Every Other Day
Humanity's at the dawn of a new horizon. Are we allowing our future to be written without us?
How was your day at the office? Long.
We’re going on a thought adventure today. I had the most intense incredible dream the other night. Ok, a mind trip. It was about work and how I could increase my own productivity. I know, my dreams suck. I’ll get out more, I promise.
After an edible to quiet the brain-static, it got outta control. The grey-matter went red-alert. How would I react to a 24-hour work-day? Not as anomaly, but as a normality. What are the implications for society and humanity? How long would it take? Could it be global in scale? Who or What will be the authority?
What if, in our dystopian next stage - right before The Future Broken Free World revolution - human labor is so radically transformed that it actually becomes the central activity in a human’s lifetime?
Humans not forced into slave labor, but raised with no other lived experience. I asked The Robot to conceptualize this and they did so excitedly. Too excitedly for a robot I thought. I’m starting to get a little nervous around these machines.
It’s not the first time I’ve thought of dreams. Or written about them. This whole concept of a 24-hour work-cycle - to not only reap the benefits of a massive labor-force - but to completely and totally control civilization became clear. To own and dictate each individual’s life. Humanity itself - automated and roboticized.
So what kind of work are we talking about? We could start with Cobalt Mining. That will provide the lithium-powered batteries as the globe transitions from fossil fuels past renewables and on to nuclear power. That atomic advancement alone will propel humanity into a new epoch, leaving behind the need to use human labor to produce raw material for energy production.
"You have to imagine walking around some of these mining areas and dialing back our clock centuries," Kara says. "People are working in subhuman, grinding, degrading conditions. They use pickaxes, shovels, stretches of rebar to hack and scrounge at the earth in trenches and pits and tunnels to gather cobalt and feed it up the formal supply chain."
Imagine an entire population of people who cannot survive without scrounging in hazardous conditions for a dollar or two a day. There is no alternative there. The mines have taken over everything. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced because their villages were just bulldozed over to make place for large mining concessions. So you have people with no alternative, no other source of income, no livelihood. Now, add to that the menace in many cases of armed forces pressuring people to dig, parents having to make a painful decision, 'Do I send my child to school or do we eat today?' And if they choose the latter, that means bringing all their kids into these toxic pits to dig just to earn that extra fifty cents or a dollar a day, that could mean difference between eating or not. So in the 21st century, this is modern-day slavery. It's not chattel slavery from the 18th century where you can buy and trade people and own title over a person like property. But the level of degradation, the level of exploitation is on par with old-world slavery.
When we think about a system of control so extensive and far-reaching, it almost seems far-fetched. But as historical and contemporary facts prove to us, it’s more than possible, it’s happened in the past. And, it’s happening now!
How 'modern-day slavery' in the Congo powers the rechargeable battery economy
But seriously, you say, that cannot happen in the first-world today. Humans wouldn’t accept these conditions and be forced into labor that they don’t agree to perform. There is no way a government can pull off a mass forced-labor society. Uh, let’s look to the Chinese for guidance. They’ll soon be our masters.
Mass surveillance and internment of Uyghurs is facilitated in several ways, including the assignment of Chinese cadres to live in Uyghur households,69 and a mobile app used by authorities to detect behaviour that allegedly deviates from the norm, such as a person using a mobile phone other than their own.70 Punishment varies from confinement in one’s registered residence, to re-education or prison detention.71 After a period of internment, detainees may be transferred into forced labour.72 Uyghur children, according to reports, are forcibly removed from their homes and placed in government-run institutions,73 in contravention with international standards,74 and may experience increased vulnerability to modern slavery due to family separation.75
MODERN SLAVERY IN CHINA
What is modern slavery?
What’s to be done by this labor force?
Freeing humanity from expending energy (human) to produce energy (society) will create new voids of time to be filled with new (and old) pursuits and endeavors.
Humans evolved from primates because we found new time on our hands. We discovered fire and cooked our meat. Our brains grew. We had time to think because we didn’t have to work the majority of the day to eat. I talked about it here.
What happens to humans when we don't need to think anymore?
Panopticon Theory provides an answer to that question and the foundation to begin building this society. Oddly enough, I written much about this as well.
As a participant in panopticon living, I can attest to it’s total domination over one’s existence. Even when not being directly observed, one’s behaviors are internally adjusted to account for the observation. And if somehow the authority misses an infraction, a snitch won’t miss a payday - via blackmail or bribe.
So, who will be the first wave for this massive realignment of power and labor? Oh, I don't know. Hmmm . . . I’ll take Trump Voters for $1000, Alex.
Democrat Challenging Stefanik in Congressional Race Calls for ‘Reeducating’ Trump Supporters
Certainly not the first time we’ve heard that. What is it with this obsession with “re-education”?
A simple search reveals that the Dems pushing this agenda have some interesting historical bedfellows: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. etc. etc. I suppose this type of reactionary stance by democrats is to be expected from the party that birthed the KKK.
Between 1877 and 1910 the KKK fueled Democrats’ push to establish one-party rule and Jim Crow. A coalition of Democrats, Klansmen, Red Shirts, Rifle Clubs, and White Leagues targeted freedmen and their allies, utilizing ballot fraud, intimidation, and murder. Some 1,751 blacks were lynched in southern and border states ca. 1882–1900 as black and white farmers’ alliances and the Populist Party coalesced for reform. Defeat of populists by ballot-rigging and terror enabled Democrats, as the Supreme Court instituted the “separate but equal” rule, to enact Jim Crow. The system disfranchised and terrorized blacks; it also persecuted Jews, Catholics, and nonwhite immigrants.
Salient point here is as black and white farmers’ alliances and the Populist Party coalesced for reform. Defeat of populists by ballot-rigging and terror enabled Democrats, as the Supreme Court instituted the “separate but equal” rule, to enact Jim Crow.
Wait, black and white farmers and populists coalesced in 1882? I'm confused 😕
The Cultural Normalization of Online Pimping
Well, I can see a large segment of society that will keep on doing exactly what they’re doing now. Except it will be in the service of the authority. The needs of humans - room and board basically - will be provided.
Clothing, furnishings, entertainment, recreation, leisure and rest will all be standardized and automated. Individual choice will be eliminated. Work-cycles of 24-hour periods will be mandatory, and humans will be allocated to specific roles, locations, and outcomes. Rest means nothing more than not working.
We’ve seen this before and now we are hearing it again. As if utopia lies in conformity. It used to in the dawn of humanity. Think tribes of antiquity and medieval mobs. Conformity and Uniformity - of look, of language, of custom and culture - kept populations safe and satisfied. Which is the essence of human nature. The path of least resistance is the under-current of evolution.
Throughout the centuries, those concepts - Conformity and Uniformity - were expanded and intersected. Keeping with the largely tribalistic trait of using skin color, gender, and status to differentiate humans, populations were influenced, swayed, coerced, forced, manipulated, trafficked, adjudicated against, beaten, drawn and quartered, lynched, raped, tarred and feathered, caned, beaten, flogged, guillotined, burned at the stake, shunned, banned, and exiled. Did I leave out any marginalized groups or tortures?
Whew! Man, we went through some shit as humans. They show sad dog commercials to raise funds, but where do we go to get back our humanity and freedom of choice?
Only Fans! presents a ready-made platform for this 24-hour work-cycle.
As a matter of statistics, just how great is the scope of the OnlyFans phenomenon? We did the math, and the good news of this otherwise sordid affair is that OnlyFans remains a minority sport in the country.
Of the 3 million “creators” on OnlyFans, the site reports that 67% of revenue goes to Americans. While the overwhelming majority of revenue goes to a minority of high-performing content creators, let’s assume, on average, that this revenue share can be extrapolated to mean that roughly 2 million Americans are OnlyFans creators. According to the site, 70% of creators are women, and 30% are men, translating to approximately 1.4 million American women and 600,000 American men.
Adults aged 18 to 45 — nearly all of the users of OnlyFans — comprise little more than a third of the U.S. population, or just shy of 119 million in total. This means that we can (again, very, very roughly) deduce that about 2% of American women aged 18 to 45 are selling themselves on OnlyFans, and about 1% of men are doing the same.
But how many are buying? More importantly, who is buying?
The problem is way more bleak on the demand side of the equation. According to OnlyFans, nearly half of its 220 million users are Americans, or more than 94 million. Considering that 87% of users overall are male, we can assume that’s about 82 million American men, three-quarters of whom are reportedly in that 18-45 age bracket.
Let us hope that OnlyFans is inflating some of these numbers because the back-of-the-envelope math would indicate that those 62 million OnlyFans users are nearly half of all American men aged 18-45. If these numbers are indeed correct, OnlyFans is a crisis of consumption, not supply.
That’s scary, “those 62 million OnlyFans users are nearly half of all American men aged 18-45.” Half of our military-aged men are hooked on digital porn. There’s a pretty good starting point. What’s more relaxing after a long, hard 24-hour shift than kicking back for a few hours with government-issued free porn.
214 million people in the United States played video games for one hour or more each week in 2020.
For some, it’s not porn. It’s on-line gaming. That’s a staggering number of Americans. Sure, it’s an hour in 2020. In a decade, could it be 24 hours a day?
Seems like society is primed to keep handing off our liberties and freedoms for some pretty pathetic trinkets. We’ve seen this before right? Give the Savages some fire water and looking glass, and we get their land and horses.
This is a slow-burn. The current temperature of the country, indeed the world, is at a boiling point. The more we get hooked on digital entertainment - making it or consuming it - benefits just one direction on the way to one future.
I asked The Robot to describe a potential society based on this 24-hour work/rest cycle. I swear I heard it strumming it’s fingers, softly repeating excellent, excellent. Enjoy the results.
Ric
In a world where society operates on a 24-hour on, 24-hour off cycle with no weekends, the following aspects could illustrate how such a schedule serves as a tool to control the population:
Societal Structure and Daily Life
Work-Life Balance:
Rigid Schedule: Citizens are required to work for 24 hours straight, followed by 24 hours of rest. This eliminates traditional weekends and shortens downtime, making personal planning and leisure activities difficult.
Exhaustion: Continuous 24-hour work periods induce chronic fatigue, reducing the energy available for activities outside work, including social interactions, hobbies, or activism.
Surveillance and Control:
Surveillance: During work hours, strict monitoring ensures productivity and compliance. During off-hours, surveillance continues under the guise of safety and health monitoring.
Reduced Social Cohesion: The alternating schedules make it challenging for people to coordinate meetups or organize, leading to weakened community bonds and solidarity.
Psychological and Social Impacts
Mental Health:
Stress and Burnout: The relentless cycle of work and rest with no variation induces high levels of stress and burnout, decreasing overall morale and increasing dependency on state-provided healthcare.
Isolation: Social isolation becomes prevalent as people struggle to align their rest periods with friends and family, eroding social networks and support systems.
Compliance and Conformity:
Routine Enforcements: The regimented schedule enforces a routine that discourages critical thinking and creativity, leading to a more docile and compliant population.
Dependence on Authority: People rely heavily on the government for maintaining this complex schedule, reinforcing the authority and control of the ruling powers.
Economic and Political Dynamics
Economic Control:
Controlled Productivity: The 24-hour work period maximizes labor output while the enforced rest period ensures workers are only minimally rested, maintaining a state of controlled productivity.
Consumerism: Off-hours are manipulated to promote consumption of entertainment and goods provided by state-approved enterprises, creating a cycle of work and controlled consumption.
Political Stability:
Diminished Dissent: The exhausting schedule reduces the likelihood of political dissent or protest. People are too tired or too preoccupied with their basic survival to engage in political activities.
Propaganda and Indoctrination: During off-hours, state-controlled media and entertainment dominate, spreading propaganda and reinforcing the government’s narrative.
Technological and Infrastructural Aspects
Technological Dependence:
Automation and AI: Advanced technology aids in enforcing the schedule, monitoring productivity, and providing entertainment during rest periods, creating a dependence on state-controlled technology.
Biometric Monitoring: Continuous health and activity tracking ensure compliance with the work-rest cycle, with deviations being flagged and corrected.
Infrastructure:
Integrated Living and Working Spaces: Urban planning reflects the work-rest cycle, with living quarters closely integrated with workspaces to minimize transition time and ensure quick compliance.
Public Services: Services are optimized to function seamlessly within this cycle, from healthcare to transportation, all designed to support the 24-hour work-rest paradigm.
Cultural and Ethical Implications
Cultural Shift:
Normalization of Fatigue: Chronic fatigue and overwork are normalized and even valorized, diminishing the value placed on rest, leisure, and personal fulfillment.
Cultural Erosion: Traditional cultural practices and communal activities that do not align with the 24-hour cycle gradually disappear, eroding cultural diversity.
Ethical Concerns:
Human Rights: The ethical implications of enforcing such a schedule raise significant human rights concerns, including the right to rest, personal time, and mental health.
Exploitation: The system can be seen as exploitative, prioritizing economic output and state control over individual well-being and freedom.
This 24-hour on, 24-hour off cycle creates a highly controlled, fatigued, and compliant society, with limited room for personal freedom, social bonds, or dissent, ultimately serving as a powerful tool for ruling the population.
Sounds like you had a nightmare...