I saw a video of a food delivery robot navigating around the body of a homeless person lying on the sidewalk, and I can’t stop thinking about it.
This video is as close to a self-portrait of western civilization as it gets. This is who we are. This is where we’re at. Might as well have giant letters with a big red arrow saying “YOU ARE HERE” overtop it.
It captures so perfectly the creepy dance between suffering, apathy, frivolity and corporate profiteering that makes our particular dystopia so distinctive, in just a few short seconds of footage. This is the dance that makes the empire go round.
It’s got everything:
– A man splayed out on the concrete because it hurts to be human in this global ghost town, and because he was unsuccessful at becoming a productive gear-turner in the capitalist machine, and because social safety nets have been stripped bare in order to help millionaires become billionaires.
– Automation being used to eliminate workers’ wages for the maximization of corporate profits, when it could be getting used to bring about a permanent end to toil and poverty for the entire human species.
– Technological innovation stagnating at fast food delivery robots and predatory service apps instead of inventions which help save our biosphere, provide for the needful, heal the sick and improve our quality of life, because sending someone a Big Mac in a snackbot through an app will generate profits, while making the world a better place will not.
– The machine calmly navigating around the unfortunate soul on the pavement in the same way all the human pedestrians have been doing all day, because that’s what we all learn to do in a society which casts those who can’t keep up to the side of the road like so much refuse.
This is where we are. This is what we have become.
That robot steering its way around that man on the sidewalk is revealing more truth about the kind of world we are living in than you will ever receive from the corporate news media.
That robot has the real story.
That robot is giving you the real on-the-ground scoop on what’s really going on here.
That robot is a better reporter than Jake Tapper. It certainly has more journalistic integrity.
We’re all following that robot off a cliff, into an abyss of madness and oblivion.
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Caitlin Johnstone 