The other day I was listening to Sirius 80s on the 8s and heard the Tears for Fears tune: “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” It was released in the decade where President Ronald Reagan told Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, to tear down this (Berlin) wall. That was 1987. The world and the struggle for control of the world would soon take a drastic turn.
When I heard this song for some reason all of the A/I tech bros popped into my mind. Instead of countries vying for control of the known world it is now a handful of billionaire tech bros and their corporations. And then all the talk about A/I dominating the world, with these yahoos in charge it made me think: We are in new era away from monarchs and dictators conquering lands and millions of people. We are moving into an age of cyberspace. What once took a flotilla and armed men now can be done in a dark air-condition room.
When the song was released I never gave the lyrics too much thought. However, according to American Songwriter.com, Everybody Wants to Rule the World. was dealing with some heavy duty concepts. They write that “The lyrics to the song became an anthem against greed and power hunger in the world. … about the inescapable eye of ‘Big Brother.’ Elsewhere are allusions to nuclear war (There’s a room where the light won’t find you) and rising tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union at the time of the song’s release (Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down).”
The song was released in 1985. By November of 1989 the Berlin Wall came down and almost a year later Germany was reunited. Oh, and a year after that, 1991 Gorbachev and the Soviet Union were gone. (Unfortunately not forgotten and back now more as Putinism than Stalinism. I think if there was sub-theme running through European and Western history it would be: Again with the Russians.)
With all that said I do believe that the song has some real relevance today. Let us just look at the title and realize that ruling the world probably goes back to when humans first started throwing rocks at one another over who controlled the berry bush.
All of this control could have started in Genesis when “God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” However, it didn’t mention having dominion over other men.
And then there is the “Promised Land” when God told Abraham that “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates…” In Numbers those borders get more specific and held up for several centuries.
In those days the concept of ruling the world was bound pretty much to the horizon. The Persians could never get past those pesky Greek city states. The Macedonians were pretty successful until Alexander the Great died. His generals (tech bros of time) were not up to the task of holding his vast empire together.
Christopher Columbus mucked things up when he bumped into a New World while trying to get to India. The discovery of a whole new land mass expanded the horizons and was possibly the reason for the first land arbitration: the Treaty of Tordesillas. It was a deal hammered out in 1497 when Pope Alexander VI divided the (known) world between Spain and Portugal. There were two fundamental problems with the Treaty of Tordesillas. One, it did not account for the discovery of the Pacific Ocean. And two, Protestant countries like England and Holland were not bound to this gentlemen’s agreement binding two Catholic countries to behave themselves.
the Spanish-born pope Alexander VI issued bulls setting up a line of demarcation from pole to pole 100 leagues (about 320 miles) west of the Cape Verde Islands. Spain was given exclusive rights to all newly discovered and undiscovered lands in the region west of the line. Portuguese expeditions were to keep to the east of the line. Neither power was to occupy any territory already in the hands of a Christian ruler.–britannica.com.
That line did not hold up very long. I would say that Spain had its moment in the sun but in the end Great Britain was the most successful country in establishing some sort of world dominance with their claim that “the sun never set on British Empire.” That boast would hold up from the early 18th Century until just after WWII. After the war Britain lost its colonies and the empire folded sunk into the category of “has been.” It went down as quick as the Titanic when it sunk in the North Atlantic around the peak of the British empire.
By 1913, the British Empire had grown to encompass 24 percent of the world’s landmass and also roughly the same percentage of the global population. This included over 400 million people which at the time was the largest empire in world history.–History144.com
The concept of ruling the world has not changed through history. One reason is no-one or one country has been able to successfully control the world is because the physical world was constantly expanding from continent to continent and across one ocean to another. However, with the tech bros and A/I all this could change the dynamics of world domination. As Buzz Lightyear says “to infinity and beyond.” Does cyberspace even have boundaries or is it infinite?
For instance, Elon Musk and Space X are much like 15th Century Portuguese. This small country worked its way down the West African Coast setting up colonies, much like the Ancient Greeks did in the Mediterranean. This “exploration” provided much needed resources (and slaves) to a country smaller than Great Britain. Eventually the Portuguese rounded Africa and started settling East Africa leaving a lasting impression on the African continent.
Musk’s Space X has made multiple runs to the International Space Station; has delivered and set up commercial and communications satellites into Earth orbit; and for all practical purposes has laid a claim on Mars. So the world as we know it is turning into the Solar System.
Ironically the tech bros themselves are calling for a modern day Treaty of Tordesillas. They see the need for setting boundaries to pen in their pent up greed and ambition. So far no Pope Alexander VI has stepped forward to contain and control where the tech bros and A/I.
