Ghost in the Machine

Ghost in the Machine

 

Leaving technical details aside, the implications are clear.  Like any other human science, biochemistry can serve the powers of light or of darkness.  Its dangers terrifying; but we are now concerned with its beneficial possibilities. 

 

-             The Ghost in the Machine, Arthur Koestler

 

By Gregg Wall (5-25-2024)

 

Finally knocked out this book.  Not only is The Ghost in the Machine (GM) a great read, but written in 1967, it’s still timely and fresh.  If you are interested in tackling this book, but don’t have a lot of time, I would recommend reading the third and final section of the book, first.  The first two sections spend a lot of time on biology, hierarchies, holons… but the third section spends considerable time on psychology, the physical & psychological defects of humanity, and of course, Koestler offers a solution. 

 

The central premise of the book is that humanity has plateaued and never really has advanced in terms of emotional intelligence and morality, whereas our technical capabilities have taken off exponentially, especially in terms of science, weapons, and war.  Our feeble or primitive limbic system, governing emotions & morality, versus our neocortex with explosive capabilities, largely untapped, for creativity and invention.  In short, humanity suffers from a huge emotional and moral deficit vis-a-vis our ability to create weapons that threaten humanity and the planet itself… and too many profit from endless colonialism, death, and war.  Koestler notes this has placed humanity at an existential crossroads.  Look at what’s going in the world today, where Biden, just in his first term, has started up cold wars with China and Russia, a hot war in the Ukraine, and is running a genocide out of Gaza with best buddy, Bibi.  And the cries for bombing Iran have not died down.   

 

It's as if this book could have been released yesterday. Truly, the neolibs and neocons… the ever-aging gerontocracy running America… are the biological and psychological dead-end Koestler was warning us about. 

 

Koestler also appears to nail it on the danger of mobs.  Noting that individuals are far less dangerous than the self-transcendence that all too often accompanies crowds.  That ‘flocks’ and ‘sheep’ easily lose themselves in the hands of religion - and the mullah, priest, or rabbi – as well as, organized political parties and the skillful demagogue.  The cults of personality surrounding America’s two fascist choices this November, Biden and Trump, immediately come to mind.  Koestler identifies the self-transcendence that accompanies crowds or groups as having two common denominators: often, low intelligence and high emotion.  Note: These are Koestler’s observations not mine.  He goes on to note the delusional, paranoid streak in humanity is often exhibited within crowds and amplified by crowds, nothing on a similar scale within the individual.  Counter to Koestler's observations on concentrated humanity, consider the wonderful things peace and student protestors are doing presently... organized humanity can be channelled into enlightened humanistic endeavors and goals.

 

As interesting, GM offers that primates are not naturally wired for violence, but that stress over environment, food, natural disasters, overcrowding will ignite violence.  And the same can be said of humanity, that our economy drives aggression, anger, crime, rage, violence… that and the “schizophysiology” within the brain described above. The economy and environment acting as a tripwire to our human nature or biology and our bipolar and schizophrenic mind.

 

Koestler states, by and large, humanity does not learn from history and so, repeats the same mistakes over and over.  To which I add, a failure to learn from the past might have been acceptable a hundred or two hundred year ago, but due to the exponential rise in weapons and killing capacity… the ability to set off a nuclear winter… humanity’s inability to learn, more to the point, leadership’s & the oligarchy’s inability to learn, leaves humanity running out of runway and time.  The same can be said of the climate crisis, Big Oil & Gas, and spineless Western leadership that keeps kicking the can down the road in the name of greed.

 

And the cure for extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds… the cure for our paranoid streak, the battle between our primitive brain governing emotion and morality, versus the highly advanced neocortex that wants to monetize death and planetary destruction (at least some of us)???  

 

Well, it was the ‘60s.  Koestler is not convinced that a dramatic evolutionary leap or genetic mutation will suddenly arrive and give mankind enough compassion, empathy, and morality to dominate greed.  In short, don’t count on that to save the planet.  Instead, Koestler recommends better living -- and a chance or opportunity at survival -- through chemicals and chemistry.  Koestler noting, we have chemicals and compounds that can completely control humanity.  Given the prevalence of mood - & mind - altering medications and America’s insatiable appetite to escape through drugs our necro/neolib/neocon reality… would it really be a leap?  Pump empathy and love right into the water supply along with fluoride?  With an extra ration for the Wall St. & Washington crowd?  Way ahead of his time, Koestler mentions future RNA technology as a way to modify the brain, bring about a truce within the mind, and give emotion, morality, and selflessness greater standing.  RNA technology that’s no longer a dream.

 

Unfortunately, as with political parties and religion… better living through chemistry can go sideways in a heartbeat if the chemicals/medicine we are given are decided by unsavory characters (like our current Democratic and GOP leadership or the oligarchy they answer to).  Here, think of both the rational & legitimate concerns, as well as, some of the paranoia surrounding the COVID vaccines.  Chemicals and medicine, it seems, can be manipulated, like AI, algos, software code, with bad intent and malicious design (try this on: creating, what Huxley called, a "painless concentration camp of the mind").  GM takes the high road, however, and Koestler believes chemicals, compounds, and chemistry can bridge the chasm between humanity’s emotional and moral bankruptcy and our insatiable desire to profit from human misery and suffering.  That is, medicine/vaccines can be engineered to better strike equilibrium for humanity & justice, versus the insane world we presently find ourselves living in.

Before the planet gives up the ghost. 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2024

The Kids Lead the Way

The Kids Lead the Way 

 

It’s all very sketchy and deeply unsettling.  Americans are living through a time of great evil, a considerable amount of which emanates from our own government, the duopoly, our elected representatives, and the oligarchy.  Americans, therefore, have a duty to speak, to march and be heard.  Power concedes nothing w/out a demand. 

 

In times of great evil, we no longer have the luxury of remaining civil… in our discourse and protests.  We must call out great evil for what it is, frequently and often.  The wealthy and their henchmen, corrupt politicians addicted to power and the corporate MSM… count on & rely upon our civility, as cover and to hide their crimes of civilian genocide, mass murder of children, and endless profits from endless wars. 

 

Nothing less than immediate cessation of all hostilities & the immediate creation of the State of Palestine should be called for by all world leaders.

 

-       Genocide & the Fall of Western Credibility, By Gregg Wall (October 28, 2023)

 

 

By Gregg Wall (5-11-2024)

 

For many it’s been a really dark period.  The entire episode, since October 7, has been both eye-opening and galvanizing… millions and millions who were once pro-Israel or maybe ambivalent have had to rethink everything (in the face of Western corruption, certitude by Western elites surrounding the righteousness & right to commit mass murder, and repugnant Zionist leadership).  Genocide and the mass murder of children tends to have that effect.  An outfit called AIPAC Tracker, on X, names names and how much politicians have taken in from Israel and it's not pretty:  POTUS Biden $11.2 million; Senator Rubio $1.0 million; Senator Schumer $1.7 million; Rep Jefferies $1.3 million; Senator Fetterman $244K; Trump $1.0 million; Senator Graham $1.0 million and the list goes on and on.  Can you say, ‘compromised’? (One has to love the audacity of paying Israel $300 billion, since 1948, only for Israel to turnaround and buy the U.S. congress with American taxpayer money, or is that antisemitic to say?)  And without variation, in lockstep, Team AIPAC dutifully repeats their talking points over and over, as if they were members of the Israeli government.  I can barely stomach the American MSM news organizations but if you tune in, they too, parrot the same narratives, long discredited: the right to self-defense, no matter how disproportionate the response; Hamas must be brought to justice (no matter the thousands of women and children murdered by Israel and the U.S., no matter that Hamas is less than 1% of Gaza), and the lie to end all lies, anybody who disagrees with Bibi is an antisemite.  Trust me, given the damage the PM has done to America and Israel, Bibi - and his cabinet and billionaire sponsors - are the greatest antisemites on the planet (although Biden certainly is making a major contribution).

 

All this, despite, as reported in Haaretz, Bibi Netanyahu (aka Mr. Hamas) is trusted by less than 5% of the Israeli population.  All this, despite the fact, that Biden has consistently plumbed the depths of abysmal public approval ratings, and Congress has an approval rating of 13%.  Looks likes the crooks in the political class, in Israel and the United States, have a great deal in common. 

 

Meanwhile, the steady stream of devastation, destruction, murder, and great violence are jaw dropping.  No wonder congress wants to kill 1A, the Constitution, civil liberties, and social media (especially TikTok).  And still, congress, who can never seem to find a dime for the American people, shovels billions and billions at the genocide in Gaza and the war in the Ukraine, $95 billion in the latest authorization.  (The national debt is out-of-control, to such an extent the IMF is issuing warnings).  And the congress completely ignores the fact that Bibi funded, supported, and underwrote Hamas for fourteen years.  That Hamas operated inside Bibi’s Gaza prison camp. That ultimately, per Israeli press, Bibi was the beneficiary of the October 7^th attack.

 

Just how corrupt and racist are the members of congress?  Well, they are perfectly okay funding and authorizing a genocide, at last count some 35,000 souls, with approximately 10,000 more unaccounted for, and 14,000 children dead.  Absolutely wretched.  Of course, this doesn’t stop the Senate from demanding that the International Criminal Court not issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and assorted thugs in Bibi’s cabinet.  In terms of ICC charges, as Israeli leadership goes, so goes the congress that is funding this entire nightmare.  This also doesn’t stop the Biden Admin from indicating - in a pending report - that Israel has not violated international law, when Politico goes on to write the administration contradicts itself, hedges, and says that Israel has violated international law???

 

And then there’s the absolute contempt that drips from members of congress for peace protestors, students, college kids, who have made the simple demands for a ceasefire (along with the majority of Americans, including 80% of democrats) and that university endowments divest from defense contractors… hardly radical stuff.  And the response from federal, state, and local governments, many of them run by Dems: goon time, police state hooligans, violence, mass arrests, and like Israel’s response in Gaza, a complete militarized overreaction by the American establishment against peace protestors & very young adults.  Unvarnished thuggery. 

 

And congress and America have not seen anything yet.  Wait until the kids discover the American economy and good jobs have been hollowed out, liquidated, offshored, and consolidated into America’s totalitarian monopolies & utilities.  Wait until they discover systemic racism is embedded throughout the U.S. economy and healthcare and life itself are rationed.  Wait until the kids learn they’re indentured into trillions in national debt:  $39 trillion and counting for Wall St bailouts, corporate welfare, endless war, empire, colonialism, propping up the stock market, the perpetuation of the necro-death-economy.  All so that repugnant boomers can be filthy rich.  When people have nothing, are deep in debt, and they are systemically preyed upon, blowback inevitably occurs.  And what will a pampered and privileged gerontocracy’s/kleptocracy’s response be then? 

 

Cop city?  What happens when the establishment starts locking up white kids and young jews merely for protesting, The United States of Racism and Greed… our failed necroeconomy?  Or for stealing a loaf of bread? 

 

It’s ugly and it adds up to what many have known for some time, the United States is no more a democracy than China or Russia… and at least China doesn’t run around the globe attempting to backstop their economy with endless war, murder, and colonial subjugation and violence, so a few can cash in. 

 

 

 

 

 

It's really not fun to write about this every day.  I wish things were different.  I wish America was exceptional instead of tyrannical.   I wish America was indispensable instead of its leadership feared and loathed by the Global South, and yes, by America’s citizens.  I would love to believe the propaganda, the fairy tales, and lies we were all raised on… but increasingly that America no longer exists, if it ever did.  The middle class has been buried in a shallow grave.  It’s different when you are white and male. Although my life has been no picnic, I look at how blacks, gays, minorities, and women are treated in the U.S. and it’s absolutely disgusting.  And the folks America bombs to death overseas because they are brown or black skinned, and possess resources coveted by Western multinationals and oligarchs …  it’s why I celebrate every time I see erosion in America’s failed status quo (because I want to see the United States do well, I want to see the United States get better, reformed… I want to see all Americans do better).  But like a twelve-step program, American elites and the political class won’t even acknowledge the country is badly managed and that we have serious, serious problems. 

 

It all rolls up to a complete lack of accountability, arrogance, and avarice.

 

And the bright spots?  The young adults laying it on the line on the campuses, who have been radicalized by boomers, debt, many witnessing first-hand how their parents scrape by, the necroeconomy, an alleged democracy that continuously ignores the needs of the American people, corruption and racism that is built into the Great American Death Machine.  Outside agitators?  Really?  Who needs outside agitators to radicalize the kids when we have entirely corrupt state & federal governments, billionaires, the outside agitator of the State of Israel, imperious Washington, and greedy Wall St.? 

 

What other disinfectant and sunlight is coming this way?  The long prayed for arrest warrants from the ICC… may they come and soon, and may the warrants not be limited to the Israeli government.  More positive energy?  The fear that has finally taken hold of the Biden Administration, as it dawns on the party that Biden is toast and the Chicago Dem convention is likely not going to be the party they planned.  Did these idiots really believe they can murder thousands of innocent children, alienate their political base - repeatedly, blow off entirely their 2020 promises, and get away with it?  

 

It's 2016 all over again, and even snot-nosed Hillary is lurking around… like the bummer she is.  I don’t know whose decision it was to bring Hillary onboard Biden-Harris 2024 but Hills is the kiss of death.  A woman scorned, like Bill, by the American people and for very good reason.

 

And the final bright spot… the UN voted Friday, sidestepped the U.S., and started to further recognize Palestine.  Long, long overdue and a slap in the face to the United States government and every Western lackey government that follows America’s lead. 

 

Selah.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2024