Pocket Change
On the face of it, nothing much has changed. We are still here, grunting at one another, misunderstanding one another, fucking one another, getting mad at and killing one another. Really, what is there to say? We thought Neanderthals were lesser than us because they could not speak: now we think homo sapiens are lesser than us, too. Because of what? How much melanin they have? How much money they have? What side of an imaginary wall they were born on? What gender they were born as, or later perhaps become? Who they love?
What is wrong with the world? It’s incredibly disheartening.
You are not to romanticise the far past and forget how far we have come, all that we have achieved. But to think so is to have the luxury to pick and choose which achievements are discriminatory to you, which achievements benefit you, which achievements are worth forgetting the cost of those achievements: Once we did not wear clothes, but now we do! Once we thought there were witches and we burned them at the stake- now we call them bitches and be done with it! Once, we killed people in a gladiator ring for sport – it’s called a TV now- you can watch from anywhere, on demand!
What strange creatures we used to be. That’s all in the past now, though – we’ve really achieved so very much.
So, when that “achievement” is built on the subjugation, slavery, and bodies of our fellow species, can you understand why one might wish to return to the past, where we can try again, to be better next time? Because on the face of it, everything changed from the moment that we learned it was possible to live first as a group: and then live outside of a group: to be independent of it: and therefore learned that we have autonomy to take charge over that group, or another group, and strive for our own, individual wants. God bless individualism. God bless the white man and his ego the size of the copper and paper pockets that he roosts upon and the world that he holds. God bless capitalism. God bless the lesser men, and God bless the American Dream.
We learn history in order to ensure that it does not repeat itself. We learn history and learn that we have been terrible: that we will always be terrible, as long as all institutions of modernity are built upon terrible things. And all institutions of modernity are built upon terrible things. Hell, even now we are desensitised to the terrible things that occur every day, are perhaps to a scale equal to our previous terrible deeds: genocide, slavery, human trafficking, rape, money, money, money.
This history is a long lesson in exploitation. First, “man” mastered himself, and then his fellow people, and then the earth. But have we actually learned anything? At all?
If we were to, say, at this very moment, transplant ourselves back to those 300,000 years ago, when Homo Sapiens first opened their eyes, is there anything of our history worth remembering? Even the knowledge of our wrongdoings would somehow end up a means of abuse by one person or another: slavery was done before- hell, let’s do it again, but sooner this time- maybe get killing the queers, the freaks, and anyone with a slight bite of rebellion in them out of the way a few centuries early. And remember God? Well, there’s only one of him, and anyone who disagrees with me can immediately find their way to the end of a sharp Mammoth tusk. Let’s kill the mammoths too, while we are at it. Their furs should be good for keeping warm with all this cold going around (we’re still figuring out the whole fire thing). Gold and oil – you remember where we need to go to find them, don’t you? Let’s mine them now, let’s get rich, faster. (Well, let’s get Black people to mine them for us). That’s right, let’s do it all again, but better this time.
No. No good seems to come from remembering any of that at all.
If Homo Sapiens had not shown such a propensity for oppression and manipulation, one might be inclined to be more forgiving, or hell, perhaps even stretch to optimism. Impart the wisdom upon these hypothetical do-overs that all bodies are equal- yes, even the ones that don’t speak just yet.
But all of this is just a thought experiment, anyway. Really, it is incredibly important that we do remember. That we never forget. That we make it so modernity has no choice but to catch up to us, and not the other way around. That no matter how easy you think it may be to hit enter on a world of AI, you do not give in. You would never, would you? Because you know that as long as this world remains forged on inequalities, the data that these systems reproduce will exacerbate and regurgitate those inequalities. And here, we are talking about progress. Not for progress’ sake. Not for a token post to your social media profile. Actual tangible Progress. Change, if you like. The kind that clears out the pockets of the Rich Man until he’s pulling at the few white hairs clinging to his balding scalp. The kind that very well might be worth starting over for.