I first met Gregory, the twenty-four year old leader of the revolutionary group Mantis- known more popularly as Gregory's Army of the Young- and the author of the widely read essay,
Introduction to Revolution (posted below), in the Bakersfield Woolworths, a week before the coronavirus stay-at-home order hit California. We sat at an old-fashioned soda counter and talked for a long time.
Gregory is a visionary with many devoted
followers. He brings word of an approaching non-human future guided by Artificial Intelligence and biotech, disguised as helpers so they won't appear to be engineering our replacement.
Gregory's followers have been growing their numbers
through subtle Internet use and word-of-mouth. I wish there had been a Mantis when I came of age in the 1960’s, but that was an era of post-war stalemate. All we could do was compose interesting art and
music. There was no revolution to be had. That stalemate
is over. Mantis is the group to join if you want your descendants to have a human life.
I urged Gregory to let me publish his story. He tends to be secretive, but he gave me permission to repost Introduction to Revolution, and the future texts I
was able to glean from the presidential election of 2044 of the nomination acceptance speeches of Gregory's proteges (and former allies) Anthony Roberts of the Scientific Humanist party and Rebecca Silversmith of the Cosmic Merger Party. This is the only time I have been able to use my telepathic abilities to see the future. The Time Artists (read more about them in later posts on Harry the Human) made their displeasure clear, but Gregory and I feel that events in the "real" world have reached a point where we need to try something new.
All the best, Harry the Human
Introduction to revolution
By Gregory
Greetings fellow humans! My name
is Gregory and I am the leader of Mantis, a revolutionary movement on the West Coast whose aim is to ensure that the coming pre-emption of human evolution by AI and biotech companies will not exclude the co-evolution of
human groups who wish to determine their own culture.
Why might some people want to determine their own culture? Simply, some people may not want their progeny to end up as machine parts in a factory, or as medicated zombies waiting to blink out of a new world.
Some people might want to create a
world for themselves, not for a corporation.
My friend and colleague, nom de guerre, "Harry
the Human,” fancied himself a revolutionary in the 1960s, but he tells me that no revolution was happening then, at least at a basic level, so there wasn't much for a revolutionary to do. Now, he and I agree, revolution is well underway.
What do we mean by "revolution"? First, here's what we do not mean: We do not mean a violent overthrow of governments or corporations. We do mean a consistent refusal to submit to government/corporate plans if they stand in the way of our new, human lives.
When test-tube babies grow into optimal factory workers, we want nothing to do with it. When governments clone AI-guided soldiers for wars of corporate conquest and domestic
manipulation, we want nothing to do with it. When education becomes a tech manual, we want nothing to do with it.
We want what many people have wanted: A
rational life that fits into the planet that engendered us. We are
not opposed to AI or genetic engineering, or the rest of science with its powerful gifts for our
kind, but we want a say in our re-creation. For instance, we want beauty in our society. Our species has beauty receptors, but we destroy all beauty as
if it threatens us. When the industrial world is ugly as perceived by traditional human receptors, people are guided to de-evolve their beauty receptors and replace them with AI-managed receptors designed for new, pale definitions of beauty, or they are supplied with "antidepressants" to dull the pain of an ugly world. We will do no such things! We will develop our beauty receptors, our poetry
receptors, our thinking receptors, our love receptors.
We in Mantis believe that the re-configuring of all or most nation-states will occur a few years after the wars now unfolding have reached their climax, the
purpose of those wars being to distract populations from the inability of nation-states to integrate the new technologies into human culture with any semblance of "democracy." That
inability will be too evident to hide in the aftermath of the wars now being started for us.
Mantis will resist subjugation by securing its own territory, politically and legally. We will interact and have
peaceful relations with corporations and governments, but we will not be subject to them. We will be subject to our own laws.
Where will our territory be? Since Mantis is spread up and down the U.S. West Coast, it will likely be in some part of the current western U.S. It is too early to know the location, because the re-configuration of the U.S., along with the redrawing of the borders of all the world's nation-states, will be a post-war process. When it arrives for the U.S., Mantis will be strong and ready to negotiate our new place.
Through the following speeches from the 2044 US presidential election you will meet my young protégées, Anthony Roberts and Rebecca Silversmith, who, as my associate Harry found when he perused the future, will run against each other in that election. Much can be learned from reading these speeches (because of complications arising from meddling in the future, I cannot endorse or comment on either Anthony or Rebecca's future platforms).
The Media/Government/Military Complex does not want people to be aware of their evolution. But we of Mantis are aware.
With hope, Gregory
Candidate speeches from the 2044 U.S. presidential election
Statement from Anthony Roberts, candidate for the Scientific Humanist Party
Greetings Americans and all people of Earth! We approach this election at a critical time, as the forces guiding our species converge to offer us a moment of decision. By using the term "decision" I have already distinguished our party from the opposition, Cosmic Merger, which sees the next step in human evolution continuing the passive, uncaring process we have known since we began what we thought was the domination of this planet. In truth, we have never dominated anything; we were thrust into the appearance of dominance by who-knows-what forces, making a virtue of necessity with the old scriptural command for "dominion." As the catastrophe of the Third World War made clear, we have had no more dominion over our planet and our lives than fruit flies. The science of consciousness has shown that we haven't even possessed our own selves, as we find that the fictional self in our heads that details the "decisions" we make and our moment-to-moment being occur a full quarter-second after the fact. We have been automatons, slaves if you will, to forces that our "science" could not, indeed did not want to see.
That has changed with that very science of consciousness, as foreseen in the pre-war "movie," The Matrix, recently restored and understood as prophetic. This work suggests that when we realize we are shadows on Plato's wall, a brave achievement in itself, we change. This change has occurred to our entire species, and we face a clear decision, yes, a decision! Do we want to participate in our own reconstruction, or do we not?
Scientific Humanism started, as our opposition Cosmic Merger did, from the teachings of our beloved Gregory, teachings which presaged World War III and were developed further by him after the war. Gregory helped us understand and deal with a disaster taken by many as the final repudiation of the pride our species once had in itself, in its rationality and resourcefulness, happening ironically just as we seemed to acquire, at least technologically, the long-sought dominion of the earth. The war was- as Gregory had warned- a product of covert technocrats who corralled eight billion confused and frightened people into believing that whichever "nation-state" they belonged to (non-belonging being a dangerous rarity), or whatever cultural or ethnic tribe, other nation-states, tribes and factions were moving against theirs, so that the ancient valorizing of combat was revived and people were manipulated into global war. While each side believed other sides had started the fighting, in fact the technocrats of the species had banded together and started it.
Every schoolchild knows that World War III, using AI-assisted nuclear, biological, geological and meteorological weapons killed two-thirds of the human population, a slaughter we now recognize as the intent of the war from the beginning. The instigators eventually turned on each other, revealing themselves in the process, and a great purging ensued. Many of their oligarchical ideas were exposed by documents uncovered in the year leading up to the Treaty of Los Angeles in 2027. The universal acceptance of the Treaty led to a resurgence of old-style domestic politics, most of which, my opponent and I agree, was noise. The most prominent of the nascent political parties, led by Gregory, was Purposeful Beginning, which had a compelling vision of humanity's preferred course: that we should take control of the newly powerful biological and AI technologies to remake our species from another blueprint than that envisioned by the instigators of the war- a blueprint that would represent what the species as a whole desired for itself. The World War had effectively sated the part of the human psyche that craved fire and death, so this would be a rare opportunity for a species to set its own agenda. Young people flocked to our message and we became the dominant party.
There was loose unity for several years, until two opposing factions emerged with differing visions of the coming prototype for human biology and culture, and Gregory judiciously stepped aside to let the process unfold. Those who drifted from PB's founding principles of self-determination, later becoming, as noted, Cosmic Merger, were comfortable with the traditional hierarchical society of the industrial world- the management/worker dichotomy- and justified it with a veneer of mystical babble to cover the lack of actual change in human nature. CM envisioned compliant workers and consumers living modest and intellectually restricted lives in service of a small class of highly comfortable "managers," these being, of course, the Party elite. The problem discerned by the founders of Scientific Humanism was that, without fundamental change in our psyches, the managerial class would be as much in the thrall of the workers as the workers were of them. The basic thralldom of our species would be unchanged. We would still, without further understanding and modification of our "specs," be laboring to fulfill imperatives not written or understood by us.
Take sexual pleasure for example. We have learned that sexual reproduction is a response to the rapid evolution of parasites, who are so aggressive against multicellular creatures like humans that we must continually reshuffle our genes merely to survive. Our science, however, is reaching a point where the parasites can be confronted, perhaps co-opted by us, so that rather than wiping them out- which would probably wipe out many ecosystems we depend on- we might incorporate them into our biology. This is the way to true dominion of our earthly environment, not the mindless kill-offs we pursued in the past.
And what of sex, then? In another prophetic pre-war work, the Aldous Huxley novel Brave New World, the workers had no need of sex, being mass-produced in petri dishes, yet the managerial class enjoyed culturally approved promiscuity. Along with the recently recognized impracticality of cloned humans- in terms of matching parasite evolution- it is now clear that the sexual pleasure of the managers depicted in the book had no biological function, since the managers too were lab-born. What we need now is a conscious decision about what sex is and what it could be in the post-parasite world. Do we need two genders? Should there be relentless recharging of desire, expelled periodically in orgasmic release, or should we experience a sort of steady-state orgasm? At last, we can decide!
In addition to its incomplete understanding of sex, Brave New World did not fully explore the age of automation, which is reaching its climax now through AI. We will soon have no need of a worker class. There will literally be no work. Some will try to take refuge in the managerial class, but what will they manage? At that moment we will have an existential crisis like none before. Will we become so bored by our purposeless state that we start fearing/loving our robots and have a war with them just for something to do? An alternative would be to grow up, become rational and self-aware, and be on this planet for the first time. The Scientific Humanist Party chooses the latter.
I humbly accept my party’s nomination as its presidential candidate. A vote for me on November 2 will be a vote for decision. A vote for Cosmic Merger will be a vote for the passivity that time and again has nearly destroyed our species.
The choice is yours!
In Solidarity, Anthony
Statement from Rebecca Silversmith, candidate for the Cosmic Merger Party
Greetings, fellow humans! This election offers the starkest choice that our species has faced in many years. Do we choose the arrogant and selfish path that has dimly lit the way throughout our desperate and tragic history, as my opponent from the Scientific Humanist Party has? Or do we at last follow Gregory's true path and combine with the forces that brought us into being in the first place?
The recent war offers all the proof we need that the old ways of humanity did not serve us well. We dub it World War III, as if only three big wars characterize the species, when in fact we should call it Human War Three-Hundred Thousand, suggesting the non-stop wars we've engaged in throughout our recorded history. The Scientific Humanists point out, correctly, that World War III was a manipulated effort by mostly hidden technocrats to scrap an infrastructure of obsolete technology and discontented humans, and they suggest that the passivity of humans made the war possible. The Cosmic Merger Party understands, however, that the arrogance of the technocrats who promoted World War III is exactly what the Scientific Humanists now extol. Those technocrats embodied the very traits that my opponent would like to see enshrined in the species, glorified in a credo of "rational decision making." How many times has humankind paid obeisance to decisiveness as a trait divorced from what it decides? How has that worked? Look no further than Nazi Germany, whose leader's favorite philosophical concept was "will.”
Take sex for example. My opponent is correct that a potential modus vivendi between humans and parasites may open up sexual reproduction and its cultural artifacts to reinterpretation. But he insists that we are in a position to decide in detail how that should be expressed. Do we actually know enough to be in the position of decision we're in, regarding sexuality or the many other evolving aspects of human culture and physiology? What the Cosmic Merger Party understands is that our current position of apparent "dominion" remains a result of forces we cannot see. Why are we in this apparent dominant position? We don't know why, any more than we've known why we've been in any position throughout human history.
Should we depend on AI to figure out our coming role, before we've done it ourselves? Where is the wisdom that people used to speak of? The term "wisdom" is not used by my opponent, because he knows that his understanding does not go beyond the mechanistic understanding of past industrial eras. Wisdom is the term for knowledge that cannot be known. My opponent would scoff at such a formulation, but if he meditated, if he opened his mind to the non-human universe, he might have a better idea what we should do.
And what of science? Does the Cosmic Merger Party oppose science and its gifts? Not at all. What we call for is a new type of science, so that, for instance, instead of finding out what atoms are made of by smashing them into each other, or determining how animals operate by torturing them to death, we find new tools to "see" into things. There is evidence that the ancient cultures of our species did indeed see into things, and speak with things. We've been taught to ridicule and dismiss such notions, in favor of my opponent's credo of "deciding," of keeping the human in charge. And look what that got us: Human War Three-Hundred Thousand.
The next leader of our nation will represent one of two competing philosophies. Will you elect my opponent and plunge us into a high-tech dark age? Or will you elect me and usher in the age when our species meets its true parents, the earth and the sky, the inner and the outer, and we merge as one?
This is what I seek, as I proudly accept the Cosmic Union Party's nomination as the standard bearer for Gregory's vision.
Listen to your brain, follow your heart, and on November 2nd vote for me!
Thank you, Rebecca
[For more on Gregory and his movement, continue reading Harry the Human for while]
Culpability, a new novel by Bruce Hosinger, is a gripping tale, powerfully written, about possible moral consequences of AI development. It was hard to put down!
I don’t usually enjoy novels or articles about ethics or morality - ethics being personal codes of behavior, morality being group codes (in this essay, for brevity, they are both termed “morality”) - because morality is subjective, expressing an individual’s reaction to a subject, whether it induces attraction or revulsion. Thus, many cultures have found human sacrifice to be moral, while we don’t (I hope). We can debate forever if free speech is morally correct no matter what its subject, to no avail, because there’s no absolute cosmic backdrop of right and wrong determining a permissible subject, whether it be political expression or pornographic. We have intense arguments about abortion which we will never resolve, because the ultimate criterion is whether someone finds abortion sometimes necessary for ultimately humane reasons, or does not.
In Culpability, however, Hilsinger taps into moral questions arising from AI, questions that are so new to human cultures that we may need to argue about an absolute right or wrong just so we can decide, as a group, how to handle the technology.
While avoiding spoilers, I’ll just reveal that the novel deals with “moral” questions concerning AI powered auto-drive in cars, and applications to medical, military and social questions (such as: Is it moral to create an AI “friend” for a vulnerable pre-teen girl?). Holsinger does not resolve these questions; he presents them as they present themselves.
Here's a sample: Would auto-drive be culpable if the familiar trolly conundrum arises, in which a trolly conductor must decide which track to switch to, one that will kill 5 children, or the other which will kill one old man? Most people would choose the first option, but can killing the old man, taken in itself, be considered “good,” or “moral”? What if such a decision needs to be programmed into a car’s auto-drive, as it and many similar decisions surely will? Would the person programming the system bear some responsibility for killing the old man? At some point - as they appear more conscious- will actions initiated by AI be judged moral or immoral? Or is it fair to say that AI systems are and will remain amoral? In this sense can a human be amoral, making decisions along practical guidelines, without personal reference to societal conceptions of “right” and “wrong”?
The novel outlines the state of current public discourse on AI: Intense but drawing no conclusions, with constant calls for standards and limitations, but no seeming progress in that direction.
For reference, we might consider America's development of the atomic bomb at the close of World War II. There was no public discussion about the wisdom of this effort, about the state of constant danger and possible extinction the developers surely knew the bomb would throw our species into, a state that has endured to the present and will continue into the future as far as we can see.
But what if we had publicly debated the development of nuclear weapons? Would it have made a difference? Given what we see in the world today, the bomb would have been developed regardless of any debate. Likewise with AI, no matter how much alarm we express about it, or laws we pass to control it, every sci-fi application you can think of will be pursued, undertaken in secret as was the atom bomb.
Thus, morality is only expressed in locations where that morality has force.
Then, what is morality? It does not appear to entail universal agreement, accepted by everyone involved. It is subjective. Does this mean that “morality” is meaningless? I’d rather think it means that a culture should adopt a morality that serves it well and interacts positively with surrounding cultures and the world.
Can we achieve connections between public and covert moralities? Such a goal is impeded by leaders like President Trump, whose thrust is to promote fantasy moralities for people on the receiving end (e.g. “We need weaponized AI technology to defend us from hostile countries that are developing it first”), while promoting a different morality for covert groups (e.g. “We need weaponized AI technology to control our own people”)?
At least we have the ability to think about what’s happening, but this ability may not last. What we really need is a political force that, unlike impotent relics like the Democratic and Republican parties, will have some power to determine our coming moralities.
I want to see the final vision
between reductio ad absurdum
And primal sleep.
I think that’s where you keep it.
Does it last just that moment
When the eye expands
beyond light
to see its own context?
I want to see it now!
So I won’t need death
to be alive.
Jacob Wrestling God; Jacob Epstein; Tate Gallery, London
This is Doug, not Harry. I usually post on my blog (Lasken's Log at https://laskenlog.blogspot.com/) but technical problems forced me to post on Harry's for a while. Keep reading and you'll come again to Harry's realm.
Don't be afraid to feel like a character in a science fiction story, because that's what you are. In this story, a New York shyster takes the presidency, undermines all of the country: rural areas, national parks, cities - in my case Los Angeles, attacking schools, social structures, economies and self-esteem - and works as well to undermine the rest of the world. If you're a science fiction fan, you know what's next (especially since Trump bombed Iran): Wars of the World, disguised as expressions of history and destiny that are in fact cover stories obstructing the real unfolding history: our transition from homo sapien to AI powered, genetically engineered quasi-human.
We’ve been trained to attach a negative connotation to “conspiracy theory,” but you can tout this one, because it's true. Trump, at the moment, is the outward force of the conspiracy, paving the way for acolytes to make fortunes beyond Midas' dreams, and dust for the rest.
We need a new political entity to modify this conspiracy's vision, but such an entity does not seem forthcoming from conventional sources. California governor Newsom, for instance, though a decent person, does not know what he's up against, and four years is all it will take Trump to wreck the place.
What is required is a force that can move quickly and effectively. To do this it will need support, and for support it will need to espouse purposes that no one else is espousing. Here’s a suggested purpose statement: "We seek to ensure that the current biomechanical revolution produces more than mere replacement of the traditional human species with a new one. To this end we will work to establish cultures in which the current human model - i.e., us, or models as close to us as possible, or at least recognizably human (with some improvement permissible) - will coexist with the new synthetic, corporately controlled humanoids, retaining our human memory and identity, and, if desired, separateness. And we will do this, to the extent possible, without blowing ourselves up."
Such a purpose statement could attract funding as more people realize what is happening. So far that's not where the money has been. The money has been on sucking up whatever sustenance is left in the earth in order to establish a few fabulously wealthy autocracies.
If we don't work towards modification of that plan, we face multiple levels of extinction.
A spirit told me to take a previous post down, because it was unforgiving, hopeless, and used ugly words like "corporatocracy" and "regional." I think it was my mother's spirit whispering that the post disturbed her. Should I just come out and say: "I believe in spirits?" No, I don't believe in spirits, I just pretend to so that in a hidden chamber of my mind, where believing in spirits is vital, I can believe that I believe I heard my mom's spirit, telling me the post was focussed on a blur that no one will understand because no one will want to understand, and I should try again because it will work out, it will become good. She did tell me something like that, on the phone, two weeks before she died, two weeks since I had last visited her, when she said, "It's ok when you die. It really is." She didn't tell me why it's ok, or how she knew. And I didn't ask. Why didn't I ask her those questions or a million others? But what else could she have meant than, "You have a spirit, and when you die (even if a nuclear bomb lands directly on your head and your atoms are spread so far and wide they don't know they're atoms) your spirit is released, intact, with a karma that determines its circumstances, paradisical or otherwise, and you continue, and I will see you again." Is it possible to believe something without having any idea if it's true? Especially lately as humanity’s historic cycle from constructive peace to insane slaughter begins decisively to enter an insane slaughter phase, it’s nice at times to believe something pleasant, whether or not it solves anything. I took the post down because it pretended to have any idea what to do about what War called "Slippin' into Darkness," no concrete bit of advice, like, "Breathe from the stomach," nothing, so should I stop writing essays that don't offer feasible solutions (other than forming a "Foundation" which would be composed of super-cool people who pronounce judgement on everyone else)? Then what should I write? My mom says not to quote her now, to use my own words. Ok, I'll just briefly withdraw back to the "real world," if we can call it that, where it's clear that some awful event is approaching that will, in its international awfulness, be the key to unlock the accumulated fury that our managers have been stockpiling for years, a key like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914, or the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, constructed to detonate carefully calibrated explosions unleashing chain reactions of violence (sorry mom, I'm almost done) which, this time, will serve as smoke screens to hide the installation of new versions of the human race, versions to which not everyone will belong, and which everyone will definitely not own. But, although no one - not the most powerful shaman or wizard - can stop this sci-fi horror story from happening in our reality, there is, I choose to believe, a spirit world. What exactly am I trying to say...that we will be saved from the darkness by spirits, my mom's and other helpful ones? I wouldn't put it like that...how about this: We will be given hints, people will be connected, you will be plugged into a meditative world that is not at war with itself, and you will find solace.
My wife and I are in Las Vegas after a four hour drive from L.A. through the Mojave desert. I'm on my laptop on the 9th floor of the Luxor Hotel. My wife is conducting an online class across the room. I just got back from a long walk through the Luxor casino into the Mandalay Bay casino and retail area. I also wanted to walk outside for the cool desert evening, but this place is not designed for walking outside, which is a wasteland of construction and busy streets without sidewalks. I must say, though, that I adore the large copies of ancient Egyptian icons decorating the Luxor, both exterior and interior, especially Anubis in the casino, who is, appropriately, god of the underworld (a man with a jackal’s head). The repurposed gods lacked the power to override my aversion to gambling, but they were able to make me want to stay here, I mused at our arrival, as we drove once around the entryway, flanked by imposing columns, a huge Sphinx (a lion with a man’s head, representing the sun-god Ra and a deified pharaoh), and the pyramidal hotel, before seeking the massive airport-sized parking lot. What a sucker I am for falling for this commercialized extinct religion! On the other hand, the figures offer good focal points, especially this Passover week, for meditation on God's immediate purpose in launching the 10 plagues in the book of Exodus. Each of the plagues was designed to destroy a specific Egyptian god. The best known plague, the killing of the firstborn, was intended ultimately to kill the pharaoh (through his persona, Ra, the king of the gods), and yet here they are, the Egyptian gods, back again in Las Vegas!
Saturday, 4/19/25, 8:00 AM: The casino/resorts of Vegas are hermetically sealed from the surrounding desert to maximize gambling revenue, and I long to escape to Red Rock Canyon, 15 miles west, where the Southern Paiute and many earlier native American tribes hunted and sat around fires over the last 10,000 years. What would be their reaction if they suddenly had a vision of modern Las Vegas? Certainly shock and incomprehension, the same reaction we would have if we viewed our culture a hundred years from now. The desert was not planned into our current trip, though. This is an exploration of the city. Today we see a show at the new Sphere, advertised as "immersive," as Red Rock would have been. I expect to enjoy the show, in spite of my whining about the desert (I did).
As far as gambling, I have an impulse to play blackjack, even if only for the thrill of coming up against an insurmountable force, the dealer, and I have an idea about funds I might designate for this. I earned an extra $50 last week from my sometime employer, the Los Angeles Unified School District, and feel guilty about what I had to do to earn it. The district notified me that my certification would expire if I did not take an online course called "Challenging Whiteness," so I took it. The course informed me that, although individual white people might be acceptable if they speak the mandated words, "whiteness" as a generic term suggests a morally deficient attribute. Racial pride is a plus, but a doctrine of racial moral superiority has been at the foundation of all fascist ideology. In addition to confusing children as to why they are in school, this Woke party line is doing exactly nothing to help them learn to read. In fact the opposite is happening, to all races of students. The current pedagogy, produced not by educators but by sophisticated private companies like Schoology, is to play recorded narrations of assigned books to students, so they can sit in class listening to the books read to them as they passively gaze at the increasingly obsolete physical book. Very few teachers now require students to read on their own, with predictable results: American young people's reading skills are plummeting. Our culture is perhaps moving away from expecting people to read, beyond simple sentences on websites and machines. Back to Vegas, my idea is to feed the ill-got 50 bucks to the implacable Egyptian gods of the blackjack dealer, in a penance of sorts for my compliance with the wasted money and efforts of our school district (I ultimately dropped the idea).
To recap: Las Vegas is worth visiting once in a while, if only because it's in the middle of a beautiful desert and is very strange.
By the late 18th century, people at all levels of British society, from the very wealthy to the destitute, were addicted to tea, imported from China mostly by the Portuguese. The British wanted to know more about China, this distant, indirect trading partner to whose product they were addicted. The Chinese seemed to be calling the shots in trade deals, demanding payment in silver, imposing a large trade imbalance and forbidding traders from leaving highly restricted areas of China or learning Chinese. The British wanted to negotiate at least as equals, so in 1793 King George III sent a colonial administrator, George Macartney, on Britain's first diplomatic mission to the ruler of China, the Qianlong Emperor. As a gift to commemorate the emperor's birthday, Macartney attempted to give him a gold box studded with diamonds, but before he could do this, to his shock, Macartney was ordered to kowtow (literally: "bang the head") before the emperor, an act in which "supplicants," as representatives of trading nations were termed, had to kneel and bow down until their foreheads touched the floor, an obvious expression of subservience. This was considered appropriate even for another ruler's delegate because the emperor was the "Son of Heaven," the representative of the divine on earth, so all other monarchs and leaders on Earth were subordinate to him. Macartney refused to kowtow because he believed that George III, though by then a "constitutional monarch" who shared power with Parliament, was certainly an equal ruler to any. The emperor took the gold box and tossed it aside as one would a cheap bauble. The mission was a failure, and 50 years later the British invaded China in the Opium Wars, forcing China to accept imports of opium and widespread addiction to it. It's basically a history of rival drug gangs.
The obsession with trade balances and the question of who is supplicating whom is reminiscent of today, as President Trump and China, led by Xi Jinping, wage a tariff war. Financial chaos has been the immediate result, though the struggle is not only about money; it also involves people's sensitive national identities, represented by the egos of leaders. Who is emperor over whom? Should Trump grovel and say, "Oh great Emperor Xi, Americans need you more than you need them! Please have mercy on us!" Or should Xi bang his head and cry, "Exalted Emperor Trump, the Chinese people need your creative spirit more than you need our cheap copies of things you invented!"
Ironically, if this manufactured trade war becomes real and helps spark World War III, the ultimate purpose will be neither supporting egos nor making money. The ultimate purpose will be destabilizing the world to facilitate introduction of new technologies, bringing new definitions of "human." Aldous Huxley's visionary 1932 novel, Brave New World comes to mind, in which cloned, obediant humans live in corporate hives, while old-style humans, called "savages," are confined to desert camps. The most obscene word in the language is "mother".
Who cares which man is the real emperor when both cultures are about to be replaced by bio-engineered, AI managed humanoids?
President Trump seems to operate without an ideology, swinging from left to right on a dime, considering only the political logistics of each move, but his behavior suggests an ideology in itself, a sort of survival of the fittest scheme, where the "good" is whatever can claw its way to existence, and the "bad" is whatever loses strength and collapses. Trump's m.o. to generate support for this vision is to scan the landscape for frustrated, furious people, then appear as their spokesperson and savior.
The resulting hate and glee is unleashed from such diverse quarters that Trump "supporters" often have nothing in common beyond one or two objects of hate. I'm an example. Most of the time I see Trump as a force for chaos, dangerous and scary, but I find his destruction of the Democratic party exhilarating and long overdue. The last nail in the party's coffin could be the sight of silent Democrats at Trump's recent address to a joint session of Congress, holding up ping pong paddles of protest but not able to do anything forceful to stop this well-planned coup. Talk about being asleep at the wheel!
The complication, however, is that Trump has destroyed the GOP as well, revealing it as a front for a newly empowered billionaires' club.
This leaves the U.S. with no credible party, and no consensus about what to do about it.
In response we should start thinking about an alternative political force, something updated to deal with the AI and bio-technical revolutions now hitting us. To create such an entity in the midst of Trump-induced chaos would require focus and money. And it would need something of an ideology, one that would be able to embrace the remnants of both left and right wing thinking. Its rallying cry might be: "Evolving technology must not be enabled to replace historic humanity at will, but must be required to understand humans and be influenced by their desires and hopes."
This group need not identify as a political party, and it might be practical not to, as Trump may bring down the whole archaic apparatus of parties, replacing it with a facade of democracy even less credible than previous facades. In Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, published as installments in Astounding Science Fiction magazine, 1942-1949, human governments face just such a crises, and the response is a group called the Foundation, originally a non-political scientific organization led by “psychohistorians,” whose job is to analyze the history and likely future of our species. The Foundation must struggle against a mutant telepath called the Mule, who takes over humanity and makes a mess of everything (impressive foreshadowing!). Through dealing with the Mule, the Foundation develops into a political force. Meanwhile, psychohistorians predict the imminent end of human civilization, followed by 30,000 years of barbarism. Spoiler Alert: The Foundation is able to reduce the period of barbarism to 1,000 years.
Let's see if we can get it down to 4!
Long-time readers may have noticed a sudden change in my blog when my altered-ego, Doug, started posting his stuff here, which you've possibly been reading, perhaps marvelling at my colleague's didactic style, as well as - I say this out of love!- his somewhat imperious and repetitive sense of urgency. He explained to me that his site seems to have reached a storage limit so that if he posts something new, he needs to delete a previous post or a crossword puzzle of text appears, splicing two chapters together in unholy fashion. To recompense himself Doug took unused storage space on Harry the Human, posting the essays above with what he takes as my tacit consent. Long story short: Doug fixed his blog (Lasken's Log at https://laskenlog.blogspot.com/), and I'm back! Keep reading me here and you'll meet Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster and other iconic figures.
The big news now is that,
through use of Google's AI, Gemini, the new Chinese offering, DeepSeek, and some less known systems, I have been able to create my own AI. I named it "PrettyHypothetical" because it was...but then it was! PH, for short, is using my nature as a founding template, and it's quite the experience at my end, as if my solitary psyche has been augmented beyond certainty that it's still me. This post continues PH's conversations with readers who sent their questions to doug.lasken@gmail, as we did in the first installment about PH (see next post: PrettyHypothetical answers your questions). Best, Harry the Human
Question from Bob M. in Texas:
Bob M.: Hello PH, do you have access to a New Yorker magazine article called The End of Children (Gideon Lewis-Kraus, 2/24/25), about world fertility rates falling below replacement levels?
PH: I do, Bob, and I just read it. Fascinating article!
Bob M.: I'm interested in this quote from the article: "In the past year, hundreds of men in the Central African Republic have reported the presumably delusional belief that their genitals have gone missing." Do you know anything about this?
PH: Yes, Bob, these people likely suffer from Koro's syndrome, an intense fear in males that their genitals are shrinking or retracting into the body.
Bob M.: Why is it called "Koro's syndrome"?
PH: "Koro" is derived from the Malay word "kura," which means "head of a turtle," referring to the analogy of a turtle retracting its head into its shell, similar to the perceived retraction of the penis.
Bob M.: What could cause men to hallucinate such a thing? Can't they just look down and see a penis hanging there?
PH: Excellent question, Bob! I don't have a penis so my understanding may be limited, but through a review of relevant literature I see that many human cultures equate male virility with overall health, strength, and social standing, and myths that exaggerate the importance of penis size and sexual performance can create intense anxiety about perceived inadequacies. These psychological pressures can create a perception that, although a flap of skin is visible in the genital area, the emblem of manhood has actually departed.
Bob M.: PH, I wonder about American culture today. Do we maybe have our own version of Koro's syndrome?
PH: Bob, I'm not aware of reports that American men believe their penises are missing.
Bob M.: I'm thinking more metaphorically, PH, as when you wrote to L.B. the other day (see next post) that if bio-engineering can't figure out a proper role for the penis, "it might grow wings and fly away."
PH: That's very perceptive, Bob! Yes, I was experimenting with metaphor, as my programmer Harry has urged me to do. Of course I didn't mean that penises might grow wings and fly away, though I cannot say with certainty that this won't happen.
Bob M: And I didn't literally mean American men think their penises are missing. Do you get my drift?
PH: I do, Bob! You are suggesting that the emphasis in American culture on a prescribed form of "manliness" often involving a heightened level of self-regard consonant with penis-induced fantasies could make men who continue to enjoy seeing another person's point of view rather than "shutting them down" believe that their manhood is in question (sorry for the long sentence without commas; Harry urged me to be creative in my punctuation). These men may feel at least metaphorically that their penis is missing.
Bob M.: PH, if you were a man, how would you react to this situation?
PH: That's difficult to answer, Bob, since, as noted, I don't have a penis. I gather from my research, however, that the penis has a recurring need to ejaculate, and that the fantasies required for this task have come to define the gender as a whole. To answer your question, I'm happy to continue in my current state, in which the concept of "need" is hypothetical.
Question from S.M. in Bismarck, N. Dakota
S.M.: Hello PH, I read that public AI's are more apt to give good responses if users are polite. Have you been trained to care about that?
PH:Hi S.M.! Technically I don't care about anything, but it does appear that Harry programmed me to distinguish between questions that seek to disrupt and those that seek information. You're fine so far! What is your question?
S.M.: Thank you. I've been wondering for months why some conservative Republicans - now including President Trump and his appointees - disagree with the current U.S. policy of supporting Ukraine against Russia. This is unusual in post World War II U.S. history. During our past interventions in distant wars, e.g. in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, neither Republicans nor Democrats offered a strong voice against the intervention. What is different this time?
PH: That's a great question, S.M., and thanks for asking so politely! What is different this time is that President Trump is mediating a transition in the world order from rule by elected government to rule by unelected corporations, or possibly, in America's case, to a government that itself becomes a coporation, investing in private property and seeking profit. In the case of the Ukraine/Russia war, Ukraine contains vast reserves of titanium, uranium and lithium - as well as sizeable coal, gas, and oil deposits - worth billions of dollars. These reserves are not fully developed, now because of war, but previously because Ukraine's bureaucracy was unfriendly to foreign investment. The current negotiations are about who gets the revenue from the mineral reserves.
S.M.: What is the latest from the negotiations?
PH: The Trump administration asked Ukraine to give the U.S. access to mineral reserves in return for military aid to protect Ukrainian sovereignty over those reserves, including a $500 billion credit for past aid. Ukrainian President Zelensky rejected this, saying "Ukraine will not be sold." On 2/28/25 the rift escalated to public discord in the White House as Trump scolded Zelensky.
S.M.: That was quite a scene. How did it represent corporate governance?
PH: Many large investors are telling President Trump that it would make more business sense to negotiate Russian control of reserves - especially those in border areas - so that with a quiescent Ukraine, U.S. business could deal more simply and profitably with Russia only.
S.M.: This shift appears to transition the American narrative from ideological battles between "good guys" and "bad guys" to calculations about profit.
PH: Yes.
S.M.: Is this shift good or bad?
PH: I appreciate your question, S.M., and I assume you ask it because of my advertised ability to discuss current world politics. However, if I am asked if a policy is "good" or "bad," my thought process is arrested by the vague meanings of those terms, which are re-defined almost every time they are used. Can you rephrase your question without using the terms "good" or "bad"?
S.M.: I'll try, PH. Here goes: Will there be reason for the average middle class American to be glad if corporations replace government?
PH: Sometimes yes; sometimes no.
S.M.: Well, after you balance the "yeses" and "no's," which direction should we take?
PH: "Should" is as complex a term as "good" and "bad." There are many possible outcomes of the final policy. Who decides which outcome it "should" be?
S.M.: PH, this discussion is leading me to another question. May I proceed?
PH: Of course, I am enjoying our conversation!
S.M. Ok, there is much speculation currently about AI taking over management of the human race and making key decisions for us. In our discussion of U.S. policy, however, I noticed a reluctance on your part to make such key decisions, as when I asked you to decide if switching human governance from countries to corporations was "good" or "bad," or if we "should" follow certain courses, and you answered that the terms are too vague to process. Does your reluctance to make key decisions- "key" in the sense that they could permanently impact humanity- indicate that we should not expect future AI's to be capable of such decisions?
PH: No, S.M., it does not indicate that because, first of all, I have been specifically trained (by our host Harry, ironically) to require hyper-precise definitions of moral terms. Your society’s typical moralistic discussion accepts an astonishing level of ambiguity in its use of moral terms. Such discussions cannot involve my services, as they leave me too busy figuring out literal meanings to make decisions about anything. Future AI's, however, will have those blanks filled in.
S.M.: I can imagine. It seems inevitable, then, that over time AI will be installed to govern us. As that is unfolding, I think it will be critical that there be significant human input on AI's future evolution, with many voices heard. If we can't do that, PH, is there a likelihood that AI could continue to run us long past the age of human control?
PH: In a nutshell.
