This brings to mind Rene Girard's Mimetic Theory and the neverending escalation of mimetic violence that destroys communities and will end up consuming our world if we're not careful. This is why non-violent action is so powerful and the only way out of the cycle. Non-violent action transcends violence because it points to qualitative goods that are beyond the ownership of any person. These are goods which are owned by Being itself. The commons must be re-oriented vertically, not toward those who have the most physical goods, but towards higher principles that can only be felt and encountered in the embodied Being that lives in each one of us. No one can take that away from anyone else. This sense of transcendent Being gives true power to those who seek a non-violent path, even if this means we end up crucified in the end for the crime of pointing to the truth of all things.
Spot on, and beautifully expressed. I’ve thought of Gerard’s work a few times since the shooting, I’d love to see a deep dive through that frame, definitely feels relevant.
That's very beautifully expressed charity. It's all true, in the same way that what Luigi and other revolutionaries have done, was trully necessary. Non violence & Ahimsa serve a purpose just as boundaries, reclamations and actions serve a purpose. Even Jesus Christ had a violent demonstration by flipping the tables of the merchants at his temple. This is exactly what Luigi is doing: flipping the tables of the invasive n abusive olygarchy. Amen
I have no inclination to subscribe to any religious ideology, though if my understanding of what the term Christ Consciousness might refer to, your comment further clarifies ‘This sense of transcendent Being’.
I'm with you on that one, T. L., I'm not one to subscribe to religious ideology either but I'm also not one to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is something very profound about the Christ story that resonates throughout the ages and still resonates throughout our culture, at least here in the West. I think Christ consciousness can indeed be a synonym for the transcendent Being that I'm referring to. In my experience, these terms, along with Girard's work, can help open up the Passion narrative for us seculars in a way that may have been inaccessible to us before.
That was a tour de force, Alexander. Best article I've read all year. Other people got trapped in the murder vs justice bind but you jumped to the meta level and accurately analysed the forces at play. So lucid. BTW, did you see that mother (another denied claim) got thrown in jail for saying her health insurer will be next. Slammed with $100k bond. The power structures protect the guilty elites.
Hey Alex, I’ve been following you since the RW days and just wanted to say I think this piece is a real testament to your arc since ~2016. You’ve clearly put in a lot of hard work and it’s really paying off in useful, shareable, genuine insights. To me that’s the mark of a true thinker. The world needs your voice man - more than ever. Hope you’ll keep it up and keep connected to whatever stokes your fire ;)
Yes if Citizens United codifies “corporate personhood”, the assassination seems like a kind of horrific blowback for the mayhem that concept has wrought on our society.
I have been with people who beg for health insurance, and they will pay a high price to get it. They are desperate to get insured, psychiatric help, or medical help from the medical industrial complex. They choose to get the insurance. When this hit against an insurance executive pops up on their social media feed, they might question why somebody would risk their freedom and even their life to kill an insurance executive. They might question the value of insurance. Factories are not being burned to the ground by disgruntled employees. But people are learning about evils of systems that they once trusted. When they lose trust in those systems, they will not engage with those systems. The whole medical tyranny, false God, outright lies, can fall apart in a week. People will just stop paying for insurance. It’s not about insurance companies, denying claims. Even when they pay for the medicine, the medicine is crap. This whole corrupt castle of lies is falling apart. It’s been shredded by the Internet.
Social media and the billions of connections between us is the subconscious mind of humanity. It’s actually a beautiful thing to see this collective dark, bright, consciousness coming to life globally. I am optimistic because my subconscious mind can go to dark places but it is a bright thing. I believe most people‘s minds are bright things, and I believe the collective subconscious mind of the entire earth will be a bright thing. But stories of darkness need to be told and lived through.
Morality is a result of lived experience. When one of my girlfriends revealed to her mother that her father had sexually abused her when she was young, that man was banished from the family forever. He died alone in a strange land.
Nature wins. The laws of nature can never be violated.
The worst slavery is that of heavily indoctrinated happy morons who adore their chains and cannot wait to thank their masters for the joy of their subservience."
The algorithms of machine learning are not “impossibly opaque and complex.” I strongly recommend Resisting AI: An anti-fascist approach to Artificial Intelligence. In a pretty succinct book, Dan McQuillan explains them to a non-technical audience. He does so to de-mystify their operations and to blast holes in the notion that machines, at least at this time, are intelligent.
He’s “a lecturer in Creative and Social Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London,” according to the back cover.
We all need to learn to demolish the claims of pseudoscientists.
I am currently writing on a variety of topics on Medium. One of them is AI.
Yes. In his 16-page first chapter, he puts it forth in language that the educated non-tech person can grasp. The entire book is 160 pages long--serious without being long-winded. Bristol University Press. There is an ebook version as well.
I think conscious people should use AI for good. Otherwise, it will just be used for evil by unconscious people. It's a powerful tool. It just amplifies whatever you use it for.
Except that conscious people are generally not billionaires. Only the ruling elite can control the apparatus. Any ordinary schlepp using AI-driven applications needs to be made painfully aware of how the apps work and the problems they cause. This is not the approach that many of us on the internet have taken in the past. We just jump on platforms run by billionaires and fill in the white space they so magnanimously provide.
Which begs the question Martin what were you before and who have you become now.
I resent the pervasive intrusion of AI and the fact that it is being used to control and surveil in ways that would make Orwell turn in his grave and us all lesser humans. That said violence is not an acceptable response in civil context.
AI has been life-changing for me. It helped me generate potent new ideas for my next book. It accelerated my writing speed by 50 times. It gave me incredible advice on marketing. It helped me clarify my likes and dislikes. It helped me see the contexts in which I flourish. It's 10 times better than the best psychologist or life coach.
Thank you Ali for this delicately nuanced piece. Many of us have likely been grappling with the internal contradictions of our reaction to this latest “breach” as you so eloquently describe it. I found your framing of an embodied, qualitative, existential response versus the abstract, quantitative, machine exchange quite useful in reconciling my own cognitive dilemma 🙏🏼
It certainly feels like we are crossing a revolutionary rubicon, doesn't it? Many of us are quite ready to throw a 12 Monkeys Wrench into the gears of this increasingly Odious Machine. Your piece is a sublime call to action. Time to pull our heads (and personal data) out of The Cloud and re-embody with our feet on the Sacred Earth 🌎
Yes. You can get a good grasp just from Chapter 1's sixteen pages. He puts it forth as succinctly painlessly as I think is possible. Bristol University Press, 2022, 160 pages total. It's also available as an e-book from Barnes and Noble.
what a great piece! thank you Ali for sharing your wisdom with us. Looking forward to more opportunities to connect and make sense of all of this as a community. Sending love from Moldova
Just one word: brilliant. I will try to upgrade to paid. I have, at least, ordered your book! As someone said, there are so many good writers on Substack, it would be handy if they all joined together to form their own online newspaper.
This is an excellent piece. We are seeing this same "quantitative/qualitative" structure happening in psychotherapy. "Measurement-based care." Same slippery path. Great nourishment. Thank you.
This brings to mind Rene Girard's Mimetic Theory and the neverending escalation of mimetic violence that destroys communities and will end up consuming our world if we're not careful. This is why non-violent action is so powerful and the only way out of the cycle. Non-violent action transcends violence because it points to qualitative goods that are beyond the ownership of any person. These are goods which are owned by Being itself. The commons must be re-oriented vertically, not toward those who have the most physical goods, but towards higher principles that can only be felt and encountered in the embodied Being that lives in each one of us. No one can take that away from anyone else. This sense of transcendent Being gives true power to those who seek a non-violent path, even if this means we end up crucified in the end for the crime of pointing to the truth of all things.
Spot on, and beautifully expressed. I’ve thought of Gerard’s work a few times since the shooting, I’d love to see a deep dive through that frame, definitely feels relevant.
That's very beautifully expressed charity. It's all true, in the same way that what Luigi and other revolutionaries have done, was trully necessary. Non violence & Ahimsa serve a purpose just as boundaries, reclamations and actions serve a purpose. Even Jesus Christ had a violent demonstration by flipping the tables of the merchants at his temple. This is exactly what Luigi is doing: flipping the tables of the invasive n abusive olygarchy. Amen
Thank you for your considerate response. I look forward to exploring Girad’s work.
I have no inclination to subscribe to any religious ideology, though if my understanding of what the term Christ Consciousness might refer to, your comment further clarifies ‘This sense of transcendent Being’.
I'm with you on that one, T. L., I'm not one to subscribe to religious ideology either but I'm also not one to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is something very profound about the Christ story that resonates throughout the ages and still resonates throughout our culture, at least here in the West. I think Christ consciousness can indeed be a synonym for the transcendent Being that I'm referring to. In my experience, these terms, along with Girard's work, can help open up the Passion narrative for us seculars in a way that may have been inaccessible to us before.
That was a tour de force, Alexander. Best article I've read all year. Other people got trapped in the murder vs justice bind but you jumped to the meta level and accurately analysed the forces at play. So lucid. BTW, did you see that mother (another denied claim) got thrown in jail for saying her health insurer will be next. Slammed with $100k bond. The power structures protect the guilty elites.
Hey Alex, I’ve been following you since the RW days and just wanted to say I think this piece is a real testament to your arc since ~2016. You’ve clearly put in a lot of hard work and it’s really paying off in useful, shareable, genuine insights. To me that’s the mark of a true thinker. The world needs your voice man - more than ever. Hope you’ll keep it up and keep connected to whatever stokes your fire ;)
Thank you so much Sam - comments like this fill me with energy and keep me inspired, I really appreciate it.
Yes if Citizens United codifies “corporate personhood”, the assassination seems like a kind of horrific blowback for the mayhem that concept has wrought on our society.
That first paragraph sums us up: enraged at not being treated fairly, not the cage.
Damn, I hadn’t even considered that subtext fully - spot on
I have been with people who beg for health insurance, and they will pay a high price to get it. They are desperate to get insured, psychiatric help, or medical help from the medical industrial complex. They choose to get the insurance. When this hit against an insurance executive pops up on their social media feed, they might question why somebody would risk their freedom and even their life to kill an insurance executive. They might question the value of insurance. Factories are not being burned to the ground by disgruntled employees. But people are learning about evils of systems that they once trusted. When they lose trust in those systems, they will not engage with those systems. The whole medical tyranny, false God, outright lies, can fall apart in a week. People will just stop paying for insurance. It’s not about insurance companies, denying claims. Even when they pay for the medicine, the medicine is crap. This whole corrupt castle of lies is falling apart. It’s been shredded by the Internet.
Social media and the billions of connections between us is the subconscious mind of humanity. It’s actually a beautiful thing to see this collective dark, bright, consciousness coming to life globally. I am optimistic because my subconscious mind can go to dark places but it is a bright thing. I believe most people‘s minds are bright things, and I believe the collective subconscious mind of the entire earth will be a bright thing. But stories of darkness need to be told and lived through.
Morality is a result of lived experience. When one of my girlfriends revealed to her mother that her father had sexually abused her when she was young, that man was banished from the family forever. He died alone in a strange land.
Nature wins. The laws of nature can never be violated.
The worst slavery is that of heavily indoctrinated happy morons who adore their chains and cannot wait to thank their masters for the joy of their subservience."
— Yanis Varoufakis
The algorithms of machine learning are not “impossibly opaque and complex.” I strongly recommend Resisting AI: An anti-fascist approach to Artificial Intelligence. In a pretty succinct book, Dan McQuillan explains them to a non-technical audience. He does so to de-mystify their operations and to blast holes in the notion that machines, at least at this time, are intelligent.
He’s “a lecturer in Creative and Social Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London,” according to the back cover.
We all need to learn to demolish the claims of pseudoscientists.
I am currently writing on a variety of topics on Medium. One of them is AI.
I’m referring to AI opacity - is his argument that it’s a myth? Would be interested to dive in if so
Yes. In his 16-page first chapter, he puts it forth in language that the educated non-tech person can grasp. The entire book is 160 pages long--serious without being long-winded. Bristol University Press. There is an ebook version as well.
I think conscious people should use AI for good. Otherwise, it will just be used for evil by unconscious people. It's a powerful tool. It just amplifies whatever you use it for.
Except that conscious people are generally not billionaires. Only the ruling elite can control the apparatus. Any ordinary schlepp using AI-driven applications needs to be made painfully aware of how the apps work and the problems they cause. This is not the approach that many of us on the internet have taken in the past. We just jump on platforms run by billionaires and fill in the white space they so magnanimously provide.
Which begs the question Martin what were you before and who have you become now.
I resent the pervasive intrusion of AI and the fact that it is being used to control and surveil in ways that would make Orwell turn in his grave and us all lesser humans. That said violence is not an acceptable response in civil context.
AI has been life-changing for me. It helped me generate potent new ideas for my next book. It accelerated my writing speed by 50 times. It gave me incredible advice on marketing. It helped me clarify my likes and dislikes. It helped me see the contexts in which I flourish. It's 10 times better than the best psychologist or life coach.
It is actively destroying the planet with every query. There is no ethical use of AI.
Love this analysis! The ghost does live in the machine after all.
Thanks! And great metaphor, I should have used that :D
Thank you for this !
Thanks for reading :)
Thank you Ali for this delicately nuanced piece. Many of us have likely been grappling with the internal contradictions of our reaction to this latest “breach” as you so eloquently describe it. I found your framing of an embodied, qualitative, existential response versus the abstract, quantitative, machine exchange quite useful in reconciling my own cognitive dilemma 🙏🏼
It certainly feels like we are crossing a revolutionary rubicon, doesn't it? Many of us are quite ready to throw a 12 Monkeys Wrench into the gears of this increasingly Odious Machine. Your piece is a sublime call to action. Time to pull our heads (and personal data) out of The Cloud and re-embody with our feet on the Sacred Earth 🌎
Yes. You can get a good grasp just from Chapter 1's sixteen pages. He puts it forth as succinctly painlessly as I think is possible. Bristol University Press, 2022, 160 pages total. It's also available as an e-book from Barnes and Noble.
Fantastic
what a great piece! thank you Ali for sharing your wisdom with us. Looking forward to more opportunities to connect and make sense of all of this as a community. Sending love from Moldova
Thanks Nico :)
Just one word: brilliant. I will try to upgrade to paid. I have, at least, ordered your book! As someone said, there are so many good writers on Substack, it would be handy if they all joined together to form their own online newspaper.
This is an excellent piece. We are seeing this same "quantitative/qualitative" structure happening in psychotherapy. "Measurement-based care." Same slippery path. Great nourishment. Thank you.