Алмаз Браев – Digital Ruler. The eternal Colosseum (страница 2)

The Morning After the Great Games

Early morning after the great games. The sun has not yet risen high above the hills, but its pale light is already cutting into the eyes, exposing the underside of imperial triumph.

Yesterday, tens of thousands of voices roared here. Senators, plebeians, gladiators, merchants, and slaves merged into a single ecstasy beneath the roar of fanfares and animals. The crowd demanded bread and circuses, and the empire generously provided both. The rulers looked down upon this sea of faces, intoxicated by their power over the swaying mass.

And now — silence.

And this silence is more deafening than the triumphant marches.

The arena of the Colosseum and the surrounding streets are covered with the residue of the celebration. Underfoot lie scraps of purple ribbons, broken clay amphorae that once held cheap wine, and scraps of sacrificial meat trampled beneath the sandals of cheering spectators. The air is thick with the smell of sweat, sour wine, smoke from torches, and decay.

Slave cleaners are already moving between the rows, gathering rubbish, dirt, and spilled blood into piles. Just an hour ago, history was being made here. The destinies of the world were being decided. Now it is merely a sewer for the waste of human excitement.

The celebration is over.

The crowd has dispersed into its own lairs, only to return tomorrow, with the same diligence and fear, in pursuit of another portion of spectacle — and to seek a new vertical that will tell them where to go.

What Do We See in This Parallel?

We see that the power of Rome sought solidarity among the plebs, among the common people.

We see that the vertical was smeared with the saliva and rubbish of the crowd.

But a mixture of saliva and rubbish left behind after a festival is extremely fragile, even if a million people leave their footprints in the mud of a vertical with dirty sandals. Turning toward the lower classes is already a crack.

Yes, nations and ordinary people have always supported power with their lives and their unassuming existence. After all, soldiers and infantry are recruited from among ordinary people.

And the vertical depends on the solidarity between those in power and those below.

The greater this dependence, the clearer the signal that the old vertical is beginning to collapse on its side, that it has begun to tilt.

And if dependence on bread and circuses becomes increasingly obvious, people will begin to search for new supports for the vertical — a different one.

Chapter 3

The Eternal Colosseum

A friend looks at the head — searching for a leader, a screen with the radiant face of a pop star, or a platform with an official, so that he can bow his knees and find something to lean on.

An enemy of the system looks at the feet. At what lies beneath the soles of the festive crowd: among scraps of award ribbons and morning plastic scattered along the avenue, there is all this rubbish, saliva, and dirty sandals.

We enter this anatomy from the outside, wearing masks and with chitin around our hearts, in order to see the underside of every triumph and every decline. (Although decline is more important and more instructive for the spectators of the show. There are too many fools. Algorithms have created a global assembly line for mass production.)

So far, we have listed the supports and established that the history of humanity is a history of the continuous search for something to lean on.

Five thousand years ago, a person clung to feathers, the skulls of enemies, and sacred mountains. When the mountains fell silent, gods appeared. When the gods gave way to temples, the state vertical was born.

The scenery changed. The names of rulers changed. Religions changed. But one thing remained constant: people need someone to show them the way, because a horizon without an axis cannot hold the psyche together.

And the main archetype of this dependence is eternal Rome.

Where is that Rome?

All roads led to Rome.

Now we have come to the ruins of the Colosseum, not as tourists, but as observers and chroniclers.

For millions of people, Roman citizenship was the ultimate dream. To be part of an all-powerful empire, to be a subject of a great lord, to bask in the might of someone else’s power — this seemed like the highest good.

The empire gave the plebs bread and circuses, generously distributing the drug of collective ecstasy.

Modern algorithms give people the same kind of temporary excitement. But people do not suspect it — no, of course they know. What matters to them is what they manage to capture on the display in that particular second. And that means they are masters.

And so, the Colosseum was the altar of this alliance. Tens of thousands of spectators filled the tiers, roaring in collective ecstasy, demanding blood and victory.

At the climax, the crowd felt like the masters of the world. All it took was a thumbs-down — pollice verso — and the life of a defeated gladiator came to an end. The plebeians imagined that they were deciding destinies, that they were the masters here.

But this was the most sophisticated deception of the Matrix.

The real master of the arena was the emperor. He purchased their loyalty with free entertainment and the blood of others, turning free people into a manageable herd. The crowd reveled in an illusion of power, while the empire manipulated them as it pleased.

And then morning comes.

Early morning after the great games. The sun has not yet risen high above the hills, but its pale light is already cutting into the eyes, exposing the underside of imperial triumph.

Yesterday, tens of thousands of voices roared here. Today — silence.

And this silence is more deafening than the triumphant marches.

The arena of the Colosseum and the surrounding streets are covered with the residue of the celebration. Underfoot lie scraps of purple ribbons, broken clay amphorae that once held cheap wine, and scraps of sacrificial meat trampled beneath the sandals of cheering spectators.

The air is thick with the smell of sweat, sour wine, smoke, and decay.

Slave cleaners are already moving between the rows, gathering dirt and spilled blood into piles. Just an hour ago, history was being made here. Now it is merely a sewer for the waste of human excitement.

The celebration is over.

The crowd has dispersed into its own lairs, only to return tomorrow, with the same diligence and fear, in pursuit of another portion of spectacle — and to seek a new vertical.

Rome fell.

Latin — the language of the masters of the world — became a dead language.

The stones of the Colosseum turned into ruins.

But history knows how to answer such a challenge.

Centuries will pass, and in December 1947, the descendants of those very slaves whom Roman legionaries once drove beneath the triumphal arches in chains will pass beneath the Arch of Titus in Rome.

They will not pass as humbled captives, but as victors.

The Roman Empire has long since disappeared. Emperors and legions have crumbled into dust.

But the Jews remain.

Because every vertical that relies on the saliva and rubbish of the crowd is temporary.

Today, the same trick is being repeated before our eyes.

Only now, instead of marble amphitheaters, there are central avenues littered with plastic cups after school graduations, and glowing smartphone screens in the President’s Park, where crowds bring infants to watch.

The pop stars and show-business celebrities are clowns themselves. But they are singing for us!

The modern person taps a finger on the screen, presses likes, and “executes” or “pardons” idols on social media, sincerely believing that they are the master of the digital agenda.

They think they control the Matrix.

But behind this imaginary grandeur lies a new, even more ruthless feudalism.

The screen has become the new Colosseum.

And when the spotlights go out, the accounts of independent thinkers are left with the same dead zeros, while the network is filled with the deafening silence of algorithmic bans.

The crowd continues to search for a Ruler.

And the system continues to offer it a new show, leaving behind broken plastic and empty screens in the morning.

Only the bottles and plastic of the future will be used-up people.