Amusing ourselves to death
I don't think it's off-base to say that this is an attack on the current state of society - the oft-repeated wail that capitalism and the opportunities it has brought (including technology) has made us all a despicable group of hedonistic thrill seekers.  This is universally construed as a bad thing.<p>I have problems with this.<p>In order to decide that something is bad, we need to have an idea of what is good.  Where does that come from here?  The past?  Your imagination?  Do you 'miss' the olden days of constant strife, peril, religion that moulded those who survived into wise old men and women, their minds enriched by the fullness of life, but their bodies cold, wet, and illness-ridden from the lack of modern technology?  Perhaps you miss the 'community' vibe of the 1950's.  Or your own childhood.  Or perhaps you dream of your own utopia.  Am I close?<p>I hope the point made in the above paragraph is self evident, but in case it's not, ask yourself how many of your alternative realities you've actually experienced, and how many are just ideas you've accrued with the blanks liberally filled in by educated guesses and imaginations.  Try and find one that isn't.  Got one? Good.<p>Now let's plan.  How would you - or anyone - transform the whole of society from what we have today to your new utopia?  Plan it out.  Perhaps government has to do something.  Perhaps government has to go.  You're almost certainly going to face dissent - perhaps some people need to face some hard realities for a short time, you know, in the transition period.  Think like this for a while.  I don't think it will be long before 1984 starts to take shape.<p>Let's categorise society.  Let's construct a hypothetical index in our minds that tracks intelligence/education/income in a single number (the actual equation isn't relevant).  Assume it's normally distributed[0].  Let's also assume that the kind of person who sympathises with the article in this link is in the top 25% (far right quarter), so put yourself up there.  Let's consider the bottom 55% - the kind of people whose chief pleasures in our Brave New World may be TV, alcohol, taking selfies, incorrect spelling in text messages, Facebook, Instagram, Candy Crush, etc. - they're not massively intellectual.<p>Where exactly do these people (who I posit construct the majority of our <i>actual</i> society) fit in to your new utopia, assuming you managed the transition without creating 1984?  Are they suddenly reading books, in a newfound passion for learning?  Maybe they accept their place in their world, respectfully keeping quiet in reverence to their overlords, the intelligensia.  Can you fit them in anywhere whilst maintaining the utopia?<p>This thought experiment should be difficult by this point.  I say it's impossible.<p>If you are not in the bottom 55% of our hypothetical index, there is a great wealth of things out there to please you.  Almost all activities are in reach of the average person now.  You have books, the ability to travel, the internet, base jumping, mountaineering, arctic exploration, even space travel is expected to be affordable within most of our lifespans.  You probably know this already, I guess you're probably happy enough with your own life and world.  The discomfort you feel is with the rest of us 'out there', right?<p>Society is reflective of its components.  People will seek to maximise happiness and pleasure under given constraints.  This has always been and will always be so.  It is the essence of humanity.  The simple truth is that the industrial and technical revolutions of late have loosened those constraints by many orders of magnitude, and now instead of dog-fighting, back-room card games, duels, 24-hour boozing, or whatever it was the bottom 55% used to do 'back in the day', they have other things.  Like you, they are who they are: a conflagration of nature/nurture forces that amount to a personality.<p>The difference is that instead of making use of all things available in the world to please you, you've chosen to spend your time sat on your high horse looking down on them, wishing they were different, so that the view from up there was a little nicer.<p><pre><code>  [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution</code></pre>