Uncertainty or totalitarianism — a difficult choice for himanity

Abstract

Humanity has always perceived uncertainty as an extremely negative characteristic of the environment. With a certain degree of convention, the entire development of civilization can be viewed as a struggle against uncertainty. And by the 2020s, people had acquired a powerful weapon for this struggle — information and communication technologies. They have created unprecedented opportunities to monitor and predict the development of a huge number of objects (or/and subjects).

However, as is always the case in the development of society, clear success is coupled with serious problems generated by it. Minimizing uncertainty turns into total control over people. A new type of totalitarianism is emerging. In many of its features, it is similar to its predecessor of the twentieth century, but it also has its own characteristics. Whereas the “old” totalitarianism was built around the protection and implementation of ideological values, the new totalitarianism is based on managerial imperatives and the desire to avoid uncertainty. If within the framework of the “old” totalitarianism the subject of control was only the state with its specially designed structures, in the new totalitarianism people are controlled not only by state bodies, but also by corporations.

The most important feature of the new totalitarianism is that modern technology begins to consistently destroy the lacunae of human freedom in all spheres of social life, and above all in the economy. The planned economy of the twentieth century could not completely subordinate the people’s economic behavior to a single center. The lacunae of freedom were used by a lot of people, who managed to produce and trade independently from the state.

Today, humanity faces a difficult choice — either to continue to get rid of uncertainty, making society even more totalitarian, or to realize the positive aspects of uncertainty and begin to fight against the new totalitarianism.