The Illusion of Choice

Welcome to the brave new world, my friends. It isn’t the utopia we dreamed of, but it’s the one we built. Huxley warned us, but who reads warnings when there’s a bright, shiny future to chase? A world where choice is an illusion. You think you’re free because you pick between brands, diets, or lifestyles, but every option was curated long before you got here.

Your job is simple: work to consume, consume to work. Don’t ask questions. Don’t stray from the pack. You’ll love what you’re told to love, hate what you’re told to hate, and call it freedom because that’s what freedom feels like now. And it works. Look around—doesn’t it work?

We’ve turned life into a spreadsheet. Rows and columns of production, consumption, and obedient little cells. There’s no need to dream anymore. The machine hums along, with or without you. And here’s the kicker—you don’t care either. Why would you? You’ve got safety, comfort, the illusion of choice. It’s perfect. Too perfect. Like a perfectly tied noose.

The New Tech Saints

The saints of this brave new world don’t wear robes or crowns; they wear hoodies and clutch stock options. Saint Elon, Saint Mark, and the immortal Saint Steve, whose cult still thrives long after his passing. His first priest preaches in the form of sleek keynotes and hypnotic product launches, each one a sermon promising salvation through gadgets. And the flock bows their heads, credit cards in hand, ready to pay tithe.

These saints don’t ask for faith—they demand it. They’ve replaced the gods of old with algorithms and hardware, and who’s to argue? The machine works, after all. It provides. It keeps you entertained, distracted, and compliant. You’ll click, scroll, and swipe, all while whispering a silent prayer of gratitude for the comfort it brings.

Classes and Tribes

Forget kings and serfs, capitalists and proletarians. We’ve moved beyond that. Now it’s the progressive against the conservative, the art lover against the philistine, the gluten-free zealot against the unrepentant carnivore. Each tribe believes they’re right, better, superior. The camps even allow themselves to decide how worthwhile the ongoing wars are, projecting their own biases onto global conflicts. Gluten opponents might choose their favorite side in the Israeli-Arab conflict, while electric car supporters passionately debate the merits of one faction over another in the Ukrainian-Russian war. Meanwhile, the conflicts themselves rage on, largely unaffected by these distant spectators, and everyone considers this normal. Each one is convinced that when the next great collapse comes—the New French Revolution, the fall of this shiny new Rome—they’ll emerge as the rightful rulers.

But let me tell you something: when our time ends, it will end for everyone. For the owner of the newest iPhone and the one clinging to their old Samsung. For the influencer with a hundred million followers and the nobody with a hundred. For the shepherd of 300 million souls and the one with three cows. When it’s over, it’s over. No tribe, no class, no saint will escape.

The Approaching Collapse

Extinction isn’t coming tomorrow, maybe not in a hundred years, but it’s coming. Like the Neanderthals before us, we’re marching to the edge of the cliff, and we’ll do it with a smile. The consumer smiles best. We’ll vanish, leaving behind stainless-steel monuments and perfectly curated digital graves. And you know what? Maybe that’s fine. Maybe it’s even fitting. If you’re going to die, do it beautifully. Comfortably. Make it look good for the cameras.

Flicker of Hope

Does it matter? I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe that’s the whiskey talking. But here’s the thing: sometimes, when I sit back and watch the whole mess play out, I think we don’t deserve it. Extinction, I mean. Not yet. For all our stupidity, arrogance, and endless hunger for more, there’s something in us. A flicker of worth. Maybe it’s in the way the sun catches on the ocean at dusk. Or the way a child laughs before the world teaches them to hate.

It’s fleeting, sure, and maybe that’s why it matters. Maybe that’s why I bother to speak at all, even when I’d rather sit silent with my whiskey and watch it all unfold. Because someone has to say it: this world, this brave new world, is a gilded cage. It’s beautiful, but it’s still a cage. And cages, no matter how gilded, have a way of breaking.

So drink up, my friends. Toast to the saints of Silicon Valley, to the smooth hum of the machine, to the perfect symmetry of our downfall. Raise a glass to humanity—a species too brilliant to die quietly, and too foolish to live forever. Cheers.