Just a couple weeks ago, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made conservatives cheer when he delivered a sharp rebuke to communism not only for the atrocities committed in its name, but for the picture of human life underlying it:
One of the criticisms you sometimes hear of communism, for example, is that it sounds good in theory, but it never works in practice. That’s actually not true. Communism does not sound good in theory. The world it envisions for all of us is small, flat, gray, leveled of all exception, drained of all that is good and noble in the human soul. The world it envisions is a world without courage, a world without creativity or ambition, a world without heroes or glory or great causes to strive toward, without—a world without miracles, without myths, without men who rise above the rest to do incredible and extraordinary things.
Communism, according to Rubio, would not be laudable if only we could make it work, because making it work would mean an end of great individual accomplishment and of the striving that brings romance and meaning to our lives.
The trouble is, as I was reading this, it did sound like a depiction of a very live ideology that is one of the most powerful forces in the United States today. I refer not to communism, but to the ideology of technological succession, or transhumanism, that is guiding our AI entrepreneurs. Every word of Rubio’s castigation of communism could apply even more fully to the views of an industry to which his administration is extremely close.
