We’ve been warned. All those well known books by Orwell, Rand, Bradbury, Golding, Huxley, Dalcher, Eggers, Lowry, and sundry others are signposts that a sixth great extinction is at hand; it’s not the physical extinction comparable to the loss of the dinosaurs: It is, instead, the extinction of the individual. We’re on the verge of life in the canaille.
Not that life in a canaille hasn’t occurred before. In fact, every age has exhibited the press toward conformity. But like the mammals and birds that survived the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction, so individuals have survived all previous attempts to eradicate them. Individuals have survived Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and even American Public Education, which is arguably one of the greatest threats to individuality.
But the threat to individuality in the current age is slightly different; the threat is greater by an order of magnitude or more. All those books warning of 1984-like societies were hypotheses. If we follow “this path,” then we’ll end up “here.” As in bad weather reports, their prophecies were watches, not warnings, probabilities, not storms. Now the tornadoes are already on the ground, and they are sweeping ever broader paths of humanity into one swirling and chaotic mass. Think of Martian windstorms that begin with isolated dust devils merging into planet-wide haboobs. Look around, the storms that mix earth and sky envelope us: Mob action has increased, not diminished with the rise of cyber-connectedness. Populations separated by geography are joined across a virtual world, a flatland of sameness. We’re becoming ONE; individualism is fast dying. Extinction is at hand.
Hyperbole? Maybe. But think of the rise in globalism in recent decades, a oneness of belief in climate change that will ruin economies, in socialism as a panacea, in universal policies affecting almost every aspect of life, in identity politics that wear the aegis of equity, and in unified talking points broadcast 24/7 coupled with censorship that stifles all opposition.
No doubt you are saying, “Not me. I’ll survive. I’ll maintain my individuality through the extinction event. My legacy will be individuality passed on to intellectual descendants. I will bequeath a heritage of independent thought to all who come after me.” Maybe. But to be truly “individual” you’ll need perseverance that so many around you do not have.
All those authors that foreshadowed the coming extinction of individualism warned us. Look around. Look over the likeminded crowds, over the canaille. You might be hard pressed to find someone who heeded their warnings.
Not that life in a canaille hasn’t occurred before. In fact, every age has exhibited the press toward conformity. But like the mammals and birds that survived the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction, so individuals have survived all previous attempts to eradicate them. Individuals have survived Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and even American Public Education, which is arguably one of the greatest threats to individuality.
But the threat to individuality in the current age is slightly different; the threat is greater by an order of magnitude or more. All those books warning of 1984-like societies were hypotheses. If we follow “this path,” then we’ll end up “here.” As in bad weather reports, their prophecies were watches, not warnings, probabilities, not storms. Now the tornadoes are already on the ground, and they are sweeping ever broader paths of humanity into one swirling and chaotic mass. Think of Martian windstorms that begin with isolated dust devils merging into planet-wide haboobs. Look around, the storms that mix earth and sky envelope us: Mob action has increased, not diminished with the rise of cyber-connectedness. Populations separated by geography are joined across a virtual world, a flatland of sameness. We’re becoming ONE; individualism is fast dying. Extinction is at hand.
Hyperbole? Maybe. But think of the rise in globalism in recent decades, a oneness of belief in climate change that will ruin economies, in socialism as a panacea, in universal policies affecting almost every aspect of life, in identity politics that wear the aegis of equity, and in unified talking points broadcast 24/7 coupled with censorship that stifles all opposition.
No doubt you are saying, “Not me. I’ll survive. I’ll maintain my individuality through the extinction event. My legacy will be individuality passed on to intellectual descendants. I will bequeath a heritage of independent thought to all who come after me.” Maybe. But to be truly “individual” you’ll need perseverance that so many around you do not have.
All those authors that foreshadowed the coming extinction of individualism warned us. Look around. Look over the likeminded crowds, over the canaille. You might be hard pressed to find someone who heeded their warnings.
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