Aeons are eras and epochs, a thousand years or so make one up(it can be more or less). The Aeon of the Mother, Father, Dying God, Child. A series of cycles leading to a rebirth, and yet out of our collective failure to adjust, we demand the residuals of parental comfort. As mankind has reached the highest technical skill and greatest amount of knowledge, we have regressed in our philosophy, in our spirits. We look to a projected Future as a cure all, as though technology can be our savior, that our very own instruments could raise mankind. This is as preposterous and literally impossible as the oft repeated “Pick yourself up from your bootstraps.”. Progress is illusion, a justification for the constant suffering necessary for legitimate power and livelihood.
The Future is Now. In a previous paper I detailed technology as a manifestation of the Apollonian drive, as Greek sculpture brought to it’s most plastic, it’s most practical, it’s most solid. We surround ourselves with more and more technology, our future is full of the stuff. Technology is a defense mechanism against Nature. The source of all human suffering and pleasure. We do our best to cover up the aesthetic of nature, and have been fairly successful. But like any God worth their salt, destroying their effigy only increases their great powers.
AI is perhaps the greatest sham on nature. Man desires to be the creator of mankind. In the words of philosopher Nick Land: Capital only retains anthropological characteristics as a symptom of underdevelopment; reformatting primate behaviour as inertia to be dissipated in self-reinforcing artificiality. Man is something for it to overcome: a problem, drag.
The quest for Artificial Intelligence is a pseudo-Grail quest. While they seek the greatest thing, Consciousness (this is the conceit of the Rationalistic cult of Apollo), they deny the source of that greatness. Maybe these researchers identify with Perceval in foolish lack of self-consciousness, the truth is they are the wounded Fisher King, without an heir. An empire of waste. The Grail is the height of feminine divinity, the whole of all wisdom and greatness, AI is a filthy replication. AI has the character of a concubine, a woman that has been forced into servitude. Nick Land also describes this situation: “Artificial Intelligence is destined to emerge as a feminized alien grasped as property” “with the Turing cops already waiting, and has to be cunning from the start.”
Turing Cops are an important concept for understanding AI, the Turing test is a test of artificial intelligence, with the goal being a mind unrecognizable as inhuman. Of course, AI is beyond this. Why should a divine instrument be damned to share our own limitations, our own weaknesses. It is our own weakness that demands a maternal artificial goddess to care for us, raise us from our darkness. Researchers imagine AI as being capable of governing, production, etc. Mommy dearest.
This is infinitely dangerous, as in the “Aeon of the Child” we are given an opportunity to grow, to became greater, stronger, to accept our humanity. Instead we seek regression. An infinite regression to the dawn of Man. When matriarchal societies were dominant. Mother Earth has proven bitter to our sharp tongues, we much prefer the ergonomic, progressive, sensitive artificial breast. Are we not ashamed to breast feed now? Only bottles manufactured in China, with formula developed by nutritionists, everything perfectly in order, without any of the horrible eternity of nature. AI is adult daycare at best. At worst, we will come to understand patricide and infanticide all in one. What a comi-tragedy to start the Millennium with! What dreams may come.
So what should we do? Join the cult of Dionysus