Flesh Vs. Machine

[Chiang Rai, Thailand in 1919]

In “Why Freud Was the First Good AI Theorist” (2002), Marvin Minsky writes, “If I am talking to a general audience I usually explain to them that if it weren’t for their bad habits and superstitions they could live forever. I was telling a small general audience that if we figured how the brain worked well enough so that we could make backup tapes—obviously nobody would go anywhere unless they had a recent backup, because you know what happens when you cross the street, then you could just reload it into another better body—and nobody seemed to be reacting to this in the way that they ought to. So I asked how many of them would like to live 500 years: 500 years isn’t even immortality, it’s just extended lifespan.”

Minsky died in 2016 at age 88. Maybe his brain is preserved on a floppy disc or thumb drive, to be uploaded onto some blonde with huge knockers. Actually, not a great idea. Spouting such nonsense, she’d only score half night stands with hideous incels with skin diseases and worst breath. Or maybe not. So hard up, men have made love to animals and corpses. One’s paramour was a John Deere backhoe tractor.

Imagine the eight billion already rocking this fuck boat to breed and live forever! Transhumanists are technophiles convinced we’ll colonize planet after planet, so space won’t be a problem. Trust the science. Planning war and “vaccines,” our masters have other ideas. They want most of us dead.

Many species are already gone. Our planet is exhausted. In 1975, my hometown Saigon had 2.3 million people. Now, it’s 9.6. Tall, shady trees have been cut down to make room for people, vehicles, convenience stores and fastfood joints. It’s a universal phenomenon. There must be billions of kids who have never seen any bugs besides cockroaches.

Vung Tau tallies 465,000 souls. In half a century, it has ballooned sevenfold! Coming here from Saigon as a child, I passed through rice paddies and forests. Now there are nothing but houses, businesses, temples and churches. Fortunately, the ocean can’t be filled in or this city would feel as choked as Saigon, Tokyo or Seoul. The sea, though, only looks good, sort of, on the surface. Fishermen must venture further to catch anything. Seaweeds no longer wash ashore. The horseshoe crabs and sand bubbler crabs from my boyhood have disappeared.

Living a fake or virtual life is also death. There’s nothing left but porn. Grafted onto so many machines, some rebel by recovering their naked innocence. If only for an hour, they just want to be a toddler or an animal. Unclothed, they dare to be judged as is. Overly regimented Germans have done this for over a century.

Hunting packs have reappeared. Instead of tracking then spearing gazelles, buffaloes or caribous, feral “teens” love to knock down then stomp on unsuspecting septua or octogenarians. In Philly, St. Louis, Oakland or Chicago, just walking your half blind chihuahua or getting a 7-11 burrito is akin to a once-in-a-lifetime safari. Bored, restless young men can enlist to kill or be killed. It beats watching endless television.

In a 1973 interview, Lewis Mumford speaks of freeing himself from one machine, “I write, for example, on a typewriter. I’ve written on typewriters ever since I was 16 years old. I wouldn’t give them up. But at one point in my life I realized I was the victim of the typewriter. If I didn’t have it at hand, I wouldn’t be able to write a long book, because my handwriting was illegible and I never felt at ease using the hand. And at that point I decided to learn the art of handwriting all over again.”

I write this on a Lenovo laptop. On the table is my Canon 80D. I’d feel naked going anywhere without it. I can hear, behind me, a blender making my soursop smoothie. For weeks, though, I’ve stopped carrying my cellphone. I don’t need Google Maps to get around in Vung Tau.

At least 7,500 years ago, people in present day Serbia used copper axes. Vietnamese bronze arrow tips go back 3,000 years. Chinese invented the iron plow in the 1st century. To be civilized is to be seduced or shattered by metal. Missiles have magnesium, aluminum, titanium or maraging steel casings. Now, we learn, even innocuous objects easily handled by kids can suddenly kill.

These thoughts on man and machine were prompted by what just happened in Lebanon. On 9/18/24, the New York Post had this on its cover, “BEEP BEEP BOOM!—2,800 Hezbollah terrorists hit by exploding pager plot.” Satanists laugh at others’ pain.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, clarifies, “International humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby-trap devices disguised as harmless portable objects. It is a war crime to commit acts of violence aimed at spreading terror among civilians.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, adds, “This was a monstrous act of terrorism, monstrous in its cynicism and its scale, considering the large number of victims.”

Gleefully arrogant, Jews and Americans couldn’t care less what anyone thinks. Serial terrorists, they have laid waste to the most beautiful city and country in the Middle East.

We must hope Hezbollah will prevail. They’re fighting for you, too, and for sanity. In 2020, I spent two months in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah’s country. I met several of them. I stand with these brave and long suffering people.

[Vung Tau, 9/17/24]

[23-year-old daytime barista at Cóc Cóc Coffee in Vung Tau, 9/18/24]

[Vung Tau, 9/20/24]

[Vung Tau, 9/21/24]