"Nobody Can Tell Me How Many Children I Can Have!"
Fighting words for some, a comforting declaration for others.
Time to check the. . .time.
It's zero o'clock and the year is 2018.
By 2030, some estimates suggest that 20 percent or more of jobs humans have come to depend upon will be gone, mostly absorbed by the world of high-tech, robots and devices yet to arrive on the scene. This raises a question, interesting as never before: Who needs all these people roaming the planet?
That's right, us, we, they.
The "Third World" is destined to be especially proficient at baby production in the future, despite a population decline in developed nations. Why do some people insist on becoming proliferating "baby machines?" Probably for the same reason why baseball players consume a game by periodically spitting on the field for no apparent reason.
Which means, is there a reason to continue popping out large families? Parents love their kids, but if one looks upon the future as, not a time of opportunity, but instead a fractured era of suffering, joblessness and enough idle time to drive the newly useless ambitious folk insane, what then? We may like to believe we can choose or deny artificial intelligence and its successors down the road, but the situation more likely involves an AI that won't need us.
Doom-and-gloom prophecies are nothing new (the latest concerns observations of a giant crack in Africa and magnetic anomalies), but putting those aside in favor of merely wondering about a future catastrophe caused by human numbers alone takes a different approach. Hours need not pass into eternity before one realizes a basic point: Every person born on the planet requires land, resources and something with which to exercise one's brain.
In a world where AI accomplishments become important enough to surpass human needs, desires and basic reasons for existence, what's the point of giving birth to torrents of folk without purpose, destined only to bump into one another or, in the worst instances, murder one another just for sport (and we anticipate, as this dreary episode unfolds, that nearly all wild and domestic animals would already be dead, having been killed for food or, again, "sport")? Just look at Venezuela's empty zoos and good people who turned into prostitutes and thieves simply to survive under a radical government -- a society in chaos.
We strongly suspect that tech labs all over the world, right now, are flexing their intellectual muscles under either the hope or pretense of building a better world, though the real outcome here, almost inevitably, could be a planet hostile to the purpose or continuation of human life.
"Nobody can tell me how many children I can have!"
From smart to outsmarted in a few decades?
California governor Jerry Brown: Trial, conviction, and a long prison term, please.
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: I do believe an astounding number of people on the left really would vote this guy into the presidency, despite the Facebook baggage. Still love your daily digital "social" network activities?
Cynthia Nixon: Another actor running for something, this time for Democrat governor of New York. We guess almost any old leftist thing would be an improvement over Andrew Cuomo, but Nixon's politics will make each battle to see who can move farthest to the left without falling off the cliff. Either way, assured though it appears that a Democrat will continue to keep the NY governor's office, New Yorkers will continue to see dramatic tax increases while even more residents move out of the state. Nixon's campaign promise to allow and tax marijuana sales in NY merely shows her wish to gain state revenue on the backs of people who probably don't know or could not care less how many toxic substances come with marijuana. Better, we think, that Cynthia Nixon continue mouthing lines from a script and do what TV or motion picture directors tell her to do in the actor's world of fiction and fantasy.
The borders: If Trump's plans for National Guard or other military influence at the borders fails to work as intended, maybe AI could play a role. Has Silicon Valley invented robotic dogs capable of biting illegal border immigrants and drug runners on the ass until they turn around and go back? We could order 100,000 of those useful little items.
Writing while white: Me, guilty as charged. Look, I'm not about to stand by and take it kindly as universities, colleges and hate groups disguised as puppy dogs condemn people of whiteness for our existence. How can I speak out in this newly-enlightened society without sounding like a KKK member? The new KKK-like entity in the U.S. encompasses non-white voices acting as irrational as the KKK ever could, minus (for now) the lynchings and cross-burning. Radical voices, implementing a crazy term called "white privilege," go on the attack at every opportunity, reflected particularly in what have become, strangely, knuckle-dragging institutions of so-called higher learning where white folk are admitted with an expectation that they'll act guilty and submissive, once certain faculty members backed by cowardly or radically permissive administrations perform extreme mental twists and torture. From firsthand experience I can declare loudly and with certainty that there are few words invoking stark terror in the English language than the one known as diversity, when applied to race and skin color, but that's an issue I prefer not to detail in a blog entry.
On the plus side, we remain grateful for college students and others who have the courage to issue public reports when various groups or speakers take to the podium or classroom to intellectually water-board white people, Christianity and established values with nothing to back up their assertions other than pure racial hatred in reverse. And, by the way, these folks don't appreciate at all those who dare to exercise freedom of speech by criticizing their antics and nonsensical words.
Revel in the new society of lefties, mad as hatters.
