A lot has changed between the first moon landing on 1969 and the historic 2026 Artemis mission around the moon. Human beings have now travelled further from the earth than ever before. We shared photos of the historic event with each other, not arguing this time whether they were real or not, but marveling at how AI could nowadays produce deepfake images that you could no longer tell from reality.
We didn’t stay at home to wait for the news to come on and hear Riaan Cruywagen tell us about the exploits of Artemis II; we watched the expedition unfold on handheld devices which have computing power thousands of times more powerful than the Apollo Guidance Computer. These cell phones can access all the knowledge of history, transport us into different virtual worlds, and communicate better than any system, translating all known languages in split seconds. Even the simplest smartphone can outperform the entire flight deck of the Starship Enterprise on Star Trek. We mostly use the device to fight with others on the internet, though, and watch cat videos. And we argue about whether the first moon landing really happened. We have indeed gone boldly where no man has gone before, albeit not in the direction Captain Kirk might have hoped.
On earth, we are the richest, most prosperous, safest, and technologically innovative generation that has ever lived. In the past 50 years, we have eradicated world hunger and extreme poverty from most of the planet. Free markets and democracy have resulted in the widest variety of nutritional options, sold at a staggering number of food outlets, catering to convenience and affordability. We are also the fattest we have ever been. We are eating ourselves to death. For the first time ever, large numbers of people are dying from eating too much rather than eating too little; diabetes, heart disease, and cancers wreak havoc on our health. Our fast food is causing slow deaths. We chose it because we had the choice.
SABC TV News made an appearance in SA households in 1976. Riaan Cruywagen, in Afrikaans, read the news of the Soweto uprisings and later the release of Nelson Mandela. The medium and language are now disappearing. The liberation movement delivered a free press to all. The new South Africa delivered freedom of speech in its most abounding and vibrant form. It was inconceivable then that young black women like June Hlongwane and Concerned Citizen would be prominent voices, passionately fighting against the ANC government on their own podcasts, reaching more people perhaps than Haas Das. If you had suggested such a thing at the time, people would have dismissed it as science fiction, as outrageous as the silly children’s TV show where a man talks to his car on his watch and the car not only answers back, but drives itself. Yet, both of these scenarios have gone from science fiction to reality. The only constant of that era is Riaan Cruywagen, whose persona has become a TikTok filter with the rap name ‘Cruy-Cruy.’ The internet democratised freedom of expression and creativity. Viva!
We consume more information than ever before now. We are gorging ourselves on input, but we are confusing it with knowledge. We are data obese. Google AI is considered the biggest source of disinformation in history, and we continue to lap it up. At the same time, and perhaps not coincidentally, we are the most anxious generation that has ever lived. We are more depressed, more angry, more suicidal. Our men are killing themselves at higher rates than car accidents can claim them. We are free, but we are in trouble, which is exactly where we should be – on a knife’s edge; that is where freedom thrives. You have to choose which way you will go.
With great freedom comes great responsibility. We want the one, but not the other. With the freedom to make decisions about your own body comes the liberty to make bad ones. Freedom of information brings with it AI hallucinations that make it all the way to government regulation, legal argument, and terrible writing. Freedom of speech means anyone can say anything they want – and they do! We have the most sophisticated communication methods ever devised, yet we are more divided and less articulate. How do you reconcile that?
Harry Browne first published his book ‘How to be free in an unfree world’ in 1973, around the time the SABC started broadcasting test patterns and the Apollo missions pivoted to Skylab. The world has become brave and new since. The fall of the Soviet Union, the abolition of apartheid, and the death of Queen Elizabeth 2, once all inconceivable, have happened. The King of England visited the USA to celebrate its 250th year of independence, in a white house filled with golden mirrors in which an orange president admires himself. The world is free now, Mr Browne, more liberal, free and democratic than you could have predicted. But we didn’t read the terms and conditions. Most of us think freedom means peace and stability, and it doesn’t. Freedom is chaotic in its simplicity, boundless in its capacity for good, and magnificent in its potential for evil. From Riaan Cruywagen in his nylon wig to Kim Kardashian with her plastic lips, from KITT in Knight Rider to Musk with his Tesla, the sublime and the ridiculous have become indistinguishable – because of freedom.
Let us understand this about ‘liberty’, freedom is complex. It is uncertain. How sure are you that you want that? The book we need now is: “How to be free in a free world when other people’s version of freedom looks different to yours.” We need to teach our children how to sit with this complexity in awe, authenticity, compassion, and a sense of humour.
Freedom is a fantabulous confuckulation.
And freedom, my friends, is not for sissies.
Viva!
[Vivienne Vermaak is an award-winning journalist, complexity coach, and keynote speaker. info@vivienne.co.za]
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