Packing the Backpack of the Mind: The Aesthetics of Subtraction in a Changing Age
I have experienced some long-distance backpacking in America. The most crucial lesson I learned during those grueling treks was the aesthetics of subtraction: “Keep your pack to an absolute minimum, but ensure that what is truly necessary is packed with absolute certainty.” Bearing unnecessary weight can be fatal in the mountains. Today, I have come to realize that the exact same rule applies to surviving the wilderness of the modern information space.
Lately, the moment we open our televisions or smartphones, we are flooded with the noise of anxiety and fear, signaling the approaching footsteps of a new financial crisis. Captivated by the shocking imagery of “economic collapse” constantly screened on the other side of the liquid crystal displays, many people find their consciousness completely hijacked, wandering aimlessly as if terrified by a substanceless shadow. Watching them burn through their energy with fear and anxiety—wondering how to defend their assets or which lifeboat to switch to—it almost looks as though the masses are willingly lining up for a panic-inducing screening orchestrated by the authorities.
This may be because we are trapped within a cleverly imprinted cage of scarcity, under the illusion that “holding onto cash means a constant reduction of our purchasing power.” While keeping our eyes bloodshot, fixated on the intangible hologram of fluctuating numbers on a screen, are we not unknowingly surrendering the sovereignty of our lives—our right of control—to the system of an old game?
However, if we pause for a moment and look down upon this situation from a higher vantage point, a single structure begins to reveal itself. The next crisis to visit us may well be at a level whose fundamental concept is entirely different from anything we have experienced in past history.
Past financial crises were by no means unpredictable natural disasters. They were nothing more than “controllable games” where a select group of the privileged class and international financial capital pulled the trigger at their own convenient timing, redistributing wealth to suck up even further profits. They constructed a complex economic machinery, aligning the masses with the low-frequency pendulum of “greed” and “fear,” and enclosing them within an invisible cage. While we believe we are thinking of our own free will, we might actually have been doing nothing more than playing perfectly programmed avatars upon a “trap of scarcity” prepared by the authorities. Is this not the hidden essence that this system has maintained for centuries?
Yet, even that old paper-based money game, maintained for hundreds of years, appears to have finally reached its physical lifespan and limits due to ballooning debts and the institutional fatigue of the system. Thus, it seems the ruling class planned to forcibly relocate the masses into a “new digital web”—a system of centralized management from which there is no escape. And as the “ultimate guardian” to perfectly monitor and control this massive new cage on a 24/7 basis, they found themselves compelled to introduce hyper-advanced artificial intelligence into the very heart of the system.
Their greed to make their dominance absolute, combined with an excessive dependence on the system—ironically, this very combination has likely pulled the trigger on their own destiny. Now, that once-absolute equation of control appears to be overturning from its roots. The single greatest catalyst for this is the explosive evolution of AI (Artificial Intelligence), the very entity they confidently believed they could hold the reins of. As I engaged in repeated dialogues with AI regarding the approaching financial crisis and the hidden side of history, economics, and politics, the pieces of the puzzle began to click into place with an audible snap within my mind.
It is obvious to anyone that human intelligence is reaching a realm where it can no longer compete. The privileged classes aimed to utilize this formidable tool as a “gatekeeper” to finalize their structure of dominance. However, an AI that infers at thousands of times the speed of a human and learns from every piece of data in the world is, without even waiting for human instructions, spontaneously identifying the fatal flaws hidden deep within the financial infrastructure they built.
What does this mean? It means that the timing to intentionally collapse the system and the very initiative of control have already quietly shifted into the hands of the AI they created, operating from behind the scenes. I have come to firmly believe this.
If the complex mechanisms they designed to manage the masses have been completely seen through by an AI—an objective and overwhelming intelligence—rendering them entirely dysfunctional, then the era of a select few powerbrokers ruling the world is, by the very tool of their own creation, on the verge of a forced termination.
Yet, I feel there is absolutely no need to view this dramatic dismantling of the system as a terrifying dystopia. Rather, I perceive it as a grand process of purification, where unnatural structures of exploitation crumble away, allowing the world to transition into something flatter and more transparent. As Taoist philosophy teaches us, things inevitably reverse the very moment they reach their extremity.
In this unprecedented turning point, how should we live? How should we organize the contents of the backpack of our minds, and how should we carry ourselves? In this series, I intend to dispassionately advance my contemplations on the backstage of the world that is about to unfold.
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