The King and the Keyboard Kingpin

Throughout the million or so years of the history of humankind, it took a certain amount of effort to commit violence on someone’s life. People were forced to use brute strength and/or some object at hand that could be used as a weapon. The eventual development of actual weapons made violence way easier, and, as those weapons became more and more sophisticated, way more efficient. But a ton of energy was still needed to create those weapons and to train humans to use them. Just read about the six weeks it took to drag cannons across unmanageable terrain to the seige of Constantinople, if you don’t believe Life in the Boomer Lane. It was seriously over the top.

Other ways of ruining someone’s life were slower to show up to the plate. Ever since humans lived in communities, gossip/innuendo/slander had to be conveyed from one person to another. This took a lot of time and could often result in mistakes. One can easily imagine how the statement “That woman looks like she was drawn by my left hand!” could, when whispered fom person to person, take on a completely different meaning. The evolution of the printing press made ruining someone’s life way easier and certainly more accurate, but it was a tiresome process and one’s fingers were always covered with ink. Worst, most ordinary humans were below grade level in reading and could have just as easily used the missives to wipe their butts as to read slander about others.

Even the most successful of murderous despots, ran into problems. Mao Zedong, creator of China’s “Great Leap Forward,” apparantly overlooked that there were 40 to 80 million victims of starvation, persecution, prison labour, and other assorted violations, who never made any kind of leap from where they expired. While Mao was focused on the Great Leap Forward, Russia’s Joseph Stalin turned his attention to the “Great Purge.” All in all, during his time of leadership, Stalin ended up purging between 5.2 million and 20+ million people. All of this demise cost these leaders untold sums of money and effort. Plus, it was seriously bad for their PR.

It is thus fascinating, then, to see the introduction of the complete ease of destruction and ruining lives. For awhile now, highschoolers’ lives have been ruined by slander on social media. Clearly, one day someone was watching their 15-year-old, sobbing over their cell phone, and realized that, if technology could cause such harm so quickly to a human brain, maybe it would be possible to use it to control the planet. Thus, the weaponization of technology was born. (A note to Loyal Readers: For decades now, articles, films and books have warned us of this in various ways. This is simply a new itiration.)

We are now able to bypass the annoying limits of laws, rules, and international diplomacy. Ancient peoples could only have marvalled at the efficiency that has been created.People no longer have to be thrown off the top of a pyramid or have their medical benefits pulled. We can simply, soley in the digital universe, eliminate their jobs. We don’t even have to warn them or bother to remove their desks and coffee mugs. Money that used to go to certain places can instantly be diverted to others. The possibilities are endless. One can wake up one morning and find that one no longer has a way to support themselves, no longer have access to go to other countries, or that their very sexual identity has been altered.

“But hold your horses!” you may yell. “We have laws! We have documents like the Constitution! We have an agreed order of things!” Excuse LBL while she smiles and pats your head. Laws, agreements, money, love, committment, science, etc are fragile. They are all parts of our own reality. And reality only works when a group of two or countless millions of humans accept the same reality. Jesus’ influence would have ended well before even getting started, if folks had said, “Good hat trick, Guy, but Son of God? We don’t think so.”

People have called what is happening “unthinkable” or “disgraceful” or whatever is the worst word they can think of at the moment. It’s like our flawed but predictable lives have turned into a circus. The only question is, how long do we stay in the sideshow tent? The tent doesn’t have a lock on the opening. We can leave at any time. But we stay inside, paralyzed by awe awe and/or fear. Or we choose to close our eyes and ignore what is happening. Or maybe we slowly realize that we can’t breathe in there and make the decision to get out. Slowly, gathering up our courage, we head toward the opening, not knowing what may happen. That’s the current conundrum we are facing.