> It's troubling for China to have as much influence as it does when it's directly trying to undermine freedoms that we have fought tooth and nail and died a million lives to get in The West.
WE have thrown it away already, China is just trying to speed things up.
I've thought quite a bit about this, and my conclusion is that everything is cyclical and has a rise and fall because it only takes a few generations to unlearn hard-fought lessons. Only this time around technology is going to enable a level of control that has never been achieved before. I can only hope that technology will also allow the escape of that same level of control.
A perfect example is how larger and larger swathes of the populace is ok hampering free speech in the name of empathy. They don't fully understand the implications, and there will be generations that will be forced to relearn those lessons, and it won't be a cheap lesson.
“The Lessons of History” by Will Durant and Ariel Durant talks about the cyclical nature of history. They talk specifically about the cycles of control and chaos. How our liberties are only possible after a period of control.
just a follow up, I found myself on a lakeside this weekend and took the opportunity to read the book.
Thank you again for recommending it, I really enjoyed the insights it had. I found the idea that democracies tend to end up dictatorships/authoritarianism to be extremely fascinating.
And the observation that market driven economies have happened in the past helped me realize current times are not nearly as unique as I believed.
WE have thrown it away already, China is just trying to speed things up.
I've thought quite a bit about this, and my conclusion is that everything is cyclical and has a rise and fall because it only takes a few generations to unlearn hard-fought lessons. Only this time around technology is going to enable a level of control that has never been achieved before. I can only hope that technology will also allow the escape of that same level of control.
A perfect example is how larger and larger swathes of the populace is ok hampering free speech in the name of empathy. They don't fully understand the implications, and there will be generations that will be forced to relearn those lessons, and it won't be a cheap lesson.