The digital revolution and depopulation
In the digital age, performance has become the paramount factor in the evolution of classes and individuals. however, with technological advances, when human beings are not part of the elite who creates or markets the technology, they’re more and more relegated to the third place, after the machines. There is now a global third world, a cast of wretched of the earth both in the West and in developing countries who by their digital illiteracy, resulting in the loss of their jobs against machines, and their inability to take advantage of technological breakthroughs by creating livelihoods through technology, experiences an uncertain future, at a time when global warming and migration crises, direct consequences of capitalism and its uncontrolled exploitation of resources, revive the debate on eugenics that advocates the idea of mass depopulation of the poor in both the Third World and the West.
For the proponents of this eugenics thesis, they cannot survive in a changing world because of their digital illiteracy.
The Origin of Species (1859) by Charles Darwin is one of the most important works in the annals of science. In "Origin of Species" and later writings, Darwin proposed a revolutionary scientific theory: the process of evolution through natural selection.
In short, natural selection means that plants and animals evolve over time, as new species are born of spontaneous mutations, there is a battle for survival.
Those who avoid being killed and have offspring are more likely to survive. Darwin appealed to the fossil record, among other evidence, to support his theory.
Darwin's biological theory, which remains debatable on certain major points, has not remained confined to so-called natural sciences. Sociologists have thought that it could also apply to human society at the end of the 19th century, at a time when the class struggle was raging in the West with the ceaseless strikes of coal miners who felt enslaved by capitalism.
A social climate which Germinal, a book by Emile Zola seems to describe, with a sharp acuity.
Social Darwinism is a term used by researchers to describe the practice of applying Charles Darwin's biological evolutionary principle to politics, economics, and society.
Many social Darwinists have embraced capitalism, liberalism and racism, and eugenics as an essential ideology. They thought that the government should not interfere in the "survival of the fittest" by helping the poor, and promoted the idea that some races are biologically superior to others.
The ideas of social Darwinism have permeated many aspects of American society and the western world in general, including policies affecting immigration, imperialism, education, employment, and public health.
The digital revolution is the shift from analogue electronic technology to digital electronics for the benefit of digital electronics, which began between the late 1950s and the late 1970s with the adoption and proliferation of digital and electronic computers, and the digital preservation of archives that continues to this day. Implicitly, the term also refers to the radical changes brought by digital computing and communication technologies during (and after) the second half of the twentieth century. Computers, microprocessors, digital cell phones, and the Internet are at the heart of the digital revolution. And have transformed traditional production and commercial techniques, drastically changing society.
A historical reminder of social Darwinism, and its hold on so-called modern society remains important to understand, the influence of this ideology in the digital era.
In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, social Darwinists adopted the language of evolution to understand the gap growing between rich and poor as well as the many differences between cultures around the world, some of which have been denominated as folklore, or dialectical when it comes to languages or music, a characterization that immediately placed an automatic civilizational hierarchy between peoples.
The explanation for Darwinist sociologists was that businessmen and other economically and socially prosperous people who are mainly found in the northern hemisphere, are wealthy because they are biologically and socially "naturally" the most apt. Conversely, they felt that the poor were "naturally" weak and unfit and that it would be a mistake to let the weak of the species continue to reproduce. They believed that the dictum "survival of the fittest" (a term coined not by Charles Darwin but by sociologist Herbert Spencer) meant that only the fittest would survive.
Darwinian social language has spread like wildfire to the theories of race and racism, to eugenics, to the national superiority of one people over the other, and to immigration laws. If in the past social Darwinism was used as justification for US imperialism in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines after the Spanish-American war. Back then, followers of imperialism asserted that it was the duty of white Americans to bring civilization to "backward" peoples. And today when Americans think they have the mission to be the policeman of the world to promote democracy, they are replicating with authenticity the theory of social Darwinism that makes them the enlightened people who should liberate the backward peoples from the obscurantism of their mode of government, using both the digital revolution to inspire upheaval of people and deadly wars that contribute to depopulation.
If the consequences of social Darwinism continue to have a fundamental influence in the relations that govern both the populations of the Western countries and the relations of subordination between the North and the South. The digital revolution is far from having changed the situation. The idea that technology would help the masses to bridge the gap that separates them from social and economic well-being, has instead reinforced the preponderance of excessive capitalism against humanity.
In the digital age, the number now has more value than the human capital, that one strives to digitize, removing any natural connotations, in a transhumanism of the performance that sidelines the agenda of pure replacement of humans by machines. When, almost perfect performances are increasingly attributed to the machine and not to humans whose fallibility is now seen as a burden that would curb the production potential of companies, it is important to emphasize that humans when they are not part of the digital capitalist elite, are only tolerated because of consumerism.
The consumption of manufactured goods is a source of profits for multinationals owned by the economic elite, which in this century is exercising more than ever the authority over those exercising political power, whom it elects and dismisses as it pleases.
To consume, one must have purchasing power that can only be acquired while working. However, more and more it is not easy to be part of those who have a stable job. The volatility of the economic tissue due to the great mutation of technology, forces the working class to adapt by striving to take additional training to be competitive on the labor market. And this competition in the employment market where only the most gifted intellectually and physiologically prevail, is bringing back without screaming, a social Darwinism, icier than the one of the beginning of the twentieth century.
To be competitive in the 21st century, a worker must not only have a full proofed background, but he must also physically look like what the company promotes.
Capitalism is racism, It is a term that seems outrageous, but the analysis of the facts, seems to prove the veracity of these words. the idea that slavery should be a good thing to save the souls of the subhuman who were Africans, according to the most widespread ideology in the Europe of Enlightenment, was only a capitalist speculation based on racism, and religion. When slavish exploitation made slavers richer, since they had free labor, thus maximizing their profit, black people were sold the idea that the belief in a God was important, to see the paradise of beyond; and that their slavery was only the promise of a better heavenly life. By selling a product, which the veracity could not be verified before death, the slavers barely inaugurated what would later become false advertising.
Nowadays, the clichés of sub humans because of the ineptitude to the adaptation in a world in the middle of technological revolution reappear often, and this time with the scarcity of resources it is the implementation of the idea according to which sub-peoples would consume resources unnecessarily, while they produce nothing in the technological evolution of humanity. The idea of reducing the birth rate in southern hemisphere regions, where less technology is created, despite the massive exploitation of natural resources, is an unhealthy attempt to conserve natural resources, vital for technological development, solely for the elites of the northern hemisphere. The destruction of the terms of trade, and the Machiavellian support to corrupted dictatorial regime for alleged Geo strategics purpose is no longer enough, but the pure and simple genocide of peoples living on top of important resources, such as Coltan has become a clear alternative when one observes, the perpetuation of deadly conflicts ravaging countries like the Congo, or the Northwest and part of Cameroon's Littoral Coast rich in ores and hydrocarbons.
Beyond the global policies based on the artificial application of social Darwinism, because it is not always the individuals living in the western ghettos or in the third world countries that are naturally unfit, it is simply that there are policies implemented by the Western powers, and their puppets which prevents any socio-economic evolution of those who do not have the privilege of belonging to the race of the haves, which is a caste that goes beyond the physiological colorations. Because, individuals personally undergo policies of ostracism, which are a net, a guardrail that allows the haves to keep their privileges for themselves alone, and not always a policy against a racial group.
However, the ban on ethnic or religious hairstyles, racism and sectarianism are now explained by the logic of the market and the dictatorship of consumption.
Because of the digital revolution and information conveyed by the mainstream media, a real psychosis has taken hold of the populations of the northern hemisphere. Very often, people are being denied jobs on the basis of their color or religion. Blacks or Muslims would thus be banned from certain jobs since they would make some customers feel uncomfortable, because conditioned to see behind all black a hoodlum, and behind every muslim a potential terrorist. These millions, banished by the exclusion system, find themselves in a dangerous situation because of the loss of options to employment, which results in a loss of the purchasing power. A loss of the purchasing power, which make them useless for the capitalist system, and thus expendable.
The era of digital technology with its corollary that is the great popularization of social networks, and the opportunity that is now given to everyone to say what he thinks, also allows the ruling elite to control people's thoughts. Those who do not think politically correct because of their writing on social networks are increasingly exposed to a ban on society, that can be materialized by their exclusion from purchasing power, through the loss of paid jobs. The exponential rise of dictatorship in Western democracies, has as ally the digital technology. If in France ordinary people can now have their name on a file held by intelligence services just because of their words on the internet, in the United States, the risk of being banned from the US for comments made on social networks is real. When the US authorities are now asking for access to the Facebook account of visa applicants to find out if they are pro-American or not, because now to visit the United States, one should never bring the slightest criticism against the country, the “Fiche S” (file S) in France, ban automatically peoples from public service and make it almost impossible to access jobs by putting pressure on employers who will dare recruit peoples who have their name on that file. These practices of another age are far from being security measures, as they are often presented, but a shameful ploy for the repression on the freedom to think.
Beyond artificial methods of exclusion from society, It also happens that some humans are naturally, less efficient, because of both physiological and sociological handicaps, and therefore can only deal with menial tasks, which have since been in the sights of robotics, which increasingly are taking their position for a yield, often better, from the strictly capitalist point of view. So, governments are increasingly attacking social assistance, which some now find to be a burden on the States. States, which some politicians manipulated by the oligarchy, now want to manage like the cold, profit-hungry monsters that are multinational corporations.
The eugenic ideas and depopulation of the less efficient entities in a changing world, according to Darwinist logic have resurfaced. When in the American ghettos the abortion industry with the family planning institutions are omnipresent, in Africa the famous aid to the development of Western countries towards the third world begins to be linked to policies of population control.
If the proletarian's bed is fertile many seem to forget that it is the perpetuation of policies of underdevelopment that creates a problem. In general populations that have access to education as well as to social progress in a descent way, tend to better regulate their birth rate. There is a direct causal link between socio-economic progress and the reduction of the high birth rate. For example, university graduate’s women, generally have fewer children. The cynicism of some is absurd, because one cannot impoverish a continent, by tactics of destruction on the terms of trade and backward puppeteering, and at the same time advocate the reduction of births, this is a fact.
Hubert Marlin Journalist
