310316 – Elysium Species Split – Thoughts, London

There is much talk about financial inequality. Statistics are often quoted on the wealth of the top one percent although this is now an outdated point of reference and should be of the top 0.1 percent. Comments tend to be focussed on ownership, control and power, on the fact that those able to live off of the system do little other than hoard and protect their profits. Discussions sometimes touch upon the fact that this concentration of finance is so unproductive that it slows technological, economic and social progress. Sadly the greatest loss from financial inequality is the loss of opportunity for the 99.9 percent of the global population that are only able to fulfil a tiny percent of their true potential and this is a collective global loss. Billions live at a level of subsistence farming be it within a contemporary urban environment. Brand power, copyright laws, patents and intellectual property have all helped concentrate wealth into the hands of a few and the global digital world has magnified the reach of that power. A financial system that is only measured by profit enforces and supports this world of concentrated efficiencies for protected and ring fenced assets. 

The protective wealth cycle is self-fulfilling. The offspring of those with access to this capital get the best education, the best healthcare, access to the best networks, the best paid jobs, the best promotional mediums. The 0.1 percent not only have greater longevity through better quality of life and medical care they also have the luxury of time as they can focus solely on what they want to do. They further have the power of leverage over time as they can employ others to deliver their every wish. Their lives are not consumed with the primary need to pay rent, to buy food, to simply exist. This is apparent early on in education. At one extreme we have students working five days a week just to keep up with the fees whilst trying to cover their assignments in the evenings or at the weekends. At the other extreme we have students that are able to employ assistants to carry out research, perform calculations, write documents or prepare drawings or build projects. Necessary postgrad courses at the best universities are even more exclusive and expensive. Following this the 0.1 percent are able to offer themselves as interns working in the best careers for free so as to secure prime employment at a later stage. All of this forms insurmountable barriers to social mobility. Eventually those with access are promoted as the most productive and yet they are not individuals but financed teams of people acting under one name with all profits and credits going to one person. A myth the media love to encourage as it aids the manipulated market, the superstar, the hyperreal is an easy sell. The cycle continues from generation to generation. None of this is a revelation as it is a constant topic of the tabloid press.

All of this could soon undertake an exponential change. The existing inequality of the 0.1 percent will be meaningless in the near future as we learn to control our genetic make up. Enhanced brains, vision, hearing, speed, reaction and strength will soon be able to be bought for genetically modified offspring. AI, technology and robotics will further be an aid for those with financial access. Machine technology is already merged with human tissue. Knees, hips, pacemakers, drug infusion pumps are already available and soon machine hearts, kidneys, livers, prosthetics will not only be available but preferable to donor equivalents. A new evolution of enhanced cybernetic humans is only a generation away and the divide between the have and have-nots will become an evolutionary unbridgeable gulf. Humans will be upgraded either through biological manipulation, genetic engineering or through cybernetic implants. Homo-sapiens evolution will be sped up. A split in the human species will occur with a breakaway group of genetically modified cyborgs that will leave the remainder of the populations just as homo-sapiens once left the Neanderthal’s. Perhaps this is the nature of evolution with the few feeding of off the many, a kind of Matrix apocalypse but it will not maximise the latent potential that is within the breadth of mankind’s diverse skillset. 

Images left to right. Terminator, Blade Runner, Cloud Atlas, RoboCop, Lucy McRae, Rebecca Horn, Stelarc, 

The Surrogate Twin