Count Me Out: Elon Musk and “Humanity”

Against the Presumptions of Tech Optimism

Adorno noted how the oft-bandied around term "humanity" exposed the at once totalitarian and particularist outlook of the bourgeoisie. This becomes impossible to ignore when faced with the so-called tech optimists: misfits and hangers-on who are, despite everything, carving out a greater online presence by the day. These defenders of Elon Musk and associated Andrew Ryan's sideline the hypocrisies, glaring flaws and capitalist banditry by ensuring us – what need you of your senses?! – that these Masters of the Universe are on a mission to save humanity. And how? By inflicting a social order rapidly approaching midnight onto the stars.

But what if I – for my sins and last I checked, a human – do not aspire to that? Do not wish for my very being-ness to be drafted into that pipedream. Specifically: what if I find the notion of colonising Mars not only entirely impractical but symptomatic of the lasting power of Manifest Destiny? That diseased ideology born out of European imperialism, responsible for the decimation of the Western hemisphere and very nearly the East. (As Hitler quipped, "Our Mississippi must be the Volga.") This is the locust approach to land management: sweep it clean, tear it down, move on up.

There is something religious about all this, and of course capitalist, which simply restates the former. Those under the spell assume one has dominion over entire landmasses, and takes for granted Providence will always provide more. One owes nothing to the more-than-human or indeed any human who gets in the way. All that counts is the monomaniacal scheme. This is reflected in the inability of Musk et al to even imagine that others might have legitimate cause to reject their end goal, whether it’s wired brains or congested tunnels. Indeed such people cannot even think straight, they must be in possession of a "mind virus". That tedious explanation chirped out reflexively online, that is to say contra thought.

Vast resources are being denied those of us who elude the dream. (And, as an aside, that is exactly how a billionaire’s wealth ought to be understood: resources undemocratically denied those who might do some good.) One in which nothing is solved; problems are simply given a broader terrain. So why are these flights of fancy so appealing? 1. The world is certainly a mess and people see that; 2. The capitalist press is allergic to – and as such silent about – the sort of project that may be socially (and ecologically) beneficial, which is to say socialist. Much simpler to ignore the structural and play up the random few with agency as Great Men who have taken “humanity” under their wing. That's how the world works, or in any case how the Marvel universe works.

Sections of the media used to take the Enlightenment ideal of educating populations seriously. Their role was to expand the imaginations of the public and cultivate their reason. But inevitably the logic of capital poisoned it, as with all things. Enlightenment takes time, dopamine hits don't, and consequently our newsrooms and social media function on the basis of “meeting people where they are”. And that, forty years into neoliberalism means: in the gutter.

One day, maybe, such men, women and those in between will look above what-is, and realise they can aspire to more than outsourcing their desires to billionaires. But it would be mistaken to think the rich and powerful simply exploit “humanity” for their own devious ends – the category is itself, as Adorno warned, totalitarian. There is no collective human project and certainly nothing like agency, and for that we should give thanks. We can see what the universal capitalist imperative inflicts on the planet, I daren’t think what a standing army of 8 billion would do. The problem running within and without is scale, or in the words of an old moralist like TS Eliot, a lack of humility.

As long as humanity remains the screen through which you pursue the goals of levelling, freedom, accountability or what have you, you will bounce off it like a fly. You cannot hope to impose a condition on every member of the species, no matter how meritorious you find it. Nor should you seek to. It might even be ventured that revolts turn sour the very moment they abandon their (unballoted) mandate and attempt to speak not for certain men but for “Man”. Because without what is assuredly a conservative element, revolution becomes mere refinement.

…

The great American poet Robinson Jeffers wrote:

Humanity

is the start of the race; I say

Humanity is the mould to break away from, the crust to

break through, the coal to break into fire,

The atom to be split.

From the edge of the world, the rugged coast of California, he observed two world wars, the dropping of Little Boy and the subsequent globe-spanning conflict between two competing humanisms. Humanity barely made it through.

Once a literary icon, Jeffers fell into disfavour with the public after speaking out against American involvement abroad. Despite the obscurity to which it led him he never compromised. To avoid contributing to the ultimate calamity, he advised readers, “We must uncenter our minds from ourselves.” But who, I hear you ask, is this “we”? For whom did he speak – to whom do I speak? To the smattering with pretences beyond the crowd: to the inhumanists.