Paul Mason argues for a new virtue ethics based on resistance to machine control. We face a triple threat – an economic system that does not work, evaporating belief in democracy and human rights, and the encroachment of algorithmic control over our thoughts and behaviours by corporations and states. To fight this we need a radical defence of the human being – a species with a telos, capable of self-liberation through technological progress and human development. Mason argues that, as against the last 30 years, where people have been forced into performative adaptations to a market based ethos, we must now break out of it and begin to “live the antifascist life”.
Paul Mason is a writer, broadcaster and film-maker who speaks on the areas of economics, globalisation and the future of capitalism.
