DNA Defines Destiny
Goodbye to 2024, Hello Survival of the "Fittest"
By the time you read this, 2024 will be over—good riddance. Then again, every year brings its own mess to discard, and the division between years is arbitrary anyway.
I haven’t written since October, and that has been freeing. Not writing about now-irrelevant topics like Trump or the economy freed me to focus on other things. Alan Watts once described zazen—the Buddhist practice of meditative sitting—as the art of doing nothing, sometimes the most beneficial thing one can do.
Autumn brought another round with the illness-industrial complex, but after 20 months of major health issues, I finally found resolution. Two private-pay doctors helped steer me in the right direction. Meanwhile, three major Bay Area medical institutions were not just useless, they caused harm through carelessness bordering on negligence. Five ER visits, one hospital stay, countless calls, and video appointments—all amounted to nothing.
The issue isn’t “bad people” or even “the system.” It’s the way technocrats have shaped medical training: prioritize speed and profit over care. The playbook? Rush patients through, minimize deaths just enough to manage liabilities, and follow profit-driven standards set by the illness-insurance complex. As long as the minimum standard from the playbook are met, everyone feels like they’re getting the job done.
I once believed doctors wanted to rise above this machinery. They don’t—or can’t. Major medical groups are just another cog in the corporate machine, no different from Big Tech, Big Insurance, Big Money. They fund the medical-industrial institutions that train as well as treat “providers.” They define the culture and the standards, of medical care.
In the end, I solved my problem myself—with help from a private doctor, an “old-school” physician, and a peer support website. Total cost: $1,100. Actual therapeutic time needed: three days (not counting weeks of waiting for treatment).
I’ve written about this before, so I won’t belabor it further.
Meantime I have been experimenting with running AI generative art and chat software locally on my PC—no cloud required! Tools like Fooocus (works great right out of the box) and GPT4ALL (has some limitations, but still…) let me create obscene and subversive content without Big Tech oversight. Used thoughtfully, creatively, responsibly, and with consciousness, I have found AI tools to be useful. I take back everything bad I said about the technology.
As 2024 ends, here are some parting thoughts:
Elon Musk bought America for $40 billion when he acquired Twitter—a real bargain.
The Federal government is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Technocracy Inc., run by Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Benioff, Altman, and their ilk. Wealth keeps flowing upward, the “middle class” either climbs the ladder or devolves to the peasant class; this process will accelerate.
Prediction: The “war on climate destruction” will look just like “the war on drugs” or “the war on poverty” - cosmetic dithering in carbon capture, sea-wall construction, and greenwashing, while any structural change is ignored.
Prediction: Gavin Newsom will run for president.
Prediction: Smart money will flee stocks (and your 401(k)) for crypto at scale, enriching the techno-crypto elite as it takes control of it and locks the peasant class out of any real benefit.
In the end, humanity will adapt to its self-inflicted dysfunctions because DNA doesn’t care about fairness — it cares about survival. Those best suited to thrive in our techno-industrial-authoritarian dystopia will propagate.
If your DNA suits feudal peasantry or gig-economy hustling, you’ll flourish. If not? Find other ways to adapt, or perish. Indigenous peoples survived genocide because some traits allowed enclaves to endure; your survival might hinge on mastering AI or leveraging tech before it’s monopolized by corporate overlords, or adapting to living in hermetically sealed erstwhile shopping malls converted to cooling centers with algae for food and oxygen. Meantime Elon will be in his bunker watching his AI-generated “Citizen Musk.”
See you next year! And if you’re feeling generous, make an imaginary donation to my Ko-fi fund—I’m trying to make this content-creator side hustle thing work despite my DNA being poorly suited for it.
Better yet, share the post with two friends.