My loyal readers, this one that I am about to write, wants to be a short story. I wanted to make a writing on the border, that the “Enlightened” Man (figure antithetical and averse to the people) wanted to get closer and closer to everyday life, beyond which artificial intelligences will permeate the life of human beings until they gain the upper hand, replacing themselves hierarchically to them, thus recreating the sort of imposed balance described by George Orwell in his most famous novel, 1984. This is not good, since the centrality of Man must not and won’t have to be questioned, ever.
Today we are faced with the materialization of certain monstrous, abominable conceptual stereotypes such as the failure, albeit accidental, of certain crucial functions of certain hardware in serving Man, an action that can be read as a descending parabola towards the conspiracy to destroy the latter in a literal and speculative sense. The brands create technologies, artificial intelligences, which have the hidden claim to replace man and his will (a man who becomes a sort of slave, a remote-controlled masses), and without, upstream, a real interrogation and involvement of man / people on whether he is really in need of certain technological / conceptual forcing.
We arrived today at a real imposition of a maliciously clever technology, and an imposition of a future that they think (and in any case they want us to believe, to all things, as a diktat) that we like, a future that if not let’s be careful, it won’t be ours, but theirs. I will explain, in parallel, the position and mission of TSW in this delicate and inscrutable scenario.
(I suggest to accompany the reading of this paper of mine with listening to the following music, in this sequence: 1) “Signs of life”, from the album “A momentary lapse of reason” by Pink Floyd; 2) “World Citizen – I won’t be disappointed/looped piano” from the album “Chasm” by Ryuichi Sakamoto (lyrics by David Sylvian); 3) “Concerto in C minor for flute, strings and continuous RV 441” by Antonio Lucio Vivaldi; 4) “Für Alina”, piano opera by Arvo Pärt); 5) “An Ending (Ascent)” from the album “Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks” by Brian Eno; 6) IV mov. “Adagietto” (Part III) of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. For convenience, here is playlist.)
The sea, the night. This day will start from here, this life will come from these waters. It has been like this since the beginning. The Sun will rise, I don’t know yet who I am, where I come from, and in what age I live, because I don’t see the colors yet, and my I is not yet illuminated. The darkness, the water, brings me back to that archaic fear of eternal nothingness.
[T. Nishimura – initial frame from Izenborg, orig. tit. Kyoryu Daisenso Aizenborg 恐竜大戦争アイゼンボーグ, literal “Dinosaur War Izenborg”, science fiction / tokusatsu / anime series of artistic / philosophical (and philological) / scientific depth directed by Jyun Oki, Kanji Otsuka, Kiyozumi Fukazawa, Manda Kazuho, Shohei Tojo, Toshihiko Nakashima, 1977/1978]
From nothing we come, while there is a D’Annunzian fire in me that does not allow me to believe that we will finish on it again, because a true end cannot exist thanks to the cyclical nature of everything, air soil water fire cell DNA life I consciousness spirit space Earth atmosphere rotation revolution Solar System Milky Way Spacetime non-space (empty) and non-time (now) Toroidal Universe with periodic boundary conditions Boundary Space Curve End Start; cyclicality that in the Buddhist philosophy is delineated by the twelve rings, called Nidana, meaning the consequentiality of life, a concept all the more inescapable as it is strong the bond of the Man towards the things of the World. The Sun will rise, but for now I am still here, in front of these waves of the sea, immersed in this darkness.
In a few hours, I will see something, I will know something, about who I am in what time and space, and what is coming from nothing, from the fear of this night sea. The Sun will rise, and this fear for the mystery, for not yet seeing what advances, despite my eyes being open, will end, give space to something positive or negative. There is such trepidation for this expectation, that for an instant I wanted not to get up from this shore anymore, and not to go out from this night anymore, hoping for a crystallization of time, because the stillness of the night can always hide the abominations of the world, and so it will be until the end of our days.
As often happens, the human soul is a crossroads of sensations, moods, and quite contrasting (or at least conflicting) emotions between them, so fear is accompanied by a certain excitement and pleasure, and trepidation can lead to procrastination and extend the wait to infinity. Yes, sometimes it is better not to know, not to see, or to remove from the mind, what has reserved us, or will reserve us, the light of day.
It often happens that something negative, malignant, which we had pushed back into the depths of our consciousness, reappears from the underground to attack us, and to plagiarize us. Evil (subjective and objective) essentially performs two actions on us: it ends us, and / or manipulates us. It is still not exhaustively clear why Man can, at a certain point, devote himself to evil, often without even being aware of it (clearly the game of an evil entity, is not to be identified, not to reveal itself, but to appear in disguise spoils, as was the Good, and ensnare us).
The fact is that if black (nothingness) is the negation of white (the whole), and exists, and death is the illogical denial of life, and still exists (due to the evident lack of progress in the scientific field), it is also true that then we cannot be surprised at the occurrence of the most heartening things at a few centimeters, or even millimeters away from events of total foolishness or even reaching out to destruction, even personal.
[Paul Cézanne – Nature morte au crane, 1896-1898, oil on canvas – Philadelphia, Barnes Foundation]
There are undoubtedly some flaws in the history of civilizations, which have led to a mechanism, which we inherit today, asphyxiated that requires us to produce, and sell, commodities and services, uninterruptedly. Why? For many factors: overpopulation and fleeing from the concept of Communism, as well as the non-exuberance of raw materials, added to the decrease in master craftsmen, the replacement of barter with gold and cash money has increasingly determined the delineation of classes social and the game of exclusivity and Capitalism.
Belonging to a social class, medium-high, therefore means possessing a certain monetary capital and being able to show off a certain standard of life, as well as being able to boast the purchase of valuable expensive craft objects. Living is regulated by the currency, so everyone must have at least one worker, or at least one source of secure income, per household. In order for everyone to have a job, and earn money, it becomes essential that there is something to produce (good or service), and to sell, from which the creation of so-called “induced needs”.
Do you buy a Jacuzzi to wash yourself? No, and without a Jacuzzi would we die? No. Do you buy a latest-generation smartphone to simply make phone calls? No, and would we really be lost without owning one? No. Do you buy a ship cruise to simply go from one place to another? No, and without having taken a cruise would we feel ignorant primitives? Certainly No.
The real problem comes when we go into overproduction, that is when production continues linearly but the demand flexes for X reasons, one of the most common of which is the fact that previously an already excellent product was sold, that the target bought and owns still showing then the clear intention not to dispose of it given the appreciation. This problem has triggered an unmanageable mechanism of continuous updating and restyling of the product, (often worsening it, in my opinion), in order to instill a certain belief in the consumer that new and updated is better.
There has also been worse, taking advantage of a policy of “fixed-term assets”, that is, an expiry scheduled in the fulfillment of its own functions (that is, the non-functioning occurrence), and a programmed expiry of the raw materials (so no more of first, but of second choice) with which the goods are produced, induce a deterioration, a premature consumption and therefore the constriction for the consumer to have to return to the store to buy at prices that are always inflated, certainly not calmed.
[Alberto Burri – Grande Rosso P.N. 18, 1964, PVC plastic, acrylic and combustion on black cloth – Rome, National Modern Art Gallery]
The fact is that through a sort of manipulation of the minds of the Masses, especially through globalization, the Enlightened Man, who basically commands the World, is plagiarizing that balance, that Free Will that allowed him not to slavishly purchase any new product. Today we consider any object, appliance, device, means of locomotion, or simply a concept that is 5 years old, outdated, obsolete.
We are constantly hooked and transported by a present that is already projected into the future, and whoever loses this train remains and / or is considered a troglodyte. The past no longer exists, it must no longer exist. Because if you turn back, even for just an instant, you are catapulted out of this carriage, you lose the waiting number, and then you have to start the line again, of shopping, to buy you no longer know what good, they will tell us, what to buy when we are there, with money in hand, at the cash desk. This is the phase of the historical / cultural deprivation of Decision Marketing, of which the Decision keyword loses its value in all respects, as it is deprived of all its meaning; and an administration of a worldliness that is child of its own time.
[Camille Pissarro – The Boulevard Montmartre at Night, 1897, oil on canvas – London, National Gallery]
The enlightened man controls, manipulates his masses, through the technology and artificial intelligences introduced into our homes due to unrestrained, uncritical and obsessive compulsive shopping, for which the masses is increasingly attracted, for a sort of Stockholm Syndrome, from his kidnapper / tormentor / executioner, in other words he is more and more pushed to be controlled, manipulated, directed like an invertebrate, that is an eviscerated vertebrate of his spine which is now held in his hand by those who balance us, by those who decide for us. Easier than that! The Pied Piper leads us towards the purchase of technology, we are convinced by deception, that this is the primary objective.
It is so, it is rightly so, why should we object? It is the present, it is the future, and we are children of time flowing at the speed of a grand prix, we take in, we swallow input from the future, the future is ours, we row, we sail the river current towards the mouth, together with the mass, why should we row against the current? It is so, it is rightly so, to follow the technology that advances in the first flashes of the day, it can be glimpsed over there, behind those waves of the sea, it is coming. The tide is carrying this, and we shipwrecked, we take it, because this is how it is done: my tenant on the ground floor does it, so does my relative who lives in the nearby town, the friend who lives in Switzerland does it, the collaborator who lives in England does it, and so does the protagonist of the TV series in the USA.
Order, Balance, a mass, a masses homologated to consumerism in general, but specifically of technological equipment is a controlled, easily pilotable, mild masses, without willpower, and small, poorest possible. A sort of “Flock“, brought to pasture by its Enlightened Shepherd. The “flock” does not think, follows the trail slavishly, it is shorn of its own hair, that is, it no longer has that wealth of spirit and economic that allowed it to decide based on its cultural heritage, and the culture built by itself during its existence.
[Pieter Bruegel the Elder – The Peasant Wedding, 1568, olio on panel – Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum]
At this point the I disappears, depleted, lifeless, bloodless, due to this programmed and progressive “lobotomization” by means of various forms of technological opium passed off as Eden of “our” future in which paradoxically a centrality of our person; and due to a planned impoverishment of cash. In my opinion, in fact, there is a treasonable project even on the level of cash power, but this subject requires an incipit from me, a consideration of mine to be considered an axiom: ‘everything that is no longer physically in my hands, is no longer mine’. That being said, this truth is increasingly outlined especially with regard to cash money, which seems to be impossible to hold in our hands, but to transform itself into a current market value and / or a telematic appanage of banks, post offices, brokers, pension funds, and in any case of others other than ourselves. In Italy, even the mysterious withdrawal of large-denomination euro banknotes from circulation makes me suspicious about the will to avoid the possibility that citizens might keep cash in their safe at home.
A 500 euro banknote is little “breakable”, and therefore the tendency was to keep it away, probably at home (more practical), and not in a bank safe. While a 50 euro banknote (equivalent to the beautiful 100,000 Liras of the past, which were worth a lot and with which you had the feeling of having a power in your hand), which today is worth less as spending power, is broken by force of things, that is, it is introduced again into the market which thus continues to feed itself. The same applies to ATMs: entering certain banks, it is possible to withdraw important sums at the ATM, even above 1,500 euros, which, however, are issued exclusively in banknotes of 50 euros (apart from some very rare exceptions). It means, remaining on the sum of 1,500, as many as 30 banknotes: try to insert 30 banknotes in a wallet … It doesn’t even close.
In addition, there is the need to consider the daily, and monthly withdrawal limits imposed: everything points to the fact that this cash should (our obtorto neck) keep the bank, always and anyway, for an atavistic concept for which the bank is security and a place where our money yields, it is a thought that is still an institution but because we are not able to make autonomous logical deductions, and we are no longer able, because lobotomized, to go against the current. Yet another concept: debit cards and credit cards, that is the money goes from being cash to being telematic, basically to disappear as an entity that we don’t see and if we don’t see so much so spend it. Cash money has therefore become three things: spent, put on the market for consumerist purposes; retained, by banks, brokers, pension funds, etc .; and telematic, virtual.
Basically, it is no longer, on a cash level (but probably not only), ours: it is theirs. It is not important if in the short or long term, but on our hands there will be no more cash, but theoretically virtual values, promises, but practically nothing, leading us to the condition of slavery towards the system, to be more minuscule and insignificant than fleas, but on the other hand, fooling around, convincing ourselves to be happy, with the latest technological equipment purchased at the “Happy Betty” department stores created by the pencil of Bruno Bozzetto.
Today the dictatorship, and the war, are administered in subtle forms, which are not known, but whose effect is considered as almost equally devastating. When a person is deprived of the power to decide, the power to think, the power to act autonomously, the economic power of cash, it is metaphorically killed, or perhaps even materially. But probably, as the Arab Phoenix is reborn from its ashes, we too will be reborn as a rubber ball, after having touched the bottom, bounces. The problem is that today we are born again cared for and controlled by a connected reality that is virtual, not tangible, not even on concepts that should be at the base of this that has become a Tower of Babel.
[Le Corbusier – Unité d’Habitation, conceived by the master of the Modern Movement as far back as 1907, and built between 1947 and 1952 – Marseille]
People now speak a single Esperanto (made of cloying Englishisms; acronyms drawn from English that are incomprehensible to everyone except those who coined them, since those who mint them do not explain them; Italianized English terms inflecting them at the moment; “Italian” neologisms mimicked by it is not known which TV series and inflected. Feeling certain scribbles arises spontaneously more than some smile of compassion), does not listen, acts, does not think, takes, elaborates, works mechanically (it is no longer living, it is functioning) stripped of all restraint, like a computer or a household appliance, or a cash register, without ever stopping at this conformism because, they told us from above, whoever stops is lost. I who am here, on this shore, listening to the lapping and the undertow of the sea, in front of this dawn, I do not see a thought in the castaways that are here near me, but simply stimuli of self-framing and passive acceptance in order to be classified as submissive and to be able to survive, not to live but to survive, for a sort of Darwinian law that requires us to derive a benefit from the detriment of others, the one who has dared to think and row against the current, and has been punished.
[Roger Deakins – poster of Orwell 1984, film directed by Michael Radford, 1984]
Poverty of soul, ideological poverty, cultural poverty, poverty of economic / volitional means, has led us to have a single mediocre personality and vision of ourselves, although unconscious and silenced by a self-imposed mask of pride totalizing falsely, illusory, fulfilling. In this puppet theater, whose threads are moved by enlightened men, someone, some Pinocchio, should take a pair of scissors and cut the wires to which he is clinging to get out of this system, from this wheel of the world, from this nightmare.
He could thus turn his gaze higher, and see this sky, this sun, real, take a deep breath and enjoy being finally free, and finally becoming a true Child made of flesh and bones, a rebirth ascetic re-embracing that pleasant burden of the Free Will which must be the backbone, the backbone of Man as an essence detached from the recrudescence of the world.
“Know what is in front of you, and what is hidden from you will be revealed to you; since there is nothing hidden that is not revealed one day.”
(Jesus of Nazareth)
[Titian – Virgin and Child with Saints Dorothy and George, 1515-1518, oil on panel – Madrid, Prado Museum]
Therefore a multidimensionality of our person is very welcome, a multi-personality that allows us to see ourselves from a, albeit temporary, decentralization of the I; we would see that, sitting in that chair, that puppet driven by those nooses, with a glassy eye without a soul or a light of reason, and that look lost in space.
“Then God said: “Make the earth living beings according to their species: cattle, reptiles and beasts of the earth, according to their kind. “And so it was.
And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kind, the cattle according to their kind, and all the reptiles of the earth according to their kind. And God saw that this was good.
Then God said: “Let us make man in our image and in our likeness, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, over cattle and over all the earth, and over all the reptiles that crawl on the earth.”
Thus God created man in his image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female.
And God blessed them and God said to them “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky and over every living being that moves on the earth.”
And God said: “Behold I give you every herb that sows seeds on the surface of all the earth and every tree that bears fruit bearing seeds; this will serve you nourishment.
And to every animal of the earth, to every bird in the heavens and to everything that moves on the earth and has within it a breath of life, I give every green grass for nourishment. “And so it was.
Then God saw all he had done, and behold, he was very good. So it was evening then it was morning: the sixth day “.
The Enlightened Man wanted to put his word above God, denying God and denying his own nature as a nucleus of his existence. Homo, hominis, homini, hominem, homo, homine. The Enlightened Man, and consequently his slaves, the masses, repudiate their own declination “in corpore vili” preferring the virtuality of the communication of themselves towards the outside. This allows them to become invincible and eternal, surpassing the carnal version of themselves, and challenging God once more, yet another.
The virtual version of the Man travels on the Internet, is visible all over the globe, runs at the speed of light with his message here, now.
The virtual version of the Man flows between the walls of the house, through Domotics, and establishes artificially when it’s cold, when it’s hot, when it’s time to watch a movie, turn off the dishwasher, turn on a light.
The virtual version of Man resides in the Internet of Things, in Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, and in every type of Assistance (vocal but not only) Artificial.
The virtual version of the Man resides in the Assisted Car Guide, in the Robots, in the Fourth Industrial Revolution launched by Japan, in the new 5G networks; and in any kind of Artificial Intelligence.
Clearly, there are reversals of the coin, and one of these is a simple law of physics, which makes us notice how small we are, despite all the efforts of enlightened men to rise with the pretense of replacing God: on a scale at two plates, to put most of the weight on a plate, determines an irreversible unbalance. What I am trying to say is that man too inclined towards technology, too immersed in virtuality, is creating an imbalance of himself that projects him outside of that earthly dimension made up of healthy foundations such as interpersonal relationships, for example to touch things with hand, osmosis with nature, craftsmanship, workshop work, the Human to Human dimension, the work of the individual man. We are subservient to technology, it is advancing, it is now on the shore, and it is day. That fear I had feared is reality.
This technology, this mischievous artificial intelligence, this real virtuality, this virtuality is reality, this oxymoron has therefore reached the shore, this Ichthyostega is transforming itself from an amphibian to a reptile, and having become a Carnosaur it will open its jaws, claiming its dominion on Earth. Personally, I firmly believe that the evil that is coming today takes on a certain semblance, but is actually derived from a reminiscence of a past atrocity related to another reality that can be completely divorced. The return of the dinosaurs described in “Izenborg” has a profound philosophical significance, a conceptual evil that returns, now acquiring monstrous and powerful dimensions, which comes from the bowels of the Earth and from the abyss of the seas, from the underground level of our consciousness suddenly, an evil to which the man Adam, unaware (through a kind of paralysis of a metaphysical sleep) of his own misdeeds perpetrated towards his neighbor and towards himself, must submit; that is to say, he must submit to a vindication of the ownership of the world on the part of this new dimension of the evil entity which is in fact a punishment, the concretization of a nightmare coming from the past.
The man has done so much and so much brigade for technological progress, he has created artificial intelligences that increase his power of control and interaction in the space of material terrain, which has come to a thoughtless short-sightedness that returns like a boomerang, brandishing its sword and returning its own duty.
[Rembrandt – Faust, 1652, etching, drypoint – Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum]
This creature was generated by man, this TransGenesis that is the grafting of this chip into daily life has created in us a kind of Sloth and in fact a Servilism towards this Monster, basically a blasphemous result that is contrary to the principle that it had been placed as a pivot some decades ago, that is, that technologies had to be a means, therefore they were a servant towards us.
This current reversal of the parts weighs on the masses that accepts, like a beaten dog, the diktats. This reversal of the parts, eliminates the masses from the world, and pours it into this opiate virtuality, taking away his awareness of himself and of his neighbor; evanescence of own material and of any interaction with the real world of matter, even at the level of roles in the world of work. The monster now dominates, eliminates, eliminates us, occupies our space, occupies our role, occupies our job, relegating us to servitude, slavery, humiliation, downgrading, descent into the hell, descent into the underground.
[Harry Fain – Coal loader. Inland Steel Company, Floyd County, Kentucky]
The creature generated by man, is a replicant that has become aware of itself, and that rebels, is a dog that turns against its master. The thundering arrival of these monsters shook the sea, the tide rose considerably and we shipwrecked here on the shore, we are slapped by these waves, and every slap is both physical and moral, so much so that I, turning around to escape, I saw in a fleeting way my shadow on those rocks, now bent, and my face now emaciated, because every slap knocks us down, every slap gets old, every slap elists us, every slap ends us.
Evil is here, how could we self-inflict on this? In reality, we masses are only victims, of the strong powers of the enlightened man, an enlightened man who provoked an involution of the physical man by pushing him back into the underground tyrannizing, enslaving him, exploiting him through the monsters created by man himself; Abel killed by his brother Cain; Laio killed by his own son Oedipus. God created Man, Man created the Humanoid and everything that can replicate and extend its presence in the world. Man rebelled against God, and eliminated God by replacing Him, placing himself above Him. The Replicant rebelled against Man, and eliminated Man, taking the place of him, placing himself above him. Evil worked step by step: he first eliminated God by the hand of Man (his son) from Man, and subsequently eliminated Man by the hand of the Enlightened Man and the virtual Man (his product to remote-control the masses) from the world, kingdom of evil.
The end seems near now, the extinction of the Man seems to be close, but there is still a hope.
I’ve always wondered if there really is a balance that pertains to the concept of Human Being. Being from Being, that is dichotomy between the fact of being a Human Being, and the fact of Being Human, is a gravitational axis that acts as a watershed between two essences, absence and presence of consciousness, being a man of the masses, from being an active consciousness man free, because listening and listened to.
How difficult it is to listen, how difficult it is to learn to listen, how difficult it is to learn to love. How difficult it is to want to learn. How difficult it is to learn to question oneself. How difficult it is to doubt oneself, the first sign of intelligence.
How difficult it is to decompose and reconstruct according to a correct mental and vocational order, how difficult it is to do the right thing. For ourselves, and for others.
How difficult it is to want something for our neighbor, be it here, or in Rwanda, which gives as much joy as it would give it to ourselves. How difficult it is to prefer the happiness of others to our money, how difficult it is to balance these two things in an ethical and moral way.
Our greed for profit has led us to blindness, to a hardness of the heart, and there is no longer any listening to needs, a fact that turns against us. The imperative is to sell, whatever means is legitimate, we produce technologies that are no longer meant to be Human, but to be a transitional generation before the final landing of the humanoids. Brands have missed an inconvenient step, because it is difficult to listen to human beings. Brands are too projected towards what is required by Enlightened Men, that is, to produce technologies that exclude, step by step, the thinking man from their use, filtering every will and collecting only a carcass to possess. The masses has become a guinea pig, to test Misanthropomorphous already finished products.
But from this Apocalypse, from this conspiracy of the innocents, a voice has arisen in defense of the oppressed.
It will always come a day when I too will have said “no, that’s enough.” It will always come a day when I too will have opened my eyes, and looking up, I will have looked the enemy in the face, often an alien evil already undermined in my body and in my reason. It will always come a day when after the umpteenth slap, I will have stopped the hand of my oppressor.
A step backwards, we must therefore take a step backwards, we, them, the whole system, we want and start, therefore, a step backwards, to rearrange the balances, and then be able to take many steps forward.
Listening, don’t talk. Don’t talk if you don’t know. Don’t talk if you don’t know what I need. Don’t talk if you don’t know who I am. Don’t propose things to me, if in designing them you have turned off that human side necessary to understand what I need. Don’t talk, don’t force me to surrender your surrogate happiness, I can’t digest it, because it’s not meant for the being human. Don’t talk, don’t impose these illusory melodies of an elusive well-being, you who didn’t think of me, you who didn’t love me, you who don’t respect me, you who don’t consider me, and who only exploit me and abuse me.
Put themselves listen, for listening, listening, and put listened to not to a masses, but to the Single Man because every single man is Unique, and must be listened to, that is to say a step backwards with respect to a sales idea, of marketing, probably replacing the idea of the aim, the money and the oppression / manipulation of the consumer, with the idea of making a service useful to satisfy a real need of every single man, because the People, what really counts for one democracy, cannot be a masses of guinea pigs, of slaves, but is composed of single men who reason and who have real needs, who must be listened to, and these needs must be brought to those industrial realities that have understood that they must listen, first of every planning. It is essential that this voice be more and more stentorian and be brought forward.
The concept of an ideal beauty in terms of a technological vanguard apt to enslave a lifestyle under the sweet bird of a well-being subjected to some tireless aesthetics of a certain philosophy, can and must be destined to set if yonder it is not included the concept that I have just pleaded and advocated that is the presence of the being human as the first fundamental objective on a hierarchical scale that must put into the background, and at the service of man, the rest.
[Pasquale De Santis – Dirk Bogarde/Gustav von Aschenbach, on a frame from Death in Venice, masterpiece directed by Luchino Visconti, 1971]