Here's a tiny question. Why is it that the future of the human race, the planet, democracy, life itself is on the line right now — and there's not a revolution anywhere in sight?

Take a glimpse at the headlines. The Greek wildfires are record-breaking. 5 dead in Michigan after storms. Tenerife, on fire. 388 people are missing from the Maui wildfires. A new Covid variant, better than all the others at evading immunity. And inflation, still on the rise. Oh, and don't miss the fire tornado in Canada.

We're hammered, you and I, with dystopia. It rains down on us daily like a deluge. Fascism, climate change, disinformation, nature being annihilated, the seasons changing into things we don't have words for, whole regions of the globe becoming Fire and Flood and Plague Belts.

You'd think, given all that, that people would be fed up. That they'd be clamouring for transformation — not just "change," whatever that even means, but profound, deep, lasting transformation. To institutions, constitutions, norms, values, these things we thoughtlessly call "lifestyles."

You'd think, given the sheer scale of dystopia thundering down on us, that it'd be an Age of Revolution. But…it's not. Instead, it's an Age of indifference, of apathy, of resignation, fatalism, futility. It's an Age of Paralysis, an age of Pacification, instead of a Revolution.

Something is very, very wrong with that. That isn't remotely normal. When people are pushed to the brink — like we are, and I mean everything from countries to generations — normally, they push back. But…we don't. Throughout history, peasants have revolted when pushed too far. France, Russia, Britain. Ages of Revolutions have been a constant theme throughout history. Why aren't we pushing back? Why are we just…accepting dystopia fatalistically, instead of revolting against it?

Sorry, but I don't just mean "vote for the good guys." I mean actually revolting. For better structures and systems and institutions and values and norms. I mean disobeying the corrupt, corroded systems and structures which have failed us, ripping them down, and building better, fairer, truer ones. I mean really pushing back.

Here we are, at humanity's most crucial juncture — the planet is dying, our polities are melting down, our societies do not function anymore — and there are no revolutions. Not even a hint or a trace of one. The next decade or two is going to decide the fate of us for centuries, probably millennia. Will we have a planet to live on? Societies to belong to? Or will we just plunge into a new Dark Age?

We are going down without a fight — and yet we live in one of history's most critical moments.

That is profoundly, deeply weird. It says that somehow, something broke us. Right down in the mind, the spirit, the will to live, endure, grow. What is that something?

First, let me put a name to this weird phenomenon of living-in-one-of-history's-most-dystopian-moment yet we're going down without a fight, not a revolution anywhere in sight. Let's call it the Great Paralysis. Something's numbed us. Paralysed us. Pacified us.

A Chomskyite might call it "manufactured consent," but I'd go further than that. Let me explain.

I think what's paralyzed us is the brutal combination of technology and capital.

Let me focus for a moment on young people. The last time the world went dystopian, young people responded fiercely. I'm thinking of the hippies of the 60s, the love children. Their intense focus on love and peace was a direct consequence of growing up in the ashes of world war.

Today, they're derided. "Hippie" is a insult. But it shouldn't be. Because young people back then believed in truly noble and earth-shaking goals. Like, yes, world peace and an end to war and violence and equality for all peoples and nations.

Did they make it happen? The answer that's often given is that they didn't. But that answer is wrong. The peace movements of the 60s had a massive impact. They were responsible, if not solely, than at least pretty critically, for everything from the passage of everything from civil rights to what would become, in the 1980s, the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals. Those flower children grew up — at least some of them — and really did begin to end war, violence, hunger, and poverty.

It's a foolish myth to imagine that the massive growth in consciousness which happened in the 60s resulted in nothing, that all those hippies just grew up to become boomers. They didn't. Many of them went on to do genuinely beautiful and world-changing things, whether at the United Nations, or as civil rights advocates, or as gay rights lawyers, and so forth.

Now let's think about young people today. I hate to say this, but most have no goals whatsoever. I don't mean personal goals. I mean generational ones. In the same way that we could have said that young people in the 60s believed — not all of them, just at the average — in the end of violence, war, hunger, and so forth, today, we can't say young people believe in or aspire to anything as a generation.

Sure, Greta and Malala are trying to get them to. So are the brilliant kids who won their climate change lawsuit in Montana. But by and large, you don't see young people on the streets every day shouting that they still need a planet to live on, or societies that work, or just lives that don't end in dystopian ruin. Yes, it happens once in a while, but it's not a generational, feeling, norm, rule, sentiment. We don't think of Zoomers and Millennials as revolutionaries, but just the opposite: as poor kids who are caught like deer in the headlights of an approaching freight train, except this is the express train to global collapse.

So why aren't young people more revolutionary? Again, that's not some kind of "kids today" jeremiad — it's just a fact. The fascists protest more and harder than the youths — whether it's against drag queens or "wokeness." The reason, I think, is technology.

Let's take the example of young women. What are they doing, if they're not out there making a revolution happen? They're glued to Instagram. The statistics are horrific. Teens spend, on average, nine hours a day staring at screens — three of them on social media. The average TikTok user spends one and a half hours on the app.

What does Instagram do? It makes young women objectify themselves. Their goal in life becomes to look like weird young alien sex objects made of filler and pout and plastic surgery. That is the only way to win the popularity game, because it's what the algorithm — an algorithm controlled and reinforced by men twice, three, four times their age — rewards. The algorithm tells them what to eat, wear, say, think. They react obediently, because, well, you can't fight an algorithm.

The result is that a generation of young women are being traumatised by a pedophilic, algorithmic male gaze. Of course they're not out there revolting. They're too busy being rewarded for sexualising themselves, and being punished when they don't, with eating disorders and self-hate and loneliness and worthlessness.

What is tech teaching young women? That their real role models are "influencers" whose job in life is to look like young sex objects with alien plastic surgery faces. That is who they should aspire to be, and they should feel worthless if they can't be that popular. This game is rigged by men for men, who "code" it, of course.

Young women are supposed to be hyperfeminine beautiful sexual objects — not Malala and Greta.

See the problem here? Think of how many young women combined follow all those "infuencers," whose only real job it is to degrade them into sexualization. Tens, hundreds of millions. Now think of why Malala and Greta can barely rouse a protest at the UN or Congress or wherever. You begin to see the problem. Way, way more young women are objectified by tech than are allowed, encouraged, incentivized, to care about the world they live in.

I want to make clear that's not a misogynistic insult. It is an observation about how the structures of patriarchy and capital control women. The "code" that teaches young women to be objectified, not Malala and Greta, is literally owned by men. Written by men. Traded on "stock markets" by men. Patriarchy and capital batter young women with exploitation just as they always have — only this time, they use an algorithm, not a scarlet letter or a stone. Your place is virgin or whore. It's to look pretty, but not too pretty. A woman's job isn't to think. And it's certainly not to rebel.

Now let's think about young men. Why don't they rebel, either? Well, take a look at culture today. What passes for it is Marvel movies and… Andrew Tate. A few generations ago, you had John Lennon singing about the end of war and violence and hunger forever…to hundreds of millions…and they believed in it. See the difference?

Young men today exist in a cultural matrix poisoned by the stupidity and greed of capital and patriarchy. What's a young man told to be? Elon Musk, maybe. Or maybe some dumb Marvel movie hero. Save the world with your super-muscles! Young men grow up in a weird, abusive cultural matrix, which is only getting weirder. The ones that can't make it, can't fit in, can't get girls, don't even become punks or nerds much anymore — they become incels. And then incels taunt each other into self-castration or massacring women. It's super, super bad.

The plight of young men is, of course, the mirror image of that of young women. If young women are taught to be giggling, hypersexualized, objects to be consumed online — all vocal fry and filler — than young men are taught to be the muscled, mindless, "alpha male" bros who abuse and exploit them, and if they can't be that, then they're worthless. The average young dude today couldn't tell you what happens at two, three, four degrees of climate change — because, like a young woman, he's glued to a screen.

But what do young men do on their screens? Well, if young women are hypersexualizing themselves for an algorithmic male gaze, then young men are addicted to porn, violence, and greed. I know that makes me sound like Joel Osteen or something, but — well, think about it. 70% of men who watch porn are under the age of 24. There's evidence that the age group that's most likely to develop a porn addiction is thirteen to sixteen years old.

Then there's video games. Hey, I like a good video game as much as the next dude. But you can't just play video games and not know a damned thing about global warming. Then there's the omnipresent Marvel Movie. A new one every month — none of which have any redeeming value in terms of making young men think about the world they actually live in at all, versus promoting the dumb fantasy that Real Men Have Super-Powers.

Tech in this way has pacified an entire generation. They should be out there in the streets, revolting. Instead, they're glued to screens. And what screens do to young people, we're beginning to find out, is incredibly depressing. Screen time crushes the soul, breaks the mind, paralysed the spirit. It pacifies — instead of sparks, enlightens, illiuminates, edifies.

That pacification is itself often traumatic. Young women aren't happily pacified by Instaculture which teaches them that if they're not object-influencers, complicit in turning themselves into commodities, they're worthless. It makes them depressed. But that is pacification too — the eradication of the will to revolt.

Men's will to revolt, meanwhile, is pacified in a different way. You kill some dumb imaginary alien in a video game. You watch some dumb Marvel hero take on a super villain. You listen to some misogynistic podcaster, who belittles women. Hey, wow! You feel better…for a day or two. You go onto some forum where you can hate women, immigrants, minorities, anyone in your way — and you feel better. You're egged on and encouraged by those just like you, trapped in a vicious circle of masturbatory catharsis. The will to revolt? Male culture is onanistic at this point, meaning, if you're a young dude, and you've got porn, violence, and hate on tap…well, what need is there to revolt? Your will to revolt is going to eradicated by all those forms of masturbation long before it ever reaches a crescendo.

I know a lot of you won't like reading the above. You'll say: "What the hell is this dude on about?" And yet the fact, the problem, remains. This should be an Age of Revolution. Instead, it's an Age of Paralysis. People — especially young people — should not be going down without a fight. But they are. And so something, my friends, needs to explain: what broke our spirits, minds, our will to revolt against the systems and structure which are hammering us over the heads with dystopia, every single day? Why is it that the future of the human race, the planet, democracy, life itself is on the line right now — and there's not a revolution anywhere in sight?

Umair August 2023