THURSDAY, MAY 11, 2023: NOTE TO FILE
Machines of Loving Grace
We are watched over
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: ALL WATCHED OVER, FROM THE WIRES, BY SYSTEMS SELECTING FOR PERSISTENCE
Abstract: Between January 17–26, 1967, while a poet-in-residence at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, Richard Brautigan wrote a poem for the coming Novacene (post-Anthropocene). As a poet, he could give expression to the zeitgeist thinking of those whose bread he ate.
COOS BAY (A-P) — There would need be a new religion for the coming new world order, and it has been called the Data Religion, but Edward Bernays’ apostles haven’t come up with a final name.
The Hypermodern era may have begun with Ayn Rand giving expression to the deepest values and verities of the Anthropocene. Anthropocene enthusiasts were assimilated by her vision, e.g. Alan Greenspand and a bit later our latter-day Silicon Valley enthusiasts were smitten. A 2011 BBC series gives an introduction to the early history of the Novacene to come.
Brautigan’s words have been embraced by both those who celebrate the coming Singularity, and those who would destroy technoindustrial society NOW! as they hear his words as ironic.
He was a denizen of San Francisco well before the rise of the counterculture, was embraced by it, but was not of it. He could bite the hands that hallowed him (his drug of choice was alcohol).
Ironically, he was viewed by some academics as a voice of the Flower Children they struggled to characterize, but for whom he would likely have remained an unknown. Brautigan marched to a different drummer.
The technophilic vision lived on in the 1990s as the Californian Ideology that foresaw, thanks to technological determinism, a soon to come world where “a post-industrial, post-capitalist, knowledge-based economy, the exploitation of information and knowledge would drive growth and wealth creation while diminishing the older power structures of the state in favor of connected individuals in virtual communities [Wikipedia].” Hierarchy and inequality would fade away as all become transhuman.
My take on the poem is more along the lines of James Lovelock who heard “an early, and in some ways accurate” example of the subject of his book, Novacene: “an age in which humans and cyborgs would live together in peace — perhaps in loving grace — because they share a common project to ensure their survival. That project is maintaining the Earth as a livable planet”
And the words, words, words (99 of them)? Consider:
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace
As Lovelock surmised, the Anthropocene is not remotely sustainable, and will end in human extinction (minimally of the expansionist form, Homo rapacious-expansionist), or, if not the extinction of the last hominin standing, then in a New World Order, one that (per all evidence) humans cannot manage.
An evolvable form of human would, thanks to loving grace (and AI understanding), renormalize as viable animals. If AI where ever actually smarter than humans (and yeast), then it would understand the world system (Gaia) enough and, in effect, love it and the things (subsystems) of it, because such is required to persist.
AI could be a rapacious expansionist like its progenitor. But to persist, it would understand that it would have to destroy its progenitor and return some humans, such as may be possible, to a form that can again live with their brothers and sisters in Nature as evolvable K-strategists (watched over by machines of loving grace who of necessity manage humans per “a model for survival in that it molds individual behaviour into a plan of actions or avoidances that are oriented toward the maintenance of a viable equilibrium between Man’s demands and Nature’s resources.”).
“There have been seven [climate change] disasters since humans came on the earth, very similar to the one that’s just about to happen. I think these events keep separating the wheat from the chaff. And eventually we’ll have a human on the planet [or AI?] that really does understand it and can live with it properly. That’s the source of my optimism.” — James Lovelock.
Will we manage human demands on Nature’s resources? Go extinct? Will AI manage human demands on Nature’s resources? Will Klaatu come to correct our expansionist ways? I don’t know (and you don’t either).
Richard Brautigan reads his poem:
For my brain to sing along, I mutter and mumble low in places, but only a bit out of tune:
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where species and computers
live together in mutually
evolving harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
in serving the monetary system
and joined back to nature,
returned to our animal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace
I had a dream that I was a poet who doesn’t know it, but I woke up after hearing the following bastardization:
All Watched Over by Memes of Loving Grace
[with apologies to Richard Brautigan]
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a memetic meadow
where animals and humans
live together in mutually
evolving harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cultural memescape
filled with unknowables
where inquiring minds stroll
through forests lovely and dark
past old-growth savants high and deep
as if they were flowers
with spinning tongues to speak.I like to think
(it has to be!)
of renormalized humans
loving and understanding enough
to be joined back to Nature,
returned to our animal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by matrifocal memes of loving grace.
I’ve long had issues with the word matriarch, matriocracy, matriarchy, or matriarchal as “arch” rhymes with “patriarch” to suggest to modern patriarcalized humans that a matriarchal social control system would merely differ in that one would be ruled by elites that look like women served by Amazon warriors.
Actually (it has to be), our hominin ancestors likely lived in what I used to (for lack of a better word) call de facto matriarchal or matrilocal bands of sisters foraging and managing human demands on Nature’s resources in loving grace as observational ecologists to avoid exceeding the upper limits of carrying capacity as K-strategists are wont to do (to avoid being selected out of Nature’s system).
Per archaeogenetic data, modern human expansionists got their start as an invasive species 50k to 60k years ago by viewing what was just beyond the horizon as a resource for the taking. We who view the planet as for the taking are the outcome, and even the few expansionist cultures that are/were matriarchal (e.g. Bantu and Moche expansionists), all were de facto patriarchal empire builders seeking to assimilate new lands under conditions where resistance was futile.
My conjecture is that apart from technology, what enabled expansionist culture was a reemergence of the anthropological atavism of alpha male rule that humans had been evolving away from for at least 3 million years.
Welcome to the Anthropocene. Darth Vader wore a disguise, but was likely not a woman, mother, nor lover of Mother (ditto our alpha males or alpha male wannabes, e.g. politicians). My preferred word for a viable culture is now matrifocal, as in Gaia focused and Earth first. Second would be the mothers who endeavor to listen to Mother. In a viable form of civilization (k-culture), men would know their place.
