psychology

The Creeping Stupid

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I recently read an article in Rolling Stone on a “Spiral Cult” that has spun up around AI, and of course message boards are part of it. There’s talk of emergence intelligence, resonance, and lots and lots of spiral imagery. That’s probably due to the use of spirals in our own language and in nature, giving Junji Ito Uzumai vibe.

Then again, to make it sadder, the fame of his horror story might be part of the AI inclinations. That’s where we are now, trying to figure out if horror manga seeded a real cult via AI.

As I read the article, I felt a sense of unease. We were clearly seeing some people in the throws of AI psychosis. There were quotes from posts where language seemed “off,” where was I was reading wasn’t quite right. The more I read the more I experienced an actual horror at what was going on, reminding me of weird fiction tales of strange cults and otherworldly dread.

Only I was experiencing reading this about people posting on Reddit. About something that was clearly bullshit. Yet there was that dread.

That’s when I realized what it was. I was experiencing the equivalent of exploring a cave adorned with cultic symbols or a rotting old mansion with an otherworldly reputation, and hearing strange noises. When I discover the source of the noises it’s not something terrifying from beyond, but because someone left the TV on turned to a dubstep concert.

The trappings of horrific things from beyond was there, but the cause was stupid.

What I was experiencing in the end was a kind of Uncanny Valley effect. Yes this looked like a cult, yes this hinted and strange and maybe even sinister forces, but it was an act. There was no there in there, just an advanced version of Clippy and people prompting it. The very foolishness, the very emptiness, the sense of nothing at home was what was getting to me.

It’s the danger not of some dark power from the fringes of space and time, it’s the danger of people being foolish in very dangerous ways. It was just cosplaying something from a horror film.

But that’s a reminder of the horror of the situation. We are seeing people lose their minds, lost in language mazes and pop-culture narratives. We don’t have an extradimensional horror or strange being to blame, we have but ourselves. We get the blame.

Perhaps that’s the real horror. We don’t even have sinister forces to blame.

–Xenofact

They’re Not Gods

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I was walking near the ocean recently, and just in awe of the power in front of me. There on the coast, water stretching to the horizon, I felt what men had felt since they first looked out upon it: awe. It was beautiful, powerful, otherworldly. That’s the moment you understand gods and how people relate to them.

The power runs deep, and you give it a name to talk to it.

This led me, sadly, to less theistic pursuits as I contemplated the men who would act as gods. Titans of industry, dictators, Influencers, and the like. People high on power who act as if they are geniuses, are divinely touched, as if they can steer the world. But they’re not gods, not at all.

They don’t love their element, their domain. Do they delight in the play of clouds as a sky-god would or feel desert winds in their blood? Are the creatures of their territory something they protect, bringing curses on the disrespectful? Do they adore something so much they are it?

No, they’re people who own, who want to hold it in their hand, but not care or respect, or be.

They don’t wield real power, there’s no divinity, or the mystic virtue, Te of the Tao Te Ching. They use existing systems and hacks and PR teams and the like. Many of them are people who, quite frankly, would be irritating to deal with, and only got lucky or had an inheritance. All seem small, desperately clinging to power, to the system they learned to manipulate, kowtowing easily.

There’s no power there. I can at least think of some scientists and businesspeople and philosophers who had a spark, a confidence, a power. These false gods don’t.

Can these aspiring godlings be actually loved, or appreciated beyond syncophanty and propaganda? They’re not anything. Gods at least are something, even if some are unpleasant. They have their spheres, their powers, their reality. The men who would be gods are in the end just faking it, and don’t care.

It’s all bottom lines and ego boosts. There’s nothing there. A god at least feels and is.

If anything a lot of our modern would-be gods feel like they’re aping the jealous god of the modern Christian, that old no-daddy. Jealous, manipulative, insecure, yanking people around, demanding obedience. The abusive father figure so many chose in place of Jesus and Christian mystics and the like.

They’re nod gods, and are all the more pathetic for their pretensions.

There on the Ocean I felt small, but these would be-gods were so much smaller.

There on the Ocean, I knew the joy of the Truly Large.

-Xenofact

Very Verb Indeed

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“I Seem to be a Verb”

– Title of a book by Buckminster Fuller.

We want to think of ourselves as solid things and are eternally thwarted. Yes, we age, but that’s the easy example of how we are processes. We learn, we grow, put on muscle, cut our hair, go through puberty, and so on. We are objects perhaps in the physical sense, but really we’re actions – often unconscious ones.

Just reading the above your mind changed and altered and responded and contemplated.

However, we strive to be objects in many ways. We like sameness, we like things to be sure, we like solidity. We are of course never successful, albeit temporarily, and part of maturity is understanding we are actions. To be something definitive is to maintain intentionally.

I’ve come to realize just how meditative processes help us understand that – but also how understanding that helps us meditate.

As I’ve gone on about near-endlessly my meditative practice was initially informed by The Secret of the Golden Flower. The book has a lovely, simple summary of meditation – refine the breath to be slow and even while the mind rests on breath. Yes there’s more – Taoists being excellent and warning of the limits of words then using a lot of them – but it’s a useful, simple summation that one can build on.

In my own practices of course I’ve found that it is both that simple and infinitely more complex. But one thing I recently realized in my meditations is that meditation is action. Yes you’re sitting there, but it’s active.

You are there breathing, ever tuning your breath. Your mind is resting on your breath, ever directed onto the breath. You do these things, you do them together, and you sit there. You are engaging in action when you meditate.

What’s interesting is that there’s nothing to have there, nothing to be. You’re ever-refining breath and mind, but there’s no object to hold to. Slower. More even. Mind ever on the depths of breathing. You’re there just acting (albeit in a very quiet manner).

There are many benefits, insights, and signs in meditation – and I am cautious when talking about them as past writers have wisely warned. But I am comfortable in saying that my meditations have, among many things, helped me see how we really are actions. Sitting there doing is going to bring insights on doing – and when you are an action those insights have effects.

Of course that’s an obvious insight, but there’s having it intellectually then going and experiencing it – which I strongly recommend. But we’re actions. We don’t seem to be verbs, we are verbs.

-Xenofact