If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
— Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Colonel Charles Yancey, January 6th, 1816
This is a column I have been mulling over for a while but, for reasons that will be instantly obvious, I have been hesitant to write. It is about 5G, vaccines, 9/11, aliens and lizard overlords. Or more accurately, it isn’t.
The prophecies are here and it is a foregone conclusion: the post-coronavirus world will look fundamentally different from anything that we have seen or experienced, at least since the end of World War II.
Even before the ‘curve flattened’ in many countries that have experienced high death tolls — let alone economic devastation — as a result of the unhindered spread of the COVID-19 disease, thinkers and philosophers began speculating, from the comfort of their own quarantines, about the many scenarios that await us.
You don’t have to control everything to be in total control.
In the modern world this seeming paradox is a systemic reality.
In the past, classic totalitarian governments sought to literally control every aspect of biopower.
As it turned out, this was a very inefficient and self-defeating way to maintain and increase scientific knowledge and technology, capital accumulation, and total effective power over the long term.
