Yearning for Lost Optimism

Winter blues

Today was a pretty normal Saturday in January. We took down Christmas decorations, as we usually do the first Saturday after Twelfth Night (for those who don't know, December 25th is the first of the 12 days of Christmas), and cleaned up after the holidays. Despite the activity, I've been feeling rather blue and pessimistic about the future. In particular, I've felt very disillusioned with a lot of things in the world.

It all seemed so innocent once

There was a time, really not that long ago, that I was a techno-optimist. I had bought into the Sillicon Valley narrative that the inevitable "march of progress" would fix all our problems and lead to a better, more just world for everyone. In hindsight, it was incredibly naive, but for a while it seemed the world was getting better. The internet would give everyone access to the total of human knowledge, and this would accelerate solutions to other problems: solar panels and electric cars to solve pollution and global warming, vaccines and new drugs to solve disease, advanced agricultural techniques and plant-based meats to sustainably feed the world population without destroying ecosystems and abusing animals. Even the social ills of racism, sexism, nationalism, and other forms of bigotry would fade as people had more contact with others not like themselves, or so I thought.

The System is self-correcting, or is it?

While Trump's election in 2016 shook my belief in inevitable progress, it wasn't until later that this belief would shatter. It was easy to see Trump as a fluke, a last grasp for power from a dying patriarchy. Sure, Trump set us back a bit, but it was all something that we would overcome. The rolled-back environmental regulations were met with resistance. I believed that every protection he repealed would be restored by the next administration. He could lash out against progress, but not stop it. Even the U.S. withdrawl from the Paris Climate Agreement, was futile as several states formed the the US Climate Alliance. At the time, I was still naive enough to see this as a meaningful measure rather than a distraction from the real problem: capitalism.

At the time, I was still operating under the illusion that markets and technology could save us. I believed that more people were waking up to the grave threats facing all of us, and that this in turn would lead consumers to demand that companies clean up their act, and that the market would reward the businesses that met this demand. Sure, I saw some problems with the capitalist system at the time, but I believed that capitalism could evolve to address these issues. This was part of the reason I decided to go back to school for an MBA. Colorado State University's School of Business has the motto "Business for a Better World," promoting the idea that business could drive the solutions to the world's problems. I wanted to be part of that.

The Tech Betrayal

Few industries have trumpeted their "high minded ideals" quite like the tech industry. I remember when many big tech companies bragged about their inclusive cultures (though it can be hard to find now, in the current political culture that bashes "woke" ideologies, like inclusion). I remember in the early 2010's when Microsoft and Google would sponsor the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and regularly earn top marks in their "Corporate Equality Index." Many publicly announced sustainably programs, before this trend caught on across the rest of corporate America. And most people knew of Google's (in)famous motto "Don't Be Evil"

I'm not going to go into too much depth as to why I think this shift happened. It is likely that there were many factors at play, and there are many bloggers have written a lot about it. Corey Doctorow coined the term "Enshittification" to describe how services go being useful to aweful due to market forces. While this can apply to any industry, it is most prevalent in tech.

And then there is the set of toxic ideologies that have been taking hold among the technocratic elite. This ideology, dubbed TESCREAL by AI researcher Dr. Timnit Gebru, is just eugenics and Nazi ideology repackaged for the 21st century. I could write for hours about it, but it just leaves me angry.

So, what now?

With hindsight, we can see how we got into this mess. What is harder is to see how we can get out. It's pretty clear that tech will not save us, and we can't count on the "magic of markets" to fix the mess it causes. Likewise, our leaders, in both political parties, have failed us. Hoping for a hero to come and save us isn't going to get us out of this mess.

But I'm not sure how we can get ourselves out of this mess either. The worst people control all the levers of power in our society. Individual action, including abstaining from all harmful consumption in this capitialistic system (which is impossible, as all consumption under capitalism is fraught) is ineffective. One would be more able to put out the fires in California with a squirt gun, while maniacs run amok with flame-throwers. I wish I had the solutions, but I don't. And that feeling of powerlessness is aweful. I miss when the problems facing the world seemed solvable.