I keep posting on FB and then deleting. I don't want to be a buzzkill. Reading this book, Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault, makes me worried about the rise of AI and automation. We are still stuck in the paradigm of self-worth equals work, salvation equals work, godliness equals work. Arbreit macht frei, to quote a phrase. If less human labor will be necessary in the coming decades in order to sustain production, how will we reconcile that?

Currently our choice is between a proponent of christofacsism and a prosecutor, so it's not looking great. 

I listened to a talk recently about how tech companies have to give the illusion of potential growth to satisfy shareholders even when no real meaningful growth is currently possible (Meta, for example, having saturated the social media market). As a result they intentionally break tools/features that users like so that they can claim this as "innovation." There is a way to connect this phenomenon, probably, with the more general contrived growth of unchecked capitalism. All the products being made that are stupid and unnecessary, all the services being hawked that are certainly wasteful and possibly harmful. 

It's annoying and disorienting that, in the political sphere, words have different meanings. Conservatism, for example. Wouldn't it be nice if it meant conserving the value in our economy, conserving the value in our natural resources and a rejection of just growth for growth's sake alone (and then having to contend with the offshoot of that growth which in terms of AI/automation is going to be an increase in "idleness" which will be criminalized/exploited)?

I wish there were another way to live. One wholly outside this geo-political circus.