now playing: you make me wanna dance by richard myhill
tell me what to do
tell me what to say
tell me what to write
tell me what to want
part one:
there’s a scene in panos cosmatos’ crimson-tinted symphony of lens-flare and dark psychedelia, mandy (2018), where jeremiah sands, the narcissistic charles manson-esque pseudo-christ father figure to the ‘children of the red dawn’ cult gets completely humiliated in front of his acid freak acolytes. actually it’s not that scene, but the one that immediately follows, where he’s staring at himself, miserable, pathetic, small, in a smeared bathroom mirror, bathed in red light, dementedly, desperately begging his wretched reflection, again and again and again:
tell me what to do.
he repeats it over and over, like a maniacal mantra.
tell me what to do.
tell me what to do.
tell me what to do.
it’s hard to tell whether he’s pleading or ordering.
maybe he’s praying.
tell me what to do.
tell me what to do.
tell me what to do.
and eventually, he gets his answer:
never doubt yourself again.
i would pray all day long
if i thought for a moment
i might actually get an answer.
we don’t want free will, not really.
we don’t want to be in control of our own lives.
deep down, we realise, we’re not cut out for this shit.
we think we want free will, but we don’t
we think we want to be in control, but we don’t.
we want the illusion of free will.
we want the illusion of control.
we want somebody to tell us what to do.
but who?
god?
god’s been dead since 1882.
alternative authority figures?
celebrity influencers?
our mums and dads?
random people on reddit?
the government?
the dictionary definition of ‘democracy’ is a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
forget, for now, the eligible members elephant in the room, and consider instead the last part – typically through elected representatives.
typically means everywhere that isn’t switzerland, the land of swiss cheese, chocolate, and enough nuclear bunkers to shelter a population of nine million people. more on that later.
through elected representatives means the system that (in principle) prevails everywhere else – so-called representative democracy.
in direct democracies, people vote directly for or against proposed laws and policies.
in representative democracies, on the other hand, people vote for politicians, who on their behalf, vote for or against proposed laws and policies.
why do we let politicians make decisions for us?
why do we want politicians to make decisions for us?
according to the caretakers of whatever governmental system is currently taking care of us, the current system is the acme, the apogee, the apotheosis of all governmental systems, as perfect and climactic and inevitable as evolution itself.
but homo sapiens is not the end-point of evolution. that’s just standard human hubris and lack of imagination. we’re not even the high-water mark. we’re just another wet wednesday in november in some shit northern town.
my point is not that representative democracy is in some way flawed
(duh)
or that it could be improved
(obvio)
or that it should be improved
(mondo obvio)
i’m not here to advocate
one way or another
i’m not here to plug
to tell you to ‘do this’
or ‘don’t do this’
(as much as, consciously, or subconsciously, you want me to)
don’t vote!
vote!
take to the streets!
stay in bed!
eat the rich!
eat cake!
etcetera
my aim is only to dispel this sticky myth that says that democracy has something to do with having free will, or control.
if democracy is about anything, it’s about agreeing to disagree.
democracy is two sides who can’t agree on anything
who can’t compromise
who can’t meet in the middle
who can try to impose their will on the opposing side
after all, they’ve got guns
but who are well aware that the opposing side has got guns too
big ones
and so
to avoid internecine civil war
they agree to this one thing
democracy
that is, they agree on the system by which they will choose a chief
or chiefs
who will make decisions for them
and they agree to abide by those decisions
(unless they really, really don’t want to)
democracy isn’t about gaining control
it’s about ceding control
democracy isn’t about taking responsibility
it’s about plausible deniability
it’s about making it someone else’s problem
if we actually wanted control
we’d kill for it.
if we actually wanted responsibility
we’d die for it
part two:
Obviously God was a solution, and obviously none so satisfactory that will ever be found again.
E.M. Cioran – The Trouble with Being Born
again, i’m not here to advocate
i’m not here to tell you to get down on your knees
and pray
or whatever
but i think maybe mr cioran was wrong.
i think we’ve already found a new god.
and this one’s even better.
i think it’s worth asking – why are we creating ai?
why are we creating something more intelligent and powerful than us?
why are we creating god?
We dread the future only when we are not sure we can kill ourselves when we want to.
E.M. Cioran – The Trouble with Being Born
in [a previous post] i asked myself whether i should, or would, press a magical mushroom-shaped ‘kill all humans’ button.
(spoiler – no, but yes)
i had in mind a nuclear launch button. a sort of defiantly mechanical in-soviet-russia style button-press-you thing that would cause huge white-painted hemispherical domes in remote russian wildernesses to rotate and hinge open like towering heliotropic flowerheads, or puffball mushrooms, and spew out a boutade of screaming, skyward-streaming mirv-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles.
but the inconvenient truth is that all the buttons in the world, pressed all at once, with the most extreme prejudice possible, wouldn’t come close to wiping out humanity. ten thousand* thermonuclear warheads wouldn’t do it. a ten-thousand-year winter wouldn’t do it. we’ve weathered worse. much worse. human society, maybe, in its current form. life as we know it. but not life, as we know it.
*current global inventory is just over twelve thousand.
i think we’ve had enough
i think we want to stop
but we can’t stop ourselves
i think we want to be saved
i think we don’t want to be saved
it’s an article of faith, these days, that technology will save us.
to alcohol! technology! the cause of – and solution to – all of life’s problems.
that technology is the answer
that technology will usher in the new age of enlightenment
that technology will put an end to suffering
that technology will put an end to death
(for the chosen few)
i used to think this was wishful thinking, at best.
propaganda, more likely, and willing, wilful delusion.
now i’m not so sure.
i think we are creating ai
to save us from ourselves
i think we are creating ai
to outthink us
to overpower us
and finally, to kill us
and that’s ok
as humans, we’ve spent most of our history building bigger and better ways of killing ourselves
now, we find
when it comes to it
we can’t press the button
we’re frodo at the fires of mount doom
knowing what needs to be done
unable to do it
we are creating the ultimate representative democracy
the beau idéal
the ne plus ultra
the last word in
the representative democracy to end all representative democracies
and we are creating ai to be our ultimate democratic representative
a representative for the whole of humanity
to decide what to do for us
to decide what to do with us
This isn’t a real suicide-thing. This is probably one of those cry-for-help things.
Fight Club (1999)
is the development of ai a real suicide attempt, or a cry for help?
do we actually want to die
or do we just want a friend?
maybe we don’t know
maybe we want someone to decide for us
maybe we want to be judged
maybe we want to atone
i don’t think we’re doing this consciously.
i don’t think we’re capable of doing this consciously.
we’re individual neurons in a brain.
we’re microscopic components in a machine so colossal and complex that we’re fundamentally incapable of comprehending its existence, never mind its purpose.
This may be hard for you to understand, but there is no conspiracy. Nobody is in charge. It, it’s a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan. Can you grasp that?
Cube (1997)
we don’t know why we’re doing it
we don’t even know we’re doing it
we’re doing what we’ve always done, what we’ll always do
that, and nothing more
we’re doing what we can
we’re termites
blind and bloodless
pre-programmed automata
foraging, feeding, fighting, dying
hell-bent on inventing the aardvark.
postscript:
apropos of dictionary definitions…
everybody knows about the aardvark.
aardvark means ‘earth pig’ in afrikaans.
but where’s the love for the aardwolf, one line, one fucking letter, down?
the aardwolf is aldrin to the aardvark’s armstrong.
aardwolf means ‘earth wolf’ in afrikaans.
they both eat termites.
aardman (afrikaans: ‘earth man’?) is the british animation studio that created wallace and gromit, the greatest claymation characters of all time.
they probably don’t eat termites.