Brave New World arrived

Aldous Huxley's dystopia
of a Brave New World
has long since arrived.
At the latest with the rise of neuroscience,
that, without resistance,
has seeped into every pore of 'our' thinking
- in science, the media, in politics and policy -,
'we' have willingly entered the happy new land.

'We' - who are we?
Those cast by history
along its Western trajectory
from the First Greek Beginning.

Now we are progressing into the cyberworld,
fascinated by shiny gadgets, wearables, implantables.
We cheerfully adopt them for the sake of
convenience, efficiency, effectiveness,
maximum longevity.

Thus we enthusiastically consummate our destiny,
allowing ourselves to become
absorbed relentlessly by that realm
of circulating bit-strings
copulating in countless Turing machines.

Thus we carry out unquestioningly, avidly,
the blueprint laid down by Aristotle
in his ontology of movement
along linear time
- boundless will to effective power -
without batting an eyelid.

The thought of opening up the line
into a clearing
does not cross our mind,
not in natural science,
nor in social science,
nor in the humanities,
nor in scholarship,
nor in critical thinking,
nor in philosophy.

The Other Thinking,
borne by few,
is repulsed, ridiculed, reviled,
the task of ontologically
recasting world
scarcely begun.


Further reading The Digital Cast of Being, 'Turing's cyberworld of timelessly copulating bit-strings', 'Out of your mind?'