AI is an unstoppable hurricane sweeping through the economic, social, political, and psychological landscape … AI is the culmination, the completion, of an age of humanity, of the civilization of modernity. It consolidates all of recorded human knowledge (recorded human knowledge—that word is key) and recorded human cognition. As such, it tends to encode multiple levels of orthodoxy (beyond those introduced intentionally by the developers), and risks entrenching and intensifying the limitations and blind spots inherent to them. Therefore, AI will be an amazing tool at solving problems on a superficial level, of extending orthodox solutions to new extremes, but it will not disrupt the fundamental patterns that generate those problems in the first place … In the paradigm of Ascent, which equates progress with an increasing ability to control the world around us, AI is the culminating technology. But it will not, by magnifying our power to control, deliver us from the failures of control itself. The totalitarian mind (and I mean that term to apply beyond politics) always blames any failure of control on not enough of it.
— Charles Eisenstein, from his essay “Standing in the Center of the Unknowing as the World Cries. What to Do?“
This writing was inspired by the article linked above.
Is it possible for us — the human factor — this massively creative yet perpetually faltering, failing-forward, and easily controlled species, to finally halt the endless cycle of fantastic creation and brutal, violent destruction? Is it all beyond our grasp, or is there some aspect of this earthbound existence that we can truly and permanently change for the benefit of all — forever?
I’m not sure there is. We don’t live long enough to learn enough — or to unlearn, relearn, and grow wise enough — before we perish. We try to pass on what we’ve gleaned to our progeny, though most of us remain children in many ways right until the end of our days. So what are we really bequeathing? The experiences and stories of one generation are inevitably subsumed by the next, sliced up, fragmented, and socioculturally compartmentalized. They’re censored, redacted, revised, and curated beyond recognition, leaving only morsels to trickle down through the ages — a futile attempt to avert this incessant resetting and starting from zero.
Perhaps, if the parasitic, psychopathic, negatively-biased — perhaps even demonic — forces in our realm aren’t allowed, by some strange accident or unexpected miracle, to gain an immediate foothold after the next inevitable cataclysm… Perhaps if they fail to seize control of the world’s resources, economies, corporations, banking systems, educational institutions, religions, food production, and critical infrastructure. Perhaps if, after much of humanity is once again wiped out, the transient triumphs of civilization lie in ruins, and those who routinely erase and rewrite history in their own image fail to act swiftly. If they can’t burn the remains under the guise of “the great fires,” rebrand and repurpose surviving architecture, or infest all of known reality with their grand distortions, psychological mire, and philosophical muck…
Maybe then, we could break the cycle.
Admittedly, this doesn’t sound terribly hopeful. And why should it? Let’s get real: what is real and true doesn’t need any defense. It simply is, and no amount of oxytocin or dopamine will soften the sting for those keen to distill and discern what is genuine about the human experience.
If this is all some elaborate simulation, then it doesn’t matter one whit. We’ll wake up — or be unplugged — shake the fog from our “real” brains out there, and get on with whatever life may resemble outside this fabricated matrix. Some believe we’re nearing the end, and therefore the beginning, of another 6,000-year cycle — an existence of truly biblical proportions.
If it isn’t a simulation, then we may have a different kind of problem. If human existence is truly governed by grand cycles and astrological ages, then it seems we’re destined to endure two to five more centuries of growing pains, slowly emerging on an “ascending arc” toward an eventual golden age… only to turn and slide back down into the dumb, daft, and stupid ages once again.
It’s curious to ponder what it all amounts to. Thousands of answers exist, with ten thousand more questions ready to arise. We don’t know what we don’t know, and perhaps that’s part of the grand design. If we, as a collective, ever uncovered the ways and means to disseminate what is real and true, the game might end. The credits would roll, and the shutdown sequence would commence. Perhaps that would never serve us. Perhaps it serves us better to keep spiraling through these circles, cycles, and ages.
We can’t even agree on the basics — like methods of timekeeping. Whether the “ancients” used certain words to mean a day, week, month, or year, the numbers are a mess. The calendars we rely on are conflicting across cultures, confusing, inaccurate, and misleading. Is it the year 233, 1403, 2024, 2777, 5785? And science, forget about it? What we have today that tries desperately to pass for science is nothing more than ritualistic, religious, superstitious, blind-leading-the-blind pantomime. And those nefarious forces among us salivate at the chaos, eager to perpetuate endless confusion, infighting, division, anxiety, uncertainty, and collective unrest.
Regardless, we are here now, you and I. What matters is what we decide matters and how we choose to live out our limited number of days. The parasites and psychopaths will always offer distractions, conflicts, worries, wars, and clashing ideals to siphon our creative and spiritual resources. They excel at it. Don’t just give it away.
Perhaps it is we who are at fault if these cycles endlessly repeat. The problem may be that most of humanity will never “get it” or awaken. For the small percentage of us who come through in each generation, only to slam against the same walls and barriers as those who came before, there is no resolution. Only headaches, heartaches, loneliness, and frustration await those who attempt the futile remediation of our intrinsic suffering and struggle. There is only our art, our music, our writings, and the reckless abandon of pursuing our natural inclination toward dissent, dissidence, and contrarianism. That, perhaps, will have to be enough.
And yet, it’ll all be over very, very quickly. The real answers seem to lie elsewhere. Perhaps it’s wise to plan for what’s next — beyond the apparent physical — while we shuffle around, bumping into each other on this plane, desperate for absolution, purpose, meaning, and some ultimate alleviation of this transcendental stagnation.
Don’t let them steal your gaze. Don’t just give it all away. One thing we can be certain of is this: we are far more than we suppose ourselves to be. No matter the layers of iniquity and imbalance, no matter the pain and hardship, no matter the illusions or delusions we adopt or adapt to, something more exists beyond these perceptual boundaries — something beyond words.
Quaredite veritatem in omnibus rebus