There is no deus ex machina resolution to the plotline of the human story.

Caitlin Johnstone

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

 

AI isn’t going to save us. Tech innovation isn’t going to save us. Your favorite politician isn’t going to save us. The Epstein files aren’t going to save us. China isn’t going to save us. The aliens aren’t going to save us.

No one is coming to save us. There is no deus ex machina resolution to the plotline of the human story.

We’re going to have to save ourselves.

In ancient Greek theater they used to resolve plays by having gods come in at the end to punish the villains and reward the heroes. The actors playing the gods would either be lowered onto the stage by a crane or raised by machine from a trap door below, hence the term deus ex machina. Today it’s used to refer to any lazy plot resolution where the protagonists are rescued out of the blue by an external force rather than by the fruit of their own struggles and character development; if the gods just come in to save them at the end, then nothing they did up until that point mattered, leaving the audience dissatisfied and staring at the writer instead of at the story.

When you look at the existential crises facing humanity today, it’s tempting to find hope in some belief about external forces coming to our rescue without our having to struggle and change ourselves. You see such salvation stories everywhere:

• Elon Musk is going to automate everything so we don’t have to work and then help humanity become an interplanetary species.
• Artificial superintelligence is right around the corner and it will explode our scientific understanding of the universe and give birth to transformational new technologies.
• The release of the Epstein files will expose all the corruption that’s been poisoning our society and lead to the arrest and disempowerment of all the evil bad guys.
• Electing progressive Democrats or populist Republicans can put heroes into office who will transform the American political system for us.
• The rise of China is going to reshape the world order and help bring about the end of capitalism.
• UFO disclosure is happening any minute now and it’s going to bring in alien technologies that will save humanity from destruction.

And it never happens. The Greek god never makes his entrance. The actors are left standing there in a long, awkward silence while the set collapses around them.

It’s never gonna happen, folks. Apollo missed his entrance and Zeus is a no-show.

Nobody’s going to save us but us. We’re going to have to change. We’re going to have to act. We’ll keep hurtling in the direction of tyrannical dystopia, environmental catastrophe and nuclear armageddon until we do.

We’re going to have to help each other snap out of the hypnotic trance of propaganda and awaken to the truth of what’s really going on in our world, and show each other that real change is both necessary and possible.

We’re going to have to wake up enough that we can use the power of our numbers to force our rulers to stop stealing from us, oppressing us, killing our biosphere and murdering people.

We’re going to have to awaken from the trance of ego and become a truly conscious species, so that we can build a healthy world without falling back in to our self-destructive patterning when the revolution is over.

Everyone wants change, but no one wants to change. That’s why the deus ex machina plot resolution is preferable in our minds.

It’s just a fantasy, though. Change is coming from nowhere but ourselves. Maintaining hope in the fantasy is the first obstacle preventing us from waking up to reality.

Every species eventually hits a juncture where it must either make adaptations to changing conditions or go extinct. We are at that juncture today. We’ll either pass that test or we won’t, and if we pass it, it will be because of our own efforts, sacrifices, and self-transformations.

Nobody’s going to do it for us.

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