Yes, I am aware of the fact that it's a book everyone read in high school, but it has been on my mind lately because I think the current situation is very reminiscent of it, actually. Maybe with a little bit of Phillip K. Dick, to add to the sci-fi dystopia theme.
Specifically, all of this insane and delusional focus on "alternate realities" and "new futures" which are somehow just around the corner, at least according to today's well-funded, high IQ, expert class.
Yet none of this progress delivers a superior future in material terms. We are becoming more isolated, disconnected, and dysfunctional, while the world around is filled with things that would have been taken as apocalyptic in the past (and now are the everyday reality): armies of junkies and homeless, abandoned buildings and decaying infrastructure, gargantuan mega-corporations that deliver the exact opposite of their stated purpose, and so on.
Rather than making advances in anything real or beneficial, technology only advances in the sense of creating a more high-definition, realistic, copium chamber for today's elites. By surrounding themselves with positive feedback, sealing themselves off in an echo-chamber, and injecting themselves with endless drugs, they can experience a positive balance of "Good Vibes" and avoid having to face the facts, which allows them to keep going, at least for another day. This is what real world "progress" has devolved to: copium injections.
As for books, forget about them: nobody reads anymore. No need for top-down interventions there!
Instead of a book-burning squad, we have the anti-sincerity police, who go around looking for any sign of spirit, libido, non-conformity, and openness in order to squash it. Mainly because in a society full of hollow people who are only living from day to day, any individual spark would threaten to burn the whole thing down, not to mention serve as a dreadful reminder of how badly things have fallen apart-- so clamp down on it!
This bleak situation is rationalized as "liberating" because you can now watch endless amounts of porn and do as many drugs as possible: truly amazing progress.
The loss of all of things like health, relationships, social trust, communities is also rationalized, but in a different way: "I'm too generic and unique for all that, so I don't really want those things!". (Never mind the fact that, even if you did want them, you would never be able to find a steady career or afford kids in the first place, not to mention that even if somehow got a hold of those things you'd be raising them in a dysfunctional ugly low-trust country).
If I could summarize the present arrangement, I'd say that we've been left with a series of economic extraction zones for various mega-cartels, while everyone within them is reliant on various simulations of real world activities in order to keep going. Simulation of sex (porn), simulation of companionship (influencers), simulation of progress and individual achievement (drugs, video games, the gym, social media), simulation of a career and a future (going to college), simulation of kids (pets), the list goes on and on...
It may fool gullible minds, since it's semi-accurate and the tech behind it keeps advancing, but everything real is missing.
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