Another excellent article, my friend. It's sharp, and I assume that you are correct about it all.
Now, perhaps you'll consider some expansion points: we're talking about AI powered globalism, right? But ai, in its present and future iterations, is not responsible for the creation of globalism. Imperialism empowered by the Techne is more root cause, isn't it? Which takes us to the top of the arrow: scientific imperialism. James, to me, we have to go towards deep psychology to bring some of the anchor points of this entire scheme to the surface. Why point towards the distopian future when it's already right beneath our feet? From soil carbon architecture as the basis of biospheric integrity (climate) to currency control models, we have some serious institutional support for ai globalism that I think we need to have a hard look at.
Thanks. In Empire of Scientism I explained how the post-imperial system was the base. AI is merely a means in that system. People are unwilling to comprehend how systems work. That also applies to the natural systems, water, soil etc. Hence the present danger to their existence is pressing. That threat is part of the need to re-align humans to nature. Globalism and techne is part of a wider view of exploitation and expropriation which rejected the more attuned view of say the Middle Ages. There needs to be a parallel attempt to criticise and create or explain. There are many people out there working with and respecting the land and re-examining the relationship. But even that endeavour will not be allowed to persist or flower without addressing the macro-problems of technocracy. Misuse of water, soil and flora and fauna inherent in a technocratic system invites an exploration of intelligent use and ingenious farming systems etc including as antidote. The importance of alignment with natural technology or the inherent system of nature is underscored by addressing the futility and destructiveness of our present path. The shift to modernism had already created the demise of respect for soil and its needs for example. Those losses were historic and not solely present. The reason why we should steward the land well and respect life is also a question that needs to be addressed as it is more and more questioned. In a postmodern world, assumptions disappear and the formerly self-evident is no longer so. I know you are well aware of the issues and people like yourself will no doubt fashion a view which is hopefully part of the solution-puzzle. But the enormity of the challenge of resistance needs constant efforts and focus on key challenges. We must plough the furrows we can in the fields we know.
I'm listening to your discussion with Dean Rickles on stopping the machine, and I was struck by your rose dreams and lucid dreams. Clemens G. Arvay, who sadly couldn't take being villified over his thoughts about public health during the pandemic, wrote The Biophilia Effect, which I bought and read to support his family and to honor him, and he writes about mothers and roses. "Everyone recognizes the smell of the substance called indole in rose blossoms from their mother's body. Decomposing substances in amniotic fluid lead to the formation of indole , which comes into contact with our senses through our mouth and nasal mucous membranes when we're in the womb. Indole in pure form doesn't smell like roses, more like overripe fruit. Only after combining with many other substances is the rose fragrance cocktail produced. However we are unconsciously recognizing the scent of the indole because of our prenatal past. It sounds strange but the rose actually arouses preconscious memories of our time in our mother's womb.' (p.140)
In the realm of the nonlocal nontemporal, the timeless realm, the mother, who will become the Virgin Mary and roses and the tilpa of Guadalupe which plays an ethereal music, begins in the move from the forest to the savannah, bipedalism, the young born earlier, unable to cling, the mother hominin laying the infant down to gather, call and response, and in that, according to the late Frederick Turner and the rogue anthropologist Ellen Dissanyake, begins music, poetry, ritual, community. There begins Mary, a gift to us from the unfathomably intricate intelligence of the cosmos, which knows the furnace of hubris, greed, sex, status madness etc. is somehow necessary but terrible, horrifying, and almost unendurable.
Here's Turner on poetry 40 years ago, so prescient, though it seemed pretty absurd at the time.
Thanks for your kind comments, attention and interesting associations and references. They seem to suggest what I sense in this as the alternative intelligence that is embedded in the structure of life itself pointing to an overriding intelligence incapable of being surpassed by machine-structures. We become mesmerised by systems inferior to the apparent simplicity of the highest. Sometimes we must indeed instead look through the interstices of our own thought systems to the beyond.
Another excellent article, my friend. It's sharp, and I assume that you are correct about it all.
Now, perhaps you'll consider some expansion points: we're talking about AI powered globalism, right? But ai, in its present and future iterations, is not responsible for the creation of globalism. Imperialism empowered by the Techne is more root cause, isn't it? Which takes us to the top of the arrow: scientific imperialism. James, to me, we have to go towards deep psychology to bring some of the anchor points of this entire scheme to the surface. Why point towards the distopian future when it's already right beneath our feet? From soil carbon architecture as the basis of biospheric integrity (climate) to currency control models, we have some serious institutional support for ai globalism that I think we need to have a hard look at.
Dear Hawkeye,
Thanks. In Empire of Scientism I explained how the post-imperial system was the base. AI is merely a means in that system. People are unwilling to comprehend how systems work. That also applies to the natural systems, water, soil etc. Hence the present danger to their existence is pressing. That threat is part of the need to re-align humans to nature. Globalism and techne is part of a wider view of exploitation and expropriation which rejected the more attuned view of say the Middle Ages. There needs to be a parallel attempt to criticise and create or explain. There are many people out there working with and respecting the land and re-examining the relationship. But even that endeavour will not be allowed to persist or flower without addressing the macro-problems of technocracy. Misuse of water, soil and flora and fauna inherent in a technocratic system invites an exploration of intelligent use and ingenious farming systems etc including as antidote. The importance of alignment with natural technology or the inherent system of nature is underscored by addressing the futility and destructiveness of our present path. The shift to modernism had already created the demise of respect for soil and its needs for example. Those losses were historic and not solely present. The reason why we should steward the land well and respect life is also a question that needs to be addressed as it is more and more questioned. In a postmodern world, assumptions disappear and the formerly self-evident is no longer so. I know you are well aware of the issues and people like yourself will no doubt fashion a view which is hopefully part of the solution-puzzle. But the enormity of the challenge of resistance needs constant efforts and focus on key challenges. We must plough the furrows we can in the fields we know.
Best of luck,
James
I'm listening to your discussion with Dean Rickles on stopping the machine, and I was struck by your rose dreams and lucid dreams. Clemens G. Arvay, who sadly couldn't take being villified over his thoughts about public health during the pandemic, wrote The Biophilia Effect, which I bought and read to support his family and to honor him, and he writes about mothers and roses. "Everyone recognizes the smell of the substance called indole in rose blossoms from their mother's body. Decomposing substances in amniotic fluid lead to the formation of indole , which comes into contact with our senses through our mouth and nasal mucous membranes when we're in the womb. Indole in pure form doesn't smell like roses, more like overripe fruit. Only after combining with many other substances is the rose fragrance cocktail produced. However we are unconsciously recognizing the scent of the indole because of our prenatal past. It sounds strange but the rose actually arouses preconscious memories of our time in our mother's womb.' (p.140)
and we have ee cummings https://www.poeticous.com/e-e-cummings/if-there-are-any-heavens
In the realm of the nonlocal nontemporal, the timeless realm, the mother, who will become the Virgin Mary and roses and the tilpa of Guadalupe which plays an ethereal music, begins in the move from the forest to the savannah, bipedalism, the young born earlier, unable to cling, the mother hominin laying the infant down to gather, call and response, and in that, according to the late Frederick Turner and the rogue anthropologist Ellen Dissanyake, begins music, poetry, ritual, community. There begins Mary, a gift to us from the unfathomably intricate intelligence of the cosmos, which knows the furnace of hubris, greed, sex, status madness etc. is somehow necessary but terrible, horrifying, and almost unendurable.
Here's Turner on poetry 40 years ago, so prescient, though it seemed pretty absurd at the time.
The Neural Lyre https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=142&issue=5&page=64
I am really getting so much from all your talks with Mishlove and others, so much gratitude.
Dear Cynthia,
Thanks for your kind comments, attention and interesting associations and references. They seem to suggest what I sense in this as the alternative intelligence that is embedded in the structure of life itself pointing to an overriding intelligence incapable of being surpassed by machine-structures. We become mesmerised by systems inferior to the apparent simplicity of the highest. Sometimes we must indeed instead look through the interstices of our own thought systems to the beyond.
Best of luck,
James