Humans are fascinating to observe.
You don’t need to be immortal to notice that.
Nor do you need to be immortal to realize that humanity, in due time, will always be the cause of their own doom…
If you ask me what sort of civilization I enjoy taking apart, naturally, the answer is one that is more developed. It isn’t enough that people tremble before they die – I find it much more entertaining when people frighten themselves into expiration.
Information, of course, is what I’m talking about. Humans are intensely curious. Intensely progressive. Intensely capable of improving their circumstances and working with their surroundings. These are, of course, all admirable traits.
They are also wildly exploitable by someone such as I.
Yes, I am talking about the great societal shifts towards the information age. A specific timeframe of humanity’s development where society is able to generate and disseminate information on a time scale that approaches immediate. For this world, I am talking about the social network, the informational network, something you mortals call the “internet.”
In my experience, humanity will never use what it’s been given to the best of its ability. Normally, with the ability to access information on this scale, you would expect that humans can exploit this towards a common good – bridging differences, eliciting progress (technological, social, or ideological), and preventing conflict through timely communication. It gives the individual a voice, with which they may choose to address any and all of society’s woes, amplifying and highlighting issues that may have previously gone unnoticed.
All this is well and good – and very exploitable.
Open access to information results in a penchant towards the extreme – I can confidently say, without fail. It is natural that ideas, actions, and most importantly, ideologies become more and more extreme in the informational age. Extremist groups are fanatically devoted to their cause and will find no small ground of potential recruits in the world at large. This most of humanity tends to recognize – after all, human civilization has been a hotbed of clashing ideologies and ways of life since society begin.
But what they fail to see, is that this very same tendency towards more and more extreme actions has already permeated every aspect of society. Observe for instance “democratic” countries, where the premise is that the governed choose who represents and governs them.
In the informational age, our targets are not the leaders – the great shining stars of humanity, to which others look towards for hope and inspiration. There is no need. The people will suffice. Don’t understand what I mean?
Go open up the news – any news, on any thing that is important enough to warrant attention from your country’s leaders. I ask you: can any of your leaders afford to spend more than a day to actually ponder about what they’ve seen?
Of course not. That is a phenomena entirely of your creation. Humanity demands their leaders to give an answer, NOW. Humanity demands the problem to be fixed, NOW. Humanity demands action, NOW.
I laugh whenever a few of the self-aware humans wonder just why (and how) did things get to this point. Of course it got to that point because of your own technology.
Thanks to it, your leaders can no longer plan, because emotions from the “people” and amplified by social demand demand results.
Thanks to it, your society can no longer assess any situation rationally, because there is only one “voice” that can be collectively shaped by the “people.”
Thanks to it, you yourself is no longer capable of thinking. It takes individuals of tremendous willpower to dare to stand against anything that approaches consensus, much less to have any ideas of your own. Individuals will not alter the tides of history – not that I can imagine, at any rate.
I laugh, because I sometimes wonder if it’s even necessary for me to act. This, in the end, is always how your civilization end in my eyes – regressing back to creatures of emotion. When “consensus” is not built upon rational discourse, but driven by purely pursuits towards feel-good, what makes you humans different from the animals you eat?
Yes. Humanity is well on its way to lose its ability to exchange information in a meaningful way. Until this issue pertaining how information is processed can be overcome, there is zero chance that humanity will survive in a recognizable form.
In fact, I could simply sit around and let you grow and collapse on your own, but …
What’s the fun in that?