or has the world always been like this and am I just naively suddenly catching up?
It’s honestly hard to tell, but it feels like we are in the middle of the lesson we thought we never needed to learn again because our forefathers paid a high price for it.
Politics have never been my strong suit, but this bleak thinking is reflected in other things as well. The rise of AI is just the tip of the iceberg that is media and tech-overtake, and I say this as a huge tech-enthusiast. Have you noticed how Windows 11 looks like a clunky, malformed, debilitated younger brother of its predecessors? You have little or no choice when it comes to how it looks and what it does. Hell, you can’t even MOVE the ducking taskbar anymore! We’re all supposed be the same, moulded in the same form, doing the same thing. And what exactly is that?
These days our purpose seems to be to train AI so it can do the tasks you now get paid for. As someone who has dealt with machines in translations for years and years, I don’t exactly fear their overtake. AI is perpetually stupid and doesn’t know its ass from a Dr. Sbaitso’s (hats off those who get that reference) but it is an excellent copy-paste machine and so it can automate your work, make everything the same, yet slightly different. It can steal your ideas and make sure those who already own half the world earn more money. And while I think AI can be useful, I doubt very much that it will be used for the right reasons, in the right ways.
Ever.
I do love technology, but lately I feel the need to close everything down. I left X, like so many others. I deleted Facebook off my phone and all META apps I can be without. The latest TikTok twelve hour ban in the states (strangely coinciding with the time it takes to move servers? The conspiracy theories are thick) seems weird to say the least and the ban? Something is rotten in Washington D.C. What is left is BlueSky (and I urge you to join, it almost does feel like old Twitter) and this place… a place that actually dares to encourage people to use words and not just spout out short quotes that go in one ear and out the other, leaving behind a trace of thought that vanishes so quickly you get used to jumping to conclusions, taking things at face value. Teaches you not to care about the silver lining. You don’t need to read the article, just browse the headline.
Maybe it is age talking. Maybe this is what happens when you’ve spent more than half a century on this planet and start to contemplate seriously what it’s all for. Maybe then the world suddenly turns upside down and you find yourself like Will Byers in a hostile world, full of Mind Flayers, Demogorgon’s with Vecna suddenly ruling the world, doing the roman salute, that does happen to be the same salute used by the peculiarly moustached madman and his supporters in World War II.
Maybe it’s time to start reading Albert Camus again. Maybe it’s time to resist the best we can. Resist against an AI that threatens to make everything the same, it will copy-paste our efforts until there is nothing left but the grey mud it creates. Resist the forces that seem to be taking over everywhere, forces determined to make their legacy be Bond-Villainesque at best, or worse, within the Zone of Interest.
Or maybe the world has always been like this. Maybe that’s why my grandfather looked so hollow eyed while reading the newspapers and why my grandmother always had her arms crossed, as if she was angry, when she watched the news. Maybe it’s age and I should see the fact that I wished for Windows ’95 (oh the horror) back when I had to reinstall Windows 11 recently. Maybe I’m old fashioned to think that the Pumpkin King shouldn’t be in charge of anything at all, not even himself, let alone the nuclear codes of the country I used to perceive as the good guys, used to think was in the forefront when it came to humanity, freedom and kindness.
Illusions, all of it.
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
― Albert Camus