Widgets brew and the flat earth society, all in a moral stew

What is human contribution to be in the mid-21st century world?

At risk of stating the blindingly obvious, change always holds the potential to both delight and/or terrify. And, boy, are we experiencing change right now! The point is, it’s technologically-triggered change, and it’s generating copious quantities of both delight and terror.

Reactions to the situation are inevitably scattered across a spectrum that goes from, on the one hand, total and enthusiastic acceptance of whatever possibilities (real or imagined) are perceived to be being made newly available, to, on the other hand, sheer bloody terror about any and all of it, leading to attempts to override it. And, as we are seeing, both acceptance and rejection will often lead to control mania.

Social media sits high on the list of issues of concern. For the first time in human history along comes a technology that enables universal interconnectivity. This miracle comes in a (literally) handy package that you can pop in your pocket or purse. And anyone can use it.

Great, huh?

Well … yea and nay. It’s all very well but what if people use it to misinform or achieve other malicious outcomes? The ‘misinformation’ category really gets people going. It can be instigated in one of two ways. One: tell straight out lies. Two: Withhold or otherwise suppress information.

A classic example of this is coming out of the UK at the moment. It has to do with gangs of men of predominantly Pakistani heritage who have, apparently for years now, ‘groomed’ and sexually abused young (under the age of 16) white girls in cities up and down the UK.

To state the basic fact underpinning this issue …

In the UK, the age of consent is 16 years. Which is to say, a child under 16 years of age CANNOT give consent to sexual activity. Engaging in sex with a child under 16 years of age is statutory rape. No ifs, no buts.

However, it is clear that, since at least 1997, thousands of young girls in towns and cities throughout the UK have been sexually abused on an industrial-scale … and the situation has been lied about.

Rather than repeat all of the evidence, allow me to point you in the direction of a report that, as it happens, was published on Substack yesterday … Grooming Gangs, My Personal Experience of Rotherham

Misinformation, diversion and distraction appear to have been doled out on a huge scale by the establishment side, right up to and including UK government ministers and representatives.

If the UK had still been in the EU I wonder whether, inter alia, The Digital Services Act that came into effect in April 2024 would have come into play? Don’t hold your breath.

The reality is that we have had to wait until Elon Musk entered the fray to say that he thinks the whole situation stinks to high heaven.

“How dare he!” say some. “Foreigner sticking his nose into our business. It’s just not on.”

To which my reaction is, thank heavens he did intervene: we needed someone with the clout to ‘get through’ the foul miasma.

In any event, an Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), published in October 2022, warned that the government must act urgently on a “national epidemic” of child sexual abuse. One of the report’s key recommendations was to raise public awareness: the government, it proposed, should “commission regular programmes of activity to increase public awareness about child sexual abuse”. It referred, also, to the need to challenge myths and stereotypes, and inform people how to take action.

Well, Elon Musk’s interventions sure have delivered on the ‘raise public awareness’ imperative. Thank you, Elon.

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What gave rise to the horrendous goings-on?

There is a clash between a new, supposedly utopian orthodoxy of multiculturalism, where, not least, diversity is supposed to be our greatest strength, and the less than utopian reality. You can bet that, had the misbehavior been the other way round, with white, British males raping and torturing young girls of Pakistani heritage, there would have been hell to pay.

The problem is, in a multicultural world, all cultures are supposed to be equally valid, and the diversity thus created is supposed to create a kind of heaven on earth. However, if some of the diverse cultural contributions clash with one another it kinda trends more toward the hell end of the spectrum. Awkward, huh?

And, by the way, if you’re bothered about a South African-American commenting on a UK issue, did you say anything when Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner (now UK prime minister and deputy) conspicuously ‘took the knee’ when the George Floyd issue was current in the United States? And I guess the UK Labour Party really should not have sent 100 people to the U.S. to support Kamala Harris in their recent election?

All of which brings me right back to my initial point about the mechanics of change - specifically technologically-triggered change.

The usual reaction when issues crop up in this arena is to say that we must control the technology and not let the technology control us. Which I guess is why the elites talk so much these days about controlling the new free-range media? But to say that we must control the technology is a flat earth statement, uttered by the technologically illiterate.

Right now, this is particularly important for the entire human race. Why? Because we are just entering a world where AI is moving centre stage.

This means that we must confront entirely new questions about who controls what. Most important, in a more AI-driven world, what is the role of humans?

And, surely, one of the most human thing that humans can hang onto is … morality.

AI holds out the promise of technological advance on a scale hitherto only dreamed of, but it all has to happen in a human world … unless, of course, we just give up and allow the AI to conclude that we humans are ourselves a fatal drag on progress and must therefore be terminated.

But let’s be optimistic (quite a useful human trait!) and have faith (yet another very human capacity) that we’re looking at at even brighter future than we already have. For this to be the case, it is, to my mind, an absolute requirement that we hold true to moral purposes that encourage our continued progress.

Which means that, somewhere very, very, very high on the list, is an injunction that we always, always, always protect the next generation from harm.

Thanks for reading.