206 Massive Spatial Migration aka The Great Escape

Gov Q began concentrating their efforts on the Massive Spatial Migration of elites – i.e. The Great Escape, according to the term censored on Social, but now in current use – precisely because the now secular ecological/climatic decline advanced at a disturbing pace, rendering the biosphere increasingly inhospitable. Even within the ranks of Gov Q's media management, powered mostly by bots and embedded journalists, no one dared deny this reality anymore. But the tradition of denialism persisted, only now in rejecting the hypothesis of the nekomemetic pandemic.

NeolibGov's political head tried create a distraction by organizing hundreds of summits, first contested and then ignored, where bombastic declarations were made and unkept theoretical goals set, but by then even this media circus fizzled out to nothing. In order to maintain accumulation at the highest levels at all costs and by all means they insisted on greenwashing, inventing dialogues around sustainable growth and green capitalism, and heavily resorted to technological solutionism, which not only couldn't cure Gaia's toxicity, but risked making it worse. Never before had the neolibs been faced with such an insoluble problem, so they just focused their efforts on population control, the difficult especially when affected by cataclysms or in the grip of civil unrest. Even sizable portions of territory could be left abandoned if not essential to the elites' grand escape project. In looted and abandoned spaces, or in the recesses of those still controlled, sometimes unusual alternative coloniessttled down, more or less belonging to the Autonomous Sphere, shaping new modes of cooperation, trying to weave new webs of life. In most cases, however, in ever-increasing territories of the greater South, the situation was so difficult that survival depended strictly on humanitarian aid and NGOs.

But we shouldn't forget that almost the entire NGO complex was somehow part of the system, where they were tasked with last resort. A complex only barely tolerated even when it was critical, but more often than not almost representing a moral goad.

Gov Q, in its one-and-three trinity, composed of Ecofin AltaSphere, PoSt/ates and WorldForce, was veined with transhumanism, claiming to be a form of techno-religious syncretism. It maintained a continuity with its Neolib predecessor in creating an atmosphere of restrictions on individual freedom. This subtle but persistent crumbling of rights often was in the guise of Western representative democracy. In the days of Gov Q, no one would've believed that in our day, we boomers we had enjoyed not only the margins to exercise collective political counterpower, but also the prerogative of travelling the world, working only on and off. In fact, I wondered if, compared to those earlier eras, Govs – being two- or three-headed matters little – hadn't succeeded in subduing entire populations in a kind of semi-living, inspired by one of Philip Dick's dystopian visions. This, among other things, made it easier to nip any attempt at rebellion or dissent in the bud. Of course, false flag ops were also abound. Fortunately, widespread minor activities, such as gathering matsutaké mushrooms in Oregon to send to Japan, were still permitted. In retrospect, this mixture of brutality and anesthesia of subjectivities was so persistent over so many generations that Gov's attempts to push us into living half lives had been somewhat successful, although there was no shortage of drawbacks. On one hand, Govs had succeeded in limiting rebellions, allowing the Great Escape (or MSM) to move forward; on the other, maintaining productivity had been truly difficult in the face of phenomena like the Great Resignation. Indeed, it was clear that despite the pounding media hype and government lotteries for the first places in the space colony up for grabs, this escape project was for a very privileged few who in turn would require immense amounts of extraction and labor from the many. Without this state of widespread half-life and apathy, it wouldn't have even been started...

MSM, encompassing the development of space elevators and construction of infrastructure to house human colonies in space, was already enormous and involved virtually all the largest conglomerates and platforms, constituting more than a significant part of the cognitive and industrial production of that era. Gov's greatest difficulty was maintaining and developing this supply chain that immediately became the central pivot of its policies, employing tens of millions of workers.

I've already mentioned how living conditions were worsening, but I'd also add that whole parts of this complex production were anyway locally compromised by protests, strikes, mass resignations, etc. Gov Q had inherited what remained of the control capabilities from the Neolibs, including the neural practices of soft control, which had counted so much in the consolidation of capitalist realism as a world without alternatives. Of course, this didn't exclude strong-arm tactics against recalcitrants, but to some extentappropriate doses of sporadic concessions continued, keeping even low populations at an even keel, instead of letting entire societies unravel. This was especially true in the North, which produced a lot for the MSM - Great Escape project. But, in addition to the material aspect, there was also the psychic aspect, which degraded especially in younger generations.

Now even this precarious balance was at risk, and Gov would have to find an additional way to stem the landslides that would make the Great Escape impossible. Something decisive was needed that would get the situation back under control so that uncontrollable social movements wouldn't arise from an over-extension of chaos. This was the only way the space project, practically dependant on the streamlining of global production, could truly be kept in production. A new initiative of generalized control couldn't be a simple copy of what had been done in neurocapitalism's Neolib era; those techniques of subjugation and servitude were running out of steam. The long era of oligarchic concentration now dictated a vertical, centralized operation, led by a board of the most prestigious techno-tycoons on the planet (obviously), with preparation remaining secret for as long as possible. The magnitude of the task hinted this would be yet another grand scheme.

There had been only one megaproject in modern history that had the characteristics of secrecy and a magnitude comparable to what was being put into the pipeline now. This was, of course, the Manhattan Project, which resulted in the creation of the atomic bomb and the unnecessary and tragic events in Japan as a pretext for ending WWII, which, when the two shocking nuclear bombings were decided, had already ended.

Now, in an even more dramatic situation, it seemed inevitable for Gov to embark on a grand neurotechnological adventure less in order to regain control of the people who were getting out of hand, than to create the conditions for The Great Escape, the final deception.

Moreover, quantum physics, which characterized the very essence of Gov Q, had already been involved in the Manhattan Project. In Ecofin AltaSphere, it was thus decided to allocate funds for a major program, ultimately dubbed Man2Man.