Western Civilisation 4.0 (Part Two): Matrix or Space?
In Part 1 of this series: ‘Death of the Modern West,’ we examined the factors and signs that indicate the end is coming. In Part 2 we explore what comes next.....
The Ancient Greeks told the story of a majestic bird whose feathers shone like the sun, whose singing enchanted the gods, and whose life spanned an epic 500 to 1,500 years. When it grew old it built a nest, sat in it, then set it on fire and perished in the flames. From its ashes a new bird was born, and the glorious cycle would restart.
That bird is the phoenix. That bird is us.
In Part 1 of this series: ‘Death of the Modern West,’ we examined the factors and signs that indicate the end is coming, i.e. we’ve built our nest and have set it on fire.
In Part 2 we will explore what comes next. What will the new phoenix, aka Western Civilisation 4.0, look like?
We will explore this in 3 parts:
First we’ll take a look at a dystopian scenario: Matrix West.
Second, we’ll look at a reactionary scenario: Neo-Traditional West.
And third, we’ll look at a visionary scenario: Space West.
Which path or paths will we take? Let’s find out.
Matrix West
In the movie ‘The Matrix,’ Neo discovers he is living in a simulated reality created by intelligent machines to keep humans enslaved. This enables the machines to use humans as batteries, by turning the bio electricity their bodies generate into an energy source. It’s a dystopian if unlikely future, because in reality, advanced artificial intelligence could probably come up with more effective ways to generate energy, for example, through nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, or some other means not yet developed or fathomed by humans.
However, the Matrix doesn’t need to be literal, it can also be a metaphor for the manufactured reality the present powers that be are building for us. A reality where war may be seen as peace, freedom as slavery, and ignorance as strength. It’s a reality made increasingly possible by disruptive technologies being developed today, which have the potential - in the hands of the evil and corrupt people who rule over us - to make our situation go from bad to worse to horrifying.
But what is Matrix West in practice? Well, let’s explore it in stages, starting with 5 categories of technology that could underpin it: that is technology that is built or can be adapted for: 1) control, 2) surveillance, 3) indoctrination and propaganda, 4) intimidation, enforcement, and punishment, and 5) crime and terrorism.
We’ll start with control technologies. The first is Digital IDs.
Today, unless you’re a person of interest to national/federal law enforcement agencies or intelligence services, you likely have a fair degree of anonymity in your daily life - in both the physical and digital realms. If, for example, you buy a new car, or go on holiday, or start a new job, or require hospital treatment, or enrol in a degree or apprenticeship, or get married, or receive a parking fine, or buy a train ticket, or open an email account, or post or watch something (supposedly) offensive on social media, and the list goes on and on - then no third party has a full view of it all. In practice many parts of your life exist in a silo, and for any outsider to piece all of it together would take considerable effort, resources, and ultimately authority (which again comes back to those exceptional cases where government entities are monitoring persons of interest).
Digital IDs, however, have the potential to change this. They, along with related technologies which we will explore shortly, could become the gateway to linking every part of your life together - giving the government easy and unadulterated access to almost everything you do. A full 360 realtime view. How is this possible? Well, your digital ID would be required to facilitate any transactions with outside parties. As in the examples formerly given, whether you’re buying something, or accessing a public service, or using an email address or phone number, or posting on social media, it would all be linked to your ID. Your ID and its corresponding records would be the central hub of everything you - run and controlled by the government. No more silos or practical anonymity, you’d be a trove of fully centralised data on a server somewhere, being analysed by humans (or more likely by algorithms) which flag you for this or that infringement - or even for infringements not yet committed. Also, did you just watch a video by Arcadius Strauss? Well, since your digital ID will be linked to your YouTube account (and any other online platforms you use) and since all your viewing history can be analysed, then you’ll need to answer for that.
But digital IDs are just one piece of the control puzzle. Another piece is Central Bank Digital Currencies (or CBDCs for short). These are digital currencies issued and controlled by central banks, which everyday citizens will use. Almost every Western government is either seriously exploring or actively developing CBDCs under the guise of a) achieving greater stability and security in the financial system, b) driving efficiency, and c) expanding access of said system to more people.
Now, there are several variations of CBDCs, but a common feature is that citizens would have a digital wallet where they’d hold their CBDCs, and which the central bank (acting on behalf of the government) could deposit money into or collect taxes from. That’s the official narrative, but the truth is that CBDCs are about governments tightening their control over the economy and society.
These digital currencies, in the mid to long term, are likely a gateway to a) eliminating cash and forcing everyone to transact on the government blockchain, b) giving the government direct and easy 24/7 access to all your transactions, c) giving them the ability to instantly freeze, expire, add to or subtract from the funds in your wallet, d) enabling them to dictate what you can or can’t spend your money on and limiting how much you can spend on certain things, e) it could also allow them to dictate individualised interest rates, tax rates, and financial incentives and penalties based on factors other than your financial credit score or your earnings, for example, based on your social credit score.
This last one is yet another piece of the control puzzle. A social credit score system, which is exactly what its name suggests it to be, can be more easily implemented and enforced when governments have the Big Brother’esque visibility and control mechanisms delivered by digital IDs and CBDCs.
Did you attend the trans solidarity march (scanning your digital ID upon entering and exiting the march)? Brownie points for you. Keep it up and you’ll get a good citizen reward at the end of the month.
Did you post something critical about the regime’s latest war? Naughty points for you. You’ve just added to your monthly social tax penalty, which will be deducted from your CBDC wallet.
Does this sound too far fetched? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But do you think the woke sociopaths and globalist psychopaths who rule over us wouldn’t embrace this system with glee? You think the people who locked us down for years under Covid, or who embark on endless wars - spending trillions of dollars on them without a second thought, or who insist men can be women and that there are 200 genders, or who are facilitating the mass foreign invasion of the countries they govern, or who demonise and gaslight citizens who question any of it, would think a social credit score would be a bridge too far? Of course not. Their primary obstacle to rolling it out is that if they rush it or make it too overt, they may get overthrown. So they’ll go about it stealthily: turn the temperature in the pot up slowly, so the frog doesn’t notice that it’s boiling until it’s too late.
The powers that be don’t even need to be following some nefarious master plan. They could just take one step in the direction of greater control (say towards Digital IDs), then they’ll think it makes sense to take another (say towards CBDCs), and then another (to social credit scores), and so on. Corrupt and evil governments and institutions, whether they’re stumbling clumsily from one villainous scheme to another, or meticulously plotting out a malevolent long term trap for their victims, are nothing if not predictable. Their nature and values betray them, and we can gauge what they’re likely to do in the future even if they don’t yet know it themselves.
A final piece of the control puzzle, is perhaps the ultimate form of control, because it’s disguised as freedom. It is Universal Basic Income (or UBI for short). This is a proposed income which will be paid to every citizen by the government - whether they choose to work or not. Don’t ask me how it’d work in the real world; it’s a bit like Communism in that its proponents can explain the theory in detail, but in practise it’s likely to be a spectacular disaster. It might sound cool to receive free money, but if you’ve lived long enough on this earth you will know there is no such thing as a free lunch. Especially when that lunch is offered by questionable third parties.
The cost to us of UBI would be twofold: first, by accepting and using the government’s infinite, magic digital money, which it creates out of thin air, we would be providing our implicit backing to them as the sole, unopposed, absolute authority on money in our society. In short, we will receive their digital coins, we will accept they have value, and they will maintain their power because of it.
Second, if they are paying us (rather than us paying them), then who is the master and who is the servant? Populists are fond of the mantra that the government works (or should work) for the people. But if we’re all on the government payroll, then it’s us who are beholden to them (not the other way around).
So they’ll pull off a masterful trick - not only will they compel us to accept their fake money has any value, but we’ll also enslave ourselves to them to receive it.
Let’s now look at surveillance technologies.
In the old days, surveillance meant tapping people’s phones or following them around; today this can be automated.
Consider facial recognition technology. It’s well known that the Chinese government uses this to monitor its citizens, but they’re not the only ones. Other countries have started adopting it too, for example, the UK, France, Australia, US, Russia, Japan, and many others, and most have plans to increase their use of it.
There’s two main types of facial recognition: live facial recognition and retroactive facial recognition. The former identifies people based on a video livestream, for example, in England and Wales, cameras mounted on top of police vans scan people’s faces as they walk by and checks them against a watchlist of ‘wanted people.’ The retroactive kind involves identifying people from existing videos or photos captured on CCTV, phones, doorbell cameras, etc.
But this invasion of privacy doesn’t end there. In China they’re developing emotion recognition technology, which scans people’s faces, body movements, and vocal tone to gauge whether they are happy, angry, bored, etc. The technology needs to be refined, but it gives a glimpse of what could be in store in the future.
Now pair facial and emotion recognition with the GPS trackers we all carry around, aka our phones, and governments (or rather their algorithms) will in time be able to monitor your every move. They’ll know you took the train to work on Wednesday, met up with John on Friday, and went to see the game on Saturday. They’ll know how you felt about it too. Your physical anonymity will be gone.
Satellites and drones provide another means of surveilling citizens. Both can capture high resolution video and images from the sky. In the case of smaller drones, they can fly closer to ground level - so can peer through windows and inspect balconies and gardens. If the latter scenario sounds far fetched, consider the following examples: in Australia, authorities used drones to enforce Covid lockdown measures, and on Labour Day the New York Police Department piloted drones to monitor large private gatherings and backyard parties.12345678
What about smartphone surveillance? Apart from tracking your location and listening in on calls, governments have used spyware like Pegasus and Predator to gain full remote access to people’s phones - including to their cameras and microphones - without the user knowing about it. (As a side note, both Pegasus and Predator were developed by Israeli owned companies linked to Israeli intelligence.) And these are the spyware programs that have been exposed; who knows what other spyware is out there. It seems there’s no hiding from governments who wish to monitor you.
Could surveillance technology be any more intrusive than facial recognition, satellites and drones, and covert smartphone hacking? Well, yes it can.
The next step is moving beyond surveilling the external world, i.e. what you do, where you go, what you look like, and what you get up to on your phone, to surveilling what you think. No, this isn’t fiction - scientists and engineers are working on technology that can read minds by translating brainwaves into text. There’s two approaches to this: invasive (which requires brain implants), and non-invasive, which is as simple as putting on a cap. Of course this is being developed to help those with neurological disorders, but who’s to stop governments from using it for other purposes in the future. 91011
Is the technology perfect? No. But as with any technological innovation, give it time and watch as it evolves and improves. We may then find ourselves in a society where our own thoughts can be used against us. In such an environment, people may opt to lie to themselves - to believe any falsehood propagated by the powers that be - rather than risk committing a thoughtcrime.
All this technology will be powered or enhanced by AI, which can analyse the information it gathers from different sources to form a picture perfect portrait of every citizen. It may indeed come to know us better than we know ourselves.
This brings us to technologies used for indoctrination and propaganda. To some degree we have this today - our television sets, digital media, and social media are prominent examples of it. Now add to this the data collected through the control and surveillance technologies we’ve covered, and add general AI, and it opens up the possibility for indoctrination on a level never seen before.
Not only could AI find more effective ways to manipulate the population, but it could customise its approach too to make it more effective. This is the next step up from the algorithms used by social media companies to personalise our experience and keep us hooked on their platforms. Here it’d be personalising indoctrination and propaganda to each individual (or to groups of individuals with the same psychological profile). The average man and woman on the street would be helpless.
Indeed, today without this expansive data and technology, a good percentage of the population can be made to believe (or at least claim to believe) blatantly false things, for example, that a man can become a woman, or that we’re all going to die in a climate apocalypse, or that it’s a great idea to have your nation colonised by foreign peoples, etc. Manipulating these people would be child’s play for AI.
But this technology only goes so far; after all you can’t fool everyone. This is where technologies for intimidation, enforcement, and punishment come in.
In countries like America and the UK, the police and national/federal law enforcement agencies have become highly politicised and are acting as physical enforcers of the establishment’s agenda. Perhaps this is nothing new - as most every ruling class through history has used force (amongst other things) to maintain their power.
What could be different in the future however, is who does the enforcing. Today, it’s humans who do it, but tomorrow it might be non-humans.
How would you like to be chased down the street by a robot police dog? Or have your door kicked in by a robot officer? Or be shot at by a fully autonomous drone?
Does this sound like science fiction? Maybe, but all of these technologies are either in development or being piloted.
For example, the NYPD is piloting a police robot that patrols the New York subway.12
The Miami Police Department is deploying robot police dogs for special operations.13
The US Marines are testing a robot dog armed with a rocket launcher.14
The US Space Force and Airforce have deployed robots to patrol their bases.15
And variations of these are being rolled out in places like Dubai, Singapore, and China.
Do some of these robots look clunky, even comical? Sure, but compare the first functioning airplane in 1903, which flew for 12 seconds above some sand dunes, to what we have now: supersonic jets traversing the globe at thousands of miles per hour and spacecraft flying to other planets. If man was able to achieve these giant leaps in such a short space of time, then there’s no reason why he can’t do the same with robots.
So could governments in the future turn to robots to help them enforce their agenda and maintain their power? Could this pave the way to greater tyranny? After all, it’s easier to get a robot to do your bidding for you, as it has no moral concerns - apart from those programmed into it. If it needs to be an efficient killing machine, it can be. If it needs to be an effective intimidator, it can be. What’s more it doesn’t need a lunch break or a holiday or a career growth plan, so can execute these tasks with consistency and vigour, and without complaint.
What about punishment? Humans have been nothing if not innovative when it comes to devising ways to punish the guilty. Whether it’s exile, corporal punishment, capital punishment, prison, community service, and the list goes on, societies have tended to punish people in ways that fit the times.
In a technological age, where virtual and augmented reality become widespread, and in an age where hideous ideologies reign supreme, could new methods of punishment be devised? In the novel 1984, the Inner Party who rule the continent of Oceania, devise nightmarish punishments for thought criminals, but stop short of killing them until they convert those criminals into true believers in the cause. When these criminals reach the point where they love Big Brother and his system with all their hearts and minds (despite it being the source of their anger, pain, and anguish) - the party kills them. No thought criminal can leave the world a non-believer.
As technology advances then, could criminals (including thought criminals) be punished in more innovative ways? Could you plug someone into an advanced form of VR and lock them up in a digital version of hell? Or could VR be used to ‘reeducate them’ (as the Chinese do to their dissident citizens, minus the tech)? Or could it be used to tamper with a person’s beliefs or memories? When it comes to technology, give it enough time, and anything is possible. Maybe none of us ‘thought criminals’ will leave this world without loving our techno dystopian overlords.
Another kind of technology that could underpin Matrix West is that which is used for terrorism, war, crime, fraud, etc. For example, if you run a terrorist organisation, why take the old school approach of blowing people up when you could hack into and sabotage critical infrastructure - thus bringing an entire city or country to its knees?
Or if you’re a rogue government, why fight a conventional war when you could stealthily release a lab engineered virus which disproportionately targets people with a particular genetic profile?
Or if you’re a criminal entity, why rely solely on human actors when you could develop AI that infiltrates high value targets like banks, corporations, governments, and more?
And that’s nothing to say of governments who might use these tactics themselves, and blame it on some fictional or unrelated criminal or terrorist group.
In short, the possibilities for causing mayhem will be many.
And who will be the biggest loser in all of this? The average man and woman on the street. Because the main bad guys - the ones that rule over us - will use this as justification to further tighten their grip over all aspects of our lives. The technology they use to control, surveil, indoctrinate and propagandise, and intimidate and punish us will be framed as being for our own good: ‘It’s to keep you safe you see - because there’s a lot of bad actors out there, and you wouldn’t want the bad guys to win now, would you?’
So that’s Matrix West. Or at least version 1 of it. Version 2 takes things much further.
If version 1 is about dominating the human, version 2 is about replacing him. It begins with genetic engineering. We explored real life examples of this in part 1 of this series, specifically pertaining to genetically engineered plants, animals, and human embryos, and it should be clear from that, that should governments and corporations wish to go further down this route, they will.
What could lead them down it? They may come to the realisation that controlling people through external means is hard. It’s reactive. It’s a form of damage control. Why not make their jobs easier? Why not program humans right from the get go? A genetically engineered population - programmed for obedience, conformity, risk aversion, or whatever other traits they find it useful to instil in them, would be far better than what god or nature has produced, which in their eyes is an irrational, unruly, foolish, and flawed crowd.
For them it makes perfect sense. The next frontier will be to change humans themselves - to escape the pitiful human condition. If utopian systems like Communism and Liberalism have failed, then it’s because we were approaching it wrong all along. It wasn’t the system that needed to change, it was us. And in a world where technology dominates all areas of our lives and society, using technology to perfect humans becomes the logical next step. Will it take time to refine this process? Of course. Will there be trial and error? Yes. But we’ve got a 50 year head start - as the field of genetic engineering has been developing in earnest over this time period - and huge strides have been made. I also bet a good chunk of the population, in the right circumstances and with the right incentives, would support a scheme that helps them produce tomorrow’s ‘model citizens.’ Not to mention that peoples and nations may be compelled to, to keep up with foreign competition.
Of course, the elephant in the room is that whilst the establishment may come to embrace genetic engineering, it would likely be employed at a smaller scale than what we’re imagining. This is because they won’t need as many humans as we have today. The current global population stands at roughly 8.1 billion, but the rise of AI and robots means many people will become redundant. In the eyes of our rulers, these people will be slow, inefficient, resource-wasting surplus that serve no purpose. They’ll neither increase the power or wealth of the establishment, and may instead come to threaten it, so they’ll need to go. How they go, whether it’s through a slow phasing out or some cataclysmic event, including a manufactured virus, I’ll leave up to your imagination.
But that can’t be true, and after all aren’t AI and robots going to usher in a utopia? Won’t it free 8.1, then 9, then 10 billion humans to do more meaningful things like paint landscapes and go on picnics and learn to play the guitar? Won’t we all be freed from the toil of labour and struggle and want?
Well, I’d say to be careful of mortals who promise you paradise. If history has taught us anything it’s that there’s a strong correlation between the degree of utopia promised, and the hell that ensues. The more utopian the vision, the worse it is in reality. But this time it’s different, right?
Also, if you want to work and not laze around all day on your Universal Basic Income, then there’ll be plenty of jobs for you to do. But will there?
It’s true that prior technological innovations both created more jobs and changed the types of jobs that people could do. Mass production, computers, the internet, and more led to such changes. But it’s a huge mistake to think there is an infinite horizon of technological progress where more and more jobs can be created - and where humans will never run out of work. There is a point at which you hit a brick wall. That brick wall is AI and robots.
Unlike prior technological innovations which enhanced the work of humans, AI and robots are designed to replace humans. Why hire a human when AI and robots can work round the clock and produce superior results? And again, if you think these technologies aren’t quite there yet, then let’s return to the airplane analogy. The technology doesn’t need to be perfect from day one. The Wright Brothers’ airplane, the ‘Wright Flyer,’ was modest to say the least. It’s not about a technology’s humble beginnings, but about its potential.
Many who have been involved directly in the development of AI are warning of the dangers, and those who are not are if you examine them closely, at their core, anti-human utopians. They believe just because you can develop a technology, you should. There is zero moral consideration, zero thought of the long-term consequences, zero deference to a higher power or authority on the matter (or if there is it is to values and a vision far removed from what we would call good, wise, and just). Finally, it’s capped off with their belief that man can and should become like God. Or at least the elite should.161718
Homo Deus.
Who needs Homo sapiens? We can do better. Genetically engineered humans, cyborgs, AI, and robots are the way.
Now if it sounds like there’s competing, and possibly contradictory visions here, it’s because there are. In Matrix West version 1 - which is an extension of the globalist and woke mindset and ideology - it’s about control, fear, and domination.
In Matrix West version 2, it’s about playing God and replacing humans with something new and better. Version 2 inherits some of the elements of version 1 (and vice versa), but brings into it the techno-utopian or e-accelerationist ideology - whose adherents hail from Silicon Valley.
The techno-utopians see themselves as the natural and inevitable successors to our globalist and woke rulers. They don’t wear suits, they’re not woke, but they’re also not on our side. Think of them as technological adrenaline junkies - with the maturity levels of an obnoxious overstimulated teenager, the impulsive urges of a crack addict, and the amorality of their cousins, the globalists. Nothing is off limits to them: AI girlfriends - go for it (never mind that we have a fertility crisis). Escape to the metaverse - heck yeah (let’s not deal with our real world problems). Extend human life indefinitely (but of course, we’re such geniuses we deserve to live forever). With no moral compass or north star, besides ‘if it can be done, do it,’ then it’s easy to see how their Utopia could (and likely would) descend into hell.
Now is there a Matrix West version 3? Yes. This is the hardest to predict however, because it’s where humans and their biological descendants cease to be the dominant species on Earth. A new form of life (if you can call it that) takes over, and it is what we humans today call Artificial Intelligence (but which may in the future rename or reframe itself to something different, if it cares for such things).
If or when AI moves beyond being a tool that humans control - to becoming truly independent - then all bets are off. If this entity, or multiple competing entities (all with the potential to be thousands or millions of times more intelligent than humans) decide to take the driver’s seat of our society and world, what will be our fate?
It could trigger a mass extinction event. Or it or they might completely ignore us, the way we do ants. Or it may use us for some purpose we do not understand, or may seek to merge with us in some way, or it could lead us to a human vs AI/Robot global war, or even to an AI vs AI war. Who knows?
There could even be a positive scenario where our society improves; it’s better run, and people are in good spirits. We may put this down to finally having enlightened human rulers and systems and to making groundbreaking technological leaps, but in actual fact AI could be the running the entire show, and our leaders may be mere front men (and may not even realise they are).
Or maybe in time Matrix West becomes the literal Matrix, or some variation of it. Maybe we become trapped in a simulation (if we’re not in one already). The fact is we could spend all day listing scenarios and possibilities, but it’s all speculation at this point, because there’s just far too many variables and unknowns at play.
In the end we may be better off placing our faith in a higher power and plan. Maybe that’s all we can do. And if we’re wrong, so be it.
The final takeaway here is that Matrix West, in whatever form it takes, and whoever it’s run by - be they nihilists, utopians, or artificial life - is fundamentally anti-human. If you believe humans are the problem, then Matrix West is a good thing. If you don’t, then you’ll agree that there must be a better way forward.
Let’s explore the alternatives starting with the reactionary path.
Neo-Traditional West
Modern society has become a web of falsity, fakery, and frivolity. The ‘truths’ we believe are false. The news we consume is fake. The pastimes we engage in are frivolous. In fact you can use these 3 F’s to describe almost any area of our society today: from false leaders to fake science to frivolous entertainment. From false justice to fake food to frivolous relationships. And the list goes on.
The point here is we’ve moved so far to an unnatural, unhealthy extreme, that a violent rejection of it all is inevitable. That rejection will very likely entail a return to nature and tradition, to honesty and simplicity, and to family and faith. This return I call 'Neo-Traditional West.’
Why neo (or new)? Because whilst it will resemble the Medieval West in structure and spirit more than it does the Modern West, it won’t be fully devoid of technology. Technology will play a role, but likely a more functional one, rather than a degenerate consumeristic one. How exactly could Neo-Traditional West come about? In several ways, which we will explore now, beginning with ‘wilful exit.’
Wilful exit means that there’ll be people today and in the future, who seeing the fruits that modernity has borne, will choose to exit the system. They’ll seek independence from what they believe is a corrupt and crumbling facade of a nation, whose sole purpose seems to be to destroy them, their livelihoods, and their bloodlines.
They will come to accept that the nations their ancestors, and perhaps even they themselves knew, no longer exist.
Exit can take several forms, including moving to or setting up separate, likely at first rural communities. Some Western countries are more amenable to this than others, for example, large, spacious countries like the US, Canada, and Australia.
It could involve setting up parallel networks and systems, which embody the anti-modern and anti-liberal values of the wilful exiters.
It could even mean attempts to declare some level of independence, either as a region or state, from the countries in question.
Would these wilful exiters encounter obstacles and opposition along the way? Of course, but this may simply strengthen their resolve and reenforce their belief that they were right to exit the system in the first place. Additionally, as our society descends further into the abyss, more and more people may be drawn to exit, as they realise that trying to reform or fix the rotting system is futile.
Indeed this movement has already begun in some places. There’s various groups planning and executing their exit strategies (even if these are modest to begin with). It will take time, but I believe it will accelerate exponentially as the fabric of Western society breaks down.19
This leads me to a second way that Neo-Traditional West may come about - and it is as a result of collapse.
We examined Matrix West in the last part, including 3 versions of it that could unfold. The fact is though that whilst we could transition to one or a mix of these scenarios from where we are today, there is also a strong possibility that our civilisation will collapse. Remember, the future is not yet written (and even if it were, no one knows what it is). Matrix West may be what our present rulers are planning for us, but they aren’t omniscient or omnipotent. They are mere mortals, and their plans can be foiled.
What seems possible, even probable, when we consider the major technological, economic, cultural, moral, demographic, and political trends impacting the Modern West - is that the system will implode, and our political, cultural, and economic leaders will be deposed. Eighty percent of their undoing will come from their own actions - either their economic system will fail, or they’ll push things so far that civil war erupts (likely in America first), or they’ll launch a direct war with China & Russia, or a genuinely deadly lab made virus will escape and wipe out large swaths of the population, or an Electro Magnetic Pulse attack will destroy the grid and all electronic devices, or general AI will go rogue, as well as several other possibilities.
But surely they’d find a way to avoid, or at least survive, these events? Well, no, because despite appearances the globalist and woke powers that be (and the system they govern) are fragile, and this fragility mixed with their extreme hubris and delusion are a poor mix if you want to stay in power long term. If anything, they’re a recipe for meeting a violent end. Moreover, why should our current rulers avoid the laws of civilisational gravity? Every ruling class eventually meets its end. They will be no exception.
And when they and their system die, then the makeshift glue that holds together our large, and increasingly diverse countries, will be gone. What’s left of them will likely decentralise, fracturing into a collection of much smaller nations and autonomous zones. Globalism will evaporate; localism will rise. The world will grow 10x in size (or it will seem that way), because we won’t be anywhere near as globally or even nationally interconnected as before. Other countries and civilisations will return to being distant, mysterious, exotic places - out of reach to the majority of the West’s citizens.
The world will also shrink by 10x, because life, industry, and governance will devolve to the local level. It may even be that local or regional governors, mayors, dukes, barons, or lords come to rule - or something like them - again echoing the societies of the Medieval West. A lot of this resembles the fall of Rome and the end of the Classical West, more than anything else. I guess history does rhyme after all.
So these are two ways that Neo-Traditional West comes about: through wilful exit or collapse.
In both cases, the values and trappings of the late Modern West will die, and new ones will replace them. These values will either be reflective of the kinds of people who originally exited - namely those who felt the most repelled by the woke, liberal, globalist order, or they’ll reflect the values of those who survived the collapse and all that came along with it, including hardship, loss, conflict, war, famine, etc. Such events tend to harden a people and shatter any illusions they may have had about life and human nature. You can be sure then that in either case, these people will fully embody traditional values. Luxury, decadent ideologies like liberalism, wokeism, and globalism will be dead and buried.
In short, this society could, once the chaos is over, look like an Amish one in many respects, but with functional technology - if you can picture that. People will be healthier, consume more natural foods, they’ll have larger families, be highly religious, have a strong sense of community, and value the simple things. They’ll have no choice but to.
And maybe, just maybe, these people will be happier and more fulfilled. Gone will be made up modern afflictions like depression or ADHD. Gone will be the war between the sexes, and the promotion of woke and LGBT mental illness and degeneracy. Gone will be working long hours to produce meaningless widgets. Gone will be the confusion, loneliness, and emptiness that many today feel. Life will be simple, modest, and perhaps closer to god or nature.
But is this the end of the Western story? Can we really put the technological genie back into the bottle for good? Or is there another way?
The answer to these questions lies in.....
Space West
At the heart of Western man lies a spirit of conquest. Yes, there is truth in some of the criticisms we receive from non-Western peoples and nations, for we have an insatiable need to conquer: peoples, lands, nature, distance, time, suffering, and anything else we set our minds to.
We can pretend this isn’t so, and make believe that our civilisation will - once we’ve gone through the fire and dealt with all our problems and our internal enemies - become a quiet, insular, and peaceful one, but that would be to deny reality.
We are conquerors, we are explorers, and we are this planet’s Prometheus - stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humankind - the fire on which civilisation is built. Whether this has taken the form of spreading empire, religion, philosophy, or science, engineering, and technology, we have been at this for thousands of years.
What’s happened today is that our genetic and cultural impulse to conquer, explore, and create has in the absence of a grander vision, been diverted towards vapid and self-destructive ends. Today we channel it into spreading more McDonalds round the globe, into developing glossy packaging for haircare products, and into force feeding other nations our homosexual and trans degeneracy. We have become a people devoid of any grand or noble mission or purpose, and it shows. Most of our energies today, whether we’re conscious of it or not, are geared towards destroying ourselves and our civilisation in a spectacular way. Perhaps we want to make our story interesting to future historians.
So how do we get back on track? Does the answer lie in making a wall to wall 8K Definition TV screen that is paper thin? Does it lie in developing a reality TV show about a group of fat lesbians losing weight by becoming vegan? Does it lie in developing an app that enables you to turn on the coffee machine in your kitchen from your bed, so that your coffee’s ready for you when come downstairs? That 1 min time saving is sure convenient.
Or maybe we should think bigger: let’s conquer (or reconquer) some random African countries. Or let’s pick a war with India over all the scam calls we get from them. Or actually no, let’s do the opposite, let’s achieve world peace......somehow.
The truth is that all of this, whether a joke or not, is pointless and beneath us. There is one, and only one endeavour that presents a sufficient challenge, risk, and payoff. There is only one that enables us to pursue glory, to reach new frontiers, to elevate us to the next level - and it is conquering space.
It’s time to look beyond our founding planet toward other planets and worlds. It’s time to expand the human footprint throughout the solar system.
Does this sound daunting? It should. It’s as daunting as building ships and setting off for the new world was for our ancestors, as daunting as building planes and flying across the skies was, as daunting as building a spacecraft and landing the first man on the moon was. Nevertheless, it is the next frontier.
We have to accept that we’re not putting the technological genie back into the bottle, and even if we tried to in the West - the Chinese, Russians, Indians, Arabs, and any other future powers, wouldn’t, and that would place us at their mercy. So if we can’t put it away, we need to find a way to live with it that doesn’t lead us down the road to self-destruction. Space West offers us a way. It enables us to channel our energy and ingenuity outwards, towards something bold, visionary, and inspiring. This is orders of magnitude preferable to using technology to control, subdue, imprison, replace, and destroy people, as would be the case in Matrix West.
Indeed imagine what would we could have achieved by now if the trillions of dollars the West has wasted in recent decades on pointless wars, foreign interventions, insane covid lockdown measures, bloated bureaucracy, corrupt corporate bailouts, counterproductive welfare programs, foreign aid, and the list goes on, had instead gone towards a serious effort to colonise our solar system. Where would we be?
What if our governments were more focused on this than on facilitating the mass invasion of our countries, or on instituting disastrous woke policies, or on compulsively lying about everything that’s going on in the world? Where would we be?
We have a choice between pursuing pointless, depraved, and evil things or pursuing glorious, wise, and noble things. The people who control our governments, the media, academia, corporations, Hollywood, etc, have chosen the former, and I am proposing we pursue the latter. Does this mean it’ll be all we focus on? Of course not. Life still goes on on Earth. But we need a grand vision for our civilisation - and that is space.
What about Neo-Traditional West though? Well, it may surprise you when I say that it’s compatible with Space West. Both Neo-Traditional and Space Westerners, at their core, understand that it’s about man controlling technology, not the other way around. Both grasp that technology must be subservient to man’s mission in the cosmos, and not the other way around. And for the religious, both paths can glorify God: Neo-Traditionalism through living a simpler life devoted to him, and Spacefaring by spreading the life he created to parts of the Universe that lack it. We’ve already expanded all over the Earth, so our solar system and galaxy are the next logical places to do it.
Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves though? Isn’t this a multi-century, or more realistically, in the case of the galaxy, a multi-millenium venture (or much, much longer)?
Well, basic bases or towns can be setup on Mars and the Moon in the coming decade, and we mustn’t underestimate what is possible when we are fully committed (both mentally and resource wise). But even if this is a long-term project, what’s wrong with that? The problem we have today is that many in power are short-term focused. They don’t care what the impact of their choices or policies will be down the line: “screw the future” seems to be the way. How’s that working out for us?
We need to become long-term focused. We have a duty to pay civilisation forward. I call this our Forward Duty. It’s not just the right thing to do, it’s also the smart thing. Think of all the problems we’re dealing with today that could have been averted if only our leaders from yesteryear had exercised more foresight; if only they hadn’t been caught up in the moment and been focused on trying to get theirs.
Colonising space is the ultimate in long-term thinking and planning. It requires coordination with descendants who do not yet exist. It demands that we be selfless, rather than selfish. It also provides us with an opportunity to show our creator that we value and take seriously the life and universe he’s bestowed us with, that we’re committed to being responsible guardians of them, and that we will spread his message through the cosmos.
Now, for those who think it sounds cool, but doubt the feasibility of colonising the solar system and beyond, it’s already in progress to some extent. For example, NASA, with their very limited funding and resources, have 149 currently active missions and 46 future missions on the books (in some of these they take the lead, and in others they support other space agencies, like the European and Japanese space agencies). On the active front, here’s a snapshot of some of the missions or projects:
3D tissue chips - to better understand the effects of microgravity and radiation on astronauts for long duration exploration missions.
ACS3 - solar sail propulsion systems for low-cost deep space missions.
Advanced Plant Habitat - research on space crop production to supplement the space diet with fresh nutritious crops.
Antarctic Station - mimicking the conditions that astronauts face, including climate, terrain, temperature, and isolation to develop appropriate systems and technologies for use on the Moon and Mars.
BepiColombo - is orbiting and studying the Planet Mercury.
CLICK - providing crosslink communication for swarms of small spacecraft.
Mars Curiosity Rover - exploring the surface of Mars for 12 whole years and counting.
Euclid - exploring the two biggest mysteries about the universe today: dark matter and dark energy, which may in turn lead to new and better forms of propulsion and faster (or smarter ways) of traversing space.
Gaia - its goal is to create the largest, most precise 3 dimensional map of the Milky Way Galaxy by surveying 1 billion stars. Might be useful to future spacefarers.
James Webb Space Telescope - currently orbiting the sun, it studies each phase in the history of the universe. It also studies the atmosphere of planets outside our solar system to identify those that have the conditions for supporting life. Planets like K2-18b, which evidence collected so far suggests is an ocean world 120 light years away from our solar system.
JUICE - in-depth exploration of Jupiter and its moons Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa.
Lucy - exploring asteroids in our solar system’s main asteroid belt, as well as those in a tandem orbit with Jupiter.
Mars Perseverance Rover - studying the geology of Mars and seeking signs of ancient microbial life.
As for future missions, here’s a snapshot of some of these:
ARIEL - a telescope that will identify which molecules and atoms are present in the atmosphere of planets outside our solar system.
Artemis 3 - sending humans to explore the South Pole of the moon.
DAVINCI - will study the clouds and surface of the planet Venus.
Dragonfly - will explore Saturn’s moon, Titan.
Europa Clipper - will conduct a detailed investigation of Jupiter’s moon Europa, to determine if it has the necessary conditions to support life.
Gateway - the first space station around the Moon.
LEIA - conducting biological research on the moon.
O2O - will enable the transmission of high resolution videos and images through space.
(You wouldn’t know most of this is happening, because all that the establishment and their propaganda arm - the legacy media - are focused on are ridiculous wars, gender and pronoun nonsense, racial grievance politics, profiteering, and climate doomsdayism. Indeed, they have no problem burning trillions of dollars on these and other pointless and degenerate endeavours. This should really make clear how morally, intellectually, economically, and spiritually bankrupt our leaders across all spheres of our society have become. We have a golden opportunity to extend life throughout our solar system, and they choose to focus on nonsense instead.)
So where exactly in our solar system can we go? Candidates include: Mars, the Earth’s moon, Europa (an ocean moon of Jupiter), Titan (a rocky and icy moon of Saturn).
Even planets like Venus, which we might perceive as having harsh environments, are hypothetical possibilities, for example, via floating space colonies. If this sounds silly, did you know the gravity and air pressure on Venus are similar to Earth’s, and that it has a thick atmosphere that protects it from radiation? The atmosphere also has the various elements required to support life and agriculture, including carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur. As for the temperature, it is reasonable too: at a height of 34 miles it is 27 degrees Celsius or 81 degrees Fahrenheit, hence the floating colonies.
Other candidates include Mercury, large asteroids like Ceres, which is big enough to be classified a dwarf planet. Then there’s other moons like Callisto and Ganymede, both which have water, silicate rock, and metals.
Are there challenges that would need to be overcome to make multi-planetary, multi-moon life a reality? Definitely. But human ingenuity (nature or god given) has no bounds. And again, let’s start focusing on the long term - on achieving great things for posterity and on passing on a glorious legacy to our descendants - rather than being petty small minded profit seekers like the ironically named globalists, or destructive and deranged sociopaths like the woke, or evil traitors like the deep state bureaucrats.
Also think, if the West benefited massively from colonising the lands that are today called the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (and if you’re watching this from one of these countries, you exist because this happened), then the West can massively benefit from colonising the next United States, Canada, etc - only this time in space.
But what about AI? Couldn’t it throw a spanner in the works of Space West? It could. To be safe then, it would be better to stick with specialised and limited AI, rather than developing general AI. We have after all had machine learning and algorithms for years now, and haven’t been wiped out by them.
Isn’t there a possibility that Russia or China develop general AI though, and wouldn’t that put us at a major disadvantage, and possibly threaten our security and survival? Yes. And there’s no easy answers to that, other than to help them and everyone else see that if they manage to successfully develop it, the risk is they may not be able to control it, so any perceived advantage they think they might get from it would be lost. If ever there was something countries might agree on, it might be that, especially if they value their own self-preservation.
This doesn’t necessarily stop rogue parties from developing it however (particularly in Silicon Valley), so it’s just something we’ll need to contend with - and yes, it may involve a justified use of force for once to resolve the matter. Regardless however, being spread out across the solar system would at least reduce the chances that humans are wiped out if things go terribly wrong. Therefore we mustn’t paralyse ourselves with fear, but rather push forward.
In a similar league is the issue of non-human and non-artificial intelligent life. We explored this in part 1 of this series. If we expand through space, could we step on somebody else’s toes? Are we only left to our own devices at present because we confine ourselves to one planet: Earth? It’s hard to tell. I’ve no doubt our planet and solar system have been visited by non-human intelligent life. Whether they’re from here or another solar system, from the future or another dimension, is up for debate, but they have not stopped us in all this time, so again, unless the deep, deep state knows something terrible we don’t know, we should proceed with our expansion - across our solar system at minimum.
So that’s Space West. But what are we supposed to do between now and then? We’re still living in the Modern West after all?
Let’s examine this now.
The Transition
In 476 AD, Rome collapsed and the Classical West died. The Medieval West - also known as the Middle Ages - began.
By contrast, the transition from the Medieval West to the Modern West was gradual (though still very disruptive). Key events or developments in this transition included the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the rise of Mercantilism, the colonisation of the Americas, the Scientific Revolution, and more.
What of the transition from the Modern West to Western Civilisation 4.0 then? Well, we have all the elements in place for a collapse, as well as elements in place for a massively disruptive transition period. The honest truth therefore is that we must prepare for both possibilities.
How do we prepare? 3 ways:
We organise
We train
We build
Organising is the first step. Without it, we are mere hapless victims of fate. With it, we can move mountains. This is the superpower of our enemies today. They are first and foremost, organised. They’re not even a majority, just a small minority who understand how power works. In fact based on manpower alone, the majority could crush the ruling minority very quickly, but they won’t because they’re not organised, and likely never will be.
The answer for us then lies in resisting thinking or acting like the majority, for example, by expecting voting, protest, or debate to make any difference, and instead to adopt a minority mindset - which means becoming a highly organised, tightly coordinated, fiercely motivated minority with a clear and compelling mission and objectives.
There’s also no need for us to obsess over what the majority think or believe at present - that can be changed in a matter of months or years depending on the subject in question. Moreover, the majority offers little to no resistance to organised minorities anyway (as we see today). So we primarily need to focus on dislodging the present ruling minority. Step number 1 is to get organised.
Step number 2 is training. Since we must prepare for both collapse or a disruptive transition period, we need to ensure we’re ready in mind, body, and spirit for what is to come. We need to be tough, strong, smart, resilient, focused, and uncompromising in our vision and values. Training therefore means the physical, for example, doing weightlifting, sports, martial arts, etc.
It means honing practical skillsets in the areas of technology, engineering, trades, farming, logistics, combat, physical and cybersecurity, communication, and more.
It means strengthening our mental and spiritual resolve - by hitching our wagon to something nobler and greater than ourselves.
And it means leading by example, and rejecting nihilism as well as pure Machiavellian-ism (which is the road to nihilism).
Third, we must build. Build networks, parallel institutions and infrastructure, separate real-life communities, and more. These must be built in a way that makes them resistant to either collapse or disruptive transition. For example, consider building a parallel financial system. What would it look like? Well, it already exists. It’s called the blockchain or crypto. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that this industry is at present filled with hype, scams, market manipulation, and the list goes on, but the technology itself works. Decentralised finance or De-Fi, though still in its infancy compared to traditional finance, is innovative, accessible, and robust. It’s getting better every month and year. I’ve no doubt that if the traditional financial system collapsed tomorrow, crypto could take its place almost overnight. Bitcoin might become a global reserve currency, and highly liquid tokens on blockchains like Ethereum Layer 2s, Cosmos, Solana, Avax, BNB, and many others could be used for daily transactions. Indeed I think this is the future of money regardless.
It wasn’t for nothing that in December 2023, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of the world’s largest bank JP Morgan Chase said of crypto: “If I was the government, I'd close it down." He’s not saying this because he’s dumb, but because he’s smart. He knows it poses an existential threat to the banking system he operates in.
Others in his space have taken a different approach - like Larry Fink, CEO of the world’s largest investment management firm, Blackrock. Fink was likely the key player in getting Bitcoin ETFs approved in January 2024 - opening up Bitcoin to the everyday investor, institutions, pension funds, etc. He probably thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room, but his actions amount to trying to make money off the rope that will hang his industry.
So this is one example of building a parallel system, which despite its flaws and the obstacles its faced, works.
To recap then: we need to organise, train, and build. We need to do this now in earnest, and do it knowing that we will inherit either a fallen West or a West in turmoil. In other words, we’ll have our work cut out for us.
But it’s not just about building, it’s also about fixing. All our work will be for nothing and our future will be jeopardised if we don’t deal with the demographic problems which we explored extensively in Part 1 of this series. The mass uncontrolled immigration we’ve had in the West for the past few decades needs to end. Not only that, but we will need to undertake one of the largest deportation programs in history - returning tens of millions, of poorly integrated and disloyal non-Westerners to their true homelands in Africa, the Middle East, Mexico & Central America, South Asia, and more.
There’ll be no Space West after all if we’re overrun by people who are incapable of delivering on that vision, and who instead deliver crime, chaos, decay, poverty, disunity, resentment, and conflict. There’ll be no Neo-Traditional West either when we have foreign people’s with completely different views and beliefs about life and society - ones that are often hardcoded into their DNA and culture, and that cannot easily be discarded.
If we fail to deport them, we are almost guaranteed to see the end of the West and will likely descend into an age of barbarism. Heck, we won’t even get Matrix West (or if we do, we won’t get very far into it).
The good news is that the mass movement of people through history, due to conflict, drought, natural disasters, and other factors is well documented. Moving these people back to their ancestral homes is logistically possible then, so long as we have the will to do it, which I believe we will. (I’ll go into the logistics of deportation in detail in a future video - for those of you who need to understand the ‘how’ before you can support a measure like this.)
In summary then, even if the current establishment’s unforced errors play a key part in their downfall, this isn’t a passive game for us. We need to take action to ensure the West lives on, and that it does so in a non-dystopian form. Those who are reluctant to get their hands dirty in order to achieve this, or who are afraid of taking risks, need not apply. This is a project for the bold, the courageous, and the zealous. The challenges we face are great, and only a motivated minority will be equipped to stay the course and do what is necessary. A minority is all we need right now.
It doesn’t matter either whether you’re drawn to Neo-Traditional West (or something like it), or to Space West - just know that both are possible. Both can exist in a dual and self-reenforcing system: a ying and yang of sorts. After all a technological society without its roots in tradition, history, group identity, and humility before something greater - like God, is one that is doomed to destroy itself. And a traditional society without technology, and without the desire to challenge and push itself is one that is doomed to flounder and die, particularly if surrounded by technologically superior civilisations.
We therefore need both for Western Civilisation to prosper.
Final Words
In this series we’ve explored what the next stage of Western Civilisation could look like, and how we might get there.
If there’s one thing you takeaway from this it’s that we must prepare for what comes next. Preparing means organising, training, and building, but it also means ridding ourselves of the illusion that we can wind the clock back. There’s no going back to the 1990s or 1980s, to the 1950s or the 1800s. We can only go forward now.
This is a pivotal time in Western and world history, and our descendants will either look back and praise us for the foresight, will, and courage we displayed, or they’ll look back and condemn us for our short-sightedness, weakness, and cowardice. I know which way I’d rather be remembered. If you agree, then it’s time to step up. We have enemies to defeat, and a civilisation to renew.
All this gets me thinking, what should we call ourselves? What name encapsulates an ode to our ancestral homes on Earth and our future homes in Space? What name incorporates both tradition AND technology? What name provides a contrast between our vision of the future and that of our foes in waiting - the anti-human techno-utopians? And what name is simple and to the point?
I know: Techno-Nationalists.
So Techno-Nationalists, if you’ll permit me to call you that, will you submit to slavery and to an ignoble extinction via Matrix West? Or will you pursue glory and legacy via Space West?
Matrix or Space? You decide.
Written by Arcadius Strauss.
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https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/police-use-drones-help-enforce-coronavirus-lockdown-a4402676.html
https://thehill.com/policy/international/asia-pacific/525851-australia-uses-drones-to-ensure-social-distancing-at-the/
https://www.9news.com.au/national/coronavirus-outbreak-wa-police-to-use-drones-to-enforce-restrictions/30387b30-f34d-40bd-84af-479cd10ff9fe
https://dronedj.com/2021/07/26/rugby-drones-australia-nrl/
https://apnews.com/article/drones-labor-day-eric-adams-nypd-jouvert-c2787e87bcad8fa87aa8d34b454ee6cf
https://nypost.com/2023/08/06/nypd-exploring-use-of-drones-to-answer-911-calls-as-it-buys-high-tech-tactical-bots/
https://dronexl.co/2023/11/16/nypd-drone-usage-investigation-nyc/#:~:text=This%20dramatic%20increase%20from%205,for%20public%20safety%20and%20emergencies.
https://gothamist.com/news/the-nypd-is-using-drones-3-times-more-than-it-did-last-year
https://www.sciencealert.com/new-mind-reading-ai-translates-thoughts-directly-from-brainwaves-without-implants
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/15/science/music-brain-pink-floyd.html
https://www.indy100.com/science-tech/mind-reading-technology-brain-waves
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/nyregion/police-robot-times-square-nyc.html
https://wsvn.com/news/local/miami-dade/meet-spot-mdpds-cutting-edge-robot-intended-for-enhanced-operations/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2023/11/01/us-marines-test-robot-dog-armed-with-a-rocket-launcher/
https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/08/10/robot-dogs-report-for-duty-the-us-space-force-enlists-robotic-dogs-to-guard-spaceport
https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-page-elon-musk-specieist-ai-dangers-2023-12
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5686265/Elon-Musks-concerns-killers-robots-speciesist-according-Google-founder-Larry-Page.html
https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-thinks-agi-replaces-median-humans-2023-9
https://www.newfounding.com/highland