Observations From the Spectrum

The Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment were man’s response to societies move from conservativism to liberalism. These periods gave more people freedom. It was not perfect but it was better than the period before where few had any.

After every age of creativity and prosperity comes an age of darkness, slavery and control. We saw this for certain after learning basic tools, the creation of language and the spark of religion. The Dark Ages were a period in which the common person had little to control over their lives. Then came the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Periods in which creativity, innovation and invention were sparked and humanity gained freedom to create and build civilizations across the globe. Perfect? Nope. Better for most who had slivers of power? Absolutely.

What follows these periods of growth are periods of slavery and ownership and control. The poor scrabbling for whatever left over scraps are discarded by the wealthy ownership group. And that seems to be the direction in which we are headed. When we no longer value the primary tools of creativity, prosperity, innovation, invention and change, the only thing that can follow is a time in which those that have those tools take more power. Call it conservative control.

Recently, I bumped into a high school student who just graduated. For four months of his education, we had a strong relationship based on growth, change and gaining more knowledge. He was on his way to gain a sliver of power. This was when he was a sophomore. He had a shift in advisors and when he shifted his new advisory lead by the Guru who rests on the laurels against change, our relationship changed. The student found a place to hide and spent his days there gaining very little and demonstrating no growth towards gaining that sliver of success through my lens. He was no longer part of my scope yet I observed him flatten. Never the best path of the young who should be ever changing, growing and accumulating knowledge for the unknown future. 

A bit ago, I bumped into him at Wal-Mart. I am poor. That is where I primarily shop. In our brief conversation it was evident that he was already aware that he was missing the tools he needed to achieve the future he was working towards. The student who had graduated with hope a few weeks prior was missing it. He was self aware that his sliver was sliding away because to follow his dream, he would need to study and pass exams. Tools that he had been working slowly towards until he got the new advisor and started to hide in his space.

This student who has a desire to be in the forestry as a fire fighter and shared that his obstacle is the studying and test taking that he has to succeed at to move forward. No one in any field moves forward without skill. Are all of these skills the same? No. But without a proper base, all we have is what we think and if we do not study or learn or grow or change, our thinking becomes very quickly out of date, out of touch and without a clear path to a better future or our small sliver of power and wealth.

AI is NOW. It has and will continue to change the landscape of humanity. For the better? In some things I assume and in others, not so much. Not understanding that those with power want nothing more than more power and that the easiest way to do this in business is to produce more for less and the easiest way to pay less is through automation. In other words, taking out the middle person or worker and giving the role or task to a machine. Period. If you didn’t know this, wake up. Slavery was never about color but about free labor. The wheel, the assembly line, Google, and AI are all tools to make labor free. The only losers are the laborers whose jobs are replaced by machines. And no, the creation of new jobs will not outpace those who have been replaced.

We are moving towards a new Dark Age in which those who have the pathway to a sliver of power are giving it up in spades for the easy now and the inability to adapt fast enough to change. Without adaptability, we fail. We die. This is proven. What we are doing is giving up the tools. We are relying on the easier way from A to B in the now without reflecting on how we will arrive at C or D. When we do this, we give up our sliver and I assure you, it is by design.

Not being able to read or write or think will come back to haunt us as humanity. The rich and powerful will consolidate their power while the rest of us lose ours. What should we do? 

The answer is simple. In 1440 Gutenberg gave us our sliver. Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and Bill Gates have created the tools to take our sliver back. 

Students need to learn. Learning is hard. It is messy and there are standards that have evolved over time. If we can’t think or write or produce for ourselves, then what value do we earn? What sliver should we get paid? The answer is ZERO. We are at a crossroads. We either push back or we don’t know that if we don’t, the sliver that we are fighting for gets closer to zero daily. Trump is not an anomaly. He is a conservative pendulum swinging leader moving us from a time of enlightenment and creativity and freedom into a Dark Ages where barons rule and violence wins.