Ammunition dump for a war of words

With the dawning of the information age and a mass sense of political awareness not foreseen, or perhaps dreaded, by the ruling classes of our past, comes an era where everything that has previously been taken for granted is systematically open for questioning and debate. The extent to which this awareness includes consideration of modern capitalist democracies and their place in our world, not to mention their stronghold on the world’s material wealth, has yet to be seen.

In the centuries hence, the masses have been bred on the doctrine that what is to be accepted as the norm is, without question, the way things should be. Religious and political institutions were founded upon the conservative notion that the ideas that form their basis should not easily be open to change. This notion well suited those in positions of power within these institutions, and their associates and families, to the continuing detriment of the subordinate classes.

In the same way in which the church denied the phenomenon of biological evolution to protect her intellectual assets, the embodiment of political thinking is in danger of missing the boat with regard to the evolution of the market and information culture in general. The Internet, an institution founded upon the ethos of free and easy access to information for all, has little need for such patriarchal protection of her assets. Indeed, alternative visions and supplemental versions of reality do little to threaten its continued existence, nor do they interfere with the informative power it has over us in our daily lives.

Our selfish genes did not think to inform their carriers of their tendency to mutate – we had to guess from the evidence that we had evolved. However, upon brief inspection, the evolution of information makes no attempt at hiding its capacity to transform the light by which we see the world. Information being the gene, and so it follows that technology is the carrier, the PC is a case in point. What began its life as an efficient form of office stationary with a built-in filing cabinet has rapidly mutated into a library, a high street shopping mall, public meeting place, etc., not to mention a virtual death trap for reality escape artists. If it’s potential as a political rallying point should not be underestimated, then neither should its proposed use as a ballot box be ignored.

In order that the individual may internally adjust to the external reality of all that our political ancestors have kindly, but inadvertently, gifted us with, and before we may rightly accept it as being the most productive and adaptive reality there is for all, we must first explore the alternatives. These might include speculations of what our world might be like in the absence, to varying degrees, of ideas that have in the past deliberately inhibited peace, prosperity, and progress for all, including those outside the ruling classes.