The Rise And Fall Of The Artificial State [RECOMMENDED] is the title of a recent book written by my favorite living historian, Jill Lepore. That is Jill Lepore pictured above. The link I have provided to the title of Lepore's book will take you to a YouTube discussion with Lepore. To order the book, click right here. You can also, of course, visit your local library, or obtain the book wherever you normally do that kind of thing. You might want to read the book first, however, before using that online "bookshop" named after a vanishing rainforest.
Since I am mainly a "reader," and only infrequently a "viewer," I have not, personally, viewed the YouTube video to which I have just provided a link. Maybe viewing that video will be enough, but I am encouraging anyone reading this blog posting to READ Lepore's latest book. I consider it to be quite an important book. It documents the "Rise" of the "Artificial State," and then discusses how the "Artificial State" might "Fall." By the way, for any science fiction fans, a lot of the history that Lepore mobilizes in this book is the history of science fiction!
By the time they get to the final chapters, I think that most readers will be rooting for the "Fall," and I confess that I was a little disappointed when I found out that the "Fall" of the "Artificial State," as more or less "predicted" in the title of Lepore's book, is not, in fact, predicted - or even guaranteed - at all.
The "Fall" of the "Artificial State" is a task yet to be accomplished. How to do it?
(1) Find Some Friends(2) Set Up A Small Group Dedicated to The Task(3) Meet Frequently (I suggest weekly)(4) Collaborate with others doing the same(5) Start practicing "politics" [Note the posters!]
Below, I am providing a quote from Lepore's final chapter, "The Last Days Of The Artificial State." As you read this quotation from the book, you might note the emphasis on what we often call "the environment," and what religious types call "The Creation." The last words of the book, in fact, are a quotation from the Bible, specifically from The Book of Job.
The Artificial State in which a great many humans have begun to live has not promoted their safety and happiness; it is a prison whose walls are comprised of mirrors: glowing screens. In its cells there are no windows that open to the wider world, to sea and sky, forests and valleys, islands and cliffs. From inside, no sound can be heard, not the rustling of animals, not the snapping of branches, not the roar of waves. No tendrils of vines snake their way under the door. No cobwebs gather in the corners. Arendt glimpsed this prison. What is required is to imagine an escape - and then to forge the tools, and summon the resolve, to make that escape....
The democratic governance of technology, instead of technological governance of humanity: that can still happen. The defense of the natural world: that began happening. "Grow tomatoes, not data centers" became a slogan as a backlash against data centers gained momentum in cities and towns and states all over the world, spurring a new environmental movement.
Escaping the Artificial State requires imaging a different future. That can still happen. The defeat of the Artificial State will require the inspection of facts, the exercise of reason, the search for meaning, the reading and study of philosophy and art and history and literature, and even learning the lessons of ancient parables and of modern science fiction.... Don't tether yourself to a computer. Unplug. If you cut down all the trees and all the animals you will die. Using robots to wage wars will always backfire: one day, they will wage war on you.... Never build a wall between yourself and the natural world, but if someone else does, clamber over it....
"Ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee." Job 12:7-9
Image Credits:
(1) - https://www.instagram.com/p/DCUYl9Ixp0V/
(2) - https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324098423
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