My interpretation from “Rät” by Penelope Scott

Found this gem of a music. As a software engineer it touches me deeply. I come from a generation that thought that by coding we could be free. But we are still limited by a society that wants to use our skills to exploit others.

“Rät” by Penelope Scott is a direct criticism of the silicon valley and USA west coast and it’s degenerate technocracy.

In the song Penelope shows special disappointment by the promises made by Elon Musk.

There is SO MUCH to absorb in this song. I love it.

• **“I come from scientists and atheists and white men who kill God” **
  According to nihilism/absurdim:
  Knowledge kills god because we realize all the meaning of life, including god, is a human construct. And she criticizes the highly technocrat society she and us programmers live in, where there is no space for god anymore (whatever yours is)

• “I studied code because I wanted to do something great like you”
  She makes it clear she chose computer science because of the dreams they sell us, that programming alone will makes us change the world

• “But we've been fucking mean, we're elitist, we're as flawed as any church
  And this faux rad' west coast dogma has a higher fucking net worth”
  She admits she realized that this silicon valley supremacy is a cult, like a religion.
  But worse, because this cult is made of billionaires and trillionaire companies!!
  You might remember how the cult of Elon Musk works on crypto, if he talks good of a coin it pumps, if he criticizes it dumps, and if anyone dares question “daddy elon” the critic gets attacked by the cult followers

• ”I bit the apple 'cause I trusted you, it tastes like Thomas Malthus”
  Well, clear reference to Apple, the multi-trillionaire silicon valley company. Malthusian theory shows that crisis are inevitable and when things go well it is inevitable for them to go very very bad eventually

• ”I fell for circuit boards, rocket ships, pictures of the stars”
  Yep, that is most computer scientists I know

This one is huge and is where we start seeing that Elon Musk is at the core of the criticism

• “** When I said, "Take me to the moon", I never meant take me alone
  I thought if mankind toured the sky, it meant all of us could go
  But I don't want to see the stars if they're just one more piece of land for us to colonize
  For us to turn to sand**”
  Elon Musk wants to take us to Mars. I admit I fall for this idea, as any nerd would, but is there a noble cause behind, or just colonization for colonization sake? The space race took us to the moon…. A couple of times, but we could not exploit it so we haven’t gone back there in decades!

• ”Well, I don't wanna eat the rich, I'd have to eat my heroes first”
  Young people, delusioned by corporativism, are calling to “eat the rich”, but she realized her heroes, the geniuses from her generation that revolutionized the world, are part of the corrupted rich world elites

• ”And my tuition's paid by blood, I might deserve your fate or worse”
  She knows that the loan she got to go to college was paid by people from vulnerable families both at her country, and by imperialist actions abroad, so she begins to realize she is almost like them, and benefits from exploitation like them

• ”But I don't need your goddamn money, I don't need jack shit from you
  So when I speak, you bet your life, my words are true”
  We, software engineers, live in fear that, if we criticize the big corporations we forever risk losing a chance to work there, so when she criticizes them in her song, you bet she is being true, because she is throwing her opportunities out the window by speaking her mind, she know now it is too late to go back

• ”Let me level with you, man, as someone guilty of the game
  I took the help, I took the cash, I would've taken your last name
  So if any girl on Earth should get to make a call about this”
  Again, she knows she is part of what she criticizes and if she admits it, it means we should listen to how bad it is, she is throwing her scientist career on the trash to speak out

• ”So, fuck your tunnels, fuck your cars
  Fuck your rockets, fuck your cars again
  You promised you'd be Tesla, but you're just another Edison”
  This is straight to the point, and couldn’t be more clear, any questions she is broken hearted by Elon Musk evil nature, from her point of view?…

The original song name is “Muskrat” but was too obvious it was focused on Elon Musk deceiving, so it was changed to just “Rät”

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