Left Behind

By

John Wright

This article addresses what I consider to be the greatest, most damaging societal schism humanity has ever faced, and so far faced poorly. It is the recognition by the people who are not part of our rapidly advancing science and technology, and the implementations of the products that result, that they are being left behind ... as a kind of appendix that has little functional value in providing anything necessary for the development of the present and the future of humanity.

I was aware of this issue a very long time ago simply by seeing the different ability levels of the people around me. We have varied levels of ability to address the many demands and opportunities that life presents to us as individuals. We all have limitations. But the span of the differences in learning abilities of individuals is huge across the world population. Whether the topic is basketball or nuclear physics, the reality is we are very different from each other in developed abilities and accomplishments when you consider whole populations with different cultures. We are not equal. Even if potentially equal we are divided based on our actual accomplishments.

The issue, the central topic of this article, is to force recognition of the insanity that is happening as a result of those being left out, left behind, realizing that in terms of human advancement they no longer bring much of anything of value to the table. Ouch! They are experiencing what it means to be obsolete, in terms of income and societal recognition, and that is creating hell across our societies and lots of idiotic value judgments about our cultures, external to and within any given society. This is a global problem. And the accompanying hatred is misdirected, for in real life there is no equal opportunity, for we all start from different levels of societal advantage or disadvantage based on where we are born, globally and within individual countries. Also, as individuals we have different aptitudes for learning the large variety of subjects that comprise human knowledge.

Life ain't fair. It never was. How could you know what your birth IQ would be in math and science, law and literature, art or entertainment? What can you do about it? The answer is ... nothing (until genetic engineering enables you to excel in all human areas of endeavor). You are what you were born with in terms of capacity to appreciate, to learn and to create. Then, you may or may not actually learn or create, regardless of your level of appreciation. That part is up to your good or bad fortune plus your inherent desire to succeed in society ... any society.

The crisis I am addressing in this article is that one specific area of human endeavor is making major advancements and the remaining areas are, like much of history, running around in circles with limited ability to add to knowledge or improve anything substantively. Such things as have been created by those with IQ's high in law and literature or art and entertainment have pretty much hit a stone wall. Society in these areas is redoing virtually everything, over and over, with no real growth in creative accomplishment via new, proven societal development ideas. Instead, we are devolving in character and knowledge across the general population, who also cannot learn math and science except at superficial levels ... or much of anything else.

This sad reality is too readily seen simply by comparing the evolution of products of math and science vs the running in circles, sad circles, of the other endeavors of society. You might ask, am I happy about that? No way! But I also have to be honest as I review history and the present. We have hit a stone wall in our efforts to grow our societies in values, morals and in general helpful attitudes towards one and all. Law and literature plus art and entertainment simply haven't continued to develop beyond the early 20th century. Instead we have pie in the sky socialism, and music and art that are barely discernable, let alone fit to be appreciated, believed or followed. In short, we are way out of balance, and seriously declining in quality in law and literature, plus most of entertainment and art. Our general population in the USA is, with notable exceptions for a few, declining into major ignorance.

Note that as recently as 100 years ago in the USA this left behind problem affected mostly black people. A lot has been done to improve their lives in terms of education and jobs, and also welfare when needed. But now? We have a dual problem resulting from advancing technologies. The first reality is that we need ever fewer people in manufacturing jobs due to advances in businesses like automobile manufacture, where robots have been used increasingly for 30 to 40 years. The second reality is we allowed corporations to offshore many of the remaining good manufacturing jobs, so we now have a large population of well intentioned and reasonably trained people who can no longer find good jobs, only jobs with marginal income. The offshoring has also eliminated white collar jobs so we have more than a generation of citizens educated but unable to find good jobs, and this has been exacerbated by importing educated people from other countries via H1B visas. Overall, a lot of our citizens have been left behind and they are understandably angry. And it doesn't stop there.

To point ... can you blame a trapped animal for attacking? Can you appreciate that individuals of high intelligence in fields outside of the physical sciences and applied technology are bent out of shape? The present and coming overwhelming changes in societies due to developmental areas like AI and Robotics even make people fairly competent in the physical sciences nervous. There is no roadmap for the sustenance and the development of humanity and the absolutely essential level of respect necessary for humans to feel meaningful and full of purpose in experiencing life. At the moment, this is a brewing disaster. Make no mistake, the intelligent non-technical people who find themselves no longer holding the steering wheel for directing human development/societal values are bitterly angry. Just look at television media expressed dislikes and bias and you can't help but understand we are in trouble ... especially if you look at both opposing sides of capitalism vs socialism. The dissembling is pathetic, but it attracts people who feel cheated, including people in higher education.

I became uncomfortable over 25 years ago with the refusal of humanities professors to even read Destiny after they read what it was about in the introductory letter. They were already aware of what was coming, and they were already "acting out" their frustrations. The obsolescence issue, by the way, is the fundamental reason why they reverted to teaching college students what to think instead of how to think! Thus we now have an angry, alienated and politically polarized large group of poorly educated college graduates. What was/is a serious limitation has become a destructive societal influence that has led to extreme, socialistic far out attempts to create value out of nothing, like "woke" or "dei." And let's not excuse the hypercapitalist economic damage within the USA caused by offshoring, resulting in China eating our lunch and looking for more. Gee, thanks Oligarchy! You pricks!

Destiny was and is my effort to use science and technology to give all of us the ability to contribute to the advancement of humanity and to enjoy our lives, to feel meaningful from rational, actual accomplishments. My recognition of the potential of genetic engineering for vastly increasing human lifespans and human intelligence across the entire species was and is the whole point. We have to address the schism and we owe it to our fellow humans to do that in kind and effective ways so the majority of humans are not left behind. We also have to be prepared to live in the world of AI and robotics, without becoming dullards. And if we do not?

The seriousness of the problem is major. You can see an obvious example of it from the violence in the Middle East. You can see a different aspect in the general ignorance of USA young adults. Real competition outside of video games and sports is considered by too many young people to be culturally criminal, and they have been spoon fed socialistic idiocies (like everybody who participates get a winners ribbon) since kindergarten within our educational systems. The sad truth is recognition of obsolescence of major proportions is behind the idiocies of the affected adults/teachers, who in turn are turning the children against any aspect of society that is not pure socialism and false messages of equality.

You now see the fundamental problem. There have always been ability and other differences between people, but merely 100 years ago an individual of very limited ability could still find meaningful employment, albeit at the low income end. Today we have a large percentage of our citizens not paying any income tax (>50%) due to their limited or nonexistent income from working. We have increasing dependence on welfare and we have poor people from other countries coming here by the millions and becoming illegal immigrants. Well, poverty is an extreme motivator, and hunger will cause people to kill each other, without remorse, for the alternative is one's own death by starvation. We have plenty of historical examples where starving people ate dead people in order to survive.

It should be obvious that our major problems just described in this article cannot be ignored. We have been on the brink of revolutions globally, and the never ending wars in the Middle East, which we wrongly attribute solely to religious differences, are in fact the reality that most of the people making war are, aside from oil revenues, living in dirt poor countries next door to economic success in Israel. Religion in the form of utter obedience to obtain what is desired after death is the only given hope for the poor populations. Total anger with successful populations is the real reason for the cultural war. Note that the endless wars have been happening in the Middle East for literally thousands of years, so this is a permanent problem until it is actually solved. That means the elimination either of poverty everywhere or death to the extent that poor populations decline massively in numbers. Is the latter possibility humane? Is not the improvement of humans in abilities to learn useful subjects the better path, with managed, not destroyed, population sizes in the interim?

We used to believe, naively, that curing world hunger via the fruits of science would fix the poverty problems. What has actually happened is we have very large and growing populations of precisely the people who have been the recipients of the green revolution, and that baldly means they will not, by their own choice, manage reproduction. So now we have the dual problems of people being meaningless to the advancement of humanity and simultaneously increasing in a major way in numbers and resource consumption. Can we be so foolish as to believe this situation can be politically, financially and physically accommodated going into the future?

I am being a bit of a smartass with my next thought ... Is it any wonder Elon Musk wants the option for people to live on Mars? Is it not obvious that fear of asteroids destroying most life on Earth is simply one of the ways of destroying quality of life and life itself on Earth? We are doing that via overpopulation and resulting human caused climate change, and depending on advancing technologies to contain the size of the problems is and has been the wrong way, for there is nothing present in the form of a problem limiting factor. This situation continues until the system breaks, and at that point the horrors of billions dying from starvation and war become reality.

Left behind? Exit to Mars for the most capable people? Or, perhaps we degrade our civilization with larger wars to contain increasing population problems. One thing is clear ... our chosen path for trying to be fair to all populations is the wrong path, for the solutions exacerbate the problems continuously, without any viable solutions even being discussed publically, like mandatory birth control all over the planet. Is it humane to continue pretending we can use advancing technologies in food production and waste management so we can be irresponsible in population growth forever? Or will the products of scientific discovery and technology advancement ultimately result in some unspoken, unacknowledged method to reduce human population?

I was hoping we could rely on genetic engineering to solve our endless historical problems of war and famine and ignorance ... but is that realistic given our rate of decline of knowledge and maturity and the needs of ever larger populations? I have my doubts. Meanwhile we have the obsolescence issue. How does it feel to be considered irrelevant? Do you like being nonessential? Will you reproduce to the point of creating broad global poverty? Are we going to solve this reality by improving all humans or will we simply continue on our present path to self destruction.

I think we had better wake up globally and face reality, and then act on that knowledge responsibly. And note that we are at least decades away from the genetic engineering advances essential to improving human health and intelligence on a large scale.

If we do not contain the above stated problems, I may be lucky enough to die of old age before our problems as stated get totally out of control. I won't be Left Behind. Or, I may not be so lucky.

What about you? Why not develop a plan in your own mind as well as working with others, that will allow humans to live without the described potential, pending disasters? Make it a practical plan, complete with details for handling all areas of serious conflict across populations. No? Well then at least try to figure out how you will avoid boredom living in a modern nursery for an obsolescent species.

Universal Basic Income in a world run by AI and robots may sound attractive now, but note that your future ignorance of how to do essential tasks will make you powerless as well as dumb. Think especially of the implications of being nonessential and powerless in a complex, future world aimed primarily at the advancement of humanity.