News
- Peace.
- Justice.
- Health (global ecological health, including human health, including individual health, embodied and psycheic).
- Vaccination against fascism.
- That “AI” would be far more resource-intensive than it would be profitable.
- It wouldn’t produce reliable or universally-agreeable results, because while these are the most important human pursuits, they pose difficult (perennial) problems. The fantasy of a facile, universalizable, standardized answer is propaganda for fascism.
- Good results would lead to less reliance on the technology, less engagement, and therefore less profit.
- Therefore it will not be attempted, let alone made.
The Myna // Sang Jalak
So here we are, in this
Third World. Palm trees,
Rice paddies, machetes.
Doves couple on concrete walls.
Seasalt breeze, like surface
Fire . . . Sapphire, emerald.
Sanctuary comes, commands
Silence. Our mothers cut
Tongues to police. Masked—
Myna bird speaks, on the
Mulberry tree. Elsewhere,
Ants against an elephant.
//
Sang Jalak
Jadi disinilah kita, di
Dunia Ketiga ini. Pohon palem,
Sawah, parang.
Merpati bercinta di dinding beton.
Angin laut asin, seperti permukaan
Api . . . Safir, zamrud.
Suaka datang, menuntut
Keheningan. Ibu-ibu kita memotong
Lidah ke polisi. Bertopeng—
Jalak Bali berbicara, di pohon
Murbei. Di tempat lain,
Semut melawan gajah.
//
military parade (no country for children)
a block of human souls, murder
of mirrors: organism heaves
a moving multitude of cells,
populous lung, as if to breathe.
populous gun, snap-locks to form:
fifty by fifty by fifty, we
as one, on riven necks, heads turn.
the mass of bodies march past Xi.
in uniform, blind discipline:
black boots, white arms, clean unison
defines the face; grey, seamless film,
a weapon’s youthful complexion.
meanwhile, across Pacific waves,
the people’s whore, instead of school,
deploys machines to make selves, slaves;
the suicidal human rule.
chip factories to feed the stocks:
by battery classroom, killing ground
to grind the greening down, by glass
addiction, into tyrant’s hound.
the glaze that, dying, skins the eyes,
steals vision from the animal;
filters from birth its grave sunrise
and petrifies the living soul.
the glaze that, seeing, sells and tells;
in masks, they empty out the homes.
nobody ever goes inside;
nobody ever is alone.
meanwhile, across Atlantic storms,
in cradle of brave humankind,
the eye its fatal flaw confirms:
the fracture of the human mind.
dust-craven, shame of patriarchs
forsook a sacred covenant;
belched blood on gift of holy land;
made blasphemy of government.
what child is this? his ribs exposed;
the second coming, came, disposed;
the final coming, coming’s close;
bodies of babes, unmade by drones.
around the blue planet repeats
this multiplicative device;
our genocide is not abroad;
the ovens crowd these hollow spaces.
proving, mobilization awed
gold-burnished by Byzantium;
the heart speaks broken memory;
this is no country for children.
so genius passed: neither in form,
nor in the scripted paedophage;
bereaved, God’s mercy, nature-borne;
a mother’s keening song, through rage.
//
🌔
silver robes of a rose rabbi
(a reply to Wallace Stevens’ “Le Monocle de Mon Oncle”; introduction here.)
I.
—and did you ordinary women mock
in liturgies of utterances contained,
lines overwrought by time-keeping cant of yours?
and did you burst from bullied syllabub,
or clockwise stiffen into winter walls?
the musicals of ghosts, midwives and angels
echo, hollow, down stone-cold corridors.
and did you consecrate your spectacle,
coupling one who spoke—no, no—not nothing,
a stand-in that you killed while playing swords?
to quell the bubbling spring by means of rain?
or merely quote the Mother’s name in vain?
she has been up at nights, considering
how to un-kiss this devil-gendered thing.
II.
well, i make believe an uncle, dead
and dear. less clear is fortune of the bird.
to fly, to seek, and what on earth to find
but torrent of an obsolescent mind
—he said, obscure and arduous to hear.
and yet, it flies. and though he doubts her crown
and midnight sight, she will fly too. and though
her silver glows in anecdotal mood,
her lilt, of stellar tilt, still loving, lingers
in braided dancing round a pool of blue,
tuning her clutch in nesting eddy of
said bird, whose course is old and hardly true
—and yet, it lives. rising, as golden-red
in flight, crowing like Scorpio in the East.
rest easy, uncle cold and fluttering
and lately of rambunctious residue;
a dove survives heaven to choir anew.
III.
O man, if you could see her witchlocs now,
or what’s become of Eastern expertise.
she is swamp-bitch, and twisted, twined and hitched
without romance by ruby claw to thorny crown,
her hair—each barb a bell, each bloody herb
a suicide. she’s heard of nobody’s
outrageous feats of raw technology.
in wracked rumors of Western fantasy
she knit a while textiles anti-exotic,
but sweaters have no use in the tropics,
where skin is king. and now we’ve come uncrimped,
uncrumpling, algal Anadyomene
of muddy water, Charybdis of the bog.
what’s history is past—nevertheless, he asks
why, woman, have you gone eau naturelle?
IV.
that spotless glass is not the book of Adam.
that trinity you stole cuts like a knife.
to be uncrumpled is to be un-uncled—
un-uncled, i become the poet’s wife.
i am un-hidden woman of the garden,
body un-ridden by the dust-bound word.
the queen of poet’s tongue, i lounge and lean
as music on my salivary throne.
the syllable you speak, my roundness is
her shapely immanence. our rectitude
is life—of tree—of life. so eat me, fallen
father of mankind, and know your foolishness.
speak again, brother—madly, as husband.
my honeyed bone un-spells your make-believe
kafir—he sees his wife sans négligee
who tastes the naked fruit by ripened eye.
says ordinary woman made explicit,
who steals your spectacle to save your life.
V.
can we remember together, after all
or does my voice harden the picture frame?
by being body, do i gather you
intolerably, or spread you thin as kin,
one stroking throb of summer esoteric—
you tickle me with feather of a peacock.
a gazer’s gloomy imagery is perfume
of incense, arousal at great distances,
long-smouldering and lit by tender match.
far from the proximity of virgins
there burn the Verbs of Love, arrayed
as galaxy of irretrievability—
before my eyes, you took and held my hand.
VI.
we used to call you man of twists and turns,
the dynamo—reckless, drowning, sea-rendered
until perennial blue, the one i knew
well enough to know, i loved nobody.
his thirst, prostrated, clutched me from below,
desperate to conceal from wingèd word
a history of suffering. a babe
buried his need in bosom of my nature,
drunk on the deep milk of disappearance.
his subterfuge despair was mythical,
until he made her fiction. he may not
remember me—but i keep by my heart
a wavy lock of sunset-auburn hair.
VII.
suppose a parable is just like her:
desired and defiled in equal measure.
his chivalry requires a blushing knight
to guard the word, who is incarnate treasure.
i heard of one such rescuer of women.
who, for his lovely sin, was de-mountained
by crippled foot, and fated never nimbly
to climb again. but faith in constancy
makes deliberate gifts, arms built from hours
spent torquing tongs before roaring earth-core.
therefore, no purity of heart is borne
that lacks an alloy in the sooty forge.
thou shalt not fear the courage of your virgin
is the limping gist of this comparison;
her shining is at once translucent bloom
and armor’s lustre, welded by humble Vulcan.
VIII.
if doom begins to seem antipathy,
baby, you’re scrolling past the blues. that time
of year thou mayst in our humanity—
but not the Muse—behold, of warty gourds'
cosmic grotesquerie. and there’s the rub.
as long as tongue still holds a gentle fold,
i will elucidate your grim hallucination.
launder and bandage the decaying limb
of sense, of memory, of time. wed heaps
of conscious compost consummate the bloom
in star-swept dimensions of titanium,
where whorls of microplastics never end—
machine poetic, of pumpkins meteoric,
becoming metaphysic—tender beings,
fizzing histories apocalyptic,
chime and rhyme as flutes of pink kombucha.
we sing the tropical-epochal view
at end of universe, or two. until
séance à trois, with chaperone of grackle,
i love the laughing sky—let’s make it crackle.
IX.
most oblatory heart, i bring you news.
despite our deadly faith in prophylactics,
resourceful Cupido pricks porous tactics,
ever hanging hymenal fools. behold:
on spun-gold surface of radiant yolk,
in sky-strewn milky way of albumen
suspended, questing’s lustiest conceit,
the part-less heartbeat of a person third:
as ancient aspect touches youngest plume
to stir, pure destiny, the origin
of life, as love, in pilgrimage secured:
the red point points, and to itself—as bird.
O holy gift, O crack in everything!
the mad midwifery of paladins
births not a baby, but a voice on fire:
ecce peep. now go, and meet your daddy-o.
his name’s Pipit the cocky chickadee;
he is a theory of fertility;
enthusiasm incommensurate
with clock-a tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum.
X.
a balmy chickadee alights on bough
of jepun tree—gigantic, bristle-trunked,
beatified—by tipped cosmos of day
and melting star of paradise, bodies
unveiled. we lie in kindred shades of them,
verbing and flowing, in blues made legible
by greenborn leaf. in leaves there hides a forest
where braid the wanderers their briared maths.
a souvenir shelters nectonic paths,
ancestral courses wild with counterpoint,
and mercy of geometry—proffered
by rivered children of Love’s oblivion.
XI.
dilated pools, star-gazed—surrender pinkly
to phobia of frogs. if you dismember
those bracing, faceless bodies—lost in love
their coiling gyres, desiring—helixing
directions inward, home. or intervene
against the skyward cough—raw, gaping need
to swallow more—when pollywog is strung
by lunar air. ritual drowning of gills,
suffering insurgency—the gulping word,
fata Morgana flooding Camelot
is twinned ecstasy of triple betrayal.
for swimmers' lust, the sea is all. and still
her cries are not for us, alone—we hone
the bluest chord of velvet-driven reverberation.
XII.
now all of us have lost our taste for mince,
the history of grinding, darkly, Adam;
so schooling blade, student of buah, will prune
til circumspect the hour. and she has thorns,
forms of her own—we prick ourselves and bleed
to name her flower. bending the voice to crown,
we’re drunk by literal skies of melody.
you found her singing by the sea, where she
had fled, as she remembered you were drowning.
who is the rose rabbi? i read, she comes
and goes. knows herself not. how would she know?
if glass were introspect, Iris of time—
to find she had been borne, a cradled question.
//
Wa’alaikumsalam, selamat purnama, peace 🌕
fungi in the filesystem
event: it needs
new categories.
local zoology lately
portends mycelial memes:
“camels” vs. “dissertations”.
monkeys on the roadside,
— laughing. un-officially, i
am giddy to be their fool.
follow-up: mushrooms
of animal entertainment,
best medicine?
antidote of day-
glow (glitch)!
//
if you ask me (about Agung)
it’s been a year
without the mountain.
comforter clouds continue
indeterminate, forgetting
to stop raining, forgetting
to end
if you ask me
how i am doing, these days
that’s how. i am just wondering /
wandering about the mountain.
whether he is there, whether
he is here
or anywhere
//
statuesque
it was her, who stopped troubling
the land with niceties; stepped out
onto the battlefield; declared
her nation iron, under copper;
ignored the children wandering
her heart. youth was her cause, but not
her destination: yapping pups
complicit in decay: the younger,
the worse. she drew a blazing sky-
ward line: from torch to sea of salt,
past oxidized decline: thou shalt
not cross this primary design.
so she was plagued by change, and change
rendered infernal mumblings
absent colossal reality.
she swallowed smaller poetry.
commissioned shining arrows from
hard-laboring masses, to quell
their rumbling curiosity.
her staples were cement brownies,
lampshades as circus gags, popped in
electrified mazes, they tongued
chromatic polystyrene sporks.
her trick was firecrackers for
proposals of shotgun marriage,
with orphans, locked in sheds out back.
essential documents were stacked
inside official cases. fireproof.
the starry skies reflected in
a muddy flood of tasteless rain,
with deeper rivers reluctant
to drain her isolating kingdom.
so spread the miasmatic air.
seen pieces, scened for maximum
invictus — hot-bulb flashes — lost
their knack for light. she was the news:
scaffolding posed as oracle.
and when her history grew old,
turning explicit, they buried her
in broken rubberbands.
mutely, her constitution says
you shouldn’t look, or else you turn
proverbially inhuman.
so close your mind to this broken
container of one billion eyes,
open to fight the warlike hour,
their hearts pumping in empty beds.
the roosters crow to lose their heads.
on glitterbombs sit satanic
afterimages of her,
as rounds of necessary loss
resound on poorly-tuned guitars.
with no time for ambivalence,
her multitudes march on.
and nothing here to be unknown,
perspective infinite as stone —
from bone reflected, light of crone
across her scorched and haunted scars
delivered signals of empathy.
by flickering night, camels repose
in contemplation of footsteps
forgotten, where plod the wind-
whipped monuments of thirst. and all
that is unburnt is a mirage.
//
🌔
that hungry space
where the tooth used to be
turned me skeletal. a skull,
leaking sand from holes. in
a permanent expression of
psychedelic estrangement
from the call that is coming
from inside the house.
category: news.
//
(a crown fell out, oops)
telescopic text (avec "?") (9/x)
most oblatory heart, i bring you news.
despite our deadly faith in prophylactics,
resourceful Cupido pricks porous tactics,
ever hanging hymenal fools. behold:
on spun-gold surface of radiant yolk,
in sky-strewn milky way of albumen
suspended, questing’s lustiest conceit,
the part-less heartbeat of a person third:
as ancient aspect touches youngest plume
to stir, pure destiny, the origin
of life, as love, in pilgrimage secured:
the red point points, and to itself — as bird.
O holy gift, O crack in everything!
the mad midwifery of paladins
births not a baby, but a voice on fire:
ecce peep. now go, and meet your daddy-o.
his name’s Pipit the cocky chickadee;
he is a theory of fertility;
enthusiasm incommensurate
with clock-a tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum.
//
i was thinking about Bob Dylan’s “talkin' world war III blues” (lyrics, recording) from 1963’s “The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan”. the song ends,
Well, now time passed and now it seems
Everybody’s having them dreams
Everybody sees themselves
Walkin’ around with no one else
Half of the people can be part right all of the time
Some of the people can be all right part of the time
But all of the people can’t be all right all of the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that
“I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”
I said that
and the last few lines were stuck in my head. or i was puzzling around that turn, the deal of dreams. which it struck me is a fundament of poetry, the deal of dreams, whereas world war III is a war of dreams.
one result of my preoccupation was a trio of dream poems: “wild bird caught in an accidental cage”, “revving vibrators”, and “i saw you dreaming, painted”. then one in hyperverse, “like sifting through guitars”. hyperverse are these compositions built out of hyperlinks to the writing of others. i find it very fulfilling, putting these together, which are basically a postroll edited into a semblance of poetic verse… poetry that opens literal links into other worlds. thanks to Bob, and to everyone else who shares velvety words with the internet. your dreams are amazing. i am moved by you.
related, here’s Bob’s later song about dreams, “a series of dreams”. and here’s Bob’s grouchy response to something adjacent and yet opposite the deal of dreams, the Judas accusation. — “play it fucking loud”.
//
ælizabeth is
moonchild
mother of cats
mask-maker’s wife
wholly enthused
by gift of life
dust weeper and dabbler
in girlish games
waggle dancer
rhymes with rain
inexpertly forgot
how to explain
sassy
midnight train
seer of self
in silvered waters
beggar’s bowl
auditioning
translator of one
worldly thing
porous
and learning
how to breathe
again
sayer of no
didact of pain
ambassador of monster
in the main
decaying
maybe insane
but fascinated by
reptile wile
lover of light
but versatile
hallowed home
if in a dream
maker and
amatrix in æxile
meeter of Muses
student of Prophet
rememberer of Names
servant of Allah
humble
as æver always on
the way and
doubtless never
lost for words
//
(for a new about page)
the inky
i dream of an intruder in the house and i wake up screaming when they turn their face to me. but if awake and i imagine an intruder in the house, my fear goes silent and still. heart pounding in darkness i listen for my life
the same idea
but what felt
differences
complete sentences
drag heavy lately like
costumed excesses
shed
the inky
extra
//
assalamu’alaikum 🌒
Writing about “hereness” //
“If not in America, maybe it’s a little alright. But if in America, it’s not alright at all”, said E. We were looking at this Naomi Klein article on “end times fascism”, specifically the propaganda photo with tattooed prisoners. I said yes, pretty much. We noted the irony. He said he remembered similar propaganda photos from Suharto’s regime. Those guys look like Blih, I said. Tattoos and all. He’s our closest Bali family and one of my protectors. That means if anything ever happened to my husband, I would call Blih first. I would usually abbreviate his name, but that isn’t his name, although it’s the only thing we call him. Blih is Balinese for Brother, and he is a brother.
Back to Klein’s article, she does maybe the best work accounting for “what’s happening” that I’ve read, encompassing the mood and seemingly-conflicting realities of it. (Tech billionaire TESCREAL and apocalyptic Christian prepper cultures coming into alignment as xenophobic bunker-building fascism.) But she also manages to be somewhat uplifting, or maybe that’s not the right word. It’s a nice piece. She mentions the Yiddish concept of “Doiykat, or ‘hereness’”, as a possible antidote to the surrender of Earth inherent in an apocalyptic mindset. Although I find her elaboration a little flimsy (maybe too abstract?), I like the suggestion and appreciate the reminder, especially having recently spent so much time contemplating a vehicle of travel.
Spend too much time on chariots and you might lose a sense of “hereness”.
As a recent expat/immigrant (almost 6 years), at first I wondered if I had been under-emphasizing “hereness” in my thoughts, feelings, or writing. Maybe it doesn’t come naturally for me? Have I been too online? But then I began to list examples and think of ways that I write about it. (This is my interpretation of the word, not that of a Jewish tradition.) For me, “hereness” is the work of embodiment, including yoga asana, as well as prayer, veganism and fasting. Islam is an embodiment practice. Also, my marriage. Marriage is an embodiment practice too.
Then my “hereness” work is to figure out life as an always-somewhat-stranger “here”. On a community level, I try to do as little harm as I can (spending money in responsible ways etc). To support local governance and cultural organizing, we donate as much as seems right to several kampungs, including Mosques here and in Java. But not so much as to draw weird attention or throw anything off. We socialize, including with neighbors, they come over for lunar ceremonies on the full and new moons. I’m working on language, although I haven’t been studious about it. The more socializing we do, the faster it comes along.
My sense of “hereness” also comes through the non-human world, the animals, plants, rocks and dirt, weather, and all of these other things that I do indeed write about. The driving, lol. Almost every category in the archives is a nod to “hereness”. “Hereness” would also come through a feeling of home (there are different versions of this e.g. from house work, from husband, from cats, chickens, etc., from the plants in the garden, from our accumulating memories) and of figuring out how to be myself here. You aren’t at home if you can’t be yourself. It’s all work in progress.
I’m a Cancer, I come with armor and pincers, (also Scorpio rising, lol), but we are in no way bunker-builders. (Well, we’ve contemplated a small one, if we ever live in Java, but that’s for an active volcano, which is a totally different kind of bunker.) Our protection will be in the community connections we’ve made, or we’ll have no protection. It’s that simple. There’s a community philosophy in Indonesia called “gotong royong”, which means people are always helping out their neighbors. Having seen it in action, I find it comforting. In turn, we actively keep our eyes and ears open for ways to “help out” in the village. My husband explains this as preparing, in case something ever happens to him, if he’s gone. But it’s good preparation in case of any kind of emergency.
My “hereness” will always be a little weird or deviant because I’m an expat/immigrant and I rely on E as a cultural mediator. But it’s still often on display. This makes me glad, and a little relieved, because I am indebted to it. I’d like my blog to have a strong sense of “hereness”.
Myself here isn’t the same as myself was there, and the selves of the blog can go off-and-around sometimes, but all of this is written by Elizabeth, of her body and of Earth. There is a body and a planet behind all of this wordiness without which it wouldn’t be what it is. The point of “hereness” is perhaps not to be uplifting, but to be grounding. The ground is an important thing to cultivate.
It’s excruciating to imagine Earth as past-tense. It is literally the worst, the most terrible vision, and it does require an antidote. This beautiful one, where I feel the sky on my face, this place of friendship and delight, is my only planet. I remember myself here. I have no doubt I would forget myself on Mars.
broken machine of tentacles and teeth
war is what monsters are and what they do
monsters are monsters at war with monsters
useless becomes another name for peace
//
Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh 🌖
marigolds
what a week to take vacation
some time to recompose
to get back from the deadness
questions that i never chose
my instrument is alien
my hands remote-controlled
i cannot see my own two feet
the way is lined with marigolds
i have no numbers to report
no news in a ghost town
there is no story to be told
the wind already took it down
go diving in the deadness
go breathing in the deep
go dancing in the marigolds
but never fall asleep
what a day to wade back in again
the sunlit flowers cold
what a way to chase the day again
to watch the underworld unfold
//
a dream
a dream
swimming
diving under
taking a deep breath to do it
not knowing when i would be coming up for air or knowing it was never
//
our exercise as exorcism of time —
the oddly-staggered rhyme leaves bruises
on buds stringently-steeped, the undisclosed
grays of grass groped in dark of morning that
took hold as roots in midnight, not knowing color
not knowing how seemly to be in sun —
steps right into the rhythm of blinding fire
this prism of shadows is highways home, revealed
in daylight’s reconciliation with desire
//
Selamat Idulfitri, Eid mubarak, blessed Eid to those who observe.
Alhamdulillahirabbil’alameen. 🌙
//
The result of all this “intelligence” // (A rant)
In these final days of the holy month of Ramadan, I am publishing this “rant” on “AI” and technology. It is a long rant, cobbled together, rambling, error-prone, and possibly shouty at times, but with the enthusiasm of madness, rather than anger, I believe. I imagine it as tribute to the darkening moon, as well as Ogoh-ogoh, which is today in Bali. Ogoh-ogoh is when the demons (called ogoh-ogoh) go howling and yowling in the streets, causing violence and uproar, to be brought out, burned up and chased away for the next year. I didn’t get any photos today as we moved around our neighborhoods, but (oops, these probably are NSFW) here is the fabulous vibe.
//
I am not anti-tech. I am not anti-AI. But writing something like this feels like writing against a deluge of history, imagining the words scattered and lost in a roaring flood. (Relatable?) Sometimes purgation itself is a good thing, the locals seem to believe. There are demons in the street, I can hear them this moment, their words and their hyper-active laughter, their growls and groans and spat curses, the frantic drumbeats of their chaotic mission, accompanied by frequent pyrotechnics. So.
Tech serves only the one in posession of tech.
(Who is that one?)
For the one in possession of tech, it makes things possible on different scales then pre-tech. Colonial and then industrial-scale genocide are examples of this, as are vaccination and virality.
Communication tech (from carved writing in stone, all the way up to algorithmic social media and/or “AI”) doesn’t just convey power over bodies, but over hearts + minds, in ways that are not well-understood. (And at tech-enabled massive scales.) It grants someone (the one in possession of the communication tech) the power to sway populations.
I am not anti-tech; I blog. (Even written language, as I wrote, I consider to be tech.) I have an iphone and an induction cooktop, I use tech all the time. I am even a tech lover. (Again, I blog.) But the use of technology (especially tech that creates new needs, i.e. luxury tech) builds a kind of ethical scaffolding (ἕξις or hexis, an active condition, disposition, or habit) for a narcissistic comportment in the world. Implicit in the building of tools, even the simplest ones, is the thought that the material exists only to serve the user. Technology progressively (re)defines the world as “material”. It serves the appetites of those who can pay for it (or invest in it). Every tech is an example of this, but it’s especially poignant when the “material” is alive, as with “factory-farmed” animals. Whether a chicken is mere material, or something in itself, has become irrelevant in the (modern western, but increasingly global) day-to-day world, built by human technology.
Of course, it’s already happening: techno-fascism is the not-long leap of turning humans into “material” too.
I am also not anti-artificial intelligence. I just have a different idea of what artificial intelligence means, than the people who are setting (and selling) the terms of the conversation.
To discuss “what is artificial intelligence” would first require a discussioin of intelligence. I’ve seen no evidence or argument that what is being sold as “AI” even resembles intelligence. What paradigmatic “intelligence” are the “AI"s being tested against? What are the “benchmarks”? We are left to gauge the purpose of it by observing what it does. (This idea, “The purpose of a system is what it does”, is straight out of Aristotle too.) As far as I can tell, the benchmark of a language model is, to convince users that it’s reliable. That it doesn’t (often because it has been specifically censored) spit out a disturbing or offensive response. That when a user feels like double-checking, it matches extant data, until a user is convinced not to double-check anymore. It doesn’t matter whether the response is “true” or not, there is no available parameter for that, because “the true” is not present in the extant data. “The true” is not present in the sum total of the internet, or ten thousand internets. “The true” is not a statistical regurgitation of ten million all-over-the-place opinions.
For “AI”-generated content, the “benchmark” (as far as I, an observer, can discern) is to convince people to keep watching, to keep scrolling, to keep using. The more people it convinces, the more money it makes, the more successful it is. And bonus, the proprietary “AI” has become an indispensable source (a medium through which to interpret the world) for an entire population.
This is not knowledge, it has nothing to do with knowledge. My prediction is (to predict this seems trivial) that the holistic result of all this “intelligence” will be insanity. And then, war. Well, more war, and worse. Anyway, it strikes me as a contradiction.
Intelligence doesn’t cause or profit off of war. Intelligence doesn’t cause or promulgate insanity. Intelligence doesn’t harm the weak. Intelligence without empathy isn’t intelligence. Intelligence isn’t complacent in the face of suffering. Intelligence doesn’t perpetrate or propel people toward self-harm, genocide, or extinction. When there is a cultural consensus on intelligence, according to which intelligence does these things, that is a sign of immanent catastrophe. So even if I am all alone in doing so, I reject that definition.
Here are some “benchmarks” for artificial intelligence I would (conditionally) accept.
Where is the “AI” that prioritizes these? Not just in its words, but its actions?
So artificial intelligence, according to me, is not present in this “discourse”. Except inasmuch as any number of artists and writers and poets have always provided artwork-based interpretations of intelligence, of what it looks like or what it is, going all the way back to the (pre-human?) invention of artifice. Religious texts offer interpretations of intelligence, and state constitutions and laws, and music, and mathematics. They are all artificial intelligences. The intelligence of a dancer. Ptolemy discerning the intelligence of stars. Intelligence understands and makes room for itself as plural – it is neither an absolute, nor a scattered infinite of particulars, but worlds within worlds. Like a jungle, or an animal, or a coral reef. Or even, something like Ocean.
Technology does not and never has had a monopoly on intelligence, no matter the propaganda they’re injecting into our feeds. Tech’s monopoly is on control.
Just so, peace remains ever beyond the reach of technology, because peace is not imposed as control. That is the violent fantasy of fascism.
The easiest and therefore the only path to (techno-)fascism is through insanity. This appears to be the “benchmark” and the purpose of what is currently called “AI”, because this is by-in-large what “AI” (in a mutually-servicing arrangement with algorithmic social media) does. It turns people into users, turns users into the used, and turns the Earth into a ball of flaming garbage. A junkies’ den. This is our new politics, or lack thereof. Other “use-cases” – (e.g., if it can practice and propagate anti-fascism as hexis, as an active condition) – will be rare, if not merely accidental.
Because technology is essentially narcissistic and only accidentally good.
It requires education as a precursor, with subsequent active intention and effort, for a human person to be healthy and good. Education if successful puts us on a path toward (empathy, as David said) sensing the depth of the full breadth of the world, as well as our own depths, and sensitizing us to our limits and boundaries in these contexts, rather than imagining ourselves to be little kings. So education was needed to temper technology. American education, including its incentive structures, has done almost the reverse. Not just by emphasizing STEM and pumping money into innovation, but also using standardized testing to measure children’s worth. By design, even our education has been in service to tech.
As I’ve mentioned before, my only political view is (public, obviously) education. Education is the living soul of (human, obviously?) politics. All else in any political constitution should be organized to protect and serve education. While the end (telos) of education is active inquiry into the discovery, expression, and interpretation of justice, as the end (telos) of politics, of what it means to be just.
That is the secret teaching of “philosopher kings”, by the way – that education alone must rule.
(Here I offer yet another on-the-fly-interp of Plato’s Republic. I say it to acknowledge the hubris of it, but also to express gratitude for the ancient technology that has somehow educated me, though any errors are my own. And I might change the word order tomorrow. Wink emoji.)
(Here I note further, as my “rant” fizzles out, that I never intended to write on the Republic for my blog, not even in oblique terms. This blog is a constant meditation on the Phaedrus, I stubbornly maintain, where we find ourselves in a quasi-mystical meta-political realm. However, here as in the Phaedrus, politics is fully capable of accompanying us outside city walls, presented and represented by its – ugliest and most beautiful – faces.
For me at least, a reference to the Republic is a reference to the past. Lol, that’s also hubris. I hope very soon to get back to more direct engagement with the textual object of my adoration, beginning with some remarks on “the chariot”. However, I’m very bad at promises. The best way for me NOT to do something has always been for me to promise to do it. I would be a very bad employee of myself. Deadlines are unnecessary, we are worlds-building, after all. So no promises, just surprises.)
This flashed across my incredulous and hungry eyes today. Okay. Islamaphobia, they say. But in another way (from another perspective of Islam) this is the truest tattoo you could ever get. It’s like getting a giant tattoo of “asshole” across your chest.
We were laughing about it, because things suddenly seemed very funny. “Oke Jeki, go hunt it like a cicak (gecko),” my husband said. And we just couldn’t stop laughing, it was just so funny. These are the useful idiots of the basilisk.
All it has are its useful idiots.
Mask firmly engaged: these long posts always strike me as narcissistic. For example, imagining all the time it would take someone to read these words, and still posting them. So I guess one thing I’m wandering-around-about-on-here is the possibility of whether you can fight narcissism with a narcissistic act. This is what poetry is, and anyone who has ever experienced a glimmer of the joy of writing knows this, even if they won’t admit it, that poetry is engagement of a deep (and hopefully redeemable, if somehow self-defeating) narcissism.
I control every little blip that’s on here, almost.
//
Tomorrow is Nyepi, Bali’s silent day, so the demons fly away. For twenty-four hours we’re not supposed to make noise or use electricity, and internet and celular are often down. Even though I guess nowhere else celebrates Nyepi, I can still say Selamat Nyepi, have a nice Nyepi. Even from a distance, to imagine an island (a party island) that is totally peaceful, no cars or motorbikes or airplanes, with birdsong taking over the entire sky, as if everybody has suddenly disappeared, an empty day that darkens down quickly to unlit night, so that it disappears from the satellite photos, is also an effect. So just imagine the sound of Bali without humans. That’s where we will be, when the purification rites are over, and I’m not posting on my blog.
Thanks for reading, if you got this far. Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🔥🌑✨
//
The anti-gospel (of TESCREAL + “AI”) //
I’ve been trying to write something about the “TESCREAL bundle” but it’s such a weirdly traumatizing thing to think about, no I wrote that wrong, what it is, is triggering. So far the thing I’ve written is very long and weird and if I end up posting it, everybody is welcome to skip it. It makes me feel like a crazy person to write about this. I scrapped and rewrote, it’s shorter now at least. Maybe I’ll post it tomorrow.
Understanding (the myths told amongst the perpetrators) clarifies.
Baldur Bjarnason posted an excellent fact sheet on AI and its connections with esoteric neo-nazism, in which he includes TESCREAL. His post is full of great links for different perspectives on the political history and directionality of “AI”. I relate to his initial hesitance to write about it, and I appreciate that he has. His own conclusions are stark but apt.
Especially of interest I found the website and blog of Dan McQuillen. For example a talk he gave, back in 2019, Towards an anti-fascist AI. I have my own idiosyncratic writings on anti-fascist “AI”, but that seems to be something nobody is looking for, lol. (Let’s invent a new category of irony specifically for “AI”.)
Then I read this AI Slop Is a Brute Force Attack on the Algorithms That Control Reality , via @tracydurnell, which describes the mutual amplification of algorithmic power and “AI”-generated content. “AI” is “brute forcing” social media by overwhelming slower, less algorithmically-responsive human creators. I’m trying to imagine politics in that context and I… can’t quite.
(Tracy draws this tidy anti-TESCREAL conclusion in her post: “we must work from principles, not merely towards an outcome.”
Related not-by-accident, TESCREAL is consequentialism, drawn to technology-enabled absurds.)
I first read about the “TESCREAL bundle” in 2023, in this article by Émile Torres. It made me nauseous and I hoped its relevance would wane. This is a very dark topic and nobody wants to write about it, least of all me, but it seems to have become more relevant, not less, these past months. So something I’m working on is understanding and describing TESCREAL in my own words.
I think there will (and should) be a multitude of perspectives providing critical interpretations of TESCREAL and the related encroachment of “AI” technology. I also think it’s key to understand this “bundle” as a whole, and try to give it unifying names to better understand its meaning. Names will come not just from the context of history, but from the broadly-conceived history of philosophy, as well as theology and ontology. Established religious traditions will also have critiques of TESCREAL, and many will resist (or are already resisting) for their own reasons. (At least, those that aren’t captured by online fascist political movements.) Let there be folk stories too, the more, the better. The anti-gospel of TESCREAL + “AI” should be spread far and wide.
As it becomes believable, it’s time to call it what it is.
//
There’s a strong wind and rainstorm tonight, we’ve had these daily for almost a week now. Strong enough to be scary.
//
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌒
Ismail
It looked like neon green beans, to my eyes,
The sorry viper he’d regurgitated at
My feet, when I bent lower to examine
The finger-lengths of body gnawed
In pieces, coated with digestive slime
And barely small enough to swallow. So
I knew that he could make, from serpent’s
Suffering, a hearty gift. I also knew
Our little life would never not be on
The line, each day one hundred unseen times
(Between the drunken swagger and the lap,
His cradled body gone loving-limp in mine)
We would match teeth and tongue with death, and that
Valor would be more holy than satiation.
//
Alhamdulillahirabbil’aalameen.
Selamat purnama. 🌕
Of time. //
This was, in fact
The creation
Of the human —
The first ape who took
A swing and
Hacked off a piece of God. (It was
As always
A piece of herself.) It was also
The invention of writing.
Logos descends from a (golden) lutung
Justice from the gentle orangutan
Guerrilla from gorilla (forever Dian)
And monkey business from a macaque.
Let us become primate and
Undo the butchery of time.
//
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌔