THE FUTURE - CHAPTERS 4-5

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https://freedomain.com/freedomain_books/the-future/

Centuries in the future, an old man awakes from cryogenic sleep to face the judgement of a utopian society that barely survived his past abuses of power. In the vein of 'Atlas Shrugged, philosophy, philosopher Stefan Molyneux has created a compelling and powerful work of imagination. He vividly describes the wonderful future that mankind can achieve - and the barriers to getting there - and all that we need to leave behind to finally live in peace...

Transcript
00:00 "The Future" by Stéphane Molyneux, Chapter 4
00:06 Like many people, at least those in the past, Alice found fear and her life's purpose in
00:14 the same moment.
00:18 Much though she loved her parents, she also loved time alone, and so went for lengthy,
00:25 solitary walks.
00:27 There was virtually no sense of fear in her world, at least if people, accidents and illness
00:33 were still occasionally fatal, as she well knew.
00:37 When she was younger, Alice had asked her father whether she should be afraid of people,
00:43 and he had nodded seriously before smiling gently.
00:48 You know how obsessed I am with history, right?
00:50 Particularly ancient history, like a thousand years ago.
00:54 But there was a time even before that, ancient, ancient history, or ancient squared history,
01:00 perhaps.
01:01 Alice giggled.
01:02 Or maybe the word "ancient" with a line on top, like in music.
01:05 He smiled.
01:06 "Yeah, like, you know how some people are called Richardson, and that means 'son of
01:10 Richard'?
01:11 It seems to be logical that the son of Richardson would be called Richard Sun-Sun, and his kid,
01:16 Richard Sun-Sun-Sun."
01:18 He pointed a finger at her.
01:20 "Go!
01:21 Richard Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun!
01:22 Richard Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun!
01:23 Richard Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun!"
01:29 Repeat and fade.
01:30 "Uh, Richard Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun!""
01:34 He clapped with delight.
01:37 "Perfect!"
01:38 And there was a technology in the ancient world that allowed you to be frozen if you
01:42 were very sick and about to die, in the hopes of being brought back to life in the future,
01:46 when there was a cure for your illness.
01:48 He counted off his fingers.
01:50 So let's say that Richard Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun froze himself.
01:55 What would you call him?
01:56 "I don't know.
01:58 Frozen Richard Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun?
02:01 Ice Richard Sun?"
02:02 Repeat and fade.
02:03 "Could be.
02:04 Although, I, for one, would call him Richard Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sun-Sunsicle."
02:10 Hearty laughter.
02:12 Anyway, in the ancient, ancient times when people lived out in the woods, like we do,
02:17 but it was really wild all around, there was no technology, no computers, no bots, no machines,
02:22 there were lots of animals that were pretty dangerous.
02:24 Some of them tiny, like insects and microbes and germs and viruses, and some of them huge,
02:29 like bears, and some of them large and numerous, like packs of wolves and coyotes.
02:35 There were also alligators and crocodiles, which were basically land sharks that lived
02:38 in ponds.
02:40 Even a small animal, like a chipmunk or a raccoon, could give you a deadly bite that
02:43 could drive you mad.
02:44 They called it hydrophobia and later rabies, and there was no cure.
02:48 A tiny cut could get you infected.
02:50 Ugh, it was a real mess all around, particularly teeth, which killed a lot of people by getting
02:55 infected.
02:56 They didn't have toothpots at night, of course.
02:58 Anyway, people ended up congregating in cities for a variety of reasons, and in the cities
03:05 they didn't have to worry about natural predators, except maybe a couple of wild dogs, which
03:09 were not too bad to deal with.
03:11 You never had to deal with a bear or a pack of wolves in a city.
03:15 Getting away from these natural predators was one of the big advantages of living in
03:19 a city, but of course living in a city exposed you to all the unnatural predators, thieves
03:25 and pickpockets and murderers and stick-up artists, people who would point a weapon at
03:30 you and take your money.
03:32 But at least you didn't have to worry about wolves and bears.
03:36 Alice's eyes were wide.
03:38 Were people really that dangerous back then?
03:41 Her father nodded slowly, seriously.
03:43 "Oh yeah, I was just terrible.
03:46 And I haven't even told you about the worst predator of all, the most dangerous hunter
03:50 of human beings."
03:51 "What, worse than a bear?
03:52 Well, bears don't really hunt people."
03:55 "No, the worst predator was…"
03:59 He paused.
04:01 "What?"
04:02 Alice could see her father regarding the inner visage of her mother and wondering if his
04:06 daughter was old enough to hear about the most dangerous predator in human history.
04:09 "Let's wait.
04:10 I suppose it gives you something to look forward to."
04:15 "Aww, I know, I know."
04:18 Anyway, one of the things that people did was to tame wolves and turn them into dogs.
04:22 Dogs were great for hunting and guiding livestock and guarding and teaching some empathy to
04:26 children.
04:27 It was like domesticating cats, which happened mostly so that rats and mice could be kept
04:30 away from stored food, especially in the winter.
04:34 Predators were turned from enemies into friends, mostly by domesticating them, which meant
04:39 having them bond with human beings and treating them very well and feeding them, you know,
04:44 petting them and taking care of them in general.
04:46 You kept the most dangerous natural predators at a distance, and you domesticated the local
04:52 predators to turn them into friends.
04:55 Alice sighed, "Dad, you really have to learn how to shorten your answers."
04:59 Yeah, sorry.
05:01 Anyway, one of the great lessons of the last century or so has been the domestication of
05:07 human beings.
05:09 We finally figured out the true cause of crime and violence and solved it across most of
05:17 the world, for all time, I think.
05:20 It took a lot of suffering to get there, to get here, but this is the foundation on which
05:26 the peace and plenty of the modern world is built.
05:33 Alice could tell he was skirting around some big topic, but she decided to let it pass.
05:40 "So I don't have to worry about people, then?"
05:44 He smiled.
05:45 "No, honey, you don't.
05:47 The odds of you running into someone dangerous are about the same as the odds of you being
05:50 struck by lightning.
05:51 Less even.
05:53 We actually learned how to end evil, or the desire to use violence to get the unearned."
06:00 She jumped up, her legs tingling from sitting too long.
06:03 "So I'm free to roam?"
06:06 "Please do."
06:08 And roam she did.
06:14 Beginning at about the age of nine, Alice explored a good chunk of the world, at least
06:18 her local world, largely on her own.
06:22 She would sit in the white pews of a sky taxi, or use a sky trampoline, and visit the local
06:27 towns.
06:29 She loved walking down the wide, tree-lined avenues past the local markets, which mostly
06:35 contained human-made pieces of art, clothing, furniture and food, popular among the "purebloods,"
06:41 the people who had decided to live without machinery for various reasons.
06:46 Some of them were "back to the land" folks who said that the most natural life was the
06:50 best life, and tried to do everything by hand, or at least with as little machine assistance
06:54 as possible.
06:57 Some of the "purebloods" also believed that exploiting machines was a form of slavery,
07:01 and refused to participate in the bot life.
07:04 Lively debates were held on a regular basis about all these issues.
07:09 The oldest and most intractable problem of ideology, absolutism, was regularly challenged
07:15 and crucified, so to speak.
07:19 Was it permissible to let machines clear the land before you took up planting by hand?
07:24 Was it acceptable to let nanobots scour your body clear of cancer if you got sick?
07:30 Alice accepted that human beings would always want a challenge, and one of the greatest
07:35 challenges in a peaceful society was the question of purity.
07:40 The debates never got out of hand, of course.
07:42 People moved back and forth between various positions, both ideologically and physically,
07:46 but the question could never be resolved perfectly, because, of course, perfection is impossible.
07:53 If a life without machines is the best, and if you need to dip into the world of machines
07:58 in order to survive cancer, say, then you should do so in order to continue enjoying
08:02 the life without machines.
08:06 At the other extreme were the people who viewed bots as a stepping stone to a higher consciousness,
08:12 a form of godhood, and eagerly merged their consciousness into every spare atom of quantum
08:17 computing they could get their mental hands on.
08:21 They were constantly pushing the boundaries of the overlap between human consciousness
08:25 and machine mind, inserting modules that allowed them to program their own brains.
08:32 They rarely returned from their digital journeys, and so did not often participate in the various
08:36 debates.
08:37 Plus, they often lost the knack of communicating in merely mortal terms, and often preferred
08:42 having virtual consciousness to having actual children, and so tended to fade away from
08:48 human society, operating on the fringes of what could be seen at the flickering edges
08:53 of the collective digital mind.
08:57 They sometimes combined with each other, as well as machines, and claimed that the ecstasy
09:02 of the ultimate merge was greater than anything that could be achieved by what they somewhat
09:06 condescendingly referred to as the "mortal flesh suit."
09:11 Their happiness took them so far outside of natural society that they ended up getting
09:16 lost over the digital horizon, like fading echoes in a bottomless canyon.
09:24 Alice found the variety of the communities amazing and wonderful.
09:28 Some people liked to live with their own ethnicities, other people liked to blend in multiracial
09:32 societies.
09:33 There were a few female-only neighborhoods, and even a few male-only and one teen-only
09:39 neighborhood which truly fascinated her.
09:45 Automation was the essence of the world.
09:48 There were five kinds of neighborhoods in general.
09:50 Big bots, nanobots, human bots, normal bots, and botless, no bots at all.
09:58 In the big bot neighborhoods, the automation was large, creative, innovative, and startling.
10:06 You could be served by dinosaurs, pixies, space creatures.
10:11 There was an entire town devoted to Lord of the Rings, with every creature from the books
10:15 faithfully replicated.
10:17 You had to stay on your toes and get used to it because the bot artists were unconstrained
10:22 in their creativity.
10:24 You could hire a twin for the day.
10:27 Alice was once startled by being served by a waiter who looked exactly like her, down
10:31 to the little scar under her left eye that came from swimming goggles a year ago.
10:37 The restless spirit of the endless artistry extended even to the houses, which constantly
10:41 changed color, shape, and style.
10:45 Sometimes when you were walking down the street, a cottage would morph into a castle, and then
10:49 a bulbous anti-gravity funhouse if a children's party was underway.
10:55 It was all a little intense for her rational mind, and she began to steer clear of these
11:01 waking dreams avenues.
11:05 The nanobot neighborhoods could be equally surreal.
11:09 There, people preferred not to see any automation at all, so restaurant meals arrived floating
11:14 on air.
11:16 Ancient people with uncertain legs zoomed by, appearing to sit on nothing.
11:20 People had animated conversations, gesturing at invisible phones, and children climbed
11:25 randomly in midair, their hands and feet supported by invisible servants.
11:30 Even sky taxis and jetpacks were invisible.
11:32 People just flew through the air, pointing and laughing.
11:38 Alice preferred the human bots' neighborhoods, where all automations took human form, with
11:44 a red dot on the left earlobe to distinguish them.
11:48 Recent work to make the robots even more human had been pulled back because it kind of messed
11:52 with people's heads, and so duller eyes and more doll-like hair had become the norm.
11:58 Normal bot neighborhoods were the most familiar.
12:02 Some followed function.
12:04 Vacuum robots were giant suction holes with spider legs.
12:07 Construction bots were a tangle of arms and conveyor belts, removing and piling.
12:12 Waiters were metal bipeds with forklift arms.
12:18 Botless neighborhoods were nostalgic throwbacks to the time before automation.
12:24 Engines were allowed, machines were welcome, but bots were not.
12:29 Neighborhoods were actually growing in popularity, because the inevitable human impulse to dabble
12:32 in the spectacular grew wearisome, and it wasn't actually good for people's long-term
12:37 mental health to live in the resurrected dreams of hyper-creative artists.
12:44 Everyone advocated for their own visions and competed for the minds and hearts of the transient.
12:51 Humans grew, split, vanished, formed, and reformed on a continual basis.
12:59 We cannot safely or sanely move past our evolution, said a passionate bearded man at a cafe.
13:07 We evolved in the woods.
13:08 Very well, we can leave the woods, but we cannot leave reality.
13:11 We cannot survive at the mercy of other people's imaginations.
13:15 When we are continually presented with that which was impossible even 20 years ago, baby
13:19 T-Rex is serving us brunch, it dissolves our capacity to process reality.
13:24 It is entertaining.
13:26 It is distracting, but it is inhuman.
13:31 The "no-bots" advocates referred to the tinkering with unreality that characterized the other
13:35 neighborhoods as a "rum-springer," a youthful time when curiosity trumps common sense and
13:41 novelty distracts from virtue.
13:46 Inside the towns, and there are always tours going everywhere, people loved to advertise
13:50 their own lifestyles, you could really dive deep into the nitty-gritty of rural life among
13:56 the people who eschewed technology as a whole.
14:03 Alice had inherited her father's interest in history and would sometimes wander around
14:06 towns with a book bot whispering in her ear.
14:10 She tried some of the latest virtual reality technologies but found them far too realistic
14:15 for her tastes.
14:17 She went on a Martian experience, sniffing the cinnamon winds of the red planet shivering
14:22 under the cold, pale sky, but it either felt unreal or terrifyingly real.
14:30 After she had a minor panic attack looking at the tiny, moon-like Earth from Mars, she
14:34 unplugged and never returned.
14:37 There were entire communities of people living virtual lives on Mars, and they often enticed
14:41 her to stay, but she found the experience (and actually smiled when the word popped
14:46 into her mind) alienating.
14:50 A few people were actually living on Mars, but interplanetary colonization was generally
14:55 viewed as the most extreme of sports like solo alpining or seafloor exploration, and
15:01 was left to the thrill junkies who lived to surf the edge of adrenaline.
15:08 The people who escaped into virtual reality did get their exercise on rotating room floors
15:13 that could simulate just about any ground surface, allowing them to move, climb, hike,
15:18 swim, you name it, but it just seemed too unreal to be enticing.
15:25 Also Alice was alarmed about some of the reports that people who spent too much time in virtual
15:29 reality lost their caution in the real world.
15:32 They would forget to put on sunscreen, lean over cliff edges, imagining that every negative
15:35 consequence in reality could be undone like the save-game world of VR.
15:44 Her parents let her explore these alternative worlds, but did remind her that she was only
15:48 alive to explore them because they had limited their own youthful use of the infinite technology,
15:55 deciding to return and start an actual family.
16:00 Her father said once, "It seems odd that some people still want to escape into a virtual
16:05 world when we have made the real world so pleasant."
16:10 Alice had asked him about combining her love of history with virtual reality, but he said
16:16 that no company would let her go into an accurate historical VR because as a child she would
16:20 just be too traumatized by direct and vivid contact with most of human history.
16:27 His eyes grew deadly serious.
16:29 It's too much of a horror show to be experienced directly.
16:33 You can watch it on a flat screen, some of them still around, and you can also read about
16:37 it in books on flat text, but what you cannot do is step in and experience it yourself directly.
16:44 Honestly, I have no idea how people in history kept even a shred of their sanity given the
16:49 horrors of the world around them.
16:51 Although I suppose that was the perspective of people in the old world.
16:55 We look back at the world of history and see it as a madhouse of evil and violence, but
16:59 the people back then looked back even further to the ancient world, like a time of plague
17:04 and superstition and starvation and war and death by infection and tooth decay, and imagined
17:09 that those people lived in hell as well.
17:12 Now, even if you find someone willing to let you go into, say, 600 years ago, just report
17:17 them to our local DRO because they really shouldn't be doing that.
17:21 They would probably be fined, not ostracized, but still.
17:27 Alice would wander into a few back-alley flat screen movie shows about the past, where very
17:32 elderly and sad-faced men, whose grandfathers probably passed down to them first-hand childhood
17:37 accounts of the cataclysms, would tell her age-appropriate stories of the old world,
17:44 their voices paper-thin.
17:46 Back then, my dear, parents were forced to pay for the schools, and children were mostly
17:52 forced to go.
17:54 There was a lot of violence and abuse.
17:56 What?
17:58 What is abuse?
18:00 Well it's when you...
18:02 Generally it's when you try to make yourself feel better by making someone else feel worse,
18:06 in this case a child.
18:09 Why did people do that?
18:11 Well, I guess everyone thought it was something called "human nature," which is very strange
18:17 when you think about it.
18:18 It would have been in the past, too, if people had bothered to think about it at all.
18:22 Forcing people into a building is the definition of a prison.
18:26 A prison?
18:27 Yeah, sorry.
18:28 A prison was a massive, fortified building where criminals were put, and a lot of non-criminals,
18:33 sadly, and forced to stay for a certain amount of time because they had confessed to some
18:39 kind of crime or been found guilty.
18:42 Anyway, the schools were the closest thing that most people ever came to being in prison,
18:47 because they were forced to be there, and bullied constantly, and lied to about the
18:51 world and morality and their society as a whole.
18:55 And it was really the only place, outside the family of course, where people experienced
18:59 direct violence, often daily.
19:02 The truly mad part of it was that the parents were forced to pay for all of this violence
19:08 and incarceration and indoctrination.
19:11 Sorry.
19:12 "Incarceration" means keeping people in buildings against their wills.
19:17 It's pretty much the same as kidnapping, but it was justified by the general beliefs at
19:21 the time.
19:23 Now the truly mad part was that the teachers, who were paid by threats of violence against
19:29 the parents, would always instruct the children that they must never ever use violence to
19:33 get their way.
19:35 "No violence, no stealing," was the general saying in these school prisons, while the
19:40 teachers and the managers and all the workers got paid by violence.
19:46 Who forced the parents to pay?
19:48 I'm afraid that's where the limit of considerate education comes for me.
19:53 You will have to ask your parents about all of that.
19:56 That is not something that you should learn from a stranger.
20:03 There was a non-blind spot at the center of her society, at least in talking about the
20:10 past, a massive trauma that reminded her of an experiment her father had done with her
20:16 once about trying to push two opposing magnets together.
20:22 Closing the circle of ignorance, talking about the core of the evils of the past, was something
20:29 that people still shied away from, even generations after the cataclysms.
20:35 It was the only real sign of superstition that she found in her society.
20:40 It was like the world had killed some kind of demon or deadly ghost and was afraid to
20:48 speak its name for fear of bringing it back to life.
20:52 When you are older, when you are older.
20:57 Just then, one day in the woods on the mountain, Alice found fear, found her future, and came
21:06 the closest to the evils of the past that could be conceived of in the world of the
21:13 present.
21:19 CHAPTER 5
21:22 Alice became friends with the dark-haired man from the cafe.
21:25 He had a daughter, Emily, who became her best friend.
21:29 Emily's family were often referred to as "harpies," which was a combination of the ancient word
21:34 "hippies," because of their loving view of nature, as well as "harpies," since they could
21:39 be quite insistent on their back-to-nature philosophy.
21:44 Emily's father was a swarthy, dark-haired man with wide shoulders and extravagant passions
21:48 who railed against the modern world and its dependence on computers and machines.
21:53 "You know that we are carbon-based life-forms, not silicon-based life-forms, right?
21:58 Let me tell you about my day.
22:00 I get up before dawn, milk the cows, boil the peanuts I washed last night, and then
22:04 break the earth with a metal plough pulled behind an unruly mule.
22:08 I fix my own shoes, do my own carpentry, grow my own fruits and vegetables, and a couple
22:13 of times a year, slaughter my own pigs.
22:16 I preserve and smoke my own wheat and rely on these."
22:20 Here he slapped his meaty biceps instead of this.
22:23 Here he simulated frantic typing in thin air.
22:26 "Here, buddy, buddy, buddy, keep being infant forever."
22:30 He wasn't exactly a fanatic, and Alice wasn't afraid of anyone, of course, since she knew
22:34 she would never be yelled at or hit.
22:37 So she took him on after dinner one night.
22:40 "You are very passionate about this."
22:43 He rolled his eyes and burped.
22:45 "The word 'passion' is an insult used by the bloodless to criticize those with actual
22:49 emotions."
22:51 Alice smiled, unoffended.
22:53 It was widely recognized that to be offended was to automatically lose the argument.
22:58 "What do you mean?"
23:00 He fixed his eyes on her.
23:02 "What is the purpose of life?"
23:05 It was her turn to roll her eyes.
23:06 "Why, happiness, of course."
23:08 "Why?"
23:09 "Well, because it is the one state that we do not achieve in order to achieve some other
23:13 state.
23:14 We get Bitcoin to buy things.
23:15 We buy things to make us happy.
23:17 Once we are happy, there's no other place to go."
23:19 He jabbed his finger into the palm of his other hand.
23:22 "Right.
23:23 And every time a man or a girl uses a machine, do you know what he or she is actually saying?"
23:28 Alice smiled.
23:29 "Um, I don't want to waste my time?"
23:31 He barked with laughter.
23:33 "No.
23:34 If a man uses a machine to lift something, he's admitting that he's unable to lift it
23:39 himself.
23:40 Every time we use a machine to do something, we are confessing that we cannot do it ourselves
23:44 or are unwilling.
23:45 In other words, we are either weak or lazy."
23:49 Alice smiled, enjoying the debate.
23:51 "Are you calling me weak or lazy?"
23:54 His eyes widened.
23:55 "What?
23:56 Insulted child?
23:57 Of course not.
23:58 You're in a state of pre-knowledge.
24:01 Think of the people stuck in the outer rims of VR who barely ever come back to reality.
24:05 By living in a computer, they're saying that they need a computer in order to be happy.
24:10 Isn't that a little sad, don't you think?"
24:13 Alice considered.
24:14 "Let's start with something a little easier, which is medicine.
24:18 Surely medicine is acceptable if you get sick?"
24:21 He pursed his lips, frowning.
24:22 "Okay, but what you need to understand—"
24:25 Sorry, Alice, that was a little condescending.
24:27 "What's important to remember is the old lesson of automobiles from the old world.
24:34 People were forced to wear seatbelts, the idea being that if they crashed, they would
24:37 be safer.
24:38 But they actually caused more danger.
24:40 People with seatbelts simply drove faster and more dangerously.
24:43 The people who got injured more were people on little two-wheeled motorcycles or people
24:48 just walking around.
24:49 Pedestrians, they were called, I think.
24:51 People with easy access to medicine tend to live more risky lives.
24:54 They eat badly, exercise less.
24:56 Perhaps they have other bad habits.
24:58 It's not entirely clear that access to medicine extends the lifespan enormously.
25:02 It simply backfills people's bad decisions quite often."
25:07 Alice gestured at her watching friend.
25:09 "So if Emily got sick, you wouldn't take her to a doctor?"
25:12 His eyes narrowed.
25:13 "I am not a fanatic, my dear."
25:16 He touched his daughter's cheek with great affection.
25:19 "The purpose of life is happiness, and if Emily died from a curable illness, I would
25:23 be miserable for the rest of my life, probably.
25:26 It's quite a common thing in the world.
25:29 When someone has a belief, you push it to extremes, hoping to break it and then abandon
25:33 the entire system.
25:35 It's like having a sky trampoline, then saying, 'Well, it doesn't bounce me to the moon, so
25:38 I'm not going to use it at all.'
25:40 Absolutes are not a test of a system aiming at a moving target like happiness.
25:45 Ambition is necessary for the young, but it looks kind of ridiculous when a man turns
25:48 140.
25:50 Exercise is good, unless you work too hard and hurt yourself.
25:54 Absolutes can never hit moving targets, and vice versa.
25:58 But let me ask you this."
26:01 He paused.
26:03 Alice said, "Yes?"
26:06 He chose his words delicately.
26:08 "Of course, there will never be other cataclysms, but I do sometimes wonder, what would happen
26:16 if there was a failure in the computers or the bots or the machines, and people were
26:20 left to face reality without all of this silicon nonsense propping them up?"
26:25 He took a bite, happy to talk through his chewing.
26:27 "I mean, imagine if VR went down.
26:30 People would lose half their relationships, their sense of where they are, of reality
26:34 itself.
26:35 They'd get to see what their food actually looks like, and their friends, too, if they
26:38 have any nearby.
26:39 Look, it's not healthy to become so dependent on external machinery that you can't really
26:44 function without it.
26:45 It's not how we evolved.
26:47 It's how kings and rulers and slave masters evolved, but not us, not working folks."
26:52 He nodded with evident pleasure.
26:54 "I know that I can produce my own food and shelter with my own hands, and that gives
27:00 me great satisfaction.
27:01 And I'm desperate to communicate to other people that the hard work and sacrifice is
27:06 worth it.
27:08 I feel like I'm trying to pry people away from a kind of digital drug.
27:11 I mean, you're going hiking with Emily tomorrow after the sleepover, when you could just as
27:15 easily walk in VR or take sky trampolines or even be carried by bus bots.
27:20 You're choosing to walk because you want your feet on the ground, the scent of oak in your
27:26 nose, the wind in your ears making a tiny roar."
27:30 He smiled in sensual delight.
27:32 "You want the crunch of leaves and needles under your feet, the swaying as you walk,
27:37 and you want your breath to come hard and tight and your muscles to throb at the end
27:41 of the day.
27:42 That kind of work is what makes us human.
27:44 It's how we got to the top of the food chain and now rule a peaceful planet.
27:49 It just feels kind of odd to abandon all the musculature that got us to where we are for
27:53 the sake of turning machines into slaves to do everything for us."
27:59 She snotted and took a sip of water.
28:01 "That's totally true.
28:03 I do love to hike, as does Emily, and I like the variety as well."
28:07 She widened her hands.
28:08 "To be honest, I view where you're coming from as a kind of the opposite extreme of
28:12 the VR dwellers.
28:14 They live in machines.
28:16 You want to live without machines.
28:18 And I'm not going to nag you about axes and plows and silly things like that.
28:20 I get that absolutism is a cheap argument, but I'm kind of for the Aristotelian mean.
28:27 If I want to hike someplace remote, I want to jump there or be carried.
28:30 If I had to spend a week doing boring hikes in order to get to a beautiful hike, I probably
28:34 wouldn't go, I'll be honest with you.
28:36 And okay, tell me this, when was the last time you went on a distant hike?"
28:42 He pursed his lips to one side, considering her question.
28:45 "I'm not bossing because I'm trying to find some way out of your question, but because
28:49 I don't really remember.
28:52 And I actually haven't had much of a desire to hike since I work with my body all day
28:55 and find great satisfaction in that labor."
28:57 "Well, that's fine," grinned Alice.
28:59 "I do love a good debate.
29:02 Here's my issue, if this makes any sense.
29:04 I think that the desire to enroll other people in your recipe or path to happiness generally
29:09 takes away from that happiness.
29:12 You would prefer it if the world would be self-sufficient in the way that you and your
29:15 family are, right?"
29:16 He nodded eagerly.
29:17 "So you see, you are less happy because other people are not listening to you, or at least
29:22 do not follow your advice or prescription or whatever you want to call it.
29:26 So you are putting your happiness in the hearts and minds of others, and you cannot control
29:30 them directly since no one does that anymore.
29:32 So your happiness is taken away from you and depends, at least in part, on whether other
29:38 people accept what you have to say.
29:41 Myself, I don't want to put any part of my happiness on the free will of others."
29:46 "You mean even a husband or your children?"
29:50 Alice paused, waiting for the response to bubble up in her as it usually did in these
29:53 kinds of conversations.
29:55 "No, because you're talking about changing the whole world.
29:59 My husband and my children will have similar values to me, so they are a pre-selected group,
30:04 not a random sample of everyone that I would want to change."
30:08 She took another sip of water, holding up a finger.
30:11 "I guess there are two ways to go about trying to get other people to change.
30:16 The first is to insist that they change and give them lots of arguments and evidence,
30:20 and the second is to be happy yourself and see if they are interested in how you got
30:26 there.
30:28 You seem to judge people who are dependent on machines very negatively, and I think in
30:31 general it's that negative judgment that will push them away from you and not give you the
30:36 happiness that you want, or add to their happiness either, I guess."
30:41 He stared at her, then laughed in delight.
30:44 "Oh, that's a really good argument.
30:47 I can't believe you're still so young.
30:49 But this is a brave new world, particularly for kids, of course.
30:52 Good for you."
30:53 "I don't have a great response, so I would just say that tomorrow" -- listen up, Emily,
30:57 you'll love this -- "tomorrow you can hike anywhere that a SkyTaxi can take you."
31:04 Emily jumped up, knocking over her cup of herbal tea.
31:06 "Really?"
31:07 "Hrrrk!"
31:08 Emily had had bronchitis when she was younger and still had a little bit of asthma, and
31:12 when she got excited a kind of faint goose-like honking came out of her throat.
31:19 They stayed up late that night, using Alice's phone to examine every nook and cranny in
31:23 the proximate wilderness, looking for the greatest possible hike.
31:27 They finally found, tucked under the low-hanging canopy of the 3D map, a natural cave, with
31:34 a thin but rapid waterfall spraying out of it.
31:37 It was not too distant, about halfway up Smudge Mountain, and there did appear to be some
31:42 vague paths leading up from some lower meadows.
31:46 Grudgingly, Emily's father zoomed in on the map, examining the paths in greater detail.
31:52 "Hmmm, it's already bear country.
31:55 Those paths look too narrow, so you should be fine.
31:57 I'm going to really throw myself into the fire and ask you to take an emergency bot
32:02 with you, with the understanding that this is the reason why I try to avoid technology,
32:07 since depending on one thing tends to lead to depending on another until you haven't
32:10 seen a natural sunrise in three years like my brother."
32:15 This would be Emily's first time on a SkyTaxi, and she was enormously excited.
32:20 The pair stayed up very late, talking about the adventure to come, until Alice sensibly
32:23 reminded her friend that it would be much less enjoyable if they didn't get enough sleep.
32:27 Emily agreed, on the condition that they travel without phones in the morning, since they
32:31 tended to be so distracting.
32:35 After an early breakfast, Emily's father mounted a horse and rode off to borrow an
32:38 emergency bot.
32:39 He reminded them that the bot might need some sunlight from time to time, and to use it
32:43 to call the SkyTaxi 45 minutes before they needed it.
32:49 After activating the emergency bot, they played a lazy game of horseshoes as the sun rose
32:52 above a distant and rather unkempt barn.
32:57 Soon enough, a pure white six-seater SkyTaxi slid through the air over the cows, causing
33:02 them to moo anxiously.
33:05 It settled just above the ground.
33:08 Emily's father said, "What do they call them, roes?"
33:11 Alice smiled, "Pews.
33:13 We get into the pews."
33:16 Alice lugged up their backpacks and the bot, then leaned forward to the crystals and murmured
33:20 their destination.
33:22 The SkyTaxi surged into the air, expertly blowing anti-wind against the slipstream,
33:28 so that only a vague breeze stirred their hair as they shot through the sky.
33:35 "Some people like SkyTaxis with windows, but I think they suck!" cried Alice in heady joy.
33:41 Emily laughed.
33:42 "I thought we would have to be yelling the whole time, but this is kind of weirdly quiet.
33:45 I can see why it reminds some people of a church."
33:50 Alice asked the SkyTaxi to skim the treetops, and they competed as to who could find the
33:53 most bird's nests.
33:56 After a while, Alice turned to her friend, curiously.
34:00 "Do you like this natural life that your family has?"
34:04 Emily made a face.
34:05 "Well, that's not a big question or anything.
34:07 We have some time."
34:10 Emily tucked a long strand of hair behind her left ear, turning to regard the treetops
34:14 flowing under the pews.
34:17 Alice could sense a strong feeling rising within her friend, but gave her space to let
34:22 it form.
34:24 Eventually, Emily said softly, "I actually really like working on the farm.
34:30 It does feel real and vivid and smelly, of course.
34:34 It feels better that my friends actually have to visit, and we see each other for real.
34:38 There's always something to do, and I'm never bored.
34:41 And I don't feel like I have to run like crazy after this stimulation stuff that everyone
34:45 else seems to want all the time.
34:48 I do miss having more in common with other people.
34:51 You all have these references to things I don't really know anything about.
34:54 Although, I guess I do for you as well.
34:57 It's definitely what my dad thinks is the best thing, and my mom too, of course.
35:01 And I trust them, that they're looking out for what is best for me, and they never make
35:04 me do anything.
35:05 And of course, I never get punished or anything like that.
35:08 That's a given.
35:09 Who does?
35:10 And my dad is very clear that whatever I want to do as an adult is totally up to me.
35:15 So in three years, I can make whatever choices I want, and he will support me no matter what.
35:23 So I would say I'm happy in what it is that I'm doing."
35:29 Alice smiled.
35:30 "That's great.
35:31 I appreciate that.
35:32 Thank you.
35:33 I know it was a sudden and big question.
35:34 That's kind of like my habit, if you haven't figured that out by now."
35:36 "Oh, yes.
35:38 We all know," laughed Emily.
35:40 "Sometimes we call you chalice, because there's a lot to drink in."
35:44 Alice giggled.
35:45 "Chalice?
35:46 That's really great.
35:49 I envy you a little bit, to be honest, if you don't mind."
35:52 "Mind?
35:53 Why would I mind?
35:54 I thought I was a little bit pitied."
35:55 "Not exactly, but you know what I mean.
35:57 Like a poor relation who can't afford a cook pot.
36:00 Envy, because you have something to battle.
36:04 You battle nature, and animals, I guess, to some degree, and the challenge of a fairly
36:09 different lifestyle from everyone else, or at least most people."
36:13 Alice raised her fists into the breathing air.
36:16 "I wake up punchy, and I go to sleep punchy, and my dreams are punchy.
36:21 Like the world seems so serene and even-tempered and peaceful that I feel as if my punchiness
36:26 would just be like, I don't know, like everyone's looking at the reflection of a beautiful sunset
36:31 on a still lake, and I just heave a big giant boulder into it and smash up all the serenity.
36:38 That's not exactly a good way to put it, because they could just look directly at the sunset,
36:41 but you know what I mean.
36:43 You have something to fight, and all I do, I think, is fight my own punchiness."
36:48 "You know what people would say about that, right?"
36:52 They cried out together in sing-song voices, "Where in your childhood did that come from?"
37:00 Alice smiled ruefully.
37:01 "Yeah, that's what they always say, but I don't think anything particularly bad happened
37:06 to make me punchy, other than my sister, of course, which was just a brute accident, and
37:11 I was so young, I don't really...
37:14 So much about us is genetic, they say.
37:15 So I mean, I had my scans, like everyone, totally normal, very peaceful parenting, my
37:20 family's great, but I'm still punchy, and I kind of wonder if I'm going to grow out
37:25 of it, leave it behind, even out, sink into the swamp of everyone, if that makes sense.
37:31 But it's growing instead, especially after puberty and all that.
37:36 Maybe I should just start a..."
37:39 Her mouth froze.
37:41 "What?
37:42 Oh, no, nothing."
37:45 Emily leaned towards her.
37:47 "Truth spell," she murmured.
37:49 This was from an old game they played, where they were wizards and had magic.
37:53 "Oh, my goodness, that's kind of ancient.
37:56 Truth spell on the freckled forehead," said Emily, placing her cool hand on Alice's skin.
38:01 "Oh, I was going to say, perhaps I should start a war, but that's about as not funny
38:08 as anything could be."
38:09 "Well, that is some edgy humor right there," said Emily, drawing back slightly.
38:14 She blushed suddenly.
38:15 "No, it's fine, I'm not offended, but I guess I'm just happy there's no one else in church
38:21 with us.
38:22 No secrets, of course, but it's okay if we just keep this between us."
38:28 They knew some of the history of the Cataclysms, enough to know what would never be considered
38:33 funny.
38:35 Emily nodded slowly.
38:36 "Okay, I'll do one, and then we will be even, and we'll have to keep each other's secrets."
38:41 "Oh, okay."
38:42 "Okay?"
38:45 Emily leaned forward and whispered, "Perhaps you and me and a group of criminals should
38:49 take control of everyone's money."
38:52 Alice laughed nervously.
38:53 "Find a way to make bitcoins out of thin air, stealing everything from everyone?"
38:58 Emily gasped.
38:59 "Ooh, and we could force all the children to learn what we wanted, what served our needs,
39:04 so they would become our slaves.
39:06 And find a way to sell people into debt, so we could become rich, children too, even the
39:10 unborn.
39:11 And find a way to charge people for going to work, charge them for a certificate saying
39:16 they could.
39:17 And if they ever displeased us, we could just take it all away."
39:21 Alice's cheeks were red with daring.
39:23 "Oh, oh, I've got one.
39:25 We could force people to fight our wars."
39:31 The two girls shivered, although the sun was rising and the air was warm, and went silent.
39:40 "Some jokes were just too dark."
39:45 [BLANK_AUDIO]