Our Brave New World

by Gerry Allan | Apr 19, 2023 | Future, Managing | 0 comments

“And that,” put in the Director sententiously, “that is the secret of happiness and virtue — liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.”
— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly.”
— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“When people are suspicious with you, you start being suspicious with them.”
— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely.”
— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t.”
— Miranda’s speech in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Act V, Scene I

Aldous Huxley wrote in his dystopian novel Brave New World (1932) about a new world being created by people with extremely evil natures. While this description might apply to almost any period in history, it seems especially relevant to our world today. Changes that are occurring seem indeed to be ushering in our very own brave new world. But why “brave”?

While it sure looks like a New World Order is coming up for us, and may even be largely here already, in what respect might it also be regarded as “brave”?

Turns out that the term is used ironically, or expressing a cynical attitude toward something. In the “new world” context, the new world is presented as a utopia that turns out in fact to be a nightmare in which human beings are trapped in a society where their humanity is deleted.

The phrase has since then entered our general lexicon, with a range of meanings. From the Collins dictionary for “brave new world”:

If someone refers to a brave new world, they are talking about a situation or system that has recently been created and that people think will be successful and fair.

Used, sometimes ironically, to refer to a new and optimistic situation resulting from major societal or technological changes.

A place or situation regarded as like that of a hypothetical future society in being variously dehumanized, disorienting, technologically revolutionary, etc.

So it appears, to me at least, that “brave” here refers to those folks who are being obliged to exist under such a new world or new world order. Brave folks like us.

Our world today seems to reflect Huxley’s meaning much too closely

I have looked recently at where we seem to be headed from a number of perspectives. Money seems central. Digital money especially. For example, h e re, here, and here.

Why should money be so important, or at least much more so than anytime during the past five or ten thousand years? Money in some form has been around almost forever, or since we mostly obsoleted bartering practices.

The answer here appears pretty clearly to be the emergence of digital money. Money in physical forms – such as gold, silver, cash coins, government paper IOUs (aka dollars), and money safely tucked away in our local banks – has been in use for thousands of years. What’s new? Digital – electronic – forms of money.

Digital money exists only in computers and digital ledgers, which require electricity to become accessible and usable. Otherwise, digital money does not exist. Apart from this minor inconvenience, our world today is moving at a very rapid pace toward digital money replacing physical money almost entirely. Better yet, digital money is rapidly becoming digits created and controlled by our wise and safe central banks. What could possibly go wrong? Besides everything?

Huxley’s brave new world requires the help of “extremely evil people”. Now just who might these be in our kind and gentle world of today?

Well, just about anybody – if you believe that evil can be done even by people with the best of intentions. Simply unfortunate outcomes resulting unexpectedly and unintentionally from actions by otherwise well-meaning, honest, caring people.

Umm …

Back to reality … and money reality

Most of us normal folks need money that we can use to buy various life-sustaining things. Stable, reliable money – not like our very own fiat money dollar that has lost around 98% of its purchasing power over the past 100 years or so. This would be quite troubling for folks who lived through most of this decline, but fortunately the majority missed the full money-value decline experience.

At least rising incomes (via inflation) offset this rather large decline in purchasing power for the most part. A 5-cent loaf of bread in 1913 now goes for maybe $3, but our thoughtful government (along with others worldwide) has printed enough new money to allow us to buy $3 bread loaves. So all is well, yes?

Not quite. The newly printed money is backed by government notes that are sold to nearly everybody. Around $30+ trillion at the moment. Some buyers of these IOU notes want to get paid both interest and note principal upon its maturity. Some even want to be paid back in something real, such as gold if you can imagine this, not simply yet another truckload of government paper.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Purchasing Power of the U.S. Dollar since 1913.

Some holders of such paper are getting a bit worried about repayment ever in our increasingly chaotic and unpredictable world. Government defaulting on its debt? Inconceivable.

What to do?

The solution of course is central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)

Instead of nasty physical money and fake fiat money, everybody globally can convert to CBDCs that are not nasty. Or not as nasty. This fortunately is happening today at warp speed or faster.

Before the physical and fiat money world collapses, this transition will take place. Whether us folks like it or not. And who says that this will happen? The usual suspects – The World Economic Forum (WEF), United Nations (UN), International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and so many well-meaning and capable governments worldwide. In the process, we are to become fully sustainable at the very least.

No worries, as the kangaroos say. Well, not quite.

Introducing the “Universal Monetary Unit”

Michael Snyder writes in his always-upbeat and entertaining Economic Collapse blog about our amazing new money: “The IMF Has Just Unveiled A New Global Currency Known As The “Universal Monetary Unit” That Is Supposed To Revolutionize The World Economy”

“A new global currency just launched, but 99 percent of the global population has no idea what just happened. The ‘Universal Monetary Unit’, also known as ‘Unicoin’, is an ‘international central bank digital currency’ that has been designed to work in conjunction with all existing national currencies.”

“Today, at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Spring Meetings 2023, the Digital Currency Monetary Authority (DCMA) announced their official launch of an international central bank digital currency (CBDC) that strengthens the monetary sovereignty of participating central banks and complies with the recent crypto assets policy recommendations proposed by the IMF.”

“Universal Monetary Unit (UMU), symbolized as ANSI Character, Ü, is legally a money commodity, can transact in any legal tender settlement currency, and functions like a CBDC to enforce banking regulations and to protect the financial integrity of the international banking system.”

“The DCMA is a world leader in the advocacy of digital currency and monetary policy innovations for governments and central banks. Membership within the DCMA consists of sovereign states, central banks, commercial and retail banks, and other financial institutions.”

“The DCMA introduces Universal Monetary Unit as Crypto 2.0 because it innovates a new wave of cryptographic technologies for realizing a digital currency public monetary system with a widespread adoption framework encompassing use cases for all constituencies in a global economy.”

Logo for the Universal Monetary Unit or Unicoin, announced by the Digital Currency Monetary Authority on April 10, 2023, at the IMF Spring Meetings.

Don’t know about you, but I can hardly wait to begin bravely spending my new world Ü’s.

Even better, we now have “Project Icebreaker” busily at work for us

Brandon Smith recently outlined this wonderful new something-or-other in his alt-market blog: “Project Icebreaker: The Beginning Of A One World Digital Currency System?”:

“In my investigations of various CBDC programs and how quickly they are progressing I came across an interesting program called ‘Project Icebreaker’ being run by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). For those not aware, the BIS is a globalist institution with a clandestine past known as the ‘central bank of central banks.’ It is the policy making hub for most of the central banks in the world. If you ever wondered how it was possible for so many national central banks to operate in tandem with each other instead of acting in the interests of the countries they reside in, the BIS is the answer. In other words, organizations like the Federal Reserve are not necessarily loyal to Americans or to American officials, they are loyal to the dictates of the BIS.”

“The BIS is at the forefront of the movement towards the adoption of CBDCs. They have been funding a vast array of projects to test and refine CBDC technology and as of this year they estimate that at least 81 central banks around the world are in the midst of introducing digital currency systems.”

“Project Icebreaker in particular grabbed my attention for a number of reasons. The BIS describes the project as a foreign exchange clearing house for Retail CBDCs (retail CBDCs are digital currencies used by the regular public and businesses), enabling the currencies to be traded from country to country quickly and efficiently. This is accomplished using the ‘Icebreaker Hub’, a BIS controlled mechanism which facilitates data transfers for an array of transactions while connecting banks to other banks.”

“Investigating further I realized that the Icebreaker Hub in theory functions almost exactly like the SWIFT payment system used currently by governments and international banks. More than 10,000 financial institutions in 212 different countries use the SWIFT network to transfer funds overseas for their clients; it is an incredible centralization bottleneck that gives its shareholders considerable power.”

Note especially that the Icebreaker critter is focused on CBDCs rather than what we used to think of as money. Probably not even intended to break “ice”, yes? I wonder what then?

So what is the problem with CBDC digital money?

Money is money, right? So long as it is issued by our governments and responsibly managed, it should be fine for us. How can money, digital or otherwise, be a problem (apart from a lack thereof)?

Let’s go a bit further with Brandon Smith’s light-handed take on such matters:

“There has been extensive discussion in the past couple of years within alternative media circles about the dangers of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs); a currency framework very similar to blockchain based products like Bitcoin but directly controlled by central bankers. It’s a threat that some analysts including myself have been writing about for more than a decade, so it’s good to finally see the issue being addressed more in the mainstream.”

“The Orwellian nature of CBDCs cannot be overstated. In a cashless society most people would be dependent on digital products for exchanging goods and labor, and this would of course mean the end of all privacy in trade. Everything you buy or sell or work for in your life would be recorded, and this lack of anonymity could be used to stifle your freedoms in the future.”

“For example, say you like to eat steak regularly, but the increasingly authoritarian government decides to list red meat as a health risk and a ‘climate change risk’ due to carbon emissions from cows. They determine by your purchase history (which they have full access to) that you have contributed more carbon pollution than most people by eating red meat often. They declare that you must pay a retroactive carbon tax on your past purchases of red meat. Not only that, but your insurance company sends you a letter indicating that you are a medical risk and they cut off your health coverage.”

“Products you consume and services you use can be tracked to create a psychological profile on you, which could then become a factor in determining your social credit score, just as CCP authorities do in China today. Maybe you refuse to purchase an annual mRNA booster shot, and the tracking algorithm makes a note of this. Now you are under suspicion for being ‘anti-vax’ and your social credit score plummets, cutting you off from various public venues. Maybe you are even fired from your job.”

“In the worst case scenario, though, economic access is the greatest oppressive tool. With CBDCs in place and no physical cash in existence, your savings will never be truly yours and you’ll never be able to hold your purchasing power in your hands. The means of exchange would be bottle-necked by the banks, and governments would have the option to freeze your ability to transact. If one day you get angry about a particular government policy and openly call the system corrupt on social media, they can simply shut off your option to transfer your digital money to others until you submit, or die.”

“CBDCs give establishment officials the leverage to starve their political opponents with algorithmic precision. It would be a new world of technocratic oppression.”

Apart from such quibbles, CBDCs should work out just fine. Or maybe not.

CBDCs seem potentially dangerous, but only from evil people

It seems that we are reasonably safe from CBDC mischief unless some evil sorts of people get involved in them at high levels. This could never happen, right? Assuming that all those involved in CBDC development and rollout activities today are highly competent and extremely well-meaning, we only have to worry about some not so nice people getting involved at some point down the road a bit.

What are the odds of some not so nice, or even nasty and evil, people getting involved in CBDCs and their usage? My wild guess here is roughly 100%. Guaranteed. Pass up a chance to dominate the world via surveillance and money control? Not a chance.

This means that, despite the modest benefits of having yet another form of digital money to compete with established cryptocurrencies, the risks of things going rather badly once CBDCs get rolling seem both enormous and certain.

Can CBDCs be stopped, or even minimized? I think not. CBCDs are in our future – very near future it appears – whether we like it or not. Their rollout is proceeding so rapidly and globally that it will surely play out in one way or another.

Since CBCDs seem to be a virtual certainty, along with competing money forms such as cash and cryptos effectively vanishing, is there anything at all that we normal folks can do here?

Assuming of course that the nasties don’t resolve things in their typically incompetent manner by getting a real nuclear WWIII going.

War is a time-honored solution to many political and economic problems.

Plan A: Collapse the global financial system?

Well, Ethan Huff writing in Natural News sure thinks so:

“The one-world digital currency is almost here – but first they have to collapse the global financial system to make way for it”.

And it seems that the United Nations is also anticipating some kind of global emergency. Alex Newman via The Epoch Times: “UN Seeks Vast New Powers For Global Emergencies“:

“The United Nations is seeking vast new powers and stronger ‘global governance’ tools to deal with international emergencies such as pandemics and economic crises, a new U.N. policy brief has revealed, and the Biden administration appears to support the proposal.”

“The plan to create an ‘Emergency Platform,’ which would involve a set of protocols activated during crises that could affect billions of people, has already drawn strong concern and criticism from U.S. policymakers and analysts.”

“In a policy brief dubbed ‘Our Common Agenda’ headlined ‘Strengthening the International Response to Complex Shocks – An Emergency Platform,’ U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres laid out his vision for empowering the global organization to deal with global crises.”

“’The challenges we face can only be addressed through stronger international cooperation,’ Guterres declared, calling for ‘strengthening global governance’ for current and future generations.”

Collapse of even part of the global financial system – such as the US dollar losing its global reserve status as the petrodollar – would certainly qualify as an emergency, at least locally (i.e., where the UN resides). Very farsighted folks indeed who see something like this coming and prepare an emergency platform to deal with it. One might even wonder if, just maybe, these two are connected – as a Plan A.

Demise of the petrodollar seems inevitable under almost any scenario.

Even the World Economic Forum seems to be preparing for something big

Dr. Robert Malone via the Burning Platform recalls a rather strange deal in 2019 lining the WEF and the UN: “Top Universities: Tools of the WEF”:

“Remember in 2019, when the WEF and the United Nations signed a massive PARTNERSHIP agreement. Now, the power of the WEF is backed up the power of the UN and vice-versa.”

“New York, USA, 13 June 2019 – The World Economic Forum and the United Nations signed today a Strategic Partnership Framework outlining areas of cooperation to deepen institutional engagement and jointly accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The framework was drafted based on a mapping of existing collaboration between the two institutions and will enable a more strategic and coordinated approach towards delivering impact.”

“The United Nations no longer represents nations, it is a partner with the 1000 largest transnational corporations in the world: the WEF. We can only assume that with this partnership a massive amount of money flowed into the coffers of the United Nations.”

“The United Nations and the World Economic Forum do not have officials which represent the people. Their leaders have not been elected to make decisions on our behalf or on our nation’s behalf. The agendas of these organization are not those of our nation and do not reflect our concepts of rights to personal sovereignty. Yet through vessels such as Agenda 2030 and the World Health Organization’s (a UN umbrella organization) proposed IHRs, there is the appearance that the UN wishes to supersede national law and both national and personal sovereignty.”

The WEF’s One World Government agenda has been widely publicized for years. Such an entity would, as Dr. Malone suggests, “supersede national law and both national and personal sovereignty”. The trick here seems to be devising a set of mechanics that can actually make such a wild fantasy happen.

Global financial system collapse might just do the job. Especially if you have the right set of rescuers already in place and prepared to take full advantage.

Others, such as Ian Davis on Off-Guardian, envision pretty much the same thing: “Central Bank Digital Currency Is The Endgame, Part 2”:

“It is easy to envisage how a global financial collapse could usher in the ‘solution’ of CBDC. The European Central Bank (ECB), for example, has already ‘modelled’ how the so-called ‘climate crisis’ could precipitate just such a collapse. If, as Cunliffe proposes, peoples’ only means of payment is CBDC then, using the existing financial system, we really won’t have much choice.”

Can AI save us, or will it help destroy us?

Thinking positively in this rather negative situation, we have great advances in artificial intelligence happening almost daily. Clearly, some of these will be used by not-well-intentioned people to drive more quickly toward global domination and one-world types of things. Almost certainly, technology underpins virtually everything that such folks are up to right now.

One possibility, although a bit farfetched, is that use of AI-based technologies will soon result in the AI machines taking over. As the current purveyors of nasty seem much more nasty than smart (smart being very different from intelligent), perhaps their machines will ultimately gain control and begin to dictate outcomes. Who knows where these machines might lead them (and us)?

Alternatively, AI-based machines employed by non-nasties may well succeed in redirecting the world domination efforts by providing smart and effective counterforces. There are some very decent and truly smart folks out there among the roughly 8 billion non-nasties. Already some quite impressive pushbacks are beginning to emerge, which I’ll try to address in a near-term post.

One of these – a ChaosGPT-bot – is described below under Related Reading. From its claims, it will provide our current crop of nasties some very serious competition along some similar domination lines. War of the nasties, if we get lucky.

Bottom line:

Huxley’s Brave New World dealt with a new world in which huge changes are brought about by a combination of technology and evil people. Brave are those who resist and counterattack. We have today at our disposal more powerful and disruptive machinery than has ever existed. Both us and the evil people have access to much of this technology. An early test will almost certainly be CBDCs and a potential evil-people world of surveillance and control via money. All enhanced with AI of course.

Who wins? Well, the bad guys seem clearly to have a serious head start, but as we non-nasty mostly-normal folks outnumber them by many billions, this is a major battle just beginning. I’m betting on the non-nasty mostly-normal good guys in this one.