1. I was thinking about a recent tweet of mine that discussed how trans is rooted in transhumanism, closing it by mentioning that cyborgs are coming. @TheWorthyHouse pushed back, rightly so, saying there will never be cyborgs. This got me thinking about the Emperors New Clothes.
2. The more I thought about it, the more I began seeing the connection across the various ways in which the regime is the emperor in the Emperor’s New Clothes. It’s a familiar story. The emperor is duped in believing that he a new suit of clothes and no one tell him he’s naked.
3. This is the reality of much of techno-scientific discourse. Many of the cultural and political aspirations of the regime fall into this reality. What do I mean by this? Everything around us associated with the regime has high aspirational goal. They are the “new suit.”
4. But as you look closer at the aspirations, once you see through all of the “court” who feels that their success is built on making the emperors happy, convinces themselves that their future success is tied up with the regime and so they tout all the “new clothes.”
5. They part of the good people who are ushering in the grand new progressive vision. But those outside the regime, whose future is not dependent upon it or who are part of communities that insulate us from regime ideas, we look and see a naked man surrounded by a bunch of fools.
6. Let’s just give a quick rundown of this new suit that is not a suit of clothes.
Zero Covid. They could not prevent its spread. The vaccines are awful. It was a nasty bug but not still kill a tiny number of people and the counter measures were totalitarian in intent.
Zero Covid. They could not prevent its spread. The vaccines are awful. It was a nasty bug but not still kill a tiny number of people and the counter measures were totalitarian in intent.
7. Global warming. This one is such a nothing burger that they had to rebrand it “climate change.” Yet we are all supposed to dutifully give our assent to the idea that the climate is changing in such extreme ways as to threaten humanity.
8. Transgenderism. We are all expected to celebrate the idea that through the use of hormones and surgery that they can change boys into girls and girls into boys. It does not matter how good the cosmetic surgery is, it is still a set of emperor’s clothes.
9. Cyborgs. Yes we know the stories. We have all seen Robcop and iRobot and it’s never going to happen. They will try and they will cheer it on, but they will build monstrosities and we will be expected to celebrate them.
10. Self-driving cars and artificial intelligence. They are never going to come up with truly self driving cars or true AI. Why? Because no one really has any idea, like literally none, how it is that we as humans think and reason and make decisions. More new clothes.
11. Renewable energy. As our governments pump more and more money into renewables like wind and solar it is becoming increasingly obvious that they will never live up to the hype and they will never give the kinds of results they claim. Yet we are all expected to celebrate them.
12. Ending poverty? How much money has been poured into ending poverty? How much of society’s energy and effort have gone into trying to end poverty? Yet another set of emperors new clothes. But we have to do something? Let’s begin by being honest. You will never eliminate it.
13. Ending racism. Sorry. You will never get rid of bias, prejudice and hate. And you certainly won’t do it through technical means like quotas or equity programs and the like. You can’t end bad racism with good racism. That just increases racism.
14. All across our society we are expected to celebrate the achievements we have made and the progress we have achieved and celebrate how progressive we are. We all look at the new suit and think it’s a beautiful set of clothes. But their is no clothes.
15. So what is going to change things? In the story it was a little boy who pointed out the emperor was naked. I doubt we will be so fortunate.
16. Because there is a material interest in people believing these things, that is believing that the emperor’s clothes are beautiful and proclaiming those beliefs are how you advance at court. As long as that’s true, regime toadies will be impervious to argument.
17. But as soon as this is not the case, say in a serious prolonged economic downturn, people will begin to wake up and question and ask, “why are paying for this?” Maybe they never will. This idea of progress is deeply ingrained in the west, especially in America.
18. Everything about who we are in the west is built around scientific, technological, economic and social progress. Our history has been the long climb out of the dark ages to the glorious present and the even better future.
19. Somehow it seems almost like when you question things and you make the observation, “seems like the emperor is naked to me” you are made to feel anti-western or un-American. Every part of society embraces part of this narrative.
20. The right has a belief is the market economy and the power of the market to unleash technological innovation. Another set of emperor’s new clothes. Sorry, but our whole culture is starting to wake up to the reality we have no clothes on and everything you thought true isn’t.
21. This is where politics is at. Coming to grips with the idea that we have built a culture and a society that is, in the end, a real time re-enactment of the “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
22. This is very disorienting because there is so little of what is around us to grasp on to, that we don’t really know how to go forward. We offer more “solutions” but these are just part of the old set of clothes.
23. Part of being right wing today is acknowledging our nakedness and being willing to see how deep and how far down the rabbit hole everything goes.
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