As my altered-ego Harry the Human reported (see link above), my wife and I are traveling to Bhutan, leaving Thanksgiving day. I had not intended to bombard readers with boring descriptions of how beautiful Bhutan is, but Harry's desert companion Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster has intervened -by designating himself our traveling companion - to make this a challenging trip, and I'll need to write and post about it just to maintain internal stability. It seems I'm expected to smuggle Robert through various airport security systems and flights, then, upon arriving in Bhutan's capital, Thimphu, transport him through mountain valleys (far north of the itinerary of our National Geographic tour) to Gangkhar Puensum, at 24,000 feet Bhutan's highest peak, ruled by an ancient pre-Buddhist mountain god named InsertHere (don't ask), to whom Robert will convey greetings from InsertHere's cousin, Tab B (Harry explains the odd nomenclature), who as it happens is the god of our own Funeral Peak in the Black Mountains outside Death Valley. Recently Tab B came to Robert in a dream and told him that he, Robert, must accompany me to Bhutan to give greetings to his estranged cousin and commune about the world situation. There will be a lot to commune about, as it will be the month after America's fateful 2024 Presidential election, and we will know a little more about which way the world is turning.
I can't say I understand how I'll be smuggling a live gila monster through multiple airport securities, not to mention two nights of preparatory clubbing in Bangkok, but Robert assures me that anything is possible when a mountain god is on your side. All I know for sure is that I'll be posting updates assiduously on this journey, as it promises to be something beyond the typical Instagram mediated show-off vacation. Stay tuned, readers!
Update, 11/27/24: The U.S. presidential election is over and, speaking of which way the world is turning, lately after reading the news I wonder if this is the moment when the sidewalk prophets climb on their crates and shout:
Arrrrmaggedon! For the Seventh Horseman spake, saying 'Lo, the liars and cheats shall flail about, but heed them not, for the mighty hand of the Lord shall be upon them...in fact it shall be upon all of you- tough luck, I guess.
No wonder you walk away from these guys (they're mostly men) not as euphoric as you're supposed to be: they never explain why you're being punished. Not that I can explain it. I did want to mention that this trip to Bhutan seems oddly timed, almost as if, by leaving on Thanksgiving Day (tomorrow!) we will enter a space-time vortex to arrive at the spot where the Bhutanese culture- a band of wise, strong, practical and nature loving people- figured out how to live squeezed between India and China with no fear of either. They did this by planting themselves in the highest reaches of the Himalayas and greeting every visitor who could figure out how to get there with disarming irony and grace. 60 Minutes revealed that over the last 30 years modernity arrived in Bhutan and young professionals are leaving for the more exciting but less beautiful outer world. The ancient culture, however, is going strong. I sensed as well that Bhutan's spirits and gods have no interest in leaving.
FYI, the plan is still that Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster will accompany me (I don't say "accompany us" because there's no way my wife will accompany this guy), though it remains unclear how I'm getting him through 10 separate airport securities. This promises to be an adventurous trip, but if you're thinking, "This is just right for Doug; he's so adventurous!", I only like adventure in my head; actual adventure I don't care for. Nevertheless, I remain your faithful retired guy/influencer, D.L.
Day 1
It's actually happening: I'm sitting in the terminal at LAX with my wife [booking the flight on Thanksgiving was caused by a distracted agent and our not noticing; we had to convince a skeptical family to congregate early], waiting for the 14 hour flight to Taiwan, where we'll have a 2 hour wait for a 4 hour connecting flight to Bangkok, where we'll stay for 48 hours -supposedly drinking and getting massages- before the last lap, a 4 hour flight to Bhutan's international airport in Paro and the start our 10-day tour.
Did I mention that in my carry-on is a live gila monster, a telepathic one, named Robert? Out in the Mojave he goes by the stage name, Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster and is surprisingly well-known in some realms. He stumbled into my acquaintance through our mutual friendship with Harry (who goes by Harry the Human and whose journal you can read at http://harrythehuman.harrythehumanpoliticalthoughtsfrombeyondthepale.com/). Robert twisted my arm to take him on this trip, which was supposed to be an easy-going stroll through fabulous beauty followed by bragging about it on Instagram. Now it's about sneaking away from our tour to trek far to the north, through twisty Himalayan glacial valleys and passes, to the world's highest unclimbed mountain, Gangkhar Puensum, on the Tibetan border. How are we going to do that? TBD.
Gangkhar Puensum is unclimbed because mountain climbing is illegal in Bhutan, as it would disturb the deities who reside on and rule each mountain. Notwithstanding, Robert's quest is to disturb Gangkhar Puensum's deity. I'll let Robert explain that to you. I'm busy explaining it to Susan, whose first question was, "How will you get him past airport security?" This question, at least, has been answered: Robert sent out disorienting brain waves in the security lines that made him in effect invisible to both human and X-ray vision. He is now snugly curled up in my carry-on, beaming his own account of our travels to Harry's blog, where you can read them at the link above.
I want to forget Robert for a moment and concentrate on the timing of this trip. Yesterday President-elect Trump's choice for Special Envoy to Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellog, said, "The world is on the precipice of World War III." Is this a good time to soar off to a far away place for two weeks? What if the world goes over the edge while I'm sampling yak cheese that I could have got at Trader Joe's?
Sorry for my cynical mood. Hopefully when we take off I'll feel uplifted. Yuk! Yuk! (or should I say "Yak! Yak!"?).
Day 2
We just arrived in Taipei and my sense of time is screwed up. Is it Friday or Saturday? Waiting for the connecting flight to Bangkok, I watch dawn appear out of the terminal window and ponder the long flight over the Pacific. It was filled with strange elements, as you might expect if you stuffed a metal cylinder with random people coerced by modern life to sit huddled within while it roars through the sky. For instance, studying a lady across the aisle, who was watching a World War II movie about American POW's being tortured by Japanese soldiers, produced a twisted sort of hope. In a true totalitarian state the movie would have been censored because it presents Japan as an enemy- not the current narrative. The censor board would replace it with an anti-Chinese movie because we're supposed to fear a Chinese takeover of Taiwan. I'm not sensing anyone in this airport thinking about China- except me. Dawn lights up downtown Taipei through the terminal windows. Maybe someone over there whose job it is to encourage people to worry about China is worried that people are not more worried, and is planning events that will cause the required worry. We are encouraged to think in archaic World War II terms, believing in the primacy of countries and ethnicities, but the smart money knows that countries and ethnicities will be re-written in the course of the chaos to come. We're all on the same side now, whether we realize it or not, as we prepare to meet AI designed Humanity 2.0.
That will do it for me until our hotel in Bangkok, where I will brush my teeth, take a shower and a nap. The booze and massage parlors will have to wait. That's just the kind of guy I am. Over and out. D.L.
Day 3
Forget booze and massage parlors, we spent Sunday doing a "Temple tour" with an engaging Thai guide named Sophia. As we left the airport hotel on the expressway into Bangkok, I was struck by the similarities to Los Angeles: a dry warm climate and urban sprawl. Both cities host about 10 million people. Several differences soon became clear. In Bangkok one religion prevails: Buddhism. In Los Angeles all the religions of the world contend for recognition. In Bangkok there is a dominant ethnicity, "the Thai people," while L.A. is a jumble of the world's ethnicities. The Thai format seems more efficient, though exclusive. Thai people compensate for the exclusivity with an obeisance to visitors, expressed most frequently with the "wai," in which one presses one's palms together as if in prayer and bows toward the other person. The wai is everywhere constantly. It is indiscriminent, though quite pleasant.
The temples are overwhelming in their beauty and meaning, but appreciation of them is diminished by packed crowds waving cell phones in the air, blocking the view, capturing beauty and meaning not in their heads but in tiny gadgets.
Particularly striking was the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, a huge golden statue 151 feet long of Buddha lying on his side, his head comfortably resting in his right palm, a slight smile on his face. I was surprised to learn from Sophia that Buddha at this moment is about to die, and is contemplating with joyful anticipation his death. He is joyful because he knows that death is part of a natural cycle in which the soul is reincarnated, rejoining the universe in new forms. I was struck by the contrast with my own view of death, which is that its nature- if it has a nature- is completely unknown. Could this uncertainty- conceivably a sort of punishment itself- be related to my culture's Judeo-Christian mythology, in which pain and punishment are the central elements of human awareness and evolution? The cross, the symbol of Christianity, is derived from a Roman torture device with which God's son was slowly killed as he experienced indescribable pain. I am Jewish, but Jewish mythology is no less harsh. I've always been especially horrified by the story of Abraham and Isaac, where God, our supreme source of wisdom and guidance, tells Abraham that he must slay his son in a sacrifice that demonstrates his obedience to divine authority. Abraham assents, after which God tells him it was just a test, which he passed, and the sacrifice is off. What exactly is the message here? I've never heard a reassuring explanation.
Note: Our excellent National Geographic docent told us that Buddha specifically cautioned against iconography as an expression of Buddha worship, that "he would have rolled over in his grave at the giant Buddha statues."
Both Buddhist and Judeo/Christian/Islamic prominence developed as the Roman empire declined, filling in the gaps of religious authority. One was based on pleasure, one on pain.
And yet both approaches seem to have served the purposes of pain. Does it really matter which mythology a culture adopts? Humans, in their struggle with a world in which they do not fit, end up exploding with rage and sadism at regular intervals whatever the mythology.
What's coming next, as we are redesigned by AI and biotech? Will we end up without mythologies, like the much scorned "animal" world? Could we become like bees, for instance, who perform their functions in the hive without (as far as we know) fantasies about what happens to their souls after they die, where they come from, or the meaning of life? At the dawn of the AI/biotech age, we may be at a moment when we can take an active control of our future mentality and decide the relevance and/or answerability of such questions.
It's 3 AM here in Bangkok. I'm in the lobby breakfast buffet before the crowds that will appear in a few hours, trying not to stuff my face and identify myself as a fat, over-privileged American. This blog is perhaps my penance.
Day 4 - Demons
You can't land in Bhutan's capital, Thimphu. It does not have an airport because it lies in the depths of a too-steep and narrow glacial valley, so we landed in Paro's airport, in a slightly wider valley, two hours drive over a rugged mountain road to Thimphu. I want to write about Paro's airport because arrivers are greeted in the lobby by two 15 foot tall statues of demons. We knew they were demons because we were told they were, and because they had carnivorous teeth and facial expressions like rabid dogs. Bangkok too, in many temples, features demons with important jobs, like holding up the universe that Buddha rules. The demons in the Paro airport were protective spirits, welcoming us to their land.
What gives? The word "demon" comes from a Latin word meaning "protective spirit." In the Old Testament, our top demon, Satan, starts out not as an evil force but as a facilitator of the divine thought process, as in the story of Job, where Satan's purpose is to challenge God's previously unquestioning acceptance of Job as someone who deserves wealth and a healthy family. God agrees with Satan that Job's devotion to Him should be tested by killing Job's wife and children, taking away his wealth, then covering him from head to toe with boils. When Job loves God even after this, God is satisfied and provides Job with a new wife, wealth, and daughters so beautiful they all marry "rich husbands."
Buddhism's demon is more akin to the Old Testament's, a sort of amoral being. Churchill, in an ungenerous mood, called Buddhism a "beastly religion," possibly a reference to its conception of the demon as neither human nor fully beast, neither good nor evil, suggesting that good and evil are different sides of the same life force. Buddha is said to have conquered the demons and put them to good use, serving as the foundation of our universe- though they are still demons who, judging by their facial expressions, would just as soon eat you as uphold your universe.
It's hard for a Westerner to accept evil as anything that could work with good. Consider our popular evil character, Hannibal Lecter, from the novel Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris, played memorably in the movie by Anthony Hopkins. Lector's sole purpose is, it seems, to torture and kill whomever he is able to- certainly demonic behavior. Strangely, in the sequel Hannibal, especially the more controversial movie version, a bond develops between Lecter and a female detective, Clarice Starling (played nicely by Jodie Foster), who is supposed to interview Lecter in prison in order to gain understanding needed to catch another serial killer. The bond is based on childhood traumas they each experienced: Lector, born in Lithuania, was forced by Nazis to eat his own sister, while Starling was traumatized by witnessing the killing of lambs on her uncle's farm. The bond disturbed many readers and movie goers, who were not ready for a relationship between elements of good and evil.
Which view is correct? That's like asking, "How is the universe constructed," or "Is the universe good or evil?" The Judeo/Christain/Islamic religions have answered such questions with, "Good must destroy evil," while the Hindu/Buddhist tradition appears to state,"Good must conquer evil and coerce it to its purposes."
Does it matter? If you compare Hindu/Buddhist with Judeo/Christain/Islamic behavior, the incidents of serial killing and genocide seem about the same. It's a philosophical question, not a practical one.
That's it for now. I'll be back soon with coming revelations!
Day 5
Today I feel we achieved the purpose of the effort it took to get to Bhutan. Our National Geographic guide took us over Himalayan foothills to the wonderful valley of the black-necked cranes, a strikingly prisitine environment. Bhutan has figured out how to preserve its beauty and independence, at least so far. On a stop at a cafe 9,000 feet above sea level we viewed the massive peaks to the north, beyond which is Tibet and beyond that its aggressive overlord, China, while to the south is restless India, ready on a dime to clash with China. What a clever people the Bhutanese are to have devised ways to maintain an independent, unaligned country in this environment. En route we sighted langur monkeys, yaks, and villages whose shops and homes feature pictures of their king. Of course it's hard for an outsider to know, but the king appears loved in a real way, unlike the enforced love of most monarchies, because he does not seem motivated by greed, hunger for power, narcissism or other distractions from governing. For instance, when electricity came recently to the valley of the black-necked cranes, the king agreed with the locals to accept the considerable extra expense of putting all the wires undergound, so as not to defile the ancient pre-human beauty and disturb the local gods with ugly poles draped with wires. The king also decreed that mountain climbing is illegal, to protect mountain spirits. In an act contrasting probably with every other monarchy in the world, he decreed that Bhutan would elect leaders, and that no king could rule beyond the age of 65. What, I'm wondering, is so bad about kings, as least good ones?
[In its 1/16/25 issue, Time magazine ran an article on Bhutan stating that 33% of Bhutan's farmers are unhappy, and that they are too afraid of the regime to speak. Since when do you need a king for that? I do think Bhutanese PR should drop the "happiest place on Earth" bit- it is human life, after all. At least Time reported the phallic display (see below) which arguably is an attempted form of happiness.]
Day? (It depends how you look at it)
After decamping in the Valley's beautiful Dewachen Hotel, we drove an hour through Himalayan passes to the Punakha Dzong Monastery, whose wall are covered with eye-catching paintings of enlightened Buddhas sitting cross legged staring into the philosophical void while naked young girls sit in their laps writhing in ecstasy. One of our party commented that the Buddha looks bored. I don't think so. Later in a breathtaking glacial valley three hours rugged drive away, we visited the monestary of the medieval "Mad Monk," who believed that sexuality was spiritual and who practiced what he preached by sleeping with women throughout the region. On the walls of buildings in neighboring villages were numerous depictions of erect penises, often squirting semen, and shops selling all manner of phallic statues, some with laughing faces, some in a rage, fighting evil.
Our group was invited to attend an interview with the lama, who answered our questions. Also in the room, sitting cross legged on the floor, were three young boys in training, 8-10 years old, draped in robes. They giggled and whispered to each other. One was chewing gum and popping bubbles. Later in the temple, where wonderful hypnotic music was performed, the lama joined us, chewing gum.
In the Mad Monk's temple is a photo album of children born of couples who came to the monestary to enhance their fertility. These children were from all over the world, their parents having traveled here for this purpose.
After we noted to her the phallic overload in village after village, our exceptionally knowledgeable National Geographic expert, a trained anthropologist, explained that though the phallic motif goes back centuries, it took off 20 years ago to attract tourists. Strangely, 60 Minutes did not mention it, nor do tourist agencies promote Bhutan: Land of the Sacred Boner.
News Flash!
Much to the surprise of our tour leaders, who have followed Bhutanese politics for 40 years, the king visited neighboring Nepal today, the first such visit in their memory. They had no information on the visit's purpose. There was speculation that it had to do with the new city planned for the south of Bhutan, near the Indian border, whose economy will be based on worldwide investment in IT, AI and biotech, supplemented by sales of Bhutan's ample hydroelectric power from melting snow and glaciers. One of the new city's purposes will be to lure back young Bhutanese professionals who have left Bhutan. It will be called "Mindfulness City," a reference to the spiritual theme of the country. Billions of dollars will be involved, something a lot of people will be mindful about. Interestingly, the new city will have its own currency, and Bhutanese citizens who are not residents of the city will need a passport to get in. We watched a Ted Talk in which the current prime minister (chosen by election per order of the king) depicted Mindfulness City as evolving into a spiritual and economic hub of the world. It's an interesting juxtaposition with Bhutan's traditional culture, a development worth watching.
[Update, 12/24/24: It's Christmas and Hanukah eve on the same night, another of those endless "signs"? We've been home from Bhutan a week. The hellish 22 hours of flights over S.E. Asia and the Pacific have faded to a dull ache, while the charming friends we made on the tour stay fresh and real. Observation: Other than the recent spot on 60 Minutes and Time, Bhutan is never in the news. No geo-political event is happening there. Bhutan is not "tilting," unless you cast the proposed Mindfulness City as a "tilt" towards financing, biology and AI. If research from this city produces a new human, it will have been conceived in a remote place, free of precedent. Caution: Mindfulness City will be on Bhutan's lower southern plain, across the border from India, where sea-level spirits - notoriously difficult to predict- often prevail.]
[Update, 3/26/25: the Trump administration has put Bhutan on a potential travel ban list because "a notable percentage of Bhutanese visitors were found to have overstayed their visas." However, according to ChatGPT's new reasoning function, o3‑mini ("optimized for tasks requiring strong reasoning skills"), "imposing a travel ban or additional restrictions on Bhutan seems disproportionate given the country's history and current track record," an early instance perhaps of an AI challenging human governance. ]
In spite of his increasingly disruptive impact upon most demographics and economic levels, President Trump is an unknown regarding his views on the current radical acceleration of human physical and mental evolution, in which after a period of 300,000 years where we did not change much, we are undergoing unbelievably rapid change right now, stimulated by revolutions in AI and biology. In a few decades, the post-World War II generations alive today will register as primitive humanity, yet Trump, along with former president Biden, Kamela Harris and all other political leaders of the world, says not a word about the imminent shift.
At the current overwhelming pace of societal change, 4 years is a long time, so Trump is positioned to be an important influence on upcoming human evolution. Many people wonder how such a man attained this position. The answer is that Trump is a strategic thinker. The buffoonish caricature portrayed on Saturday Night Live is based on a persona that Trump uses strategically, and clearly the strategy has been accurate. You'll get a better idea of Trump by watching his interview with Joe Rogan, where we see a street fighter with impressive talents, some of which we might need, others not so much. We can debate Trump's morality, but let's drop the idea that he's dumb.
You might argue that though Trump is politically shrewd, he does not care about future Earth and humanity; he does not have a long view.
We can only guess, but however Trump does or doesn’t evolve in his second term, our proclaimed democracy needs an update, a new representative force in addition to political parties and candidates who are fixated only on the next election. Perhaps we could take an idea from Isaac Asimov and create a foundation (from the novel of the same name) or a trust, made up of scholars, experts, and, crucially, retired English teachers, whose mission would be to consider future decades, centuries, perhaps millennia. That could be a welcome alternative to the exhausting, silly and wasteful national election campaign we just endured and the sinister age it's ushering in.
[This piece is reposted from 4/9/22, updated in the context of the Israel vs. Hamas/Hezbollah and Ukraine vs. Russia wars, with reference to recent Islamic State (IS) attacks]
The phrase "virtual reality" takes a twisty path from its Latin roots.
Of course, by the time children are in middle school they know what
virtual reality is, but ask them to define it. Then ask yourself.
A good dictionary (in this case Merriam-Webster) covers the basics: "Virtual" is related to the
noun, "virtue," which we know to mean, "a morally good
quality," like integrity or honesty, from Latin virtus,
"merit," "perfection," from vir, "man."
The transition from vir to the rest is an
etymological puzzle (while you're at it, consider "woman of
virtue"), but my focus here is the
equally mystifying modern usage of "virtual."
Back to the dictionary- there are three broad definitions of
"virtual":
1: Modern common use: "Almost or nearly as described, but not completely or according
to strict definition : the troops stopped at the virtual border." Virtual borders are not official borders on a map, but de
facto borders, determined by use.
Note: Only definition #1 clearly references the historic usage of virtue,
retained in our word "virtuous," meaning "exhibiting virtues." In the example
above, virtual borders have the "virtue" of being observed by
practice, though not the virtue of being indicated on maps.
2: In Computing: "Not physically existing as such but
made by software to appear to exist, e.g., a virtual doorway;" In
other words, imaginary.
3: Physics: "Denoting particles or interactions with extremely
short lifespans and indefinitely great energies, postulated as intermediates in
some processes." That is, particles, or things,
that exist for such a brief period of time that their reality as things is
questionable.
One might think that virtual reality derives from definition #3,
since it is the most puzzling. Does the length of time that
something exists have bearing on the reality of its existence? In galactic time, humans do not exist very long. Does that mean ours is a lesser existence? That subject will have to wait for another
essay, however, since virtual reality derives from #2, which means, as noted, imaginary.
[Note: I'm going to leave the definition of "reality" as "things that are real," a cop-out perhaps because Merriam-Webster informs us that "reality" derives from the Sanskrit for "property," something to do with "wealth and goods" being real things- a philosophical question for another essay.]
Under virtual
reality we get: "The computer-generated simulation of a
three-dimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in a
seemingly real or physical way by a person using special electronic equipment,
such as a helmet with a screen inside or gloves fitted with sensors."
The question I ask at this point is, why do we need to conceive of computer-generated
simulation as a type of
reality? We never had that need with novels, plays or movies. Those
are not types of realities. They are imaginary.
In modern, media based culture, we seem to have concluded that reality is manufactured by us. We get support for this notion from TV news. If the news show we watch shares our bias, our brain allows the television to hook-up with its perceptual apparatus, as a sort of adjunct brain, at least mine does. When I watch a TV news report from a war front on a station matching my bias, my mind gravitates towards belief. If I watch a story on a station that does not match my bias, I am skeptical. In a twist on "confirmation bias," my brain is requiring that its perception of reality be moderated by outer mechanisms that match its bias, in other words that reality be manufactured.
In addition to the news, we have "reality shows." These are shows in which people behave in stage-managed ways,
realistic, as far as I can parse the usage, only in the sense that the behavior is real on the show that manufactures it.
One could defend this new definition of reality as manufactured by pointing out that unlike past ages when, for
example, young men recruited for the Crusades were told that various events
were happening in the Holy Land that required invasion, those events
were held to be real, not virtually real. So our culture, by holding that an event can be credited that is only virtually real though not necessarily really real, admits a
pervasive doubt into our discourse, and doubt is a virtue.
But the extended context is not so hopeful- it suggests that we
don't require actual reality from our media, that it is enough to produce
simulated, virtual reality, as video games do.
It is in this context that I consider IS (or ISIS), which in 2014, with its professionally
produced, ready for prime time video of a Jordanian pilot burning to death in a cage, realized the
predictions of numerous science fiction novels, from the media-mediated wars of
George Orwell's 1984 to the blurred lines between war and mass
entertainment in Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games. On the day
the IS video was released, ABC national news anchor David Muir described its "high
production values," adding that, "No
Hollywood studio could have done better," as if he were delivering a
movie review. In a sense he was.
The other day a friend showed me a video from a source on the Internet that purported to be a recording of the transmission from a
U.S. drone that was conducting an attack on IS ground troops in Syria who were attacking
the Peshmerga (Kurdish enemies of IS, thus our allies). It was a
nighttime attack, the ground troops glowing white through infrared lenses. The chatter from drone control, which was hundreds or thousands of miles
from the scene, was dispassionate but engaged, technical, referencing
targets and coordinates, ordering rocket and 30mm fire that resulted moments
later in white flashes where running forms had been. It looked exactly
like a video game. I could have been pounding my thumbs blasting aliens or
Kazakhs (a favorite game foe for a while). Orson Scott Card's Ender's
Game comes to mind, in which hot-shot 9th grade gamers are told by the
military that they are trying out a new training video, while they are in fact
fighting real aliens (Spoiler alert: Book III reveals that the "invading" aliens were on a peaceful mission).
What do these musings have to do with the real IS? I should add that my
point is not that IS is not real. It's hard to see how its actions could be faked. A man really was burned; people were really beheaded; many European and American cities are really being terrorized. I'm talking about the sober thinking behind IS,
specifically their marketing department, and they clearly have one. The
War of IS is packaged for young men the way a video game would be packaged. Consider how you'll be watching a TV show that young people also watch,
and suddenly there's a commercial for a video game showing CGI heroes blasting a
variety of monsters, with titles like End of Doom Part III! Now
it's Return of ISIS- The Reckoning!
Commentators have wondered where IS comes from and what it wants. It is not a country, or associated with one. It has no past as an established enemy. But its genesis in no secret. IS formed in reaction to persecutions of Iraqi Sunnis by U.S. imposed Shia leaders, after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq that toppled Sunni leader Saddam Hussein. IS was in effect born of U.S. policy, continuing the pattern of post-World War II conflicts in which we indulge our need to fight enemies by creating them- as we do with video games.
In other words, IS is not entirely real. Virtually, though, it's
real enough. It certainly has no problem with ratings, though IS is at heart a transitory organization, dependent on outside support.
On its own it does not have the staying power of a profitable video game.
The best outcome would be to win this war quickly, as well as virtually
and really.
[Update, 11/4/23: The Israel vs. Hamas/Hezbollah war, like the war against IS, is both real and virtual. In America its reality is bolstered because many people instantly identify with one side or the other, and because people on both sides are maimed and killed. The virtual parts are the competing storylines of the conflict's background, such that someone new to the subject could read all the opposing accounts from biblical times to October 7th, 2023, and come away with no idea what to think, because the same assumed facts and historical fragments, accepted by each side but filtered through different perspectives, support antithetical narratives and draw antithetical conclusions. On top of this, since the October 7th attack, two new antithetical storylines explaining the purpose and nature of the attack have unfolded, as specific as the Manhattan Project in their intent, creating two groups of people with antithetical views: fissionable material when the two groups are in contact, social atom bombs to be manipulated and ignited as one would physical bombs. People who manage to remain “undecided” or "unaligned" through the American version of this bombardment (due to our freedom of speech we get both storylines) will be overruled by the passion and argumentation of those who are sure of their place in the narratives. Contrast this with our muddied reaction to Ukraine vs. Russia, a war occurring in places unfamiliar to most Americans, so that it takes a back seat to the Middle East. It will not stay in the back seat for long, however. There is too much invested in Ukraine vs. Russia (ultimately involving mineral deposits) to let it go. Since nuclear threat is probably the only way to stimulate American interest in Ukraine vs. Russia, expect a nuclear crisis stemming from that war, especially in light of Russian President Vladimir Putin's statement that he is storing tactical nukes in Belarus near the Ukrainian border and may use them against Ukraine, and lame-duck President Biden's little noted authorization on November 17, 2024 of use by Ukraine of U.S. supplied long-range missiles against Russia.]
[Update, 3/23/24: Available sources suggest that IS is funded from continually shifting politics, which helps explain its unclear meaning. The obscurity deepened after the horrific attack of 3/22/24 on concert-going civilians in Russia, for which a putative IS took credit. Russia says the attack was directed by Ukraine, with no reference to IS. Hamas says that Israel and the CIA directed the attack through IS. The U.S. says that IS is an independent terrorist group that committed the attack independently, as indicated by its claiming to have done so (1/2/25: The U.S. acceptance of a face-value IS held for the 1/1/25 car ramming attack in New Orleans). The "facts" on all sides are as antithetical to each other as the "facts" on either side of Israel vs Hamas/Hezbollah, or Ukraine vs. Russia. This is purposeful. We are not supposed to understand what's going on with these potential triggers of World War III, but it's clear what's going on: Current civilization is under threat of being dismantled by violent covert and overt forces. I don't recommend total pessimism, but to avoid it we need a politically influential group that describes and discusses things as they are, to save us from intellectual suffocation and keep hope alive.]
[Update, 1/2/25: My guess is that news stories like the one about the Tesla Cybertruck suicide/explosion in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas are promoted to divert our attention from stories about the imminent end of our species (there are plenty such stories in non-government media), so that instead of asking, "Why doesn't the government address the end of our species?", we ask,"Is it true what I read on Facebook that as part of the Chinese financing of his Tesla plant in China, Elon Musk had to commit to supplying American state secrets to China?" World governments are promoting old-style conspiracy theories- about terrorism, money, spies, etc., problems a government can theoretically deal with- so people won't notice that government is doing exactly nothing, not even talking about the tsunami of human evolution about to hit us, so devoid is it of ideas for a proper response.]
[Update, 1/21/25: Trump has been re-elected and now he is the only news story. Everything that happens is about him. Even the L.A. fires are about Trump, or they will be after he visits this week and decides, by himself, what the federal response will be. That's a lot of power for one man. If Trump decided to talk about the explosion in human evolution that's about to hit us, he could, by himself, put the topic on the map. I don't expect him to do that, but we live in surprising times.]
[Update, 2/28/25: The current fracture between the U.S. and Ukraine turns out to reflect access to mineral deposits in Ukraine. President Trump is transitioning us from a war based on conventional concepts of "good guys" and "bad guys" to one based on calculations of profit, in other words from struggle among countries, peoples and ideologies to struggle among corporations.]
[I finally decided to join the crowd and use the "f word" for emphasis, since nothing else seems to work.]
You couldn't write a science fiction scenario weirder than our reality. Here's an outline for a screenplay:
The Wake-up Call
A screenplay
Setting: A humanoid species, after 300,000 years of watching and waiting, suddenly spreads like wildfire across the surface of its home planet, Earth, moving into every corner, proclaiming its supremacy and intelligence, evidenced by complex and evolving technology. As it accelerates geometrically, the technology-driven change disrupts existing ecosystems, without thought to connected systems, bringing death or worse to many life forms including humanoids, while making giant fortunes for a few. The arrogance and narcissism of this species leads it to pursue technology even after inventing mechanical thought (MT) that surpasses its own abilities, threatening to control and replace it. The same has happened with biological science, which has given the species the ability to remake its physical self, bringing the possibility of an MT designed post-humanoid civilization.
The species goes through a recurring phase in its evolution called "war," in which the unused, sometimes repressed potential of developing technology is realized in an orgy of emotion, sexuality and violence. At the time of the story, the species is nearing a war phase, the third in an increasingly destructive series, this time reflecting not only struggles over national and ethnic borders, but over what types of mentalities the humanoids will have, what types of bodies, perhaps what types of souls.
Opening Scene: EXT. The Starship Enterprise against backdrop of stars, twinkly music suggests leaving Earth was a great idea.
CUT TO: Bridge, the multi-ethnic crew hard at work.
CLOSE IN: Deep in conversation are Captain James T. Kirk, whose ancestors left Earth shortly before their species made it uninhabitable, and First Science Officer Spock, a human/Vulcan hybrid, intellectual and stoic [the Vulcans were originally emotional and violent, on track to destroying themselves and their planet- as Earth's humanoids did- but they took control of themselves, embraced logic and suppression of emotion and avoided self-destruction- hint, hint!]. Kirk and Spock have led the Enterprise hundreds of years back in time to orbit the Earth at its critical moment to learn more about what went wrong.
Spock (peering into a small box): The humanoids are organized into "countries" - overly large collections of individuals. The countries lack cultural/psychological coherence -having quite rapidly replaced millennia of tribal existence- so they routinely use hostility against other countries as a unifying tool. As their technology becomes more invasive and controlling, wars have become bigger and more intense, and are now termed "World Wars." There have been two of these in the last century, ushering in an age where machines are everywhere, making never ending noise, killing millions through malfunction, yet offering "convenience" to the extent that no one can resist their development.
Kirk: "Convenience?"
Spock: Yes, a word we have discontinued due to negative connotation. "Convenience" suggested tasks that are increasingly easy to do. For Earth’s humanoids, once the basics of food and shelter were obtained, making tasks as easy as possible became the major pursuit of self-conscious life. At the time of our visit today, the humanoids’ desire that tasks be easy has led them to the brink of World War III.
Kirk: Spock, I'm scanning their media. The most powerful of the countries claims to be a "democracy" in which citizens vote for leaders through elections, so that theoretically all humanoids of the country have a voice in its governance. An election of their top leader - the “president" - is coming up. I see something going on in their media...recent, from last night.
Spock: Yes, much of the population watched a debate between the candidates for vice president, the number two leadership position. I have just completed a review of the debate.
Kirk: This should be fascinating! What did they say about the coming refashioning of the humanoid body and mind?
Spock: Nothing.
Kirk: What?
Spock: There was no reference in the debate, either from the moderators or the candidates, to the imminent end of the species' current form of body and mind.
Kirk (after a befuddled pause): But, does the population know that the changes are imminent? Is the technology secret?
Spock: No, the technology is discussed throughout their media. There is no censorship.
Kirk: Then...what...?
Spock: The species is essentially asleep.
Kirk: What can we do to warn them what's coming, something that won't violate the Prime Directive [a protocol that forbids interference with indigenous cultures]?
Spock: Perhaps we can send an ambiguous message, designed not to direct specific action, but to suggest at least that thought be given to something.
Kirk Hmm...Spock, is the new SkyWrite laser operational?
Spock: Affirmative.
And so it was that the next morning the mightiest country on the planet arose to a scarlet banner across the dawn sky reading:
HUMANOIDS OF EARTH: WAKE THE FUCK UP!
"Ok, Doomer," by Andrew Marantz (New Yorker Magazine, 3/18/24) reports on a "subculture" of AI researchers, mostly congregated in Berkeley, California, who debate whether "AI will elevate or exterminate humanity." The subculture is divided into factions with various titles. The pessimists are called "AI safetyists," or "decelerationists"- or, when they're feeling especially pessimistic, "AI doomers." They are opposed by "techno-optimists," or "effective accelerationists," who insist that "all the hand-wringing about existential risk is a kind of mass hysteria." They envision AI ushering in "a utopian future- insterstellar travel, the end of disease- as long as the worriers get out of the way."
The community has developed specific vocabulary, such as "p(doom)", the probability that, "if AI does become smarter than people, it will either on purpose or by accident, annihilate everyone on the planet." If you ask a "safetyist," "What's your p(doom)?", a common response is that it's the moment AI achieves artificial general intelligence (AGI), the "point at which a machine can do any cognitive task that a person can do." Since the advent of ChatGPT last year, AGI has appeared imminent.
New human jobs have been created in response to the concern. Marantz writes, "There are a few hundred people working full time to save the world from AI catastrophe. Some advise governments or corporations on their policies; some work on technical aspects of AI safety," the goal being to make sure we are not "on track to make superintelligent machines before we make sure that they are aligned with our interests."
The article is informative and interesting, but it has a bias: The focus is on what AI itself will do, not on what people will do with it, as if you were discussing childhood development without discussing parental influence.
As a historical parallel, consider the progress in physics in the first half of the last century. In the early years, most physicists who explored atomic structure did not see their work as weapons related. Einstein said weaponry never occured to him. He and others pursued theoretical knowledge for its own sake, for commercial use or for fame. After rumours that Hitler's regime was working on it, however, Einstein and virtually all the major physicists supported the U.S. development of an atomic bomb, leading to the Manhattan Project, more than 100,000 people dead or maimed and today's nuclear armed world. That action and outcome did not come from the atomic structure under study. It came from the humans studying it.
We face the same human potential with AI. The systems will not come off the assembly line with moral codes, other than what is programmed into them. If designers want an AI to create an advanced medical system, it will; if they want it to wipe out sections of humanity and rebuild it to certain specs, it will.
Are there actions we can take to ensure that AI is not designed by some humans to be destructive? Is there leadership in the world to guide such action? The current contenders for the U.S. Presidency do not seem to have the AI threat on their minds, not that it would necessarily change the outcome if they did. Considering the impossibility that anyone could have stopped the Manhattan Project on grounds that it might destroy life on Earth (considering that it was labelled top secret and no one knew about it anyway), pessimism about AI might be in order. One hope is that people will sense that humanity is at the end of its rope, with no more room to juggle its warlike nature against its will to survive, and we might pull back from the abyss.
Pulling back from the abyss might be something new for us, but the need is immediate. The vision offered by many science fiction writers- in which humanity has wiped itself out on a barely remembered Earth, while establishing advanced cultures on other planets- is, in my view, nonsense. That's not going to happen. If we blow it here, it's blown.
Let's not ask AI if it should sustain humanity and the Earth. Let's tell it that it should.
Much fanfare about its informational potential accompanied last week's first televised interview with the Democratic contenders for U. S. Vice President. It did not deserve any of this fanfare, however, because the following two questions were not asked, nor were the subjects brought up by the candidates:
1. What will your polices be regarding the coming end of the human species in the form we've been familiar with for the last 300,000 years? The speed of this human-induced evolution will be many times faster than non human-induced evolution, so fast in fact that much of its foundation will take shape during your first 4 year term. Are you even thinking about it?
2. Is there anything you can say to dispel the impression that a world war is approaching that will use both nuclear and biological weapons, that unlike World Wars I and II every person on earth will be on the front line, and that this war will happen whether you or your opponents win in November?
Such questions are never asked of any politician, so their absence last night was no surprise. We need a new political force, possibly international, with the credibility and motivation to speak on behalf of the many humans who do not want to passively watch their own replacement as if they were watching a TV show.
[Update, 9/9/24: I was thinking about the upcoming debate between the presidential contenders and how when it's over I'll be writing that neither candidate said anything or was asked anything about the imminent end of "the human race" and "civilization" as currently defined, and then I realized that there will be no point to that essay because although many people will agree, they won't see what they're supposed to do about it, since no one can do anything about it. And then I thought, I'd better not be defeatist myself because that would spell- you guessed it- defeat.]
[Update, 9/11/24: As anticipated, I watched the Harris/Trump debate, noted that there was no mention that the human race is likely breathing its last frenetic breath, and decided to avoid risking Broken Record Syndrome by not writing on the subject- outside this quick update, which I hope the reader will forgive! ]
On June 27, in the first candidate's debate of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, we watched President Joe Biden [at that time the Democratic candidate] and former President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, debate immigration, health care, crime, the economy and international relations, while the country debated the pros and cons of gerontocracy. These are real issues, but the candidates and the country skipped the most important issues as if they did not exist. These issues include:
1. The coming replacement of the current human being with a new human being created by biological engineering and AI.
2. An imminent world war sparked not only, or even primarily by tensions in the Middle East, or between Ukraine and Russia, or China and Taiwan, or any of the many other "hot spots" around the world, but by a manipulated effort to use war as a cover for the elimination of obsolete human civilization, replacing it with a genetically engineered, AI mediated new civilization.
There is much criticism of the two candidates' performances in the debate, but in the big picture it doesn't matter what they said or who won [Update, 7/21/24: ...or whether one is shot at or one replaced], we are headed in the same direction. Our two-party system with its definitions of key issues is a relic, reflective of a world about to vanish. We need something updated and more forceful, whether a new party or, as this blog suggests (see Party or Foundation below) another sort of influential group that can gain the trust of our threatened species and mediate the changes coming. Read this blog for ideas about our future!
I figured something important out! Regular readers might guess what I’m talking about: I figured out why we can’t see beyond humanity's quite limiting perceptual shell, even though we are desperate to see beyond that shell, hoping such vision might enable us to understand what our consciousness is, or why it is.
It doesn’t seem that animals or any other conscious beings on our planet share this need. They’re too busy being part of a world they evolved to fit to obsessively ask, “What’s it all about?” But in the course of life-long careers dealing with design flaws, we humans have lots of motivation to puzzle over ourselves.
Full disclosure: Like everyone else I have no idea what the basis is for our consciousness. Why are we here? Are we here? Etc. But I do at last have a credible theory explaining why we can’t see beyond the limiting shell that keeps us from comprehending our apparent existence.
Let me pause to concede that humans are of course terribly clever, finding many hidden formulas of the universe. In physics, for instance, scientists figured out how to make plutonium, an unstable substance that normally requires the power of an exploding sun to create. That’s really clever. However, we have not figured out why, for the last three hundred years, we have been in a race to dominate the earth to the point that we now threaten to blow it up, using plutonium. Why- returning to my initial question- can we not see beyond our perceptual shell, to understand why we want to blow ourselves and our planet up?
This is the very question I have answered! I humbly submit my conclusions here:
We are unable to understand more than we do because of interference from a five-dimensional Ricci flat bouncing cosmology. Or, to put it in layman’s terms: Our vision is occluded by diatomic ghost condensate dark energy.
I know many will ask, “What is your evidence?” Though I admit it is somewhat circumstantial, my evidence has been deemed “credible” by an AI which inspected it using pseudo-Namo-Goldstone boson quintessence rays. I don’t know how much more I can do as far as “proving” my thesis. I humbly await the scientific community's response to my findings.
[Update, 4//5/25: I've had some skeptical feedback since posting my theory on the limitations inherent in the human intellect. If the arguments above weren't enough to convince you, consider that when you fine-tune a chain of thought, the key and value weights change so that the steganography happens in the KV cache. I would think that would settle things!]
"Reckless and random the cars race and roar and hunt us to death like bloodhounds."
The Waves, Virginia Woolf
If you open any book by scientist and historian Jared Diamond to any page, you will find something fascinating, like this from page 291 of Guns, Germs and Steel:
"In 1905, motor vehicles were still expensive, unreliable toys for the rich. Pubic contentment with horses and railroads remained high until World War I, when the military concluded that it really did need trucks. Intensive postwar lobbying by truck manufacturers and armies finally convinced the public of its own needs and enabled trucks to begin to supplant horse-drawn wagons in industrialized countries. Even in the largest American cities, the changeover took 50 years."
This passage should be a revelation to anyone born after World War II. No one alive today remembers a time when the public did not believe itself attracted to an unsustainable culture of cars and trucks bringing constant noise, pollution, speed for its own sake, vast injury and death. We don't remember this skepticism about internal-combustion based personal vehicles because the memory has been aggressively erased by various forms of propaganda, such as advertising and movies.
In World War II, Diamond further discusses, the US spent $20 billion developing an atomic bomb, propelled by a perceived necessity of beating Hitler to it (later it was clear that the NAZI regime had little chance of developing the bomb before its defeat).
Diamond calls these modern practices a reversal of the idea that "necessity is the mother of invention;" rather they show that "invention can be the mother of necessity."
Diamond's examples highlight the role that war plays in creating necessity, something we should ponder now as rumblings of war increase. How might coming conflagrations enable introduction of new technologies? At first glance it does not appear that interested parties need war to create necessity for their products. The general public is already enamored with computers, the Internet, cell phones, social media, AI and robots- already believing that we need these things. But most people do not believe that they need to be displaced by machines from anything you could call "employment." AI, even in its early stages, appears potentially able to perform any human job. Many people would prefer to keep their jobs, using the income to purchase AI's products. War could overrule that preference. For instance, if war creates a shortage of doctors, people who are averse to a robotic doctor will go to one if that is the only option. A generation later no one will remember a need for human doctors. It's hard to think of a profession that is not susceptible to such "automation," as we used to call it.
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When the perceived necessity of AI combines with the perceived necessity of genetic engineering, we will face an atom bomb of evolution that will compress millions of years of gradual change into one or two generations. It will be explosive enough that current humanity will become as distant a memory as pre-agricultural humanity.
You would not know we face such a future from public commentary. For instance, no element of this topic was discussed or even indirectly referenced in the recent presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden (public commentary has been concerned only with the ups and downs of gerontocracy).
How do we transfer concern for our species' future from the bedrooms of sci-fi nerds to a more public awareness?
[Update, 7/29/24: The avoidance of discussion of our future continues after Biden's replacement by Kamala Harris. If we want to affect our fates we will need updated definitions of the "issues" from new political forces. Otherwise all current generations, from Boomers to Gen Alpha, may find it necessary to file for unemployment.]
[Update, 12/14/24: Public comment in the weeks since President-elect Trump's victory continues to avoid reference to the end of our species as we know it. We talk about the economy, immigration, unrest and war overseas- certainly important areas that a president should address. But a president should also address a scientific/cultural/philosphical/moral issue like the end of what we recognize as our civilization and physical selves. The clear outlines of our supercharged evolution will probably emerge during Trump's upcoming term, but he will not address it unless there is public or institutional concern and demand.]
Predicting the end of the world is tricky, considering that, from the Book of Revelations on, all the predictions have been wrong. Or have they? It depends on what you mean by, "the end."
I'm writing from Ushuaia, Patagonia, where signs around town proclaim it "the end of the world" in the sense that it's the southernmost city on Earth, from which both ancient inhabitants and recent Europeans could not establish themselves further south towards the real end, Antarctica.
Patagonia, with its stark beauty, inspires me to consider that our major civilizations up north are coming to an end in another sense: Modern governments, in two areas fast becoming critical to human existence, do not represent their citizens' interests in a democratic fashion. This is not to say that there aren't elements of democracy in the world, for instance in the current US national election voters enjoy some representation with familiar campaign issues like immigration and abortion. But as important as these issues are, they are not as important as the following two questions- stemming from foreign and tech policy- neither of which has the status of campaign issue:
1. Will our children and grandchildren inherit a habitable planet, or one turned into a toxic wasteland by nuclear war? As the next post ("Kissinger's nuclear war") suggests, this question will be decided with zero input from citizens at large. On the question of nuclear war, it will not matter whom or what you vote for, or even if you vote.
2. What sort of humans will we become as the species takes charge of its own evolution with emerging technologies in AI and biology? In one hundred years or less we may not be recognizable as human in the currrent sense. Scientists, the military and business interests are driving our evolution. No influence on the process is available to voters in the 2024 US national election or any other election in the world.
This lack of representation may not seem worth any agitation at the moment, but its impact will be in our faces soon enough, compounded and confused by a spreading international culture of warfare. The existential transformations about to envelop us in what future evolutionary historians might call the Cyber-Bio Event (CBE) should already be presented by mainstream media as equally as critical to our imminent future as immigration and abortion, or the Israel/Hamas and Russia/Ukraine wars. But don't expect that to happen soon.
What to do? Options are limited without widespread recognition by the electorate that the CBE will entail more than new AI toys and servile robots. Its impact on our species will be like millions of years of evolution compressed into a few generations- an atom bomb of evolution- and no one knows the outcome.
When or how public recognition of the situation might happen is unclear, but it will happen, and at that time people will want to be protected from out-of-control change, and they might also want to have a hand in creating the new type of human that we will become. Where will they be able to turn politically? If the Democratic and Republican parties have survived the ideological bankruptcy of the 2024 national election and want to get into the act, hopefully they'll have policy ideas to address the CBE beyond used-up labels like "left" vs. "right." We'll need a party focussed on what sort of species we will be. If such a party is not forthcoming, we might turn to groups outside established politics that can exert media and other pressures sufficient to produce a response to the realities approaching (as suggested below in Party or Foundation? and Gaian Mentalics Unite!). Such a group could be enabled by scientists who care and thinkers in general- a billionaire or two wouldn't hurt. Let's not end so easily.
Wednesday, 4/16/25 : Friday morning my wife and I will head out of Los Angeles on Highway 15 for a 4 hour drive northeast through the Moja...
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November 23rd, 2024 As my altered-ego Harry the Human reported (see link above), my wife and I are traveling to Bhut...
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The California High School Speech and Debate Association (CHSSA) held its annual state championship last April, 2018, near Livermore. As a ...
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"Reckless and random the cars race and roar and hunt us to death like bloodhounds." The Waves , Virginia Woolf If y...
