As someone who has dipped into the libertarian infinity pool of crazy, and flopped right over the side into the freefall insanity of pragmatic anarchism, I am aware that most lasting societal changes have only been accomplished by creating rivers of blood--the Reign of Terror, the Soviet Revolution, the Holocaust, the Killing Fields, etc. And I am also aware that the new boss is usually either the same as the old boss, or quite a lot worse.
But nevertheless, after the reset, things often get better for a while--if you survived, that is--before they get worse again.
So you can either screw yourself up to do some bloody murder against those whom you believe to really deserve it, and make a real change, for better or worse (usually worse), or you can parade around making some fake change that lets you feel better about yourselves, but probably won't do any real damage, such as a devastating nuclear winter, or another miserable dark age of terror, brutality, serfdom, and slavery. You can pick out your targets now, and wait for the right time to pull the trigger. Or you can make signs and sing Kum-Bai-Yah. But maybe there's another option, that has never been tried before.
The usual problem is that the masters of the universe have no incentives whatsoever to change their own behavior or give up their own power. But there is a magical, mythical substance in the Illuminatus! trilogy called AUM. This was described as a drug that permanently changed someone from a neophobe into a neophile. It changed minds with one dose. So perhaps, like so many sci-fi speculations later found to have landed near the marks discovered by future science, a cocktail of known hallucinogens and entheogens might be employed to bestow an artificial chemical sense of compassion and empathy upon those who lack one of their own.
In short, black-bag some elites, and shoot them up with a witches brew of MDMA, LSD, DXM, Datura, nicotine, cannabis, salvinorin-A, high fructose corn syrup, fluoride, chemtrail distillate, et cetera (Poe's Law disclosure: the latter three were satire), and see if that can cure them of being selfish assholes. You flip the enemy to your side, and you gain power without killing anyone--or at least without producing dead bodies, as forcibly making permanent changes to someone's brain against their will could be construed as psychological murder.
It's the same problem as eradicating any parasite. If you kill 99% of them, that just leaves the niche open for that remaining 1% to repopulate. So you capture some, sterilize them, and release them back into the wild. Those continue to compete among their own kind, and then die off without progeny, which crashes the whole population enough that it can now be controlled by other means. Just as the parasites subvert others to work for them, you subvert the self-interest of the parasites so that they destroy themselves.
There's a revolution in the US every four to eight years. You just don't remember them /because/ they happen peacefully. And if those don't give you the drastic change your spoiled mind craves, that may just be because most people are happy enough with the status quo that they consider it unlikely that anything better would emerge from chaos–kinda like you don't throw a puzzle in the air if only a few pieces are missing.
1990 would also count as the biggest revolution in our lifetime (assuming there are few WW2 vets on HN). Plus China has changed drastically, without bloody revolutions, and that whole EU thing. Mandela. Gandhi. Venzuela, Turkey, Brexit (for the worse). Iran, Cuba (for the better).
Brexit is TBD. Seriously. The thing hasn't been implemented yet (hardly even an implementation strategy exists), so calling it for the worse is premature.
You may very well be right, but it's too soon to make that judgement rationally unless you want to call it a forecast.
I don't crave any drastic change. I realized long ago that society is not a thing I can fix. So I changed myself, to not get so upset whenever confronted with more evidence that life is not fair. It doesn't really matter to me that the US elected a reality-show host as its President, because "the US" never really belonged to me. The illusion I carried of it in my head was never real. The real US doesn't care one infinitesimal iota for what I think. I'm just a kook, with no valuable insights whatsoever. Historically, the US has been generally content to leave me alone, as long as I pay more than the minimum measure of tribute, and don't stir up trouble. Abandon the illusion, and you lose all the cognitive dissonance that it fuels.
So have yourself a revolution. Or don't. Or rearrange the deck chairs and rename the ship. Do any of those things, but you're still caught up in the shared delusions of tribalism writ large.
Vonnegut said it best: "To find the substance of a granfalloon, just prick the skin of a toy balloon."
Every four to eight years, there is a great heaving shift in what people think they are supposed to be, with little to no fundamental basis in reality. Real wages have been stagnant in the US since the 1970s. Technology is better. Environmental catastrophe looms taller. Younger people agitate, and older people dissipate. Charlatans and con men ply their trade on the unsuspecting. Those who wish to eat must work, even if the work is gratuitous and unnecessary.
What really changes for that middle 80% of Earth's population? They gain freedom of speech? No one is listening. Freedom to own property? They can't afford to buy it. Freedom to cross borders? The available work-for-hire can move away faster than you can chase it. All the while, people like Putin and Trump wield the power to reduce all those people to radioactive dust without care, while meting out lesser (still deadly) consequences at whim, with even less possibility for remorse. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The tsar becomes the party leader. The shah becomes the ayatollah. The king becomes the president. Mr. Machiavelli sidles up, whispers into their ears, and the pigs move in to the farmer's house.
> In short, black-bag some elites, and shoot them up with a witches brew of MDMA, LSD, DXM, Datura, nicotine, cannabis, salvinorin-A, high fructose corn syrup, fluoride, chemtrail distillate, et cetera (Poe's Law disclosure: the latter three were satire), and see if that can cure them of being selfish assholes.
No, it'll give them a bad trip and they will hang you by your own guts. This (and more) had already been tried fifty years ago, read about project MKULtra and the book "Acid Dreams".
As I recall, the goals of that project were somewhat different.
I am specifically suggesting a cure for antisocial personality disorder. Hallucinogens have been successfully used clinically to treat addiction and other self-destructive behaviors. Anecdotal reports from recreational drug users sometimes include sensations of being connected to everything else on the planet, and coming down with a profound and newfound respect for life. MDMA reportedly enhances natural empathy.
Currently, the only proven, permanent cure for sociopathy is to put a bullet in the sociopath's head and then cremate the body.
While that is effective, it is morally abhorrent to go around murdering people for having a brain defect. And most mind-altering drugs are barred from serious research into peaceful clinical applications, due to being scheduled substances. There may be a banned substance, or some combination of banned substances, that could form the basis of a treatment or cure for antisocial personalities, and particularly for the narcissistic sociopaths.
Alternately, a pacemaker-like device implanted into the brain might work, but that seems dangerous and expensive.
If no cure can be found, and no cure is possible, the logical thing to do would then be to devise an objective test, targeting 0% false positives, to identify sociopaths, and exile them away from all normal humans. Or murder them. But only a sociopath would be able to implement such a solution, so you might see the problem there.
> As I recall, the goals of that project were somewhat different.
There were many, from "truth serum" against captured enemy spies through mind control over the US population (they considered adding psychedelics to tap water) up to "pacification" of Soviet leaders in the exact way you described.
> Hallucinogens have been successfully used clinically to treat addiction and other self-destructive behaviors. Anecdotal reports from recreational drug users sometimes include sensations of being connected to everything else on the planet, and coming down with a profound and newfound respect for life. MDMA reportedly enhances natural empathy.
It only worked that way for people who already wanted it to work for them that way.
Let's not fall into the trap of assuming that since CIA-funded scientists performing secret and unethical experiments to accomplish military-political objectives couldn't make the drugs work, that it couldn't be done above-board by clinicians who genuinely want to cure a bona fide brain defect that is utterly devastating to everyone who would ordinarily be close to the affected individuals.
MK-Ultra wanted to make normal people more biddable by the US government. That's a far cry from attempting to cure the apparent combination of antisocial personality disorder and narcissism that seems prevalent in the behaviors of many of the worst heads of state (and other, less-privileged government officials) known to history.
We know it's possible, because the majority of humans manage to grow a sense of empathy attached to their limbic system that actually makes them feel bad when they hurt other people and feel good when they make other people happy. The human brain naturally develops this capacity when exposed to the correct combination of chemicals and stimuli. So I have to believe that a cure is possible, because otherwise we have no business letting those monsters anywhere near our livelihoods, our relationships, or our institutions. They are currently physiologically incapable of caring whether the rest of us live or die, feel fear or joy, love or hate. They might as well be randomized time bombs strapped to stray cats. If you let them go, you have no idea where or when they will go off.
I believe that a significant fraction of the world's ultra-rich elites are either naturally narcissistic sociopaths, or have conditioned themselves to numb their sense of empathy and their humility. If the dangerous ones can be cured, they don't all have to be indiscriminately thrown under the guillotine next time. Because that often just allows the reserve corps of narcissistic sociopaths, formerly kept in check by the previous top predators, to assume power.
I want to believe in a cure. If I couldn't believe in that, I would have to support committing crimes against people whom I cannot be certain are truly antisocial personalities--in the name of the "greater good", of course--and that would mean that I would be one of the monsters unfit to participate in civilized, cooperative society. I'd have to wonder whether I genuinely wanted to help other people, or whether I was just removing the competition for their future exploitation.
Are you certain it's a problem with their sense of empathy not being properly attached to the limbic system? Because IMO, it seems more likely that bit works just fine even for them, but they use strong cognitive dissonance to hack around it.
Also, you are taking it as a given that the problem is that a lot of high ranking power positions are taken by people with sociopathic and/or narcissist personality disorders. I'm with you on that btw, no need to convince me, but I'm not sure if it's a generally agreed upon fact :)
Also also, AUM worked not just with one dose but also a (near?) 100% success rate. But that was in a work of fiction, specifically, one with the premise of "what if ALL conspiracy theories ever, were true, simultaneously?". It's one of my favourite books for sure, contains a lot of real wisdom as well, but more in a philosophical sense than practical. There's no way even a perfectly researched cocktail of hallucinogenics, MDMA, other drugs and I dunno what else, would attain a practical permanent success rate past 10% even.
I think if it were not a physical problem in the structure of the brain, we would not currently have a 0% cure rate using existing psychiatry.
In a philosophical sense, AUM is not an actual chemical cocktail. It is the basis for a viewpoint wherein a past enemy may become a future friend, and the normal human fear of the unknown is the barrier between them.
So you recite to yourself the Litany Against Fear from Dune and offer to your enemy the opportunity to become less alien to each other. A dose of real-life AUM takes decades, or even generations, to administer.
This is why most wars are preceded by a psychological campaign to dehumanize and alienate the designated enemy.
But nevertheless, after the reset, things often get better for a while--if you survived, that is--before they get worse again.
So you can either screw yourself up to do some bloody murder against those whom you believe to really deserve it, and make a real change, for better or worse (usually worse), or you can parade around making some fake change that lets you feel better about yourselves, but probably won't do any real damage, such as a devastating nuclear winter, or another miserable dark age of terror, brutality, serfdom, and slavery. You can pick out your targets now, and wait for the right time to pull the trigger. Or you can make signs and sing Kum-Bai-Yah. But maybe there's another option, that has never been tried before.
The usual problem is that the masters of the universe have no incentives whatsoever to change their own behavior or give up their own power. But there is a magical, mythical substance in the Illuminatus! trilogy called AUM. This was described as a drug that permanently changed someone from a neophobe into a neophile. It changed minds with one dose. So perhaps, like so many sci-fi speculations later found to have landed near the marks discovered by future science, a cocktail of known hallucinogens and entheogens might be employed to bestow an artificial chemical sense of compassion and empathy upon those who lack one of their own.
In short, black-bag some elites, and shoot them up with a witches brew of MDMA, LSD, DXM, Datura, nicotine, cannabis, salvinorin-A, high fructose corn syrup, fluoride, chemtrail distillate, et cetera (Poe's Law disclosure: the latter three were satire), and see if that can cure them of being selfish assholes. You flip the enemy to your side, and you gain power without killing anyone--or at least without producing dead bodies, as forcibly making permanent changes to someone's brain against their will could be construed as psychological murder.
It's the same problem as eradicating any parasite. If you kill 99% of them, that just leaves the niche open for that remaining 1% to repopulate. So you capture some, sterilize them, and release them back into the wild. Those continue to compete among their own kind, and then die off without progeny, which crashes the whole population enough that it can now be controlled by other means. Just as the parasites subvert others to work for them, you subvert the self-interest of the parasites so that they destroy themselves.