Cyberpunk vs Idiocracy
I consider these two, the possible future paths of humanity. While both are bad, one keeps the seed of possible change, the other is an evolutionary dead end.
I consider these two, the possible future paths of humanity. While both are bad, one keeps the seed of possible change, the other is an evolutionary dead end.
Idiocracy:
Cyberpunk:
In one humanity just collapses while the smart machines keep on running the show. In the other ‘reality’ democracy dies and a sort of semi-fascist system with the Corporation in charge takes hold. The sort of bad guys win scenario.
However the reason I respect Cyberpunk, because the bad guys in it are still rational.
What we need to avoid is Idiocracy.
The bad guys in Cyberpunk are still intelligent, and value philosophy and yearn for moral ideas and things.
In Idiocracy the head of the company doesn't understand anything, because computers do the jobs, but when Gatorade gets replaced by water on the farm fields, the stock of the company collapses. The CEO gets Not Sure removed from the White House for causing the stock to collapse. But ignores the fact that the population will soon run out of food and starve to death.
Same in Don't Look Up.
"We are in mortal danger." Their response: "Ha, ha. Cow farting makes me laugh!"
I can deal with evil. Because it is rational. It will attempt to self preserve.
Arrogant - Stupidity is the danger. Because it has zero self preservation instinct.
The people who run the world of Cyberpunk understand, power, science, in a sick way they are even religious. But they understand that society must survive. They have an understanding of reality and attempt to deal with reality as it is. In Blade Runner, people are cold and cruel, and lonely, but they are not stupid.
They appreciate art, culture, romance, have books all around them despite living in a digital world. The scrap people are constantly working with electronics, evading the police, try to find some kind of moral core, and are aware of the decay.
The people who run Idiocracy. Are too dumb to live. They will not respond to the threats around them. They want to eat candy and watch porn. And whenever solutions are presented: "it is a threat to my freedom, me no like!"
In the Cyberpunk world if Don't Look Up takes place there:
You have an idiot President and a moron Billionaire who thinks themselves to be a God. They ignore dying because they are too stupid to process information.
They just get killed. The White House explodes. Subversive forces get blamed. The military throws together a rocket and diverts the asteroid. The price payed? The loss of Liberal Democracy and the rise of Fascism. As the Fascists will blame the failure of the corrupt, bloated decadent old order for the disaster that almost happened.
In Cyberpunk incompetence and stupidity is hated and punished.
In Idiocracy incompetence and stupidity are celebrated and rewarded.
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark