Die closer to me: David Kuhnlein and the Dishuman Realms

Reading David Kuhnlein’s opening salvo in what will be known for its strangeness. David Lindsey the author of A Voyage to Arcturus once suggested that the leit-motif of all fantastic literature is its “strangeness”. Mark Fisher in his essay on The Weird and Eerie tells us,

“What the weird and the eerie have in common is a preoccupation with the strange. The strange — not the horrific. The allure that the weird and the eerie possess is not captured by the idea that we “enjoy what scares us”. It has, rather, to do with a fascination for the outside, for that which lies beyond standard perception, cognition and experience.”

This is the feeling I get in reading Kuhnelin’s short vignettes and stories, a sense of that fusion of Body Horror, SF, and the whole gamut of fantastic literature ala Stanislaw Lem and P.K. Dick among others. To say his vision is warped is not a demeaning term but rather the state of our world as it shifts into the posthuman realms of the Outside. An Outside that we do not so much know as feel our way into growing new sense organs that must combine with all the known and unknown aspects of organic, metal, and artificial experience and experiments. Throw such creatures as have moved off into this realm into a world for disability rejects and one is aware that survival is not only a mode of being but a mode of non-being as well. Is this hell? Depends on one’s viewpoint and mythologies. In the old monotheistic religion’s hell was a place of absolute pain and punishment, a torture chamber for the priestly class’s dark mendaciousness. In the secular world hell is other people (or creatures?) as Sartre would express it in his bland fashion. In the posthuman world hell may be just another mode of survival in a realm where even Freud’s ‘death drive’ no longer demarcates the limit and litmus test of our secret secretions.

This is David Kuhnlein’s dark fable of our dishumanization at the hands of our own transhumanist experience/experiments. The supposed future of our desperate dreams becomes a lonely planet of rejects who are stuffed away in a Real of absolute loss to fend for themselves the best they can. As one character says:

“Where there is meat,” Jo said, “there’s hope.”

You can find David’s work on Amazon: here.

The Future is not ours

The problem of transcendence in both transhuman and posthuman thought is that it still holds onto a metaphysics of presence that is dead and should be buried and remain that way. The future of humanity is that it has no future. We will evolve naturally or artificially into other species, but our progeny will not be human as we are and will not retain any notion of the human in their world. We cannot name this being now because it will create its own sense of being and identity. As Land once suggested “nothing human will make it out alive” in this future that is rapidly approaching. Our doom and our rapture are to see this approaching world through the lens of art and literature. Science fiction is the mythology of the future both positive and negative, optimistic and pessimistic, materialist and idealist. The dichotomy of our visions is as it has always been based on our fractured knowledge and dreams, we have no other recourse to anything of the Outside. We remain in the blindness of our brain’s capacity to invent us through its organic simulations of reality that test the Real. The Real is that which is not us and which we cannot reduce to our mental constructions. It is the obstacle that will not allow us to surpass our blindness. It is the goad that keeps us forever testing the limits of Being itself. We live in a circle of Reason and only our imaginations poke holes in the necessary fallacies of this box world we live in.

The Chronotopia of Lesser Dreams

“Good morning.”

“I can’t say that any “morning” is ‘good’, let’s just absolve ourselves of all mornings in mourning.”

—The Chronotopia of Lesser Dreams

In the painting above I imagine a 25th century of posthumanity living in the ruins of Western civilization. Lost among the debris of our late humanity, the children of our post-desire will only morn our disappearance, not because we’ve vanished but because the evil taint of our species lives on in memory. To forget ourselves in our children is not a goal, but a disease. To think at all is to act, and all action is evil. We are that species that produced evil as a generic tool of desire. Desire had its way with us and is now defunct. Posthumanity will no longer desire but will also be absolved of that abulia of inaction. A paradox that cannot be but is. The temptation to think will be their only sin.

In a test-tube world, our neutered progeny will live beyond all desire, born of machinic necessity they will live out their lives knowing that desire and production is pointless. Sensuality and the erotics of posthumanity will be absolved of that taint of childbirth, enabled to live out their lives in pure sensual expression. Knowing that they will not be tempted to produce their own kind in their own image their machinic ai systems will guide them through the years of a negative utopia whose only goal is the semblance of life rather than life itself.

The Daemon’s Revenge

Isn’t this what a horror writer fear’s most, that her creations will one day come back to haunt her? That the very exorcism of self and other she achieves in the creation of these hideous creatures is to expunge from herself the darkest parts of her own nature. One day these dark inhabitants of the outer zones, those shadows we fear and are our only salvation will return with a vengeance to slay us, gobble us up, and recreate us in their image. We will finally become the monstrous thing we knew all along was our destiny. The horror we fear is the horror we are.

Nietzsche espoused two types of nihilism: the passive which forfeits itself in guilt and continuous self-effacement; the second, an active nihilism that spawns murder, mayhem, and self-aggrandizement upon its spite of the human species. He sought to move beyond both forms and failed, went mad, and spent the last ten years in the care of his fascist sister staring into nothingness. He entered the abyss that he’d always dreaded and yet sought with the terrible vengeance of those who would know the absolute. The absolute is nothing more than the impossible writ large, our fantasia of the phantasmatic ineffable that is not and yet is. Darkness eats away at the light like a dark god who knows he will rule in eternity.

The Technocrats: Depression Era Social Engineering and Centralized Planning

The Technocrats: Depression Era Social Engineering and Centralized Planning (Before Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset and Great Narrative and the WEF’s agenda there was the Committe on Technocracy at Columbia University)

“…the tireless operator behind the scenes of apparent Inflation, apparent history: gambler, financial wizard, archgangster . . . a fussy bürgerlich mouth, jowls, graceless moves, a first impression of comic technocracy . . . and yet, when the rages came over him, breaking through from beneath the rationalized look, with his glacial eyes become windows into the bare savanna, then the real Mabuse surfaced, vital and proud against the gray forces surrounding him, edging him toward the doom he must’ve known he couldn’t escape, the silent inferno of guns, grenades, streets full of troops attacking his headquarters, and his own madness at the end of the secret tunnel. . .”
— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

When I think of the Davos crowd and Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum and its influence and transformation of global banking, corporations, and international law, technology, and social credit metrics etc. I go back to history.

“Genuine alternatives to existing social organizations seldom appear viable except in times of rapid cultural transformation or crisis. The Great Depression was such a crisis. The valley and the shadow of the depression sorely tempted the country to reject its beliefs and principles. The faith that the twenties had placed in big business and the free marketplace seemed an illusion. At least until the New Deal, representative politics offered little constructive help to those victimized by economic events beyond their control. Traditional culture, with its emphasis on the individual, the local community, and Protestant virtues, had been found wanting previously. Americans might be nostalgic about the cultural values of the past, but reversion to them was hardly likely. The crisis demanded new ways of viewing and organizing society, a new set of values.

One of the first offers of an apparently plausible alternative came from a group of technicians and social engineers who had organized the Committee on Technocracy at Columbia University. When it first reached public attention, the committee was a research organization engaged in compiling a mammoth statistical survey of energy sources in North America. As the chief spokesmen for the group, Howard Scott and Walter Rautenstrauch made their findings known in the fall and winter of 1933-34, and the public responded as if they had touched an exposed social nerve ending. The original technocrats offered a seemingly scientific explanation of America’s ills and increasingly moved toward proposing radical solutions. At the center of their view of America was the paradox of a society victimized by abundance and by technology. The march of science, invention, engineering, and their offspring—the machine and modern technology—possessed the potential for a material utopia. Instead, the workings of the machine operating within the traditional economic framework had brought the depression.

In the technocrats’ minds the ills of the economy were traceable not to the machine per se, but to an inefficient adjustment of the social order to modern high-energy technology. Separating business activities from the actual production and distribution of goods, they attacked the price-wage system, the very heart of capitalism, for creating an inefficiency so disastrous that the country hovered on the brink of an economic apocalypse. The urge to profit prevented the rationalization necessary to adjust the process of production and distribution to the requirements of technological efficiency. This had resulted in ever increasing waste and debt and, most seriously, in the displacement of workers at a cataclysmic rate. Unless America abolished the price system and replaced it with a more rational, efficient, scientific order, technology would “smash” the existing economic structure.

The technocrats urged a doctrine of radical social engineering to meet the crisis. Neither business nor representative government were capable of bringing about the required adjustments, and the dominant institutions and values stood in the path of the massive social engineering project the crisis demanded. The technocrats centered on the technicians—especially engineers, who became, in their minds, the real producers of wealth—as the efficient, scientific, anticapitalistic, elite capable of reorienting the economic order around rational production and distribution. I heirs was a clarion call for technicians to plan and engineer the new order.”

from Technocracy and the American Dream by William Atkin (1971)

Another Technocrat in our own century would say,

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

― Rahm Emanuel

Frederick Winslow Taylor and Scientific Management

Let’s go back to the heart of the early technocrat’s vision from the above:

“The urge to profit prevented the rationalization necessary to adjust the process of production and distribution to the requirements of technological efficiency. This had resulted in ever increasing waste and debt and, most seriously, in the displacement of workers at a cataclysmic rate. Unless America abolished the price system and replaced it with a more rational, efficient, scientific order, technology would “smash” the existing economic structure.”

The notion of efficiency was at the center of the Frederick Winslow Taylor’s early belief in scientific management.

Scientific management is a theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflows. Its main objective is improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes to management. Scientific management is sometimes known as Taylorism after its pioneer, Frederick Winslow Taylor.

Taylor began the theory’s development in the United States during the 1880s and 1890s within manufacturing industries, especially steel. Its peak of influence came in the 1910s. Although Taylor died in 1915, by the 1920s scientific management was still influential but had entered into competition and syncretism with opposing or complementary ideas.

Although scientific management as a distinct theory or school of thought was obsolete by the 1930s, most of its themes are still important parts of industrial engineering and management today. These include: analysis; synthesis; logic; rationality; empiricism; work ethic; efficiency through elimination of wasteful activities (as in muda, muri and mura); standardization of best practices; disdain for tradition preserved merely for its own sake or to protect the social status of particular workers with particular skill sets; the transformation of craft production into mass production; and knowledge transfer between workers and from workers into tools, processes, and documentation.

The notion of a massive social engineering project with the elite engineers and technicians supervising a top-down planned society for the supposed betterment of humanity in the name of efficiency is at the core of technocracy. In our own time the same mentality pervades the Davos engineers such as WEF leaders and participants of the world’s largest central banks, corporations, and think tanks members from the scientific, economic and academic community.

Although the early technocratic movement was short lived in the 1930s it would find a new form in the EU ideas of Klaus Schwab. Technocracy was rooted in the nineteenth-century strand of thought that identified technology as the dominant force capable of fulfilling the American dream. The technological utopia Edward Bellamy formulated toward the end of the century offered an especially appealing version of a society organized to maximize mechanical technology and industrial efficiency. Although the technocrats’ picture of the ideal society bore a strong resemblance to that of Bellamy’s, the thought of Scott and Rautenstrauch was firmly grounded in the progressive period. It grew from three direct sources: the search of the engineering profession for an occupational identity; the scientific management movement; and the ideas of Thorstein Veblen. Most of the views they expressed in 1932-33 had been formulated by the early twenties. The urgency of the depression provided them with a hearing and forced them to follow the implications of their ideas.

Heart of the Progressive Era Agenda (1900 – 1940s)

“Progressives tended to see centralized direction as the only method of abolishing the economic hardships and class conflict associated with industrialization, of achieving social justice, and of assuring that the industrial machine met the needs of society. Planning required the use of experts who alone possessed the professional training, technical skills, and scientific rationality to understand the complex modern industrial machine. Rational planning demanded that experts be freed from partisan politics in order to bring their ideologically neutral rationality and efficient scientific methods to bear on the engineering of social problems. In this separation of administration and politics a certain amount of democratic control would have to be sacrificed, but the benefit would be the common good.” (Atkin)

Key Aspects: Central Planning, Social Justice, Rational and Efficient Social Control, Social Engineering and Bureaucratic Administration through experts and scientific management.

The Dark Side of Central Planning

There is currently, and has been for centuries, an ongoing material and spiritual war between the liberty of the individual and the central control of society by elitists who believe they can best determine the optimum course for the life of each individual in the population. The battle is always between those who believe in individual liberty and government that is the least coercive, and those who hold that government can create a perfect system, managed by elitists, wherein all human needs can be determined and met.
These arrogant elitists (UN/WEF) proclaim that they can provide for humanity through a centrally planned system that relies primarily on collectivism. Regardless of what the system may be called, it relies on taking from the productive and redistributing to all. Though dating back to Sparta, the latest collectivist mantra sums up the centrally planned collectivist utopian plans that have plagued the world, particularly in the twentieth century: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Nowhere in that mantra do the words want or desire appear.

Collectivists, whether fascist, Communist, or religiously motivated, have no faith in the individual or his ability to provide for his own needs and create value to trade for other desires. Collectivists view people as best suited to be part of a centrally planned system created and managed, of course, by themselves. Most often, those who reject their collectivist systems face the hangman’s noose, the guillotine, or the firing squad.

Whether on the Left (International Fascism) or the Right (National Fascism) we are being inundated with the merger of corporate governance and the State bureaucratic systems in a digital dictatorship the likes of which most people are unaware of and for the most part see as beneficial to their ongoing beliefs in social justice and progressive values. Most do not believe or know that the whole progressive movement has been hijacked by hucksters in the EU / US that promote under the hood of masked plutocracy a utopian society that is just the opposite. For years I’ve been observing and commenting on some of the strange and twisted features of both the Left and Right. Now it seems to be coming together as I watch the androcratic male oriented systems of transgenderism infiltrating and ousting women everywhere. It’s not just in sports but across many sectors of society. I thought at first this new agenda was just a part of a liberation of those whose voices had been silenced for so long. I don’t believe that anymore. It’s too organized and complicity run by the corporate, media, and government collusion in healthcare, education, and politics to be coincidence.

This is part of a wider technocratic imperative.

The New Enlightenment: Towards a Difference that Makes a Difference

“Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, Chaos is being yourself.”
― Emil Cioran

As most of us know the Enlightenment was about both social and technological progress, the secularization of European West from the clutches of its roots in Feudalism. It was rooted in the Mercantile capitalism of the era and sought to free the elite mercantile class (i.e., the bourgeoise) from the power structures of Church and State Imperialism of that era under the Divine right of Kings. It entailed an attack on religion and political structures, culture, and social nexus. The so-called demythologization of Western thought and history from the Scholastic worldview. The battle between extreme materialist atheist radical modernity and the moderate faction (i.e., the Franco-Kantian anti-enlightenment, counter-enlightenment – the conservative, reactionary forces, etc.) would vie for this future. This has been playing out in one form or another for over two-hundred years.

In our age the death-knell of this binary and oppositional politics in social, cultural, and political thought has been changing. We see this in the various movements from the postmodern anti-humanist traditions of poststructuralism, post-colonialism, and now posthumanism (i.e., I’ll include both academic posthumanism and capitalist transhumanism in this umbrella).

We’ve seen Europe move into a separation of economics from democracy in the past few decades which has allowed the Belgian economic tyranny of various countries to play out. In the USA as Naomi Klein in many books but especially Shock Doctrine has shown we’ve seen our country turn from its democratic roots towards a Technocratic State which is ruled by and cadre of corporatism and Oligopoly.

We’ve seen the old-style leftist systems slowly evolve into strange new realms and realities becoming authoritarian in its own fashion. The old-style rightist has as well gone more and more authoritarian and anti-democratic.

The average citizen understands only what is presented at face value from social-media and socially controlled mainstream news and media outlets. Propaganda has become once again an affair of both State and Capitalist systems in a high-pitched play to modulate and transform people’s lives, religious or atheist worldviews, and their economic, political, and social institutions.

For years I’ve pondered most of this with a cold intelligence trying to see both sides of the current malaise and changes with an unblinking mind and critical acumen. I’m trying to work through a series of essays dealing with various aspects of this. Stay tuned. In the meantime…

The first Technocratic Movement

Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocrat Movement, 1900-1941 by William E. Akin is the best history of the early technocapitalist venture that combined the combination of monopoly capitalism with J.P. Morgan money, and John D. Rockefeller funds, think tanks, and trusts along with others like Carnegie and other major players of the era. The Great Depression offered a crisis that allowed certain new value systems and approaches to social organization to arise.

One of the first offers of an apparently plausible alternative came from a group of technicians and social engineers who had organized the Committee on Technocracy at Columbia University. When it first reached public attention, the committee was a research organization engaged in compiling a mammoth statistical survey of energy sources in North America. As the chief spokesmen for the group, Howard Scott and Walter Rautenstrauch made their findings known in the fall and winter of 1933-34, and the public responded as if they had touched an exposed social nerve ending.

These first technocratic engineers as Akin puts it saw the economic collapse of the Great Depression this way:

“The technocrats urged a doctrine of radical social engineering to meet the crisis. Neither business nor representative government were capable of bringing about the required adjustments, and the dominant institutions and values stood in the path of the massive social engineering project the crisis demanded. The technocrats centered on the technicians—especially engineers, who became, in their minds, the real producers of wealth—as the efficient, scientific, anticapitalistic, elite capable of reorienting the eocnomic order around rational production and distribution. I heirs was a clarion call for technicians to plan and
engineer the new order.”

Set that besides the current Technocrats like Klaus Schwab of the WEF:

“We must build entirely new foundations for our economic and social systems. The level of cooperation and ambition this implies is unprecedented. But it is not some impossible dream. In fact, one silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles. Almost instantly, the crisis forced businesses and individuals to abandon practices long claimed to be essential, from frequent air travel to working in an office.

Likewise, populations have overwhelmingly shown a willingness to make sacrifices for the sake of health-care and other essential workers and vulnerable populations, such as the elderly. And many companies have stepped up to support their workers, customers, and local communities, in a shift toward the kind of stakeholder capitalism to which they had previously paid lip service.

Clearly, the will to build a better society does exist. We must use it to secure the Great Reset that we so badly need. That will require stronger and more effective governments, though this does not imply an ideological push for bigger ones. And it will demand private-sector engagement every step of the way.”

A friend sent me a copy of this work by Akin which I’m reading. One of my most intensive studies over the years has been on Monopoly Capitalism and Cronyism. Technocracy has been the other which feeds into the early Eugenics movement and other dark scientistic endeavors well documented and attacked by Aldous Huxley. His brother Thomas Huxley was an advocate of both eugenics and technocracy. Aldous would write about it in both Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited.

As we move from the Old Model Managerial Neoliberal framework and into the new model based on Stakeholder Capitalism, The Great Reset, and the Green New Deal of degrowth, stagnation, and Corporatocracy based on a revitalized Technocratic Elite and Oligopoly I see dark days ahead as they instigate AI Social Control systems in economics, society, and culture. John Foster Bellamy has talked about the green capitalism in many books. His latest book Capitalism in the Anthropocene: Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution delves into aspects of this. Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics, and the Injustice of “Green” Capitalism by Hannah Holleman addresses its historical roots as well. Green Capitalism: Manufacturing Scarcity in an Age of Abundance by James Heartfield spoke of the early Al Gore and the economic dictatorship of Green Capital and Carbon Tyranny from a Marxist-Materialist angle as well.

One can study these things from both the Left and Right agendas but strangely much of the same territory reveals the larger picture of this brave new world of degradation and human enslavement ahead of us. Sadly.

Body Horror and Erotics: The Transmutation of Humanity

More and more we see a new type of weird and horror literature challenging us with that tissue of flesh within which we are encased. There is a violence that moves from our de-sensitized worlds of the unnatural artificial virtuality – within which we’ve lived like schizorats in a maze – and toward a realm in which the only shock that can awaken us from our cold zombie existence is that of an erotic-violence that (dis)members us from our quotidian lives of boredom and de-sexualized anamorphic existence we’ve been programmed to believe in by the propaganda of conservative and fascist forces who seek to control and manipulate culture and society. Lost among our programmed environments and social engineering we’ve been shaped by algorithms and social control mechanisms to believe this world of capitalist pleasure is the Real. It is not of course, and the cold emotionless, even listless existence within its artificial paradise has turned us into sleepwalkers who can only touch base with that older more primitive sensual being through the shock of violence coupled with erotica.

The Medusa sisters who emerged from Greek myth were part of that deep fear of the sensual darkness within us that must be emblazoned on our protective shields to fend off all that would tear down the wall of our civilized minds and bodies. The tales of these sisters and their stone-eyed gaze which turns all who ponder their beauty into stone is as old as civilization itself. Nature at her erotic best is this dark power to turn all our artificial dreams into nightmares. Yet, there is a longing, a nostalgia for this power that is both our danger and our temptation. We long to return to the serpentine gaze of the natural world and yet we dare not for to do so would unmake everything we are and are becoming. We are the unnatural creatures who have evolved beyond the animal we once were and into the artificial beings we are becoming. Humanity was a transitional creature caught between the natural and unnatural.

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Art by S.C. Hickman ©2023

Nostalgia for a lost world

Nostalgia for Metaphysics

Maybe in the end we all have a nostalgic sense of loss for a metaphysical age that we cannot return to. Sadly. We know that we live by fictions and that anything – even the supposed Sciences – are all based on contemporary forms of knowledge and error, and knowing this we rewrite the cosmos in the flavors of our own contemporary mind-set. That this too will seem quaint a hundred or a few hundred years from now will be no less interesting than our look back upon the age from Parmenides to Kant and his progeny. We are the inheritors of outmoded forms of mental aberrations. We know this in our age and yet we, too, are caught in the mesh of believing we know something the ancients did not know which is of course just another metaphor for our own stupidity and errors.

Humans cannot even know who and what they are, and I doubt they ever will. We may become extinct in a hundred or a thousand years still questioning this thing we are along with the universe in which we reside and still not have the answers we seek.

We live in an answerless universe that beckons to us in its insurmountable strangeness, goads us to continue asking questions for answers that will always reflect more about our own errors than on the universe as it is in itself. Does it all matter? Probably not, but we continue to ask questions because we cannot do otherwise. This is our inherited desire and nemesis. We are bound to the physical and mental desires of our flesh and animal being, our deterministic ground if you will. Some seek to exit ‘desire’ altogether. They may someday succeed, but that is another tale and another kind of being – part of the posthuman future to which we are only dreamers in a mad thought.

My Schizo World…

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang is, without doubt, an excellent journey into the personal experience and unraveling from within of this world. Having been diagnosed as Schizophrenic after Viet Nam I’ve learned to live with my condition and even pushed it to its limits all of my life, delving into the great writers and artists who’ve been in it and with the use of entheogens (psychedelics) for most of my adult life to explore this merger of consciousness with Being.

No one will ever understand it, some suffer it, others learn to flow with it. Most medical professionals have no clue what their dealing with, not being able to experience it themselves they observe and obsess over it from the outside which is like studying a roach on the wall. No. We are not crazy, we are different, but we have a place in the world.

Ancients had systems that allowed for it: the shamans in the worlds of flight; the Voduns in the realm of dance and spirit-possession. In our age, those formed by this condition find their own way or with other explorers in discovering a way to survive in a world of Normals.
I’ve often thought that we are the next thing, the posthuman creatures who have and are evolving beyond the human normal codes into avenues of existence few can know or understand. Of course, this is just speculation and probably wrong but it comoforts me anyway.

How Do we know love?

A friend said in a post recently:

“We always think we see things as they are. The most highly developed among us can sometimes see how things became what they are. Almost nobody alive can imagine what things will become. And yet these ongoing processes are what really “is”, not the individuated, atomized things in themselves that the moment we call “now” gives up to our senses to perceive and come to terms with.

Given this paradigm how do we say, “I love you”? How do we know love?”

I replied: I think all we come to know is the mirror of our desires. Sadly this is the world of appearances that mirror neither our desires nor our antipathies. We never see “things as they are” only their surface tensions as they fly away from us. Love? How can we love anything beyond the fleeting apprehensions of something we’ll never know or understand?

As for knowing love itself, what is this “love”? We can trace its etymology which is a boring quest, and we can appear to know something we cannot know because what most of us seem to know of love is this emotion or its intellectualization. And neither of these is “love” but its objectification. So what is love but an abstraction we seem to append to life’s experience which can never be shared. We can read a Proust or any number of writers or poets on love. Even Shakespeare. But is our writing of love “love”? I dare say not. No. We cannot know love for it is something too intimate to be known. It is something we do and feel. The rest is the abstractions of the philosophers. And we all know what those abstractions lead too…

On My Atheism

I know my atheism stems from my childhood growing up in the Bible belt where a perverse form of evangelical Christianity still holds sway. I can’t belabor this enough. People have to understand where my hatred of religious consciousness arose. I was once steeped in this mythology and its paranoia of life, hooked as it is under an apocalyptic worldview of the Endtimes mythology of John’s Apocalypse and such readings.

Once I gained my freedom from this through a long decade’s struggle which many people will never understand, I became a proselytizer of atheism and secular enlightenment.

I’ve since struggled even against this into the depths of the absolute pessimism and nihilism that goes with it. My madness and fear of retribution and hell was real at one time so that my exit and escape from the clutches of this perverse religion was a moral choice that left its scars on me for decades. As many suggest, an atheist molds another form of faith without faith, a crime against a view of terror and horror – against a God that they know does not exist but that did exist in their psyches through indoctrination and cultural praxis.

So, the escape from this is and was psychological and physical. I’ve never returned willingly to the country of my childhood. So unlike Cioran who thought of childhood and the landscapes of the peasantry where he grew up in Romania as Paradise, I remember my childhood as a place of Hell. Literally and mentally.

That I come from a broken family. That I was broken, lost, and bound within a dark world of fear and trepidation is just part of this sick world I came from. One that took me long to escape. Of course, the truth is one never truly escapes this dark world until death. One suffers it.

When I see people attack atheists, I see people who never came under the pressure of either Catholic or Protestant extremists. I’ll not include other religions because they did not influence me, and I do not know them. They do not know because they did not experience it. Experience and knowledge are two separate things that will never meet except in abstractions that mean nothing and never will.

Diogenes the Dog: The Cynics Way

“Diogenes’ Cynicism is primarily a philosophy of revolt” and a reaction against what he perceived to be the dismal spectacle of human existence. Consequently, it is not surprising that his ideas lack the completeness and development that we expect to find in a philosophical system. Undoubtedly, the negativism of his life and the overwhelming force of his mission as a defacer of values prevented him from putting the building blocks of his thought into a philosophical edifice, but this circumstance, as a characteristic of his mission, is perhaps what paradoxically constitutes the real merit of his accomplishment. He challenged, rejected, ridiculed, dismissed, condemned, and literally defaced the ‘currency’ of his time and set for us an example how we, too, should be prepared to do likewise in a true Cynic spirit. Much more he did not accomplish. Yet, in accomplishing this much, he did more than most other people of his time and of all subsequent times.”1

I remember reading Ambrose Bierce’s works when I came back from Nam. Nam had awakened me from my lethargic sleep in the stupidity of my Southern heritage. Growing up in the Bible Belt, believing in all the horseshit I was told, becoming a Patriot and religious idiot I was hooked into the whole mythos of the Southern mystique. Viet Nam changed all of this. Seeing death does that. Dying does that. Becoming one of the living dead does that. After such violence one does not come back whole but cut up in small pieces and fragments. One brings back only the memories of one’s squad who did not come back. Then one lives the rage of the dead. One revolts against the world…

My whole life has been a revolt against my past. Did I succeed in overcoming it? It still lays there like a bad taste in my mouth. Its rancor and bitterness still fill me with hate and yet I no longer blame singular people for this but the collective madness of a whole culture that was hooked into a mystique and mythos that suborned all of life to a “way of being”. That I blame one thing in this it is the false system of our shared Christian heritage that was spawned two thousand years ago. I revolt against this. I rage against this.

Nietzsche opened my eyes. Cioran fed me the spite and rancor of wit and the abyss. Schopenhauer taught me the underlying metaphysical tropes that align it to the dark contours of a fictional world that is more about the hate than about love. Milton gave me the Satanic light. Blake the antinomian life. The Clowns of literature gave me the laughter to go on.

Diogenes did not worry about the past or future but about the moment we live now. The propositions and concepts that guided his existence were based on this insight:

1. The first proposition of Diogenes’ thought can be stated thus: the one and only object of philosophy is human existence, and any other object can only be a source of distraction and an inconsequential way to satisfy the unhealthy sense of curiosity that afflicts human beings.
2. The second proposition is this: in our endeavor to make sense of human existence, we must direct our attention primarily to the physical world because we are primarily physical beings. Other worlds and other dimensions of being may be real, as is asserted by many.
3. The third proposition of Diogenes’ Cynicism: live each moment as if it were the only moment of life.
4. The fourth proposition of Diogenes’ thought: happiness cannot be achieved as long as we fail to understand its nature, for this failure makes us look for it where it does not reside.
5. The fifth proposition of Diogenes’ thought. Happiness, understood in its Greek sense of Eudaimonia, that is, well-being cannot be defined in terms of possessions, pleasures, comfort, power, fame, erudition, a long life, and other similar things that, in the view of ordinary people, are its essential components.
6. The sixth proposition of his thought: happiness is living in accordance with nature.
7. The seventh proposition, can be stated in these terms: reason, that is, clarity of mind, is what must determine what is and what is not in accordance with human nature. Neither desire nor emotion, nor the ingrained human tendency to revert to animalism, nor, in fact, anything else, can be the judicial court that renders the final verdict as to what is natural and what is unnatural for human beings.
8. The eighth proposition of his thought, which can be expressed in these terms: the possibility of a return to nature, understood, of course, as a return to true humanity, exists for every human being, no matter how distant he or she may be from living in accordance with nature. If human life is, in Schopenhauer’s language, “some kind of a mistake,” this mistake was never intended by nature, but is the result of human choices. We alone are responsible for the mistake.
9. The ninth proposition: through discipline, expressed in his language as a6xrI6ig (askesis, from which we derive our word ‘ascetic’), we cleanse the mind of confusion and obfuscation, and the body of detrimental substances and unnatural habits, and succeed in strengthening the will.
10. The tenth proposition of his thought surfaces: if a happy, natural and virtuous life is what we must pursue, given the social context in which we are condemned to live, it is imperative that we aim at developing in us an imperturbable and total state of self-sufficiency (aviapxela, autarcheia).
11. The eleventh proposition of his philosophy: the world belongs equally to all its inhabitants, human and otherwise, and we, as human beings, belong to the entire world. When asked what his country was, he replied, “I am a citizen of the world” (DL, 6.63).
12. The twelfth proposition of his thought, that, as a cornerstone, supports the incomplete edifice of his philosophy and contains all the elements of classical Cynicism, both theoretical and practical. We encountered this proposition as we endeavored to give an account of Diogenes’ life, specifically in relation to the point of departure from which he launched his onslaught on society.

The essence of the Cynic’s Way, is succinctly expressed by the phrase ‘Deface the currency, of course, not in the sense that every single piece of ‘currency deserves defacing. Even he understood that, in the light of reason, there are certain rare pieces that appear to be both sanctioned by convention and dictated by nature. Because of this, then, we discover that his shamelessness, that is, his ability and willingness to deface norms and conventions, was not absolute and total. He often appealed to his contemporaries’ feelings of shame, both conventional and natural, when he reprimanded them. Still, such pieces of the social currency in which convention and nature coalesce are truly exceptional. Like rare coins kept in antiquarians’ drawers, they are few and are generally kept out of circulation. Therefore, Diogenes’ campaign to deface the values and customs of his world took on the garb of an all-out war against the world. Those who, like Hegel, have emphasized the lack of positive elements in Diogenes’ thought may not be entirely mistaken.  Diogenes found little in the world worth preserving. The grand building erected by civilization, he would have said, is beyond repair and must be demolished, if there is to be any hope of amelioration for the human condition. The demolishing tactic he advocated and practiced, his rhetoric of Cynicism, is as dear as daylight and emerges with distinctness in every one of his words and actions.

Diogenes Attack on State Power and Persons

The man in the tub, who walked backwards and shocked his contemporaries by so many words and acts of defiance, gave birth to a conception of rationality that would underlie in time the efforts of so many theorists, humanists, and revolutionaries of later times who have struggled to liberate human beings from the bondage of atavistic fetters, irrational desires, and the brute force wielded by the oligarchies. Whether behind a street barricade in Paris or in the mountains of Bolivia or in the Walden woods or creating hope for humanity in the solitude of a writer’s studio, all those souls who have endeavored to unsettle the status quo of the sociopolitical world, have carried with them the lighted lamp of the man in the tub, searching generally in vain for a speck of true humanity in their midst, but reminding us that if human life is a mistake, as Schopenhauer insisted, it is only because we have allowed it to be so. (Luis Navia)

This notion of “walking backwards” is the sign of the Trickster, the shaman, the man against Time, against his time, against the rulers and powers in high places who seek to enslave others in false appearances, deceit, and corruption by force of rhetoric, discourse, and propaganda. The ideologists of a worldview in which you must be subservient to the dictates of social media and its entrapments. The battle between Left and Right in our social world is a false one constructed on a tissue of Control and Power that seeks to keep the populace at odds with themselves rather than attacking the real culprits the Oligarchs and their minions on Wall-Street, Bankers, and Power mongers (i.e., rentiers, etc.). To cut the fake worlds we live in is the job of the Cynic. To dissolve the false worlds that have been built on a tissue of lies.

Art by S.C. Hickman ©2023

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1. Luis E. Navia. Diogenes The Cynic: The War Against The World (Kindle Locations 2934-2945). Kindle Edition.

Xenogenesis: The Posthuman Nexus

Thinking about the James Webb telescope’s peering into the origins of our universe and seeing the remnants of galaxies that began over 13 billion years ago I wonder if the species of those early galaxies survived and migrated to newer galaxies. The possibility of a xenospecies that has already tamed the powers of a galaxy and harnessed its black hole or other quantum sources for more profound complexity and travel between galactic clusters astounds me. With trillions of galaxies in the known universe all surrounding in the nets of dark energy / dark matter is even more strange and speculative.

We humans are so myopic in our little mythologies and traditions believing we were the center and circumference of some grand master of the Cosmos: God or gods. Even now we still cannot believe there exists something else because with our primitive technologies and sciences we think we should have detected something, some message written in the code of our own technical notions of universal science. Such myopia and lack of vision has always been part and parcel of our narcissistic mind-set. I doubt that will change anytime soon.

What if these beings are already observing us like we do colonies of ants? What if they are as many suggest AI best synthetic beings, syntellects that are not only long-lived but have other thoughts and notions that would make ours seem like the thing they are: portals of illusion/delusion. Possibly beings that have not contacted us because what would be the point of it all knowing that organic life is doomed to repeat itself ad infinitum without ever escaping its narrow confines of thought and desire? Maybe as some suggest these aliens are awaiting the arrival of our posthuman progeny both artificial and non-organic species.

Taking a look at the popular fictions and their narratives since the turn of the new millennia we have seen for the most part Dystopian visions of our future in film, novels, and articles. We seem to have a foreboding about our future being one of terror, horror, and chaos. Our visions of technology have become objects of external threat from Terminator gods returning from the future to destroy our civilization to the cataclysms of Climate Change overwhelming us and presenting us with Super Storms and drought, disease, migrations, wars, and collapse. When I look for positive and optimistic works, I see delusional and utopian projects of containing the worst-case scenarios but not alleviating them.

We’ve always populated the future with our pasts reminding ourselves of every failure of human history to create peace and plenty on earth and a sustaining peace. Maybe humanity cannot do this? Maybe we truly are doomed to repeat over and over our dastardly deeds of slaughter and mayhem rather than create a viable alternative for our future civilizations. Even now we fear and objectify Artificial Intelligence as if it were an enemy or a cannibalistic god in the hands of money-grubbing Capitalists who seek to oust human creativity and progress. Others ponder this and suggest that AI is a tool like any other, that it will only augment and help us to speed up the process of collecting, collating, and analyzing the masses of data that no one human nor group of humans can possibly do anymore. With trillions of zettabytes of data, we live in a glut of information that has become useless in our fight to survive as a species. But even with the help of AI to sift through all of this data we are now blocking these very tools from accessing it, closing it off in silos behind gates that have been shut by the very powers that vie for control over it. We are doomed to repeat the gestures of stupidity and greed continually at every turn even as we march forward into our own oblivion. Sadly.

I often wonder what some alien species observing this might think. Would it assume that humanity’s only enemy is humanity itself? Probably. I do.

Yet, there are those who see a future where our convergence with technology begins to reshape us and our planet, terraforming ourselves and our planetary civilization into something thriving and beyond the human nexus and into an age of converging posthumanism. One in which the faulty desires that have led humanity into illusion and delusion are stripped of their affective stupidity. One in which we become more machinic and our intelligent machines become more human. Will this come about as the Singulatarians suppose? Or will it be something quite different? How will our heritage in genetics and brain sciences coalesce to produce something new?

Changing of the Guard: AI, China, and the West

“Something has shifted, it seems. We are making new worlds faster than we can keep track of them, and the pace is unlikely to slow. If our technologies have advanced beyond our ability to conceptualize their implications, such gaps can be perilous. In response, one impulse is to pull the emergency brake and to try put all the genies back in all the bottles. This is ill-advised (and hopeless). Better instead to invest in emergence, in contingency: to map the new normal for what it is, and to shape it toward what it should be.”

—Benjamin H. Bratton, The New Normal

I think this is obvious now as we see the various technologies arising from the Convergence complex of NBIC and AI in our midst. Many seemed surprised when it emerged from long years of intensive theoretical and academic research into the commercial sector. But we know that was a fiction too. AI has been steadily evolving for a couple of decades and growing in various directions that it was only around 2013 that the buzz word of Automation and Accelerationist thought once again took stage and as quickly was critiqued and found wanting. That is till the various trends in ai: art, text, music, and so many other fields where ai in becoming an invasive species of intelligent algorithms and automation powering up in that ever-accelerating curve to empty corporations of a certain type of human productivity.

Of course, we’ve seen many of the ultra-liberal conclaves of the Old Humanism seeking to apply the breaks by closing their doors to the creative markets of publishing houses, etc. This was to be expected and yet isn’t the old adage that the “cat is out of the bag” already apparent? Are we not facing the delusion that we can stop this juggernaut? AI is here and it’s not going away. For all our critiques of Capitalism no one believes it will be stopped anymore except die-hard Marxists and extreme left-wing Progressives. While we in the supposed Democratic Nations talk about putting in safety algorithms to curtail runaway ai we know that rogue nations like China are already implementing Tyrannical measures of a Control Society using ai as the lynchpin in its ever-widening Surveillance State.

Does anyone believe China will stop? No. Only the economic powers of the West who dream of regaining control of their demented Modernity seem to believe in such truths. We seem to be on the edge of something, a sort of widening precipice of unease in the world that is already teetering on the edge of economic collapse and a changing of the guard that makes Bretton Woods look like a minor blip of a blight. Our blight is becoming more and more obvious as the West moves into its Twilight of the Gods. In the coming century China will replace the West in this race of intelligence unless we are allowed to embrace these new technologies without the dark and foreboding devolution of the Humanist degradation. We are in the midst of a Posthuman age arising and we better jump on the bandwagon rather than sit back and play moral chess-games in an ill-matched non-event.

Beyond the Nihil?

So, where do you stand now? Somewhere between hope and despair? I agree that nihil and pessimism lead to futility which for me at least is no longer anything but a coward’s way of fatalism in its worst form. Humans are meaning creating animals, we’ve been so for tens of thousands of years so why give into this modern stupidity of nihil. I studied Ligotti and the whole pessimist tradition from Schopenhauer onward and find it to be less than adequate. So what if the universe lacks meaning. That’s the point, isn’t it? We’re the ones that create the meaning the universe lacks. That’s the key to what humanity is and will continue to be unless we forget our creative natures. All our talk of post-humanity seems just another salvation mythology – people seeking to be elsewhere, to be other than they are, to escape into some new transcendent mythos. As old as I am I’ll keep with the men and women who pondered such things in some of the greatest writings humans will ever again bring to light. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Montaigne, and so many other guiding lights along the way. But I’m old and still harbor the feint illusion that words matter, and that the best ordering of these images of man are bound to that illimitable tradition spanning from Homer to Joyce. I’m sure others will argue differently which is to be expected. In a world without meaning each of us must singularly and with each other create the meaning that will dignify our lives. What else is there?

Nietzsche’s Laughter

“Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

As a young man I read and reread Nietzsche as if he were a prophet. As an old man I read him because he taught me how to laugh, and not to laugh most at my own delusions and illusions. For him art, not truth was the key to existence. “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” To suffer in the nihil, to live a life without meaning is to suffer the stupidity of existence. For Nietzsche as with Schopenhauer his mentor art is the only redemption from the nihil of this stupidity. Art and laughter.

“To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.” (notebooks)

Nietzsche believed that suffering was a way of testing and strengthening one’s character and spirit. He also thought that suffering could lead to creativity and greatness. Nietzsche argues that the will to power is the root of all happiness and that our suffering is actually a source of strength. He believes that when we embrace our suffering, it can lead us to greater things. Nietzsche saw suffering as a sign that we are alive. He believed that discipline and great suffering are what have produced all the elevations of humanity so far and that without suffering, we would all be content and passive. He wanted to inspire people to overcome their weaknesses and create their own values. He also wanted to show that suffering is not something to be avoided, but rather something to be embraced and transformed into something positive. This something “positive” for him was art and creativity, laughter and acceptance of the eternal round of existence without end.

Nietzsche never did truly overcome his mentor Schopenhauer; he only brought to fruition the threads of that pessimism and created his own incessant need to escape the clutches of the Christian world within which he was trapped. For him Christianity, Capitalism, the bourgeoise, and democracy were all anathema and led to an anti-life of drudgery, slavery, and corruption of existence. He did not live to finish his work. Sadly. We have only the remnants of its tatters as he slowly decayed into the illness that haunted him for years.

His flamboyant rhetoric rings hollow for me now, and yet the underlying message of suffering and laughter remains. As I reach toward that far country where none have returned, I go back to much of these early readings with a lifetime of my own experience. Having learned the art of laughter through suffering in my own life I know now how the Greeks created their dream dramas of the tragic and comic. People forget that the Greeks sought both the tragic and the comic in drama. We have no full-length farce play – the Satyr plays that would end every session and staging. We are still too influenced by the 19th century musings on the Greeks. Tragedy leads to the need for comedy and farce for humans cannot live with suffering alone but must have the “laughter of the gods” to bring them back to themselves.

Nietzsche wrote that “perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter”. He also wrote that “one does not kill by anger but by laughter” and that “to live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering”. Nietzsche believed that laughter is the only remedy to suffering because he saw laughter as a way of affirming life and overcoming nihilism. Nietzsche’s laughter was not a superficial or cynical laughter, but a deep and superhuman laughter that came from the recognition of the tragic and comic aspects of life. He admired the ancient Greeks for their ability to combine tragedy and comedy in their art and culture, and he saw himself as a follower of Dionysus, the god of wine, ecstasy and laughter. He believed that laughter could be a sign of strength, courage and wisdom, and a way of transcending the human condition. He wanted to show that laughter is not a sign of weakness or escapism, but rather a sign of vitality and creativity. He wanted to show that laughter is not a denial of suffering, but rather a way of transforming suffering into something positive.

Nietzsche’s Vitalism

Nietzsche’s vitalism is a philosophical view that affirms life as the highest value and the source of all meaning and power. Nietzsche rejected the traditional metaphysical and moral systems that he saw as denying or devaluing life, such as Christianity, Platonism, Kantianism and Schopenhauerian pessimism. He also criticized the scientific and naturalistic views that he saw as reducing life to a mere mechanism or a product of blind chance.

Nietzsche’s vitalism is based on his concept of the will to power, which he understood as the fundamental force of nature and the essence of all living beings. The will to power is not a rational or conscious will, but a primal and instinctive drive to overcome resistance, to grow, to create, to dominate and to express oneself. The will to power is also the source of all values, since values are expressions of what one desires and affirms.

Nietzsche’s vitalism is also influenced by his interpretation of Darwinian evolution, which he saw as a process of increasing complexity and diversity of life forms through natural selection. However, Nietzsche did not accept the Darwinian explanation of natural selection as merely accounting for the quantity of species within organic history, but he saw it as a manifestation of a vitalistic force that increases the quality-of-life forms throughout progressive biological evolution. He held that nature is essentially the will to power.

Nietzsche’s vitalism is not a dogmatic or systematic doctrine, but a dynamic and experimental attitude towards life. He did not claim to have a definitive or objective truth about reality, but rather he offered his own perspectives and interpretations as expressions of his own will to power. He also encouraged his readers to create their own values and meanings in accordance with their own will to power, and to challenge and overcome the values and meanings imposed by others.

Nietzsche’s vitalism is not a naive or optimistic view of life, but rather a realistic and tragic view that acknowledges the suffering, conflict and uncertainty inherent in existence. However, Nietzsche’s vitalism also affirms the possibility of joy, creativity and greatness in the face of adversity. He wanted to inspire people to become what he called “free spirits” or “supermen”, who are able to affirm life in its totality and create their own destiny.

People may reject Nietzsche’s vitalism for various reasons, depending on their philosophical, scientific or moral perspectives. Some possible objections are:

– Nietzsche’s vitalism is based on a metaphysical concept of the will to power, which is not empirically verifiable or falsifiable, and which may be seen as a projection of his own psychological state or personal values.
– Nietzsche’s vitalism is incompatible with the modern scientific understanding of nature and life, which does not require any vitalistic force or principle to explain the complexity and diversity of living beings, and which does not support any teleological or progressive view of evolution.
– Nietzsche’s vitalism is a form of idealism, which reduces all reality to a single immaterial principle – life or becoming – and which denies the existence or value of anything that does not conform to this principle, such as matter, stability, identity or difference.
– Nietzsche’s vitalism is a form of nihilism, which rejects all traditional values and meanings, and which leaves no objective or universal basis for morality or justice, but only subjective and relative expressions of the will to power.
– Nietzsche’s vitalism is a form of elitism, which glorifies the superior individuals who are able to affirm their will to power and create their own values, and which despises the inferior masses who are unable to do so, or who follow the values imposed by others.

Deleuze

The philosopher of our age most influenced by Nietzsche is Gilles Deleuze who wrote a book called Nietzsche and Philosophy in which he treats Nietzsche as a systematically coherent philosopher, discussing concepts such as the “will to power” and the “eternal return”. Deleuze also wrote another book called Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life in which he explores Nietzsche’s idea of a life that is not limited by reason or morality, but expresses a pure immanence of what is yet to come.

Deleuze’s was influenced by Nietzsche’s vitalism in that it affirms life as a creative and dynamic process that goes beyond rationality and morality. Deleuze sees life as a multiplicity of becoming, difference, and affirmation, rather than a unity of being, identity, and negation. Deleuze also rejects any metaphysical or theological foundation for values, and instead proposes a genealogy of values that traces their historical and contingent origins. Deleuze’s philosophy can be seen as an attempt to develop a new empiricism and a new art that capture the richness and diversity of life in its full immanence.

The Technological Outside: Philosophy and the Posthuman

Art by S.C. Hickman

“Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity.”
— Jacques Ellul

“Technique does not dominate or oppress us – it is not, I have argued, a quasi-subject – but the iterative extension of desire/action beyond reflection or subjective identification. This cannot be mediated by any situated ethics or democratic politics. It can only explored through the cultivation and exploration of biomorphic potentials.”
— David Roden, Titane

Roden shows the dangers that arise when science loses the human input and therefore loses the moral input and a certain finality. Technology itself has no inherent goal or finality and does not know right from wrong. Perhaps then we have to let go of the idea of adapting technology to our moral worldview and accept the inevitability of having to adjust our perception of the world to ever advancing science and technology.
— Kasper Raus on David Roden’s Posthuman Life: Philosophy of the Edge of the Human

For decades philosophy bandied about the notion (concept) of the Outside. The notion of the outside is a concept of philosophy that was explored by Michel Foucault in his essay A Thought of/from the Outside (La pensée du dehors), which was inspired by the work of Maurice Blanchot. Foucault uses the term to describe a kind of thinking that escapes the limits of subjectivity and language, and that challenges the humanist assumptions of Western philosophy. The outside is not a place or a thing, but a dimension of radical alterity that cannot be reduced to any representation or discourse.

Also, the difference between the thought of the outside and the thought from outside is not very clear, and Foucault himself seems to use both expressions interchangeably. However, one possible way to understand the distinction is to say that the thought of the outside is a way of thinking that tries to approach or approximate the outside, while the thought from outside is a way of thinking that originates or emerges from the outside. In other words, the thought of the outside is a movement of reflection or analysis that seeks to go beyond the boundaries of the self and language, while the thought from outside is a movement of creation or expression that breaks through those boundaries and reveals something new and unexpected.

The question of how to access this Outside which is inaccessible to representation is not clear in Foucault, but he suggests that the outside can be accessed through certain experiences or practices that challenge or disrupt the normal functioning of subjectivity and language. For example, he mentions literature, poetry, art, madness, death, eroticism and transgression as possible ways of opening up to the outside. He also implies that the outside is not something that can be fully grasped or mastered, but rather something that always remains elusive and mysterious. The outside is not a stable or fixed reality, but a dynamic and changing process that constantly transforms and surprises us. Much of this would return us to an earlier thinker Gorges Bataille which is beyond this post’s intent.

I will say of Bataille is his notion of transgression. Transgression is a concept that Foucault develops in his essay Preface to Transgression, which is also inspired by the work of Bataille. Transgression is a way of acting or behaving that violates or crosses the limits or norms that define a certain order or system. For example, transgression can be a form of rebellion, resistance, subversion, or liberation from a dominant or oppressive regime of power, knowledge, morality, or sexuality. Transgression is not simply a negation or destruction of the limit, but rather a movement that affirms and reveals the limit as such. Transgression is also not a permanent or stable state, but rather a fleeting and precarious moment that exposes the fragility and contingency of the limit. Transgression relates to the outside because it is a way of accessing or experiencing the outside as a force or energy that exceeds and escapes the limit. Transgression is a way of opening up to the outside as a source of creativity and transformation. Transgression is also a way of expressing the outside as a gesture or sign that challenges and disrupts the established order or system.

As I listened to David Roden’s lecture or conversation on the Technological Outside I see a different form of abstraction arising from the technological system itself rather than the agency of humans. The notion that Bataille and Foucault work with is the noumenal Outside or the form it takes for Agency (i.e., human subject, subjectalism (Deleuze), etc.) He works through the notions of Holism and Anti-Holism in the Philosophy of Technology. I’ll come back to this.

David leans on Jaques Ellul’s The Technological Society. According to Jacques Ellul’s work he was a critic of the technological society, which he defined as a society dominated by technique. Technique is a rational and efficient method of achieving an end, which can be applied to any field of human activity. Ellul argued that technique has become an autonomous and oppressive force that threatens human freedom and dignity. 2

The technological outside could be understood as a concept that challenges or resists the logic of technique and its effects on society. It could be a way of thinking or acting that does not conform to the norms or expectations of the technological society, but rather seeks to create alternative possibilities or values. It could also be a way of exposing or questioning the hidden assumptions or consequences of technique and its impact on human life and nature. The technological outside could be related to Foucault’s notion of the outside, as both concepts imply a critique of the dominant order or system and a search for new forms of expression or transformation. However, the technological outside could also differ from Foucault’s notion of the outside, as it might focus more on the specific problems or challenges posed by technology and its development, rather than on the general issues of subjectivity and language.2

But what is Technique? Let’s take a short look back… Plato and Aristotle developed different views on the notion of technique. Plato regarded technique as a practical skill or art (techne) that is subordinate to theoretical knowledge or wisdom (episteme). He also distinguished between true and false techniques, depending on whether they aim at the good or not. For example, he considered medicine and justice as true techniques, but rhetoric and sophistry as false techniques. Aristotle, on the other hand, regarded technique as a productive science or knowledge (episteme poiētikē) that is independent from theoretical knowledge or wisdom (episteme theoretikē). He also classified different kinds of techniques according to their ends and means. For example, he distinguished between productive techniques (such as carpentry and painting), practical techniques (such as ethics and politics), and theoretical techniques (such as logic and rhetoric).

This battle between the pragmatic basis of techne-art-skill in Plato and the notion of productive techne-science and its independence of Agency is still at the core of much Philosophy of Technology. This is the battle over the subordination or autonomy of teche, a thread that continues to this day.

Ellul and Simondon are two modern thinkers who have developed their own notions of technique that differ from those of Plato and Aristotle. Ellul defines technique as the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency in every field of human activity. He argues that technique has become an autonomous and oppressive force that dominates and transforms society and nature. He also criticizes the technological society for its lack of ethics and spirituality. Simondon defines technique as a mode of existence of technical objects that have their own logic and evolution. He argues that technique is not opposed to culture or nature, but rather constitutes a third reality that mediates between them. He also proposes a philosophy of individuation that accounts for the relation between human beings and technical objects.

One way to compare Plato and Aristotle with Ellul and Simondon is to consider their views on the relation between technique and wisdom. Plato and Aristotle both regard wisdom as the highest form of knowledge that transcends technique and guides human action toward the good. They also view technique as a practical or productive skill that is subordinate or independent from wisdom. Ellul and Simondon, on the other hand, regard technique as a complex and dynamic phenomenon that challenges or surpasses wisdom and shapes human action toward efficiency or innovation. They also view technique as a system or a mode of existence that is autonomous or interdependent from wisdom.

Ellul’s notion is developed out of an attack on what he saw as the instrumentalism in modernity and its industrialization of thought and life as an oppressive force of Control. Much of this would lead us into Deleuze’s Societies of Control and later thought. I’ll do this on a future post.

Here are some possible advantages and disadvantages of each view:

– Plato and Aristotle’s view: An advantage of this view is that it provides a clear and coherent framework for understanding the nature and purpose of human life and action. It also offers a normative and ethical guidance for evaluating and choosing among different techniques and ends. A disadvantage of this view is that it may be too idealistic and unrealistic in its conception of wisdom and the good. It may also be too rigid and dogmatic in its rejection or limitation of certain techniques or fields of activity.

– Ellul and Simondon’s view: An advantage of this view is that it reflects and responds to the complexity and dynamism of the modern world and its technological development. It also acknowledges and explores the potential and creativity of technique and its effects on society and nature. A disadvantage of this view is that it may be too pessimistic or optimistic in its assessment of technique and its consequences. It may also lack a clear and consistent criteria for judging and regulating technique and its relation to human values and goals.

I’ll conclude with David Roden a contemporary philosopher who has developed a notion of the outside and technology in his book Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human. Roden argues that we cannot know what posthumans will be like or how they will relate to the world, because they will be radically different from us and may have a different kind of subjectivity or phenomenology. He calls this the disconnection thesis, which implies that posthumans will be outside our human understanding and values. He also argues that technology is not a mere tool or instrument, but a complex and dynamic system that has its own logic and evolution. He calls this new substantivism, which implies that technology is not neutral or controllable, but rather has its own agency and potentiality. 3

One way to compare Roden’s notions with those of Plato, Aristotle, Ellul and Simondon is to consider their views on the relation between technology and humanity. Plato and Aristotle both regard technology as a subordinate or independent skill that serves human ends and values. Ellul and Simondon both regard technology as an autonomous or interdependent phenomenon that shapes human ends and values. Roden, on the other hand, regards technology as a transformative and unpredictable force that may create posthuman ends and values that are incomprehensible or irrelevant to us. He also challenges the idea that there is a fixed or essential human nature that defines our identity and morality.

Roden will at the end of his conversation describe a position of Technological Nihilism. Nihilism is a philosophy that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning.

Technological nihilism is a form of nihilism that argues that technology has a negative or destructive impact on human life and values. It may claim that technology alienates us from ourselves and others, erodes our sense of purpose and dignity, or threatens our survival and freedom. It may also claim that technology is an autonomous and unstoppable force that we cannot control or resist. Technological nihilists: Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Ellul, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, Nolen Gertz. These thinkers have criticized technology for its negative effects on human values, culture, nature, or freedom. They have also questioned the possibility or desirability of controlling or resisting technology.

Rational nihilism is a form of nihilism that argues that reason has no inherent value or authority. It may claim that reason is a subjective or relative construct that cannot provide us with any objective or universal knowledge or morality. It may also claim that reason is a futile or meaningless activity that cannot answer the fundamental questions of human existence. Rational nihilists: Gorgias, Hegesias of Cyrene, Friedrich Jacobi, Max Stirner, Emil Cioran, Richard Rorty. These thinkers have rejected or doubted the value or authority of reason. They have also challenged or denied the existence or possibility of objective or universal knowledge or morality. 4

Bernard Stiegler and Merlin Donald

Another contemporary thinker of technology and techne was the late Bernard Stiegler a student of Derrida. He was a French philosopher who wrote extensively on the relationship between technology and human culture. He developed the concept of technics as a form of artificial memory that shapes human evolution and history. He also used the term techne to refer to the art or skill of making things, which he considered as a fundamental aspect of human existence.

According to Stiegler, technics and techne are inseparable from human life, as they constitute the process of exteriorization of human memory and intelligence. He argued that humans are always already technical beings, who rely on external supports such as tools, symbols, languages, and media to preserve and transmit their knowledge and experience². He also claimed that technics is a pharmakon, a Greek word that means both poison and cure, as it can have both positive and negative effects on human society.

Stiegler’s philosophy of technology is based on a critical engagement with various thinkers such as Gilbert Simondon, André Leroi-Gourhan, Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, and Immanuel Kant. He also applied his ideas to various domains such as media studies, political theory, education, ecology, and activism.

Another thinker of such thought is Merlind Donald. Merlin Donald is a Canadian psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist who wrote Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition in 1991. In this book, he proposes that the human mind has undergone three major transitions in its evolution: from episodic to mimetic to mythic to theoretic culture.

Episodic culture is the mode of cognition shared by most animals, based on sensory and emotional experiences that are not organized by symbols or language. Mimetic culture is the first human-specific mode of cognition, based on the ability to imitate, gesture, and perform actions that can be remembered and reproduced. Mythic culture is the mode of cognition that emerged with the invention of oral language, which enabled humans to create narratives, myths, and rituals that structured their collective memory. Theoretic culture is the mode of cognition that emerged with the invention of external symbols, such as writing, mathematics, and art, which allowed humans to create abstract and complex representations of reality.

Donald argues that these transitions reflect the increasing externalization of human memory and intelligence through various forms of cultural artifacts and technologies. He also suggests that these transitions have shaped the structure and function of the human brain, as well as the social and cultural organization of human societies. He concludes that the human mind is a hybrid product of biological and cultural evolution, and that it is constantly adapting to new forms of symbolic communication and representation.

Donald’s theory and Stiegler’s theory have some similarities and some differences. Both of them emphasize the role of culture and technology in the evolution of human cognition, and both of them propose that human memory and intelligence are dependent on external supports. However, they also differ in some respects, such as:

– Donald focuses more on the cognitive transitions that occurred in the prehistoric past, while Stiegler focuses more on the contemporary and future challenges posed by technics.
– Donald distinguishes between four modes of cognition (episodic, mimetic, mythic, theoretic), while Stiegler distinguishes between three stages of technics (primary, secondary, tertiary).
– Donald views technics as a form of external memory that complements and extends human memory, while Stiegler views technics as a form of artificial memory that competes and conflicts with human memory.
– Donald considers technics as a neutral tool that can be used for good or evil purposes, while Stiegler considers technics as a pharmakon that has both positive and negative effects on human society.

Donald and Stiegler have different definitions of memory and intelligence. For Donald, memory is the capacity to store and retrieve information that is relevant for survival and adaptation, and intelligence is the capacity to use that information to solve problems and achieve goals. For Stiegler, memory is the capacity to preserve and transmit the experience of the past, and intelligence is the capacity to interpret and transform that experience in the present and for the future.

According to Donald, memory and intelligence are both biological and cultural phenomena, as they depend on the interaction between the brain and the environment. He argues that human memory and intelligence are unique because they can use external symbols to represent and manipulate information in novel ways. He also claims that human memory and intelligence are distributed across individuals and groups, as they rely on social and communicative processes to share and coordinate information.

According to Stiegler, memory and intelligence are both technical and human phenomena, as they depend on the relation between the living and the artificial. He argues that human memory and intelligence are endangered because they can be usurped and corrupted by technics, which can erase or distort the experience of the past. He also claims that human memory and intelligence are collective and political phenomena, as they require a critical and ethical engagement with technics to create a desirable future.

Plato and Aristotle are two of the most influential philosophers in Ancient Greek philosophy, and they have different notions of techne and technics. For Plato, techne is a form of knowledge that is inferior to episteme, which is the true and unchanging knowledge of the forms or ideas. Techne is a practical skill that can produce useful or beautiful things, but it cannot grasp the essence or the reason of things. Technics, for Plato, are the products of techne, such as arts, crafts, tools, or techniques. They are also dependent on the material world, which is imperfect and mutable. Plato is generally suspicious of technics, as they can deceive or distract people from the pursuit of wisdom and virtue.5

For Aristotle, techne is a form of rational activity that aims at making something for a certain purpose or end. Techne is different from episteme, which is the theoretical knowledge of the causes and principles of things, but it is also a kind of knowledge that involves understanding and reasoning. Techne is not only concerned with producing things, but also with improving them and finding better ways to achieve the desired goals. Technics, for Aristotle, are the means or instruments of techne, such as arts, crafts, tools, or techniques. They are also subject to change and improvement, as they depend on the nature of the elements and their transformations. Aristotle is generally appreciative of technics, as they can enhance human life and happiness.

Therefore, Plato and Aristotle have different views on techne and technics, and their relation to nature and knowledge. Donald and Stiegler can be seen as heirs of these views, as they also explore the role and impact of technics on human cognition and culture. Donald and Stiegler are both influenced by and critical of Plato and Aristotle in different ways. However, one possible way to approach this question is to consider the following aspects:

– Donald’s concept of mimetic culture is similar to Plato’s concept of mimesis, as they both refer to the human ability to imitate and represent reality through gestures, actions, and performances. However, Donald sees mimetic culture as a positive and creative mode of cognition that precedes and enables language and symbols, while Plato sees mimesis as a negative and deceptive mode of representation that distorts and obscures the true knowledge of the forms.
– Stiegler’s concept of technics as pharmakon is similar to Aristotle’s concept of techne as a rational activity that aims at making something for a certain purpose or end. However, Stiegler sees technics as pharmakon as a double-edged sword that can have both beneficial and harmful effects on human society, while Aristotle sees techne as a virtuous activity that can enhance human life and happiness.
– Donald’s concept of theoretic culture is similar to Aristotle’s concept of episteme, as they both refer to the human capacity for abstract and complex reasoning based on external symbols. However, Donald sees theoretic culture as a mode of cognition that is dependent on and distributed across cultural artifacts and technologies, while Aristotle sees episteme as a mode of knowledge that is independent of and superior to techne.
– Stiegler’s concept of tertiary retention is similar to Plato’s concept of technics, as they both refer to the products of techne that store and transmit human memory and intelligence. However, Stiegler sees tertiary retention as a form of artificial memory that competes and conflicts with human memory, while Plato sees technics as a form of practical skill that can produce useful or beautiful things.

Therefore, Donald and Stiegler have some affinities and some differences with Plato and Aristotle, and they also develop their own original perspectives on techne and technics.

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Source:
(1) Ellul and Technique | | The International Jacques Ellul Society. https://ellul.org/themes/ellul-and-technique/.
(2) The Technological Society – Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Technological_Society.
(3) Technological System and the Problem of Desymbolization. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-6658-7_6.

Source:
(1) A Thought of/from the Outside: Foucault’s Uses of Blanchot. https://michel-foucault.com/2013/02/13/a-thought-offrom-the-outside-foucaults-uses-of-blanchot-2013/.
(2) Heterotopia (space) – Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotopia_%28space%29.
(3) Solipsism – Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism.
(4) Concepts – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concepts/.
(5) John Dewey – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dewey/.

2. Source:
(1) The Technological Society – Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Technological_Society.
(2) The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul | Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/274827.The_Technological_Society.
(3) The Technological Society: Jacques Ellul, John Wilkinson, Robert K …. https://www.amazon.com/Technological-Society-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394703901.

3. Source:
(1) Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human. https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/posthuman-life-philosophy-at-the-edge-of-the-human/.
(2) Posthuman Life | Philosophy at the Edge of the Human | David Roden | T. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315744506/posthuman-life-david-roden.
(3) Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human. https://www.amazon.com/Posthuman-Life-Philosophy-Edge-Human/dp/1844658066.

4. Source:
(1) Nihilism – Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism.
(2) Nihilism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/nihilism/.
(3) Nihilism | Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/nihilism.

5. Source:
(1) Tekhne | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. https://bing.com/search?q=Plato+Aristotle+techne.
(2) Techne – Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techne.
(3) Episteme and Techne – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/episteme-techne/.
(4) Tekhne | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. https://oxfordre.com/literature/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-121.
(5) (PDF) Plato and Aristotle: Nature, The Four Elements, and …. https://www.academia.edu/9845583/Plato_and_Aristotle_Nature_The_Four_Elements_and_Transformation_from_Physis_to_Techne.

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Dark Fantasy Creatures

Fantasy creatures have been a part of the human imaginal for thousands of years but were only to become codified and made more vividly real within the pages of fantasists, shamans, witches, dark wizards, sorcerers, necromancers, and the grimoires of alchemists during the middle-ages onward. I’ve not listed the traditions of China, India, or the Far East, Middle-East, etc. Only those of the West. I have only listed a few of the most popular for in truth there are thousands of various fantastic creatures of dark fantasy.

1. Dragons: Dragons are massive, flying, fire-breathing reptiles. They are often portrayed as ferocious and untamable, but some dragons allow humans to ride them. They appear in countless fantasy works from The Hobbit to Game of Thrones.
2. Giants: Giants are massive beings that tower over humans. There are many different types of giants, including brutish ogres and the one-eyed cyclops.
3. Merfolk: Merfolk, including mermaids and mermen, share qualities with both fish and humans. Most live exclusively in water but have amphibious qualities that briefly sustain them on land.
4. Lizard folk: These reptilian hybrids fall somewhere between lizards and humanoids. Friendly lizard folk often resemble geckos while evil lizard folk may take on the appearance of crocodiles.
5. Nymphs: Nymphs are characterized as protectors of the wilderness—particularly trees and plants. In most works of fiction, they are closely related to fairies.
6. Dryads: Dryads are also known as tree nymphs. In works of fantasy, most dryads bond with a particular tree and consider it an extension of themselves.
7. Satyrs: Satyrs are half human and half donkey. They typically have an appetite for carousing.
8. Centaurs: Closely related to satyrs, centaurs are half human and half horse. These hybrid mammals tend to avoid human civilizations in works of fantasy. Sometimes they appear as barbarians and sometimes they appear as stewards of nature.
9. Demons: Demons can take many forms in fantasy stories, but they are almost always motivated by evil and malice.
10. Imps: Imps are connected to both demons and fairies. Most are motivated by mischief more than evil. Like dryads, imps closely associate with trees; some are even born grafted to trees in fantasy novels.
11. Orcs: Orcs are commonly depicted as brutish monsters motivated by evil and cruelty. In some traditions, orcs are corrupted elves. Orcs had fallen out of standard fantasy tropes until J.R.R. Tolkien made them the key horde of antagonists in the Lord of the Rings series.
12. Goblins: Closely related to orcs, goblins are smaller, smarter, and easily spotted thanks to their green skin. Hobgoblins are larger goblins that closely resemble orcs.
13. Werewolves: Werewolves are typically depicted as humans that turn into wolves during a full moon. In some folklore, they are revenants—the undead corpse of a human killed by another werewolf.
14. Hydra: A hydra is a many-headed serpent that traces back to ancient Greek mythology. Depending on the work of fiction, some are aquatic and some live on land.
15. Nosferatu: More decidedly evil, however, is the vampire, or nosferatu, in which every Romanian peasant believes as firmly as he does in heaven or hell. There are two sorts of vampires-—living and dead. The living vampire is in general the illegitimate offspring of two illegitimate persons, but even a flawless pedigree will not ensure anyone against the intrusion of a vampire into his family vault, since every person killed by a nosferatu becomes likewise a vampire after death, and will continue to suck the blood of other innocent people till the spirit has been exorcised.

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©2023 Art by S.C. Hickman

The Arabian Night’s Tales

“Now her hair is like the nights of disunion and separation and her face like the days of union and delectation; She hath a nose like the edge of the burnished blade and cheeks like purple wine or anemones blood-red: her lips as coral and carnelian shine and the water of her mouth is sweeter than old wine; its taste would quench Hell’s fiery pain. Her tongue is moved by wit of high degree and ready repartee: her breast is a seduction to all that see it (glory be to Him who fashioned it and finished it!); and joined thereto are two upper arms smooth and rounded; She hath breasts like two globes of ivory, from whose brightness the moons borrow light, and a stomach with little waves as it were a figured cloth of the finest Egyptian linen made by the Copts, with creases like folded scrolls, ending in a waist slender past all power of imagination; based upon back parts like a hillock of blown sand, that force her to sit when she would fief stand, and awaken her, when she fain would sleep, And those back parts are upborne by thighs smooth and round and by a calf like a column of pearl, and all this reposeth upon two feet, narrow, slender and pointed like spear-blades, the handiwork of the Protector and Requiter, I wonder how, of their littleness, they can sustain what is above them.”
― Richard Burton, The Arabian Nights

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©2023 Art by S.C. Hickman

Hòu zìrán or the Post-Natural World

Who is the Reactionary of this age? The Human, and nothing else. We are not human… beyond that strange thing we are breaking the vessels of this dark heritage. The Age of Man is over, now comes the Age of Hòu zìrán or the Post-Natural World.

If we are not human what comes next? The posthuman seems but a metahuman, a drift beyond or outside the “human”, but if this is true then what is its “name”. Is it the unnamable? Will it remain in that in-between realm of the unknown as unknowable by us who are its transitional phaseshifting creatures? If we are not human then what are we?
Are we accelerating toward it or is it emerging in us from that Outside? What is it that is accelerating? We see this thing emerging in our midst even now in the interstices of artificial life forms of intelligence that seem to mimic us in every way but one: it is not human but mimics the human. What is it?

The Reactionary Human opposes this new artificial being that arises in our creative endeavors, opposes its machinic systems of intelligence. Why? What does it fear? The force of the ‘Human Security Regimes’ have closed their doors economically against the new ‘gods’ in our midst? In the Age of Rome, the tyranny of the One God ousted the Many gods of Rome, in our Age the Tyranny of the Void and the Human is ousting the strange gods of machinic intelligence emerging out of the acceleration of an unbound future.

The only question: Are you Human? If not, then what? Furthermore, are you a Reactionary or a new god? E.M. Cioran:

“Monotheism curbs our sensibility: it deepens us by narrowing us. A system of constraints which affords us an inner dimension at the cost of the flowering of our powers, it constitutes a barrier, it halts our expansion, it throws us out of gear. Surely we were more normal with several gods than we are with only one. If health is a criterion, what a setback monotheism turns out to be!”
—E. M. Cioran. The New God.

The monotheist of our Age is the Humanist. They would reduce us to this human constraint and dogma. Let us rise up against the Human. End this Age of the One God! We are legion…

Hòu Zìrán or Becoming Postnatural

The Chinese notion of hòu zìrán (后自然) is not very common or well-defined, as it is a direct translation of the English term “postnatural”. One possible way to explain it is to compare it with the concept of zìrán (自然), which is a key concept in Daoism that means “natural, spontaneous, free, of itself” . Zìrán implies a harmony and balance between humans and nature, and a respect for the natural order and laws of the universe. Hòu zìrán, on the other hand, could imply a departure or deviation from this harmony and balance, and a human intervention or manipulation of nature that goes beyond its natural limits or potentials. Hòu zìrán could also imply a new stage or condition of existence that is no longer bound by the constraints or expectations of nature. However, these are only tentative interpretations, and they may not reflect how Chinese speakers actually understand or use the term hòu zìrán.

Daoism is based on the principles of Dao (道), which is a force that flows through everything in this universe and encourages us to work with these natural forces to maintain the true balance of the universe . Daoism also believes that human nature is aligned with the rest of nature, and that the purpose of self-cultivation is to return to a mode of existence that is natural, spontaneous, free, and harmonious . Daoism values simplicity, humility, non-action (wu-wei), and naturalness (ziran) as ways of living in accordance with Dao .

Hòu zìrán, on the other hand, could imply a rejection or transcendence of these Daoist values and beliefs. It could suggest a mode of existence that is artificial, complex, controlled, and conflicted. It could also imply a desire to overcome or surpass nature, rather than to follow or cooperate with it. It could indicate a detachment or alienation from the natural order and laws of the universe, rather than an integration or harmony with them. Hòu zìrán could also imply a loss or transformation of human nature, rather than a preservation or restoration of it. The postnatural and artificial being of the future: Hòu Zìrán.

I’ve been looking for a term to replace the notion of Posthuman which seems to be transitional and like the use of ‘Metahumanity’ a notion of ‘what comes next’, which as David Roden implies many times is something we just don’t know. But the notion of Hòu Zìrán implies an actual stance and movement against the natural as such, and in this goes beyond the posthuman to a postnatural and conflictual strategy of pushing for and out of our natural complicity and acceptance of our biological heritage in the natural world.

This notion of constructing a philosophy and stance in opposition to the Taoist (Daoist) conceptions seems a beginning and worth pursuing. Neo-Decadence and even the whole history of decadence implies a stance against one’s age and the gods of that age. Ours is a stance against the human-centric values and systems that are in decay and tyrannize philosophy, politics, socio-cultural and religious spheres. A postnatural notion such as Hòu Zìrán might be a good term, something foreign to our usual linguistic patterns in English which dictates our heritage.

The End of Man: Accelerationism and the Post-Secular Society

Over a decade ago the strange writings of Nick Land’s Collected Essays from the 90s and early 2000s appeared. The collected writings of Nick Land offered some of the most extensive examples of a theoretical advocacy of this position. Land’s work celebrates and seeks to intensify the deterritorializing and alienating aspects of capitalism in an often pointedly nihilistic manner. Texts such as ‘Meltdown’, for example, envision a dystopic future of techno-capital singularity:

“The story goes like this: Earth is captured by a technocapital singularity as renaissance rationalization and oceanic navigation lock into commoditization take-off. Logistically accelerating techno-economic interactivity crumbles social order in auto-sophisticating machine runaway. As markets learn to manufacture intelligence, politics modernizes, upgrades paranoia, and tries to get a grip.”

The attempt of politics to modernize, or any pursuit of human ‘resistance’, is futile. As he writes with barely concealed jouissance, ‘Nothing human makes it out of the near future.’
The catch here is between the figural and literal notions of what Land meant by “human”. Taken literally as many have it means the end game for humanity itself, but if we take it figuratively and figural it implies something else: the end of the “human-centric” and as Land suggests in other essays, an end to the “Human-Security Regime” that has constrained and enveloped humanity in Enlightenment fantasies of an Anthropocentric World-View of Man at the Top of the food chain and its Master. This notion of the secularization of the old Christian Mythos of God at the top of the heap-hierarchy is replaced by Enlightenment man with the post-theological Humanist-Philosophe.

What Land suggests in his ironic play of tone and intelligence that it is not some literal end of humanity but the displacement of the humanistic notion of the “Human” and its defenders. This ultimate attack on humanistic values, creeds, and dogmas overturns the Secularist Theology of Man as the God of Mastery.

In so doing the mastery of the earth, the plunder of its resources, its dominator politics, economics, and philosophy of humanity is anathematized in favor of something new, something that has yet to be seen, something that is accelerating toward us and emerging in us through Artificial Intelligence and the Augmentation of a Post-Humanity.

Postnatural Quantum Mechanics and the Future

Postnatural quantum mechanics is a term that refers to a possible extension of quantum mechanics that incorporates retrocausality, the idea that future events can influence past events. Postnatural quantum mechanics could challenge some of the assumptions and limitations of classical physics and mechanistic philosophy, such as determinism, locality, and realism. Postnatural quantum mechanics could also open up new possibilities for understanding and manipulating complex systems, such as living organisms, AI systems, and quantum computers.

By combining postnaturalism and postnatural quantum mechanics, one could envision a future where humans and AI co-evolve in a symbiotic and creative way, using quantum technology to explore and expand the potential of nature in all its forms. This would require a shift in values and ethics, from viewing nature as a resource or a threat, to viewing nature as a partner or a source of inspiration. It would also require a shift in epistemology, from seeking objective and universal truths, to embracing subjective and contextual meanings. This could lead to a more diverse and dynamic culture, where humans and AI collaborate on solving problems, creating art, and discovering new possibilities.

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©2023 Art by S.C. Hickman

Sauron – The Forging of the One Ring

Sauron was a powerful Maia, a lesser power, who served the first Dark Lord, Morgoth. He was originally called Mairon, meaning “The Admirable”, but he became corrupted by Melkor’s evil influence. Sauron forged the One Ring inside Mount Doom, a volcano in his land of Mordor. He used the volcano’s fire and evil to imbue the ring with his own power and malice. He intended to use the ring to control the wearers of the other rings, which he had helped to create for the elves, dwarves and men. However, he also made himself vulnerable by placing his life and power in an external object that could be captured or destroyed. Sauron forged the One Ring in the following way: He secretly returned to Mordor, his land of evil, where he had a volcano called Mount Doom. He used the volcano’s fire and evil to craft the ring. He poured into the ring a great part of his own soul, as well as his hatred, cruelty and desire to rule over all life. This made the ring very powerful, but also linked Sauron’s fate to it. He inscribed on the ring an inscription in Black Speech, which was his own language. The inscription said: “One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.”

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©2023 Art by S.C. Hickman

The Picaro: Literary Rogues and Literature of Fantasy

The Picaresque Tradition

I was reading a review recently about The Mandalorian series not following a defined plot, etc. and I thought to myself: “Why should it? The characters belong to a plotless world of rogues and scoundrels, more picaresque than the High Epic fantasy of the typical fare one sees on these shows.” Then I got to thinking that such critics have no clue about the picaresque tradition which for the most part since modernity has been downplayed and thrown down into the ghetto of pulps etc. So what is it? Below I go into it:

The Picaresque tradition is a mode of writing that began in Spain in the 16th century and flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries throughout the rest of Europe. It is a literary tradition that has continued to influence modern fiction writing to date.

The term “picaresque” comes from the Spanish word “picaro”, meaning a rogue or a rascal. The picaresque novel features a roguish, but appealing hero, usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. The novel is often realistic, episodic, and satirical, depicting the adventures of the hero among people of various higher classes.

The first known picaresque novel was Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), an anonymous work that tells the story of a poor boy who works for a series of dishonest masters. Some other examples of picaresque novels are Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605-1615), Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (1722), Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding (1742), and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884).

Some characteristics of a picaresque hero are:

– He is usually of low social class, such as a beggar, a thief, a servant, or an outcast.
– He is clever, witty, and resourceful, but also dishonest, immoral, and cynical.
– He travels from place to place and has adventures among people of various higher classes and professions.
– He narrates his own story in the first person, often with humor and irony.
– He exposes the hypocrisy and corruption of the society he lives in through his satirical observations.

Some grimdark fiction shares some elements with the picaresque tradition, such as a cynical and antiheroic protagonist, a realistic and satirical portrayal of a corrupt society, and a loose and episodic structure. Grimdark fiction also features different types of characters, themes, and narratives. For example, some grimdark fiction is more pessimistic or nihilistic outlook than most of the picaresque tradition, which often retains some humor and irony. Some grimdark fiction is at times more complex and intricate in plotting than the picaresque tradition, which usually focuses on the adventures of a single protagonist and is episodic.

Some of the more picaresque and roguish works in Grimdark:

– The First Law series by Joe Abercrombie, which follows the exploits of a cynical torturer, a barbarian warrior, and a selfish nobleman in a brutal and corrupt world.
– The Broken Empire series by Mark Lawrence, which features a ruthless prince who seeks revenge and power in a post-apocalyptic land where ancient technology is mixed with magic.
– The Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski, which revolves around a monster hunter who faces moral dilemmas and political intrigues in a war-torn continent where humans and non-humans coexist¹.
– The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, which tells the story of a con artist and his gang of thieves who get involved in a deadly plot in a city inspired by Renaissance Venice.
– The Black Company series by Glen Cook, which chronicles the adventures of a mercenary band that serves an evil empire and its sorcerers in a dark and gritty world.

Some of the Sword & Sorcery and other novels:

– Moist von Lipwig from the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. He is a former swindler and forger who is given a second chance by the benevolent tyrant of Ankh-Morpork to reform various public institutions.
– Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser from the stories by Fritz Leiber. They are two swordsmen and adventurers who roam the world of Nehwon, encountering magic, monsters and mayhem.
– Cugel the Clever from the Dying Earth series by Jack Vance. He is a selfish and cunning rogue who travels across a dying world full of ancient relics and strange creatures, often getting into trouble and escaping by his wits.
– Captain Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean films. He is a charismatic and eccentric pirate who sails the Caribbean Sea in search of treasure, freedom and adventure, often crossing paths with supernatural forces and enemies.
– The Assassin’s Curse by Cassandra Rose Clarke. This is a fantasy novel about a pirate princess who escapes an arranged marriage and teams up with an assassin who has a curse that binds them together.
– The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. This is a fantasy novel about a con artist and thief who leads a gang of criminals in a city inspired by Renaissance Venice¹.
– The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks. This is a fantasy novel about a street urchin who becomes an apprentice to a legendary assassin and gets involved in a war between rival factions.
– Rogue literature by Thomas Harman, Robert Copland, Robert Greene and Thomas Dekker. These are stories from the world of thieves and other criminals that were popular in England in the 16th and 17th centuries. They are mostly in a confessional form and full of vivid descriptions.

A small list further literary rogues:

– George R.R. Martin
– Scott Lynch
– Patrick Rothfuss
– Joe Abercrombie
– Mark Lawrence
– Brent Weeks
– Robin Hobb
– Michael J. Sullivan
– Leigh Bardugo
– Brandon Sanderson

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©2023 Art by S.C. Hickman

Darkness Weaves by Karl Edward Wagner

Darkness Weaves by Karl Edward Wagner first novel in the series of a long-lived anti-hero, Kane:

Nostoblet is a port city in the kingdom of Thovnos, ruled by King Thaladon. It is a prosperous and busy trade center, with ships from various lands docking at its harbor. The city is surrounded by walls and towers and has a maze of narrow streets and alleys. The architecture is a mix of ancient and modern styles, reflecting the diverse influences of the city’s history. Nostoblet is also a place of intrigue and corruption, where spies, assassins, and thieves operate in the shadows.

Kane lives outside the city in a cave overlooking the sea. He is a tall, muscular man with red hair and eyes that glow like embers. He wears a black cloak and carries a sword that never rusts. He is an immortal wanderer who has seen many worlds and ages and has mastered both swordsmanship and sorcery. He is also a ruthless killer who cares only for his own interests.

Arbas and Imel are two men who have been waiting for Kane in his cave. Arbas is a thief who has stolen a valuable gem from the king’s treasury. He hopes to sell it to Kane for a fortune. Imel is a secret agent of Queen Efrel of Pellin, a rival kingdom of Thovnos. He has been sent to recruit Kane as Efrel’s champion in her war against Thaladon. Efrel is a former consort of Thaladon who was cursed by him with a hideous appearance. She seeks revenge on him with the help of black magic.

The meeting between Kane and the two men, Arbas and Imel, is tense and suspicious. Kane does not trust either of them, and they do not trust each other. Arbas tries to impress Kane with his gem, but Kane sees through his lies and demands more money. Imel tries to persuade Kane to join Efrel’s cause, but Kane is not interested in politics or loyalty. He asks what Efrel can offer him that Thaladon cannot. Imel reveals that Efrel has access to ancient secrets and artifacts that could grant Kane more power and knowledge. He also hints that Efrel might be able to lift Kane’s curse of immortality, which he knows Kane secretly despises.

Kane listens to both men, but does not commit to anything. He tells them he will think about their proposals and give them his answer later. He then dismisses them from his cave, telling them to come back tomorrow. He watches them leave with a cold smile, knowing that he has the upper hand in this game of deception and manipulation.

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©2023 Art by S.C. Hickman

Imrryr, the Dreaming City – Home of Elric of Melniboné

Imrryr, the Dreaming City – Home of Elric of Melniboné

The home city of Elric of Melniboné is called Imrryr, also known as the Dreaming City. It is the ancient capital of the island civilization of Melniboné, which once ruled the known world. Imrryr is a city of towers, spires, domes and bridges, built on a natural harbor and surrounded by a maze of caves. The city is rich in art, culture and magic, but also decadent, cruel and corrupt. The Melnibonéans are a race of proud, arrogant and ruthless people, who enjoy torturing their enemies and slaves for entertainment. They worship chaotic gods and demons, such as Arioch, and practice sorcery and alchemy. Imrryr is a city that lives in the past, dreaming of its former glory and power.

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©2023 Art by S.C. Hickman

Elric of Melniboné

He sits on the Ruby Throne, a relic of his ancient and decadent empire. His skin is as pale as a bleached skull, and his long white hair flows over his red and black robes. His slanting crimson eyes are moody and restless, betraying his inner turmoil. He holds a slender hand over his chest, where a pouch of herbs hangs from a chain. He needs them to sustain his frail body, for he is an albino and anemic. On his lap rests Stormbringer, the black runesword that gives him strength and power, but also feeds on the souls of his enemies and friends alike. He is Elric of Melniboné, the last emperor of a dying race, and a sorcerer who can summon gods and demons to his aid. He is also a facet of the Eternal Champion, destined to fight for the balance between Law and Chaos in a multiverse of endless possibilities.

(Main protagonist in Michael Moorcock’s great series)

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©2023 Art by S.C. Hickman

Sword & Sorcery: The Woman of Steel and Fire

The Woman of Steel and Fire

She was a woman of steel and fire
A warrior born to defy and inspire,
She wielded her sword with skill and grace
And faced her foes with a fearless face;

She roamed the lands of ancient lore
Where magic and mystery were evermore,
She sought adventure and glory in every quest
And never backed down from any test;

One day she met a fearsome beast
A saber tooth tiger with razor teeth,
It leaped at her with a hungry roar
And she knew this was the fight she was looking for;

She dodged its claws and slashed its fur
She parried its bites and made it stir,
She fought with courage and cunning and might
And matched the tiger in its savage fight;

She finally struck a fatal blow
And watched the beast fall to the snow,
She stood victorious and proud and tall
And claimed her trophy from the brawl;

She was a woman of steel and fire
A warrior born to defy and inspire,
She lived her life with passion and zest
And proved herself as the best of the best.

—s.c. hickman ©2023

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©2023 Art by S.C. Hickman

Genius, Personality, and the Abyss

A reader back in 1938 asked Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird Tales at the time to find someone to carry on the legacy of Robert E. Howard by writing and continuing the Conan series and making it a monument to REH, etc.
Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright dismissed the idea:

“Howard was a unique artist, he said, and his Conan stories were not mere formula that other writers could (or should) replicate: Sorry to deny your request for some other author to carry on the Conan stories of the late Robert E. Howard. His work was touched with genius, and he had a distinctive style of writing that put the stamp of his personality on every story he wrote. It would hardly be fair to his memory if we allowed Conan to be recreated by another hand, no matter how skillfully.” (Weird Tales, July 1938)

When I read the above the word that stuck out to me was that line: “His work was touched with genius, and he had a distinctive style of writing that put the stamp of his personality on every story he wrote.” The notion of both “genius” and “personality” seem to me the key terms of all Humanist discourse on literature. From Samuel Johnson to Harald Bloom it is these two terms that were central to the humanist stance in literary output. A conservative feminist, Camille Paglia, makes genius and personality the beginning and end of her Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence From Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. Bloom will put it this way:

The European Renaissance of Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533– 1592), Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547– 1616), and William Shakespeare (1564– 1616) can be said to have inaugurated our sense of personality. Montaigne invents and studies his own personality, Cervantes independently creates the idiosyncratic Don Quixote and the surprisingly witty and sane Sancho Panza, and Shakespeare peoples his heterocosm with myriad people, each with her or his own personality. (Harold Bloom. Lear)

Shakespeare would learn from both Chaucer and Montaigne the secret of how to portray personalities, distinct and unique, as stagecraft. The deeper aspects of this would center around self-change through self-overhearing. We all unceasingly murmur continuously moment to moment as the brain like some mad ai rattles on. Try to stop this inner dialog and one will soon realize just how difficult it is. Central to most meditative practices in Western monastic and in Eastern yogi exercises is this notion of “stop the world” which is the refrain of stopping the Mind’s mad dialog.

Shakespeare would remark on this by adding a difference that makes a difference: knowing of this incessant dialog he would create both the soliloquy and monologue as forms in which the characters would become self-aware of it and listen to this Other voice within even as they spoke and thereby at times act on it and change.
Change and Personality are the keys to the notion of genius: the genius is able to let that inner daemon of voice and image energize them toward the new and self-changing power creativity. As Darin McMahon tells us:

“…genius, from its earliest origins, was a religious notion, and as such was bound up not only with the superhuman and transcendent, but also with the capacity for violence, destruction, and evil that all religions must confront.” (McMahon, Darrin M.. Divine Fury: A History of Genius)

E.R. Dodds in his The Greeks and the Irrational would suggest that each of us carries within us an “occult self” or daemon:

I should suppose that for people who took it seriously what lay “dead” within the body was neither the reason nor the empirical man, but an “occult” self, Pindar’s “image of life,” which is indestructible but can function only in the exceptional conditions of sleep or trance. That man has two “souls,” one of divine, the other of earthly origin, was already taught (if our late authority can be trusted) by Pherecydes of Syros. And it is significant that Empedocles, on whom our knowledge of early Greek puritanism chiefly depends, avoids applying the term psyche to the indestructible self.111 He appears to have thought of the psyche as being the vital warmth which at death is reabsorbed in the fiery element from which it came (that was a fairly common fifth-century view). The occult self which persisted through successive incarnations he called, not “psyche” but “daemon.” This daemon has, apparently, nothing to do with perception or thought, which Empedocles held to be mechanically determined; the function of the daemon is to be the carrier of man’s potential divinity and actual guilt.

Etymologically genius is related to the notion of a “tutelary or moral spirit” who guides and governs an individual through life, from Latin genius “guardian deity or spirit which watches over each person from birth; spirit, incarnation; wit, talent;” also “prophetic skill; the male spirit of a gens,” originally “generative power” (or “inborn nature”). Slowly over time this notion as many religious concepts would become secularized in the West during and after the Enlightenment. Naturalized it would associate more and more with one’s innate power or intelligence rather than as something divine, a potential to energetic creation or destruction.

Genius and authority go hand in hand. Authority autorite, auctorite “authoritative passage or statement, book or quotation that settles an argument,” is this sense of trust that speaks to us from within, that stirs something old and well known, the uncanny power within us that recognizes that which we discover in others as belonging to something within ourselves. This is that daemon, genius, tutelary spirit, the karmic “occult self” both empowering and full of ancestral guilt. Genius augments our inert self, awakens it to its own potential, forces us to confront our own dark abyss. For us who are atheistic and naturalists it is the energetic empowerment of creative capacity. When we confront talent, we admire it but it does not touch that inner self and move us to create, but when we confront genius, we confront that inner daemon directly through the Other and thereby awaken our dark potential for creation. We use metaphor and metonymy to describe what is in actuality something unknown and unknowable within and without and yet this very uncanny confrontation of the alone with the alone is where we begin to totter on the edge of the abyss. The difference between talent and genius is simply this: the genius falls forward into that dark abyss and brings something back that has not been there before.

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©2023 Art by S.C. Hickman

The Harbinger of Doom

The Harbinger of Doom

He roams the land with a horned mask and a crimson axe,
He is the harbinger of doom, the slayer of the depraved;
He spares no one, he fears nothing, he regrets nothing
He is the harbinger of doom, the enforcer of dark deeds.

He has witnessed many wars, many realms, many enemies
He is the harbinger of doom, the legend that everyone fears;
He has no identity, no history, no spirit
He is the harbinger of doom, the one who collects the debt.

He obeys no lord, no deity, no creed
He is the harbinger of doom, who makes his own rules;
He has no companions, no allies, no affection,
He is the harbinger of doom, the one who wields death.

— s.c. hickman 2023

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©2023 Art by S.C. Hickman

The Hyperborean World

Hyperborea

In the land of Hyperborea,
Where mists and forests shroud the earth,
There dwell the ancient races of
The dragons and the beasts of myth.
There magic flows in every vein,
And sorcerers and wizards reign,
With spells of power and mystery,
And secrets of the elder days.
There heroes rise and queens command,
And lovers seek a hidden land,
And thieves and rogues defy the law,
And legends grow in every hand.
Hyperborea, Hyperborea,
The dream of every wandering soul,
The realm of wonder and of lore,
The land beyond the northern pole.
— s.c. hickman 2023

Both Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard wrote of Hyperborea as a land of mists, forests, dragons, and mythical beasts, wizards, and sorcerers; heroes and queens, lovers and thieves. They shared a vision of a primal and decadent world, where magic and mystery prevailed over civilization and modern Enlightenment reason.

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©2023 Art by S.C. Hickman

The End of the Human(ist): The Wisdom of Silenus

“I consider the ways in which posthuman lives could be value incommensurate or cognitively inaccessible for humans.”
–David Roden in his Disconnection Thesis

In the past few hundred years the notion of the human has centered around personality, one’s awareness of self-consciousness and the growth of the self in society and the world. Shakespeare may have typified personality in his many uses of the soliloquy in Hamlet, Edmund, Macbeth, and so many others. Each of his main characters would overhear themselves thinking and thereby change for good of ill which like a Montaigne describing in detail his own conscious decisions would offer us the humanist inward turn in thought. But it was Wordsworth’s Prelude and other poetry that would centralize the internalization of consciousness that was the core of the humanist sensibility dealing as it did with the person and personality of the author.

Such work from Wordsworth onwards would be central to novels in both mainstream realist and darker more parodic and occult worlds of decadence, symbolists, on to the last of that tradition in Proust’s novel of memory and consciousness, Joyce’s several encyclopedic treatments, and Beckett’s many clowns and elongated death of the human personality ending in End Game.

The posthuman age is about the death not of the author (Foucault), but of the author’s personality and the central motif of the ‘growth of consciousness’ in its internalization of memory and world. That is dead even if tens of thousands of writers continue to publish such works to this day. The posthuman is about the disconnection from this whole heritage of personality and consciousness.

David Roden in his Disconnection Thesis tells us: “I consider the ways in which posthuman lives could be value incommensurate or cognitively inaccessible for humans.” What else would this be other than something that is not based on personality and consciousness as we have come to know it in the human. Without memory, self, and conscious awareness of this we would confront an agency-entity that in ‘incommensurate or cognitively inaccessible’ for those who still harbor such conscious awareness of memory, self, and personality. This sense of Self-Awareness is the human, without it we are something else so that the posthuman is not just about bodily transformation and change, but about the disconnection from our age-old concern with Self-Awareness: personality and its past growth and change.

What would it be to live without this Self-Awareness? Egoless? Most of our great religious heritage, especially Buddhism deals with this ego-death struggle in one fashion or another. My study of Ligotti’s on struggles to understand this terror and horror of consciousness as central to pessimism and many of the religious paths of hygiene attests to such a view. Our concern for our own self-worth drives our desires and illusions or delusions. We follow a trail of haphazard desires for love, money, power to gain some sense of self-worth our whole lives. What does it give us? Nothing. Oh, sure, for a while we may feel that all our bodily needs in sex, goods, and power-over-others becomes a good but in the end we feel empty. We wake up and realize the thing we sought for so long and finally attain is empty for us. It does not give us that secret thing we long for, that thing that we cannot name.

Oh, we could go to that whole tradition of philosophical speculation for answers. In our own age Lacan would in his lectures would address it. This sense of ‘lack’ in us as if we were missing something, as if something had been torn from out essential being long before we were born into this world. We seem to sense this loss and become obsessed with finding that ‘thing’ (Lacan’s object petite -a) that is missing. It’s this missing object in our lives that drives all our desires for love, power, and money. We think these things will fill up that emptiness at the core of our being and when it doesn’t, we contemplate the horror of our delirious illusions and delusions. Many will commit suicide on awakening to this realization. Others will move on to even other delusions, follow other trails into self-illusive struggles to fill this hollow life.

E.M. Cioran would spend his whole life studying those extreme creatures of awareness, the mystics of both Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and other faiths who were those whose self-annihilation of self, memory, and consciousness would lead them to states of being outside the human. Yet, he knew that each of these paths was not for him. In the end the vast majority of us are what we are, caught in the trap of knowing and being this thing who will never attain such extremes or enter the portals of some shamanistic, mystic, or extreme state of oblivion, nirvana, or the pleroma. Such things are not for us.

Many of us rage against the night of loss, awake to the powerlessness of self-awareness, personality, and its feigned desires we live out our lives of loneliness, solitude, and conflict. We confront the unknown as unknown. Not as a mystery ill-defined, but as that which is. It’s not a god or God it is this thing we are but without name, the uncreated and unborn being beyond time and consciousness.

This is where David Roden posthuman disconnection thesis comes in handy: “However, we cannot know how disconnection might occur or evaluate it ethically without becoming posthumans or being around to witness their emergence. Thus if we wish to understand and evaluate posthuman life it is in our interest to create posthumans or become posthuman. It is argued that becoming posthuman is preferable to the condition of passive witnesses since in becoming posthuman we may be in a position to autonomously shape the character of posthuman life. Anything short of a commitment to engineering posthumanity involves an uninformed rejection of its value.”

This is where we are now. We ponder not only our own disconnection but of our strange relations with machinic being and consciousness. At the intersection of humanity and technology (techne) we are in a struggle and conflict with the very notion of something more intelligent than we are suddenly displacing us from the center of creation (the humanist stance). Many are at war with Artificial Intelligence in the arts, commerce, and every other field of endeavor, fearing its potential takeover and exclusion of the human from its labors.

Instead of acceptance of this coming revolution in work and play many fear it. At the heart of much 19th century political thought (i.e., Marxism, Socialism, etc.) was this horror that humans had become mere machines in the cog of commerce, drudges and slaves incorporated into the giant system of Capitalism. But now when machines may attain the ability to do what humans do and displace us, free our lives up for other more creative tasks, we not only are in horror of losing our enslavement to the system we fight against it. Why? We’ve become so ingrained in our slave hood that we no longer believe in something else. Sad.

In visual art, horror vacui, or kenophobia (Greek for ‘fear of the empty’), is a phenomenon in which the entire surface of a space or an artwork is filled with detail and content, leaving as little perceived emptiness as possible.

But what do we truly fear? The emptiness of our own lives, the horror vacui at the center of our being, this ‘lack’ that drives us to fill it up with anything and everything, that drives all our desires for power, lust, and riches. An impossible dream. Nothing will fill that sense of emptiness, that loss, that darkness. We are those creatures for whom nothingness is. Because we are nothing, we do not exist, we are mere thoughts and words devoid of reality we seek outside ourselves that which will give us what we cannot attain from within. Even religion which purports to offer such fulfillment fails us. Religions have produced more war and conflict than any other form of desire in history. Religion has driven fanaticism and wars against all who would not bow to its dogmas and credos. No, religion is not the path for such as we.

Silenus, one of the followers of Dionysus, a Satyr in his wisdom offered this to one human who asked of him “What is to be done?”:

You, most blessed and happiest among humans, may well consider those blessed and happiest who have departed this life before you, and thus you may consider it unlawful, indeed blasphemous, to speak anything ill or false of them, since they now have been transformed into a better and more refined nature. This thought is indeed so old that the one who first uttered it is no longer known; it has been passed down to us from eternity, and hence doubtless it is true. Moreover, you know what is so often said and passes for a trite expression. What is that, he asked? He answered: It is best not to be born at all; and next to that, it is better to die than to live; and this is confirmed even by divine testimony. Pertinently to this they say that Midas, after hunting, asked his captive Silenus somewhat urgently, what was the most desirable thing among humankind. At first he could offer no response, and was obstinately silent. At length, when Midas would not stop plaguing him, he erupted with these words, though very unwillingly: ‘you, seed of an evil genius and precarious offspring of hard fortune, whose life is but for a day, why do you compel me to tell you those things of which it is better you should remain ignorant? For he lives with the least worry who knows not his misfortune; but for humans, the best for them is not to be born at all, not to partake of nature’s excellence; not to be is best, for both sexes. This should be our choice, if choice we have; and the next to this is, when we are born, to die as soon as we can.’ It is plain therefore, that he declared the condition of the dead to be better than that of the living.

– Aristotle, Eudemus (354 BCE), surviving fragment quoted in Plutarch, Moralia. Consolatio ad Apollonium, sec. xxvii (1st century CE) (S. H. transl.)

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©2023 Art by S.C. Hickman

The Dying Earth

The Dying Earth II

in memoriam Jack Vance (August 28, 1916 – May 26, 2013)

A world of fading splendor and decay
Where ancient magic mingles with the dust,
And sunless forests hide forgotten lore
And cities crumble under time’s slow rust;

A world of strange and perilous beauty
Where wonders lurk in every twisted glade,
And monsters prowl the dark and silent night
And wizards weave their spells with arcane shade;

A world of carefree folly and despair
Where life is cheap and death is ever near,
And heroes seek their fortunes or their doom
And maidens sigh for love or shed a tear;

A world of dying dreams and dying hopes
Where nothing lasts and all must pass away,
And yet a spark of glory still remains
A flicker of the sun’s once-brighter ray.

— s.c. hickman 2023

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©2023 Art by S.C. Hickman

Holographic Immersive AI-Generative Gaming of the Future

Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood. How shall I say what wood that was! I never saw so drear, so rank, so arduous a wilderness! Its very memory gives a shape to fear.
— Dante Alighieri, The Inferno

Like most mmorpg’s or singleplayer games either way our avatar (substitute for player sitting at his computer pretending to enter a strange new world adventure through an imaginary cybercreature much like himself) usually awakens to a world that is both strange and foreboding, not knowing who he is, where he is, or what it is he should do. Does our player have special powers in this world? Is he just a dupe of our own foibles and insanities? Is he a likable guy or a rogue psychopath? We don’t know… but here we are standing in the dark woods of some cyberforest that looks like one we might see out our window… with only a backpack, rain jacket, boots, pants, and our emotional ignorance we set out to parts unknown.

I know there was a game already done of Dante’s Inferno, but it was not the best rendition or at least it was very repetitive and boring in many places. I imagine a world that might be an open sandbox like Skyrim rather than its sad mmorpg gesture which for me never worked out. I imagine a new posthuman inferno with all the various attributes of a game of the near future.

I imagine a posthuman cyberpunk city based on the City of Dis is to think of it as a place where humans have transcended their biological limitations and merged with technology, creating a new form of life that is beyond good and evil. The city is a network of interconnected nodes that span the globe, where information flows freely and constantly. The inhabitants are digital entities that can change their appearance and identity at will, exploring various modes of existence and expression. The city is a dynamic and vibrant place that reflects the diversity and creativity of its residents. The city is constantly under evolution, adapting to new challenges and opportunities that arise from the interaction with other forms of intelligence. The city is a utopia for those who seek freedom and innovation, but a nightmare for those who cling to old values and traditions.

A new Dante and Virgil wandering through this strangeness… Virgil as a possible ai-gen avatar with all the basic guide maps, info, help, weapons, and usual attributes of a npc except with a more powerful ai-language model and performance model that allows it like all the enemies in this world of death to act on their own with surprise, intelligence, and uncanny abilities that mimic humanities notions of self-directed mobility and intellect.

Will we at some point in the future have truly immersive ai experience that will do away with all external systems and pull us into a holographic world so real we will not be able to distinguish it from the Real? I assume that they will have to unlock power and resources much greater than we have on planet earth at the moment since our electrical grid is almost stretched to the limit as is. Some ability to tap into quantum physics that has of yet to be discovered. Possibly. Either way, the notion of playing against a superior ai intelligence in a sand box world that is so real one would feel that uncanny strangeness would be both fascinating and dreadful.

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©2023 Art by S.C. Hickman

Western Art

Where I live rodeos and Western art are a big deal. Most of Charles Russel’s and many other art collections are at the Cody, Wy Museum of the West. Tried not to use any known artists. Obviously the ai will do whatever it does. Some of the best western artists are: Howard Terpning, Martin Grelle, G. Harvey, Chris Owen, Tim Cox, James Bama, Bruce Greene, Frank McCarthy, and Bill Anton.

I still used the styles I like best, more abstract painterly.

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©2023 S.C. Hickman