So, you’ve probably heard of the alt right pipeline. Many straight white dudes aged twenty to forty fall into that. I didn’t. I was in danger of falling into it sure, there were plenty of close calls as I look back on it. But I don’t think I ever fell down that. The pipeline I fell down was a bit, less outwardly horrible than the far right, so it was harder to know what you’ve fallen into it. And what I call it is.
The Pseudo Intellectual Technological Centrist Pipeline. That was less dramatic because I named it in the title.
Part of how I got there was, I was just, emotionally drained from being angry at the injustices of the world. Corrupt governments, heartless corporations. I was ready to just be a bit more happy and a bit less angry. And I wanted to believe there was hope in the world.
I wanted to believe humanity had a bright future ahead.
But, it was a false hope, and I think, if I hadn’t gotten out of it, it would have caused me to make one of the biggest mistakes of my life.
So, how did this all start? Well, the main villain of the piece was.
Steven Pinker.
I read the Better Angels Of Our Nature fairly religiously. And in it, I found an argument, that humanity was slowly but surely, putting away the darkness of the past, and moving towards a bright, peaceful future.
I got into Micheal Shermer, who makes very similar arguments.
Then I read Robert Zubrin, and learned about how humanity could colonize Mars, and then colonize the outer solar system, and then, maybe become a multi solar system species.
I learned of how Elon Musk was (supposedly) building the technology to get us to Mars, and not only that, but building electric cars. Elon Musk would stop climate change and help us have a bright future in space!
And this is where my morality frankly started to become corrupted. Through my twenties I adopted many political philosophies, as diverse as Marxism to a belief in the free market. But, one thing I always had, throughout this time, was a strong distrust, if not outright despising, of the super rich. But, I fell under the sway of Elon Musk’s promises of a bright future for humanity, and for the first time in my life, I had nice things to say about billionaires. Don’t get me wrong, I still thought most billionaires were awful, but during this period of my life, I had nice things to say about Musk, Peter Diamandis, Richard Branson, and (shudder) Jeff Bezos!
Because, even when I went through a period of believing the free market would solve everything, I genuinely believed the free market would have no billionaires. I believed that getting rid of government subsidies for mega corporations, and making sure all companies were thrown into the ruthless competition of the free market, meant there would be so many competitors that it would simply be impossible to become a billionaire. But now, I had become a supporter of billionaires. Some of them anyway.
It pains me to think of how I knew Musk was horrible to his workers, and I just heartlessly thought, while it was horrible, sacrifices had to be made. After all, Musk was stopping climate change with his electric cars, and he was going to build us a city on Mars.
And, I started to believe that in a few generations, it would be possible to dramatically extend human lifespan. I started religiously watching videos by a man named Aubrey DeGrey, a man who claims that, with enough money, we can dramatically bring up human life span. Perhaps with the right medical interventions, humans could live for hundreds if not thousands of years! And of course, I believed some billionaire could put money into it and make it happen.
Although, I think it would be a massive oversimplification to think that I was just selfish. Because, many of these amazing technologies were things I didn’t believe would happen in my lifetime. I didn’t believe, and still don’t, believe indefinite life extension will happen in my lifetime. I didn’t believe humanity would colonize many of the other planets in my lifetime, with the possible exception of Mars. I believed there could be a glorious future, that to a large extent I wouldn’t be part of. But, I was happy for the future generations who would get to experience this.
I started to believe technology could solve everything. There was no world problem that couldn’t be solved by going into space or by nanotechnology. And there were lots of billionaires promising to deliver this technology. So I started falling into a horrible way of thinking. It was like, “Look, I know these billionaires are assholes who hate their workers, but they’re trying to deliver us technologies that will solve all of our problems, so just let them invent these technologies and we can worry about the fact that they hate worker’s rights later!”
So, I believed in the power of billionaires to change the world for the better. But I wouldn’t have characterized myself as right wing. Rather, I would have characterized myself as a centrist.
I was very in favour of gay rights and trans rights. I voted for gay marriage around this time. I thought the people giving out about trans women using the women’s bathroom were stupid and that trans women should be free to use the women’s bathroom in peace, and likewise for trans men. I despised Islamophobia. So, I certainly wasn’t left wing, what with this weird belief that billionaires could save the world, but I wasn’t exactly right wing either, because I don’t think there was any major bigotries in my beliefs at the time (I say no “major bigotries” because we are all bigoted to some extent, there’s no escaping that.) Except, I came dangerously close to going to the alt right pipeline during this time. Let me explain.
In 2014, The European space agency, as part of the Rosetta mission, landed a space probe on a comet for the first time. It was an amazing technological achievement, and made many of us feel a great sense of wonder. However, a bit of an argument was about to kick up on the internet. Because when being interviewed, one of the scientists involved in the mission, Matt Taylor, was wearing a risque shirt that had cartoon pictures of women wearing revealing clothes. And there was a lot of angry comments towards Matt Taylor on the internet. I couldn’t believe that a person could be part of an amazing feat like landing a probe on a comet, and get a lot of hate for wearing a shirt that was deemed sexist.
I was angry at the way he was treated. Now, to be honest, if I was to look back on this whole incident now, I’m not sure how I’d view it, I’m not sure who I’d view as right or wrong in the whole event. I never formed a strong opinion on whether or not his shirt was sexist. But the point is, I was angry at the way Matt Taylor was treated at the time, and that made me vulnerable to far right propaganda.
I started watching a certain you tuber. And I won’t say who, because, unlike Pinker, Shermer and Musk, this guy, who spouts a lot of hateful rhetoric, isn’t that famous, so I don’t want to give him oxygen. But, he did a video criticizing the way Matt Taylor was treated, that I really liked. And this guy was an anti-feminist. So I started to believe the things he was saying about how feminists were out to get men. I became suspicious of feminists, maybe they were just out to get men for no other crime than being the way they were.
But, I grew tired of this you tuber after a while, because in addition to the anti-feminist videos, he also did videos that were hateful of trans people and Muslims. Despite my vulnerability to toxic ideas during this time in my life, I still had absolutely no patience with Islamophobia and transphobia. So I stopped watching this you tuber, and other similar you tubers, seeing their content for the hateful shite that it was. And that’s how I made a narrow escape from going down the alt right pipeline. So, I escaped the far right pipeline, but sadly, was still trapped in the pseudo intellectual technological centrist pipeline.
The fake optimism started to unravel in 2019, when I became an ethical vegetarian. What led me there was watching a lot of vegan activists on you tube. I agreed with them in principle, even though I was only able to go vegetarian but not vegan. (I’m still vegetarian five years later.) But, learning about the horrific way that food animals are treated, such as cows, chickens, and pigs, made me really question the idea that humanity was going in the right direction.
Ken Loach helped me around this time too. His film, Sorry We Missed You, really opened my eyes to something that I did know before, but had forgotten, that the workers are horribly mistreated by the rich and powerful. I couldn’t believe I had become so hypnotized by billionaires promising amazing technologies that I would have forgotten this.
Then 2020 came, and the optimism about gay people getting their rights unraveled during this year. Even though we mainly remember this year for Covid, what we also encountered this year was a sharp increase in transphobia. And then I started to worry, when one group gets their rights, like gay people, does another group become the target? I remember, about twenty years ago, homophobia was completely socially acceptable. But what I was seeing in 2020, and beyond, I saw that exact same acceptable prejudice towards gay people, applied to transgender people. (Which isn’t to say there wasn’t transphobia before 2020, or that we’ve completely eliminated homophobia now.) Twenty years ago, you could say something like, “If a man wants to marry a man we might as well let him marry a dog.” And now, you’ll often hear the phrase “If a “man” wants to identify as a woman we might as well let “him” identify as a dog. So, the dream of getting rid of bigotry seemed to be dead. There isn’t less bigotry in the world now. We reduced homophobia, but all of that bigotry and hatred, just went somewhere else. The hatred that was going towards gay people, is now going towards trans people.
So I worried then, and I still worry now, will there ever be a day when bigotry is relatively uncommon? Now, there will never be zero bigots in the world, but I had hoped that some day, maybe long after I’m dead, there’ll be a day when meeting a racist, or a homophobe, or a transphobe, will just be, a weird occurrence, like meeting someone who believes the sun revolves around the Earth. That, encountering a bigot will just be this, odd thing that happens.
But now I’m wondering, does bigotry never reduce in amount, but is just directed at a different group? Transphobia has replaced homophobia as the socially acceptable prejudice. Will transphobia be replaced with something else, for example, with a bigotry against a religious group or a disabled group? And will that bigotry be replaced by something else? And will that bigotry be replaced by something else and so on and so forth?
And, on Micheal Shermer’s you tube channel, around 2020, I saw him platforming a lot of transphobes. As well as being extremely hateful, this was hypocritical according to his own viewpoint, he claims to be about fearlessly exploring both sides of an argument, and yet, here he was, constantly platforming transphobes but never once a trans rights activist. I slowly realized that the man I once respected was nothing but a bigoted pseudo intellectual, and I stopped watching his content and buying his books.
So, what was the big mistake I was in danger of making, if I hadn’t shaken myself out of these regressive beliefs?
I believe, it was possible, entirely possible, that while my brain was imprisoned by the unholy trinity of Pinker, Shermer, and Musk, I may have stood idly by, did absolutely nothing, while a genocide unfolded right in front of me. Or, and I absolutely dread this possibility, but it was possible, that I would have condoned the genocide.
Because what Pinker and Shermer teach you to do, is to say, “The world is getting better, there’s no need for all this political activism, the world is getting better by itself!” There’s no need for Black Lives Matter this and Trans Rights that, don’t you see that our great leaders are making the world better without us doing anything? There’s a utopia just around the corner, and all we have to do is sit on our ass!
I realized that Steven Pinker and Micheal Shermer are very privileged members of the society we live in. They’re, to put it bluntly, rich guys. In a sense, they already live in a utopia. As rich white straight cis guys, they’re probably the members of our society that are least likely to experience bigotry and prejudice. And they have a level of wealth that most of us can only dream of. So, since they already live in a kind of a utopia, they have every incentive to say, “Don’t worry about inequality or human rights abuses, the system will take care of it, and soon enough we’ll soon be living in a world of puppies and rainbows!”
Micheal Shermer is an unapologetic apologist for the genocide in Palestine. If I hadn’t gotten away from his negative influence by 2023, I dread to think what would have happened.
Here’s an article from Micheal Shermer:
Now, since becoming active in protests for Palestine, my opinion that the October 7th attacks were a war crime, and were completely unacceptable, has not changed. But listen to Micheal Shermer talk about how Hamas are worse than the Nazis, because at least the Nazis realized they were wrong and tried to cover up their crimes.
Does Shermer say the same about Israel? Does Shermer say the same about Israel after what Yove Gallant said about the people of Gaza?:
Hmmm, it seems Gallant isn’t shy about the fact that he’s denying the people of Gaza food, water, and electricity, all war crimes, and he calls them “human animals”. It doesn’t seem like it’s the case that, at least he realizes he’s wrong and trying to cover up his crimes. So, according to Shermer’s own logic, Israel is worse than the Nazis. Has Shermer breathed a word of criticism of Israel? Not that I know of. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure if I dug through everything he said over the last year, it probably works out that every now and again he says, “Israel is bad sometimes” as a way of throwing people off the scent. But, he has not said, as his own logic demands that he do, that Israel is worse than the Nazis. (I’m not arguing that Israel is worse than the Nazis, I think comparing regimes in this way is counter productive, I’m just saying that is what his own logic demands that he should do.)
So, because I thought Micheal Shermer was right about, pretty much everything, I was so dangerously close to becoming an apologist for the genocide in Palestine. Now, I don’t know for sure, I remember during this time, reading Micheal Shermer justify the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagazaki, and realizing instantly that he was wrong, but, it still feels a bit too close to comfort. Would I have become an apologist for Israel if I didn’t realize in 2020 that he was full of shit?
Maybe if I hadn’t figured it out then, I would have concluded that he’s a fuckwit because of his uncritical support of Israel. I don’t know, but it troubles me that there were times in my life that I was lapping up the propaganda of people with horrible, disgusting ideas. It could have taken me to a really dark place.
So, part of what led me down that weird rabbit hole all those years ago was a love of the possibilities of advanced technologies. How do I feel about all these technologies now? I feel completely ambivalent about humanity setting foot anywhere other than Earth. Maybe five hundred years, maybe one thousand years from now, there’ll be some good reason to land on Mars, or the outer solar system, but I don’t see any good rationale for making this happen as soon as possible.
And, what about indefinite life extension? In a world where many people still die young, be it from horrible diseases, or from murder and genocide, I think we can’t worry about the fact that life is very short, even for the lucky ones, just yet. Let’s create a world where everyone gets to live to their eighties first, then we can worry about extending it.
But, what if I could press a button that would add, we’ll say fifty, even a hundred years of life. What would I do?
The answer is, I wouldn’t hesitate to press the button. And the reason for that is, I’m 39, it feels relatively recently in my life that I’ve really, really started living. And yet, my life is half over. And it feels like it can’t be, it shouldn’t be. How could it be that when I’ve finally managed to carve out some happiness it won’t be long before I have more years behind me than ahead of me? So, if I somehow got the opportunity to extend my life, I wouldn’t hesitate.
But, I recognize the pursuit of indefinite life extension as something that just isn’t a worthy goal right now, not in a world where so many people don’t even get to see their sixties, let alone their eighties. I hope future generations get to live a lot longer than us.
I’ve never been less confident now that humanity is on the right track. I have really dark thoughts because of this genocide. Indeed, I had two thoughts I never thought I’d have. I’m an atheist, and believe there’s no afterlife. But there’s a part of me, just a part of me, that wishes there were such a thing as hell. I never thought I’d have thoughts like that before. And there’s a part of me, again just a part of me, that wishes that all of humanity would be struck be an illness that would render them infertile. So when the last human alive today dies, that’s it.
I’m worried that after Palestine, there will be more cruelty, and more cruelty after that, more senseless and obscene slaughter. And I’m worried that the only way it will ever stop, is for humanity to simply go extinct.
So, outside of when I was a teenager, when due to depression and anxiety I was in a very dark place, this is the time in my life, that I’m most worried that humanity is completely, and utterly, fucked. And I’ve never been happier.
What, was that some sort of bizarre typo on my part? Humanity is fucked, and I’ve never been happier? What?
It’s true though. I’m not happy about the fact that humanity might be fucked, but it is true that at this point of my life, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I’ve gotten abusive and bullying people out of my life. Through my cycling, and through my wildlife photographing, and through my astronomy, I’ve never been closer to nature, and the universe. I’m very happy with what I’m doing with my music. I am no longer ashamed of the fact that I I’m autistic. Never before have I had more good people supporting me than now.
I know how this comes across, I can see that as I write it, “Privileged guy engages in self care and now is happy despite the world shitting on itself”. But, I think the important thing to note is, because I’m in a better place in my own personal life, I’m less vulnerable to the deranged rantings of people like Shermer and Musk. I think because I’ve found happiness in my own life, I’m less likely to be tempted by a false utopia, in whatever form that may come in. Humanity might be fucked, but because I’ve found happiness in my own life, I feel able to face that, if it’s true, rather than being so broken that I have to run and hide from it.
So, Is Humanity Extremely Fucking Fucked?
I wish I could tell you, no, it’s not. I wish I could tell you, we are only a few decades away from the horrors being visited on Palestine being a thing of the past. I wish I could tell you, that trans people will get their rights, and after that, that’s it, everyone will have their rights then. I wish I could tell you that humanity will do something about climate change. I wish I could tell you that the days of keeping chickens in horrifically cramped cages will end. I wish I could tell you, I have seen the future, and it is a bright and wonderful world, where all humans, and all sentient life, live a wonderful existence, where all the evils of the past has been put away forever. I wish I could tell you that, but I just don’t know.
Part of the reason it’s so hard to answer that question is that it’s very hard to identify what constitutes progress in that direction. The British Empire committed genocide against the Irish people, indeed the population of Ireland has never recovered after the deliberate starving of the Irish people.
Now, I don’t think Britain would be able to get away with doing that to us. Is that progress? Is it the case that the world is better now than then? It’s difficult, impossible to say. Does the fact that things are better for the Irish, mean, the overall human rights situation has improved, or is it simply the case, “Well, you can’t do that to the Irish anymore, but if you want to do it to some other group, go right ahead!”
I don’t know. But, because I’m a nerd, a massive nerd, I’m going to leave you with a quote from Doctor Who, that inspires me when I’m worried that the world is just irreparably a shit turd.
The Doctor, in this incarnation played by Peter Capaldi, talks about how he still fights for justice, even though as he puts it, it hardly ever works, because it’s right, and because it’s kind. And that’s how I try, with emphasis on try, to live my life now. I want to do the right thing, even if it makes little difference, even if it makes no difference. Maybe decades from now, I will conclude that the world is just, awful, horrible, irredeemably awful, I don’t know, it’s a possibility. But it is better to fight for what is right with little or no chance of success, than to fight for what is wrong when there’s every chance of success. The world may be crashing and burning around us, but we can still try to carve out a small, tiny space, where there is goodness, and beauty. It is always worth trying.
NEVER STOP TRYING.
Ponderings Of An Autist 