Science Fiction
Why does hopelessness find more purchase these days?
In 2018, speaking at an event, I was asked; “What do you think of the AI and its dangers?”
I responded, rhetorically; “What do you think about the dangers of a hammer?”
I went on to say;
“AI is a tool, the question is what we do with it. God is not dropping AI, we are creating it, you choose whether we build it to create or destroy.
The problem is not with AI but with our imagination.
You know, the world we live in today is a result of things people imagined in the 1960s. The science fiction writers imagined this world and we got it. This world with all these conveniences. They imagined a society that was better. Some kid read that book and set out to create it.
The sad part today is that, science fiction is dark and filled with despair. We are incapable of even imagining something good. If we cannot even imagine something better, what the fuck are we even doing?”
The room went off into an impromptu applause. It felt good.
I was reading Alan Watts today.
He says science fiction is a reflection of the society we live in today.
Think about it…
The 1960s were a very turbulent time. The Vietnam War was claiming American lives, the Cold War was claiming American minds, Nuclear drills were normal in school and the Russians seemed to be spying from space. Even so, it was a brief period in the history of the Neo-Capitalist world when the inequities were the lowest. The gilded age was in the past, and the world wars had reset things.
Despite the threat of Nuclear War, nobody was building a bunker in New Zealand. Nobody was injecting baby blood into their veins so they could live forever. Nobody was taking private trips to space.
The Government was worrying about this as much for the millionaire as for the working class.
Today, we exist in a world where somehow CEOs feel that they are entitled to being paid 500 times the average worker.
Billionaires don’t write science fiction. It is written by someone who loves science and is probably struggling to clear the education loan while constantly being subjected to stories about billionaires who are “struggling” to give away their money.
I was wrong. Our fiction is so dark because the world we live in is dark. It is hard to imagine it get any better. It is that hopelessness that translates into science fiction today.