George’s comedy specials helped raise me from a young age when no one else was doing any raising. I consider him to be one of the greatest minds, social commentators, and philosophers of the 20th century, and I’ve yet to recognize a contemporary near his level. I’ll always be grateful to have had the honor to see him twice before he died.
I see a lot of people enjoy his brilliant bits, but with the way the world is and where its going, imho in the name of enthusiastic greed, I personally find a lot of peace, and a lot less depression when I choose to aspire to George’s genuine divorce and detachment from “caring about the outcome.”
Enjoy the freakshow, folks!
Bonus: I’ve seen so many comments in his bit videos wishing for George’s perspective on smartphones, well this was near his end (2008), smartphones were just arriving, and his opening words briefly address in passing what he thought about the latest tech obsession.
There’s always a disconnect between “Our nature is destroying us” and the people that chime into say “then be the change you want to see!”
Seriously, if cobbling enough technology together to generate MORE food than every human needs couldn’t change our nature, it can’t be done.
And What did we do with that miraculous technological revolution in post-scarcity?
Well, a tiny percentage can now glut themselves to the point of then getting outpatient surgery to manually remove the excess fat so they can do it all again tomorrow, while we also throw heaps of food away…with lots of people still starving! Gotta maintain that artificial scarcity to keep prices up after all.
That’s why AI and Fusion, things that many propose could save us from our demons, won’t. They’ll just be turned into another tool the few own and use as leverage against the many for literally nothing more than a boost to their ego scores, more gold on the hoard that will have no bearing on their daily lives.
We could decide it’s wrong and cut them down to size, but then we as a species would have to give up the ridiculous dream/fantasy of being the fuckers punching down. And we won’t do that, even as we’re on the ass end of it and have no rational hope of it changing under the current system.
No way to cure this mindset. A global plague couldn’t put a dent in this mindset.
The only way we’ll save ourselves is if we’re lucky enough to have some no name genius be born that somehow makes off world colonization possible. Our existing structures will not accomplish this.
Humanity has, in my opinion, only lasted as long as it has because every so often people were able to just walk away from a failed, corrupt society and start over somewhere else. Now that we’ve basically claimed the entire planet, that’s no longer possible. Only by being able to colonize other worlds do we regain that.
Existing human biology/neurology doesn’t seem to scale properly for governing existing populations. It just doesn’t work and the failure rate keeps accelerating.
That’s possible I guess, but we’ve had transcendant geniuses. They’re just as likely to have their game changing, revolutionary discoveries bastardized over power in its various forms to be yet another vector of self-annihilation. An Einstein here, an Oppenheimer there, and what could have been a warm light for all mankind, low cost power for all, instead became a race to this:
and half assed and demonized harnessing the power of the atom for good. Nope, big carbon couldn’t have that.
And then we have the capitalists ready to turn that colony into a very literal company store you’re born into with that tech. We aren’t the Federation. Oh god in my youth how I wished we could be, but We’re the Ferengi. Balls to bones.
And not the cutesy later series Ferengi. The TNG Ferengi.
Thank you for explaining your thinking process.
Great insight, I learned something new today!