It occured to me that in the 90's the rise of technology and the internet was supposed to fuel a new revolution that ended corporatism and the corrupt and lopsided system. Instead, the corrupt and lopsided system took over all this technology and began using it against us. It's almost as if all these tech gurus sold out the first chance they got and expected everyone to switch sides whenever they became the very thing they professed to hate.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Money has a way of changing people. Put a million dollar offer out there and just watch how many sell their own principles out immediately, and in the case of tech it is usually much more than just a million. There is always a way to justify things to yourself if u really want to keep from feeling like a sell out.
george
Level 7
Mar 18, 2019
1
The new boss is the same as the old boss . We may be getting fooled , again .
Georgesblogforum
Level 7
Mar 18, 2019
1
I am not sure i agree or understand where this logic would come from, it was corporations that built the technology why would that eliminate corporatism? it would seem it would only make it more dense as our culture embraced it, and most of the new things coming out are at least in the beginning attempting to better things but there is always the potential for people to use things for good or bad, and if more use them for good then good should win out in the end.
Gooch
Level 3
Mar 18, 2019
1
I’m not too sure I agree with your premise that the technological revolution was supposed of even believed to have been the vehicle to end corporatism and corruption. Did you expect those systems to simply roll over and die, leaving the keys to society to the “tech gurus?” Corruption, as much more thoroughly explained by the long post below me, is and has been a human universal. All we can hope to do is fight it in ourselves and those around us as much as we can.
StrykerWolfe
Level 5
Mar 18, 2019
1
I didn't expect that at all. But there wasn't even a fight. The greatest minds of the Digital Revolution switched sided. As if their motto went from "hack the planet" to "I didn't sell out I bought in" the instant the corporate suits showed up with their checkbooks.
@LeftySinister People have a very persistent tendency to drop their college-age idealism once those suits show up with their chequebooks. Actually having millions of dollars written down in front of you will do crazy things to people.
@StrykerWolfe True. And I think that is what it ultimately boils down to. Saving the world is a pretty sentiment but saving yourself pays much more. It's always been this way but I grew up in that movement. I guess I had high hopes.
@LeftySinister If it’s any condolence, that’s the story of every movement in history thus far. But there’s nothing stopping you as an individual from discovering a way to both save yourself and the world, and maybe even more than that. It’s why we talk about these things. Good luck.
How in the world has the word Corporate become a nasty word? They do by far more good in the world than bad.
BrunosDad
Level 6
Mar 18, 2019
0
It relates to the incorrect sentiment that "your success is attributable, to the lack of mine". If looked at correctly the success of others is more applicable to the possibility of your own success.
@Think I have become so tired of others trying to make me feel guilty for the successes that I have had. I have worked hard, dealt with failure, taken risks and in the end had a fare share of success. Along the way I have lifted many others with me, improving the quality of life of those who have remained at my side.
Yes I used the corporate structure to work my way through this adventure. A corporation has been nothing more than a tool that I used to make this journey. As a tool it can be used for good or evil depending upon the craftsman who is using it, same as a hammer or nail. I refuse to feel bad or even condemn others for their use of a tool.
I would hate to see what would become of this world if we were to end Corporatism. People like me would loose one of the best tools we have been given to improve this world.
@BrunosDad Be that as it may, as MidwestProf, points out below, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Corporations and the corporate model may have started out as useful tools, but given enough time, opportunity, and resources they have evolved into the very vehicles that drive the oppression.
@LeftySinister Yes they may but only if given the authority to do so by government. Hence the term crony-corporatism, that is a whole different ball game. I believe that crony-corp is a plague on the free market system. Perhaps people confuse the two.
Something you might do is substitute any number of eras and technologies for your sentence, such as "in the 1830s, the telegraph was supposed to bring us all closer together and make war impossible."
Humans are humans, and power will tend to corrupt. So, with Hamlet, we may say that "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." And, being mostly conservatives and libertarians here, I think that we must hold with Solzhenitsyn that every person has the tendency to corruption. As he noted:
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."
The tendency toward use of power to dominate and control - the libido dominandi, as it has been called - is a human failing, not an "us" and "them" problem. For, as you have noted, as soon as the "us" move over to the "them," "they" fail "us." Most revolutions, sooner or later, end up as bad as the thing that was moved against, and then devour themselves. Even Robespierre felt the guillotine.
So, worship of technology - scientism and related movements - is a constant thread in progressivism. I think that, as conservatives and libertarians, we must be aware that, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
A monk in the work "A Canticle for Leibowitz" said:
“You heard him say it? 'Pain's the only evil I know about.' You heard that?"
The monk nodded solemnly.
"And that society is the only thing that determines whether an act is wrong or not? That too?"
"Yes."
"Dearest God, how did those two heresies get back into the world after all this time? Hell has limited imaginations down there. 'The serpent deceived me, and I did eat.”
And finally, to finish on a Lewisian note, C.S. Lewis noted, on progress and evolution:
"If things can improve, this means that there must be some absolute standard of good above and outside the cosmic process to which that process can approximate. There is no sense in talking of ‘becoming better’ if better means simply ‘what we are becoming’—it is like congratulating yourself on reaching your destination and defining destination as ‘the place you have reached’. Mellontolatry, or the worship of the future, is a fuddled religion."
MidwestProf
Level 5
Mar 18, 2019
2
Eleqently formulated!
@Think Thank you, ma'am.
First, thank you for your insightful reply.
Sure, sure. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and given the opportunity the oppressed will always become the oppressors. I get that. However, the invention of the telegraph being seen as a "way to end all war" is admittedly new to me. I look at technological revolutions of the past in a different light. Usually people lashed back against it (Luddites, for instance), and attacked it because they thought it negatively affected their lives. I think we will see more of that as the Robot Revolution automates industry. But I didn't see the Digital Revolution of the 90's that way at all. It was celebrated, digitization was supposed to better our lives and all that. The internet was going to give us free access to information. In short, people were stoked about it. At the same time there was also a definite backlash against "the system." There is ample evidence of this in the movies, music and literature of the time. The cyberpunk culture also grew out of this as a kind of worst case scenario of the future that could come of a negative Digital Revolution.
But the technology that was supposed to improve our lives has instead been used to monitor and enslave us. The internet went from an anonymous platform for the free exchange of information to an Orwellian tool of epic scope. It has actually taken our privacy and used it against us. It has been used not to spread information, but to direct the type of information that is spread. You mentioned C.S. Lewis. I think a perfect example of what I'm talking about is seen in "That Hideous Strength."
So it's not necessarily about that absolute power corrupts absolutely as much as it is about the greatest minds of the Digital Revolution turning out to be little more than intellectual mercenaries. They didn't fight the system. They ended up making it stronger.
@LeftySinister But that's exactly it!
>But the technology that was supposed to improve our lives has instead been used to monitor and enslave us. The internet went from an anonymous platform for the free exchange of information to an Orwellian tool of epic scope.
Precisely. There has been no tool that has not been used, in some way, to expand the the power of some over others.
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