Passive Eugenics, Technology, and Tech Bros

Reflections of a Diseased Pariah

It may be- ought to be- obvious that the motive of the current regime, a term I deliberately leave as minimally defined and capacious as possible, is to kill as many undesirables as possible under the cover of some ostensibly sensible, “common sense” (as Fox News would have it) justification. It baffles me to the point of sputtering desperation that what is obvious to any who would care to look at the results of the measures taken in the last two weeks can avoid the realization that we are all watching and all but becoming complicit in a Social Darwinist process of passive eugenics. The tech-addled adolescents, high on the Ayn Randian fumes they’ve been huffing in the “powering up” pauses in their video games, clearly wish for the death of any who are not like them and who impede humanity’s path toward pure survival games. Only these games are no longer framed in a ritual. The wish is to render the competition perpetual.

This is possible through the thorough saturation of technology which has so alienated those persuaded by its supremacy that it is possible for some to avoid altogether a confrontation with death. They do not accept the reality of death. Death has become, for them, drained of meaning. Our bodies, superfluous in a virtual world, are rendered regrettable encumbrances. Omnipotence is the promise of virtual reality. Mortality is no longer a limit to confront. Once we are all avatars, clusters of pixels that can be organized, disorganized, and reorganized at the push of a button, life and death no longer have meaning.

This might be the occasion for some concern for those whose inner lives have been so impoverished, but it is greatly alarming for anyone who might unwittingly occupy a place in the “undesirable” category. Masha Gessen, in a NY Times essay, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/15/opinion/trump-autocracy-bad-ideas.html?smid=url-share reminds us that ideas are important, and the capacity to think, which she argues has greatly been diminished, as is predictable under authoritarian regimes, indeed is one of the aims of those seeking permanent domination, urges us to think about the ideas animating the dizzying events around us. This depends on the capacity to observe one’s thinking: the underlying theories we all use to organize our perceptions and emotions. It is shocking to me that there are still those who assert that there is an a-theoretical access to “the truth.” Notice what this assertion does: it relieves the subject who makes this assertion and those who accept it of the responsibility to think about one’s motivations and limitations. Among the other things to be observed about this stance is the nihilistic contempt for the capacities we are all given, if only we will notice them and develop them. This contemptuous attitude would enforce utter passivity. Among the effects of this passivity is that it renders the subjects of corporate capitalism the most efficient consumers possible.

For those of us who are vulnerable- that is, all of us- we are useful to this power arrangement insofar as we engage in maximum consumption, that the maximum extraction of capital smoothly continues with the least amount of cost to the system.

These thoughts came emphatically to mind yesterday as I opened a bill from my Medicare Advantage carrier informing me that I owed them a balance of $330.00 for the latest refill of the HIV medication I take, bringing the cost to me to nearly $1100.00 a month. Now, this will not last, at least I had planned on that cost to me not lasting, because Medicare has set a cap for its beneficiaries of $2000.00 per year for their prescriptions. I am privileged enough to be able to afford that. So I will meet that cap with my next refill. And perhaps I am hysterically extrapolating from the threatened demolishing of Pepfar funding to some post adolescent tech-bro examining Medicare data, noticing how much some drugs cost, inferring that they are taken by those of us once labeled “diseased pariahs” and taking the steps to hasten our death by removing the cap on our prescription costs. Because, being unable- unfit?- to procreate, what good are we anyway? We’re just burdens to the smooth functioning of a society whose aim is to create the perfect individual, eliminating the “moochers,” on the way to colonize Mars, once the earth thoroughly has been despoiled in the unfettered pursuit of profit, “growth,” and technological innovation.

The theories I rely on to guide my thinking, should they be obscure in any way, are clearly a Marxist orientation toward observing how capital circulates and organizes us, and Psychoanalysis. The psychoanalytic influence has perhaps not so clearly been explicit, but implicit is surely a developmental model whereby the development of the capacity for self-reflection and the ability to imagine another person’s independent subjectivity are privileged. Both of these developmental achievements would inhibit the increasing dominance of technology over human culture. So the atrophy of these and other psychological capacities, once valued and encouraged but now actively discouraged and ridiculed, is apparent to any who care to observe what is taking place around us.

Say it clearly, please. Corporate Techno-Capitalism is a death machine. (Yes, I know that the pricey medicine I take every day, and have done for 40 years, is a product of Corporate Techno-Capitalism. I am seeking to notice the effects of maintaining its unfettered functioning once it becomes the sole justification for governance and commerce.) It presents itself as a means of improving the quality of our lives. This is a lie. The price of uncritically believing this lie is either to be eliminated or to be an accomplice in the extermination of the vulnerable in a project of Social Darwinist Passive Eugenics.