There’s nothing backward about questioning ‘progress’
Whether it’s an EU army or a device to hack the brain, some ideas pose a serious threat to our liberty
The coming tyranny creeps as well as flaunts. When we are relentlessly subjected to the grotesque pageantry of Brussels, it’s easy to forget this basic fact. The recent spectacle of EU superarmy fanatic Ursula von der Leyen scraping a nine-vote margin in a one-horse election – like the deficient tyrant of some doleful banana republic – was so burlesquely, flesh-baringly totalitarian, it almost seemed like a vulgar joke. But, gripped by the Orwellian psychodrama of Brussels, are we neglecting the advance of an even more dark and dangerous strain of modern authoritarianism?
The world is sleepwalking into technotyranny. If those democrats among us seethed with indignation at von der Leyen this week, they greeted revelations that Elon Musk is trying to hack the human brain with a chilly shrug – if they even registered the story. Musk’s company, Neuralink, has applied to US regulators to begin trialling a device that will connect the human brain to a computer interface. Although the firm says its focus is patients who suffer from neurological diseases, Mr Musk believes that the future of humanity is “superintelligence” – a final utopian cognitive state, which will merge our faulty, irrational minds with infinitely more capable and logical machines – thus potentially paving the way for the obliteration of our flawed species.
But if elite ambition is reaching out to a sinister future reality, human apathy is also lazily letting it in. As you read this, hundreds of British millennials are blithely handing over personal photos to a Russian-owned artificial intelligence app in return for the thrill of seeing a simulated version of their elderly self. The thrust of this now commonplace
narrative – gormless hoi polloi unthinkingly hand over personal data to nefarious corporation – is now so clichéd, and so difficult for journalists to illustrate in concrete terms, that concerned members of the public struggle to feel primal fear or anger, and so console themselves with collective confected dismay instead.
It is my (admittedly mildly eccentric) belief that Brexit is not just about sovereignty; on a subconscious level, some of us are trying to claw our way out of a much more serious existential abyss. The companies of the future like Faceapp and Neuralink are trying to impose on us a disturbingly unchecked, unaccountable definition of human “progress”, just like Brussels. Perhaps that is why so many dismiss Brexit as backwards; it goes against civilisation’s broader direction of travel, which is centralising, controlling and hyper rational, and respects neither the individual nor the concept of limits. It is not hyperbole to suggest that the future of humanity may hinge on whether projects like leaving the EU are successful; if civilisations cannot craft alternative visions of “progress”, that respects democracy and operates within proverbial as well as literal borders, then I am afraid that man is heading for an era of unprecedented despotism, swiftly followed by his extinction.
It will soon be too late. Our actions are already closely surveilled and manipulated by corporations who have a profit-driven interest in reducing the individual to processable data chunks. We are already so cripplingly dependent on technology and distorted by algorithms, which shape everything from the music we enjoy to the films we watch, that the concept of an autonomous self feels like philosophical self-indulgence.
Which leads us to the biggest lie of our time – the notion that the most serious threat to liberalism is populism. In fact, a global network of scientists and entrepreneurs are on course to obliterate liberalism by scientifically disproving free will. They are compiling the case that all our feelings and decisions are triggered by neural processes, which can in turn be influenced by algorithms. As well as being presented as a triumph for scientific “progress”, this will conveniently open up infinite new avenues for tech-driven profit-making. Which leads us to the second biggest lie of our time – that socialism is the arch enemy of personal responsibility. Actually, it’s the tech giants who truly threaten to reduce us to probed, passive husks for human beings.
Naturally, this all sounds like the deranged stuff of science fiction. But it would be more prudent to regard the impending technological apocalypse as a long-term existential threat, comparable with climate change. And it is vital that thinkers, scholars and activists grasp that the philosophy of Brexit – establishing boundaries in order to progress as a country – is about so much more than Brexit. Our battle to reclaim sovereignty from the EU is merely the start of a very long war to save humanity.