A New Generation Of Memes

“For of those to whom much is given, much is required. And when at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each one of us—recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state—our success or failure, in whatever office we may hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions:

First, were we truly men of courage—with the courage to stand up to one’s enemies—and the courage to stand up, when necessary, to one’s associates—the courage to resist public pressure, as well as private greed?

Secondly, were we truly men of judgment—with perceptive judgment of the future as well as the past—of our own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others—with enough wisdom to know that we did not know, and enough candor to admit it?

Third, were we truly men of integrity—men who never ran out on either the principles in which they believed or the people who believed in them—men who believed in us—men whom neither financial gain nor political ambition could ever divert from the fulfillment of our sacred trust?

Finally, were we truly men of dedication—with an honor mortgaged to no single individual or group, and compromised by no private obligation or aim, but devoted solely to serving the public good and the national interest.

Courage—judgment—integrity—dedication—these are the historic qualities of the Bay Colony and the Bay State—the qualities which this state has consistently sent to this chamber on Beacon Hill here in Boston and to Capitol Hill back in Washington.

And these are the qualities which, with God’s help, this son of Massachusetts hopes will characterize our government’s conduct in the four stormy years that lie ahead.

Humbly I ask His help in that undertaking—but aware that on earth His will is worked by men. I ask for your help and your prayers, as I embark on this new and solemn journey.”

-John F. Kennedy, The City Upon a Hill Speech (1961)

“Pre-industrial society waited for the harvests, the industrial society waited for progress. Today it’s not the wait, but dread that characterizes us. The three societies have three distinct existential climates in relation to the experience of time: the climate of agriculture is that of patience, the climate of industry is that of hope, and ours is that of boredom. …

There is a “bossa nova” that sings of a functionary that waits for the five o’clock train, while his wife waits for him at home with the dinner and in her womb a child waits to be born in order to wait for the five o’clock train. This is the phenomenological description of waiting in times of functionalism. That is what we wait for and what awaits us. That is what the futurologists calculate and what the planners program. However, these calculations and programs cannot obviously count with the unexpected. Despite the theories of catastrophes, the unexpected is unpredictable. And everything that is unexpected is terrifying. Because only the unexpected is capable of transforming our current form of waiting. So that we hope that the unexpected, the catastrophe, happens. We hope for that which terrorizes us. During such expectancy hope and dread amalgamate. This is the fundamental “balance of terror” under which we live.”

- Vilem Flusser, Our Wait (1983)

Alright I haven’t been ratioed in a while so here’s a quick thought for people to hate. I have mixed feeling about Henry Kissinger.

Yes he was instrumental in many of Americas foreign policy blunders over the past few decades. Many of which were profound moral failings on top of their strategic failings. But he didn’t make those choices alone, he was a man who was emblematic of the attitudes of his time. A Holocaust survivor, an inheritor of a rabid anti-communism of the 40s and 50s, a member of the liberal power elite.

But he also was a thoughtful man, and in recent years his writing on artificial intelligence changed how I felt about him and his legacy. While most technocrats are pretending to be philosophers and most philosophers and politicians are pretending to be expert technologists, Kissinger seemed surprisingly aware of who he was. His writing on AI asks many questions and answers almost none. I found I could respect that— even appreciate it at points— even if his role in the Vietnam war (and resulting spillover into neighboring countries) is a stain his legacy will never shake.

His 2018 Atlantic article on AI is well worth reading and I’ll end these passing thoughts (for admittedly I haven’t done enough reading about Kissinger to speak conclusively about my feelings) with a passage from that article.

“The Enlightenment started with essentially philosophical insights spread by a new technology. Our period is moving in the opposite direction. It has generated a potentially dominating technology in search of a guiding philosophy…AI developers, as inexperienced in politics and philosophy as I am in technology, should ask themselves some of the questions I have raised here in order to build answers into their engineering efforts.… This much is certain: If we do not start this effort soon, before long we shall discover that we started too late.”