The Blackberry Walk

Ananke, the goddess of necessity, is dying. The difficulties man once had to fight against, like surviving cold winters without much food nor fuel, are over. There is very little we have to do; and that which we have to do is pretty meaningless work, like filling spreadsheets, sending emails around, and such. With ever-greater automation with machines, we get ever closer to making ourselves seemingly unnecessary. Somehow most socialists and anti-socialists alike now aim for the same future; a future where no work needs doing. Machines have reduced working hours by automating processes to ever greater extents - surely the end-point is full automation, where we sit back whilst machines dress us, make us lunch and wipe our bottoms? The idea of a machine dressing you in the morning may sound absurd, but the only qualm is a moral one; British East India Company employees usually each had a local man-servant to do menial chores like dressing them, cooking, or cleaning. The only difference is the morality. Our society today is far more attuned to power. To have someone dress you in the morning seems to our eyes a gross abuse of power since there isn't that big a gap in wealth as there once was (sure in terms of actual money the gap is larger, but not in terms of having enough money to survive). We see ourselves as above the 'slavery' of having someone dress us - and quite rightly so. But machines are slaves; it's a large coincidence in the early 19th century that slavery was abolished right before the industrial revolution - our new slave labour workforce had arrived. Once machinery dissolves all human responsibility, we can live suckling on the teat of luxury. There will be nothing we have to do - only activities we want to do. We'd spend time watching anime, chatting to friends, small projects, working on crafts - that kind of thing. Lockdown with a little more socialising. But even those smaller projects can be bested by a machine. The table you buy from a shop will be better than anything you, the amateur carpenter, can make. And likewise, one day the anime making machine will make better anime than any team of people. The neural network can give you inputs of any genres, any tropes - even do it in the style of your favourite character designer, studio, or director. Sure, there's the personal touch to making something from scratch, but it will be essentially LARPing. It'll be a want not a need. Once all human endeavours are bested by machines, all human activities will be a LARP for a lost past. A lost past where you had to do make a table, make an anime, or get dressed yourself. We'll become a society of effete dilettante noblemen with nothing better to do than to complain about the AI governing us or the machine controlling the weather. That instinct inside of us that strives for comfort is the Devil in disguise; that instinct to snuggle back onto mum's lap will be the death of mankind. Comfort creates spongy sofa-people who are without rigidity nor self-discipline. But with Ananke lying wilting on her sickbed, the ever-youthful goddess Desire has no restraint bar the individual's spirit. However without Ananke forging the spirit strike by strike throughout your life, the spirit is weak and malleable, unable to tame the unwieldy wide-smiled goddess Desire. There is no solution to this. Can't just run away to the mountains and live a life like Heidi - it would just be inauthentic living that kind of a lie. Similarly, if the AI government mandated certain targets to be met, in a kind of Psycho Pass/Chinese social credit system, to force you to exercise, eat healthily and grow as a person, it would be equally inauthentic. Why not then overturn the system and fix the machine so man can live in greater peace and comfort? As I said, there is just no solution. Ananke's ritual cycle of rebirth and decline, is the death and growth of civilisation respectively. In the present, we'll just have to keep our spirits strong to survive the temptation of Desire's warm amniotic tides.