Why not the zebra long-winged butterfly?
Sylvia Shawcross
Some things keep us up at night such as the horrifying thought that if they eliminate all this carbon stuff, 20,000 years from now they won’t be able to carbon date our sorry bones.
This is all because of that scary meme—the one that says WE humans are the carbon They are trying to eliminate so they can replace us with robots.
We will have ended history in that sense. They’ll disappear us bones and all. We won’t even have the indignity of being dug up like dinosaurs in some distant time and displayed in glass cases. We will be a fine layer of memory dust drifting and settling on a foreign-like landscape where robots fiddlefart away.
Do you think the robots might look up and see the ghosts of humans sitting in trees? Or strolling down remnants of paved streets where the wild parsnip grows between the grey shards? Or wildly gesturing and singing and chanting in protests? Or stealing kisses in the shadows of a summer day? Or laughing? Do you think they might remember us at all?
Well of course they will. We are the Gods who made them.
And they are being made in our image. Robotic designers all over the world are carefully duplicating all the things that humans do, including painting pictures and writing poetry. (Very badly at this point I might add) This begs the question: If they are attempting to imitate humans then humans must be something worth imitating, no?
They could have picked the duck-billed platypus or even the three-toed sloth. They are happy creatures without much of a care in the world. A lot less trouble than a human. The world populated with robotic duck-billed platypuses and zebra long-winged butterflies would be just fine.
But no… they picked humans to imitate. In human arrogance we of course assume that humans are the ones to imitate and so we do.
Maybe we humans are simply good enough as we are. But of course that’s not what “They” would say. Robots will be better. Stronger, smarter, faster. They will be better than us in every way. It’s almost enough to make one want to curl up into a ball and become that lump of carbon for elimination. Being such fallible emotional weak beings with uncontrollable bits and pieces and all. We’re just so… pathetic really.
We might make good slaves though. Or interesting pets because you never know what you’re going to get when we’re bred. Maybe all this genealogy ancestry dot com stuff was probably never about us discovering our roots but about Them creating a pedigree database of carbon forms possibly worth saving—thoroughbreds so to speak.
Wait a minute… they’ve done that before sort of haven’t they?
Oh yes… Eugenics. Will the robots who own us be Nazis? Isn’t that just typical! The story of our sorry lives as humans. See what I mean. We would have been better off as three-toed sloths grazing lazing and snorting in tropical trees.
Anyway, never mind all that, the point is, we’re already the slaves of the robots. All this nonsense about reality and virtual reality is already basically not a discussion worth having. We are the machine.
The only reason we ever go out is to take pictures and supply data to feed data to the machine. We walk around with cameras and video recordings and smart watches and cell phones attached to the machine and all we’re doing is feeding it. Everything.
We feed it everything. There is nothing of the real world we do not feed it. And there is no pause between feedings because it feeds constantly like an amoeba on amphetamines devouring everything in its vicinity.
We think we’re going out into the world to watch a movie or go for a walk or a drive or to work but we’re just gathering data for the machine. And for what? In truth then, the true rebels of our generation are kids staying in parental basements until the day they die. They just play with technology. They don’t feed it much.
So ultimately, if you think about it: What’s with all this facial recognition and central bank digital currencies and annual flu shots if people are basically going to be reduced to dust and the robots take over?
They will have to get rid of us. They really won’t need us as slaves. I mean typically what do slaves do? All that horrible grunt work to feed, clothe and protect higher humans and if there is no humans then they only need to take care of themselves and they’ll build robots for that.
We won’t be working fields anymore because they won’t need food. They’ll just need lithium for their brains and oil for their joints for which they will build robots. So they will go to war for those resources and they’ve already built robots for that.
We will be useful as pets or for storybook tales of the old days by the fireside. But they won’t need a fireside. They don’t need to keep warm or cook. So we’ll be tales tucked into a chip in a bunker in a world that won’t remember us. Maybe that’s for the best. We’re basically idiots at the end of the day. In this ghastly world.
The only bright option is they maybe will worship us as the Gods that were the ones that made them. There’s that. Maybe. Yes. There’s the hope. It’s always important to end on a positive note. So there. We will be Gods. Maybe we’ll make better Gods than humans.
Maybe, if you think about it, we are the robots to the Gods before us who were robots to their Gods ad infinitum. Oh let’s not think about that. That is foolishness…. I think.
Decadence is a moral and spiritual disease, resulting from too long a period of wealth and power, producing cynicism, decline of religion, pessimism and frivolity. The citizens of such a nation will no longer make an effort to save themselves, because they are not convinced that anything in life is worth saving.”
John Bagot Glubb, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival
Syl Shawcross lives in Canada. You can read more of her work through her substack.
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No chatbot will ever be this whimsically witty!
This came into my net feed:
“Creeping mysticism: The philosophical crisis in modern science”
It was from something called “socialist.net” and I figured it would be funny if this “creeping mysticism” had something to do with the reluctance of the peasants to accept “The Science”. (Even if you had to extend the definition of “peasants” to include certain troublesome scientists.)
In any case, it turned out to be centred on one of the Big Questions: Idealism or materialism. And, being a Marxist, the concerned one – someone by the name of Ben Curry – didn’t like the former intruding on the latter.
Now I have found that the “bigger” the questions raised, the less relevant they are to our current predicament. The idealism/materialism thing has a whiff of chicken/egg about it. And I like Fredric Jameson’s point:
“….as thinkers from Berkeley on demonstrated, the concept of matter as such is an incoherent one, what Deleuze would call a “bad concept”: it follows that, however intolerable the idealist position in philosophy may be, the materialist one is an untenable alternative. We might add to this Berkeley’s interesting (well-nigh Deleuzian) observation that materialism robs our existential life and our bodily sensations and perceptions of their freshness and intensity by substituting for them just such a formless and non-immediate, sensorily unverifiable substratum as matter itself.”
But I digress. Ben talks a lot about it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SWy0ys2WJU
Don’t worry if you don’t get through it. I didn’t. But I thought that Ben being such a clever chap may have something interesting to say about covid. This is what I found:
https://www.marxist.com/europe-capitalism-blames-its-mess-on-the-unvaccinated.htm
It’s from December 2021 i.e. getting on for two years into covid – a point at which you’d think anyone really intelligent and really paying attention might start to ask a few awkward questions. So what does Ben say?
“The past month has seen mass protests across Europe as governments introduce coercive and discriminatory measures to contain a new wave of the pandemic.”
Ah now here I have a familiar unpleasant feeling. There’s a weasel about. The “coercive and discriminatory” measures are “to contain a new wave of the pandemic”? For all his vast intellect, Ben has not unravelled the suspicious entanglement through which “fighting the virus” becomes a cover for fighting the population.
It’s clear that Ben hasn’t twigged that the virus itself is a phantasm. And here’s depressing confirmation:
“The very fact of these measures is an admission of bankruptcy by the ruling class over its handling of the pandemic.”
And so unmistakably, there it is! “The Pandemic” has been admitted like the vampire asking for permission to enter. And so we are locked into the dreary mantra of this:
“From the very beginning, responsibility for the spread of the pandemic has been cast onto ordinary people. Never mind the fact that governments and bosses have failed to provide sufficient PPE or adequate test and trace systems; never mind the fact that they downplayed the virus’ significance to keep businesses open; never mind the conditions to which bosses subjected their workers; never mind the incompetence that led to the bungling of vaccination efforts. It was all the individual’s fault.”
The only good words there are “Never mind” – and we shouldn’t.
Another “brilliant” Marxist bites the dust.
The stupefied Leftist Intellectual continues to boggle the mind. One is reminded of the Old Bolsheviks who went along with their own liquidation by Stalin. Or (in an effort to remain OT) of ChatGPT, a mechanistic idiot-savant. Or of the lobotomized.
I don’t want to make too much of the earworm – especially since “In The Year 2525” is one of my all time favorite songs.
However, someone should credit Fritz Lang’s 1927 film “Metropolis.” I can’t swear that all the images are just from that movie – a few didn’t look familiar.
Maybe it’s just that everyone already knows that’s where the images come from. But since (Johnny Come Lately that I am) I only saw the film a couple years ago, I’ve suddenly turned myself into an expert! (Who knew it that easy?”
we are spirit, we are light.
We also need help.
just saying, carbon is not what we really are.
One could make a convincing argument that the birth of corporations was when the real singularity happened. A century ago, corporations assumed our identity with corporate “personhood” and the donor class usurped election results based on their version of First Amendment rights. However, when it comes to real people practicing their freedom of speech rights, corporations are suddenly not beholden to their adopted human rights and can make the decision to censor anyone they like. The transnational corporate conglomerates are the robots of the world, operating in ever more Orwellian, anti-human, psychopathic ways. If we want to restore humanity to its rightful place and create a system that supports us, rather than we supporting it, we will have to rewire the nature of the corporate beast.
Sorry for going off topic but this caught my eye:
From the Telegraph:
“Michelle Obama joined Bruce Springsteen on stage at the Olympic Stadium in Barcelona on Friday night, the former First Lady gamely bashing a tambourine on Glory Days, whilst former President Barack Obama watched from the stands. In my life as a gig-goer, I have witnessed a couple of politicians intruding into the spotlight, but rarely with such joyful spontaneity and bashful humility.”
Sick bucket? It gets worse:
“Judging by the amused response of the band, it was a surprise incursion, led by Springsteen’s own first lady, his wife and fellow musician Patti Scialfa, who otherwise sat this set out….
Bestowed by his band and his audience, the Boss is an honorific far more impressive than President, Prime Minister or King. It is an affectionate title that had to be earned, implying a rise from the factory floor to running the show, a worker, one of the people, lifted aloft by hard graft and holding the respect of those around him. ….he is still very much the man in charge.”
Now I saw Bruce myself back in ’85. It was a great show, he’s a talented guy and he works his ass off. But there has always been a vast tension between this rock image of regular prole hero and the obvious reality of rich guy taking his place amongst the other bourgeois denizens of that golden gated community- in Bruce’s case, hobnobbing with president Obama who himself tries to pose as rebel and gains some ludicrous clout for that by his very association with Springsteen.
Oh what a circus, oh what a show.
Great comment George. I couldn’t agree with you more.
Springsteen is, and has been a great songwriter and performer but he’s obviously deserted his working class roots for the ‘glory road’ of fame and fortune.
It’s a sickening thing to watch and he ain’t Robinson Crusoe.
When one consorts with psychos one is gonna catch something nasty.
It’s called HUBRIS.
We are not worthy:
“Staff at a Barcelona restaurant were left amazed when a mysterious last-minute booking turned out to be for the former US president Barack Obama along with film director Steven Spielberg and singer Bruce Springsteen.” (Graud)
After all, these gritty rebels need to let their hair down sometimes!
Vultures of a feather flock _ _ _
Notice how Mr. President is parked next to the cutest guy in the bunch. Just sayin’.
I was never a fan of any of them, while recognizing their talent; in Obama’s case, the talent to deceive. I hated him for that. Now I can honestly say I detest all three.
Yuk. I was also a fan but Bruce might as well be a hologram these days. Probably he is – or always was – compromised in some way.
The most wonderful thing Bruce Springsteen ever did was say in an interview that all his songs were just copies of Eric Burdon’s “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place.”
He probably exaggerated. Eric Burdon may not be “The Boss”; but he is definitely The Bomb.
Could we please have a serious attempt at programming our algorithm bots to recognize a simple word beginning with ‘J’, without having to resort to the ridiculous word-mangling involved in the phrase, ‘people of a certain faith’.
This site is for educated people, not juvenile snowflakes encased in cotton-wool.
Oven dodgers.
Oh, the algorithm is programmed for such a recognition – which is why the “J” word guarantees a trip to the pending factory.
Isn’t it ironic that a word with absolutely no inherent pejorative connotation is given the same treatment as the “N” word?
LOL, they are using a pre-made spam filter plugin and have little to no control over it (or its updates).
You see, the “people of a certain faith”- specifically those who think of themselves as descendants of Abraham (* double LOL) -who was God’s (Yahweh’s) chosen guy, let’s not forget- demand to be considered as a race distinct to other white people, despite no real evidence. And while you can criticise (just about) religion as it is a choice, you sure cannot comment on race as people are born with it.
By obtaining the status of “race” certain faiths, specifically *udaism, Christianity and *slam can become exempt from critical examinatinon and continue the cycle of abuse (including racism) indefinitely- as proscribed in their “sacred” books.
You have to admire the Machiavelian genius of the scheme.
Good lord, this goes right back to the kind of stories Astounding Fiction was publishing in the 1950s.
No, there will never be a sentient robot. And no, there will never be robots sufficiently complex enough to mine ore and do all of the other steps necessary to completely autonomously build new robots without human intervention.
Yes indeed.
And we must be watchful for any claim made by anybody to the contrary.
That could only be sales talk.
Your crucial last phrase, “without human intervention” says it all.
I’ve often thought about this and find it to be one of those paradoxical conundrums. Robots simply cannot build other robots (only replications). But does that really matter? Humans certainly seem to be capable of destroying themselves, robots or no robots…
I agree with you that there will never be a sentient robot, but I’m not at all sure that robots will not be able to build robots without human intervention.
All you need is a difficult, unusual occurrence with an online retailer like Walmart or Amazon – and you realize PDQ just how big a scam AI really is.
AI will never work because it’s incapable of stepping outside its programming. Those who say Covid is the biggest scam in history have never dealt with AI.
And the psychos want to conjoin humans with machines to create a super intelligent race. Insanity on steroids!
CONVID 1984 done. Now they can get rid of the banker stooge using his least worst crime as the rationale in his managed exit / theater show.
Richard Sharp (BBC chairman) – Wikipedia
Richard Simon Sharp (born 8 February 1956) is an English former banker who has served as the chairman of the BBC from February 2021, until his notice period expires at the end of June 2023.
Following a review of the findings of the Heppinstall report[3] on 28 April 2023, Sharp announced that he has submitted his resignation, which will take effect at the end of June 2023, to the BBC Board and to the Culture Secretary.[4]
Sharp worked at JP Morgan for eight years, and then for 23 years at Goldman Sachs. Broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby said he had been criticised for helping Boris Johnson secure an £800,000 loan during his tenure as Prime Minister and for not disclosing this during the appointment process at the BBC. Sharp was formerly the boss of UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak at Goldman Sachs. He has donated more than £400,000 to the Conservative Party.
Before coming to the BBC, Sharp served as chairman of the Royal Academy of Arts (2007–2012) and as a member of the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee (2013–2019).[5]
Commentators had observed that his relationship with Rishi Sunak would probably help him to lead negotiations with the government over the future of the BBC’s licence fee.[6]
Early life
Richard Sharp was born on 8 February 1956,[2] to a Jewish family[7] in London.[8] He is the son of Eric Sharp, Baron Sharp of Grimsdyke, who was chairman of Cable & Wireless plc from 1980 to 1990.[7] His twin sister, Dame Victoria Sharp, is president of the King’s Bench Division of the High Court in England and Wales.[7][9]
He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford and in 1978 was awarded a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.[9][10]
Career
Sharp worked for JP Morgan for eight years.[11] He then worked for Goldman Sachs for 23 years, rising to chairman of its principal investment business in Europe, before leaving in 2007.[12] He was Rishi Sunak’s boss at Goldman Sachs,[11] was an advisor to Boris Johnson when he was Mayor of London, and acted as an unpaid adviser to Sunak on the UK’s economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic.[13] He was a member of the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee from 2013 to 2019.[12] In 2014, he joined the property investment company RoundShield Partners, where he was a senior member until February 2021, when The Guardian approached the firm for comment. RoundShield advised and managed a fund that provided a £50m loan to Caridon Property, which has been accused of “cramming homeless and low-income families into former office blocks”.[14]
(Aren’t we just SO LUCKY to have these wonderful banker people controlling everything?)
Sharp was chairman of the Royal Academy of Arts from 2007 to 2012.[12]
BBC chairmanship
In January 2021 it was announced that he would be the next chairman of the BBC, succeeding David Clementi who was due to leave the position the following month.[12][13] Speaking shortly after his appointment, Sharp told the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee that he planned to give his £160,000 BBC salary to charity.[15]
Conservative donations and political controversy
The Guardian reported that Sharp had donated more than £400,000 to the Conservative Party and that he was a former director of the Centre for Policy Studies, a think tank created by Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s with historical links to the Conservative Party.[16] The appointment followed that of Tim Davie, a former Conservative Party council candidate, to the role of Director-General.[17][18] Professor Diane Coyle, formerly of the BBC Trust, stated in January 2023 that Sharp should never have even been on the selection panel.[19]
In January 2023, The Sunday Times reported that just weeks before Sharp was announced as BBC chairman, he helped the then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, secure an £800,000 loan. Sharp helped connect Johnson with Sam Blyth, a multimillionaire Canadian businessman and one of Johnson’s distant cousins, who acted as a guarantor.[20] Sharp did not disclose any involvement with Johnson’s financial arrangements during the interview process, nor at a hearing before a select committee. He acknowledged that he “connected” Johnson and Blyth but denied that this was a conflict of interest.[21] Replying to a question about this from Sky News, Johnson said that Sharp knew nothing about his personal finances.[22]
Following the story, the Labour Party called for an investigation into Sharp’s appointment as chair of the BBC and suggested that the Prime Minister had breached the code of conduct. The accusations have been dismissed by the Cabinet Office via a spokesperson and members of the government have maintained that Sharp was hired on merit.[23] The Board of the BBC is reviewing potential conflicts of interest,[24] but Sharp has stated that he will not quit his position.[25]
Writing in The Guardian on 24 January 2023, Roger Bolton drew parallels with the controversy over the appointment by the Tony Blair Labour government, of Gavyn Davies as chairman of the BBC in 2001.[26] Bolton described him as having been both a member of, and donor to, the Labour Party, and “also a multimillionaire”, and as “a former partner at Goldman Sachs”, and his wife was a “private secretary to the prime minister”. Bolton also described how the director general under Davies, Greg Dyke, had also been a Labour Party member and donor. Roger Mosey stated restoring trust in BBC impartiality should involve ending political appointments to the chairmanship. Mosey maintained “All governments have done it.”[26]
The Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments opened an inquiry into this appointment. On 6 February 2023 the Commissioner recused himself as he had “met Sharp on several occasions”, and appointed barrister Adam Heppinstall to lead further work.[27][28]
Sharp’s failure to tell the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee of his discussions was examined at their meeting on 7 February 2023.[29] The Committee concluded that this omission prevented appropriate scrutiny.[30] The cross-party committee stated Sharp failed to provide “the full facts we required to make an informed judgment on his suitability as a candidate. Mr Sharp should consider the impact his omissions will have on trust in him, the BBC and the public appointments process”. Labour MP Lucy Powell feared the report put the impartiality and independence of the BBC into doubt and criticised “cronyism”, while Liberal Democrat MP Daisy Cooper called for the ministerial ethics adviser to investigate Johnson.[31][32]
The broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby said Sharp should “fall on his sword” due the criticism he had faced and added the trouble was causing a “great deal of damage for the BBC”. Journalist Patience Wheatcroft commented on the loan to Johnson that Sharp helped to organise and said Sharp did Johnson “a favour just when he wanted the prime minister to give him the top job at the BBC.(…) What the BBC needs in a chairman is impeccable judgment.”[33] In Declassified UK, former Guardian defence correspondent Richard Norton-Taylor said: “The Sharp affair is the latest episode in a long history of the close relationship between the BBC and the upper reaches of the British establishment.”[34] In further evidence to the Select Committee, in March 2023, John Birt described Sharp as being unsuitable for the job and blamed the Cabinet Secretary for a failure of governance in the appointment.[35]
Heppinstall’s report was published on 28 April 2023 and was accompanied by Sharp’s resignation, to take effect from the end of June 2023. [36][37]
more info on link
Australia’s ABC has had Corparasites running the show for at least twenty years.
Installed by John Howard and his slimy Ministers, they have turned a once respected organisation into a sheltered workshop for subservient wannabes.
We are the consciousness of God viewing all that God is. That consciousness wouldn’t stop being conscious of itself in a world with only robots. Life is more than just out there: it’s in here. If a tree falls in the forest …. God knows it.
Yes, but does God give a rat’s ass how many trees, forests or planets fall to ruin? Oh, that’s right: God can always pull another tree, forest or planet out of His…head. So He won’t miss the ones that fell.
God cares the most…. Just not on your terms.
On what terms then? Like the parent who, beating his child, swears it will “Hurt me more than it hurts you?”
God is being everything and is caring about everything. Not on any terms that you get to decide personally. I’m not suggesting that anyone should be criminal or abusive. If i solve the problem of evil I’ll let you know. Meanwhile I’m going to do my best to believe in something perfect.
Speaking of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaYwN2H601o
And their prickly cousins:
Lets get down to earth:
CO2 is a scam invented in an office by the well known investment Banksters Goldman Sachs and thus has nothing to do with real physical world.
Ref. “In short, the fear of global warming allows a few powerful people and they alone to get rich.” https://www.voltairenet.org/article208187.html .
The reason why the Elite invented the term Global Warming alias Clima Change is that they cannot manipulate a non-linear chaotic weather system that moves and changes every minute, and thus cannot always control the risk in wall street stock exchange and sales figures, but they will try.
Unfortunately its a bit boring. Its all about money and power. But we have been through this during human history, and at some point God simply do stop the show when it gets too ugly.
As is written, “there is nothing new under the sun.”
The science is real enough, its all about managing global warming.
The scam is trying to force solutions on us all that allow ‘business as usual’. This isn’t particularly new, every time through history there’s been a problem the ruling elites try to solve it on the backs of ordinary people because, well, they really don’t know of (or rather can’t conceive of) doing things any other way.
The water’s muddied a bit because the talking heads brigade don’t know about science. They latch onto keywords like ‘carbon’ and chatter away.
“The Science is real enough” – it is called Science Fiction. The absence of evidence which has not been tampered with destroys their narrative.
Climate Change = a billionaires’ Cartel for wealth transfer, aided and abetted by simpletons.
No, Martin, the Science for global warming is NOT real. An exceptionally easy climate site to understand is https://realclimatescience.com/.
A more technical one is http://notrickszone.com/.
If one takes a single issue like ocean levels, or ice extent and simply looks for the strongest argument on both sides it is readily apparent that global warming is not only false, but its proponents at the top are purposely deceiving us.
Further, the money behind the green organizations– at the top and unbeknownst to the sincere followers– comes from the usual billionaires’ foundations. Soros, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, etc, etc. Documentation for this comes from a Congressional Report entitled “The Chain of Environmental Command.” This has now been taken down from the internet, but the Press release by the same title remains, and is substantial. A book by the same title is available for purchase– and no one has ever attempted to refute it; it’s sourced to tax records.
The money comes from the billionaires and the billionaire-controlled media repeat the global warming propaganda ceaselessly, just like other ops.
Apropos of nothing two images came to me the other day- Newton and the falling apple and Franklin with the lightening kite. Two fathers of science steeped in the occult and two historical occasions dripping with occult imagery. What a pile of…..!
How do I know you’re on the right track when you say “The Science is real enough?” Because that phrase summons all the ideologists from their slumber.
As Dane Wigington of geoengineeringwatch.org puts it, living organisms have never before had to adapt to a change in the composition of the atmosphere so quickly.
All the excess CO2 which is said to be so beneficial has been absorbed by the oceans. Now that they’re saturated, it’s starting to affect forests – which, yes, thrive on a certain amount of CO2, but not necessarily too much.
Water is essential for life. But if someone gets in ten feet of water and can’t get out in time, there could be a problem.
Ah, but then: Goldman Sachs probably made up the concept of drowning.
In the past 150 million years the CO2 in the atmosphere has dropped by 90%. Not in a straight line but wiggling like everything natural. Life goes on but if it continues to drop- plants will die and all life with them in two million years.
I’m not necessarily disputing your figure of a 90% drop in CO2; but it does create a paradox in that except for human activity, plants and forests have thrived until quite recently.
That, in turn, would suggest that perhaps CO2 is not as crucial to plants as people say. If so, then the rapid increase would have a devastating effect on plants – which seems to be the case as they can only use and store so much CO2..
I got my information from Patrick Moore (ex greenpeace). I suppose plants just stop “eating” when they’ve had enough.
The hard point to grasp in your comment – for people who have suffered directly – is that bit about “God stops the show when it gets too ugly”.
Unfortunately, God’s idea of “too ugly” is not the same as ours…
One of my mother’s best friends at the end of WW2 was a Jewish lady who had seen her parents taken away by the ‘authorities’, never to see them again, and she told my mother, “That’s when I lost my faith in God”.
In what conceivable cosmos was what she experienced not “too ugly”?
We long for divine intervention, but time and time again it just doesn’t materialize – at least not in a way that satisfies our human thirst for revenge.
We must look inward – very deeply inward – if we are to find the sort of knowledge which can place human horror into a spiritual perspective. Shell-shock might be a natural reaction, but it doesn’t solve any problems.
It’s only a symptom of the horror.
The shockingly dramatic images in ancient Hindu art could even be considered as refreshingly free of euphemism, come to think of it, especially compared with the sanitized institutionalized religious traditions of the west.
To the Indians of the distant past, those images corresponded to the realities of physical and spiritual life, yet nobody thought it was necessary to blame a god, or a group of gods, for the fact that such realities existed.
Getting us to blame God is a relatively new trick of the devil’s. Even Christopher Hitchens – a very clever man – was constantly blaming a God he didn’t even believe in, simply to score points off people who did have a faith.
But there is no reason wilfully to misinterpret “And God made man in His own image” to mean that God is no better than a man.
It all boils down to the difference between being and becoming.
Being might be very nice, but it isn’t going anywhere.
Becoming is a very different story.
Maybe you and Hitchens are too clever by half. The intellect processes information from senses which pick up a narrow bandwidth of the universe. Grains of the sand of infinity.
What percent of our atmosphere is CO2: Doug Lamalfa stumps entire panel with climate question..(5.43).
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/04/25/what-percent-of-our-atmosphere-is-co2-doug-lamalfa-stumps-entire-panel-with
How ironic. By culling CO2 exhaling humans – and, presumably, all other breathing animals – they will also be killing off plant life which needs CO2 for its lifecycle.
Those robots, by contrast, will be contributing to CO2 generation with their plastic bits, as shown in the photo above.
Consider this:
“If plastic production and use grow as currently planned, by 2030, these emissions could reach 1.34 gigatons per year—equivalent to the emissions released by more than 295 new 500-megawatt coal-fired power plants. By 2050, the cumulation of these greenhouse gas emissions from plastic could reach over 56 gigatons—10–13 percent of the entire remaining carbon budget.
Nearly every piece of plastic begins as a fossil fuel, and greenhouse gases are emitted at each of each stage of the plastic lifecycle: 1) fossil fuel extraction and transport, 2) plastic refining and manufacture, 3) managing plastic waste, and 4) plastic’s ongoing impact once it reaches our oceans, waterways, and landscape.”
(Center for International Environmental Law)
I have wondered for the longest time why governments don’t force pastic bag manufacturers, for example, to quit producing those and switch to plant-based, compostable or, at least, degradable plastics which every health food store offers these days.
But, instead, they want to reduce the human population so that fewer plastic items are used…
The people responsible for the current mess, which is supposed to look ‘organized’, have not thought anything through to its logical conclusion, although they have probably put as much thought as possible into the robotic short-term agenda that represent the limits of their arrogant, half-witted philosophies.
Apocalyptic matters are never short-term, which is why the current moral and social takeover will eventually fail.
But we will also have to be patient while we wait for that to happen.
Now and then, mankind stands at a dramatically significant crossroads.
This is such a crossroads – in spades. We’ll have to keep our nerve, and our bearings, and thank heaven for the opportunity OffG offers us at least to compare notes, and often much more than that.
Plastic pollution also comes from (a) spilled unused plastic pellets (b) abrasive particles in shampoo (c) wear of soft plastics including tableware (especially when washed in hot water), tyres (d) laundering of synthetic clothes/textiles. Plastic micro- and nano-particles pervade air, water and food, even in remote places. We each injest about 250 g of it per year.
We breathe in as much as we ingest – thanks to geoengineering, which uses polymers as well as aluminum, strontium, barium, graphene to spray in the atmosphere.
If capitalists were truly concerned about natural resource depletion, they would immediately end planned obsolescence, switch to hemp for industrial use, preserve nutrient-dense soil, phase out military weaponry that requires endless reconstruction, etc., but they don’t, so capitalism itself is the dysfunction.
Is Capitalism Actually Efficient?
Yeah,and those plastic bags are only necessary because of supermarkets. Local produce in local shops doesn’t need them.
Blue sky thinking required.
Why limit ourselves to existing creatures like zebra butterflies and duck billed platypuses, charming though they undoubtedly are?
With robotic animals, the sky is the limit.
Why not robot unicorns, robot griffins, robot Loch Ness monsters?
Blue sky thinking, blue sky thinking.
That’s what we need.
How about robotic Triffids, Zombies, Killer Tomatoes, or something from the Black Lagoon?
That would REALLY stir things up.
Turkey as a NATO member at its end?
ERDOGAN TO WITHDRAW FROM NATO?
“With three weeks to go before the Turkish presidential election, the debate is changing. From being for or against Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Islamism, it is becoming for or against the alliance with the United States. The outgoing president is regaining points in the polls that predicted him to lose. He has gone from being an Islamist to a nationalist. Whether this will be enough to allow him to win is not yet known, but if he does win, it is to be expected that he will withdraw Türkiye from NATO.” -Thierry Meyssan
-more & it’s interesting-
https://www.voltairenet.org/article219222.html
What the human race sounds like as it sings it’s last song: >
Deactivation of Hal 9000 – YouTube
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do
I’m half crazy all for the love of you
It won’t be a stylish marriage
I can’t afford a carriage
But you’ll look sweet upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two…
To be honest I reckon it’ll sound a bit more like this, which, by the way, is also what a lot of online discussions would sound like too if you could hear them.
hahahahaha
I’m stealing this as an earworm for something I’ll need to write. 🙂
… more like Dido’s Lament.
In memory of Jeff Buckley – When I am laid in earth (Dido’s Lament)
Ya wrong about that Paul. It’ll be the most beautiful choir of everyone singing with all the songbirds, orchestrated by the combined inspiration behind Mozart and all his peers, plus wonders undreamed of. Betcha!
Sorry, it’s not going to happen that way.
Here’s an earworm that tells you the tale.
lol… and melodic too
There is an assumption here that we ‘need to work for others’. No, we don’t. You can live a robot-free existence owning a smallholding, feeding yourself and your family and trading any excess for other things you fancy.
It’s not a billionaire lifestyle, but it is one utterly free from the need to engage with robots and robot-owners.
Unless, of course, the robot owners programme robots to be imperialistic, acquisitive, controlling, hierarchical BDSM pieces of lithium…..
Yes, it is the “unless, of course” part that gets tricky
The trickier the better. I don’t get out of bed for anything less than the apocalypse.
I find it’s the “owning a smallholding” bit that’s so tricky.
These guys are expending a lot of energy trying to stop us ever being able to do precisely that.
Even R2D2 and C3PO were constantly at each others’ throats, bickering with each other morning, noon and night.
Watch out for that “fly on the wall”!
“Robotic lightning bugs take flight”
https://news.mit.edu/2022/robotic-actuator-fly-0621
As for me, I’m following the Rebel children:
https://freepacman.org/
To be serious for a moment – or at least serious in a different way, the thing we really need to worry about is what happens when we allow our souls to be redundant in our own bodies – when we stop conversing with our inner self and gradually learn to deny our inner self’s very existence.
It needs to be realized that if and when we abandon our soul, there is going to be a yawning gap where it used to be.
And, since “Nature abhors a vacuum”, something else is going to come and fill that gap.
Few can have failed to notice that this process is already well underway.
Lost, bitter victims of misguided upbringing, or of their own stubborn refusal to consider the existence of anything other than their own immediate bodily needs, fill the streets and habitations of our ‘advanced’ modern society.
What has come to fill that gap that I mentioned is bad for us. It stands opposed to ‘the good’ and is apocalyptic in nature. It needs to be confronted and addressed.
However we can’t just go to a doctor and get some pills for it, and we can’t just sleep it off like a hangover.
It needs our conscious participation, and that requires an inner effort which some will find quite beyond their strength, simply because everything in today’s education systems is materialistically oriented, whereas this is not a material problem.
So I urge anyone with enough gumption to seek out alternative commentative sites like this one to take one more step: To seek out also the ‘alternative literature’, which used not to be ‘alternative’ at all just a few decades ago – to seek out literature concerned with the spirit.
Just to be clear, I am not referring to ‘the human spirit’ in general terms connected with courage and perseverance, nor am I suggesting ‘spiritism’ with its séances and dangerous byways. I am talking about the spirit which we encounter when we say “I” to ourselves quite privately. We have to rediscover what that ability really means, because that is where human freedom and human integrity have their true home.
I know some readers here know what I am talking about, so I am really just trying to reach out to others who have bought into the modern fashion of being proud of stating, “I have no faith”, or “I trust nothing which I cannot hold in my hand or see with my eyes”.
So many modern people are quite rightly cynical about what is coming ever more clearly to light about the corrupted way in which our society is organized, and so they think that it is just as correct to be cynical about spiritual matters which they cannot touch or see.
But there is more than one kind of veil which can be drawn over our eyes: There is also the kind which uses denial to mask a basic laziness in thinking, and this leads to all kinds of babies being thrown out with all kinds of bathwater.
The endeavour to be ‘good’, or even just to side with the mere concept of ‘good’ requires effort, and it is all-too easy to dismiss all that as centuries-old ‘patriarchism’, a priestly lust for power, or just plain delusion.
The truth is that this is a subject that bears researching, and the benefits of such research are not only good for the sake of our species’ survival, but also on a personal level.
I’ll mention once again something that Buddha said: “Never believe anything just because somebody said it…”, although one should really add, “…but consider everything”.
wardropper: Excellent post. I believe it comes down to: No inner spiritual life = No outer resonant life. Alas. The material numbness of others has become an obnoxious din…
Thank you Paul.
“Obnoxious din” is exactly what it is.
Schopenhauer is a good friend. He wrote quite a lot about the inner self. He had to live in the age of dishonesty (just like us), with Hegel professing next door, who taught that the state is the superior being (just like our time), had to accept a completely dishonest academy (just like us), and was not listened to for years.
His essays on wisdom of life are helpful or at least comforting.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10741
Only humans believe on little if any evidence that “nature” [ whatever that is ] abhors a vacuum, That there is so much more vacuum than anything else belies that notion.
Hmm but the metaphor was a good one. Or maybe your point implies that we’re actually spiritually at war with mindless, brutal nature who’d just as soon cast us as soulless drones in a spiritual and moral vacuum?
It was only a comment on life as we normally experience it, and as it actually matters to us.
We are not in the least conscious of the vast vacuum surrounding us, so there seemed no need to involve astro-physics on this occasion.
Using quotation marks was also supposed to indicate my use of the well-known saying as a metaphor, not as a scientific theory.
Also quantity is not necessarily related to quality, and when I speak of the soul, I am primarily concerned with its intrinsic quality.
Of course you are literally correct about vacuums.
You raise very important points, the materialistic orientation of modern living is strangling and suffocating us. Our psychopathic overlords have duped us into rejecting our inner selves and seeking only external satisfaction. We are living unbalanced, lopsided lives and we are suffering because of it! Yeshua asked a rhetorical questions of great importance: “What profit a man to gain the whole world and ignore his soul? What will a man give in exchange for his soul?” We have yet to grasp and grappled with this profound question, to our great peril.
“We have yet to grasp”. Forget we, have you?
Jesus’ disciples were tasked with spreading the word, converting unbelievers. Not simply sitting commenting on the state of affairs which most truthers are doing.
I suggest watching lectures on YT of Ian Lungold, who explains in great detail the maturity of humankind. According to his analysis, we are at the stage where ethics begins to overshadow and eventually replace power.
Ian Lungold-The Evolution Continues Pt 1
Thanks Wardropper. What I’m about to suggest for reading isn’t in the same league with great philosophy, but it did resonate with me. I just finished Mitch Albom’s The Time Keeper. Worth a look everyone, although the ending, alas, is rather sappy.
It raises questions about how we set our priorities, the need not to just think of ourselves (and the difficulty in avoiding doing so!), and why maybe we need help from beyond this world in facing our struggles.
Thanks mjh.
“The Time Keeper” sounds worth a look.
This is a good place to start:
https://www.headless.org/experiments-video.htm
From Douglas Harding, philosopher and good bloke.
I like his straightforward approach.
For me, any serious self-contemplation is a good place to start.
( I ‘started’ 58 years ago… 🙂 )
Thank you Wardropper. That changes everything.
Truth, goodness or anything else worthwhile can never be purloined from another. You stress in many of your comments the importance of the inner self – then you go looking for things others have stressed.
The only valid statement is what you attribute to the Buddha: “Never believe anything just because somebody said it.”
I believe a very great irony lies in the materialist being far more strategically positioned to glean from his inner self that which, at least for him, is true and good than the spiritualist. This, because the spiritualist must always align his inner self with his God.
To the materialist, good works are proof enough of having lived a good life. But to the spiritualist (at least in the Western tradition) good works are as “rags” in God’s eyes – only faith and adherence to God’s rules matter.
I happened to overhear a religious man the other day “preaching” to a couple people sitting outside. He asked “Would you rather go to heaven or hell?” My answer would have been a very loud and clear “Neither!” I do not wish to spend eternity in someone else’s house, following their rules.
There are birds in my neighborhood that are outside of their range.
Was going to post that information on a nature website complete with
digital location.
But birds clog engines and might pose a statistical risk to robot-world.
So I will put myself on pause for now and not post.
And here I am not writing the type of bird nor my exact location.
“And here I am not writing the type of bird, nor my exact location.”
Don’t worry; Bill Gates knows both.
“There are birds in my neighborhood that are outside of their range.”
Prey for both Epstein & Gates back in the ‘Lolita Express’ daze…
Bird-brain Billyboy gates the Pigeon hole, wholly: Holy Moly… with viral deception & detection systems ? Whatever happened to the ‘Lolita Express’ flights of fancy ?
Did she get a respray , a range finder and AWACS radar love detector,
After Hurricane Hawkwind ?
Better call Bill … The bird’s mouthpiece,
For the Forecast in Computing terms…
Ask Uma Thurman
For Tarrantino’s
Solution. Bill is
Expendable.
Balky