Covid19 — Fast Forwarding us to Utopia

It’s way too early for any optimism or searching for a silver lining in all this, but I wrote this (Medium Link)  anyway:

(Also as a video on Youtube.)

As a sci-fi author, I always have at least one foot in the future. It’s not a choice, my brain can’t help looking for signs of what is coming next. The day-to-day patterns of the world are my I Ching sticks.At the moment, I’m thinking a lot about purpose —For most of human existence, aligning against adversity has given us clear purpose. Once our defining enemies were lions, glaciers, storms, or the monsters in the next village. For much of recent history, we derived purpose from banding together against worshipers of Gods who didn’t see eye to eye with our own [Gods]; but the last century saw a new great battle of good versus evil: Capitalism versus Communism. For two generations, we pitted ourselves against the great enemy. Working in a corporation made you a holy warrior. CEOs were generals; warlords of capitalism. Money was munitions. Going to work, you were not just earning ‘TV tokens’, at a primal level you were strapping on a shield and sword and doing battle.Suddenly, quite unexpectedly, in the early 90s we found that we had won. The enemy was routed; the foe was vanquished. Our battle-weary hordes did what triumphant conquering armies always do, they sacked the place and helped themselves to all the plunder.Post-conflict, those trained killers continued the fight. The ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ paladins of Capitalism, knowing only war, became thugs terrorizing their societies, it was all they knew.