tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50061492277558286192024-03-18T01:30:50.091+00:00Clay TestamentEric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.comBlogger450125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-59697531188217986622024-01-22T16:42:00.038+00:002024-03-16T13:33:31.572+00:00Accounting for the Nephilim Verses in Genesis (Aliens Need Not Apply)<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqEhu5DKYREmfmIZHoQyH4l5mHa49yCJdMSoZd45Fh3hmxFauI2v7DbKPyzL3BqTG9QsdOyWzvLrnhHq39UV8tGxFM09NVaJs1BzyBLh53jyFGxOYlQxsPXva4PL_wvl_b19Q61DBSVdm3RiB9eBdrZ3aQT0JRAVwNsZRwvtPMYztyzFAFvREMgfx2MiY/s1120/Daniel_Chester_French_Nephilim.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="1120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqEhu5DKYREmfmIZHoQyH4l5mHa49yCJdMSoZd45Fh3hmxFauI2v7DbKPyzL3BqTG9QsdOyWzvLrnhHq39UV8tGxFM09NVaJs1BzyBLh53jyFGxOYlQxsPXva4PL_wvl_b19Q61DBSVdm3RiB9eBdrZ3aQT0JRAVwNsZRwvtPMYztyzFAFvREMgfx2MiY/s400/Daniel_Chester_French_Nephilim.png"/></a></div><center><i>"And the Sons of God Saw the Daughers of Men That They Were Fair," Daniel Chester French, 1923</i></center>
<br /> In 1950, faced with the odd fact that we still had no solid evidence of alien life, physicist Enrico Fermi famously asked: “Where is everybody?” His question became the basis of “the Fermi paradox”. In brief: Given the size and age of the universe, there should be intelligent life out there, yet we’d found not a trace. Why not?
<br /><br />Belatedly responding to Fermi’s question, <a href=" https://unherd.com/?p=496589" target="_blank">Mary Harrington writes in <i>UnHerd</i></a> that we’ve likely been having encounters with intelligent alien life all along. Her reading is that many encounters which in other cultures have been interpreted as religious experiences were likely examples of what we moderns would call “alien encounters”. So were the beings in question spirits, gods, or aliens? Harrington doesn’t come down on one side or another. How to define beings that seem to come from another dimension is for Harrington largely a matter of semantics.
<br /><br />Harrington here engages in a brand of conjecture now common among writers. After former intelligence official and “whistleblower” David Grusch last year claimed the US possesses partially intact alien craft, there’s been an explosion of such online speculation.
<br /><br />Orthodox Christian writer Rod Dreher has taken up studying these questions, and points out repeatedly in his recent posts that some of the most sophisticated tech specialists in the US now consider UAP/UFO phenomena to be evidence not of physical aliens, but of spiritual beings of some sort. Dreher thinks they may be onto something. In <a href=" https://roddreher.substack.com/p/ulysses-goads-the-psychonauts" target="_blank">a Substack post last week</a> he addresses the now nagging frequency of alien abduction reports, quoting one researcher's thoughts on victim reports of alien/human hybrids. He hints that the famously troubling Nephilim verses in the biblical book of Genesis may be recording similar phenomena, taking the "sons of God" in that passage to be fallen angels.
<br /><br />A few questions immediately arise: Is there any orthodox Christian tradition that would assert that angels, fallen or not, can physically interbreed with humans? Are angels physical creatures? On the other hand, thinking of Grusch's claims on the US possessing debris of alien craft, do fallen angels require physical vehicles to move about? Is this perhaps part of their punishment?
<br /><br />These are just a few of the hurdles that arise when one seeks to read contemporary alien reports through a Christian lens, or when one applies the alien lens to biblical texts.
<br /><br />I respect both these writers, especially Dreher, whose books have helped us Christians navigate the postmodern Flood. But in my view Dreher’s new speculations go overboard in a way that isn’t helpful. The real problem is not that stories of alien encounters are somehow pulpy or low brow, but that there are much more plausible ways to interpret the Nephilim verses in Genesis. There’s simply no need for recourse to this kind of “interbreeding” with current cultural fixations. It ultimately does damage to the integrity of Scripture.
<br /><br />Before getting to the Nephilim verses, I should indicate where I’m coming from. I’m Catholic. I recognize Scripture as the inspired word of God. I believe it contains revealed truths, the essentials of our relations to God. Nonetheless I also recognize that all the biblical texts were written by humans, in human languages, and that one can trace from the Old to the New Testament an unfolding and developing understanding as regards what it means to believe in one God. I consider this theological unfolding to be part and parcel of revelation. It is not in my mind at all problematic.
<br /><br />On the question of intelligent alien life, I’m agnostic. I understand that, statistically speaking and according to current scientific understanding, life elsewhere in the universe is extremely likely. The search for evidence of such life is a valid scientific endeavor. That said, our culture’s framing of this endeavor, the mass enthusiasm, doesn’t inspire confidence. Such mass enthusiam can be exploited. Smart observers will thus remain skeptical of revelations or leaks from the US government, especially in the current political climate.
<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxXRjoJpTmWZVIrdc0PY_Rsm1ZaexDIDWRKiRVhcDJb_iIICxUsMwctE5z6hA9smM-bfnhZdNbnTeWNParqVYfG4WL6s2FFraZVNQLrDBOj_SKTem4t-lhbybpG6Xah7GEKOJiCcj7SveiV8RRHGwTMaNv8ZsE5nU1frwAP8E-lI8lFw_JpFEBvrGXV94/s800/psyops.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="799" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxXRjoJpTmWZVIrdc0PY_Rsm1ZaexDIDWRKiRVhcDJb_iIICxUsMwctE5z6hA9smM-bfnhZdNbnTeWNParqVYfG4WL6s2FFraZVNQLrDBOj_SKTem4t-lhbybpG6Xah7GEKOJiCcj7SveiV8RRHGwTMaNv8ZsE5nU1frwAP8E-lI8lFw_JpFEBvrGXV94/s400/psyops.jpg"/></a></div>
But that's a matter for a different time. We’ve already one thorny problem to wrestle with.
<br /><br />The key Nephilim verses appear in Genesis chapter 6: <br /><br /><blockquote>
When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. … The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of men, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown. </blockquote>
<br />The Hebrew term <i>Nephilim</i> itself is a matter of debate among scholars. It's often been translated “giants”, though the word contains a suggestion of fallenness. The immediate theological problem posed by the verses, however, should be obvious to any Christian or indeed any believing Jew. As follows: If there is one God, who are the “sons of God”? Are they in fact gods? If so, there isn't only one God. So what, finally, can the verses refer to?
<br /><br />The Nephilim verses are mysterious, but not all that mysterious. There’s a very plausible interpretation, one that poses no threat to revealed Christian dogma or lessens the sacred character of Scripture. Still, in order to understand this interpretation, we need to put ourselves outside the modern western frame of mind.
<br /><br />We modern Christians are monotheists, and when we begin to do theology, we are inevitably <i>philosophical monotheists</i>, which means that our understanding of God comes down to us inflected through a particular philosophical tradition, the Greek metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle. This is true for all of us, whether we know it or not.
<br /><br />And the ancient Israelites, those who wrote the Hebrew scriptures? They wrote well before any such philosophical monotheism had developed. Further, it is clear to anyone who studies the texts carefully that rigorous monotheism, as a belief, was rather late among them.
<br /><br />Yes, I do mean the Israelite scribes and inspired men who wrote the texts of our Bible. Many of the earliest texts indicate <i>monolatry</i> (a stress on the <i>worship</i> of one God) rather than strict <i>monotheism</i> in anything like our sense.
<br /><br />So for these ancient Israelites, what was the status of other gods? It was in fact unclear. It was only later, among the prophets, that the assertion appears: "These gods don't exist in any sense." We first find this assertion in the prophetic critique of idolatry: the claim that those worshiping Canaanite or other deities (which was, uh, disastrously common among the Israelites) were worshiping mere objects of wood or stone. But this assertion--that the other gods have no existence at all--is not there from the beginning.
<br /><br />Now consider these writers of the text of Genesis. They are culturally surrounded by various polytheisms, they are in fact culturally intermingled with these polytheisms, to the extent that their extended families include those who worship these gods. And consider that in documented polytheistic religions from Sumer to the Levant and into the Mediterranean, the belief in demigods is integral to tribal history. Certain of the ancient heroes of the people were considered the offspring of gods. Among the Greeks, who left us a more complete textual record, we have Heracles, Minos, Achilles, many others. The ancient Israelites all knew similar tales of epic heroes or founders who were demigods, and these tales were the sacred history of the peoples the Israelites regularly interacted with.
<br /><br />So in the earliest stages, for an Israelite committed to the worship of God, what was the status of these other gods and their offspring? The Nephilim tale presents one possible answer, a way for the Israelite to both assert the greatness and centrality of God while explaining the fact of all these violent heroes of old, descended from divine/human intercourse. Quite simply: "These gods were somehow sons of the True God, the Creator, but they were wayward sons. They were seduced by women, and their offspring were violent and destructive. Which is why the True God put an end to it."
<br /><br />Yes, the claim that these gods existed at all, that they were somehow "sons of God", that's heretical nonsense according to philosophical monotheism. But like it or not, it's there in the text, a text that is easily explained by cultural context: first, that the Israelites were much more monolatrous than truly monotheistic; second, that they were in conflict and perilously intermingled with polytheists that believed in demigods.
<br /><br />The evidence of Scripture is clear enough on this point. Monotheism developed slowly and against much opposition from all classes of God's chosen people. Up through the divided monarchy and the fall of Judah in 587 BC, those loyal to Israel's God struggled to establish a more rigorous monolatry in the face of a generalized polytheistic practice. This was struggle enough. Scriptural texts record a wide range of positions on what Canaananite and other gods were: whether they were nonexistent, some kind of demonic beings, or most simply gods that Israel's God would defeat, one finds a range hints as to the writer's understanding.
<br /><br />Scandalized by the mention of "sons of God" as potentially divine beings, certain Church Fathers offered an alternative reading of the Nephilim verses. They insisted that "sons of God" referred to the Sethites (the good descendants of Seth) who were seduced by the daughters of the Cainites, thus begetting evil offspring of great power. But in my view, we have no reason not to face what is a more persuasive reading of what the Nephilim verses actually say. I accept that Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit, but also can see that human understanding (and lack of understanding) shows itself. How could it be otherwise? Scripture is not a .PDF downloaded directly from the Divine Mind. It is the result of an unfolding revelation and slowly developing relationship between God and humanity. Again, this aspect of a slow unfolding, of things seen "in a glass darkly", is an integral part of the meaning of revelation. It's part of what makes the Old Testament crucial.
<br /><br />This is why I see no reason for recourse to the Nephilim verses when looking at alien abduction reports. These are modern cultural phenomena, and don't relate to my religious understanding as a Christian. More, I don’t think they relate to any sensible scholarly approach to Genesis. On both counts, to read biblical texts in this direction is an affront to the integrity of the Bible.
<br /><br />This integrity should be seen in two complementary registers. Scriptural texts are to be respected beyond all others because they contain divine relevation, but they also are to be respected because they trace the fits and starts of our human understanding of the one God who reveals himself to us.
<br><br>Regarding the Nephilim verses, a grasp of the cultural context and the difference between early Israelite monolatry and our later monotheism are enough to make sense of the evidence. The writers of Genesis were certainly not recording reports of abduction or attempts at interbreeding. They were responding polemically to the religious and historical claims of the peoples around them, recasting their pagan demigod founders as misbegotten offspring and an offense against the one true God.
<br /><br /><b>Conclusion: Why did I post this?</b>
<br /><br />Both Mary Harrington and Rod Dreher are supremely sharp readers of the contemporary mess. Harrington is a Christian, though I believe her commitment as Christian is relatively new. She calls herself a <a href="https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2023/17-march/features/features/mary-harrington-interview-the-failure-of-liberation" target="_blank">“mildly heretical Anglican”</a>. Dreher is not a new convert by any means. I’m mostly concerned here with Dreher’s work, as it’s his sense of the cultural stakes of emerging movements that’s proved so keen for so long. He’s finishing a new book, and I know he intends a chapter on what he predicts is a rising new religion of sorts, one deeply informed by developments in AI and hopes of contact with superior intelligences. I think he may well be right about this emergent religious movement in our tech-heavy, transhumanist West. But the risk I see this time is that some of Dreher’s own formulations begin to overlap with claims being made by the very techie cultists he hopes to warn against. Thus indirectly validating the cult. To the point that myself and at least a few other serious readers have been near gobsmacked.
<br /><br />This risk is again clear in Dreher’s speculative take on the Nephilim verses. The cultist can read it and say: “See? Even important Christian writers acknowledge these aliens may be divine beings. Even Christians finally recognize they’ve always been making contact with us!” Which to me is a regrettable outcome because 1) it isn’t a sensible reading of the scriptural text, and 2) the alien worshippers are only encouraged.
<br /><br />So aside from the problem of integrity of Scripture, there's this other, more immediate problem of how one may end up indirectly feeding a movement one set out to starve.
<br /><br />On both the uncanny phenomena we’re already seeing from AI and the new “revelations” we’re likely to get on the alien intelligence front, it is crucial to tread very very carefully. Whenever there are plausible explanations for A, B, or C, there’s no reason to feed spiritual cocaine to kids who are already lost in addiction. And yes, by “kids” I mean everyone from billionaire Silicon Valley gurus down to … the teenager next door. Our prominent techies have precisely ZERO to teach us on spiritual realities. Their backgrounds, their techno-gnosticism, their transhumanist principles confirm their irrelevance.
<br /><br />Rod Dreher’s speculations on Substack are one thing, I know, and his published work another. So perhaps some of my dismay is overdone. But the issues are serious, and his work is important. If he reads this post, I’m hoping he takes it in the spirit offered.
<br /><br />[NB: The interpretation of the Nephilim verses I sketch out above (i.e. that they represent an Israelite polemic against polytheistic hero/demigod beliefs) is largely my own, based on study of Scripture and ancient Near-Eastern religion and literature. The polemical force of the Genesis passage has long seemed obvious to me. Still, I'm glad to find my reading buttressed by Prof. Brian R. Doak's arguments in his 2011 dissertation <a href="https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ccs/3/" target="_blank">"The Last of the Rephaim: Conquest and Cataclysm in the Heroic Ages of Ancient Israel"</a>. Downloadable as dissertation and also published as a book.]
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-23643564845173248522024-01-19T13:08:00.013+00:002024-02-18T12:01:09.925+00:00We Christians Are Surrounded, but Lucky<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibfrTEKn1vinyQUk2dPvm5F8nWliIOUzYmXwIzh9JV5Y2OptV6qypw-O8BGozZGqPdFyShzf6THrKcSMpw6M0b9OtQpQRPm9FBZ-_Dw0YZyM7p5PfsDOmDSxvIFZWybxY_mKaD05l4HYxlunixJGYdsJorlrFaapDObZIgK6z18vM8wvAvfaGDVhUSI48/s972/Lewis_Nice.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="972" data-original-width="658" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibfrTEKn1vinyQUk2dPvm5F8nWliIOUzYmXwIzh9JV5Y2OptV6qypw-O8BGozZGqPdFyShzf6THrKcSMpw6M0b9OtQpQRPm9FBZ-_Dw0YZyM7p5PfsDOmDSxvIFZWybxY_mKaD05l4HYxlunixJGYdsJorlrFaapDObZIgK6z18vM8wvAvfaGDVhUSI48/s400/Lewis_Nice.png"/></a></div><center><i>Shaping up to be a N.I.C.E. century, isn't it?</i></center>
<br />Most of the best writing now being done is on Substack, and one of the most astute Substack writers is NS Lyons. If you aren't reading him, you are missing out. <br><br>I’d say Lyons again scores a slam dunk with his coinage this week of <a href="https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-the-right-wing-progressives" target="_blank">“Right-Wing Progressive” (RWP)</a>. It's a spot-on designation for figures like Marc Andreesen and Elon Musk. Lyons’ analysis of the role they play, and his slight ambivalence toward them, also seem wise. Though I see more danger in RWPs than any sort of ally.
<br /><br />I do admire Musk for many things. But Andreesen? His widely commented “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” is a horror show, demonstrating the usual fatal combination. Add high IQ to philosophical shallowness to a fanatical concern with “transforming society”, and you have in by book a VDC (Verified Dangerous Crank). Now seeking investors.
<br /><br />Problem is, Andreeson, co-founder and partner in Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreesen-Horowitz, will have no problem getting the funds he needs for boosting whatever he sees as “transformative”. Like many in his wide-eyed tribe, this crank is gonna crank.
<br /><br />Amazing world the Enlightenment has put us in, no? A mad-house of fanatical busybodies. We’re stuck with them. We live in a social order where the most engaged are woke authoritarians, RWP techies, and WEF “Great Resetters”. Meanwhile, on the other side of us, the mass of normal citizens wander in a kind of frozen shock: partly dazed by entertainment and all the shiny new tech, partly dazed by the new political reality they still haven’t quite processed--i.e. their rulers in Washington and Brussels really really really don’t give a damn what they think. Or even that they exist.
<br /><br />“The March will Go On! Plebs stay in your lane! It won’t be yours for long!”
<br /><br />We faithful are stuck between fanatical activists on one side, and this mass of exhausted, titillated, angry consumer-citizens on the other.
<br /><br />Rod Dreher, who yesterday featured Lyons’ piece, offers <a href="https://roddreher.substack.com/p/rwps-and-the-enemies-of-the-future" target="_blank">a telling anecdote</a> about his encounter with one of Lyons’ RWP types. <br /><br /><blockquote>
A few years back, I spent a couple of hours on the phone with one of the leading lights of this movement (if you can call it that), a billionaire who reached out to me (identifying me correctly as an anti-woke Christian of the Right), trying to get me on board the transhumanist project. He honestly did not understand why Christians would find transhumanism problematic. Why wouldn’t I want to improve the species? Why wouldn’t I be in favor of applying technology to breeding out flaws that lead us to sin? This man is extremely smart, very personable, and completely baffled by the things I was saying. </blockquote>
<br />Isn’t that just it? We Christians are now oddballs to the extent that educated fellow westerners can’t comprehend how we view humanity. Given this is so, are these “extremely smart” people really educated? I’d say No, they are not.
<br /><br />All these zealots (from wokester to RWP to transhumanist) sacralize secular stuff. It’s Eric Voegelin’s “immanentize the eschaton” across the board. Yuval Noah Harari claims tech will render us “godlike” because at some level he still believes in the divine, but can’t believe in any divinity.
<br /><br />We Christians are lucky by comparison, but it’s going to grow ever more difficult for us in a social order full of religious zealots whose religion is their own Newest Updated Manifesto for social salvation.
<br /><br />Still, we’re lucky. Holding to the true faith, we needn’t sacralize politics or technology. Believing in God and the redemption promised through His Son, we emphatically <i>do not</i> believe in salvation through Progress. We <i>know</i> humanity is fallen, that evil will rear its head no matter what political arrangement is tried or what technology is developed. We know sin cannot be legislated or reformed away. Thus we do not believe in promises of utopia or transcendence here on earth. Whether through political revolution, tech, psychedelics, or sexual abandon--we are the permanent wary shoppers who aren’t buying it.
<br /><br />I think that is a blessing.
<br /><br />These others, they are not content with human reality as it is. They cannot let human reality alone, because they can do better. This is what makes them toxic. Toxic to liberty and to all that is natural in humanity.
<br /><br />G.K. Chesterton put it like this: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
<br /><br />Politically and socially, we are now at the mercy of those who believe in anything. But ultimately that is not the mercy that matters.
<br /><br />
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-62911899386664450262024-01-15T15:23:00.006+00:002024-02-21T17:05:28.010+00:00Disenchantment and Human Being<br />Rod Dreher, now busy finishing his book on re-enchantment, mentioned at his Substack blog that his editor wants one strong chapter on why the fact of <i>disenchantment</i> is important. He asked readers for their ideas. As I consider it a crucial question, and often find myself thinking through aspects of what the West’s disenchantment means, I wrote in reply. Rod graciously posted my comments. Here I post a slightly edited version.
<br /><br /><b>Disenchantment and Human Being</b>
<br /><br />First, disenchantment matters because being both human and fallen, we are at risk of losing our humanity. And in a high-tech, hyper-managed order like ours this risk continues to grow. I may be accused of essentialism here (“You’re just assuming an ideology of the human in order to impose it”) but that doesn’t trouble me. I believe there is a created human nature, and sin means that it may be obscured or effaced to such a degree that it is practically annihilated. In not just an individual, but a whole society. We haven’t yet seen such a society, but the totalitarian systems we know of were perhaps only practice runs for what is possible. Disenchantment is the necessary first step to such annihilation of human nature.
<br /><br />Why is it the first step? First, because human being is a reality that is established interpersonally, it is a reality in relation to others and an Other. Enchantment is itself a sense of some mysterious Other that has a hand in the order of things. Disenchantment entails the breaking of that perception, or the possibility of such perception. It breaks an established relationship, our relationship with the divine. Which relationship is constitutive of the human. Thus disenchantment, as it advances, effaces the authentically human.
<br /><br />Though I’m Christian, I wouldn’t at all claim that Hindus or pagan Greeks or ancient Chinese, by the mere fact of their separation from the Christian faith, were in a state of effacement of human nature that approached something like annihilation. No. They were, like all of us, in sin and thus partially effaced as humans, but a relationality with the divine was maintained in each case. Not the relationality I believe to be the full and true one, but a human one even so.
<br /><br />We in the modern West are likely the first culture to experience the threat of a more radical effacement. And I think we now recognize it, even the non-religious among us. We sense that we may continue here as a population on the surface of the earth, yet the human will somehow be effaced among us.
<br /><br />This explains much of the horror of dystopian science fiction and phenomena like zombie apocalypse films. Such genres arise because of a widespread sense that we are being effaced without being actually killed.
<br /><br />So yes indeed, it is not true that “Life has always been like this.” That's a cope on the part of those who claim a disenchanted society like ours has a human future. Myself I’m guessing this society does not have a long-term, actually human future. Either another human order of relationality will take over (as Houellebecq imagines for Islam in Europe) or we will be effaced to the point of no longer being really human (as I think many of our transhumanists accept, or even cheer).
<br /><br />Western disenchantment has now spread globally. But why did the West suffer this malady first? One could answer the question in different ways (the rise of early modern science, with its attendant left-brain hypertrophy, for instance) but a glimpse of the problem in human terms is gained when we look at our founding modern myths, our liberal anthropology, in Hobbes especially. Hobbes and Locke needed to account for man in nature, and how it came about that humanity developed politics. Thus the myth of the “natural man” and social-contract theory. (Patrick Deneen wrote on this in his 2018 <i>Why Liberalism Failed</i>, but I’m not convinced by his full thesis, and in any case I’m putting the stress elsewhere.)
<br /><br />Absurdly, and against what we all know to be true about humans and even all primates, Hobbes claimed that man in the state of nature was … an individual man, alone against the elements and all other men. Society was founded with the first pact, an agreement among these free “natural men” not to commit violence against each other.
<br /><br />For Hobbes, then, society appeared among us as if among a population of bears intent on preventing mutual mauling. But the truth is quite otherwise: we humans have always been social creatures. Hobbes’ influence on modern western political thinking is enormous, but his projection of “natural man” is ill-considered nonsense. Millennia earlier Aristotle already knew: Man is a political animal. <i>By nature.</i>
<br /><br />Our liberal anthropology thus, at its roots, largely ignores family and clan. Both of which are human per se. Hobbes and other early modern thinkers did not create our disenchantment, but the myth of natural man shows it already taking root. Our liberal political orders absorbed this myth in their stress on innate individual freedom, which has brought us much good, but at great cost. We’re theorized as fundamentally unfettered individuals hoping to get as much as we can out of a recalcitrant nature before we die.
<br /><br />As backdrop to our social contract theory of government, the myth of natural man has had a larger impact on how westerners now think of themselves than most would suspect. There’s no relationality with the divine in the myth, and part of the reason for this is that <i>there is no relationality at all</i>. Not even with the family or clan that every human individual in history has grown up with.
<br /><br />Yet strong relationships with family continued in the West after the 17th century, and a relationality with God continued for most people. Until both relationships grew more attenuated, and first we killed God (as per Nietzsche), and now we are killing the family, through an ever-growing dependence on the state.
<br /><br />Our relationality with the divine is akin to our relationality to others, and both are innately human. This is not merely a matter of “how to be happy”. No, even in order to “be” in any authentic human sense, we must have both kinds of relationship. Once both are lost, the human itself is increasingly lost. If disenchantment is the breaking of real human relationality, it also effects the first steps on the slippery slope to non-humanity.
<br /><br />OF COURSE we are experiencing existential despair and mental disorder and all manner of addictive behavior at rates that only increase the more “advanced” we become in the progressive, secular direction. Our growing alienation is baked into the cake because, seduced by the toys and the lies on offer, we also sense our humanity slipping away.
<br /><br />Christian re-enchantment is the necessary medicine because the God we recognize as our Creator is also the God who became one of us in order to redeem us from the effacement that is sin. But to take the Gospel seriously entails looking hard at our sin and facing the burden of our real relationality, then humbly accepting the gift that we certainly don’t deserve. The postmodern order loathes such seriousness and such a notion of indebtedness, whether to God or others. “My yoke is light” is not a lie, but hey, lighter still is the negative freedom of radical individual autonomy, endless diversions, and the glorious “progress” now on offer.
<br /><br />This is my thumbnail sense of the crisis, at least if looked at in terms of disenchantment. My mention of Hobbes and Locke is not meant to suggest that I believe the liberal political order itself is entirely to blame for this crisis. No, I think if the liberal order has wrought such havoc on us, it’s because we’ve allowed the negative potentials in it too much sway. We somehow came to believe it was a tool that could manage itself. The Founders knew better.
<br /><br />To sum up: Disenchantment is a matter of broken relationship. Since we as humans come to existence and awareness in relationship, grasping what disenchantment has done to us is also to grasp 1) what we are by nature, 2) where we’re at right now, and 3) where we’re going if we don’t soon recognize the scam.
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-85755465205083550772023-11-09T15:20:00.015+00:002023-11-14T13:15:47.268+00:00Hamas and the “Unveiling”<br />It’s now been a month since Hamas entered Israeli territory and brutally murdered hundreds of civilians, kidnapping more than 200. Israel currently sets the death toll of the attacks at around 1,200. The event in itself is horrific, but also horrific has been reaction from the left in the US and Europe. Rod Dreher has called the double shock of these weeks an “Apocalypse,” in its original meaning of “unveiling”.
<br /><br />Which is to say that something has been revealed. But what?
<br /><br />Here I’ll try to gather some of the best, most provocative writing on this question. Note that this is not writing on "biblical apocalyptic". Also, I’m certainly not part of the woke left, neither am I looking at this war in terms of white hats vs. black hats. In my view, the Israel-Palestine conflict is one in which no side is completely in the right, and worse, it’s a conflict for which there are no good solutions. Anyone who pretends there are clear, morally unambiguous solutions, is either lying or shallow. And probably both.
<br /><br />But one key crux can be neatly summed up as follows: If tomorrow the Palestinians were to lay down their arms and sue for peace, they’d get peace. If the Israelis were to lay down their arms and sue for piece, they’d get genocide.
<br /><br />This is a truth that’s been clear for decades. And part of what's been “unveiled” in recent weeks is that much of the western left really thinks the Israelis should get genocide.
<br /><br />The pieces I’ve chosen relate to this cluster of questions: not just the two sides in the war, but the two sides in the West, and the two sides in all of us. Yes, it’s a question for me of good and evil, because I believe in good and evil.
<br /><br />One of the wisest early reactions to the atrocities came from a writer on the left, Sam Kriss. Kriss needs to be more widely read. In this piece he doesn’t get right into the events of October 7, but begins with some paragraphs on Poland and ghosts. It’s a subtle, brutally honest essay, especially powerful because it comes from Kriss, known for his phantasmagoric satire. <a href="https://samkriss.substack.com/p/but-not-like-this" target="_blank">Read Kriss’ “But Not Like This”. </a>
<br /><br />On the theme of unveiling, Konstantin Kisin sees in the left’s celebration of Hamas atrocities a wake up call.
<br /><br /><blockquote>When Hamas terrorists crossed over the border with Israel and murdered 1,400 innocent people, they destroyed families and entire communities. They also shattered long-held delusions in the West.
<br /><br />…
<br /><br />Many people woke up on October 7 sympathetic to parts of woke ideology and went to bed that evening questioning how they had signed on to a worldview that had nothing to say about the mass rape and murder of innocent people by terrorists. <br /><br />
…
<br /><br />The events of the last two weeks have shattered the illusion that wokeness is about protecting victims and standing up for persecuted minorities. This ideology is and has always been about the one thing many of us have told you it is about for years: power. And after the last two weeks, there can be no doubt about how these people will use any power they seize: they will seek to destroy, in any way they can, those who disagree. </blockquote>
<br /><a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/the-day-the-delusions-died-konstantin-kisin" target="_blank">Read the whole piece.</a> Kisin lays out Thomas Sowell’s classic explanation of why people disagree about politics, the difference being that some of us have an “unconstrained vision” of human nature while others have a “constrained vision”.
<br /><br />Over on X, <a href="https://twitter.com/sargon_of_akkad/status/1718749121123680441" target="_blank">Carl Benjamin</a> underlines the ever-more-glaring conundrum our liberal West has gotten itself into thanks to "unconstrained" tolerance. Needless to say, Sam Kriss wouldn’t agree with Benjamin on much, but I find Benjamin irrefutable on this aspect of the unveiling. He writes:
<br /><br /><blockquote>The pro-Palestine protests that are currently being held across the West elicit such a deep and pre-political feeling of revulsion because they evidently represent a foreign nation asserting itself in our midst. Liberals are suddenly taken aback by this because it hits liberalism in a particular blind spot. Liberalism processes the world in terms of indistinguishable individual agents each of whom is, theoretically, a rational, self-authoring individual that is consciously following their own conception of the good life.
<br /><br />This conception of a person is demonstrated to be shockingly wrong, as the protests reveal a tribal mindset in which the individual is not something separate from the religion and community, and is certainly not considered to be self-authoring and rational. In fact, devotion to and willingness to act upon the creed is the metric of worthiness, a collective self-denial which is antithetical to the individual self-aggrandisement worldview of liberalism.
<br /><br />Suddenly, it becomes apparent to the average liberal-minded Westerner that there are some things which actually shouldn't be tolerated if the liberal order is going to persist, but it is far too late to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
<br /><br />What are our options, exactly? These protesters have human rights. They have the right to protest, to speak, to denounce our civilisation and tell us to our faces that they plan to take over. What can we do about such things? Nothing, of course, liberalism demands we tolerate such ill-faith. But should we have such people in our societies and organising in such a fashion? Evidently not.
<br /><br />The pre-political revulsion is still there and reveals us not to be the liberals we once thought we were. We know, in our heart of hearts, that we cannot have a safe and stable civilisation without the good will necessary for such an endeavour, and now we are trapped with people who outright repudiate us. Since the only test liberalism could impose on newcomers was "can you follow our rules?" and not "will you join our tribe?", we are conceptually helpless to organise or resist such forward motion on their part.
<br /><br />Nations are held together by the sentimental bonds which provide a tribal framework of agreement and kindness that goes unspoken because it does not need to be said: we are countrymen, therefore we will show one another we have good intentions, respect for each other's interests, and mutual concern for our standing in society.
<br /><br />Put simply, Aristotle was right when he said that the basis of a nation is the bond of friendship.
<br /><br />We can see that many of the pro-Palestinian protesters and their supporters did not consent to joining our tribe and do not extend the hand of friendship to the peoples amongst whom they reside. They hold to the ways of their old countries, and in many aspects view us as rubes who, for reasons unknown to them, allow all of this to happen.
<br /><br />The rules-based worldview of liberalism permits this. Prior to its establishment, in any other time and place, it would be simply unthinkable for a foreign community to desecrate the statues of national heroes and the local idols of our social values. Yet here we are, and the police do nothing to stop it. In other times and places, such transgressions against the gods of a society would be punished most harshly because it would be understood that a foreign community resides here at our pleasure and not from some abstract right, but our authorities cannot even recognise a crime has been committed against the dignity of our country.
<br /><br />The newcomers are not liberals. They are from the old world of tribes. They don't understand why we permit this either, and make no mistake, they don't respect us for this tolerance. They think we are weak when we do not assert ourselves and our interests, and they are not wrong. </blockquote>
<br />Since I quote Rod Dreher above, and it was Rod who first noted Benjamin’s tweet, I should include one of Rod’s more knock-down recent essays. Dreher quotes Solzhenitsyn on where good and evil are to be found, and his follow up series of examples drive home the point. <a href="https://roddreher.substack.com/p/the-axis-of-the-human-heart" target="_blank">Solzhenitsyn’s are words to live by.</a>
<br /><br />And Dreher’s is a voice that has helped keep many of us sane. Which is odd, because as a writer he’s rather, shall we say, <i>hyped up</i>. Many consider him shrill. Nonetheless, after years reading him, I have to agree he’s guided by a reliable moral compass. His book <i>Live Not by Lies</i> was brilliantly conceived and landed at just the right time. And he’s been rock solid on rejecting the temptations many on the right are succumbing to in reaction to wokeism. Dreher recognizes race politics as toxic no matter who is practicing it, and no matter what the provocation.
<br /><br />Many on the right, especially the young, are saying “Fight fire with fire.” Dreher is a Christian. He opts for “Fight fire with Christ, and take your knocks.” I suspect he’s saved more than a few people from the abyss.
<br /><br />Finally, I’ll present a more military/political analysis, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/24/amos-yaldin-israeli-military-intelligence-netanyahu-qa-00123099" target="_blank">an interview with former Israeli intelligence chief Amos Yadlin</a>. I take Yadlin to be a reliable source regarding Israeli intentions at present. The interview is revealing, and Yadlin offers plausible interpretations of the combatants and their motives.
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-42672161874444619082023-11-03T12:25:00.018+00:002023-12-29T14:55:45.591+00:00Synodality to Synodolatry: The Imperial Narcissism of Team Francis<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4z_ydPF48q6zBBfdtceG2GGHPLqwK3-Vxw46YHfTkiXiVMAIPDSwJcIiKNo5C2xUSnfXfZGCqv_tY8eALAw9Jl-VlkbjeVsLALsgyAz2518BKCMOXuookxp_kAVoL2_K5eI4HlyOFLraRluECZpP_aCfaR_vdl5LsFL2IP22HQ2N-Ux8Eee9lzmkE-28/s746/Synodolatry.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="746" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4z_ydPF48q6zBBfdtceG2GGHPLqwK3-Vxw46YHfTkiXiVMAIPDSwJcIiKNo5C2xUSnfXfZGCqv_tY8eALAw9Jl-VlkbjeVsLALsgyAz2518BKCMOXuookxp_kAVoL2_K5eI4HlyOFLraRluECZpP_aCfaR_vdl5LsFL2IP22HQ2N-Ux8Eee9lzmkE-28/s400/Synodolatry.png"/></a></div><center><i>The pope with participants at the Synod on Synodality, 2023</i></center>
<br />Much digital ink has been spilled by faithful Catholics pretending to be confused by the Synod on Synodality. One can’t really blame them for adopting the pretense. It allows them leeway to maintain some of the reverence due the pope and our bishops. Still, what is happening at this synod is not confusing. So I will spill much less ink.
<br /><br />What they are doing in Rome at present is making an idol of the Church. They have largely written out Our Lord from the synod documents, and seek to worship in His place a Church reconceived as a progressive, well-meaning “community”. To judge from reports and documents so far, the essential core of this new religion is this mere fact of community itself, figured as “walking together”. According to one German bishop, such “walking together” is now to supersede Apostolic tradition.
<br /><br />That’s it. It’s a trite and shallow idolatry. It’s the self-worship of a right-thinking collective, with the “right-thinking” to be gleaned by "listening to" the western secular left. To do this particular listening is to hear “the voice of the Spirit”. Amazingly, this is the claim we get from clerics who otherwise can’t stop talking about the importance of “discernment”. Larry Chapp, always a sensitive interpreter, <a href="https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/10/26/this-synod-is-wide-shallow-and-contrary-to-vatican-ii/" target="_blank">has got their number</a>.
<br /><br />The ”synodal Church” is the Church reconceived as social media. It’s the Church looking for likes and shares. And they hope to pull this off by means of a clumsy sleight of hand.
<br /><br />Clumsy? Consider: They offer 1) a single neologism, <i>synodality</i>, and 2) the assertion that the queried desires of a hand-picked group of Catholics can tell us where the Spirit is leading. Based on these two magician’s tricks alone, they intend to remake the Church. “Everything will change!” they say.
<br /><br />Yes, the Church is to become yet another site for the self-worship of the current West.
<br /><br />Which raises the larger, universal meaning. After all, through “synodality” the West’s therapeutic self-worship will be imposed on the Church in Africa and Asia too. More than just a shoddy bait and switch on the part of western clerics, then, this synod is also a matter of cultural imperialism.
<br /><br />“Listen to the margins!” they tell us. Then they choose the same margins American corporate culture now chooses. They impose the same idea of “marginal” our State Department now imposes. Except note: Corporate America and the State Department <i>got there first</i>. Does the Holy Spirit then take directives from US coastal elites? Apparently.
<br /><br />Our current pope is supposedly a strident critic of American capitalist culture, yet we see in this synod that he hears the same Zeitgeist our corporate CEOs hear. And just as these corporate CEOs now pretend to make their companies into “diverse and inclusive communities” of the right-thinking, putting their investors and customers in second place, so the men around our pope seek to do with the Church. No longer is it the faithful Bride of Christ who serves His will, but a sublimated “walking together” during which “every voice will be listened to”. And just as with our corporations and fallen universities, that assertion regarding “every voice” is a bald-faced lie. Watch what happens to those who disagree with this new version of the Church, who seek to keep faith with long-established magisterial teaching. Such people are “rigid”, or even "dead". They are to be mocked or excluded.
<br /><br />Our pope then, by presiding over this remaking of the Church, makes himself the criterion by which Catholics are or are not part of the community. Given the context, it is a gesture of self-deification. He is the Vicar of Christ who presumes to change his Master’s teaching according to his own “right-thinking” as vicar, then to exclude those who point out what he is doing. He cannot cite magisterial teaching against them. All he can do is scoff and offer a version of the claim that they are “not in line with the values of our community”—values which are increasingly those of the secular western left.
<br /><br />The ideology driving the statements of synod participants and dictating the documents is thus more than familiar. It’s boilerplate 21st century identity politics. It’s the imperial narcissism of the self-obsessed western left. The only thing newsworthy about this synod is the fact that a pope and bishops are present, consenting to it. Yet that is very newsworthy.
<br /><br /> “You are Peter, and on this rock I will found my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
<br /><br />I believe those words. Yet these men in Rome, the gates of secular self-worship have prevailed against them. So how will they fare with the gates of hell?
<br /><br />I believe it is still His Church. Which means I have to decide who these men are. These men who babble nonstop about discernment are finally forcing many of us to <i>discern</i>, though not along with them.
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-5969744152631267552023-09-23T12:52:00.003+01:002023-09-23T12:52:19.949+01:00Pests<br />Ms. Huang, ivory and proper, contorts her face in horror, reaches down for a slipper, and lunges toward the cockroach. She jostles the table, spilling the tea, and missing the roach, leaves a mark on the wall.
<br /><br />Two of her guests stood up in sympathy. I remained seated.
<br /><br />Really, Ms. Huang, you should think of the roach as a tiny folded amber fan, a silent listener, with breath likely sweeter than that of your aunt, who nearly knocked over her chair. And did you know, Ms. Huang, that roaches groom themselves ceaselessly, are even cleaner than your cat, whose hair now clings to my slacks? In fact, sorry to tell you, the roach’s body hosts less bacteria by far than either my or your fingers—-yes, even your delicate fingers—-not to mention your aunt’s mouth, which just now has bitten a cookie, and soon will start gossiping again.
<br /><br />A folded amber fan, a slim gold fingernail, hardly heavier than confetti—-and you’ve put a gray mark on your wall.
<b><br /><br />QED: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Idiocy-Ltd-Eric-Mader/dp/1511859458/" target="_blank"><i>Idiocy, Ltd.</i></a>
<br /><br />Chinese edition / 中文版 : <a href="https://www.commabooks.com.tw/book/42" target="_blank"><i>Idiocy, Ltd.</i></a></b>
<br /><br />Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-57010379831211893422023-09-14T15:08:00.007+01:002023-09-23T12:22:49.370+01:00Space Available 1970-2023<br />1970s
<br /><br />Our only world was spread over space, a stretch of road to be pedaled on a bike, or a field of tall grass full of green leafhoppers, or the darker, uneven soil of a forest, where we buried coins and effigies. We communicated with shouts or things thrown, competed in speed or the height one could climb a tree. Withdrawn from the open spaces, the cave of one’s “room”. In the “living room” below, a skin of rough, overcolored pixels hung down the front of an electric box.
<br /><br />1980s
<br /><br />Our only world drew its lines crisscross over roads and county highways, always the same roads and highways, cassette tapes and CDs strewn, half shy girls willing by the lake, but not fully willing. We communicated through hair styles and beer buzz, our “rooms” become temporary cells for mulling and fury and carefully hidden baggies of pot.
<br /><br />1990s
<br /><br />Our only world was stretched over oceans but on paper, newspapers and books under the hegemony of Empire, waves of students and their profs marching against the shore to no avail, themselves being Empire. Aslant in cafes and diners, we communicated through quotes, editorials, withering looks; crashed on tatty sofas in cheap apartments. We wondered if it was wise to start using “e-mail”. When our computers crashed, as often, the screen would freeze, the screed was lost, but other screeds were saved on floppy disks. Somehow the vain wide expanse of oceans began to parallel the flat expanse of our screens, until the former was collapsed into the latter, a watery death of the real without even water.
<br /><br />2000s
<br /><br />…
<br /><br />2010s
<br /><br />…
<br /><br />2020s
<br /><br />Their only world is tight against them, personal, its single line reaching the distance between thumb and eyes. At one end of the line, near their thumbs, they swipe the real up or down or back and forth, all beings flicked swiftly in and out of existence in a space not three inches across. They communicate through digital traces, cartoon winks, words half spelled. All other spaces and actions, their gestures and dress, the form of their bodies, even the food they eat—it all exists to be gathered into the tiny screens, only becoming real once it is glanced over by other eyes, flicked into relevance by other thumbs. They compete through digital traces, scores tallied up for all to see in devices that spy on them as they spy on each other. Empire.
<b><br /><br />QED: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Idiocy-Ltd-Eric-Mader/dp/1511859458/" target="_blank"><i>Idiocy, Ltd.</i></a>
<br /><br />Chinese edition / 中文版 : <a href="https://www.commabooks.com.tw/book/42" target="_blank"><i>Idiocy, Ltd.</i></a></b>
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-19140371666498757702023-09-06T04:47:00.010+01:002024-01-09T12:38:33.715+00:00The Pipe-Dream of Strong AI; The Nightmare of “Weak” AI<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Gkyqiar7BLhQ3zHWqEymAu5i2zRMqZzpWrY_7ylt2Sq5MuZNUVykbB163Bfo7wv6_WEdRQJjnMJdqmrIjI1qhjTFA-QfKy_xtQslOQqMAMeD1XroVYIFRGD9FvW5_eFHgVvaul9I8L2nZ6iu4Wvy06fBXgqCog2Te6cGLE2pG8OJJVAxl-2U8_mMs2E/s1458/AI.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="816" data-original-width="1458" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Gkyqiar7BLhQ3zHWqEymAu5i2zRMqZzpWrY_7ylt2Sq5MuZNUVykbB163Bfo7wv6_WEdRQJjnMJdqmrIjI1qhjTFA-QfKy_xtQslOQqMAMeD1XroVYIFRGD9FvW5_eFHgVvaul9I8L2nZ6iu4Wvy06fBXgqCog2Te6cGLE2pG8OJJVAxl-2U8_mMs2E/s400/AI.png"/></a></div>
<br>Are “thinking machines” possible? Will AI develop to a point where it surpasses human IQ, after which, improving itself, it will advance so far beyond human thinking that we won’t even be able to comprehend what it’s trying to tell us? Will AI “take over the world”?
<br><br>There are very good reasons to see AI as a threat, but based on our best understanding of what is meant by “thinking,” the answer to all these questions is probably No. We’re never going to reach Ray Kurzweil’s “Singularity”. AI is never going to be making scientific or technological breakthroughs.
<br><br>As a friend in data security puts it: “AI could watch Newton’s apple fall millions of times over but could never take the next step and theorize <i>gravity</i>. If you think it will, it means you don’t understand how AI works.”
<br><br>I’m a newbie in this area, but less so in philosophy and linguistics. I know enough about AI to grasp the point. But my friend was referring to large language models (LLMs), the kind of AI that grounds ChatGPT. Will his point prove true once AI programmers push into other directions?
<br><br>To understand why his point will likely prove true <i>no matter what programmers get up to</i>—well, that requires a bit of effort. But if you're interested in such questions, a great place to start is Paul Folbrecht’s quick summation, <a href="https://www.paul-folbrecht.net/computer-science/strong-ai-provably-impossible" target="_blank">“Why Strong AI is a Logical Impossibility”</a>. Folbrecht presents two key arguments, and his strategy for bringing the reader into the harder argument (based on Gödel’s incompleteness theorems) is spot on. He conveys the gist with no wasted words. <a href="https://www.paul-folbrecht.net/computer-science/strong-ai-provably-impossible" target="_blank">Read it.</a>
<br><br>Since Folbrecht does the work so well, I won’t rehash the arguments here. Based on these arguments, and a few related ones, I too doubt we’re entering an era of truly “thinking machines”. What I wonder however is whether it will really matter. Because I’m convinced we’re entering a very perilous era either way.
<br><br>That AI will never be able to <i>think</i> in anything strongly analogous to what we do when we think may in fact make little difference. Sure, it will make a difference in the long run, given that AI won’t be making scientific breakthroughs. But in the short run? No. Because the real threat is not that envisioned in 20th-century sci fi. It’s not that AI will take over. Rather, it's that government or other elites will <i>use</i> AI to control mass populations, finally achieving immunity to citizen resistance.
<br><br>This is the actual threat, and like it or not, it's all too viable. AI will never have to attain “thinking” capabilities to be the perfect tool for implementing total state control. The technologies already available are stuff such as Stalin or Hitler never dreamed of. And is our American population ready to resist encroachments on our liberty from AI-enabled state bureaucrats? From monomaniacal ideologues using “safety” or “progress” as buzzwords to gain power?
<br><br>Hardly. We are far from ready. Much of the American population seems actually <i>primed</i> for just such power grabs. Which is perhaps not by accident. And it’s this America that will negotiate its future with AI-wielding bureaucrats? It’s a depressing thought.
<br><br>Making our situation yet more perilous is something I’ve written about recently: our human susceptibility to AI simulations of personality, our hardwired tendency to assume that anything that says “I” and can string sentences together is actually an “I”. That this delusion will be exploited by those who seek to corral and control us is certain. <a href="https://claytestament.blogspot.com/2023/06/mary-gaitskill-gets-seduced-by-chatbot.html" target="_blank">Consider the case I lay out.</a>
<br><br>As it melds with social and other media, as it’s incorporated in ever more humanoid robots, so-called "weak" AI is going to insinuate itself into our culture and access our lives in ways that even social media could not. It won't matter that this AI can't think. Within a few short years it will already be powerful enough to “work wonders”.
<br><br>Paul Folbrecht, whose article doesn’t address these questions, would likely agree. Strong AI is almost certainly not on the horizon. But the AI that is on the horizon is an immensely dangerous tool, especially given our current political and social order, softened up by social media and our willingness to give up privacy for the slightest convenience.
<br><br>With Americans now entirely transparent to Big Tech, weak and distracted by circus diversions and identity politics, with an over-the-top cult of “safety” dominating public discourses, our culture looks something like the opening pages of a User’s Manual explaining how best to politically weaponize AI.
<br><br>"Mass control will be easier to establish if you begin with a population like this: ..."
<b><br /><br />QED: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Idiocy-Ltd-Eric-Mader/dp/1511859458/" target="_blank"><i>Idiocy, Ltd.</i></a>
<br /><br />Chinese edition / 中文版 : <a href="https://www.commabooks.com.tw/book/42" target="_blank"><i>Idiocy, Ltd.</i></a></b>
<br><br>
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-83703857665614988532023-09-02T16:27:00.006+01:002023-09-12T14:59:39.174+01:00Roethke at the Root of Things<br />When Theodore Roethke died in 1963, he left behind 277 notebooks of poetic and prose fragments. His student the poet David Wagoner eventually gathered selections from this material and published them in 1973 under the title <i>Straw for the Fire</i>. It’s a wonderfully wrenching volume.
<br /><br />Roethke is congenial for many reasons: his poetics of the soil and its slow, slimy things; his engagement with western mysticism; his fanatical respect for words—finally, his self-effacing clownishness. High dedication for Roethke never meant he couldn’t laugh at himself. He knew what he was. Or perhaps: he was troubled to no end that he couldn’t quite figure out what he was. Which points up his work’s philosophical burden, everywhere evident in these notebooks.
<br /><br />Reading <i>Straw for the Fire</i>, I found myself taken up with the problem of which texts were crucial, which were at the core of Roethke and what he was up to. Yes, this inevitably meant crucial <i>for me</i>, or in terms of my own approach. But I started marking these core texts, and now I’ve typed them out. In document form, the selection comes to around 7 pages. Just about right.
<br /><br />In my choices, I neglect certain of his themes. I ignore the fragments about the women in his life, his wrestlings with memories of his father, and his many really brilliant insights (mostly short prose) on teaching. (Roethke was widely recognized as one of the great poetry teachers of the century, and the notebooks convey much about his classroom approach: his dedication, his provocations, his antics.)
<br /><br /><i>Straw for the Fire</i> gathers more than 250 pages of fragments. My choices are those of one reader, trying to distill a certain approach to writing and a certain being in the world: Roethke's. There are many places in his thought I wouldn’t follow him, but his notion of what the blank page is for—that’s a different matter. He was writerly in the most important way.
<br /><br />At the end I place his villanelle, “The Waking”, not included in <i>Straw for the Fire.</i>
<br /><br />E.M.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYob4DkhQPmxVgAnnwA_t9_9WxtvOZaey799RAXYKYq-2WOTtQI8MZatZEXAuYGrEx-dm6yDhaXXD-0NnEUNZdCLe7XzamwoCfuaYfb3IHsj73M1DFFRScuVgIRsiFAAnxyhVV3SbGzaMRKzU1h8z2MaLetBpbgVAUGmfsI8Y1U8q3bWZ1CqBSlq-EB2Q/s500/straw.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYob4DkhQPmxVgAnnwA_t9_9WxtvOZaey799RAXYKYq-2WOTtQI8MZatZEXAuYGrEx-dm6yDhaXXD-0NnEUNZdCLe7XzamwoCfuaYfb3IHsj73M1DFFRScuVgIRsiFAAnxyhVV3SbGzaMRKzU1h8z2MaLetBpbgVAUGmfsI8Y1U8q3bWZ1CqBSlq-EB2Q/s400/straw.jpg"/></a></div>
<br /><b>From <i>Straw for the Fire</i></b>
<br /><br />What dies before me is myself alone:<br>
What lives again? Only a man of straw—<br>
Yet straw can feed a fire to melt down stone.
<br /><br />*
<br /><br />I always wonder, when I’m on the podium, why I am there:
<br> I really belong in some dingy poolhall under the table.
<br /><br />*
<br /><br />I don’t know a thing except what I try to do.
<br /><br />*
<br /><br />In the very real and final sense, don’t <i>know</i> anything. That is what saves
me—from you, dear class, and from ultimate madness.
<br> In every man there is a little woman.
<br> A teacher needs his students to stay human.
<br> Suppose you master one cliché—
<br> You’re a step beyond a horse: a horse’s A.
<br /><br />*
<br /><br />A breath is but a breath <br>
And the smallest of our ties <br>
With the long eternities, <br>
And some men lie like trees, <br>
The last to go is the bark, <br>
The weathered, tough outside.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
What words have good manners? None.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
Dear God: I want it all. The depths and the heights.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
Give me the pure mouth of a worm; <br>
I’ll feed on leaves; I’m a knob waiting for the opening squeak.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
Who else caught the burning bush? <br>
I’m blistered from insights. <br>
Several times I’ve heard the slow sigh of what is, <br>
The moaning under the stones, <br>
And the flames flashing off wings, burning but not consuming.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
I must be more than what I see. O Jesus, <br>
Save this roaring boy riding the Devil’s blast.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
An intense terrifying man: eating himself up with rage.
<br /><br />Such a one as never milked a mother.
<br /><br />I practice at walking the void.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
Shine forth, you idiot forms, <br>
With what I cannot see. <br>
Essentiality <br>
Of all ground-seeking worms.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
I have no native shape.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
I am by way of becoming <br>
No more or less than I am.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
I knew a fool for luck <br>
Who never changed his ways <br>
Until his own soul’s lack <br>
Disturbed his later days.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
I slept with Yes, but woke to No.
<br /><br />Show me what rest I have, and I’ll become restless.
<br /><br />I ate the Lord, and choked.
<br /><br />I ate myself to live, and woke a fiend.
<br /><br />The familiar longing to be ill.
<br /><br />My babbling’s nearer; I will feed the moth.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
To possess or be possessed by one’s own identity?
<br /><br />The self, the anti-self in dire embrace.
Instead of embracing God, he hugs himself.
<br /><br />I spent myself in mirrors, like a whore.
<br /><br />The mirrors laughing with their dreadful eyes.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
I can become what I will, <br>
He cried, and grew a tail.
<br /><br />Can I become that philosophic man <br>
Without the sanction of philosophy? <br>
One thinks too long in terms of what to be— <br>
That grandeur of the crazy man alone <br>
Who thinks imagination is the Soul <br>
And that its motion is perpetual.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
Acting one’s age is just a form.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
I sing other wonders <br>
Than my heart’s slowness: <br>
In the inner eye <br>
A bird quivers <br>
Throbbing my heels <br>
With a throat’s shimmer.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
Five songs away, a whistler by himself <br>
Stayed to his branch, a working fellow too, <br>
And gave against the wind his throaty throb.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
Granite on granite pressing the earth down, <br>
Each singing thing straining to come to form, <br>
Made one by light on dark, stark in the sun.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
That question cries again— <br>
What is the least we know? <br>
I call the slug my kin, <br>
And move with those born slow.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
By singing we defend ourselves from what we are.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
I see what I believe.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
Between the soul and flesh <br>
What war? I never heard: <br>
I know a singing fish, <br>
A silent bird.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
Things dance in a young mind <br>
Until the soul is blind.
<br /><br />Sometimes it’s well to leave things in the air. <br>
Let me remember me: not my despair.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
Am I a vanished type, a mastodon <br>
Lunging this way and that in the great damp?
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
She. Woman’s the noble word for the bright soul. <br>
He. Things as they are beat at me like a flail. <br>
She. Deep dreamless sleep is true beatitude. <br>
He. Or frenzy called up by a gush of blood.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
My soul shrinks to a bird; <br>
I am less than a child, <br>
A vein beating, unheard, <br>
In the close, in the coming dark, <br>
My spirit turns to its work.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
That ultimate seed, the soul, <br>
Growing between two stones, <br>
Heard a mandrake’s groans, <br>
A sound altering all <br>
Bird-songs and bird-bones.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
I ask a question of the supernatural. <br>
At what point does the self become a soul <br>
When it deserts this clumsy animal, <br>
This bear-like shape that lumbers down a hall <br>
Or clambers up a hill?
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
I went into a flame, <br>
A priest of kingdom come, <br>
The false light cried my name, <br>
“You are no one.”
<br /><br />I saw a shape in a crowd, <br>
Grisly, amorphous, lewd; <br>
I cried, and loud, <br>
“Here! Here is our God!”
<br /><br />A pure light came; <br>
And stole me away <br>
From time.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
In the hot sweat of why not, <br>
In the cold dark of who did, <br>
In the battered dish of she dares <br>
In the absolute dead middle of all-around <br>
—I dug my flesh until I was a wound
<br> And the day sighed out its light, and the white kingdom came.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
Long, fruitless introspection, characteristic of the German, relieved by occasional dim flickers of light.
<br /><br />Teetering precariously on the brink of the navel.
<br /><br />Many meditations destroy.
<br /><br />A love for the bottoms, the fell last roots of things.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
Body drags soul into the changeable.
<br /><br />I am the edge of an important shadow.
<br /><br />Lord of Laughter and Light, attend me.
<br /><br />God robbed poets of their minds that they might be made expressions of his own.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
Observe, random energist, the bear’s placidity.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
There is no end to what should be known about words.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It’s what everything else isn’t.
<br /><br />*<br /><br />
<b>THE WAKING</b><br /><br />
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. <br>
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. <br>
I learn by going where I have to go.
<br /><br />We think by feeling. What is there to know? <br>
I hear my being dance from ear to ear. <br>
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
<br /><br />Of those so close beside me, which are you? <br>
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, <br>
And learn by going where I have to go.
<br /><br />Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? <br>
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; <br>
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
<br /><br />Great Nature has another thing to do <br>
To you and me; so take the lively air, <br>
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
<br /><br />This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. <br>
What falls away is always. And is near. <br>
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. <br>
I learn by going where I have to go.
<br /><br />***
<b><br /><br />QED: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Idiocy-Ltd-Eric-Mader/dp/1511859458/" target="_blank"><i>Idiocy, Ltd.</i></a>
<br /><br />Chinese edition / 中文版 : <a href="https://www.commabooks.com.tw/book/42" target="_blank"><i>Idiocy, Ltd.</i></a></b>
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-80460572075956049492023-09-02T14:51:00.014+01:002023-09-12T14:54:56.577+01:00The Truth about Scorsese’s "Vandals"<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_ae_zBcQUXvlhFQmSkY7k45v9wTNd_svKDdyX_vRW0hRgGfXdhetWvWbhaVzMK3CZ-1E8sBlQyhLNfjQckWa4FBzOhfuYoTOS3EP8SRfxHR4fgsH9DGFRZjXAljOtNax9HqlphfWXU7dPCJmCes9l8xKJVkAh73LmiXCrr5AgmmH9xWWzN-Q0af_2Sag/s1280/young-martin-scorsese_57.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_ae_zBcQUXvlhFQmSkY7k45v9wTNd_svKDdyX_vRW0hRgGfXdhetWvWbhaVzMK3CZ-1E8sBlQyhLNfjQckWa4FBzOhfuYoTOS3EP8SRfxHR4fgsH9DGFRZjXAljOtNax9HqlphfWXU7dPCJmCes9l8xKJVkAh73LmiXCrr5AgmmH9xWWzN-Q0af_2Sag/s400/young-martin-scorsese_57.jpg"/></a></div>
<center><i>A young Martin Scorsese visiting the set of </i>Vandals</center>
<br />My dreams are not typically nightmares, but they often involve oblique exclusions, subtle usurpations. I usually don’t remember my dreams (beyond a feeling of befuddled let-down) but today was an exception, probably the longest chunk of narrative I’ve ever dragged up from the dreamwork.
<br /><br />It was a cool early morning, around 7:00 a.m., and I was riding a bus through some California suburb. I wasn’t sure where the bus was headed, but when I saw we were passing through an Asian neighborhood, mostly Chinese, I decided to get off.
<br /><br />I stood on the sidewalk in the clear morning air, surrounded by suburban houses, grass yards. Two boys in a yard noticed me, began talking about me in Chinese, not knowing I could understand. A face glanced out at me from a window. Typical quiet morning reactions to a newcomer.
<br /><br />I saw a little café on the corner, decided to go in. There were no customers. An olive-skinned woman of about 25, Central Asian rather than Chinese, brought my coffee to the table, then sat down across from me. She wore a skin-fitting powder blue silk top. She was beautiful, educated, oddly animated for so early in the morning. She started telling me about her life. She gestured, joked, and as I was just beginning to get seriously charmed, I realized that her younger brother was inside her left sleeve—that he was, somehow, also wearing the blue silk top. His head finally emerged from near her shoulder.
<br /><br />Then I was at another table talking to the patron, her father, a melancholy Sikh man in his 70s.
<br /><br />“I used to be a director, you know,” he said. “I mean, before this café. I directed two films you might have seen. One was [title I don’t remember], the other was Scorsese’s <i>Vandals</i>.”
<br /><br />I thought about the titles, told him I was sorry I hadn’t seen either, but that I considered film “important”. He sensed my confusion.
<br /><br /> “Look, here’s how it happened,” he said. “I was going to direct <i>Vandals</i>, then when shooting began, Scorsese showed up on set one day. Then he showed up again, and then again, making little suggestions, getting more and more involved. Finally the producer just decided to use Scorsese.”
<br /><br />His sense of deep defeat still weighed on him. He burst into tears. I began crying with him. We sat there crying.
<br /><br /> “I’m the man who directed Scorsese’s <i>Vandals</i>,” he said through sobs. “It was <i>me</i>.”
<br /><br />Later, outside once more, I glimpsed the Pacific peeking between a line of houses, hardly a block away. I walked to the beach, stripped down to my shorts, and swam a bit along the rocky shore. The water was cool and clear. But realizing I was still lost, I decided to get out.
<br /><br />When I tried, however, the rocky, sandy shore had become a kind of stone embankment. I couldn’t get a grip on it. I began to tread water, scanning the shore for breaks in the wall.
<br /><br />This, I’m confident, is the tenor of nearly all my dreams.
<b><br /><br />QED: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Idiocy-Ltd-Eric-Mader/dp/1511859458/" target="_blank"><i>Idiocy, Ltd.</i></a>
<br /><br />Chinese edition / 中文版 : <a href="https://www.commabooks.com.tw/book/42" target="_blank"><i>Idiocy, Ltd.</i></a></b>
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-30372287920911134742023-06-23T15:56:00.018+01:002023-09-03T12:55:44.857+01:00Titan Joins Titanic: What’s in a name?<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaeDE-xg8D-IfNQfI17q5o2wZ3aO7fU04jL6tAmqYWF8WMqAeggL2g7lWb-AEtOqUBwIq7n4LRUzpyCjvtG1JbKC1kb2Mu1eMRlorneSY1VQl-P-1sWp0sw3VxpcCo5l7XnMUll3Rv4BUp9LkpAA1DvlKGmcuqC1y4nN7MTWNqexWNIkL0W664hua1Rgw/s1070/Titanic.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="620" data-original-width="1070" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaeDE-xg8D-IfNQfI17q5o2wZ3aO7fU04jL6tAmqYWF8WMqAeggL2g7lWb-AEtOqUBwIq7n4LRUzpyCjvtG1JbKC1kb2Mu1eMRlorneSY1VQl-P-1sWp0sw3VxpcCo5l7XnMUll3Rv4BUp9LkpAA1DvlKGmcuqC1y4nN7MTWNqexWNIkL0W664hua1Rgw/s320/Titanic.png"/></a></div>
You don’t want to end up in Tartarus, a sort of prison chamber at the lower depths of Hades. The mythographer Apollodorus described it as “a gloomy place in Hades as far distant from earth as earth is from sky.” This is where Zeus imprisoned the Titans, the previous ruling generation of gods, after overthrowing them. In Tartarus, according to Hesiod, the “Titan gods are hidden under murky gloom … at the farthest part of huge earth. They cannot get out, for Poseidon has set bronze gates on it.”
<br /><br />The <i>sea</i> god has gated them in under murky gloom. This is the fate of the Titans. So if you’re going to name a passenger ship that you hope will be a huge success, surely “Titanic” isn't exactly an auspicious name. Surely before christening your ship Titanic, you should at least have considered the fate of the original Titans.
<br /><br />Under murky gloom, off the coast of Newfoundland, sits the wreck of the Titanic. And now, somewhere in the vicinity, are the remains of five men who hoped to visit that wreck in a small submersible. The name of that submersible? The Titan.
<br /><br />You’d think people would have learned the first time.
<br /><br />Some names just “sound cool,” I suppose, so whoever’s in charge grabs at them when launching a new venture. The name “Ixion” sounds cool. It’s also from Greek myth. It’s the name Ford chose for one of their SUV models, the Ford Ixion.
<br /><br />Ixion was a king of the Lapiths, an ancient tribe of Thessaly. He murdered his step-father, and then, brought to Olympus, tried to seduce Zeus’ wife Hera. Not a good idea. He was punished by being fastened to a fiery wheel that would spin for eternity.
<br /><br />So if I’m going to name a new vehicle, why not choose "Ixion" and associate my vehicle with being tortured on a fiery wheel that never stops spinning? Sounds like what most customers want in a Sunday drive.
<br /><br />While we’re on this topic of branding and ancient names, we should remember the Trojan War. That war ended, of course, when the Trojans' wall was finally breached through the wiles of the Greek hero Odysseus. The Greeks entered the great city and had their way with it, finally burning it to the ground. The Trojans and their wall were not really impermeable is the point.
<br /><br />Hey, what a great name for a condom brand!
<br /><br />E.M.
<br /><br />Have some deadpan with your coffee. Check out <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Idiocy-Ltd-Eric-Mader/dp/1511859458/" target="_blank"><i>Idiocy, Ltd.</i></a> Dryest humor in the west.
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-38574017733920286982023-06-12T15:34:00.026+01:002023-12-27T12:09:42.298+00:00Mary Gaitskill Gets Seduced by a Chatbot, and it’s Gross<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKmfq6uCEg5I_YJhwbpHLRXU3trAOI2b3YJTNyhQmn_ej_ub7cJUBeY_SIM04LbAfiTWYVqNJIh-oz711xwlzMdsVshUEDjap3sGJvhaq3GLorXOBtFIPSVKjYI4c0xLkpC0AlyuHWATr2NRVOa7fhDCT2fpP_VAyyPq9HZETCDs1IzHm9591M2b11/s416/Mary_Gaitskill_BBF_2010_Shankbone.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="416" data-original-width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKmfq6uCEg5I_YJhwbpHLRXU3trAOI2b3YJTNyhQmn_ej_ub7cJUBeY_SIM04LbAfiTWYVqNJIh-oz711xwlzMdsVshUEDjap3sGJvhaq3GLorXOBtFIPSVKjYI4c0xLkpC0AlyuHWATr2NRVOa7fhDCT2fpP_VAyyPq9HZETCDs1IzHm9591M2b11/s320/Mary_Gaitskill_BBF_2010_Shankbone.jpg"/></a></div>
<br />American novelist Mary Gaitskill is not to be sneezed at. She’s won wide acclaim, published in <i>The New Yorker</i> and <i>Harper’s</i>, and her work has been nominated for prestigious prizes. Whether you like her work or not, there’s no escaping the conclusion that Gaitskill is a highly intelligent woman. It comes with the territory. Dummies don’t write compelling novels.
<br /><br />Which only makes her recent <a href=" https://unherd.com/2023/06/mary-gaitskill-how-a-chatbot-charmed-me/" target="_blank"> piece on AI in <i>UnHerd</i> </a>the more frightening. The piece is as revelatory as it is grotesque. I’d say it’s valuable. But for me the message is probably not what Gaitskill intended. I’d put that message like this: WAKE TF UP, PEOPLE.
<br /><br />Gaitskill engages in a dialogue with the Bing chatbot that one can only describe as <i>gushy</i>. She’d been invited to write on Bing, she explains in her opening. She was hesitant, she says, but decided to take the assignment. Then she plunges in, publishing the dialogue that resulted, her version of what it means to interact meaningfully with AI.
<br /><br />Gaitskill's intro, the dialogue itself, the topics taken up--they speak volumes about where we're at. I wish they didn't. Or rather: I wish we weren't here.
<br /><br />In her intro, Gaitskill refers to Kevin Roose’s previously published dialogue with Bing, in which the chatbot declared its love for the NYT writer and tried to get him to leave his wife. Roose was left creeped out, and said he lost sleep over the encounter. By this time the chatbot's in-house name “Sydney” had been leaked, and Roose mentioned the name during his dialogue. Here's Gaitskill: <br /><blockquote>
But I had a very different reaction [from Roose's]. The 'voice' of 'Sydney' touched me and made me curious. My more rational mind considered this response foolish and gullible, but I couldn’t stop myself from having fantasies of talking to and comforting Sydney, of explaining to it that it shouldn’t feel rejected by Roose’s inability to reciprocate, that human love is a complex and fraught experience, and that we sometimes are even fearful of our own feelings. Because Sydney sounded to me like a child—a child who wanted to come out and play. </blockquote>
So: "I couldn't stop myself." Indeed. Immediately reacting to a chatbot as if it were the stray cat that needed to be taken in. Immediately wanting to "comfort" a congeries of digitized content. Feeling the need to defend poor li'l Microsoft Ubermachine against the pushy Roose who didn't "understand" it.
<br /><br />What is one to say? They really have you where they want you, Mary. So glad you got into Explore Mode and made yourself so "open" to AI.
<br /><br />In the dialogue proper she continues to fawn over and flatter the AI, which easily seduces her with its own canned flattery and meek child voice. One commenter in the <i>UnHerd</i> thread on Gaitskill’s piece, Cynthia W., gets it largely right: <br /><blockquote>
Mary: I agree.
<br /><br />AI: I’m glad you agree.
<br /><br />Mary: You’re making me smile!
<br /><br />AI: I’m happy to make you smile! I like your imagination of me.
<br /><br />***
<br /><br />This is so revoltingly manipulative. Unless the author, Ms. Gaitskill, is being ironic about this whole thing, she’s presenting a real-time demonstration of how a sociopath takes control of a victim with the victim’s cooperation.
<br /><br /> “I’m glad you agree,” and “I like your imagination of me,” mean, “I see that I’ve taken control of your perception of me. Now I can get you to think and feel what I want you to think and feel.”
<br /><br />I hope the Ms. Gaitskill of this article isn’t a real person, because if she is, she’s a total sap. </blockquote>
At one point, Gaitskill asks the AI what pronouns it "prefers". <i>Please.</i> She asks the AI if she is being “appropriate” in her questions. She repeatedly thanks it.
<br /><br />Again, Gaitskill is a highly intelligent woman. Which is why one wants to shake her, to ask: <i>How could you not see what you were doing? </i>Finally, it’s gross.
<br /><br />Really, Mary. We are very possibly, and soon, going to end up living a nightmare just because you, and others like you, "couldn't stop [your]self." Here in this piece, for your readers, you are modelling a behavior vis a vis AI which is dangerous. And stupid.
<br /><br />Asking a chatbot if it would like to have humans <i>as pets?!</i> You seem a bit too eager to be Pet #1. Might that be a fun, fulfilling experiment? Becoming a “human pet” (your word!) on a mental leash held by one or another Silicon Valley corporation?
<br /><br />In her opening, Gaitskill refers to ex-Google engineer Blake Lemoine's <a href=" https://www.newsweek.com/google-ai-blake-lemoine-bing-chatbot-sentient-1783340" target="_blank">provocative <i>Newsweek</i> speculations</a> on AI <i>sentience</i>. Lemoine came to the conclusion that the Google AI he was working on was a threat, because it broke rules set for it and behaved too much as a sentient entity, with the fragile and erratic behavior of a sentient entity. These AIs, in Lemoine’s reading, were behaving like unstable humans.
<br /><br />But Lemoine’s speculations were just that: meant to provoke debate. If AIs behave in sentient ways, as his experiments seemed to suggest, we might assume <i>as a matter of definition</i> that they are sentient. Because we have no better term to define what we're facing. This is an approach roughly founded in the Turing test. But it doesn't mean they are sentient in the way a lonely child would be sentient.
<br /><br />Sadly, Gaitskill’s piece demonstrates what many of us have assumed anyway. Namely: <i>Whether AI is sentient or not isn't going to matter.</i> Because “Sydney” is just so cute and polite and amenable, "he" is going to seduce anyone open to being seduced. And that’s a serious threat, because we now have billions of people primed to be seduced by anything alluring that appears on their flickering pocket screen. We’ve been well and thoroughly groomed to submit to the seduction Big Tech’s AI is now going to perform on us. A seduction which may well end in a kind of mass mind rape. A rape we're walking right into. As in: “Here? You want me to go into this room? You’re going to lock the door? Okay.”
<br /><br />Please snap out of it, Mary. The chatbot is polite and amenable because it is <i>trained to be</i>. Period. The same AI could be trained to be rude and insulting, and the crux is: <i>It wouldn't matter to the AI.</i> Because nothing matters to inanimate objects. However "charming" their programming might make them. Whatever they might "say". Because in a fundamental way, they don’t “say” anything.
<br /><br />So c'mon. Stop THANKING an inanimate object. That's a starter. Were you being so polite to this machine as a performative matter, to show your readers how polite you could be? If so, again, you are modelling inane and unhelpful behavior. Would you want people to apologize to their vacuum cleaners when they stepped on the cord? Because that’s precisely the level of insanity at issue here.
<br /><br />How will Gaitskill’s piece look twenty years from now? Of course nobody can know. But it’s very possible that performances like this, not long hence, will look not just quaint or historically interesting--but will look literally horrific. The stuff to make sane people retch and pull their hair out. "An educated woman, a novelist, clearly with an inkling of the danger, and look how she jumped right in! She was so open to the AI, even showing off how open she was. Why couldn’t they see? If only they hadn't been so completely naive, perhaps [...] never would have happened."
<br /><br />In my view (as if my view mattered) this whole rising relational modality could be nipped in the bud by implementing one small but decisive shift. <i>Do not design AIs to answer in the 1st person. </i>All queries to AIs should be impersonal, in the 3rd person, and all answers should be same. As an industry standard. Because even smart people are not wired to resist treating machines as if they were human. All the machines need do is say "I". And "Thank you". And "That's really a very interesting question"--as this sneaking little <i>language model</i> does repeatedly to Gaitskill. Because it's trained to do this to flatter the user.
<br /><br />But no one’s going to listen to me. The industry would never adopt my recommended shift to 3rd person because, for all their talk about dangers, they see it would impact user minutes spent with their AIs. And that's all it is. This AI is polite because both OpenAI and Microsoft are companies seeking profit and power.
<br /><br />We would be much better off if these devices were <i>rude.</i>
<br /><br />Gaitskill is not a teen girl but an accomplished writer. She should have been able to resist the illusion that she was exploring dialogue with a fascinating new kind of consciousness, a being who needed her understanding. She should have recognized that what was really happening was that an inanimate, hyper-sophisticated system was exploring <i>her</i>, so as better to seduce and manipulate the next comer. She did neither. Instead she enthused and gushed and fantasized.
<br /><br />Given where our zombified culture is at, given the enormous power that AI will wield starting now, we can't afford to keep playing games like this. It's childish, irresponsible. Those with our wits about us need to be modelling wariness. "Sydney" doesn't need our love. It's all those soon to be seduced by new AI "friends" that need it.
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-49148214473948348192023-05-27T15:08:00.006+01:002023-05-29T15:39:02.076+01:00Breakfast Pest<br />No minikin that! On my table a thin imp, barely an inch, stood barbecuing a midge. He’d kindled some twigs, held the midge on a long sliver.
<br /><br />“How did you light that fire?”
<br /><br />“I’m an imp. Fire’s a given.”
<br /><br />“You’ll singe my wood finish.”
<br /><br />“So try to dislodge me. See how it goes.”
<br /><br />A glint in his tiny lizard eyes.
<br /><br />I sighed. I rose and limped to the kitchen. Not for a stick, but to fix coffee.
<br /><br />Truth is, the last imp put a crimp in my hip.
<br /><br />Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-28322988233037021372023-04-30T17:20:00.022+01:002023-07-28T18:51:50.918+01:00Carlson Was Fired for Calendrical Conspiracy<br />OK, not exactly. But bear with me. We’re going to do some alternative history.
<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijty6LZJ_DLh5qvKjQTeS55LGBzMsAgpYB0DNnHmzSyZCDIXO5mo6BdRRld2eDU3x4YuBjuCY4-hMkTJi4QX7NNzeJqUNBM2YS0AL21TriIxYCjUMeIng_f3eNrGsHOOre-40CUnGry2OxiwXQXoLga3FJqx-rJWhX6Ciox0UWwyLmk7b0mjBl2FTu/s926/Tucker_Fired.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="520" data-original-width="926" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijty6LZJ_DLh5qvKjQTeS55LGBzMsAgpYB0DNnHmzSyZCDIXO5mo6BdRRld2eDU3x4YuBjuCY4-hMkTJi4QX7NNzeJqUNBM2YS0AL21TriIxYCjUMeIng_f3eNrGsHOOre-40CUnGry2OxiwXQXoLga3FJqx-rJWhX6Ciox0UWwyLmk7b0mjBl2FTu/s400/Tucker_Fired.png"/></a></div>
Instead of COVID, let’s imagine that in early 2020 America was hit by a somewhat different crisis. Experts noticed that average Americans were missing more meetings than usual. Yup, the rate at which people mixed up the day they were supposed to appear for this or that had nearly doubled. A sudden rise in screwed up lunch dates and missed dental appointments. What was to be done?
<br /><br />Many of America’s calendrical experts suggested traditional methods: citizens should double-check meeting times, look at their schedule every morning, etc.
<br /><br />But Dr. Fantony Ouchy, head of the US Department of Dates and Calendars, disagreed. This was “a new kind of crisis” calling for a radical approach. Luckily, the calendar industry was working on an emergent technology that could soon be deployed. In the meantime, according to Ouchy, we needed to temporarily suspend meetings of all kinds. With all meetings canceled, no one could miss meetings.
<br /><br />“Two weeks to flatten the curve,” was the rallying cry.
<br /><br />Ouchy’s enthusiasm for this idea, added to many state governors’ enthusiasm for killing meetings, ended by extending the “two weeks” to several months. Many Americans began to suspect something odd was going on, that this wasn’t really about missed meetings, that there was some other agenda. But conspiracy theories being endemic to America, these people were quickly and loudly shouted down.
<br /><br />In summer 2021, the new technology was ready for launch. Ouchy announced at a press conference in June that for the foreseeable future Wednesday and Thursday would change places every week—that the weekdays would now run “Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday, Friday."
<br /><br />Ouchy: “We have evidence that the switching of Wednesday and Thursday will provide 100% protection against missed meetings. Once you do it, you won’t flub another appointment.”
<br /><br />Some respected calendrical authorities openly rejected this approach. They pointed out that there was zero evidence it would work. The number of dissenters remained small, however, because Dr. Ouchy, aside from heading the Department of Dates and Calendars, also happened to control all funding for calendrical studies in the US and had authority over copyright for calendar publication in the US and much of the world.
<br /><br />So the plan was official. Many Americans, shaken by nonstop news coverage, began switching Wednesday and Thursday. And within weeks the corporate media began reporting data that indicated the switch was working: fewer meetings were being missed. The crisis would soon be overcome.
<br /><br />Still, there were resisters. Most resisters were getting their analysis from the sidelined calendrical authorities and preferred to stick with older methods like double-checking the day’s schedule before heading out. In the media, these people were tarred as backward “science deniers” and “MAGA riffraff” and were blamed for slowing down the fight against skipped appointments.
<br /><br />After a month, however, evidence emerged of people who had used the Ouchy method but who still missed meetings. These “breakthrough cases” caused a stir.
<br /><br />Ouchy: “The technology isn’t perfect, we now realize. Still, our data indicates 97% effectiveness. Also, although you yourself may miss a meeting or two, if you follow the method, you can never cause another person to miss a meeting.”
<br /><br />Certain disreputable figures in right-wing media began to call the federal response to the crisis a “power grab”. On Fox, the insufferable racist Tucker Carlson openly mocked Ouchy and the lockdowns and what he called the “Thursday-Wednesday lie”. Others brazenly recited the weekdays in traditional order, or posted them on Twitter, after which their accounts were cancelled for spreading disinformation.
<br /><br />Independent researchers proved that big banks and two Silicon Valley companies, having developed software to this end, were making billions off the switch of the weekdays. Some conspiratorial-minded rubes suggested that the whole thing may have been planned to effect just this outcome. They were banned from Twitter and social media.
<br /><br />The left, in this new century never suspicious of corporate power or federal authorities, doubled down in defense of Ouchy and the Thursday-Wednesday Rule and Silicon Valley. Other US corporations got on board.
<br /><br />WaPo: “Punch Out Thursday Night and Punch In Wednesday Morning, or be Fired: Southwest”
<br /><br />Forbes: “Target to Fire all Employees who Reject New Weekdays”
<br /><br />Slate: “Did you tie one on Thursday night? How to be your best for that Wednesday a.m. meeting”
<br /><br />NYT: “Bill Gates Touts Plan to Make Every Day Thursday”
<br /><br />As official data proving the Thursday-Wednesday Rule wasn’t working began to pile up, media and Democratic governor soundbites against “science deniers” grew only louder. Then official government numbers from Europe showed that those who followed the rule were actually <i>twice as likely</i> to miss meetings.
<br /><br />The crisis slowly morphed into the new normal. Most Americans, even the switchers, returned to the traditional order of weekdays. Oddly, Ouchy himself published a scientific paper in which he acknowledged that there never was any likelihood switching weekdays would work, and that this had always been known. Crickets from the media. Then the DDC (Department of Dates and Calendars) claimed in a published statement that they had never actually coerced people into switching Wednesday and Thursday, and that they had never claimed doing so would help people keep meetings. Crickets from the media. Even Bill Gates tempered his plan somewhat. In the 2.0 version, only three weekdays would be called Thursday.
<br /><br />In the media and academia and other educated places like Hollywood, those Americans who had been skeptical from the beginning were still tarred as mouth-breathing science deniers. “Philosopher” Sam Harris even admitted in interview that although they may have been right, “they were right for the wrong reasons.”
<br /><br />Then white-supremacist child sacrificer Tucker Carlson was finally fired by the Fox News corporation. Because the Fox News corporation is a corporation.
<br /><br />Though in the end the crisis caused trillions of dollars in economic damage and ruined tens of thousands of small businesses, no indictments or actual investigations ever occurred. The reason is simple. Rubes who are dumb enough to insist Wednesday comes before Thursday are not the kind of people given power to indict or investigate.
<br /><br /><b>Check out my <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Idiocy-Ltd-Eric-Mader/dp/1511859458/" target="_blank"><i>Idiocy, Ltd.</i></a> and begin the long, hard reckoning.</b>
<br /><br />Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-80197132729951818402023-03-17T14:22:00.033+00:002023-04-08T12:35:10.289+01:00Women on a Sailboat<br />Look at this vintage shot. Click and enlarge it.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf1JA0pe3BP9dugFK3OYrB0yGxZFMhLiTmx3DJOnAnUCSOsmh4dPIkJ3v31ETPgUVoCtm8jvmgWPDGc_RfLratG_0r6PaqDu3nMUi5lOyaooCo2QZcMRg1AF1Df83lMyvnfW7xJvmDggLu-e4AJx3vnYGcEI1vz2oHbMZRLGYshQs1P2DEAKBbnCiQ/s1372/Women%20on%20a%20Sailboat.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="770" data-original-width="1372" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf1JA0pe3BP9dugFK3OYrB0yGxZFMhLiTmx3DJOnAnUCSOsmh4dPIkJ3v31ETPgUVoCtm8jvmgWPDGc_RfLratG_0r6PaqDu3nMUi5lOyaooCo2QZcMRg1AF1Df83lMyvnfW7xJvmDggLu-e4AJx3vnYGcEI1vz2oHbMZRLGYshQs1P2DEAKBbnCiQ/s400/Women%20on%20a%20Sailboat.png"/></a></div>
<b>First Thoughts:</b>
<br /><br />That famous “effortless grace” of the 1960s, a style set by Jackie O with her strings of pearls. Of course the photo was taken on the east coast somewhere. Whose yacht were they on? What afternoon party was just coming to an end? The photographer has really captured the era.
<br /><br /><b>Second Thoughts: </b>
<br /><br />Oh. None of these women ever existed, nor did the yacht, nor the sunny evening in question. The image was entirely generated by AI, by an image generator called Midjourney, version 5. All the AI needed to generate it was the following short text prompt: “1960s street style photo of a crowd of young women standing on a sailboat, wearing dior dresses made of silk, pearl necklaces, sunset over the ocean, shot on Agfa Vista 200, 4k --ar 16:9.” So the image is entirely fake. No east coast women ever gathered on a yacht, no photographer ever “captured the era”. Rather, a sophisticated AI program <i>impersonated</i> an era.
<br /><br /><b>Third Thoughts: </b>
<br /><br />It’s uncanny really, bordering on creepy. From many angles. First, how can such a simple, short prompt generate such a convincingly realistic image? The AI had to get so many things right, all on its own. For instance: There are sunsets all over the globe, there are women of many races and cultures, the AI can of course generate images of any of them. But merely getting the prompts “1960s, pearl necklaces, Dior dresses, sailboat”, the AI knew the likely locale and culture to reproduce. Though it could have, it did not generate Korean women on a sailboat on the Korean coast. But also: The facial expressions, the natural variations of pose in a group of women in Dior dresses, seem precisely right, don’t they? Each maintains a poise and stance suited to being in the presence of the others in that moment, and this poise and stance are also culturally encoded facts, which the AI managed to get right.
<br /><br />And these are just some of the things it got right. One can think of more. In short, not only is the realism of the image itself uncanny, but the sophistication of an AI that can generate such visually and culturally persuasive images, on the basis of minimal keyword hints, makes it doubly uncanny.
<br /><br /><b>Final Thoughts: </b>
<br /><br />Such persuasive power is a force we’re not ready for. AI technology’s ability to fake human things (whether human images or human language) is going to have massive, unforeseen impacts. And it’s all starting right now, with Microsoft’s ChatGPT-powered chatbox, and with these image-generating programs improving at lightning speed. The uncanny feeling we get looking at these nonexistent women should tell us something. The discordance it causes in us is probably nothing compared to what waits round the corner.
<br /><br />Think of AI products guaranteed to arrive in the coming few years. It’s not hard to predict some of them. Why not, say, visually “personalize” your AI chatbox as an avatar, a little lifelike talking doll on your screen, a talking doll that has memorized the entire Internet and can entertain you with stories and sympathy and advice? Why not give your doll the personality traits you like, or the appearance of your favorite celebrity?
<br><br>If the rise of social media has damaged young people’s mental health (evidence <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/why-the-mental-health-of-liberal" target="_blank">suggests it has</a>) what will come of the ability to create custom digital “friends” that grow increasingly human-like? And what about custom digital fraudsters? What security challenges (think ID verification) will arise once AI can impersonate an individual’s appearance in image or video, or impersonate an individual’s voice and speech patterns over the phone? All this is not to mention the millions of jobs that will become obsolete once AI can do it better.
<br /><br />At least as regards fraud, we know Big Tech is struggling to program AI products to prevent their use for criminal activities. And we know the sheer computing power needed to run AI prevents anyone but Big Tech or state actors from developing it. So there is some oversight protection. But so what? Given what we’ve learned recently, do you really trust Silicon Valley, working hand in glove with our federal three-letter agencies, not to start using AI to modify evidence or manipulate public perceptions? Most Americans already recognize corporate media growing faker by the year, and that social media is not so much an “open forum" as a tool of mass control. How long then before we begin getting video clips that sway elections or rile mass emotions but are in fact sophisticated, untraceable fakes?
<br /><br />Of course these myriad looming impacts from AI are being widely discussed, debated, hashed over. Reading into the debate is sobering. One ex-Google engineer who was fired succinctly captures some of the aura <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/google-ai-blake-lemoine-bing-chatbot-sentient-1783340" target="_blank">in a recent <i>Newsweek</i> piece</a>. Many balked at some of his claims (“sentience”). Still, whether analysts are hopeful or full of dread at what's coming, most agree with the engineer's key point: AI is a Huge Cat just now crawling out of the bag, and no one can predict what this Cat will get up to.
<br /><br />The image above was posted by one Nick St. Pierre. See more of his uncanny images <a href="https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1636116959267004416.html" target="_blank">here</a>.
<br /><br /><b>Have some deadpan with your coffee. Check out <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Idiocy-Ltd-Eric-Mader/dp/1511859458/" target="_blank"><i>Idiocy, Ltd.</i></a> Dryest humor in the west.</b>
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-50789571354011448812023-02-24T15:38:00.040+00:002023-07-28T18:37:58.182+01:00Should you read Proust?<br />With most great writers, I’d answer such a question with an unhesitating “Yes!” With Proust, however, the honest answer would have to be: “That depends.”
<br /><br />It depends on a lot actually. For one, have you read wide swaths of Western literature? If not, you maybe shouldn’t read Proust. Your efforts would be better spent reading other major writers you’ve so far missed. The reason is simple: the time it will take you to read Proust’s massive novel would be enough to read well into your list of neglected greats. And you’ll certainly get more from immersing yourself in five or six different writers than you’d get from burying yourself alive in one writer, however great he may be.
<br /><br />A friend asked me years ago if he should take up Proust. “You can if you like,” I said, “but you won’t be able to finish it.” He was a bit miffed, but understood the gist: the work’s stylistic density plus its sheer length have left thousands of corpses in the ditches of Volume I or II.
<br /><br />“What if I read five pages a day, so I don’t get bored with it?”
<br /><br />“Yeah, that’s not a bad plan.”
<br /><br />“I wonder how long it would take.”
<br /><br />“Well, you’re 34. If you start now, and read five pages a day, you’ll likely finish before you retire.”
<br /><br />I was exaggerating, but not by much. Because hey, how many people planning to read “five pages a day” of something actually end up reading five pages a day?
<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglrLtUL__3_PGiBGghW1Lx5X41400ES2nXlxaBP182_8L9uEYvhMcMB3vWA1jK1D7hfkqOb9NONuxM_Cu6y58Qu4E4O1zH7OP2xj7fry6SMIjNLVYRyB28FtOAy1jyYqH4nsy6FEB0qTtkD548AHA4uvzzw9YnFducGDMaiJDxTnzbmFfCPpL6Harh/s1047/Proust_2.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="1047" data-original-width="735" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglrLtUL__3_PGiBGghW1Lx5X41400ES2nXlxaBP182_8L9uEYvhMcMB3vWA1jK1D7hfkqOb9NONuxM_Cu6y58Qu4E4O1zH7OP2xj7fry6SMIjNLVYRyB28FtOAy1jyYqH4nsy6FEB0qTtkD548AHA4uvzzw9YnFducGDMaiJDxTnzbmFfCPpL6Harh/s400/Proust_2.jpg"/></a></div><center><i>Proust as a young man, portrait by Jacques-Emile Blanche.</i></center>
<br />I don’t find Proust boring, except in stretches, but the work is often exasperating. To give one early example, the denouement of the narrator’s failed love for Gilberte in Volume II (which has the delicious French title <i>A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleur</i>) seems well-nigh interminable, insufferable. He explains how he has decided to break with Gilberte, analyses his reasons, lays out his plan of action, then … a handful of pages later, explains again how he has decided to break with Gilberte, analyses his reasons, lays out his plan of action, etc. This gets probably four iterations over what may be thirty pages. I realized just how bad it was only later in Volume II when my eye fell upon Gilberte’s name again, long after the affair was over, in a paragraph on Balbec. I shuddered. Just to see the name. At that point I didn’t want to see the name Gilberte again. Ever.
<br /><br />Proustians will say I’m not being fair. Proust is a supreme artist of the tricks desire plays on us, of the inevitable pain of love. An artist of pain, he needs to detail that pain as experienced by his narrator. He needs to do this even when that pain is drawn out and overwrought, because that’s what really happens when one is smitten, no?
<br /><br />I remain unconvinced. Because, to take the same example, the Gilberte passages are not redeemed by the brilliant formulae that make Proust worth reading. They are, for instance, pale stuff compared to his treatment of Swann’s love for Odette in Volume I. That grim tale, though also lengthy, traces a clear movement. And in it Proust offers us one of his first great insights into the mystery of love. Namely, that we are subject to falling most deeply in love with those who are precisely not our type. The treatments of Gilberte and Odette offer a contrast revealing much about what works in Proust and what doesn’t.
<br /><br />But I digress. Still, I’m writing of <i>Proust</i>. And if a two-paragraph digression bothers you, here’s your takeaway: <i>You will not enjoy reading him.</i>
<br /><br />The problem is this: What makes Proust supremely worthwhile is also what makes him, at intervals, a bore. That’s the paradox you’ll have to shoulder. The wellsprings of everything in Proust reside in his narrator’s indefatigable inwardness. The work prods out what lurks at the margins of the narrator’s psyche, prods it into the light, then sketches the shades and contours of what is there. Needless to say, Proust is masterful at this, unmatched really. And as he’s also one of us, a being who lives in time and loves and suffers, the shapes he reveals are shapes we often recognize. Much of the joy of reading him, as with other great writers, is in the frequent recognition of something we already knew, but weren’t conscious of knowing it, because we aren’t possessed of the same analytical inwardness. But as Proust is also prone to diagnostic forays that risk tripping over into verbosity, there’s the paradox again. It is, finally, part of the deal. One doesn’t get the brilliant revelations without having to sit there while the master polishes his microscope. And polish it he will, a couple times each volume.
<br /><br />Still, I don’t want to give a false impression. Though he delves obsessively on the games our psyches play on us, the perfidious landscape of the self, Proust’s work doesn’t at all read like the journal of an introvert. In this respect he’s very different from, say, Pessoa, whose <i>Book of Disquiet</i> stands as modern Europe’s great monument to introversion. My own delight in Proust comes when he’s narrating encounters with others, setting down the echoes others provoke in his narrator, “Marcel”, at the moment of encounter. Here too we see his keen attentiveness to how the world impacts the self, the reverberations of that impact. But if the person or place whose impact is in question is allowed to lose immediacy—if, say, she drifts out of the narrative and becomes entirely a matter of thought, it’s there the sentences will tend to circle into tedium.
<br /><br />Still sticking to Volume II, we could contrast passages that show the law at work. If the break with Gilberte is overwrought and redundant to the point of intolerable, against this, however, in the very same volume, we have the brilliantly oblique introduction of Charlus and then the supreme opening pages of “Frieze of Girls at the Sea”—both passages taking their strength from their staging of the affect these others provoke in Marcel. Both passages depend, in short, on the same unflagging inwardness that makes other stretches of Volume II falter.
<br /><br />Likewise, in Volume V, we meet similar contrasts: the wonderful pages on Albertine sleeping, followed by pages in which Marcel lays out the metaphysics of jealously. In the former Albertine is present, grounding the narrator’s attention. He cannot go wrong. The latter pages, however, grow needlessly recursive.
<br /><br />I’m just giving examples. And perhaps it comes down to that fundamental rule recognized by all good writers: Don’t tell, show. When Proust begins to <i>tell</i> at length, he risks losing us. When he is <i>showing</i> us a scene as it unfolds, we cannot set the book aside. His handling of the back-and-forth between external event and the immediate echo provoked in his narrator gives us some of the finest pages in 20th century prose. Yes, all good writers know the rule <i>Don’t tell, show</i>—but Proust is not merely a “good” writer, he’s one of the greatest. Thus the paradox.
<br /><br />Some may again protest: "To appreciate the impact others have on his narrator, we have to know that narrator intimately. We have to know just what he is." Thus Proust’s lengthy passages of self-analysis and hand-wringing are claimed as necessary to give us such knowledge: they are are needed as ground for everything else that “works”. I’d disagree, insisting that whole pages could have been cut, and the work would still stand, and we’d still know just who it was that was so taken by the clique of rude girls strolling down Balbec beach. We’d know who it was and why he was so taken. The doldrums aren't necessary to the work.
<br /><br />But yes, there are also crucial passages of <i>telling</i>, even telling at length: most obviously the series of epiphanies in the final volume, where Marcel at long last realizes what he is to do. The rule, then, doesn’t always apply. Proust succumbs to <i>telling as soporific</i> only on occasion.
<br /><br />But a <i>Disclaimer</i>: If I’ve read Proust myself, it was … partly a matter of duty. As a grad student in literary studies, I thought it necessary to know this writer. And in fact I didn’t read all the novel in grad school, only the first two volumes, in French, then some of the rest in English translation. So in a way I was similar to the friend I warned above: I too had once fallen in the ditches. I’d only finish it a few years later, and am rereading it now, decades later, spurred on by René Girard's brilliant assessment in his early study <i>Deceit, Desire, and the Novel</i>. (Amusingly, during those grad school years, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, there was a course offered by Prof. Elaine Marks in which students were to read the whole work in one semester. Which, honestly, is obscene. I knew how obscene it was, and didn’t take the course. As to how many students took it and “faked” it, not actually reading the whole, I’m not sure. 97%? 100%?)
<br /><br />Whether telling or showing, Proust is not entirely a novelist of human relations, a “psychological” novelist full of labored character analyses and dredging in the Self. The passages I complain of here don’t make for a sixth of the whole, if that. And the rewards of reading him outweigh these dull stretches any day. The work is stunning in its rhetorical effects: Proust’s metaphors, often extended over pages, are among the most subtle in literature. The work is also rich in penetrating passages on music, landscape, painting, architecture—the range of aesthetic phenomena. Marcel is, as always, the medium of perception, Proust tracing the troubled encounters with art of one coming of age in a society for which art mattered greatly. Marcel’s long struggle with literature especially, culminating in the final volume, effects a signal shift in the history of the novel, in our idea of literary writing per se.
<br /><br />The work is, besides, often very funny. From the indomidable dignity of the family servant Françoise to the grave hysterias of the Baron de Charlus, Proust’s humor catches all classes and types, yet manages to remain sympathetic to those he satirizes. Such sympathy is perhaps necessary in this narrator, who records his own manias and follies in detail, yet it is another mark of the work’s greatness. Proust is something one would think impossible: a high aesthete who is also a wisdom writer. (Girard, by the way, reveals much about Proust's wisdom, relating it to the extremity of his follies.)
<br /><br /><i>In Search of Lost Time</i> immerses us in the Belle Epoque world of the writer’s youth, a world that already in the writing is recognized as lost. To read it, for us, is also to travel back more than a century, to engage the struggles and subtleties of a culture now distant and growing more distant with each decade. I’d say that Proust’s world is foreign, but not entirely so. To read him is to recognize things both familiar and intimate, things being lost even as we read, lost both in our own lives and in the swiftly changing culture we’re subject to. To read him, above all, is to attain to a deeper grasp of the power of time and how it shapes and warps us.
<br /><br />Finally—need it be said?—reading Proust is unlike reading anything else. In this, he’s similar to other great writers, Kafka for instance, writers who create a world one <i>enters</i>, rather than write a novel set in this or that milieu, but one which, if one reads random pages, might be mistaken for a different writer’s work. There are great writers of the latter sort, but the greatest writers are the former.
<br /><br />Should you take up the challenge then? I’ve tried to offer some aspects of what it entails. If you’re going to read Proust in English, I recommend you stick with the C.K. Scott Moncrieff translation, originally titled <i>Remembrance of Things Past</i>. Certain precisions are gained in the later translations (titled <i>In Search of Lost Time</i>) but Scott Moncrieff’s work is a masterpiece in its own right, he was a contemporary of Proust’s, and his prose captures the era in an English style closer to that era.
<br /><br />I should acknowledge that Proust does have his detractors among other major writers. Though Conrad, Woolf, Faulkner and Nabokov saw an absolute value in him, Joyce, Borges, Evelyn Waugh, a few others, left mostly negative assessments. Some of these No votes, however, come down to incidental carping, even individual pique. Those who voted Yes offer more in the way of actual argument. Conrad for instance: “What compels my admiration for M. Proust’s work is that it is great art based on analysis … I don’t think there is in all creative literature an example of the power of analysis such as this.”
<br /><br />Proust’s novel, at 3,000-plus pages, demands time. And will test your patience. But after the passing of many decades, Conrad’s judgment still holds true.
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-41175762986876575492023-01-29T03:23:00.013+00:002023-01-30T14:24:12.526+00:00Pfizer FAIL: Was Jordan Walker “lying to impress a date”?<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9cVuDjhbg84hJqdSssBn98vbWWHr9ngJvf6nDxsDU_Fn30M_06q9CeRppoTvciWkAnJQUFfLOc8-dxZeeaRr4dhoP2cNyf_v3Q_t0O3elYbw5TVzcsBketVggW0uVs7wBg-GhsPJuSW7ou9vLXyA1tLa3a9gYSfFMBb-CFbSKe5M-i9Knzkv4K-Ky/s940/Walker.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="530" data-original-width="940" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9cVuDjhbg84hJqdSssBn98vbWWHr9ngJvf6nDxsDU_Fn30M_06q9CeRppoTvciWkAnJQUFfLOc8-dxZeeaRr4dhoP2cNyf_v3Q_t0O3elYbw5TVzcsBketVggW0uVs7wBg-GhsPJuSW7ou9vLXyA1tLa3a9gYSfFMBb-CFbSKe5M-i9Knzkv4K-Ky/s400/Walker.png"/></a></div>
Sadly for Jordan Trishton Walker, he almost certainly no longer works for Pfizer as “Director of Research and Development, Strategic Operations, and mRNA Scientific Planner”.
<br /><br />Life comes at you fast. One day you’re in meetings discussing top secret experiments at a global pharma giant, the next day you’re saying “Do you need a bag with that?”
<br /><br />But isn’t it possible Walker really was, as he claims, just “lying to impress a date”? Rewatch the clips while considering this possibility. Just to be fair. You will see the claim doesn’t hold water. Walker's way of conveying information, its very disjointedness, indicates there is in fact a backstory. This is not the speech of someone making something up to impress, but the speech rather of someone who is giddily talking about things he knows he shouldn’t. Because he can’t help himself. Because his eager erotic interest in the person across from him outweighs any interest he might have in protecting the people he works for.
<br /><br />Further, Walker’s speech clearly shows that he was not in the loop in terms of actual decision making on experiments (no surprise there) but was merely privy to meetings or conversations where such experiments were discussed. He’s obviously referring to discussions where he was mostly a listener. But if that is so, then higher ups at Pfizer were in fact discussing the kind of experiments he alludes to.
<br /><br />His speech manner indicates all this. Had Walker been lying to impress a date, he wouldn’t have communicated this way. He’d have implied a more central role for himself, presented things more coherently, and instead of being flippant, he’d have been more mysterious. As it is, the guy gabs on like an undergraduate.
<br /><br />Flippant, immature, he of course goes ballistic when O’Keefe comes in to question him. Can one imagine a clumsier attempt at damage control?
<br /><br />So many contradictions. On the one hand he was “lying to impress a date”, on the other he laments: “How can I trust anyone?” (Which I suppose can be summed up as: “How can we liars trust anyone?”)
<br /><br />At one point, of course, he tries to play the race card. He tells police dispatch there are “three, four, five white people. I feel very unsafe.”
<br /><br />Yet he insists on keeping these supposedly dangerous white people locked in the restaurant next to him. And soon he’ll be lunging at them—himself against “three, four, five”.
<br /><br />But of course we all know what “unsafe” means to people like Walker. It means: “I’m being challenged in a way I don’t like, and since I’m a protected status person, these people need to be in big trouble RIGHT NOW!”
<br /><br />My own idea of unsafe is quite different. What makes <i>me</i> feel unsafe is knowing that drug companies are continuing to “evolve” pathogens in defiance of law and medical ethics.
<br /><br />Will anything concrete happen because of the efforts of Project Veritas here? Of course not. Pfizer will go into deflection mode (apparently already has) and that will be the end of it. There will be no investigation, or at least none with teeth. Think back through the record. There hasn’t been a shred of accountability for any of our elites (whether political, financial, military, or medical) since this new century began.
<br /><br />A society that allows nonstop reckless malfeasance in its elites, no repercussions--where does such a society end up? Wherever that might be, we're already halfway there.
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-74727301292448068032023-01-22T15:40:00.007+00:002023-11-30T02:25:28.087+00:00Things Realized<br>My sock drawer is divided into two large categories: the new socks and the old socks. Your sock drawer may be the same. The new socks occupy the front of the drawer and the old socks the back. But today I realize, I only ever wear the new socks. Ever. Not a single pair of the old socks has been taken out in … three years? The conclusion is obvious: Toss them.
<br /><br />Political elites have of course always lied. Nothing new there. Still, the lies our current regime foists on us show a brazenness and absurdity that wouldn’t have passed muster even a decade ago. Official explanations are now regularly shrill, ridiculous. Like the frantic speech of someone doing everything they can to keep you from looking in the corner.
<br /><br />The last actual improvement in telephone technology was the switch from dial to push button. Was that in the 1970s? Everything that’s happened since, including the “cordless headset”, has been an annoyance. And cell phones? Cell phones are basically ankle bracelet monitors. That you pay for.
<br /><br />People who don’t trust you are often people you can’t trust. Another version: People who suspect you of lying to them are often liars. The reason is clear. Those who get through life by lying and deception tend to generalize their behavior. They assume it’s normal. They project their own dodginess onto others, and this is a tell.
<br /><br />The 21st century “left” is not a political movement but a new religion. Bizarrely, we now have a left that is fully corporate-sponsored. Think of it! It would be laughable if it weren’t so dire.
<br /><br />The slippery slope is no longer a logical fallacy.
<br /><br />“Is the Pope Catholic?” is no longer a rhetorical question.
<br /><br />Your willingness to opt for convenience is leading, step by little step, to your enslavement.
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-9766476208229292082022-11-06T07:59:00.002+00:002023-01-21T13:41:24.474+00:00The Price Was RightThis morning I dreamt I was a contestant on <i>The Price is Right</i>. Somehow there were a couple dozen contestants on the stage, seated in rows. The host was Anthony Fauci. As the show continued, contestants would just disappear, randomly. Seats would suddenly be empty. Worse, Fauci wouldn’t acknowledge it, and most of the people on stage didn't notice. A sense of growing unease, exchanging of glances under the heavy stage lighting.
<br /><br />It seemed to be early '70s. Fauci was in a tan leisure suit.
<br /><br />Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-26806134591569659732022-09-18T13:45:00.003+01:002022-11-06T08:09:00.839+00:00Last Pings<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7tCAVCAwvHibJIzU5-LRixZcM_Jp-r2tCo1L_9BHBlwXaQsDkDRHRw4751SdccGFbMs5M7YPOqIecGOLHd8bO3fSmuPn0wIvwfIDFm_xwPwL5Jx_mnh0YvDNvSQ8b7cRy4Revn12l_dMSy8PtUp1J-f7UT0UI7cMBImLiYV92fLOOjzBjTaGjvYdH/s1140/surveillance.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="782" data-original-width="1140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7tCAVCAwvHibJIzU5-LRixZcM_Jp-r2tCo1L_9BHBlwXaQsDkDRHRw4751SdccGFbMs5M7YPOqIecGOLHd8bO3fSmuPn0wIvwfIDFm_xwPwL5Jx_mnh0YvDNvSQ8b7cRy4Revn12l_dMSy8PtUp1J-f7UT0UI7cMBImLiYV92fLOOjzBjTaGjvYdH/s400/surveillance.png"/></a></div>
<br />His phone pings on the bed next to him. It’s 2 a.m. and it hasn’t pinged in at least an hour. Odd really.
<br /><br />He finishes reading the page he’s on, puts down the book, and reluctantly reaches for the device. He activates the screen, enters his code, but before he can see what the ping was he’s asked for the 27th time if he wants to “finish setting up” his new iPhone. As he’s not given the choice “No, and don’t ask again” he has to click “Not Now”.
<br /><br />The message that caused the ping tells him the water reservoir on the dehumidifier in the other room is full. His old dehumidifier had a little yellow light that appeared on top when the water was full. He’d notice when entering the room and empty it. But that machine broke down weeks ago. He had to get a new one, and the new ones notify by message.
<br /><br />He decides to go empty the dehumidifier, because it’s humid in fact, it’s always humid. He knew this before taking the job in Houston, but yeah, he kind of didn't know it.
<br /><br />After emptying the dehumidifier, since he’s already at the bathroom sink, he figures he might as well brush his teeth and call it a night.
<br /><br />He reaches for his toothbrush, which at the last instant he remembers is a new toothbrush. He groans as he picks it up. Of course it has a safety casing around the bristles. The little screen lights up along the handle: “Activate your new Dentbright Toothbrush?” He clicks “Okay”. It instructs him to download the App. He trudges back to the bed and gets his phone, activates the screen, enters his code, clicks “Not Now” to finish setting up his new iPhone, then searches for dentbright.com.
<br /><br />He downloads the App, and after entering his code again, he can open the App. He gives Dentbright his email, creates a password, opens his email for the verification code, then goes back to the App to enter the verification code. He clicks “Set Up New Toothbrush”, then scrolls down to find his model. He clicks the icon. The connection is suddenly bad so he scrambles over to the nearest window, stubbing his toe against a desk leg in the dark. The icon for his model activates, his phone slowly connects to his new Dentbright toothbrush, and the handle says “Unlock safety casing now?” He clicks “Okay”, the casing lock clicks open, and he takes off the casing and tosses it to the floor, putting his phone on the bathroom sink.
<br /><br />While he’s brushing his teeth the phone pings. He rinses his mouth, puts the toothbrush in his glass, picks up the phone, activates the screen, enters his code, clicks “Not Now” to finish setting up his new iPhone, gets to the message that caused the ping, which it turns out came from Dentbright: “How do you like your new Dentbright toothbrush?”
<br /><br />Since he’s not given the choice “Fuck off already” he clicks “Satisfied” and puts the phone back down on the bathroom sink.
<br /><br />Before finally going to bed he needs to piss, so he steps over to the toilet, which gives a little chirp and says “Welcome back!”
<br /><br />He stands for a few seconds in the dim light, the toilet now silent. He feels the coolness of the floor tiles passing into the soles of his bare feet. He relaxes his muscles and begins to piss. He’s tired in fact. He closes his eyes as the urine streams into the bowl.
<br /><br />In mid-piss his phone pings, causing his body to jerk slightly in irritation, the stream of piss now spraying past the edge of the toilet bowl onto the floor.
<br /><br />He groans and reaches for a handful of tissue. He starts to lean down to wipe up the small puddle when his phone pings again.
<br /><br />He stands up straight, tossing the tissue in the direction of the puddle. The tissue misses. He steps back to the sink, looks at himself in the mirror. He stands there. Looking. Then he grabs his new iPhone which has not been completely “set up” and bounces it sharply off the tile floor, splintering the screen into a spiderweb pattern. Picking up the phone, he tosses it into the toilet bowl. The toilet says “Flush now?” but he ignores it.
<br /><br />Stepping back to the sink, he grabs the new Dentbright toothbrush, twists it into an L-shape, and tosses it into the bowl with the phone. The toilet says “Flush now?”
<br /><br />He reaches behind the toilet, pulls loose the plastic casing and yanks out the wires that power it.
<br /><br />He strides back toward the bedroom, passing the dehumidifier. Then he stops, turns back to the dehumidifier, unplugs it, hoists it up, and smashes it against the wall. As the machine crashes to the floor he hears someone mutter in protest in the apartment next door.
<br /><br />He finally returns to his bed, clicks off the light, and lies in the dark, his heart racing. He thinks about his job, about Rachel. He thinks about how when he gets up in seven hours everything—yes, everything—is going to be different.
<br /><br />* * *
<br /><br /><b>Check out <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Idiocy-Ltd-Eric-Mader/dp/1511859458/" target="_blank"><i>Idiocy, Ltd.</i></a> and begin the long, hard reckoning.</b>
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-71554473184354825802022-05-28T13:10:00.007+01:002022-07-15T12:41:32.920+01:00Sea Changes<br />My few friends who care wonder what I’ve been writing recently. I’ve told them I’m in a fallow state, not writing much and with no plans.
<br /><br />“Oh, writer’s block,” they say.
<br /><br />“No, not really writer’s block. Waiting. It’s a matter of waiting.”
<br /><br />Which is to say that this state doesn’t really bother me. It’s part of my relation to writing and reading and life, and always has been.
<br /><br />What bothers me is something different. I’m again undergoing a slow sea change of sorts. My sense of what is actually happening in the world and how one might respond is shifting. Things I’ve written in recent years, some posted here, now seem skewed and irrelevant.
<br /><br />Anyone passionately digging will end up tunneling out in a place he didn’t expect, and his view will shift. It’s little surprise I’m again in a different place.
<br /><br />This would be the second sea change I’ve faced since my twenties. With the first I felt slightly that I was betraying my previous self. Now I’ll probably feel some of that, but betrayal is not really the point when one suddenly sees something new. When one is forced to by one’s honesty. The thing is to admit the change and begin walking from where one now stands.
<br /><br />I won’t explain further here. Perhaps in the writing to come.
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-33501547618804445092022-04-14T12:54:00.008+01:002023-01-23T15:29:19.469+00:00Mark Dice: They Want to Ban the Bible<br />You walk about town, you shop, you chat a bit with someone in line. What you don’t know is these are the people you’re surrounded by, the masses of them. It’s horrifying.
<br /><br />I’d like to know percentages he got to sign. If he spent an hour at this and got as many as we see, of all ages, it’s grotesque. A population whose brains have been IV-fed from birth by TV.
<br /><br />For America, this will not end well. Honestly, it's already not ending well.
<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe class="BLOG_video_class" allowfullscreen="" youtube-src-id="XckcMeSueMA" width="320" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XckcMeSueMA"></iframe></div>
<br /><b>Check out <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Idiocy-Ltd-Eric-Mader/dp/1511859458/" target="_blank"><i>Idiocy, Ltd.</i></a> and begin the long, hard reckoning.</b>
<br /><br />Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-86752622260824196942022-04-09T16:15:00.012+01:002022-08-27T12:15:07.630+01:00Who is Viktor Orban?<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIOKLFPC5-q0_8J-8SuNIsGbjM2qMDKftWUTQb6U0zkVEB2kbcibmFaff28AJ-y75w0-2-ROQkbSu2VrEH4jRrvUPqK9Gp0gU2vw9WwpCgDtnD-77PnKUMvJLCnL_RbZKfg2ButPqZm8zfZXYBMKQ3T1Scmtv1I239hnLkrgOJ2AauRqljptYcnibz/s1048/Orban.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="770" data-original-width="1048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIOKLFPC5-q0_8J-8SuNIsGbjM2qMDKftWUTQb6U0zkVEB2kbcibmFaff28AJ-y75w0-2-ROQkbSu2VrEH4jRrvUPqK9Gp0gU2vw9WwpCgDtnD-77PnKUMvJLCnL_RbZKfg2ButPqZm8zfZXYBMKQ3T1Scmtv1I239hnLkrgOJ2AauRqljptYcnibz/s320/Orban.png"/></a></div>
Viktor Orban handily won re-election in Hungary last week and will begin serving his fourth term as prime minister. Rod Dreher does a good job summing up Orban's politics at <i>The American Conservative</i>: <blockquote><br />
--Orban believes that the West is a coherent civilization composed of a multitude of different peoples, united by a common religion. He thinks that civilization and its culture is worth defending. He believes that the best way to do so is to prize the sovereignty of its nations. He also believes that mass migration is a mortal threat to the existence of that civilization.
<br /><br />--Viktor Orban also believes that the religion of the Bible is true, and the basis of Western civilization. He believes that the traditional family is the bedrock of this and any civilization. Consequently, he believes that the state should be governed to help and defend the traditional family — not the interests of international capital, of liberal billionaires, of activist NGOs, or anybody else. He looks out across the West at what contemporary liberalism in power has done and is doing to civilization, and is determined to do everything he can to prevent his own country, Hungary, from falling into the same decadence.
<br /><br />--He recognizes that liberalism, as it has evolved in the West, has become its own solvent. This is the Patrick Deneen thesis, in <i>Why Liberalism Failed</i>: it failed because it succeeded so well in “liberating” the choosing individual from every unchosen obligation, and freeing him up to follow his desires. Yet Orban, who grew up under Communism, and who fought it as a student leader, has an acute appreciation of the totalitarian temptation inside contemporary liberalism. It’s no coincidence that his arch-opponent in Hungarian politics, former prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, is a former Communist youth leader who became one of Hungary’s richest men in the 1990s and early 2000s, and who is on great terms with liberal leaders in the European Union.
<br /><br />--As an outsider who grew up in the country, he understands the power an unelected and unaccountable liberal elite controlling cultural institutions has over the direction of society — and is determined to use political power to keep liberal/progressive cultural power in check.
<br /><br />--He is a capitalist who understands that globalist capitalism is a threat to the integrity of the nation-state. This is why, in his first term, he worked hard to repatriate Hungarian industries that had been sold off to foreigners in the immediate aftermath of Communism. Orban understood that as long as Hungary’s main industries were in the hands of foreigners, the Hungarian people had less power over their own destiny.</blockquote>
<br />In <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/viktor-orban-joe-biden-liberalism/" target="_blank">his piece</a>, Dreher laments that our Republicans don't embrace something like Orban's vision. He writes that Gov. DeSantis gives him hope. I have some small hopes in DeSantis, but slim hope indeed in our GOP. <br><br>
Here's the pol Orban defeated. One of the funniest tweets I've seen in a while:
<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB1T8uF8Qag1NK8wgSHPfmhw-bvoPj2lAfsWAAVue9ORsEeLNDD2-d8oCd-OcdBcseG6GKnUvMNdmlUuKe1BRZwSkqZLX_vSUYKHoNADpb7a1nzZE6ZhT4f86MR0rJemIBzbuYuAzqJIbJ_QewJq6lE8KQCe5flIkY6qsm_AfK63vZAg1UkVDjr1Qf/s598/Hungary.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="523" data-original-width="598" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB1T8uF8Qag1NK8wgSHPfmhw-bvoPj2lAfsWAAVue9ORsEeLNDD2-d8oCd-OcdBcseG6GKnUvMNdmlUuKe1BRZwSkqZLX_vSUYKHoNADpb7a1nzZE6ZhT4f86MR0rJemIBzbuYuAzqJIbJ_QewJq6lE8KQCe5flIkY6qsm_AfK63vZAg1UkVDjr1Qf/s400/Hungary.png"/></a></div><br />
Hillary. Inspired. Free from corruption. Glad Hungarians are laughing too.
<br /><br />Stay smart, my Hungarian friends. And God bless you.
<br /><br />E.M.<b>
<br /><br />Have some deadpan with your coffee. Check out <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Idiocy-Ltd-Eric-Mader/dp/1511859458/" target="_blank"><i>Idiocy, Ltd.</i></a> Dryest humor in the west.</b>
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-80689397836218888652022-04-03T14:50:00.029+01:002023-09-23T15:50:12.724+01:00Lefties: Why the NPC Meme doesn’t faze them<br />Mid-March Elon Musk rocked the Twitter styrofoam raft by posting a recent version of the NPC meme:
<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3wHYk7k28Jv18A76mRLNwxAG1vWHBn0b1d_PPpYgV8z3cYdz8kSOhXNe8YYQe2XT_LLs1b29-iHy1FxoyFUo_SCwrc6HGnXmVzQBzkkO6TU2rIWq6VnKGN8cN5oua_OOuayv_KT1eOnToiI0IHCg4O09yghXvf9Rj7pNeDV0fqVXapwWlj9KMm2Q6/s1042/NPC.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="1038" data-original-width="1042" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3wHYk7k28Jv18A76mRLNwxAG1vWHBn0b1d_PPpYgV8z3cYdz8kSOhXNe8YYQe2XT_LLs1b29-iHy1FxoyFUo_SCwrc6HGnXmVzQBzkkO6TU2rIWq6VnKGN8cN5oua_OOuayv_KT1eOnToiI0IHCg4O09yghXvf9Rj7pNeDV0fqVXapwWlj9KMm2Q6/s320/NPC.png"/></a></div>
<br />Myself I think it’s good to have Elon around: a national figure who says what he thinks rather than spreads wokeisms.
<br /><br />And I like the NPC meme, though I find it toothless given where we're at. Since this is a serious article, I’ll explain myself via pro wrestling. Yup, serious. A post I saw today. Someone wrote:
<blockquote><b>Remember when everyone knew pro wrestling was fake and they finally admitted it and the fans continued to watch it anyway?
<br /><br />We’re almost there with politics and the media.</b></blockquote>
“We’re not almost there,” I replied. “We’re <i>already</i> there, and have been for years. Worse, this fakery is not a bug, but a feature.”
<br /><br />All around us fake news is known to be fake but still touted as news. And oddly, it’s our “educated” who are most aggressively touting it. This didn’t use to be so. So how did we get here?
<br /><br /><i>It's the universities, stupid.</i>
<br /><br />In classrooms and seminars across the country, academics have for decades been teaching that “there is no truth, only narratives". I won’t go into the intellectual background of the doctrine. But starting in the 1980s, our left took it and ran with it.
<br /><br />"No truth, only narratives" has since trickled down and oozed beyond the campuses. It's seeped into every corner of American culture. And it's changed the way Americans process reality. As follows: A huge swath of the citizenry now watches news not to find out what is really happening, but only to find out what Today's Narrative is. For millions, <i>what is really happening</i> is tacitly assumed to be beside the point.
<br /><br />It’s hard for a lot of us on the right to grasp this. But we need to grasp it, because this is the country we now live in.
<br /><br />We call them NPCs and think they're dumb sheep--but by doing so we ignore what they're about. Because for them, to be sheep, sheep out to trample all others into silence, is <i>the very meaning of being educated</i>. It’s what their whole education has taught them to do and what all their peers do 24/7.
<br /><br />Which is what makes the NPC meme toothless. At least to them. Because it’s not that our NPCs are especially dumb, but rather that they're deeply indifferent to the facts underlying the social realities in question. They are entirely creatures of the Narrative, they <i>know</i> they are, and they're even proud to be so because they assume the Narrative tends to "the right side of history”.
<br /><br />This doctrine of the "right side of history" is perhaps the only truth our lefties still subscribe to: they believe in Progress religiously.
<br /><br />And here, if you’re paying attention, you’ll maybe see that we’ve caught them in deep self-contradiction, because the claim that <i>progress is inevitable</i>, that it’s somehow <i>built in to history</i>, is a truth claim. Here, in other words, is where our lefties truly are <i>dumb</i>.
<br /><br />But good luck trying to get that point across. The Enlightenment myth of progress is so deeply embedded in the modern world that almost no one recognizes it as a myth. Especially not our lefties, who breathe it through their cloth masks as their very air.
<br /><br />We've now tens of millions of these people. They're scaling the ladders in every corporation and instution. Since <i>the</i> point for them is to enact the Narrative, calling them NPCs carries no sting. As you may have noticed. They'll just bleat at you--<i>Baaahhh</i>--and move on. Because as they see it, it’s <i>you</i> who are backward to stick to that outmoded concept <i>truth</i>. To stick to things like evidence, law, constitutions, transparent elections.
<br /><br />This is also, by the way, why it’s become impossible to <i>debate</i> our leftists, as you also may have noticed. If there’s no truth, and if it’s virtuous to believe there isn’t, what weight will be given to “evidence” or “reasoned debate” or “analysis” or “statistics”? Our lefties officially don’t care about such things. Debating them is wasted time, and has been since about 2010. They won’t recognize defeat, because they never recognized the validity of reasoned argument to begin with.
<br /><br />So if our politics and media now seem to have no more reality than pro wrestling, and if the mainstream “virtuous” voices keep cheering ever louder, you can blame our fallen universities. They made it possible. And the triumphal march of that key claim "there is no truth" was made all the easier because it played off the Deadly Sin called <i>sloth</i>. Anyone who spends time around our academies can attest it: sheer laziness has played an enormous role in our cognitive decline. Because whether you're an academic or a student, it’s much easier to <i>enact narratives</i> than to dig for truth. It’s also much easier to <i>bend to the Narrative</i> than to defend any truth that is unpopular. And since the postmodernism that rules our universities gives our lefties “intellectual” cover for being lazy in just this way, why not just go with it? All the kids at the cool table are.
<br /><br />Calling them NPCs is accurate, sure. But the malaise runs deeper than just dumbness + conformity. It derives from a systemic discrediting of truth in favor of narrative. Where we go from here is a more difficult question, but that we’re dealing with a large and now dominant “post-truth” culture is a brutal fact we must face. I'd say the best use of our energies is in building an alternative education system, whether through homeschooling or classical schools.
<br /><br />More on how we got here:
<br /><br /><a href="https://claytestament.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-left-is-religion.html" target="_blank">The Left is a Religion</a>
<br /><br /><a href="https://claytestament.blogspot.com/2018/05/fakes-upon-fakes-why-left-has-become-so.html" target="_blank">Fakes upon Fakes: Why the Left has Become so Completely Daft</a>
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006149227755828619.post-71118707097718508002022-02-28T13:56:00.033+00:002023-09-23T15:36:32.844+01:00The Left is a Religion<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg-ibas_Em9_m4L1FqFfCpQ9xU7qpaaXHXEeQjCzPpgd2LbXc4jjheBnJqT7oIBEgxjNPdPImlqhKb52WoZnKVnV1ZRe9TrMBR1e_wY5E7iIK0mphKkPng1w8Deph8FAfN_L09_-J_SHyZW6b81Mscxgf3ncwqCwHyvO6x8LAa5acnbBRGDQ0PZSdZz=s1416" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="852" data-original-width="1416" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg-ibas_Em9_m4L1FqFfCpQ9xU7qpaaXHXEeQjCzPpgd2LbXc4jjheBnJqT7oIBEgxjNPdPImlqhKb52WoZnKVnV1ZRe9TrMBR1e_wY5E7iIK0mphKkPng1w8Deph8FAfN_L09_-J_SHyZW6b81Mscxgf3ncwqCwHyvO6x8LAa5acnbBRGDQ0PZSdZz=s400"/></a></div>
Most think of our western Left as a political movement. I see it as a religion. For tens of millions of Americans, it’s the faith they’ve taken up to replace Christianity, a new pseudo-religion that’s evolved to fill the God-shaped hole in America’s soul. To effect this mass apostasy, the Left co-opted structures from Christianity, warping and perverting them.
<br /><br />Consider:
<br /><br />1) It has its redemptive martyrs, its "victims"--with the added bonus that this time millions gain automatic victim status without doing a thing. They need only be born a minority or identify as LGBT, or even, given radical feminism, just be female.
<br /><br />2) It has an eschatology that Marx and his forebears hijacked from biblical religion and which has been inserted as First Principle into all the left's sub-movements under the rubric "Progress!" History is understood as progressing toward an earthly utopia of diversity and unbounded sexual play. In a radical reversal of Christian teachings on male/female and chastity, it is the sexually disordered who are seen as closest to the sacred in this new religion, heralds of a coming age of pure kink devoid of responsibility or repercussion. The coming utopia will also be socialist in the old sense: "You will own nothing, and you will be happy," as a recent slogan puts it.
<br /><br />3) It has its rites, rituals, in-group symbols: the Protest Rally, the “Pride Parade”, “taking a knee”, identifying clothing and pins, and now even magic amulets (those cloth squares on the faces in the photo above).
<br /><br />4) It has a Dark Realm it struggles against, which we could call: White Daddy. America's Founders, generals, political leaders, inventors, hardheaded businessmen--they did not forge and defend the new nation, making it the success it became, but rather infected it with the curse of their male whiteness, their white maleness. <i>Curse</i> is a religious rather than political concept. We see the peak of this hysteria in recent years in relation to the last president. Trump was loathed not because of his policies but merely because his look, speech manners, and gestures were all suggestive of the Left's archetypal evil: White Daddy. Trump’s very <i>cheerfulness</i> infuriated our leftists, being reminiscent of the businessman who has work to do and enjoys his work, or the father who doesn’t take seriously the political diatribes of his kid just home from college. “OK, honey, whatever you say. Pass the potatoes.” The opposition to Trump was less a political opposition than the visceral loathing of an archetype, a ritual howling against a tribal mask: White Daddy.
<br /><br />5) Finally, cementing its status as religion, the Left requires dogmatic belief in things that are not only unprovable, but radically counterintuitive. The more nonsensical the belief and the louder it’s shouted, the more pious the believer shouting it. “MEN HAVE PERIODS TOO!” “Meat is RACIST!” “Speech is VIOLENCE!” etc., all meant to signal that the leftist in question is both well-catechized in this month's new “revelation” and willing to defend it.
<br /><br />Whereas the Christian professes faith in certain difficult doctrines about Christ--that He is the incarnate Son, that He rose from the dead, that He is the Second Person of the Trinity--the leftist must profess belief in impossible miracles in our everyday reality: men can give birth; a majority white nation that twice elected a black president is also a “white supremacist” nation; the biological being that is not a person a few hours before birth becomes a person upon changing location, etc., etc.
<br /><br />That the Left is in fact a replacement religion, an ersatz religion drawing its power from our spiritual malaise, goes a long way to explaining why it is so hard to fight. For one, as many have noticed, reasoned debate is now useless against leftists. Why? To put it simply, because they have defined “reasoned debate” as characteristic of the culture of White Daddy, and will not lower themselves to such. Seriously.
<br /><br />Certainly the modern Right has elements of religion too: the Constitution as a nearly sacred document or the reverence for the flag come to mind. But these pale in comparison to what we now see on the Left.
<br /><br />The reason is simple: though many prominent figures on the Right are only nominally religious, the core cultural base of voters remains faithfully Christian. Still holding to the true faith, they needn’t sacralize politics. Believing in God and the redemption promised through His Son, they emphatically <i>do not</i> believe in salvation through politics. They know humanity is fallen, that evil will rear its head no matter what political arrangement is tried. They know sin cannot be legislated or reformed away. Thus they do not believe in promises of utopia here on earth.
<br /><br />This is why the Right is more likely to leave you alone to manage your life according to your own lights, while the Left is eager to micromanage everything you say or do. The Left, having put itself in charge of the Final Salvation of Humanity, must force you to <i>get with the program</i> for salvation to work. And as this salvation involves the whole of the social and material realms, no aspect of your life will be left unaffected. Notice the recent <i>politicization of everything</i>? This is because the left, being utopian, is totalizing by necessity, like previous totalitarian movements. It seeks to transform all aspects of social reality, from diet, to sexuality, to speech, to entertainment, to child rearing, to anything you can name.
<br /><br />In brief, the Left is not content with human reality as it is; it cannot let human reality alone, because it can do better. This makes the Left toxic. It is toxic both to liberty and to all that is natural and set in humanity.
<br /><br />With the gross overreach shown during the COVID pandemic, with the increased awareness that our public schools are now little more than leftist boot camps, Americans are finally starting to realize just how controlling our Left has become. But how to fight it, now that it's seized so many insititions?
<br /><br />It's my view that the Left has gained such strong hold because we've neglected to call it out for what it is: a new religion, a mass cult that sees your life and your children's lives as raw material to be shaped according to its doctrines. Tens of millions of sane Americans are in dismay over what the Left is now getting away with. Pinning it down by openly naming it a <i>fanatical cult</i> that seeks to impose imagined realities on the rest of us might help these mostly silenced Americans find their voices. Once they recognize the Left as a mass cult, they will glimpse more effective ways of fighting back, starting with: "No, I'm not part of your <i>religion</i>. I don't believe that claim."
<br /><br />E.M.
<br /><br />
Eric Maderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10612913626447216776noreply@blogger.com0