Before getting started… these days, I am already writing a lot about digital policy issues on FOSS Force. Therefore, here I will mostly, but not exclusively discuss what I consider the ten biggest errors of our time, summarized here. Please let me know if you agree, commenting here or by email, and please pass around the requests at the end.
The ten biggest errors of our times are, in semi-random order…
Error 1: Environmentalism without class
As I read somewhere online, environmentalism without class is just gardening, and that's why it cannot gather enough votes to make a difference. One good example is politics that push electric cars as good for the environment, instead of politics to free the millions of working poors from the slavery of forced car ownership with much more transit, with collateral but huge environmental benefits.
Error 2: believing we still have an overpopulation problem
Demography is the science that tells you what you should have done thirty years ago, in order to have around you today just the type and quantity of people you'd like. Sure, today there are on Earth three times more people than when I was born, but they are a very different mix of generations than just one or two... generations ago.
Today almost all countries, even in Africa, are aging fast, and the time to manage that change is yesterday. Regardless of what the material economy will look like thirty years from now, most people already alive today will live very strenuous and very, very depressing "golden" years if they don't seriously, concretely encourage and support now those among us who do want to have as many kids as possible.
Error 3: demeaning the 3Fs = Flag, Faith and Family
The Enlightenment was absolutely necessary, but could never be enough. Fascism does very often come "wrapped in a flag and carrying a Bible". However, automatically equating all flags, religions and, why not, preferences for traditional families with fascism is a non-negligible reason why today there are more, not less authoritarian, reactionary governments in western countries than ten or twenty years ago. We do have to get rid of all the many, real phobies, intolerance and bigotry that still plague us. But why keep doing in a way tha, no matter how right it could be in principle, is obviously backfiring?
Error 4: believing that "more is better" is progress, and that any progress must be endless, mandatory and FAST
The brains and bodies of our species are not built for instantness and excesses of any kind, be they food, communication or simulations of thinking. Physically speaking, it doesn't matter if it's inside (excess body fat) or inside (excess clothing, car, home...): we cannot be healthy with too much stuff crushing us. Brain-wise, it's the same: we cannot function properly, both individually and as a society, with brain plugs doubling as electronic tags that either drown our consciences and sense of being with just too much data or do the exact opposite, that is mine data.
Error 5: believing that Work = WORTH
Abandon the "absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living" to be valuable. People still thinking they must absolutely have a job, any job, to do good and be valuable need counseling, not a job. What human beings actually need is money to stay alive, and a purpose to make being alive worth it, vut the more the two things are separate, the better. Continues here and here.
Error 6: believing that education and schooling must prepare for work
The purpose of education is to prepare for life, not work. Education must prepare people to be good citizens, partners and parents, not good employees for roles that may not exist anymore by the time one graduates. That's the purpose of vocational training, which is something else entirely, and as such should happen outside, or after, school and college.
The confusion of education with training has created two huge problems, one short- and one long-term: the first is the myth that education MUST be always high-tech, complicated, and expensive. The second is what's called elite overproduction, that will make many people very angry. The sooner that confusion stops, the better.
Error 7: snobbing text, that is HUMAN writing and reading
99% of the knowledge we need to be really diffused across society is still text. Human-written text. That is something that requires writing and reading to master. See the purpose of education above, and the tips for parents below.
Error 8: Granting human status to what is NOT human
Real entrepreneurships is good, and so can be markets, when properly regulated. Granting the same rights of frail but precious human beings to immortal, ubiquitous, omnipotent entities is instead a hugely stupid mistake. Corporations must not have personhood, or any other human right. Ditto for what passes for AI today, which is just a really fragile smokescreen for something that is not unavoidable at all.
While I'm at this, pets. Regardless of their environmental impact or the very ethics of owning another living being for personal gratification, if we have come to benefiting from pets as much as from a spouse, fulfilling pets needs with AI and needing expensive pet insurance to cure pets we created with health issues... Maybe we must re-learn relationships, both with animals and among humans.
Error 9: not demanding a reform of MONEY before everything else
Beyond ending corporate personhood, no real reform of work and society could last without a reform of money and how it is managed, from creation to taxation. Personally, I have no idea if stuff like Modern Monetary Theory or Wörgl negative money could be the solution, but I cannot accept that the geniuses who already screwed the real economy with financial schemes "too complex to fail" except for working poors cannot also conjure something that would benefit everybody.
Error 10: believing we can act alone
Fuck lontermism, that is the advice to put the wellbeing of humans that may never exist before yours... given by the only people rich enough to never have any of your problems today. Fuck longtermism, but never do it alone. We have all been told for decades that we are only allowed to fight the system as individuals, but the only way to fix those errors and make the world a better place in your lifetime is to vote and work together now, even (especially?) with people who have very different ideas than yours on some issues.
Back to the future
Besides what I already mentioned, many of the problems above would be much, much smaller if we only were mature enough to go back to the levels of material comforts and tech sophistication of the western 1980s, rebooted and optimized with modern technologies and adult common sense. I'm talking of something nobody could dare call "degrowth, like:
personal goods, from cars and appliances to clothes and computers, built to last decades with cheap maintenance, without idiotic "smart" additions, plus
long overdue infrastructural changes like efficient public transit, rebooted air conditioning, and rebooted cement industry for all the crumbling infrastructures, from bridges to pipes, that we can't live without…
and yes, even mobile Internet, just with RSS and slowness in social media, at the right age
I mean, if even the rich are back to living like we all used to do, why shouldn’t you?
Final note on education...
On one hand, many of the jobs that pay well, are more resistant to automation and offshoring, and are also sources of great self-realization don't need a degree. More than programmers or MBAs, today's world needs plumbers, electricians, roofers and many other technicians, who also know and appreciate the humanities.
On the other hand, if I ran parenting classes, which I would like, almost all the tricks I would teach are those that you hear very seldom, because they cost nothing: avoid personal smartphones (not the internet!) until your kid is at least 14/15 years old; teach kids to always sleep regularly, make your kids addict to reading; and make kids play outside alone, as they want, as much as possible. Do this, and what will increase sensibly will be your chances of growing balanced, happy adults, instead of their student debt.
... and final personal requests to all readers.
The more support I get, the more I can write. If you want and can become a paid subscriber, thanks, that's wonderful, really. But I know we've reached peak subscription, and I think that one-time donations can be even better, for both me and and my readers. To do that, go here. Also, I am available to speak, teach, consult on any of those errors. Just email me.