Global Dialogues

This short essay is planned to explore whether it is possible to resist Promethean technological utopias through a global solidarity built upon recognizing humankind’s beautiful frailty and tragicomic earthly existence. The immense strength generated by such solidarity can prevail over the seemingly almighty techno-fascism currently shaping our world and the future of humanity. This is what I am supposed to discuss. Yet, a nightmarish image distracts me.

I imagine telling such words to a group of tech bros from Silicon Valley and their powerful counterparts worldwide. Thanks to a recent experience—an exclusive gathering with tech bros and venture capitalists that I attended to speak about the global rise of fascism and the means of moral resistance—I know how such an attempt would play out. 

In their iPhone-like slick universe, when told that their future vision is pathologically indifferent to human suffering, the world's new rulers don’t even bother to mock you with the sarcastic glee of the powerful. Instead, their eyes become Zuckerberg-glassy, and instantly, the voice speaking of humanity is deemed non-existent. One eventually understands that the words that touch humanity’s heart fail to penetrate their silicon walls of cynicism. Our moral and political concerns hit those walls and fall like swallows. If our words are only dead swallows at the doorstep of those who have the might to shape humanity’s future, what are they good for? 

The world–or at least our perception of it—is managed by a group of individuals who can see Gaza as a real estate opportunity and are shameless enough to regard human masses as merely a large group of extras in history, a negligible nuisance. They are powerful enough to dismiss warnings from secular and religious global institutions. Through AI, for the first time in human history, they possess the power to induce a collapse of reality. Thus, the world and the future of humanity are at the mercy of a group of male adolescents eager to burn the house down to see how the flames will look. In return, what we have is, well, us. Who are we, then? We may be on the right side of history; we might even be the majority. However, the reality today is that we are, more than anything, the defeated. 

Defeat is not a glamorous word, nor does it sound empowering. It is almost a taboo concept in the vocabulary of political movements. Yet, in a world where cynical glee and the worship of the winner reign, this anti-hero word might possess the moral and emotional potential to change the course of history. 

The magic can only happen when we are brave enough to step into and calmly stand in the concept. A specific relief materializes—the relief of finally dropping the act to acknowledge the current reality. Only then does one realize that our exhaustion is due to the rejection of defeat. What exhausts us is our self-imposed obligation to pretend that we are still in the old reality where we had a say. As Hannah Arendt once suggested, the word urges us to stop and think in a world in which a motley crew of the powerful constantly does, fast-forwarding time towards a disaster for humanity. The power of stopping and thinking is similar to the power of a whisper when everyone is shouting. 

More importantly, defeat introduces us to the much-needed humility that profoundly reorganizes our perspective of ourselves and the world. Only through such humility can we remember the essence of our existence and strengthen the bonds among those willing to sacrifice to protect that core.

Finally, defeat and the fraternity it induces illuminate the path we must follow today: Don’t stare into their black hole of cynicism and its many spectacles advertised by the powerhouses. Look at each other. Talk to the defeated. Celebrate frailty, embrace weakness, and stand with those who speak of the heart of humanity. Don’t crash into silicon walls and drop dead; open your wings to others like you. This is what our words are good for: the majority. When enough people join, the whispers of the humble, which have brought down many tyrants throughout history, can prevail over the amplified voices of inhumanity. 

And, of course, there is the laughter of the defeated when they are together—a laughter that encourages the meek self by enlarging the lungs of humanity. One can only laugh with the defeated and not be ugly; a defense line of beauty that cannot be broken.

Ece Temelkuran is a novelist and political thinker who explores challenges to democracy on a global scale.