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Techvolution: A New Philosophy - Introduction
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Politics
Donald Trump is the savior of Western Civilization. If that turns your emotions on, with tears or cheers, then you are missing the point of politics. Politics isn't about voting for a political party, advocating for a political cause, and it's definitely not screaming at a Twitter feed. The government is so big—with so many politicians, civil servants, companies, and interest groups fighting for control, it will never respond to your small voice.
Tears or cheers don't make a person powerful.
On the contrary, you see, exercising, composting, teaching your kids mathematics does change the world. Good decisions change and improve your world—giving you freedom from dependency and power over your part of society. And, since power is to politics what money is to finance, your personal choices are always your most potent political weapon.
The question is, how do we increase your powers. The answer, we'll find out in this book, is better technology, and the self-awareness to use it to improve your life. But this isn't a self-help book about making you "happy." It's about making you powerful so you can earn your happiness.
Your power comes from realizing Harry Potter didn't march for change. He bought his own wands for the same reason Luke Skywalker constructed his own lightsabres. The lesson is simple. The middle-class will only live in the Internet Age when we upgrade our politics to make us fight for society's levers of power.
Many people fear new technologies. But that's all the more reason to make and control our own levers of power. We'll only live in a dystopia if we don't evolve our culture to distribute modern technology to Main Street. Credit: Blade Runner. Video.
New Tech, New Age, New Philosophy
Life on this Earth has never been easy. However, our lives improve with better technology. Deaths from disease, famine, and war have all decreased as our technological power has gone up. We can even look at this pandemic and see how lucky we are.
I'm serious. Think of this, before 1880, doctors didn't even wash their hands before surgeries because nobody knew bacteria or viruses existed. Everyone thought disease was caused by "bad air" and would open windows in hospitals if too many people were getting sick.
And now, in 2020, we're all washing hands, isolating ourselves, and already working on a COVID-19 vaccine.
We still have many problems today, but our technology in medicine, agriculture, education has given us lives our ancestors would envy.
And now we have computers and the internet. They're game-changers. Laptops, digital cameras, tablets, drones, bio-sensors are all millions of times better than just 30 years ago. Modern technology greatly empowers us to keep fighting off pandemics, hunger, ignorance, and war.
But, only if we use new tools to stay ahead of our problems.
In Nature, lifeforms evolve in jumps called eras or epochs. Likewise, humanity develops new technology in leaps; what we call "ages." When a new age comes, its technology is so unique and powerful, it changes how society functions. Things were very different in the Stone Age in comparison to the Bronze Age, for example.
Today we're going from the Industrial Age (1760-1969) to the Internet Age (1970-). It can be hard to appreciate all the transformations. There's a lot to think about when civilization's entire way of life upgrades to new technology. I've been thinking about our technological evolution for years and only now have a grasp.
Improving our technology is hard work, but at least we understand how to do research and development. Upgrading politics to a new age isn't so straightforward. Evolving new cultures, policies, and philosophies usually happens with uprisings, civil wars, or revolutions.
Getting you involved in the game to upgrade our civilization is a better way to evolve. And it's much more peaceful too.
The critical point to realize is that in 1970, personal computers and the internet came online. Since then, computer geeks, hackers, and innovators have been upgrading our society to the Internet Age. All the while, the "eight different bosses" inside Industrial Age companies and government bureaucracies have been holding us back to keep their obsolete products and services alive.
Being forced to use outdated technology is why middle-class life can be so unhappy. It's why we work bullshit jobs, still use so much oil, can't understand the tax code, and now live in uncertainty during this pandemic. Middle-class life will only get better once we finish the Internet Age upgrade.
There's no shortcuts, cheats, or gimmicks. There's just you and your friends on the frontline who must do the work.
Happily, since "we the people" already have amazingly powerful digital tools. We only need to believe in a new philosophy to upgrade our way of life to the Internet Age.
The first lesson in this modern philosophy is to look up.
Looking Up
There's a lot to realize when thinking about human evolution. I found it very helpful to "look up" and imagine what our community looks like from above. Looking up lets you "look down" and gain a proper perspective on our society.
I didn't just imagine this better perspective; I got to see it. Play computer games like Age of Empires, Anno 1800, and Civilization, and you'll get to as well.
You'll be the "player god" of a civilization. A virtual divinity who knows all and sees all, and who puts its general will into action using an array of buttons, switches, and toggles. As you play the game, you'll use these levers of power to save up money, decide what to research, where to place buildings, and especially when to click "upgrade."
Pressing that most important upgrade button magically transforms every factory, hospital, house, and citizen, to the technology of the modern age. Look below, and you'll see a person being the player god in the game Anno 1800.
The above is a computer game, of course, but it represents reality pretty well. We're all in there somewhere right now, trying to figure out how to earn a living while the game plays around us.
That's why this book's cover page is a regular person standing on Main Street—a single guy or girl in civilization. His or her job is to do what's best for themselves and help society prosper. Gazing up for guidance, the character sees heroes and villains. In the sky high above is the mythical "player god," whose ultimately the one making the decisions.
Will the player god act to benefit society or himself?
In a computer game, all of civilization is the player's responsibility. The player must always save up money, make plans for the future, and in general, think of the greater good. That's why the player controls all the levers of power. Players thus decide what to build, culture to adopt, and what philosophy to use.
In reality, we change society when we do yoga, save up for rainy days, check-up on our friends, re-seal a leaky window. Funny to think about, but our everyday choices determine what happens in our entire civilization.
You can see the power of a single person in this pandemic. Will enough of us decide to wash our hands and self-isolate to "slow the curve"?
It's an open question. Because we often don't think of ourselves as being "player gods." It's easy for regular people to forget how important our lives really are. But that's the big picture. It's all our individual choices that make up the player god in our real-life game of civilization.
The more individuals realize the big picture and act like their actions matter, the happier their society. And the job of inspiring individuals to believe in the big picture is the job of philosophy.
It's a distinct philosophy that makes people care about something bigger than themselves. Nationalism did it for Revolutionary France. Communism created the (impossible) dreams of the Soviet Union.
Think of America's Founding Fathers. They didn't merely force 13 colonies to come together and make a new country. It was the philosophy written in many pamphlets, newspapers, books, the Declaration of Independence, and the Consitution that made strangers realize the big picture. That to all prosper, they needed to become Americans who believed in:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
This new philosophy is how the United States formed a new political community. And this "Liberty Bell" player god kicked ass in the game of civilization during the Industrial Age. That's why the rest of Western Civilization, more or less, followed America's example.
So contemporary Americans, Canadians, Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, can learn from the lesson. If we ever want to independent from the Industrial Age power brokers inside Big Government and Big Business, we'll need to make a new Internet Age player god.
And if order to do that, regular people need to click a new philosophy. Once we install a new way of thinking, we'll bee able to "look up" again see ourselves as the player gods of our civilization.
This video displays how the game of politics is played. Player gods always have a list of different technologies, cultures, and policies to choose from. Only when Main Street holds the levers of power can we pick the best ones for ourselves. Credit: Civilization 6. Video.
Good Politics Is a Moving Target Because You're the One Who's Moving
A common philosophy unites player gods. Only when joined with a shared understanding of right and wrong do we all think of the same big picture and "play the game" together. There are always plenty of options when deciding which to install as the ruling philosophy. The player god—we, collectively—must pick one that empowers its members to solve real-life problems using modern technology. Only then will society live a good life.
It's easy to see technology change. Installing a sewer, damming a river, building a road, is very obvious. But we can't see philosophy change so easily; because it's our minds that evolve to believe in a new way of thinking.
Astronauts often talk about how life-changing it is to see Earth as nothing but a dot in space. However, we can't yet travel to the Moon to rethink human affairs on Earth. For now, Playing Anno 1800 or Civilization 6 is the best way to give yourself a boost when detaching yourself from the current ruling philosophy.
When you play a computer game, you'll see every ruling philosophy is temporary. You'll understand this because you'll experience first-hand that each civilization lasts many generations. Every person in the game, and therefore in real life, is always working to bring on the next era. Thus, just as a sailboat is a stepping stone to a steamship, every person's philosophical beliefs are a stepping stone to something better.
Credit: Civilization 6.Video.
The video above shows a "tech tree" of new technologies, tools, civic, and philosophy upgrades. In the real world, just like improving our technology, we also upgrade our philosophy with a "click." Except this improvement happens when a new philosophy clicks in the minds of multiple people and unites them in a relationship so strong that it forms a new player god.
However, even with a general agreement, every member of the community interprets the ruling philosophy differently. This is why Left/Right politics has many different camps like Conservative or Progressive. Libertarian or Socialist. Republican or Democrat.
Still, even with ideologies to guide our philosophical opinions, understanding our political views is hard. We all look up at the same doctrines—we all try to "think of the big picture," yet we arrive at different answers. Our opinions are a by-product of our psychology, job, skillset, family, geography, culture, ethnicity, religion, time-period. Who can understand how all these factors intermix to make a political opinion? Why does one friend cry tears of sadness, the other of joy, on the same election night?
I can't explain it either. But I can help you understand politics today.
Because the dawn of every new age is the same. Idealistic inventors create a flood of new technologies, and a wealthy establishment fights to maintain its control over society.
Innovators and establishment both want their philosophy to click with the people and become the ruling philosophy. The establishment uses the rules of the old philosophy to persuade, or force, the people to keep the rich in power. At the same time, inventors distribute new technology to lure people away from the past.
And here is when everyone on Main Street makes a huge choice.
Does the regular person help the protagonists evolve civilization by using modern tools to change their way of life? Or, does the average person let the antagonists hold back progress by following old lifestyles and rules?
If you stay out of the fight, you support the establishment by keeping things the way they are. That makes you what computer games call a "non-playing character". Which means you're basically an extra watching your civilization as if it was a movie you can't control. However, if you grab hold of the new levers of power, you're a player god, playing the game of civilization.
Player gods help evolve their society.
History always celebrates protagonists and player gods. These are two times regular people stepped up to become player gods. Credit: Boston Public Library.
We hit the Internet Age in 1970. Since then, hackers, geniuses, and geeks have been fighting to give the incredible power of computers to Main Street. The middlemen who control Industrial Age technology are fighting them off with things like fancy marketing campaigns, copyright laws, and political lobbying.
And everyone on Main Street today makes a choice. Do they step up and help the heroes or not?
That's a choice you, the person reading this right now, has to make. It's a choice as big as any you're ever going to make. Because if we don't upgrade now, it only means your kids and your grandkids are destined to live even unhappier lives. The burden of transforming society will only fall on their shoulders.
A bit heavy to pull on your parental heartstrings, but it's true. Life on Main Street will keep getting worse until we upgrade to the Internet Age. Evil things like debt and depression, hatred and hunger, wars, and pandemics, only stay away if we keep evolving our technology and culture.
Don't worry. We can finish the Internet Age upgrade. Even now, during this pandemic, we can start to upgrade our way of life. People only need to believe in a new philosophy. One that teaches us how great the world will be when we finally control the Internet Age levers of power as player gods.
This video lets you see "the game" of civilization in our real history. You don't need to watch it all. But you should now know each new civilization is a group of people who "clicked" together and thus change their technology, culture, and ruling philosophy. We survive and rise as protagonists and player gods, or decline and fall as antagonists and extras. Britain, France, America, and the rest of the Left and Right world won the Industrial Age. But the winner of the Internet Age is still up to grabs.
We Upgrade our Politics Now, or We Lose the Game
Politics is currently quite emotional. Actually, from the disputed elections of the American government to the radicalization of European politics, I think it's better to say Westerners across the world fucking hate each other. And many don't know why. They're just angry. And not in the "I stepped in the puddle" sort of way. Mad "because the other side is ruining everything!" kind of way.
Let's get some perspective. Today, regular people are increasingly unhappy. To cope, we often pick an ideology to help us. Conservatism and Progressivism are the big choices because both were the best at industrializing the world during the Industrial Age and the era of mass-production. Conservatives fight for free-markets to help society create more houses, cars, and consumer products, Progressives fight to redistribution this property to keep our community fair. This divide causes a tug of war over regulations, tax rates, subsidies, and other government policies.
However, digital property is automatically distributed and mass-produced. Even better, digital stuff such as ebooks, websites, and videos never spoil and can be accessed from anywhere. As our world becomes more virtual in the Internet Age, Industrial Age policies to mass-produce and redistribute, grow obsolete.
But rather than rethink hundreds of years of "Left vs. Right" politics, both sides turn extremist.
Old-school businessmen keep their Conservative troops loyal with constant stories of "fighting evil communists who are coming for your money!" De-regulation, tax-cuts, free-trade are among the right-wing rallying calls. In contrast, social justice warriors keep left-wing politics exciting by "fighting racist fascists who want to oppress you!" Their choir forms around demands for climate justice, diversity indoctrination, and making up pronouns.
In short, today, Left-wing partisans think politics is one long Woodstock activism march to fight against the selfishness of wealthy fascists. While their Right-wing adversaries believe politics is defending the idyllic Leave It to Beaver suburban life against lazy communists.
In our communities, nationwide fascism and communism (thankfully) died decades ago. Meaning few people in Western societies label themselves fascist or communist. Left and Right brand their enemies these names because neither understands digital technology helps individuals prosper (as Progressives dream) by forcing individuals to better themselves (as Conservatives demand). With their founding goals achieved in the Internet Age, Left and Right extremists stay alive by keeping their believers in the choir singing against "the other side."
Fighting phantoms distract Main Street with great television.
In fact, spectacular entertainment is their strategy. Both Left and Right ideologues don't want regular people to become player gods of the Internet Age. They want their supporters to stay extras in the Industrial Age. When Main Street complains about how much modern life sucks, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and the rest put up "Breaking News! The Other Side Is Ruining Our Country!" to distract their believers from the fact both Left and Right are out of date.
Blockbuster movie sequels do the same thing. Without more special effects and sex scenes, all their viewers would too quickly notice how boring franchise movies are.
In the Industrial Age, Left and Right used to cooperate all the time. Not anymore. This video excellently shows the growing hatred between them. It's about the US Congress but applies in every Western country. Notice how the divide started in the 1970s and has grown since. That's because neither Left or Right knows what to do in the Internet Age, so they blame each other for the society's growing list of problems. Credit: Business Insider.
The answer to countering hateful ideologies is to upgrade our philosophy to the modern age.
Sadly, in history, upgrading only happens when old doctrines kill each other off. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) is an all too good example. This horrible war between European kingdoms was fought during the Science Age. But politics hadn't upgraded yet. Europe was still run by a powerful nobility preaching the Medieval Age philosophy of "a nobles divine right to rule."
When Main Street demanded a better life, the "divine right to rule" ruling philosophy only gave them two options to choose from; Catholicism and Protestantism. Regular people picked a team and slaughtered "the other side" on behalf of "divine kings". Historian Peter H. Wilson summarized The Thirty Years War as "a warning of the dangers of entrusting power to those who feel summoned by God to war, or feel that their sense of justice and order is the only one valid."
The Hanging by Jacques Callot. Created between 1632 and 1633 to show how regular people were treated by both "sides" during the war. Credit: Wikipedia.
The Thirty Years War was extremely brutal. One in five Europeans died from its pillaging, battles, and massacres. The carnage only stopped when both sides were exhausted. The worst part was when the horror ended, the people realized they were no better off, and their problem was, in fact, being ruled by any and all kings. That's why philosophers soon wrote an upgraded philosophy of Democracy. It wasn't long until it clicked between ordinary people, who therefore adopted modernized Democracy as their new ruling philosophy. As player gods, the people fought against divine kings in the American Revolution (1776), the French Revolution (1789), and many more uprisings afterward.
The hatred between Catholics and Protestants should sound scarily similar. Today's fights over presidential impeachments, border walls, and trigger words are a smokescreen. Left and Right hate each other because neither can see or admit they're both behind the times in our modern age.
The ray of sunshine is, most people today are moderate Progressives and Conservatives. While these reasonable people find motivation in Left or Right ideologies, they concentrate on real-world problem solving and not ideological purity. It's much easier for moderate citizens to discard ideology, compromise, and "reach across the aisle" to solve a problem. And then tackle the next issue on the list.
However, as we keep using more Internet Age technology, it gets harder to rationalize aging ideological beliefs. The result is ideological loyalists devoutly watch the 24/7 media circus that's making our society hate itself, and moderate people keep abandoning politics.
This is what Left/Right has devolved to. Keep in mind, commentators, reporters, and columnists don't go to work like you and then think about the world. Being on TV is their job. But since too many of us tune-in, our elected politicians are forced to care what they think. Real politics put modern technology into ordinary people's hands. Once we start concentrating on building our own levers of power, our politicians will be free to help us.
The Internet Age Needs a New Philosophy
For Techvolution to be our new Internet Age philosophy, it must inspire everyone in the middle-class to see the big picture again. Left/Right are whiners who'd you never select to start a new civilization, and so really should not be in control of our current one. The big-picture today is realizing our future is being built by the people working at Tesla, SpaceX, Deno, Mozilla, OpenAI, and Blue Origin. Everyone who wants to live in the Internet Age should be following these heroes' example.
Therefore, regular people should fund, make, and use modern levers of power. Examples are home solar panels to power an urban farm. A car maintenance app to know which cars and mechanics are best. And openly available management performance reviews to help keep our companies honest.
Techvolution will work best if you're sick of contemporary infotainment politics but love checking-out what Elon is up to.
Because this new philosophy will empower the passion in your heart that wants to improve the world right now. After all, with digital technology, most of today's problems are quite simple engineering problems. We don't have to invent impossible technology like time-travel to solve road traffic, personal loneliness, or rising healthcare costs.
You'll really like this book if you know that unless we see ourselves in the video below, Evolution will find someone who does.
That's our ancestors in the video, and it should be all of us today too. So, if you despise your job, believe in conspiracy theories, worry about climate change, get intimidated by the uber-rich, are scared about COVID-19… fine, you've spotted a problem.
What are you going to do about it? Wait to cast a vote in an election, yell at a TV, or find, fund, and use a new tool to solve the problem?
What would Harry Potter do?
You have the power to stand up and solve society's long list of problems.
For all the negatives of this pandemic, I think there's one big positive. Most people are stepping up, staying home, self-isolating, and social distancing. A few weeks ago, these habits didn't even exist, and it's already taboo to flaunt them. Our society can still adapt when we realize we should.
That's really good because we have a lot of evolution ahead of us.
I wrote this book to get you dreaming about them all. It's written to be like New Atlantis, On Social Contract, and Common Sense. All books that helped start modern democracies by making unhappy people realize the big picture. That our choices are our most potent political weapon. That with advanced technology, our choices are, in fact, levers for change.
Today, if we don't step up to upgrade our politics, we'll keep suffering the unknowns of a degenerating Industrial Age society. We'll stay unhappy extras watching stories of phantom communists and fascists, instead of gazing up to a future as player gods of the Internet Age.
And if we stay non-playing characters, at least with this book, our kids can read what their parents could have done as they regret the choices of player gods who lost because they refused to play the game.
The Grand Mission of Techvolution
Writer David Mamet once said not trying to please a group of people, means empowering yourself to better see Nature. So, I embraced that idea when writing this book. Meaning, I didn't try to please any pundit, reporter, or professor. I'm a regular guy who wrote this for myself and my fellow people on Main Street so we can win the game together.
Saying that, Techvolution has several parts:
I. A New Philosophy: This part shows how to upgrade our philosophy to the Internet Age. Its purpose is to empower Main Street to see the big picture. That we're all player gods who must fund, design, make, and use apps, electronics, and the internet to solve our problems now. Fittingly, the best indicator of our progress is how happy we are with our lives.
II. Building the Life Star: This section explains the new political and economic truths we'll see in the Internet Age. New technologies like sensors, bio-monitors, and big data will become our "microscope" and "telescope." With these digital tools, we'll be enabled to see the effect of our predictions, and therefore create objective definitions of political and economic "right and wrong" as we play the game. In short, the Life Star will do for politics and economics what scientific instruments did for physics, chemistry, biology, etc. The troubling part is many people—especially phantom storytellers of old philosophies—won't accept what this new telescope shows us.
III. Starting Starfleet: Once we can see ourselves in the Life Star "telescope," we'll use it to design digital tools detached from the Industrial Age. As the Industrial Age's material abundance helped us live in so-called "perpetual peace," Internet Age products will make our lifestyle one of "perpetual profit." We'll send the massive savings to the protegees of Musk and Bezos and hence jumpstart the Space Exploration Age—or as I like to say, "Start Starfleet."
How to See the Matrix: To write Techvolution, I used Aristotle's Poetics to better understand Hegelian dialectics. Then I added some evolutionary biology because I think it and political philosophy are similar, if not the same, fields. If that bores you to pieces, that's cool, you don't need to read more about it. But just so you know, Techvolution is based on a full-blown philosophy that I'll explain in another book called How to See the Matrix.
No More Magic - The End of Movies: Like Silicon Valley is today, Hollywood was once a pillar of innovation. By mastering modern technology, "the movies" became an affordable and fun night out for the middle class. Now we've almost forgotten what movie seats feel like. All because the industry used modern technology to oversell blockbusters instead of telling better stories like HBO or Netflix have done so well. No More Magic looks behind the curtain of a dying Industrial Age industry and foreshadows what's to come if our economy doesn't upgrade to the Internet Age soon. This article is only for reference as I wrote it many years ago.
The 2008 Economic Crisis Was Only the Beginning: In the Medieval Age, the sword and scepter were the ultimate levers of power. These were replaced by the muskets of a civilian-military, the gavel of a blind justice system, and the voting booth. In the same fashion, whether we like it or not, the Industrial Age supreme levers of power are crumbling so they can be replaced by Internet Age technology. That's why the image for this article is the people of the Industrial Age "player god" waking up, while the leader is looking up in sadness; his time in the sun is over. I was writing this article in 2006 and finished up in 2009. Like A New Philosophy, it says we need to upgrade our way of life to digital technology but is cruder in doing so. Again this article is only for reference.
The land of perpetual profit. We're never going to get there with Left/Right politics. Credit: James Clyne.
Techvolution A New Philosophy has a very high goal. So, I want to be crystal clear about its purpose. We're in the new and wondrous Internet Age. But we're still using the philosophy of the Industrial Age to run our society. Conservatism (1791), and Progressivism (1859) philosophy cards were clicked many years ago. It's thus no longer good enough for the middle-class to watch infotainment news, donate to a social cause, march in a demonstration, and think we're improving the world.
To have a better society, we need a new ruling philosophy. One that gives people the right and duty to evolve our culture to the Internet Age by funding, building, and owning content, apps, and electronics custom-designed to improve life on the frontline.
In line with that goal, our new philosophy must target today's most significant political enemy; antagonism. Like despotism, racism, and sexism, opposition to our technological evolution needs to be eliminated.
Antagonism is created when the "eight different bosses" of the Industrial Age choose to guard the gates of old technology. These antagonists reject the opportunity to build the Internet Age. Instead, they fight to keep Industrial Age products, like TPS reports and broadcast TV, alive.
Two comedians talking about making money on Main Street. Since they can now make internet podcasts, they are both liberated from Industrial Age television broadcasters. Even ones with black belts. Credit: JRE. Video.
The changing of the guard, from the Industrial Age to the Internet Age, is basically what this book is about. To liberate more people from the gatekeepers, we need a new philosophy that eliminates antagonism.
Antagonism is defeated when ordinary people have the right, duty, and protection to use the best tool to solve a problem in their home and work lives. Helping to define the what's really the best tool is what the Life Star is for.
But that's not around yet.
And we're not talking about government regulations and laws either. That gets us back to lobbying for change. So, instead of hoping for the Internet Age to come to us, the middle-class must go to it by getting our hands on new apps and electronics.
Because using and listening to podcasts is what's empowering everyone on Main Street.
However, to distribute more apps, electronics, and other levers of power to the middle-class, we must evolve more than just new politics.
Like magic, or the Force, this machine can make face-masks, wrenches, replacement parts, and almost anything else. Using new technology is real politics. Because it promotes evolution. But we need a new economic policy to help player gods spread tools like this throughout society. Video.
