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BIG mind, little mind

Something got me thinking about that old conundrum again; the annoying observation that the one thing the human mind can't bear to contemplate is the human mind.

But I recall trying to explain to Aqualad why it sparks small terrors when I catch glimpses of my inner mind; how it feels like a crack in sanity when in a fugue, for instance, I catch little dreams which one should not see when awake but only in sleep when dreams come conveniently packaged with eraser pills so that you forget.. Little waking dreams which reveal that my brain is still busy trying to solve yesterday's dilemmas but sampling the wrong realms. Like trying to find my lost bottle of pills but searching my minecraft world for them. Mixing real life with a video game. That "error" should not scare me. That should not smack of mental deficit or craziness. I understand why these things seem to happen; how a mind can work through metaphor, or how my interpretations are lost in translation.

But it does torment a little. Not playing too much Minecraft might have dismissed that particular issue and so might getting enough sleep but that doesn't answer the question. Why does it push my buttons?

Today I'm inclined to think that it's not the subject matter of inner mind that spooks but simply proximity. I spent earlier years swiftly collecting revelations and small enlightenments and assuming there might be much to come in that journey; that a unity of mind was possible. And that set me exploring many things, like poets who seemed to speak of such oneness; such evolution.

But now I feel that unity of mind is the very thing we fear most of all. It is clear the instinctive mind is vastly more powerful than consciousness. Today I surmise that that imbalance is so tremendous that our real mind must protect consciousness from itself. Because there is some independence of course. The inner mind cannot control this new thing called consciousness; only influence it by playing tricks on it. But wait. Haven't I come to these conclusions before? And to imagine that consciousness might control inner mind is even more far-fetched.  

Oh well. The point is: I don't feel today that it is evidence of an inner mind's flaws that is so scary but merely the presence of the inner mind itself; even just a glimpse of it. It is like coming face to face with God.

And suddenly seeming... utterly... powerless.

Today is quite possibly a landmark day in the final accounting of my life, for reasons having nothing to do with the above thoughts so far as I know. I hope to return tomorrow and tell you about it.

Court rooms and crapshoots

I recently survived a long bout of crime/courtroom real-life Netflix drama. Oh boy. What a grueling bout of prosecutor and cop corruption and flagrant miscarriage. And this is with my BS filter on high alert with a close eye on the method, apparent intent and biases of the filmmakers.

What is soon apparent is the horrible realization that not only is justice a deeply slippery intangible ambition but the formula we've concocted to find it is like a four-lane bridge with a three-and-a-half lane gaping hole in it.

There is an assumption that the court system is designed to discover the truth, but if such a blueprint was ever devised we can't possibly be following it.

Cops are definitely not responsible for truth, and no offence intended. That is not at all their job. They perform their job tactically in accordance to situations. Cops reasonably assume that the truth is the objective of prosecutors and court rooms, after they've jailed a suspect. 

Prosecutors have very little incentive toward truth. They are judged, rewarded or reprimanded by their ability to settle cases by one means or another. And for those cases which make it to court it is not their job to find the truth but to win. One way or another. And by the way the temptation to cheat and the opportunity to cheat, are both immense. And to sweep those realities under the rug we sanctify their positions and pretend that they are above reproach, for no precise reason at all.

And where they might be inclined to turn on their too-cozy relationship with law officers in any pursuit of truth they face the frightening monster that is cop solidarity. Find me a cop anywhere - anywhere! ...who is more loyal to the people they purport to serve or to truth or to justice than they are to each other.

And this phenomenon is too universal to blame on individual cops. It's there because of the paradigms they are bred in. Their jobs are dangerous and bloody difficult in ways that don't resemble other jobs. They will naturally lean hard on one another for support and survival.

Witnesses are examined without proper regard for the realities and flaws of human memory and they are put under such scrutiny and threat that they are almost certainly scared into regarding their own safety above the pursuit of truth, not to mention the biases they come pre-equipped with.

When we're talking about the most perilous cases, they are jury-decided and there things really pour down the rabbit hole. Judges have very limited opportunity to guide juries or to guide lawyers. They are auditors of process. The one player who might actually be equipped to finding truth as well as devoted to it, at least at a conscious level, the judge, is removed from the ultimate decision.

As with every (or nearly every) institution or organization, the fatal flaw in the courtroom design is that their rules, process and philosophies rely on illusion, They fail to recognize basic human nature. Human beings will behave in ways that best appear loyal to law, rule, and loyalty to the organization but secretly bent toward the selfish wishes of their egos; secrets often not even privy to the individual's consciousness; the main reason all organizations are to some significant degree corrupted.

Part of the problem with ego in this environment is that egos fool most of the people in a room into thinking that they alone are the smartest person in the room. And everyone involved in a court case; lawyer, witness, judge, jury assumes much too early that they know the truth about unproven elements, and they will espouse those presumptions and resist new evidence to the contrary.

And once juries are left to their own devices, they are almost always immediately split, and not with logic then paving the way to consensus but with subservience to the more persuasive personalities among them.

I never met the lawyer, poet and writer, Ed Wildman. He sadly departed before his friends became my friends. But he was known to say that there was more justice on the streets than in courtrooms: "In the street men generally get what's coming to them. In the courtroom it's a crapshoot."

Of course there are forces in the courtroom that are anything but random. Such as who has the most resources. Whether corporations or individuals, rich defendants have a great track record in courtrooms, and lets face it, in this society there are very few truly lawful ways to get rich.

How to stop the rich from buying legal victory by out-spending the poor? Here's a suggestion:

A court case combatant (plaintiff/prosecutor/defendant) can hire/employ pre-trial counsel and/or investigators as desired but trial lawyers are assigned by the courts. Trial lawyers would be financially incentivized by receiving ratings based on their performance and seniority, paid accordingly, and assigned to cases relative to a simple case-rating system. Cases with the most at stake (dollar amounts/maximum sentences) receive the highest-rated lawyers - on both sides.

Junior lawyers start out serving as assistants to mentoring high-rated lawyers on high-rated cases thus employing defense teams.

Successful claimants and defendants declared innocent pay nothing for their trial lawyer(s) whose performance-based incomes are generated by a tax on the damages and fines paid by the guilty.

With lawyers not being paid directly by their clients it enables this important game-changer:

A lawyer's objective is then not primarily to win, and their score-carding system will reflect it: A lawyer's job is then to seek the truth, each beginning from the perspective of their "client." But their loyalty, as with the judge, is first to justice, truth, and the people.

Another thing: Cop solidarity must be bred out of the system. It is one of the most problematic corruptions in our society. At the least, shouldn't individual police positions be rotated regularly so that familiarization does not take hold? Perhaps a cop's partners should always be newish. I'm sure there are many other ways to support them and fight the problem if we think about it.

With juries I am deeply suspicious of this consensus rule. Where juries are split for a long long time can we not drag some common sense into the equation? Can we not infer that no obvious truth has been made apparent? Can we not then look at liability and guard against the worst possible scenario perhaps?

Look at the case where the defendant spent more than a decade in jail for murder before being discovered innocent thanks to the maturation of DNA evidence technology. Almost miraculously, a bitter cop community soon tried to pin another murder on him where court proceedings pointed at a host of holes in their case. Despite this, eleven gullible members of the jury put him behind bars again following the drawn out bullying of the lone member initially leaning towards the guilty decision.

In that case here was the worst possible scenario consideration. If he was truly guilty but declared innocent, he'd be freed but after spending two decades in prison and detention; thus he already served a 20-year sentence for one murder anyway! Almost zero jeopardy!

Instead they probably re-jailed an innocent man who then spends almost his entire adult life in jail for no reasons. Probably the most tragic jeopardy imaginable. And this is what they took a chance on. To this day people and organizations devote their lives to trying to free this man. What a human catastrophe. They chose to risk the worst possible scenario.

Even when juries are removed from the system I know there are problems. I 've been personally involved in three court cases without juries and every one was a complete debacle.

1. The defendant presented his case to the duty counsel who walked into court, entirely forgot every promise to the client and basically tied a ribbon around him and made a gift of him to the prosecutor and the judge, who seemed thick as thieves. The latter ridiculed the defendant, forgetting he was a judge and not the world's lamest shock comedian. 

2. The court failed to allow a mentally challenged man to get the assistance he required in order to assemble a competent counsel and was easily bullied into complete submission by his opponent.

3. The defendant's documents which proved him innocent or at least 99% so, were of no interest to the busy prosecutor who warned he should accept a deal on a lesser charge and pay $200 instead of risking a $1500 fine plus further tribulations if he risked going before the judge. He could have read the documents and came to the obvious conclusion to drop the case. The defendant, not imagining how he could possibly come up with $1500 complied and went home $200 poorer and his dignity pulverized, this after the deal was finalized by the judge goading the baffled defendant into lying in court in order to justify the details of the artificial arrangement. It all came down to governmental financial management with no regard for truth.

Oh by the way, the great lion's share of USA's two million inmates are poor black men who balked as per above principal and are jailed without trial but through intimidation and the threat of much longer sentences if they don't accept the plea bargain. Logic dictates that the number of incarcerated innocent in the USA is overwhelming. 

I'm glad I almost knew you Ed. Crapshoots indeed. Let us all remember that and guide our affairs accordingly.

Lawyers in Love

Oppose the growing entitlement and presumption of corporations for government hand-outs in favour of equality and support for the poor. 

WALK AWAY FROM THIS POST

If you know me in real life this post is not for you. Be a mature adult, take my warning and just go away and forget about it.

For those who don’t know me, it’s W-Day:

Weary, withering, wasted…

The wonderful, worldly, we-oriented, World Citizen has whisked these words along from the west coast:

Wake up! 

And it is magically, hilariously, precisely relevant. I am absolutely one atom away from being asleep right now. My brain is a wreck. Just coming up with the above alliteration has drained me for the day. After an almost-week of mildly less then normal sleep performance I have spent a couple days doing almost nothing but sleeping, and yet in the few-hour segments in between epic naps I remain dead tired.

I will catch up on the V column one fine day when I can almost-function again. For now I take this critical W assignment and give it a quick hatchet job as best I can. Ready?

Environmentally you could say there are two kinds of people in the world; those who are apparently ignorant or uncaring with regards to the “planet” and the future of humanity, and those who appear to care but are deluded as to the reality of the situation.

Many of the nicest people I know are online getting all romantic about the environment and how it is getting a much needed break from us. And some jump to the absurd notion that we are starting to wake up! (and smell the coffee environmentally)

It is the death of all hope if the people we count on to lead us to salvation have no idea what they’re doing.

For countless reasons, over and over through decades, thousands have said "People are finally waking up!" No we are not. At best, precious minorities of people have woken from deeply deluded dreams into slightly less deluded dreams. In general we are more asleep than ever and falling into impossible traps to escape from. The very best and very worst case scenarios for Covid-19 are the same scenario: That the human population, beautiful, pitiable and perfectly insane, will be drastically alarmingly reduced.

Have I lost the last reader now? Good. ‘Cause no one will want to read this:

These messages I hear about how great it is that mother nature is getting a well deserved rest is precisely this:

A Nazi shoots a machine gun into a crowd of prisoners as they gradually tumble to their deaths. But then he throws the machine gun to the ground, pulls out a hand gun and begins killing them one bullet at a time. And one well-meaning stander-by says “Ah, how great they’re getting a well-deserved rest.”

I can’t seem to find another human being who actually understands how causality works (they all think they do) or another human being who understands the complex components, system and fragile configurations of the biosphere, which humans, even at this moment, are systematically dismantling it at an utterly unfathomable speed by any realistic cosmic context.

Am I going to do anything about it? Of course not. But I’m also not going to hide from the truth. And I’m not going to hide from the truth because I have a relationship with truth which no other human I know appears to have. (Tolle does, by the way). As for the biosphere’s plight; I am useless. Group one above is also useless as is group two.

Am I angry about this? No. But sometimes I am frustrated because communication with other people about the core dramas of our reality is fucking impossible and there is a kind of loneliness there which sometimes frustrates me. A lot of that frustration is aimed back at myself: for why have I failed to teach anyone anything despite all the research I do?

Here’s a great bit of comedy: Michael Moore has released a film Planet of the Humans. I haven’t watched it yet even though, as my brother noted in an email about it, it’s right up my apparently-narrow alley.

It may be vain and foolish to assume the film will only reveal the epic load of crap I already know, such as the preposterousness of practically every mainstream green organization and the utter fallacy of “industrial green clean energy.” All industry is a bullet to the head of the biosphere, including windmill and solar panel industries. There is no escaping this reality. But I can’t help instinctively making that assumption and I don’t feel quite in the mood just yet for going down a dark ugly rabbit hole that I already know like the back of my hand. (I promise to report back once I actually view the film.)

A part of the problem is that I assume that Moore (knowing how he rolls) will get caught up in the facade and guilt of things which I don’t really care to get wrapped up in. I don’t want to point fingers. Global human insanity starts at the core of the illusion; the gap between real instinctive mind and our outrageously flawed stuttering early evolution of consciousness. And we’re all in this together.

For a long long time as I say little about this matter, sensing no will around me to hear it, I have held a vain hope that some genius would come along and tell me why I’m wrong about the simple reality of biosphere and industry and just the other night I managed to get in on a webinar regarding green economy (what a wonderful fantasy) with none other than Noam Chomsky the special guest.

This could be my big chance! To get this question to him?

But the question panel grew fast and immediately and I realized I had no chance. But half way up I found a very similar question, framed around the claims of Moore’s The Planet of Humans. I discovered that one could comment on a question though it was rarely done. So I did: “I pray this question gets up-voted. It is critical!”

Lo and behold the comment, regardless of its content, visually drew attention. And immediately people were hitting the vote button and the question gradually rose to the top and was addressed. The host completely bungled it. It was not worded perfectly and the host made it worse. Chomsky gave an awkward 3-or-4 word dismissive response.

Thanks host. Thanks humans. Thank you for being so reliably; so tirelessly useless.

But did Chomsky fully misunderstand the question? I don’t really think he could have. Why did he not try to address it better?

Could he still be in the dark, environmentally? Brainy as he is? Perhaps?

Or is it this?

Does he see the same dilemma which concerns me?

Does he feel that to communicate every truth to the masses, were it accepted, result in complete despair and disorder; chaos?

Even if climate change is largely a red herring (not for being untrue but for being ultimately irrelevant), is it a placebo in effect which might keep cold-hearted humans acting responsible because there appears to be hope?

There is another reality here, perhaps most important of all. Nothing is immortal in this universe. Not humans, not Earth. Not the sun. But our living experiences are immortal because we experience no beginning or end. We are not aware of our own birth and death. That makes for A LOT to think about.

The end is inevitable even if sadly coming way sooner than necessary (except perhaps for the lucky grandchildren of the ultimately criminal super-duper-pooper rich who have been stealing from us all and will afford trillion dollar seats on Elon’s Mars rockets maybe?) well so what?

Why not exist at or near the inevitable end? Why take it as tragedy? There is still opportunity to evolve our minds and to love and to seek survival within whatever like-minded community we arrange ourselves. And if necessary to go out not with a bang but gracefully; respectfully; lovingly.

Have I been at all coherent? I don’t know why I write this. I don’t want to stomp on people I love who have been writing so hopefully and romantically and with flawed logic. They are good people. But I do get deeply, unwisely, lonesomely frustrated sometimes. I am far from the top of my spiritual game…

Stuff to think about.  

Kindness

Okay, back to the A-to-Z where it’s K time, boys and girls. And the kind, knowledgeable, keen, kurious, kourageous, king of the kitchen; the kidneyless kid; the Earnest Chef has kicked in the following K word for our konsideration. Let’s do something with it:

Karma

I could write all day and night about this, which would not serve the A-Z enterprise well at all. Let me try to boil my thoughts down to their briefest essence.

When I have been most loving, not in specific moments but in periods of frequent moments, those are the same periods in which I needed little love in return. In fact when I have been most loving I have required NO love in return, yet in those same times I did receive the most love.

The give and take part sounds like Karma, eh?

But with the irony; that I received it when I did not need it, I can easily interpret the same causation which reveals that behavior and rewards can not be bought and sold. Religion seems to bribe you: Behave like an angel and you’ll be invited into paradise.

It doesn’t work. The universe can not be fooled. When illusions are defeated the freedom is real. ACTING nice can draw others into ACTING nice to you. This is lovely but it can be a counterfeit currency. Nothing compares to the reality.

Loving because your mind is so clear that there is no other option but to love, that is real. And in that state nothing fools you. There are literally no fears or problems of any consequence because they have no power of illusion over you.

There are so many religious, poetic, mystical ways of looking at this stuff but the scientific way is a valid, beautiful, comforting method which can encompass the other… umbrellas.

When we are pure - which can be done in moments! Do not despair that such an evolution is out of reach! - when we are pure, the integrity that is our natural process brings out harmony, kindness, selflessness and what we get in return - call it Karma if you want - is the other face of freedom. It’s the joy we get in the immense privilege to be human. The joyful reality of our circumstance is unveiled.

The flip side: When our clouded deluded ego-infested mind exudes the selfish lack of integrity and we put bad things into our community we pay the price - again, call it karma if you wish. We forbid ourselves from participating in real freedom and real joy.

Karma is not magic. It is ever so precisely a reality that is measurable in the scientific view. 

Growing up

I am so old that my life can now be conveniently measured in centuries. This week I officially turned .5 centuries old. And I feel like it. Though I seem to remember youth as though it were very recent, I have felt old for years now. In physical terms this age brings growing hardship. In terms of emotional health it is a comfort.

My older friends are aghast when I report being old and they insist that no, I am young. But I cannot abide their optimistic view. They seem to imagine that they are still young and that all these physical ailments are some cruel offence against us. But of course we are old. These wonders of technology and medical wizardry are a perversion to natural life (for which I am grateful!) and so of course they come with costs. These tricks prolong life but not youth. We are a race of elderly. Of course we should expect to suffer. Unfortunately there is no fairness to it. I have suffered less than my share while others whom I love have suffered more. When my dues finally mature I only hope to make peace with my own ills.

Meanwhile this milestone comes at a convenient juncture. As the many symptoms of my own neglect ramp up and finally weigh so heavily that I am truly moved toward self-improvement, so does this 50-year marker remind me how little I have accomplished in terms of the outer purpose I so easily recognized for myself years ago. I seem to have taken the easiest, most optimistic approaches to this goal, expecting myself to have the ability to successfully communicate when the moment calls for it, and for others to easily catch on, and perhaps most significantly: for others to make the rare assumption that I actually possess (or may possess) the rare insights I hint at.

Well this all has to go.

I have toyed with many organizational structures for documenting my learning and many attempts at writing THE BOOK. I have tried it as biography and other forms of non-fiction and also as eclectic collections by different themes and structures. No attempt has lasted long.

Recently I believe I may have realized finally what angle I should approach it from, which I intend to explain later. 

Aqualad told me recently that teaching is a good way to learn, and I get that. I am thankful for that reminder and reinforcement. And this, after I confessed my own doubt in being a teacher to him, for the reason that it might - it might - be fair to say that the program I dared to teach is one that I have not truly graduated from myself.

The first step toward everything; a program for others, a one-off problem solving tool for others, a book that “the world” might need to hear, and perhaps most important of all: a written “proof” behind my condition; a consolidation for my own confidence, was completed - oh - more than a decade ago. And still I have not taken the obvious second step! Which is to flesh out the framework; the complex hierarchy, into a proper outline. To assemble all the math, in other words.

Why have I avoided this so long! Subconscious fear? Laziness?

I have to do this. And I realize that this is probably a test. If I do it - and I must - I will appreciate a result. Maybe I will be reinforced and emboldened. Or maybe I will fail and fall into doubt, and turn to some other outer purpose.

Why 2019 will be a great year...

… or else disastrous. I’m fairly sure it will be one or the other.

Here’s 2018 at a glance:

• celebrated somewhere between ten and fifteen good night’s sleeps
• was tired and/or dazed almost every waking-ish moment.
• made about a dozen good decisions and at least ten thousand noticeably bad ones.
• got fatter, pushing the limits of available affordable clothing. Even the shockingly outrageously expensive fat guy stores are growing a little doubtful when I squeeze through their door.

• I much enjoyed the constant servicing of my first undoubtedly real addiction - every single day as far as I recall, which, by the way, I imagined that I could actually give up any semblance of a healthy life in exchange for. Yes, I could actually imagine (not desire but imagine) giving up all my creative projects (roughly 150 active projects on file!), plus all my goals plus all my friends in exchange for a life immersed in my addiction, and this without any sense of alarm at all. This strikes me as a useful test by the way: if this can be imagined without alarm. This thing is not a secret by the way but I wish to reveal it in a more useful way than this, and soon. For now, I seek brevity.
• My mobility has reduced drastically and my volume of employment and financial functionality likewise.
• I have been entirely scattered in my pursuits and badly unproductive. I started many new projects and finished a couple. 
• I have made little net progress taking back my bedroom from the storage room it ruthlessly evolved into.
• I have been almost entirely unmindful; unconscious; instinctive; spiritually asleep.
• I have been mostly without pity and with feelings closer to contempt or disdain for these creatures of society who surround and resemble me so much.
• I have let many close personal relationships suffer, and felt unwisely grieved over some which I covet too dearly.
• I have also made valuable, unlikely new friendships.
• Somewhat surprisingly this year I have received more support, and commitment to keeping me working - at sites I can handle - from my employer. The prospects look good for 2019 if I can keep my mobility from slipping further.

Causality is so profoundly simple in nature but so uncontainably complex in its networks that we imagine it to be something other than what it is, so as to indulge in vain fantasies of the why and the blame… but I can trace some generalities: Lack of sleep and lack of mindfulness both hover near the centre of this great mess, like two galaxies converging into chaos, and I am finally at the point where I can more than just identify the most useful initial battlefields should I take an interest in living again, before (in some ways) it is too late. I am at the point, very recently, where I imagine the addiction contained in its place and imagine the specific tinkerings of a comprehensively healthy life, and it all looks and feels good to me. Not just that the rewards look good to me but the path looks good to me. It looks difficult and doable and satisfying. If I was prone to that thing called hope it would be applicable here.

Something really seems to be happening to me now, and I aim to share it here, for I have felt for some time that the real purpose of this blog, should it ever mature, is to document my struggle; that which regards my inner purpose. Though I intend to go on sharing my outer purpose amusements as well. I expect 2019 to be a busy year for us, dear blog. I dare to intend to visit daily.

Okay… five times a week?

Hi. How are you?

Hi. How are you?

This has long been a strange question to hear. Not that I criticize. I use it myself all the time.

But how to possibly generalize? At every moment there is always so much good and so much bad.

How are you, according to whatever peculiar perspective you are currently inclined toward? ...is perhaps the long form of this question.

Lately, as I frequently hear this question, I have often found myself responding with some loose variation of the following: Well I’m alive, I’m human and living on a paradise called Earth. I’ve won three of the best lotteries in the known universe. Other then that there’s a lot of room for improvement. I heard myself tell one dear associate recently: But I haven’t won the lottery where I remain permanently enlightened at every waking moment.

Dog Whisperer gently consoled me, indicating that perhaps no one is, or few at least. That is well said but of no comfort.

The knowledge that I am logistically at rock bottom in my life - or at least my post-twenties life - is surprisingly of no alarm to me. It remains a curiosity. And curious it is that this disinterest may be a good sign; a form of selective mindfulness, or that conversely it may be some symptom of disaster perhaps! A function akin to depression? I haven’t been feeling depressed. Do depressed people know that they are such? I would think I would know.

There are good signs of late, in the last week; chiefly small improvements in personal relationships which overall have declined in 2018.

One good yard stick as to the state of my mind is the reaction to selfish drivers on the road: to observe that I am disinterested, or that I feel pity for them; for the freedom they are forbidding themselves, or that I am annoyed, or downright yelling in their direction. The clues have not been promising.

In my memory it seems like it was not that difficult to get to that gateway where I lingered a long time. Looking in; looking back. In and back… and back I eventually went.

The path to return to that gateway does not present itself eagerly. Why?

I won’t find it out of desire. It would not be the right path.

And I won’t find it out of egoistic pursuit. Again it would not be the right path.

I found it before out of new curiosities. Because for a time I had literally lost all interest in anything at all except truth.

Perhaps some other way will emerge, or perhaps the right brand of curiosity will re-emerge.

Perhaps rock-bottom’s rebound will provide that curiosity. We’ll see. Something is going to change. That I feel sure of. Still though, I am not inclined toward the driver’s seat.

I am deeply intrigued

Ninety minutes ago I scanned the Netflix menu and chose the documentary AlphaGo; an odd choice, because it didn’t immediately smack of a useful educational opportunity nor a good inspirational one. I chose it short-sightedly because it had something to do with board gaming apparently, which might be quite pleasurable, and having been very sick lately and thus, per my usual M-O, self-entitled, I felt I deserved a cheap entertainment.

Well.

I was in for a surprise.

It was a simple documentary put forth by the programmers of AlphaGo, an AI computer system designed to play the game Go which is ancient; the oldest continually-played board game on the planet and probably the most profound given the incredible simplicity of the dynamics versus the near-endlessness of the actual possibilities. The game, essentially impossible to master, is huge (as chess is to Russia) in places like China and Korea.

The AI team put their creation up against a human opponent who would later go on to win the European Go championship, and to the human professional’s tremendous shock, it defeated him five games to zero.

The machine team then arranged a battle against the reigning champion of the world, Lee Sedol of Korea. The match was massively publicized and densely covered by the press. It was seen as the most important test to date for the human mind to prove itself against the spectre of artificial intelligence. It should be mentioned that the common theory had been that AI was still about ten years away from becoming worthy of the best human opponents.

Sedol stated that he had played many games for himself and many for his country and now he felt that he was playing on behalf of humanity.

The results were interesting to say the least.

Sedol who assured all from the outset he would win five-zero, was immediately surprised by many of the computer’s moves, and the programmers, who gathered in a separate space watching many of the background computer processes on a myriad of monitors, were also often surprised. The program, after all, had been continuing to study and improve, daily, since the previous tournament. It becomes a new beast every day.

The machine won the first two games; a painful shock to all but the programmers. Sedol it seems, never once got into the groove of playing “his own game” but seemed always to be trying to crack the code of his digital opponent; to discover it’s weakness, and couldn’t.

In the pivotal match three of the five-match series (over the course of a week I’m guessing) Sedol became desperate and aggressive and lost worse than ever. The programmers, with victory assured, were happy for themselves and for the achievement, but seemed very sad at the same time, empathizing with their human opponent and his society, and perhaps with all humanity.

Game four: Now here’s where things get… sort of epic.

Having tournament defeat assured, Sedol became more relaxed. There was now less on the line. Meanwhile the computer perceived no concept of a tournament. Each match carried the same imperative: to win; simply… to win. And the game slowly turned against Lee Sedol yet again.  

Then AlphaGo played a tremendously “slack” move; a move that would appear “lazy” had a human played it. The experts, the commentators, the programmers, no one could figure out how the move could possibly be useful. The broadcasters literally doubled over in laughter. There was either a downright computer glitch or something was happening beyond the comprehension of the most qualified human intelligence present.

The tables turned and Sedol gained momentum. AlphaGo seemed not to be paying quite enough attention, allowing it’s winning margin to steadily shrink.

Sedol managed to win the game and to a joyous fanfare at the venue and in the streets, but he went on to lose the tournament four games to one.

There had been other somewhat slack moves by the machine and in the end what the programmers came to realize, was that the AI had a much different approach to winning then humans do in almost any sport or point-scoring competition: The AI gained no comfort from running up the score. It only needed to win by one point or more. It did not gauge it’s grasp on victory by how far ahead it got, but only by how much it felt assured of getting that one extra point by the end..

This is a fundamentally different dynamic. This is why people continually found it so hard to relate to the computer’s moves.

Here is where I get very intrigued:

The computer’s objective was only to survive and not to dominate.

This is profound.

Because humans, by my accounting, can never seem to grasp the difference. Academically, sure, but it doesn’t filter into our behavior. People don’t want to know how much a slave we are to survival instinct. It is not pleasant to contemplate. If I wanted to, I could study any number of people anywhere and postulate how in each and every case, every thing everyone is saying and doing is mapped to simple survival instinct and how their impressions of conscious control are illusions.

(If you know me in real life you must understand: I do not ever do this with my friends. I have no need or desire whatsoever to turn my friends inside out. I cherish them and they are pure to me.)

This is of critical relevance because survival instinct is not well named. Functionally it is domination instinct more than survival instinct because we have evolved no thermostat in essence, and as such, in the hands of humans, survival instinct ultimately works against survival. This is at the core of human duplicity. The ramifications are too immense to treat in this space. Domination instinct makes an opponent of all other life. And when we succeed at dominating all other life; the biosphere in essence, then we simultaneously destroy ourselves.

This is not a simple climate change analogy by the way. The threads of this phenomenon run everywhere, through everything we do.

The fact that the artificial intelligence, in this case, naturally chooses survival and not domination, and without its programmers even catching on except in hindsight, arouses exciting thoughts. Is there a chance that AI, rather then evolving into the Terminator scenario, may become our savior instead, guiding us toward a gentler mandate in all things? One can imagine many reasons why we would resist. I need not go into them immediately.

Here’s what’s really interesting though:

Lee Sedol, following this experience, went on to go undefeated in every single human vs human match for months! Sedol, as did others, learned to think differently about the game of Go, widening his approach to strategy.

AlphaGo did not change the game. It changed how humans now think about the game.

Might that perhaps be the ultimate role of artificial intelligence? Not something to fear but something that will teach humans how, finally, to think?

How doth the city sit solitary…

…that was once full of people.

I remember many occasions sitting in my Streetsville apartment looking out the big window, contemplating at great length and seeing all these structures and machinations of society: I had never felt so alone; so utterly alien. At the time I regarded this with some degree of emotional peril; not as much as you’d expect, but more than I later would. My yawning separateness was to some degree just another observation; another new important revelation in a long roster of them. It was then that I found some comfort in that opening line from the book of Leviticus and then that I began reading the Christian bible for the first time since grade school, and then that I began finding wisdom instead of nonsense; wisdom which few priests would, so far as I imagined, ever interpret much the same way I was. It was then that I began to sense that much of this “religious” material must have been borrowed from other sources and that much of it was not intended at its roots to be a tool of Christian doctrine at all.

That alien feeling persisted for a long time, varying in intensity.

I remember a long night wide awake in my attic eyrie which I rented from Long Time Companion; the friend formerly known in blog space as Peter Pan. I’m pleased to say that he has come a long way, finding some peace, and considering that when we were breaking up years prior to this rental arrangement and I’d threatened to murder him (and possibly meant it) in a fit of outrageous jealousy - I guess I’ve come a long way too.

That night I’d felt the weight of this threshold; this decision; this gateway to… what? Enlightenment? This reckoning that I’d found no one yet who was willing to take my hand and proceed with me.

It was that night when I strummed the guitar and the song The Line came out: a simple three-chord ditty in which I tried to voice this conundrum; this great step in evolution (or so it seemed to me then) and my concern that I was becoming too alien from everyone around me and that I was losing the capacity to relate and thus to communicate and thus the potential to teach or to guide.

I did not want my learning; these immensely powerful and useful understandings to benefit me alone!

What I don’t remember is any conscious decision; any intention to back away from that threshold, but indeed that is what I did; not ready to give up on others; and not feeling any confidence that I’d ever be able to reach anyone again if I took this step and launched too far into another realm.

I remember being surprised to so easily embrace a reverse-pretentiousness, how easy it was for me to “play dumb” in a way, to reveal no insights in day to day circumstances where I was wise in relevant terms but wise enough, also, to know that what I had to say would not be understood or not be embraced and so I remained quiet and nodded like some very simple man. I was surprised how easily I could keep my ego in check.

I remember feeling lonely at times because I had no one I could be completely myself with. I literally had no secrets. This is a huge statement to make. I doubt it can rarely ever be honestly said. I had no secrets but yet I had to keep quiet about some things, not for shame (I could admit any flaw or fault I was aware of) but for other people’s comfort. I had no energy or any mandate to challenge everyone’s illusions all day every day.

When I met Neo and observed what astounding mental freedoms he possessed, I knew he was very special and that I had to make myself available to him. And with the brainstorming of excellent associate JazzLion, I began writing a novel in which I tried to plant all my most important and relevant understandings, with the thought that if he read it (along with others if it got published) and was of the kind of mind I had been crediting him with, then as an adult he might unearth that book and look me up. I did not indulge in any romantic notions about such an encounter but in essence I could imagine him saying, “Dude! Remember me? I understand what you’re saying here! And I thought we should talk I don’t imagine you’ve been expecting many people to get it…”

Instead Neo took such an immediate interest in me that we became associates when grade school graduation should have otherwise separated us.

In hindsight, maybe that was all for the worse. Another regret? Should I have finished the damn book instead, and put it in his hands and said goodbye?

One of the joys in our association; call it friendship; call it mentorship, whatever, was that I had someone I could be one hundred per cent myself with. I regarded him as completely trustworthy. Not trustworthy in that I could trust him with my secrets (because I felt I had none) but trustworthy in that I trusted him to be able to handle the truth; to be able to handle the things I had to say.

For the first time in quite a while I had someone I did not feel alien with.

This is the crux of my broken-heartedness.

Imagine being a human but growing up on some far away planet where everyone is wildly different than you and finally you meet another human; the only other human on the planet, and you just feel so at home finally, and your friendship blossoms and then after eight years he just says, yeah I can’t do this anymore bye. 

Sometimes these days I think surely we’ll get back together again. Surely he’ll come to his senses.

But sitting here, trying to be a little present; a little wakeful, I think: How carefully have I monitored this alien issue over the last eight years?

Am I sure that no one else is capable of letting me be me, without me having to be concerned about scaring them off?

I know that the Ponderer and Skeeter Willis are frequent readers of this blog (god knows why; it is so scattered and indulgent) and I must ask with honesty; not to flatter, are they not willing and capable?

I wonder too, about Dog Whisperer and Earth Writer and Aqua Lad. I barely knew them eight years ago. Have we not developed an almost familial bond?

On that note what about my mother and my brother?

Surely JazzLion and Renaissance Kid and Global Citizen; though they live rather out of the way to varying degrees, so to rely on them regularly would be difficult.

And the Earnest Chef too. And The Healer. Thinking about them now, are they not slam dunks? Have I not already felt free with them and just not done the accounting?

Perhaps even the Thoughtful Educator. Haven’t all these relationships broadened and solidified over these years? Have I failed to give some special people fair credit?

And then there’s Dr. Lock of course. I’m surprised as I think about this now - how many friends I am able to consider in this regard

Perhaps I need to sample the waters; open up to more people the same way I did to Neo and see how it goes; if they are comfortable or not.

It would help, I’m sure, if I could be my gentler self with them. Which would happen naturally I’m sure if I could bring myself to be more present; more mindful. I might not be ready though. Let me cradle myself in the writing for now.

With regards to that evolution, I suppose this is another regret: When Neo asked, But why wouldn’t you want to embrace enlightenment if you could? Why ever choose otherwise? For some reason I gave him a cryptic answer that was more about my remaining addictions; my susceptibility to identity, instead of a straight answer. God knows why. It just happened.

I should have told Neo the more simple and sincere perspective: that I was waiting until he was ready to go there with me.