Free New Taboos by John Shirley Page B

the stench of such corruption will be the punishment.
    Taboos are necessary for now, but they should not be necessary forever. They are a sociological mechanism designed to modify behavior. If we were what we have the potential to be, taboos would be superfluous.
    There are those of us who believe that most people are in some degree asleep, even when they suppose themselves to be awake. That is, they go about their day in a kind of trance. According to this theory, far more of ourresponses are mechanical—purely automatic—than we realize. The exploitation of others is a conditioned reflex; the rationalization of corporate theft or environmental ravage is also conditioned—and partly instinctive. This mechanism is implicitly difficult to escape without the powerful leverages of such tools as taboos and harsh laws.
    But there are also those of us who believe that these destructive, psychologically mechanical responses fall away if we recognize our state of walking, waking sleep and strive to awaken from it. If we seek to be more mindful, more conscious, then real consciousness will awaken. And conscience with it.
    And then we won’t need taboos, old or new.

WHY WE NEED FORTY YEARS OF HELL
    1.
    I T’S A CONTRADICTION IN terms—two singularities. But there are two: there’s the fanciful technological singularity of the imagination, and the singularity that’s likely to come about. The false singularity, supposed to come between 2035 and 2045, is almost a “supernatural event” in the minds of many people. With its dream of technologically achieved eternal life, it has the reek of religious mythology about it, the unconscious fear of mortality; the second singularity, the Real Singularity, is more modest but impressive enough …
    But all technological convergences, revolutions, renaissances, taking place in the next fifty years will happen against the backdrop of social and environmental crises. Multiple simultaneous crises will create shortages, which will further concentrate wealth in the hands of the few, bifurcating the world, separating most of the humanity from the breakthroughs of “singularity” level tech and biotech.This could result in a powerful and eccentric technocrat class with its own elitist rationale for dominance of the technologically underprivileged through control of media and mechanism. Generally, the moneyed class will be the technologically equipped class; and with some exceptions the disenfranchised financially will be the disenfranchised technologically, despite the cell phones we see now in many remote villages.
    Let me be clear that I do not foresee the downfall of civilization. I do not expect my son to have to emulate the Mel Gibson character in
Road Warrior.
    But it’s going to be a long slog. Just a few weeks ago the most thorough analysis yet of the world’s energy infrastructure, from the International Energy Agency, reported that without significant reduction in greenhouse gases the next
five years
will take us to a point where it will be impossible to hold global warming to relatively safe levels—and the last chance of stopping disastrous climate change will be “lost forever.” The door is closing, says their chief economist, in
five years.
    Does anyone think we’re going to get global warming under control in
the next five years?
With all the entrenched denialists backed by big oil and the intransigence of companies that profit from burning coal—no! Sadly, it’s not going to happen. We
will
feel the full consequences of global warming. When tropical diseases and pests move northward, when monsoons take place in regions unprepared for them, when radical changes in climate impact agriculture, causing dust bowls in some areas and catastrophic flooding in others, we will see a gigantic surge of refugees, hundreds of millions of people, totaling billionsglobally, moving away from these areas, desperately