Spoilers ahead! I will note in big bold letters when they’re approaching, but I’d avoid this one if you plan on reading the Foundation series sometime soon.
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I’m currently reading the 2nd book in the Foundation series, Foundation and Empire, by Isaac Asimov. It, combined with untold hours of X scrolling, and dozens of real life conversations inspired this piece.
The first Foundation book was spectacular, just as good as promised, and caused me to want to finish out the series. Foundation, much like Frank Herbert’s Dune series, is actually a philosophy book cleverly disguised as an epic sci fi novel. The premises, settings, and characters used by Asimov and Herbert were (for the most part) literary devices used to make points about modern and future society IRL.
The first thing that stands out is that the questions these guys grappled with in the 50s and 60s were awfully similar to the popular issues of today, 60+ years later. History doesn’t exactly repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme…
Today I want to specifically talk about something from F&E that hit a little too close to home.
Before we start, the general premise of the first Foundation book is that we’re way far in the future, humanity has established a galaxy wide Empire. A fella named Hari Seldon invents a theory of psychology and mathematics called psychohistory, designed to predict the future. Psychohistory basically says that individual human psychology is absolutely unpredictable, but once there are enough billions and trillions of people, collective behavior makes certain outcomes perfectly and accurately predictable. So, while you can’t tell what someone is going to eat for lunch later, you can use psychohistory to accurately predict the movements of the entire Empire with fair certainty over a long enough period of time.
Seldon establishes two “Foundations”, on opposite sides of the galaxy. Their goal is to compile an encyclopedia of all human knowledge before the Empire (inevitably) collapses, in an effort to avoid “+30,000 years of barbarism”.
SPOILER ALERT for F&E coming, please avoid if you want to read the series eventually.
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The initial collapse happens, starting in the outer systems, very slowly.
As local warlords begin their consolidation of power, The Foundation is soon the only outer system left with any “nucleics”, or nuclear powered technology. Not just bombs, but generators, force fields, agricultural tech, etc. They use their fancy nuclear gadgets to pit local kings against each other, and end up being the dominant force of the outer edge of the galaxy, due to the incredible reliance they create on their nuclear tech.
Meanwhile, the inner Empire, which hasn’t had nucleics in quite some time, continues to wallow in its own opulence. The new ships, technology, and household goods are far inferior to the old stuff. “Ancient” nuclear-powered starships are invaluable to the point that they are almost always confiscated by the Emperor for use in the military. “Tech men” are few and far between. There’s a several year wait to have things serviced, so people just make do with what they have, or tolerate the shitty new plastic stuff.
Thing is, it doesn’t *feel* bad for the general populace. They don’t remember the times when everything was nuclear, efficient, and the Empire was actively expanding. Life is still generally comfortable for the ruling class, there isn’t even a public acknowledgment that the outer systems have completely collapsed and been rebuilt. They don’t even know how badly they’ve lost control of the galaxy. The newspapers (it was written in the 50s) just report whatever propaganda the people need to hear to keep churning along.
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Sound familiar?
In business, the prevailing wisdom is that if your company isn’t actively growing, it’s dying. The same goes for empires and civilizations. The other side of that coin is that there’s no way for something to grow infinitely, and exponentially. In fact, it’s even more dangerous to grow too quickly. At some point, everything *will* stop growing, and start dying.
The lights go out, the power runs dry, and nobody has any clue how to fix that leak in the pipes. The most traditionally useful members of society (young men) are confined to bean counting, paper pushing, and administration of The Mush, the bureaucracy.
At some point it becomes more important to simply distract the general populace from the stagnation (or active collapse), by putting on big displays of power and organizing perpetual (mostly harmless, but entertaining) civil unrest. The people in power fear an uprising, because they know the peasants below would depose them in an instant if they knew how blatantly corrupt and weak the whole house of cards was.
People hate guys like Elon Musk for “saying crazy stuff”, and being a generally eccentric nutball. The point they miss, I think, is that without a clear goal for humanity, and expansion plans, we tend to eat each other alive. Quickly. It is preferable to have a mutual, powerful goal driven by someone you don’t like, to having no goal at all, and dying the slow debilitating death that tends to visit stagnating civilizations.
Space is our next frontier. We must dominate our solar system, or we risk more of the bullshit that has made the last 15 years feel unnervingly dystopian. The culture wars, political shenanigans, virtue signaling, the scrabbling over a rapidly inflating world reserve currency, that is all solved by moving forward and doing better.
We fight each other out of boredom, and subconscious distraction born out of not fulfilling our infinite and glorious potential. My grandkids and great grandkids should be exploring the stars, not working in finance, government, or (God f*cking forbid…) taxes/insurance, or some other soul sucking monetary pursuit. None of that bean counting stuff matters, it can and should be automated. I will do anything it takes within my personal power to give them that future.
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It’s a bit of a meme today to say that we “don’t know how to build anything from the past”, but it’s actually true to some degree. New cars by and large cannot be worked on without very specific scanners and diagnostic tools. Our planes (lookin’ at you, Boeing) seem to have constant maintenance issues. I don’t think I’ve flown anywhere in the last 4 years without some sort of problem delaying us on the runway, or stopping a plane from arriving on time.
Things are always broken to some degree. Customer service lines are busy or robots. You have to download an app, and then create an account to do literally anything. On top of that, most of us have become spoiled turds that expect instant refunds or quick fixes, because it subconsciously terrifies us to know that there’s absolutely nothing we could do if the last 10 people who know how to actually fix things in our city died out.
The individual is at the full and unyielding mercy of the manufacturer when buying any sort of engine powered toy or tool.
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So, are we really the Empire, ignoring the first signs of collapse in the outer rim? Are we just trying to keep the party going as long as possible, to milk the great lumbering economic machine, while the barbarians pound at the gate, and our technology falls into perpetual disrepair?
I don’t know. It’s telling that they were asking these questions in the 50s and 60, and things got significantly better for the next 40 years. In general, I’m an optimist in the long run. We very well may be looking back in 2085 asking the same questions, wondering when the collapse is coming.
As long as we have entrepreneurs, dreamers, and the indomitable human spirit, I think we’ll push through. If we shackle those people, and continue the infinity wars, the state-sponsored rackets, and the Ponzi schemes, our chances get thin very quickly.
This is all to say that each and every one of us has potential to do incredible things. We’re entering an age of automation, where it will become more and more possible to leverage artificial and robotic labor to create cool stuff.
Find your passion, ignore the grift, and get ready to fight for a beautiful future.