“First to be born was the Golden Age. Of its own free will, without laws or enforcement, it did what was right and trust prevailed. Punishment held no terrors; no threatening edicts were published […] the crowd never pleaded or crowded in fear in front of stern-faced judges. No pine tree had yet been felled from its home on the mountains and come down […] No cities were yet ringed […] long straight trumpets and curved bronze horns never summoned to battle; swords were not carried nor helmets worn; [and,] no need for armies […] The earth was equally free and at rest, untouched by the hoe, unscathed by the ploughshare, supplying all needs from its natural resources.
The final age was of iron; the floodgates opened and all the forces of evil invaded […] Loyalty, truth, and conscience went into exile, their throne usurped by guile and deception […] The land which had been as common to all as the air or the sunlight was now marked out with the boundary lines of the wary surveyor. The affluent earth was not only pressed for the crops and the food that it owed; men also found their way to its very bowels, and the wealth which the god had hidden away in the home of the ghosts by the Styx was mined and dug out, as a further incitement to wickedness.”
— Ovid, Metamorphoses
It is certain that there is a difference between a human and a Human, because we note that the former has no capacity for being moved by beauty. Especially, the beauty of nature. They feel not a drop of discomfort as the vibrant green of their world is all mowed down. And even as the black fog settles, lining their lungs with muck and grime; and even as that hacking cough sends spittle onto their coins—they at no point detect that something has gone wrong.
Lower and more base are the “owners,” who are gleeful at this ugly world, and at the humans they’ve unnaturally reduced into ants. Like the point of cave drawings was this. Like the point of language and the love of one’s child was this and nothing but. Like Humanity’s telos and every civilization was an error—we needed this.
The human Spirit is most apparent in children. We need only watch what they do. Un-compelled, they sing and dance, make art, play games and struggle. If an iPad is not thrusted toward them, they’ll naturally prefer to go outside. They are sociable, curious and brave; they often do things for the sake of it. But by the end of adolescence this has all been beaten out, and can only persist under one condition: monetization. No more singing, no more drawing, no more playing, no more creating—unless they can do it to make money.
The Iron Age values task-completion and efficiency, not Spirit. It doesn’t really have a need of “humans.” By far, what it prefers, is a worker-ant or bee. But humans, of course, cannot be this. That is the problem. The newest turn, as a result of this, is to make human beings redundant. Robots, artificial intelligence. “Intelligences” that “think” and make “art.” That do our little spreadsheets and slideshows . . . that release singles, have live debates, and that even—lately—become actresses.
The spirit of industry is somehow forward-looking and blind. If AI takes our white collar work, if they do art faster and “better” than we do, and if labor is cheaper when done by robots . . . what is left for us?
Fury.
And idleness.
The two components in historic revolt and the elites are careening toward it.