"Next Normal" - Quareness Series 173rd "Lecture".
It's a Brave New World where the drugged and genetically modified populace with their blunted personalities bear passive witness to bodies and minds configured by a technocracy whose scientists have redesigned humans so as to maximise output for the benefit of the ruling elites. Is this what we're about to become?
With global financial inequalities now rapidly growing and anti-democratic sentiment alarmingly increasing within "democratic" countries, populations are beginning to recognise how little real control they have over their lives. With the rapid spread of "striking" workers (aka The Great Resignation) it would appear that the World Economic Forum (WEF) is hell bent on ideologically capturing any potential revolutionary leaders and re-programming them to favour its own technocratic system. The elite funders and attendees at those regular Davos meetings are now openly pushing their agenda under the banner of widely disseminated slogans such as The Great Reset, The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Build Back Better, as they seek to cement their New World Order (NWO).
This Brave New Normal (or "next normal") is said to supersede the present global malaise in aiming to use hi-end technology and data collection to tailor environments to the needs and wishes of the public who'll be expected to participate in "sustainable" infrastructure and to double as data points for constant public health monitoring. And like the hapless victims of Huxley's dystopia, tomorrow's society will be happily enslaved (at least in the minds of the WEF planners). The new workspaces will supposedly blur the lines between personalisation and professionalism, feelings of being cheated by the system will be re-conceived as consuming less to help the environment, and all real world pain will be soothed with immersion into a joyous and incessant virtual reality.
Build Back Better.
Mega-wealth in today's global economy largely consists of digits on bank account computer screens that increase when the rich buy and sell repackaged debts to each other (i.e. a house of cards). And when the gravy train derails (every decade or so) the public bails out the perpetrators. Nevertheless the main bases on which this intangible economy is constructed are themselves tangible enough...hydrocarbons, precious metals and real estate.
All of this fake wealth in the hands of asset managers who hold the stocks, shares, bonds and portfolios of the banks, hedge funds, insurers, pension pots and real estate holdings wouldn't really exist without the physical ownership of these three bases...particularly landed property...a fact well appreciated by the WEF types (such as Blackrock, State Street, Vanguard, etc.) who understand the crucial importance of real estate in relation to wealth inequality and uber-profits. In this regard they are well aware that younger generations are getting more and more desperate with deteriorating housing quality leading to mental health issues as people get to live and work in increasingly crowded and expensive cities. Not only is home ownership fast becoming an unattainable dream for the majority of young people in the West, but renting is also becoming harder as landlords grow more reluctant to let their property to those engaged in the insecure employment of an expanding gig economy.
Above all these WEF corporations fear a brain and labour drain from cities as work-from-home youngsters may increasingly flee to the countryside where dwelling spaces are bigger and cheaper. It's estimated that about 80% of global GDP is now generated in cities...a situation pushing asset companies to try and keep workers locked therein. This is the "bottom line" reason they are now seeking to redesign urban environments to make them more appealing...
eco-friendly, health conscious and tailored to the psychology of the individual.
Per the WEF the new agenda will take place via "an increase in public-private cooperation" (aka taxpayer foots the bill, as usual). Those new urban slums will be greenwashed and prettied up via the harnessing of personalised big tech data collection for "customisation". As the rich continue to plunder, the poor working classes will have to get used to "adaptive reuse"...an eco-friendly normalisation of second-hand ("pre-loved") products. As the WEF also says - "the private sector can play an instrumental role in helping the public sector craft legislation that is viable for business". And on the matter of greenwashing in response to public pressure, it's "sincerely" pointed out that "global investors, pension funds and financial institutions are demanding their investee companies incorporate, track and report environmental, social and governance performance into risk-adjusted returns that they deliver".
In our so-called smart homes, the wishes of the occupant can greatly expand sales opportunities for programmed machines (fridges, heating systems, etc.) as the biology of the occupier is increasingly tracked and analysed under the PR-friendly cover of public health monitoring. Any prospective AI in smart homes might also be tailored to provide commercial services (e.g. offering to adjust the solar-controlled room temperature if in-house cameras sense that the occupant is too hot or too cold) in order to create optimal working conditions. And through a kinda bastardised communitarianism (preventing the poor from attaining wealth under the slogan of "equity") buildings could be designed with "cost-sharing mechanisms". WEF has publicly (and conveniently) noted that increased population density is linked to increased creativity and productivity, but of course the people who do most of the hard work hardly get to share in the patent wealth. An "in your face" recent example is the funding of vaccines by the taxpayer with low-paid personnel administering the jabs and big pharma reaping most of the rewards. Seems the WEF types want people crammed into cities to boost innovation, but they also want to renovate/polish the inherent blight of urbanisation by making dystopian dives look like efficient modern pockets of eco-friendly mingling.
An end-to-end digitisation of real estate...from design, purchase, lease and construction to repurchase, letting and contract in a new age of tailored living...would likely create a new "blockchain" for real estate markets where constant labour is normalised. "From focus zones to work cafes, the space integrates 'external' elements such as co-working and the home office". Design concepts to include "ergonomically supportive home office with limited distractions". Maybe strategically placing exercise and coffee machines to form a "blend of social spaces with productivity enablers" (colleagues giving unconscious prompts to others to work harder). And all to be achieved through the design of the building itself. Is this what we're about to become?
The Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Over the last few decades politicians, intellectuals and the media have vigorously sought to brainwash us into believing that terrorism would make total surveillance and travel restrictions a "new normal", as would limitations on freedom and growth caused by anthropogenic climate change. And we have also witnessed the same playbook applied in dealing with the "covid crisis" and continuing to frame the approach to allegedly offsetting the inherent downsides involved e.g. acknowledging that the structure of their new socioeconomic order increases isolation and at the same time claiming to lessen mental health concerns by promoting "community"...mainly through an increased blending of both in augmented virtual reality.
It's important at any time to distinguish between words and actions...and particularly those of the WEF in this present context. Sometimes its founder and chairman Klaus Schwab with seeming genuine concern for the damage to younger generations as well as stagnation of the middle classes and fueling of the climate crisis, points out what seems to be wrong with the "capitalist" order. The reality though is that such is more likely a cover for continuing the dominance of profit driven state-backed corporatism masked under attractive slogans that long-term planning is better than short-term profit and that inter-generational parity is better than growing inequality. As part of its pyramid structure, the WEF has courted and engaged with large numbers of journalists, intellectuals, business and community leaders to spread its message through entertainment, education, media and the workplace and shape its doctrines for those below them on the ladder of hierarchy. However, ordinary people remain the flotsam and jetsam in the plans of the higher-ups e.g. in pushing the line that the WEF should decide what is or is not ethical consumption..."it would be unfair and naive to put all the burden on consumers having to educate themselves in order to avoid greenwashing". The idea has also been floated that the WEF should harness the wisdom of indigenous people when promoting the new agenda so that people resonate with ancient ways of living whilst continuing to work for corporate overlords. Here we can see a form of mind control in which the labouring masses come to believe that they have internal freedom and participate in a spiritual society, when in fact the limits of their reality get to be set by superiors who pretend to consult with and gain the approval of those they are controlling. The fruits of such empty verbiage.
The Great Reset.
What's entailed here is a professed plan to promote economic and social equity while cementing the structures that guarantee worsening inequality. In addition to trapping working people in properties designed to enhance their productivity and monetise their idiosyncrasies, it's seemingly intended to quell the revolutionary potential and dissatisfaction of the exploited classes by the promotion of a transhumanism and virtual reality in which humanity is "reset" to begin anew with biological and digital enhancements. We can currently see these methods of control evolving through trapping people in social media bubbles when action is taken against what is deemed "fake news" as fact-check organisations have rapidly morphed into guardians of elite narratives. In most cases these so-called fact-checkers simply argue over interpretations of truth, which they then use to delegitimise real concerns. They mostly appear to operate from an ideological basis which promotes the WEF agenda, thereby raising the question of who fact checks the fact-checkers. Research has uncovered their close connections to political, corporate and media establishments with many such former editors and journalists now having taken up new roles as self-professed fact-checkers whose targets are primarily those opposed to their own agenda.
Social media too has been on a deplatforming crusade serving to reinforce its bland content and constrain users to the boundaries of what is "acceptable" thereby pushing its entire user base into a giant corporate-approved echo chamber...a so-called "digital literacy" process. Without such "literacy" people might not alone fall for dangerous "fake news" (aka news not approved by WEF corporations) but might also create and share real information that doesn't fall within the bounds of accepted neoliberal ideology e.g. questioning the efficacy of big pharma-produced vaccines or pointing out the serious problems with our corporate-political elites. Here again we can note the WEF doublethink..."steps must be taken to prevent abuse and harm while maintaining the freedom to openly exchange ideas". It's envisaged that serving the ultra-rich in personally-tailored smart cities will see the younger generations censored into the desired sheep pen by social media and augmenting their "useful" capacities with technology. For the older and more "infirm" generations the transhumanist agenda envisages their moving from "useless eater" status to potential data points for augmentative technologies. As the WEF propaganda says, it's now preparing to "articulate the potential benefits of artificial intelligence" for all but particularly for the older folk.
Among the encouragements for older people, the WEF is suggesting involving representatives in the design process...reasoning that the over-60s tend to have different aesthetic tastes, practical preferences, physical and cognitive requirements to younger people. With the envisaged new technological changes likely to be seen by the young as simply part of their "familiar" environment, the WEF seems more set for now to position itself more as a vehicle to help profit-pursuing companies turn the elderly population into transhumanist augmentation technology consumers with home-help robots, implants for better eyesight, time-released painkillers, etc. It appears not to be seeking solutions for ending the collection and selling of personal data but rather for more transparency. In this way companies can continue cheating consumers whilst being honest that they are in fact doing so. The possible aim here is to make consumers feel less angry because they appreciate the "honesty". If, as the WEF suggests, companies "disclose the data being collected", older people may be more willing to have their information sold. It also wants to push the idea of obtaining "meaningful consent" perhaps implying that up until now, consent has not been meaningful. Just as they seek to make the younger generations "digitally literate" (aka to keep them in a mental prison), WEF corporations aim to protect the elderly from deception..."design for appropriate trust"...just not from those deceptions upon which their system is built.
Of course if left to their own devices, the general public might form groups, communities, parties and movements that spread an anti-"capitalist" message and develop new social models. Should such a long-term grassroots revolution succeed, it would not only hurt the profits of the owner-classes but also likely threaten the system they have spent such a long time developing. Thus we are increasingly being urged to view the repackaging of their profit-driven agendas into some form of interim state between say capitalism and socialism, as "corporate responsibility". And being well aware that the young tend to be driven more than the old by outrage, the WEF is actively seeking to capture potential revolutionaries by appealing to "social justice". But instead of encouraging people to change the system in their own image, it wants to make people feel like they have real input into their conditions (without actually having such)...as it proposes "recognising, co-designing, partnering and learning with impacted stakeholders...must be at the centre of any corporate action on equity and social justice in our unequal world".
Conclusion.
All of this trend points towards making "truth" a vague and flexible concept. As the notion of truth becomes fuzzy, that which is real is set to become fuzzier. Many "experts" are coming to believe that "extended reality" (i.e. the combination of augmented virtual and mixed reality) must play an important role. And the WEF is hoping that once we have been bombarded into the new system, we will all be happy slaves in a "real" Brave New World playing with intangible VR toys and mingling with avatars of those we love.
May I draw this one to a halt with a veiled reference of mine own ("Fallen") to that oft-repeated warning about the condemned state of not learning from history -
The Garden of Eden has vanished,
Ruined again and again by hope
Right until the very end,
That all loss will be erased
With one spectacular play.
Blinded in the celestial light of Kidworld,
Amid self generated toxins
And the anaesthetic of familiarity,
We've fallen in the final analysis
For the illusion of being too good to lose.
It's the bottom line you see
For goodness sake,
Losing the head like the Baptist,
Paving the path to redemption
And the necessary recreation of the species.
Two pillars down
And the centre cannot hold,
The house of cards is blown away
In the dying of the light
And the dawning of a new day.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
November, 2022.