"When I hear the word ‘civilization’ I reach for my gun."
Human civilization is built upon foundational lies, untruths which much be perpetuated, to keep the system running. It's been theorized that early agriculturalists gathered together out of convenience and outproduced pastorialists, but I think that did not happen without coercion. With agriculture came social stratification and hierarchy, tyranny, and professional militaries. We only have civilization due to the instinct to dominate, the capacity to commit violence in the name of authority. Authorities used to justify their privilege to rule as mandates from Heaven, today it is justified by secular fictions such as elections. Ultimately, states rule by fiat, implicitly backed by violence; to a statist, justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger, as Thrasymachus asserts. The rules are always eventually made to benefit the ruling class, which shouldn't be unfamiliar to you, the modern reader.
Nearly everyone born today is a slave in a system they didn't consent to, with no way out. Go to school, get a job, get married, have kids, work until you die. It often doesn't seem like a raw deal, after all, relationships along the way can become meaningful in life. All of the exploitation and suffering that happens in life doesn't seem so bad when it's punctuated by moments of boredom or pleasure. Even when one follows this scripted path, one can feel they are not living for themselves but rather society's expectations. The scam of civilization is thus:
- Most humans are only as valuable as their productive output, as such people prepare to be exploited and internalize this productization of the self: polished automatons of LinkedIn, ready to work.
- All of the expectations set upon us are some form of exchange of labor for something of lesser value, once we have nothing left to give we may as well be dead. Civilization is built upon exploitation.
- Each generation promotes a false promise that the future for the next generation will be better for them, whether this promise is fulfilled or not is immaterial, only blind faith is necessary.
- The universal human tendency to promote sociopaths to the highest levels of hierarchy in any organization will lead to inevitable and predictable results.
Ponzi schemes
A Ponzi scheme benefits those who got in on the scam early and relies on new victims to perpetuate itself; without newcomers, it will collapse. Observe that there is a fractal pattern to Ponzi schemes: at scale, Ponzi schemes include corporations, real estate, financial markets, currencies, entire civilizations, and life itself. There is a selfish gene which motivates people to have children, so that they can have children, and ensuring the continuity of some genetic self-being.
The modern reader may be familiar with boomer memes, inter-generational conflict, the unaffordability of living and crippling sovereign debt. That is because civilization is a long con, played out over generations. Without more new victims, the system implodes on itself, as the debt can no longer be passed onto the future. Many young people understand the raw deal they are given and choose not to have children, and it is not just about suffering economic conditions or destruction of the natural environment, which are common rationalizations for a subconscious understanding of their situation. It is a subconscious realization that human civilization is headed down a dark path with no worthwhile future, due to the increasingly inhumane social contract of every developed nation state.
The end of liberty
Modern nation states are the most repressive societies that humanity has seen yet. This is some sort of human progress, people are increasingly efficient at manipulating each other against their will, often without them knowing. China alone has over one billion people, one can't expect that such a society could be governed without an authoritarian state, or even try to optimize for individual freedom. Humans are treated as automatons by bureaucracies which itself is a projection: things with levers to pull and boxes to put them in.
The statists gaslight us with documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is about as enforceable as scrawls on tissue paper. The same entity which ostensibly grants us rights, has the full authority to renege on those rights and take them away. Most people never come to terms that their rights are a legal fiction. It was never about creating a better world for anyone but themselves.
As states and corporations know almost everything about us, they can use that information to completely control us, sometimes even without our knowledge. Free will can be hijacked by impossibly specific attack vectors, pattern-of-life analysis can be used to detect any anomalous behavior. Corporations put people in their own social media Skinner boxes, to study their behavior while delivering quick dopamine hits.
The era of individual autonomy, while useful in limited degree, has ended and most civilizations are coming to terms with it. Turns out that most people would give up essential liberty for temporary security, but end up with neither, as Benjamin Franklin suggested. Most NPCs distrust their peers more than their government, leading to government overreach in everyone's lives.
Dominance hierarchies
This was something that Terence McKenna discussed in great detail, the rise of hierarchies and dominator culture. Where every person has to report to someone, and that person who reports to no one may as well be God. Every state is its own dominance hierarchy, which has fully captured all of humanity except for a few uncontacted tribes in the middle of nowhere. Civilization has captured the entire human species, and may bring us all down with it.
Dominator culture carries the implicit threat of violence, it is completely normalized in most parts of the world that the state has a monopoly on violence. Most people are completely disarmed and have no effective means of resistance, even protesting may not be allowed, hence why the only remaining form of resistance may be laying down and rotting. Many people go to work if only because of the threat of homelessness and starvation one must face for refusing to participate in a society one never wanted to be a part of.
Sociopaths who rise to the top of dominance hierarchies betray any sense of ethics or morality. Governments are the most prolific mass murderers, which is accomplished via dehumanization and callous lack of empathy, sociopathic tendencies at scale. There is something deeply wrong in the human psyche, which enables leadership like this to emerge in every culture and every state.
In my opinion, the human species needs rewilding, to prevent civilization from failing the species and inevitably leading us to war, famine, population collapse. Such an opportunity may only present itself after a global collapse of civilization, which may already be ongoing with the globally low fertility rates, and possibly nuclear war. I'm not terribly optimistic about the future of humankind.