A Frictionless Revolution
(repost from Substack: originally posted July 10th, 2025)
The rise of machine-learning is frequently understood as “The AI Revolution”. But what sort of revolution? The CEO’s of America’s Tech Companies speak with faux-altruism in their calls for unobstructed power in order to deliver us a superior and safer society. These refrains, with their promising ideals, echo the autocratic urges of Lenin and his Revolution. It’s the idea that there should be strong centralized control at the start of a seismic economic and political shift. This is so in order to unleash the full potential of reformation. Then, with the ideal state achieved, the general prosperity commences. It’s always in the form of: “Universal Basic Income”, “a 2 day work-week”, or whatever the latest talking point meant to placate us (without any plan of action) may be. The logic being if we let Altman, Thiel, Zuckerberg, and Musk control the world for now - the promised land will come. They are the wise shepherds; we, the flock. So it goes.
This is a preposterous line of thinking; but it can be easy to fall into the trap of the Philosopher King argument. It is tempting to give yourself over to powerlessness. It’s freeing - the work is not for us to do, it’s for someone else. The appeal is: if we trust in these good shepherds, then with the lowest amount of friction we will achieve prosperity. Is this not pleasure - in its least perverted form? Perhaps the poets and philosophers have over-complicated true and unfettered pleasure. What’s more, if these kings’ power is absolute, then it is futile to resist and risk ones already diminishing position. Thus, if paving the way for a future of frictionless gratification means to abet the bulldozing of those who resist the decree of our Kings, so be it: the rebels ignored the writing on the wall. While they stifle the public good, our kings promote it. Hear hear!
Still - there is another way. I believe we should heed Rosa Luxembourg’s criticism of Trotsky and Lenin’s approach to Marxism. It is useful when wondering whether working through (rather than around) the friction inherent in a democracy, will deliver a more fecund approach to Revolution. Luxembourg counters the Dictatorial approach of Lenin in The Russian Revolution (1918):
To be sure, every democratic institution has its limits and shortcomings…But the remedy…the elimination of democracy as such, is worse than the disease it is supposed to cure; for it stops up the very living source from which alone can come correction of all the innate shortcomings of social institutions. That source is the active, untrammeled, energetic political life of the broadest masses of the People.
Here I encourage everyone to ask theirselves, are we stifling our collective potential by signing over our future to a narrow minded few? Some act as though humanity never questioned the legitimacy of technological advances (and those who trumpet its inevitability). Yet, we would not be the first to question whether the relentless march of “progress” heralds revolution or repression. When industry gave London over to an unending pollution that both ruined the quality of life and ended life itself with it’s insidious fogs, the Romantics emerged. William Wordsworth wrote:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
While Wordsworth and the Naturalists did not “win”, their resistance echoed in the conservation efforts of the twentieth century and the green philosophies of the twenty-first century. We may have more comforts and less friction, due to the advancements of the machine, but less meaning too. Less connection to the wider earth. Less nature. Should the people’s revolution not beguile and be green? We should question any revolution which touts the value of advancement while stripping value from the human.
This is not to say that we are better living in some Erewhonian society, which drifts to the most extreme iteration of “Abolish the Machine” (though what a pithy slogan it would make). But, I believe we must live in a culture which questions what is gained by integration with the machine, rather than automatically accepting subjugation. If we do not press whether or not the revolution is truly in the collective’s interest - then we, by default, grant the Digital Robber Baron’s, power, profit, and supremacy.
There can be no doubt that a man who lost a leg in a war will regain an element of his personhood, should the missing limb be replaced by a bionic leg. While there can be rich bits of living found in adapting to the disability, rather than remedying it - it’s clear that the remedy compensates for what was lost. He does not, in his rehabilitation, compensate for afflictions which never existed. However, there is doubt that the man who is perfectly able-bodied, gains something by cutting off his working leg in order to receive the bionic leg. The mechanical leg may not have the normal flaws and deterioration of flesh and muscle. But, this indestructible appendage is gained with no appreciation for the suffering and loss that creates gratitude in the joining of machine with human character. Joinder of our most resilient selves - forged by struggle - with the actualization of profound intellect - forged by science - is what gives the mechanical access to the soul.
In equal measure, we find this truth in the mental. A woman who is so deeply depressed, that she takes steps toward suicide, could lead a more full and connected life if she is given the antidote of an anti-depressant. However, should the woman - with no inclination toward melancholy - be medicated with dopamine every waking moment, then her existence fails to transcend hollow reward. It is an empty prize with no initial absence or challenge to ground its gain. Reward without merit.
Can there be reward without the lack that causes the individual to seek a greater remedy? Is not the root of being human: facing friction, struggling against it, and persevering in the pursuit of purpose? Meaning cannot be found if selfish pleasure is the only pursuit. There is no impetus to climb the mountain when one can take in the high from the ascent by way of a simple pill. Yet this is the trap of the techno-fable fallacy. We climb the mountain because it is built of the very star stuff we ourselves are made of. That connection gives purpose to the ascent. It seeks to solve a mystery deeper than we can comprehend.
We must not point fingers at each other for acting on the self-defeating goals of addicts, when it is our collective self that the CEO’s relentlessly push their drugs upon. Their obsession with an AI and Media monopoly, at any cost, is what impedes meaningful Revolution - not the friction of our discourse. In the struggle of a democracy, not sold to the highest bidder, we find the reward of legitimate progress. That legitimacy is what makes the “dream” in “American Dream” an aspiration rather than a mirage.
An AI revolution which negates the purpose of connection in favor of an autocratic and relentless forward march, is not a revolution for the masses. It is only in the questioning of all this progress, that we find what of it is revolution and what of it is reward bereft of meaning. In finding that distinction, we find our own agency.
