What We Owe the Longtermists

A Loopy, Recursive Lament for Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

First they came for the historians, and I did not speak out –   Because I don’t live in the past.

Then they came for the humanities, in a pincer movement, saying all that immeasurable how-to-be-human stuff provides zero value-add for the economy, and I did not speak out -    Because I am a privileged, white, male-assigned, binary-coded, patriarchal, hetero-normative, cis-gender, ablist oppressor who, nevertheless, persists in dreaming instead about god, nature and the transcendent mysteries of life, the universe, and everything inspiring awe. And verily too, I am no economist.

Then they came for the workplace, from a higher floor, saying don’t you dare say anything that might make the graph not go up, and I did not speak out –    Because I don’t live in the chart, the program, the generic map of Flatland.

Then they came for the surplus consumption units, obsoleted by cascading resource costs, Large Scale Data Processing, and techno-utopian dreams of gods, golems and a skeleton crew of transhumanized servo-bots, and I did not speak out –    Because Techno-Optimists installed neurostarlink in my brain, dumped toxins in my blood, screened Idiocracy to kill my time.

Then they came for you, and I did not speak out –    Because I was already dead inside, dreaming of electric sheep.

Who controls the past is doomed to repeat it.