Yo. Checking in. Proof of life or whatnot. I keep thinking “proof of life is pointless, a post proves nothing, a two hour conversation wouldn’t prove anything.” But it’s psychological.
Anyway, lost about half the sensation and more than half of the fine motor function in my left hand. I thought I had a stroke. Not drinking for so long, having lost weight very quickly, gotten into exercise, using ADD meds to deal with post alcohol brain fog, been sloppy with diet, it seemed plausible if not terribly likely.
But no. Had an MRI. Paid full price. I don’t have insurance. As I’ve been open about, I have a DNET in my temporal lobe, which is probably making me weird, but wouldn’t cause nerve issues all the sudden. I haven’t had a seizure in years.
Anyway, I’m pecking this out on one side while still using my right hand normally, but it is extremely annoying. I’m going to look into physical therapy and maybe get a Wacom pad where I can write script with my right hand and translate it to text. That is the current plan. Though there has been slow recovery. I don’t feel my wrist go limp when I try to lift objects anymore.
It’s whatever. Such things occur. It is the nature of material existence, the chronic instability of the black iron prison. I’ve been focusing on reading. I can now consistently hold my e-reader with my left hand and push the page turner button.
Most of my adult life was sent in front of a computer. Now it’s mostly lying on my back on the floor on a thin bamboo mat like a nip with the electric book (non luminescent of course). I think it’s actually a palm petate. It feels good to be totally flat. I also got some good headphones for music.
I have stopped the stims as I think they could have been contributing to nerve irregularities, then realized that after four months, or five or whatever it’s been, I don’t actually even have post alcohol brain fog anymore. I just have really bizarre neuro-psycho processes. Not negative.
Beg forgiveness for writing a bunch of stuff about myself. I’ve just established a parasocial bond with people, so it seems important to follow up. It’s also a framing for the rest of what I’m going to say.
Also, thanks to God or providence, this typing incapacity comes with a total lack of interest in saying anything about anything. I don’t want to comment on the wars anymore. I hardly even follow the news. News monitoring is an evolutionary glitch. Our brains assume that a crisis needs monitoring because we have an ability to immediately affect it. The reality is we have no ability to affect any crisis in the news, meaning monitoring it is applying an evolutionary survival function in a meaningless manner.
There are a lot of things I do want to comment on, but I don’t fully have a grasp how any of it should be framed. Being offline largely, I’ve had the concentration for the kind of texts I used to read. After twenty years, I reread the primary works of Jaques Ellul, along with several related documents. My perspective has shifted dramatically. (Note: to be clear, I do not recant anything, everything I said was simply factual, it is simply that much of it now seems irrelevant.)
Here is the underlying issue: there is this problem with no solution which drives everything in the world. Yes, that would include the Jews. In pre-technological society, Jews were a persistent nuisance, not an existential threat to the existence of all life on earth.
I need to figure out framing here. The idea is quite simple. But everyone, including far-right extremists, have been conditioned not to be capable of processing it. Maybe it isn’t conditioning, but rather a psychological mechanism that prevents the mind from processing problems that do not have solutions.
To prevent this from being overly vague for people not familiar with Ellul, I will give a simple explanation, but it is unlikely many will actually process it, and it may instead sound like the meaningless drivel I’ve put out in recent years. Basically, the modern technological society demands efficiency in all things. This is driven both by capitalism on the private level and great power competition on the state level. We don’t know what the most efficient means of doing something is. The most efficient path reveals itself through technological development and application. But there is only one “most efficient” path, and it will always win out. No technology in history has ever been removed from society because it was disruptive. The only time a technological means of doing something is removed is when it is replaced my something more efficient. This means that technology itself is progressing along a predetermined path, which humans, whether Western democracies or Chinese authoritarians, have no control over. External factors demand that they implement the most efficient processes, in every case, regardless of the human costs.
The reality of this truth has been self-evident since shortly after Ellul wrote these books in the 1950s and early 1960s. But if the social disruption of smartphones didn’t make the reality undeniable. Among other threads you could pull at, all of the top AI developers are simultaneously claiming that the technology could or perhaps will destroy the world and kill all humans, and yet there is choice but to develop it. Regardless of the veracity of this claim, it demonstrates the internal logic of the machine. All attempts to regulate the development of the technology have been dismissed, with the society instead embracing the “inevitably” narrative. This speaks to the fact that technology is self-progressing, that humans are left merely to stand by and watch, to do their best to manage its effects.
The machine hasn’t served us in a long time. We are servants of the machine. Humans exist for the sole purpose of implementing the will of the machine. The elite are now talking in terms of an “obsolete population.” In fact, that is an elite consensus. However, due to hubris or cognitive dissonance, they are missing the fact that to the machine, they are no more critical than an Amazon warehouse grunt.
In World War II, neither side used mustard gas. They stockpiled it. And Japan did use it in China, though it was a limited use not known about until decades later, a decision made with the knowledge that China did not have stockpiles of the poison. The primary belligerents, the US and Germany and their allies, abstained from using it, knowing that if they did, the other side would, and it wasn’t worth it. In the international sphere, there is no such built-in inhibitor on technological development and deployment. In fact, it is the opposite, or the inverse. The external pressure is not only to develop weapons capable of matching those of the perceived enemy, but to deploy technologies domestically to integrate the strategic processes. While China has the mechanisms to simply tell AI developers to stop developing AI, or to selectively deploy it, for the purpose of maintaining social stability and preventing job loss and other corrosive social effects of the technology, if it is not fully implemented domestically, this creates a weakness against a state like the US where the systems are being fully implemented through the unrestrained liberal social system, where those who would regulate the tech are easily paid off and fraudulent studies are easily passed as science.
China’s system gives them slight advantages in terms of public health. For instance, if Monsanto had knowingly continued to market Round-Up after internal studies had shown its toxicity, individuals would have been executed. But the power of a conservative economic order, along with the lack of any need to pretend the process is democratic, does not actually give them an edge on big issues of technological implementation. The competition with the US demands efficiency at all costs, and by definition, there can only be one “most efficient” method. Their most recent moral guidance publication for the public had clearly been edited to remove language directly critical of cellphone addiction, given that electronic business is a huge economic engine which the country needs for competitiveness. That is, reading the document, is clear that it originally contained explicit critique of the overuse of cellphones having a deleterious effect on society, but it was obvious to reviewers that they don’t have the luxury of addressing that problem due to structural economic necessity.
The hope, if there is any (there isn’t, actually) is that because the Chinese system is currently more efficient, it will dominate the geopolitical competition, which will give them room to make decisions in opposition to technological determinism. It’s a long shot, but that’s the best I’ve got.
Statistically, this all probably sounds like gibberish to you. It’s not. You can ask your favorite LLM to explain “Ellul technique” to you. It is an entire body of research, but Ellul created the language to describe the parameters we’re working with here. Ellul, you might recall, was the biggest influence on Ted Kaczynski and his manifesto. I have discussed these issues at some length previously, as I have most issues, but at this point, I don’t really see much point in discussing macro social and political issues in any other terms.
All those words I just strained the status of my nervous system to tap out should at least prevent me from being in a situation of stating that “I have shifted paradigm that is too complicated to explain.” It’s not too complicated. It’s just intensely bizarre and specific. Somehow more bizarre and specific than “satanic pedophiles who eat children.”
In future, I will negotiate better analogies. Things are very strange now, because not only can I not publish due to this disability, but can’t write my own notes as I have done my entire life to organize my thoughts. Lacking this structure, combined with whatever neural rewiring my brain is doing to establish a post-alcohol synaptic consensus model, I’m left feeling like there is a whole lot I need to say, but unable to pinpoint how to say it. There are a lot of things I want to say about the above paradigm, but there are, more importantly, things I want to say about the nature of being in “reality.” Combining all the things, there’s something important that needs to be said about the highjacking and exploitation of evolutionary biological systems in the human psyche by the technological system and the absurd and odious compulsive dysfunction this creates. Despite the nagging, ubiquitous allure of defaulting to philosophical nihilism, stoicism offers a much clearer path for the individual to navigate the sense of helplessness we all experience. It’s not a sense, but a fact. We are all totally helpless. Therefore, the only logical course is to isolate variables we have control over, and shape a state existence where these are the only things you engage with on an emotional level.
If you can silence the external noise, however, that’s really just a modest first step. The much harder realization is that there are things within your self you can’t control, hardcoded by childhood trauma. This is the more stimulating avenue of inquiry.
Regardless, despite appearances, I have not disappeared and don’t plan to. Because there are no financial incentives here, I don’t have immediate pressure. Which is a good thing and potentially a bad thing. Probably, my hand will start working again at some point.
Note: If this was tedious to read, please know, that is a reflection of the writing process itself, physically. I have not plan to intensify the tediousness of my writing. Rather, with a critical eye, I have been looking toward the reverse. In principle.
Note 2: Whenever you say “you can’t change politics, just focus on yourself,” you get accused of giving up. I don’t have any desire to refute that. I’m fine pleading “guilty as charged.” I have given up and I encourage others to do the same. I’m trying to avoid even mentioning politics here, but it’s no different than the US surrendering in Iran. The Jews are screaming in protest, but none of the Jews have a solution. The only possible “solution” is to use nukes, liberally, and hope for the best (Iran would still be able to followthrough on threats to delete the Gulf states using underground missiles even if you killed 90% of the population in a nuclear strike). Just so, when speaking of this idea you can influence politics, people will protest when you say there is no solution, but when you analyze it, your “doing something” option is to start killing cops and hope for the best. Engaging with politics does not lead to change, can’t lead to change, and therefore it is a waste of resources that could be spent on things you can change.
