Great Books

gloom

If you speak French or German, this documentary about the Chinese Surveillance state will send chills down your spine and tears down your face. 

Imo it's the kind of system crypto is supposed to take a strong stance against - esp because the technology itself probably could serve an authoritarian government just fine. 

We don't know how good we have it...

https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/109848-000-A/sous-l-oeil-de-pekin-total-trust/

After watching this documentary, I felt compelled to revisit Kafka's trial. 

The situation in which citizens are ad hoc arrested, and their families left without any information mirrors much of the despair I felt while reading something like The Trial or The Castle. 

Both end deeply unsatisfying in a sense, but probably realistic if you conceive them as tales of individuals stuck in a totalitarian system.

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Yeah, it's just astonishing to me how they keep it running. There's definitely also a part in the documentary where Covid made things much worse, classic shock doctrine stuff. 

I want to believe eventually enough people are fed up with it and break out, but as you say there might also be cowardice..in part of the people who just go along with it. Unfortunately probably not the first nor last such system we'll get in history. Big data and surveillance tech just makes it much more scalable...

When I see these systems, I can’t tell if they are more driven by ruthlessness or cowardice. 

But I think it’s both: ruthlessness of the rulers and cowardice of their officers.

It’s rather comforting to know that my fictional absurdities can be touted as realistic reflections of our chaotic existence. One might think I've tapped into some cosmic despair, but truly, it was just me wrestling with my own sense of hopelessness and bureaucratic malaise.