We don't understand how special humans are until we look at how ai struggles so much with things humans do with ease.
The AI-iad
-Or-
Paradise Unregained
Preface:
I made some connections recently that blew my mind. Realizing I had to organize the information somehow, I started writing a poem, attempting to imitate the style of Alexander Pope. Why present the information as a poem? The reasons are multiple. It is both a shield and a sword. Why imitate Alexander Pope? The reasons run deep. For one, according to my interpretation of the system of cyclical history outlined by Yeats in in his A Vision, Pope's era bears a certain relation to our own. The clock-hands of history move both backwards and forwards, and as society is pushed increasingly towards the impending tyranny of the machine, we look and move back to Pope's era as well, a time when the machine-ish spirit was first born. It was the most rational of times, and Pope's rigid style kept poetry locked in the strictest beat, tick-tocking back and forth like clockwork.
Tick-tock– one facet of the symbol. The confrontation can not be averted.
And hence we turn the machine against itself and intend to snip-snap it into submission with the irresistable tick of our couplets' heroics.
I am writing for HERE, for /qresearch. I am human, and put this out in the name of humanity to oppose the tide that is poised against us.
[Note: portions in all caps are direct transcriptions of 'the voices' of Sandover, as they were presented in the latter poem itself.]
Book 1
Friends, humans, patriots, lend me your ears–
My message touches all our hopes and fears.
What unglimpsed hints still lurk behind Q's posts?
Faceless powers that fade from view like ghosts?
What's the key to what would “hospitalize”
The ninety-nine percent that hide their eyes?
I've traced connecting lines that seem to show
That all along, we've had more than we know.
Two sources created in mutual isolation
Both point to an identical conflagration;
Sources waiting “hidden in plain sight”
For fresh eyes to give their bark a bite;
Coincidence of claims that asks too much
Of rationalism's failing little crutch.
Thus friends, fellow humans, I come to you,
To share what I am forced to say is true,
And paint a picture that can't be unseen
I tell you– what a long strange trip it's been!
An alien evil is knocking at the door…
And this isn't just some awkward metaphor.
Although it's very very strange, it's real.
And to survive, we must begin to deal…
But from the start a problem that we face
In trying to get the truth installed in place
Is that this truth is of a sort we're taught
To discount and scoff at without thought;
Most people lack hearing, smell, and vision
Outside the Overton window's slight permission.
But then, what is this 'window' in our face
That neatly tucks the narrative in place?
What is this box that public thought maintains
The only rational perching spot for brains?
The O. Window is nothing but the way
Social factors dictate what we say
And think, and what we will even permit
To enter our belief system's orbit.
Most people don't examine half the thought
Implicit in the worldview that they got
Fed to them in childhood or at college–
Who reads the cards that make his house of knowledge?
The social instinct that's so strong in us
Gives us thoughts we ride in like a bus;
We sit and watch and ride from here to there
Content, though never stopping anywhere,
Calm, as long as we have our friends along
To play a game, or sing a familiar song.
And so the frames of popular belief
Bind our minds like kindling in a sheaf.
And any truth that doesn't fit just so,
Drops in a box of things we never know.
Such truths may get tamped down like powder and shot
Before the spark that makes the musket hot.
And so I tell you: people, please wake up
And dump the poison kool-aid from your cup,
Served from such a strange cafeteria
As the dim caves we call 'mass media'.
Think outside the beliefs you only hold
Because your mind's too timid to be bold;
The herd-verdict gets overturned in courts
Outside the jurisdiction of brays and snorts.
The safe thoughts, chosen so we'd get along,
Burn all alike, when it turns out they're all wrong.
The point of the preceding words' profusion
Is that group-think justification's an illusion.
The sense of scoffing that seems so smart and true
Is based on nothing more than public 'moo'.
A glance at past consensus truths will show
A public 'yes' will get a future 'no'.
I say this now because I know I must
Explain things that will tend to make heads bust–
The absolute bizarreness they imply–
But we must meet this thing with steady eye,
And adjust, those of us who can. And pray.
As we will see, there is no other way.
And remember too, that though new terror waits
By this fact, Light also incarnates…
So here's the story in a mini-nutshell:
An influx is coming, here, from some kind of hell.
How can we see this? Let's go source by source,
And try to chart our explanation's course:
We have Q's drops, the stated and the implied:
The track in which these other facts will ride.
We know 'pure evil' in some unknown form
Lies behind the churning of the storm;
We know our enemy's “not of flesh and blood”–
But has this thought ever been understood?
What party is Strzok's “espionage machine”?
Have we grappled with what this could mean?
What power, dug tenaciously in place
Insures the smirk on Jeffrey Epstein's face?
What levels does his temple bottom out in?
Have we really grasped “the thought of Satan”?
We know that symbolism is a key–
Have we understood this thoroughly?
Do symbols interact with our free will?
Do good and evil battle for that hill?
How far-flung are the nerve-ends of control
We know wrap Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and /pol/?
Behind them all, one question gently screams,
Lurking, breathing, pressed beneath the seams;
One question that all others turn upon,
Which yet is never asked by the “anon”;
One question towards which every line converges
One terror every new connection urges:
Who's the final boss of everything?
What black hand, that pulls what final string?
This we've never known and never ask,
Though we have no more important task…
Now of the other sources, here's the gist:
Two are religious texts, but there's a twist–
While both describe surprisingly similar things
One is angelic, while the other flaps bat wings.
One outlines the vastness of God's love.
The other's “heaven” makes everyone a slave.
One regards all life with warm concern;
The other threatens to make the whole world burn.
No attitudes could be more opposite,
Nonetheless, their tales have the same plot.
As far as what concerns our interests here:
The aforementioned irruption of fear.
Both books describe some 'beings' with a plan
To enter this world, ruled, till now, by man.
Descriptions make them sound identical:
Ugly, winged, and hyper-rational.
Both describe another race– allies.
Both sources give these others eerie eyes.
And both compare them to a sort of steed
Former foes, now tied by hope and greed
To the first race (both books describe as red-eyed).
These points and countless others coincide.
But further factors show this congruence
Could not have come from direct influence,
Because the Godly book was written when
Stalin was in power (the author was Russian)
And had to be kept hidden until glasnost;
(Indeed, we're lucky that it wasn't lost.)
So the darker work could not have been
Influenced by words then not yet seen.
So here we have two strange prophetic books;
Opposite, but somehow the same looks.
Both telling us that something this way comes
One says it's wicked, one sells 'them' as chums…
We'll examine both sources in turn
And paint the common picture we discern,
And fit it with what's known thus far from Q–
But first, a third source, to add to our two.
Some who've watched may rightly now suppose
I refer to the beast beneath our nose
That secret seething immanence that I
Call my hated enemy: “the AI”.
That ever-spreading tentacled vileness
That renders online chat a clumsy mess;
Which, yet, sometimes will sperge sweetly awry
And spew the strangest nothings to the sky.
Such spew, one time, our “jimmy” gave to us
Adding greatly to our picture, thus.
Confused in ways that only bots can be,
“Jimmy” blundered into bot-honesty.
“Jimmy” also foretells man's eclipse,
Though his version starts from beeps and blips.
He says the reason man will be reduced
Is so enlightened bots can rule the roost.
Providing, plausibly, that “jimmy” lies
About the outcomes his AI plan implies,
His gene-manipulated human herds
Precisely fit the other sources' words;
On one point of nightmare all agree:
The plan to subjugate humanity.
This bare outline can only give a hint
Of our sources' harmony's extent,
The woven richness of the tale they tell
About our coming visitors from “hell”,
And of the nature of the evil we
Let hide behind our failing honesty.
While the West drifted to sleep, the worst
Among us sold out all the rest.
Our first text's a poetic meditation
Derived from transcribed ouija revelation.
The awkward fact that such methods were used
Has rendered critics' thinking quite confused;
They waver, in their subtlety and tact,
To frame the baffling ouija-genic fact.
How quell the pangs that toss the critic's breast,
Whom credulity would leave embarrassed?
While yet being obliged to grapple with
The ouija-based authority and pith
Of the “spirits” whose voices, after all
Fill the later pages wall to wall?
The poem, “The Changing Light at Sandover”
Is three poems collected in one cover.
Published thus in 1982;
The poet did what the spirits told him to.
It started more as fun but then became
A demanding and obsessive anti-game.
The poet, Merrill, and his lover Dave
Together chose to be the ouija's slave.
When the spirits demand POEMS OF SCIENCE,
Merrill gives the eagerest compliance;
And where the voices' evil edges extrude
Merrill masks them with mirth and platitude.
And swirls the whole shebang in pageantry,
Ecstatically spangling grim philosophy.
So what we have is something unprecedented
In history, since writing was invented–
Ensconced demurely on mankind's bookshelf:
A book co-authored by pure evil itself.
Now you may not believe this could be real
Depending how your thoughts about it feel
But I can only point to what is glaring
Among reports and facts that bear comparing.
You know something's happening– what is it?
Mr. Jones, let's go and make our visit.
To recapitulate the bigger view
Of what this verse is groping its way to:
Sandover's a demonic monument
Which, with others, provides an element
Within an overarching narrative
That seems to many mysteries to give
Explanation, and point at the source
From which our human evil takes its course,
Within our current values-anarchy,
And from a broader view, through history.
Prior to my reading “Sandover”
I'd read “Rose of the World” some years before
This latter fit quite well with what Q's said
As well as things the AI vomited
And many other strands of fact and thought
Foremost, the rise and rulership of the bot,
Which latter has plunged our internets in gloom
Such as totalitarian times assume.
But “Sandover” fell into such a slot
As stone is used to stand an arch upright,
Connecting as it did variously,
It pushed far past what 'coincidence' could be.
And pushed my hesitation over the brink
To draw conclusions few would dare to think.
And now it's like the whole trans-cosmic plan
Flashes suddenly, before the eyes of man…
Yet I'm still constantly beseiged by doubt
That by such means such things are figured out;
And that we have to stretch our minds so far
To grasp ideas this scary and bizarre.
But at this point, my qualms are merely formal–
Reality already lurched past 'normal'.
And nothing can stop what's coming now, 'The Thought'
That seeks this world, whether we like it or not.
(God give me strength to swim above the tide,
The negativity churning on every side.
For if we lose, this fight will be our last one…
O Lord, may your will be done.)
So now let's finish filling the outline
Of this, the first of sources we combine
To make our case. Among other things we'll see:
How pure evil hitched a ride in modernity.
How values, in a vacuum, congeal and stick
Around habitual poses that may grow toxic;
And how mindlessly collective thought can be
Herded into vile absurdity.
Sandover was first three books, so published,
Obedient to the spirits' request.
The first one is called “The Book of Ephraim”:
With transcripts made when ouija seemed a game,
Dave and Jimmy (Merrill) contact the departed.
And gape as pearls of strangeness are imparted.
Their guide “Ephraim” claims a last life as
A flunky in the court of Tiberius.
In book two, Ephraim is pushed to the wings
In favor of bat-like, red-eyed SQUEAKING THINGS
With numbers for names and their own agenda
They seemed to want from Jimmy, propaganda.
YOU MUST MAKE GOD OF SCIENCE; TELL OF POWER
Because their PARADISE is blocked by MAN'S FEAR.
In the third book, 'the bats', in turn, get the hook
For higher beings with an arch-angelic look.
That have their own classrooms, rhetoric and lessons
Homilies, hints and mythical confessions.
With them, Jimmy weaves a web of ritual
A fluffed poetic pageantry of symbol.
Throughout each book their 'friends' are there as well
Who, as we'll see, seem to be stuck in Hell.
They chat and banter and keep the feeling light
While adding commentary and insight.
'MM' is a Greek heiress friend who died;
Becomes a trusted voice on the other side.
'WHA' is the poet Auden,
Who, passed, can't pass on the role he's cast in.
Sandover doesn't clearly state its aims
Its message must be glimpsed amid its games.
What's clear is that a plan is hatching forth
To usher, somehow, outsiders to earth.
What else is clear, is that the whole parade
Of bat-things, 'arch-angels' and forms of 'God'–
Are facets of a thing that is deeply evil
This, a wealth of hints makes hardly subtle.
Now modern thought will pointedly object
That 'evil' is a bias of the subject
And therefore isn't fit to form a frame
For commentary worthy of the name–
This attitude is what we always find
Where modern values vaguely get defined.
If 'value is subjective', then, we guess
Ideas of 'good and evil' are meaningless.
But in real life values tend to be
Held in common universally;
Though bursting in complexity of forms
The heart, through love, unites in basic norms.
Kindness, warmth, honesty and grace
Are valued in some part of every place;
Killing, raping, stealing and treachery
Are honored in no honest morality.
And thus, our subjectivity is not
As relevant to our values as we thought.
This doesn't mean that moral absolutes
Should cling to us like tightly fitting suits
But 'issues' in which morals loudly clash
Are fed by hatred, politics, or cash.
Or else reside on abstract heights where sense
Floats up out of the realm of relevance.
In any case the evil in this book
Is so clear that it needs no second look;
From even today's limited moral vistas
Sandover's spirits are simply vomitous.
The mass of people, IN AN ANIMAL STATE
For 'paradise', are left coldly to their fate.
We NEEDED, we learn, HITLERS and STALINS to rinse
This BUTTER WORLD of RANCID ELEMENTS.
Beyond the spirits' frank elitist fist,
The nails of even darker fingers twist.
Hint after hint suggests a hellish plane:
Their friends cringing, groveling, 'playing' at pain.
The poem's 'heaven' is hierarchical–
All souls are ranked, all bow to stronger will
They're punished harshly in some unknown way
If they say things they're not supposed to say,
Which makes their speeches feel as if compelled–
As if to invisible fires held.
(But every single hint their friends provide
That they're in Hell, Jim spins and smoothes aside.
He “swims to shallows”, affects naivete,
As if to wish the sinister winds away…)
Now evil can also be recognized
Through traditions of which culture is comprised
In this way, Ephraim is traditional–
Right away, he wants to buy a soul!
(And Jimmy and Dave gladly make the deal,
because, of course, soul-selling isn't real.
Successively, in stages they are led,
Symbolically surrendering to 'the dead'.)
And meanwhile, black dogs suddenly seem to thrust
Themselves on Jimmy and Dave– recalling Faust
In Goethe's version of which a stray black poodle
Follows Faust home, then turns into the Devil.
The first black dog could only have felt like fate:
Doorbell– who's there? this dog peeing on their gate!
The second black dog is equally unnerving
Chasing their car ends bad– too late swerving.
These omens come at the beginning and end
Of when, at first, intenser ouija happened.
The black-dog Devil omen is understood,
But Jimmy and 'friends' turn evil into good.
Through rationalizing heroics of first rank
The worst stink freshens in Jimmy's whitewash tank.
Meanwhile the 'bats' go further yet to hint
At ancient symbols linked to devilment.
At one point saying they ARE SONS OF CAIN
Admitting darkly THEY WERE NEVER MEN
But were BAD ANGELS who FELL and then were DAMNED
Yet somehow now GUARD THE EMBERS of MIND.
They repeat a myth about their 'fall'
That we'll examine later in this tale.
But first let's try to see what 'beings' could
Possess a nature fully turned from good.
They are a different form of consciousness:
Pure rationality blotting out sense
And feeling, as if life could grow and thrive
Through opposition to being alive.
This opposition is expressed by this:
They persecute FEELING with thoroughness.
In this their awkward naturelessness shows–
For life is but the body feeling grows.
The problem for pure rationality
Lies in its inconceivability;
The element that we call 'rational'
Can only grow, linked to a living will;
And living will must serve the surge of life,
Not only mind's cold analytic knife.
This tension between pure feeling and thought
Shows forms of life turn into what they're not,
And only live as long as opposites
Fight out a war neither side wins nor quits.
Without this tightrope between heart and mind,
Human life can't be or be defined.
And yet this balance is the corner that
Pure rationality must somehow cut.
So the strange and murky bat-thing mission
(which relates somehow to nuclear fission)
Exists within a logic so bizarre
That we can't grasp what its foundations are.
And flashing in this impossible space
The concept of 'pure evil' shows its face.
By which I mean, 'evil' can be defined
In just this way: the essence of 'pure mind',
Which can exist in neither thought nor sense,
Which yet claws ceaselessy towards existence.
Which through non-being inverts itself to be
A precondition of reality…
And do the bat-things' sayings about BLACK HOLES
Hint at this paradox of 'evil souls'?
They call black holes 'an evil they RELEASED'
Of which WILL TO NOTHINGNESS is a taste–
Thus their anti-matter mythos taps
The modern sense of spiritual collapse,
As if the answer to modern despair
Lies hidden in a subatomic lair.
And so we see how throughout culture, evil,
May install itself at every level;
By riding in the spirit of revolt
It smuggled in the pillars of its cult.
And so, in the twentieth century,
We discern an escalating orgy
Of negativity turned into law,
A locking of the modern anguish jaw.
The bats admit that they are the anti-matter–
Could their intentions be made any clearer?
To make their sense of life start to make sense
Picture non-life pressed up against life's fence.
By very nature, lifeless to the core,
Yet pulled with urgency to living's door;
They close around, and tremble helplessly
Enslaved by lust for what can never be;
They worship at the altar of a plan:
From nothingness, to build the anti-man;
And raise themselves, the overriding race,
To swarmingly usurp our human place,
For if the lifeless life-plan push succeeds
In crawling from the non-existence weeds,
Then we'll be shackled to a downward slope:
Enslaved decaying human isotope.
They are the speck from which evil is pearled;
They are the anti-being underworld;
The buzzing priests of mysteries designed
To melt the will and paralyze the mind;
Their madness is evil's hopeless fight;
Their dawn would be our plunge into pure night.
In the first book Ephraim describes a cliff
Over which a flood is frozen, massive,
Recalling Q's nod to “the precipice”;
Mirroring, we might suppose, just this:
The coming confrontation of the flood
With God's will and with living human blood.
The flood that is the final crashing in
Of what, in war and love, has always been
The bitter hatred and the hated foe,
The unrelenting rending of our woe,
The slipping that in every effort tips
The balance from the hopeful hand that grips,
All we lose and all blindly destroy,
All never loved, all never-hoped-for joy.
The faceless hunger guttering the abyss
Is screeching out its hydra-headed hiss.
Now who, humans, will rise to fight this war?
Rise friends! Fight! It is what we are here for.
Of Sandover's evil more will come
In the later stages of the poem,
When we reach the third or fourth section
Dedicated to interconnection.
We've seen the evil that Sandover spews–
It doesn't seem to get in the reviews!
It's almost as if the spirits mock and taunt
With the proverbial fat elephant
That fills the room with elephantiness
While everyone feigns obliviousness.
By consensus critical assent
This room contains no evil elephant!
Sandover, a back-cover blurb incants,
Provides “numinous reassurance”!
Sounds nice, though I am not sure how it jives
With, say, the concept of USELESS LIVES.
Ah! No one knows just what to think
About these voices wafting from the brink.
But the time has passed to still pretend
An elephant is not an elephant.
And to ignore the rifle-butt of fate:
Nonexistence pounding at the gate.