I hope it's never too late to be Amish
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/
From Bloomberg article on Peter Theil and his data mining company Palantir:
"As Thiel’s wealth has grown, he’s gotten more strident. In a 2009 essay for the Cato Institute, he railed against taxes, government, women, poor people, and society’s acquiescence to the inevitability of death. (Thiel doesn’t accept death as inexorable.) He wrote that he’d reached some radical conclusions: “Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” The 1920s was the last time one could feel “genuinely optimistic” about American democracy, he said; since then, “the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/
This dude has an existential hole in his soul. His scrawny little self-esteem is so shaken by the thought of death that all he can do is seeking refuge in radical beliefs, power and capitalistic grandeur. I can urge everybody to become familiar with the Terror Management Theory, which has established, that the fear of death leads to all kinds of shenanigans, for instance make people more right-wing, for instance. This isn't just some wishful argumentation, this theory is based on decades of thinking and careful empirical research. Learn more at http://ernestbecker.org/resources/denial-in-the-press/
http://ernestbecker.org/how-the-fear-of-death-makes-people-more-right-wing/
Quote: "According to this hypothesis, if we do in fact adopt cultural worldviews to curb a fear of death – as TMT posits – then reminders of our mortality should produce actions that serve to strengthen faith in our worldviews. Specifically, death reminders should motivate individuals to invest more in groups to which they belong and, conversely, to act more aggressively towards those with different cultural worldviews and national or ethnic identities"
Quote: "TMT predicts that when thoughts about death are triggered, people will do all they can to preserve and strengthen their cultural worldviews, since it is those worldviews that act as a death anxiety-buffer. This means clinging to those worldviews more strongly, as well as defending those who share those worldviews and aggressively opposing those who do not."
Our culture values performance and material gains but is just atrociously bad at acknowledging that we are mortal beings and that loss, grief is real and painful. Yes, we all know that intellectually but that knowing is only shallow. Anyone who was present during a death of a close person or who has lost somebody dear has seen this existential rift that runs through us and society. If you haven't been through this, then it will happen and there is nothing you can do about it. Death is life. Thiel just hasn't got the backbone to come anywhere close to it hence he's got to do his little evil power play. This harvesting of data is power which is akin to immortality. I don't believe, however, that this nonsense will be sustainable because it lacks kindness, connection and soul. We hear about all these agents and institutions that try harvest the data traces we leave behind in the internet and real life. But there are many more people behind the scene working on how to be safer online, how to encrypt data, how to safely wistleblow the shady doings of the hungry ghouls; people are going back to old flip-phones without all the traceable smart bells and whistles, the recent facebook scandal is opening the masses eyes etc. There is always a pendulum swinging in the other direction, always a counter-culture emerging that seeks to balance out the extremes. Also, global climate change will eventually undermine these endeavors, as well as put death and our cultural existential shortcomings right in front of our doors.
We better built a worldview of compassion and kindness if we want to weather the many storms yet to come.