(2019-07-31) Hunt The Long Now Pt1 Ticktock

Ben Hunt: The Long Now, Pt. 1 - Tick-Tock. Last year I wrote a series of notes called Things Fall Apart ((2018-08-08) Hunt Things Fall Apart), focused on the transformation of our most important social institutions – small-l liberal institutions like free markets and free elections – from cooperation-allowing games (Positive-Sum) to competition-requiring games (Zero-Sum). That sounds bloodless and small, but it’s not. It’s literally how society self-destructs in a widening gyre of mistrust and defection.

Today I’m starting a new series of notes called The Long Now, focused on the further transformation of our social institutions into political utilities … into smiley-face Panopticons of self-censorship where our marrow of autonomy and free will is sucked dry by the Nudging State and the Nudging Oligarchy.

What Orwell called the Party, I call the Nudging State and the Nudging Oligarchy. I call it Management.

No, the future is a smiley-face authoritarianism, an authoritarianism that is not imposed on us, but an authoritarianism that we embrace.

It’s “Yay, Capitalism!”, “Yay, Military!”, “Yay, Diversity!”, “Yay, College!” and “Yay, Stock Market!”. (Theater)

The threat of the future revealed itself to me in 1996 with the death of my father and the birth of my child. One day the threat of the future will reveal itself to you, if it hasn’t already. When it does, you will be CONSUMED by thoughts of the future. You will FEEL the pressure of time more keenly than the younger you could ever imagine.

You’ve never heard of Delmore Schwartz. In 1938 he set the New York literary scene on fire at the ripe old age of 25 with the publication of In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

The threat of the future washed over Delmore Schwartz in 1938 as surely as it washed over me in 1996. As surely as one day it will wash over you. But he never found his Pack. (Tribe)

instead of living in the Now and investing for the Future, we are nudged into “investing” for the Now and “living” in the Future.

We are told that the economic stimulus and the political fear of the Long Now are costless, when in fact they cost us … everything.

What is the alternative to the Long Now?