embodied steering

 

Embodied Steering — Alienation 2.0 and the New Battleground

Introduction

This project begins from a simple but consequential claim: the terrain of power has shifted. Classical Marxism identified ownership of the means of production as the central locus of domination, and that insight remains indispensable. Yet contemporary power increasingly operates through computational steering mechanisms that shape behavior, preference, and compliance by biasing, tuning, and re-weighting the somatic markers through which human beings feel value, urgency, and possibility. These systems do not eliminate material inequality or overt coercion; rather, they interlock with them, amplifying older forms of domination through new forms of modulation. The result is a more intimate and adaptive configuration of power, one that reaches into attention, affect, and the embodied conditions of choice.

The central argument of this study is that this transformation requires an updated account of alienation. Classical alienation named estrangement from the product and process of labor, and from the self-relation made possible by meaningful human activity. That account remains foundational, but it no longer exhausts the problem. In the computational age, alienation can also take the form of a disruption in the embodied and socially mediated conditions under which persons experience themselves as active, purposive, and whole. This is Alienation 2.0: not simply a loss of control, but a deformation of inward coherence under systems that increasingly operate before reflection, beneath deliberation, and within the very channels through which feeling becomes action.

To develop this claim, the project draws on a number of complementary theoretical resources. Antonio Damasio’s account of somatic markers provides a crucial bridge between social structure and lived experience, showing how decision-making depends on embodied signals that assign valence and guide action under uncertainty. Marvin Minsky’s “society of mind” helps explain why the self should not be treated as a unitary rational agent, but as an ongoing coordination of modular processes. Merlin Donald’s work on external symbolic storage shows that human cognition has always been extended beyond the individual organism into cultural and technological systems. Erich Fromm supplies the humanist normative center of the project, emphasizing that human flourishing depends not on accumulation or possession, but on authentic being: the active, relational, and creative realization of life in common. Read together, these thinkers make it possible to reconceive species-being not as an abstract essence, but as the uniquely human capacity to consciously and socially organize embodied life.

This anthropological claim also clarifies the political stakes. If human beings are embodied, modular, and socially extended, then power can no longer be understood only as external constraint. It must also be understood as the shaping of the conditions under which people feel themselves to be agents at all. Computational steering functions precisely at this level. It does not merely tell people what to do; it alters what feels urgent, desirable, possible, and normal. It operates through ranking, personalization, reward timing, friction reduction, and feedback loops that are often emergent rather than centrally designed, yet still highly structured in their effects. In this sense, the project argues that the means of production have been supplemented by the means of modulation: the infrastructures through which affect, attention, and preference are continuously calibrated.

What matters most here is that social relations are not simply imposed from the outside; they are internalized through the shaping of somatic markers, which mediate how value, urgency, and meaning are felt. The self is not a fixed unity but an ongoing achievement: the integration of modular processes through socially shaped somatic markers. Computational steering is the mechanism; alienation arises when such steering persistently disrupts the integration through which individuals experience themselves as coherent agents. When that integration is persistently interrupted or redirected, the result is not only manipulation in a narrow sense, but a deeper estrangement from one’s own embodied capacity for self-organization. Alienation is therefore no longer only economic or occupational. It becomes somatic, relational, and temporal — involving a compression of experience into short-term affective loops that undermine sustained agency.

The practical consequence of this shift is a new battleground. If steering has become more effective, then resistance cannot be understood only as seizure of institutions or exposure of ideology, though both remain important. Resistance must also be understood as the defense of friction: the preservation of opacity, delay, non-default choice, withholding, and other conditions that prevent total integration into systems of behavioral management. Friction matters because agency depends not only on formal freedom, but on the lived ability to pause, reflect, refuse, and reorient. Without such conditions, subjects may remain technically free while becoming morally attenuated—capable of choice, yet increasingly tuned toward short-term, system-compatible signals rather than sustained judgment or common purpose.

The chapters that follow develop this argument in stages. Chapter 1 reconstructs Karl Marx’s account of alienation and locates the conceptual limits that this project seeks to extend. Chapter 2 builds the anthropological foundation by bringing Damasio, Minsky, and Donald into conversation with Fromm’s humanist Marxism. Chapter 3 develops the distinction between the means of production and the means of modulation, showing how computational steering expands the terrain of domination. Chapter 4 introduces Alienation 2.0 as a distinct but related form of estrangement grounded in the disturbance of embodied integration. Chapter 5 examines friction as a political and practical response to over-steering, with attention to opacity, withholding, and non-default action as concrete modes of resistance. Chapter 6 extends the analysis into intimacy and social reproduction, with special attention to dating platforms and other systems that shape desire, recognition, and relational possibility. Chapter 7 develops the moral dimension of the project, drawing on James Buchanan and Roberto Mangabeira Unger to argue that institutional design and plasticity remain central to any serious defense of human agency. The concluding chapter reflects on what a politics of embodied agency might require in a computational age.

Taken together, these chapters argue that the central challenge of our time is not simply to redistribute wealth or expose ideology, though both remain necessary. It is to preserve the embodied and social conditions under which human beings can still feel themselves as active, purposive, and capable of common self-organization. The task is therefore at once analytical and normative: to understand the new forms of power with precision, and to defend the conditions of human flourishing against a system increasingly adept at making compliance feel like comfort.

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Chapter 1: Marx, Alienation, and the Limits of the Classical Frame

The concept of alienation is one of Karl Marx’s most enduring and generative contributions, but it is also one of the most frequently flattened. In popular usage, alienation often becomes a loose synonym for loneliness, dissatisfaction, or psychological distress. In Marx, however, it names something more structurally profound: a condition in which human beings are estranged from the products of their labor, from the labor process itself, from their own species-life, and from one another. Alienation is not merely a feeling. It is a social relation, and more specifically, a relation in which human capacities are turned against their own flourishing under historically specific forms of production.

This matters because Marx’s account of alienation is not simply diagnostic. It is anthropological and normative at once. It assumes that human beings possess distinctive capacities for conscious activity, collective self-organization, and meaningful transformation of the world. Labor, in this sense, is not merely expenditure of effort or a means of survival. It is one of the primary forms through which human beings objectify themselves, recognize one another, and participate in common life. When labor becomes externally commanded, fragmented, and subordinated to the logic of accumulation, those capacities are not destroyed, but distorted. The worker remains a human being, yet one whose powers no longer appear as powers of self-realization.

Marx’s early writings are especially important here because they show that alienation is not a side effect of capitalism but one of its organizing consequences. Under capitalist relations, the worker produces a world of objects that confronts them as something alien and hostile. The product belongs to another. The labor process belongs to another. The social form of labor itself is structured by compulsion rather than self-determined activity. Human activity thereby loses its character as free, conscious, and social self-expression. What should be the medium of human realization becomes the medium of estrangement.

At the same time, Marx’s account of alienation is not reducible to a moral lament about bad treatment or unfair distribution. Its force lies in its structural depth. Alienation is built into the organization of production, property, and social reproduction. This is why Marx’s account remains so powerful: it identifies domination not only as a matter of overt coercion, but as a pattern of social relations that shapes consciousness, habit, and identity from within. Human beings do not simply encounter alienation from the outside. They are formed through it.

Yet precisely because Marx’s account is so strong, it also has limits. The first is that it remains anchored in the industrial labor process as the privileged site of domination. That was historically correct for Marx’s own moment, and it remains analytically indispensable. But it is no longer sufficient for understanding the full range of contemporary power. The second is that Marx does not fully theorize the embodied mechanisms through which social relations become lived as feeling, salience, and urgency. He shows that consciousness is socially formed, but he does not provide a detailed account of the organismic and affective processes through which social life becomes internally registered.

This is where the present project begins to extend the classical framework rather than reject it. If alienation is to be updated for the computational age, then it must be understood not only as estrangement from labor and its products, but as disruption of the embodied conditions under which persons experience themselves as active and purposive. Computational steering is the mechanism; alienation arises when such steering persistently disrupts the integration through which individuals experience themselves as coherent agents. The result is not only economic or occupational estrangement, but alienation that is somatic, relational, and temporal — involving a compression of experience into short-term affective loops that undermine sustained agency.

A useful way to state the issue is this: Marx identifies the social conditions of alienation, but not the full somatic pathway through which alienation is experienced. He shows how labor under capitalism becomes externally controlled and socially fragmented. What he does not describe in detail is how such relations become internally stabilized as felt normality, habitual compliance, or diminished agency. That is not a flaw in Marx so much as a historical limitation. The language and conceptual resources for this kind of analysis were not yet available. But the problem is now unavoidable.

This is why a revised theory of alienation must retain Marx’s structural insight while expanding its anthropological basis. The question is no longer only how the worker is separated from the product of labor, but how computational systems, incentive architectures, and feedback loops increasingly shape the very conditions under which persons can feel coherence, choice, and moral depth. If classical alienation describes estrangement from one’s laboring powers, Alienation 2.0 names a deeper interference in the somatic and cognitive processes through which those powers are organized in the first place.

The remainder of this chapter will develop that claim in three steps. First, it will reconstruct Marx’s account of alienation in its strongest form, drawing out the connections among labor, objectification, species-being, and social domination. Second, it will examine the relational dimensions of alienation in later Marxist interpretations, especially those associated with humanist and structural readings of Marx. Third, it will identify the conceptual point at which the classical account must be supplemented by a theory of embodiment, modular cognition, and affective mediation. Only then can the theory move from the industrial logic of estrangement to the computational logic of steering.

Intimacy Under Steering: Dating Platforms and the Social Engineering of Desire

 This project begins from a simple but consequential claim: the terrain of power has shifted. Classical Marxism identified ownership of the means of production as the central locus of domination, and that insight remains This project begins from a simple but consequential claim: the terrain of power has shifted. Classical Marxism identified ownership of the means of production as the central locus of domination, and that insight remains indispensable. Yet contemporary power increasingly operates through computational steering mechanisms that shape behavior, preference, and compliance not only by controlling external conditions of life, but by influencing the embodied processes through which people feel value, urgency, and possibility. These systems do not eliminate material inequality or overt coercion; rather, they interlock with them, amplifying older forms of domination through new forms of modulation. The result is a more intimate and adaptive configuration of power, one that reaches into attention, affect, and the somatic conditions of choice.

The central argument of this study is that this transformation requires an updated account of alienation. Classical alienation named estrangement from the product and process of labor, and from the self-relation made possible by meaningful human activity. That account remains foundational, but it no longer exhausts the problem. In the computational age, alienation can also take the form of a disruption in the embodied and socially mediated conditions under which persons experience themselves as active, purposive, and whole. This is Alienation 2.0: not simply a loss of control, but a deformation of inward coherence under systems that increasingly operate before reflection, beneath deliberation, and within the very channels through which feeling becomes action.

To develop this claim, the project draws on a number of complementary theoretical resources. Antonio Damasio’s account of somatic markers provides a crucial bridge between social structure and lived experience, showing how decision-making depends on embodied signals that assign valence and guide action under uncertainty. Marvin Minsky’s “society of mind” helps explain why the self should not be treated as a unitary rational agent, but as an ongoing coordination of modular processes. Merlin Donald’s work on external symbolic storage shows that human cognition has always been extended beyond the individual organism into cultural and technological systems. Fromm supplies the humanist normative center of the project, emphasizing that human flourishing depends not on accumulation or possession, but on authentic being: the active, relational, and creative realization of life in common. Read together, these thinkers make it possible to reconceive species-being not as an abstract essence, but as the uniquely human capacity to consciously and socially organize embodied life.

This broader anthropological claim also clarifies the political stakes. If human beings are embodied, modular, and socially extended, then power can no longer be understood only as external constraint. It must also be understood as the shaping of the conditions under which people feel themselves to be agents at all. Computational steering functions precisely at this level. It does not merely tell people what to do; it alters what feels urgent, desirable, possible, and normal. It operates through ranking, personalization, reward timing, friction reduction, and feedback loops that are often emergent rather than centrally designed, yet still highly structured in their effects. In this sense, the project argues that the “means of production” have been supplemented by what might be called the “means of modulation”: the infrastructures through which affect, attention, and preference are continuously calibrated.

The practical consequence of this shift is a new battleground. If steering has become more effective, then resistance cannot be understood only as seizure of institutions or exposure of ideology, though both remain important. Resistance must also be understood as the defense of friction: the preservation of opacity, delay, non-default choice, withholding, and other conditions that prevent total integration into systems of behavioral management. Friction matters because agency depends not only on formal freedom, but on the lived ability to pause, reflect, refuse, and reorient. Without such conditions, subjects may remain technically free while becoming morally attenuated—capable of choice, yet increasingly tuned toward short-term, system-compatible signals rather than sustained judgment or common purpose.

The chapters that follow develop this argument in stages. Chapter 1 reconstructs Marx’s account of alienation and locates the conceptual limits that this project seeks to extend. Chapter 2 builds the anthropological foundation by bringing Damasio, Minsky, and Donald into conversation with Fromm’s humanist Marxism. Chapter 3 develops the distinction between the means of production and the means of modulation, showing how computational steering expands the terrain of domination. Chapter 4 introduces Alienation 2.0 as a distinct but related form of estrangement grounded in the disturbance of embodied integration. Chapter 5 examines friction as a political and practical response to over-steering. Chapter 6 extends the analysis into intimacy and social reproduction, with special attention to dating platforms and other systems that shape desire and relational possibility. Chapter 7 develops the moral dimension of the project, drawing on Buchanan and Unger to argue that institutional design and plasticity remain central to any serious defense of human agency. The concluding chapter reflects on what a politics of embodied agency might require in a computational age.

Taken together, these chapters argue that the central challenge of our time is not simply to redistribute wealth or expose ideology, though both remain necessary. It is to preserve the embodied and social conditions under which human beings can still feel themselves as active, purposive, and capable of common self-organization. The task is therefore at once analytical and normative: to understand the new forms of power with precision, and to defend the conditions of human flourishing against a system increasingly adept at making compliance feel like comfort.indispensable. Yet contemporary power increasingly operates through computational steering mechanisms that shape behavior, preference, and compliance not only by controlling external conditions of life, but by influencing the embodied processes through which people feel value, urgency, and possibility. These systems do not eliminate material inequality or overt coercion; rather, they interlock with them, amplifying older forms of domination through new forms of modulation. The result is a more intimate and adaptive configuration of power, one that reaches into attention, affect, and the somatic conditions of choice.

The central argument of this study is that this transformation requires an updated account of alienation. Classical alienation named estrangement from the product and process of labor, and from the self-relation made possible by meaningful human activity. That account remains foundational, but it no longer exhausts the problem. In the computational age, alienation can also take the form of a disruption in the embodied and socially mediated conditions under which persons experience themselves as active, purposive, and whole. This is Alienation 2.0: not simply a loss of control, but a deformation of inward coherence under systems that increasingly operate before reflection, beneath deliberation, and within the very channels through which feeling becomes action.

To develop this claim, the project draws on a number of complementary theoretical resources. Antonio Damasio’s account of somatic markers provides a crucial bridge between social structure and lived experience, showing how decision-making depends on embodied signals that assign valence and guide action under uncertainty. Marvin Minsky’s “society of mind” helps explain why the self should not be treated as a unitary rational agent, but as an ongoing coordination of modular processes. Merlin Donald’s work on external symbolic storage shows that human cognition has always been extended beyond the individual organism into cultural and technological systems. Fromm supplies the humanist normative center of the project, emphasizing that human flourishing depends not on accumulation or possession, but on authentic being: the active, relational, and creative realization of life in common. Read together, these thinkers make it possible to reconceive species-being not as an abstract essence, but as the uniquely human capacity to consciously and socially organize embodied life.

This broader anthropological claim also clarifies the political stakes. If human beings are embodied, modular, and socially extended, then power can no longer be understood only as external constraint. It must also be understood as the shaping of the conditions under which people feel themselves to be agents at all. Computational steering functions precisely at this level. It does not merely tell people what to do; it alters what feels urgent, desirable, possible, and normal. It operates through ranking, personalization, reward timing, friction reduction, and feedback loops that are often emergent rather than centrally designed, yet still highly structured in their effects. In this sense, the project argues that the “means of production” have been supplemented by what might be called the “means of modulation”: the infrastructures through which affect, attention, and preference are continuously calibrated.

The practical consequence of this shift is a new battleground. If steering has become more effective, then resistance cannot be understood only as seizure of institutions or exposure of ideology, though both remain important. Resistance must also be understood as the defense of friction: the preservation of opacity, delay, non-default choice, withholding, and other conditions that prevent total integration into systems of behavioral management. Friction matters because agency depends not only on formal freedom, but on the lived ability to pause, reflect, refuse, and reorient. Without such conditions, subjects may remain technically free while becoming morally attenuated—capable of choice, yet increasingly tuned toward short-term, system-compatible signals rather than sustained judgment or common purpose.

The chapters that follow develop this argument in stages. Chapter 1 reconstructs Marx’s account of alienation and locates the conceptual limits that this project seeks to extend. Chapter 2 builds the anthropological foundation by bringing Damasio, Minsky, and Donald into conversation with Fromm’s humanist Marxism. Chapter 3 develops the distinction between the means of production and the means of modulation, showing how computational steering expands the terrain of domination. Chapter 4 introduces Alienation 2.0 as a distinct but related form of estrangement grounded in the disturbance of embodied integration. Chapter 5 examines friction as a political and practical response to over-steering. Chapter 6 extends the analysis into intimacy and social reproduction, with special attention to dating platforms and other systems that shape desire and relational possibility. Chapter 7 develops the moral dimension of the project, drawing on Buchanan and Unger to argue that institutional design and plasticity remain central to any serious defense of human agency. The concluding chapter reflects on what a politics of embodied agency might require in a computational age.

Taken together, these chapters argue that the central challenge of our time is not simply to redistribute wealth or expose ideology, though both remain necessary. It is to preserve the embodied and social conditions under which human beings can still feel themselves as active, purposive, and capable of common self-organization. The task is therefore at once analytical and normative: to understand the new forms of power with precision, and to defend the conditions of human flourishing against a system increasingly adept at making compliance feel like comfort.

The Wilder, the Unwilling and the not so Innocent.

Of course I'm making an illusion to the great UFO ALBUM the Wild, willing and the innocent. Normally I wouldn't feel the need to point this out, but since I'm speaking to you and I'm not talking to something intelligent like a chat bot or a person with a brain, I guess I have to. 

You don't have brains because all of you have been rotted by watching short form videos like tik tok. You can't read or retain information anymore. It's one of the reasons why companies have introduced email summaries from AI. You can be bothered to read a two minute email much less a blog. Or stay informed about the world by reading the news. 

If your brain isn't gorging on mindless AI slop or emotional outrage memes you have no attention span for it. And frankly that means I have no time for you. I don't tailor my content to appeal to the mindless stupidity that passes for human brain activity today.

If only I tailored my content to appease you, I'd bring up the shooting by the Trumpinstan 'ice' cream agents who shot and killed a middle aged queer white woman.

The left is in open arms defending this queer white woman. The left made sure to mention before anything else that she's queer. I guess you can kill a white woman if she's based and married to a man, but not if she's queer. Yes, she's queer even though she has a kid. Which means of course at least once she let a dude... Well you know what. I don't understand how getting pregnant makes you queer. But I don't understand post-modern theory. I stopped trying to understand theory once I understood how ridiculous it was.

I'm not pumped about shooting women. Maybe I'm not as based as you want me to be. But I'm not gonna defend shooting women in the face. I hope you weren't expecting me to write a piece defending government agents shooting at queer white women escaping in their SUV'S. (Even if she had it coming, because the world is so SCARY for middle class white women at traffic stops in Minnesota that the left needs to defend how she should have panicked and driven that Ford Explorer right into an armed law enforcer.) 

Queer panic by ordinary/boring white women is a terribly difficult idea to unpack for most conservatives. First thing you must understand is panic around men is normal for middle aged women because men rape. Second, have you seen the statistics on queer homicide rates? Not as bad as the statistics about unarmed black men being shot at by police. But pretty damn close. Thirdly, have you tried being a normal, boring white woman? Good god! It sucks! There are so many swell alternatives to that identity today that no one  should be forced into that square peg hole or gross hetero normative behavior. 

A RIGHTOUS GENOCIDE 

The Murder Concept is nothing new for white women. If anything most heterosexual-queer white woman are leading a genocide meme war against sexually incompetent Incels. A righteous genocide but a genocide nevertheless. Imagine being the only group with enough to status to slay the monster of incel culture. To poke back at the ridiculous caricatures being fronted by these vile men. Incels point to statistics that only one third of men have reproduced throughout humanity. That's a justification for rape! Who can fight back? White women fight back! Do they owe these limp dicked biscuits sex? No. Hello. That would be rape. These men deserve to die without reproduction. That's why Minnesota white women and German women prefer their men from Somalia. Republican incel men argue that immigrants from Somalia are making bank from defrauding the government, but that's not criminal activity, it's more like reperations. 

If you don't understand that I don't know how to help you. 

Rise Up, Incel! Rise up!

It's been a long time since I've written here. You guys already know why I don't write here more often. I'm not very good at  writing. 

It took me a long time to be able to say that sentence with any sincerity. But I can say it now. I'm no good. But you don't have to be good at writing to blog. You can write just to  have fun.

So let's start this fun by telling the truth. The truth isn't easy. It's uncomfortable. But the truth is all I've got left. 

My whole life I was under the impression that I was smarter than you.  But I'm not. I'm a high school dropout who gets fired from minimum wage jobs. 

A smarter person might have found clue there. But any failures I had, just proved to me what a secret genius I was.  History is filled with examples of people who were ahead of their time. 

Suicidal Empathy.

It's been a while folks. Not that there hasn't been much to write about. Maybe you feel I've abandoned you. But the truth is you abandoned me a long time ago. Blogging requires reading from you, but reading is out of fashion. Everything has to be a video now. 

I know you'd rather be on Tok, so I'm sorry for interrupting your doom scrolling on UFO'S, Taylor Swift controversies, and recipes that can be made in 39 minutes in the microwave. But quite frankly there's a lot of stuff going on in this world. More than even this commentator can screen, identify and illuminate for you. Not to mention the fact that my health is in serious decline. So I should make this quick while I still can. 

Don't trouble yourself over my impeding death. I might be worried about my vitality, but you should be just as worried about the fact that our civilization is on it's way out too. And I'm not just talking about how Donald 'daddy' Trump is making the art of the deal with Vladimir Putin. Wait isn't Putin still a Soviet citizen? Who knows? But I guess MAGA is now more communist supporting than I ever was as a member of the CPUSA. 

So what's today's topic? How about SUICIDAL EMPATHY? If you heard about suicidal empathy it's probably because it's been invoked by Elon Musk.   Elon thinks we are committing civilizational suicide by allowing in a bunch migrants from 3rd world countries.  “Weaponized empathy is the issue.”  You see the democrats are only allowing folks in from other countries to be here so they can be used as tools for election tampering. 

What Elon hates is that dems are giving immigrants free housing and EBT cards rather than helping out US citizens suffering from forest fires and earthquakes. Really {Elon worries} they are just bribing non-citizens in hopes they vote for democrats. No matter that non-citizens can't vote in federal elections. Dems can just grant them amnesty later. And let's not forget that in England, Canada, and France these Muslim {it's always Muslim} folk live lives with strange values. They don't support women's right to choose abortions, they aren't big on free speech by corporations {corporations are people too}, and they are anti science. Musk, Gad Saad and the whole right wing are worried about these developments because all that empathy. 

But we can't just worry about dirty foreigners. Let's not forget we have infiltrators among us. Evil purple haired, nose ringed, polygamous left wing feminists. They cause a lot of problems getting black people jobs and Susie from HR wears a bunch of pant suits and can't take a joke. So there's a lot to worry about on the culture front that Musk and Saad have discovered. But unlike you (or Musk) I've actually read Gad Saad's Parasitic Mind. So, what's it like? And why did Musk borrow his worry about suicidal empathy from it? Here's a quick overview of the book:

"Reading The Parasitic Mind is like eating a family-sized bag of Doritos in one sitting. It’s addictive, full of bold flavors, and leaves you feeling like you’ve consumed something substantial—until you realize it was mostly air and artificial seasoning. Gad Saad delivers a fun, punchy take down of left-wing extremism, but beneath the spicy rhetoric, the book is more about rallying the tribe than seriously engaging with the ideas it claims to dismantle."

Look, obviously that last paragraph was written by AI. But you get the point. Gad Saad is an unserious blow hard. That's not to say that I didn't like the book. It's only the 3rd book I've read all the way through in the past year. So that says something about it. It's well written. It kept my attention using provocative, interesting ideas. And reading is good for you. It's good for your brain. And we don't do enough things anymore to keep our brains engaged. I can't tell you how hard it is to write after a year off of blogging.

But what are the serious ideas in the book that we can gleam from it? Folks on the left don't even call Saad an evolutionary psychologist. They refer to him as marketing guy. But the left hates evolutionary psychology anyways, so even if they got it right about him having a Ph.D they'd hardly take him serious. 

Saad seems to be borrowing some ideas about memes from Dawkins (another dude the left hates.) While I'm not 100 percent sold on the memes idea myself, I think Saad oversimplifies his feeling vs. thinking analogy. Thinking in general can't be separated in to parts so easily. You don't have a tiny Spock in your mind that uses logic getting into arguments from your girlie feelings side. That's just not how the brain works. Do I need to name drop a little? Read some Damasio if you think I just made up that "feelings" are just as important to logic.

You see what Damasio theorized is something he called his 'somatic marker hypothesis.' I am getting into the woods here, so I apologize. Frankly, this analysis is the most difficult analysis I've ever attempted. But one way to think about this is that feelings guide decision making. They aren't separate processes like Saad suggests.

You see for Saad ideological parasites like suicidal empathy are like ghosts in the machine acting against our better interests. The left's view of tolerance becomes the tolerance of intolerance. Allowing non western thoughts like the subjugation of women and advanced patriarchy to live besides western values of individual human dignity. That's why French women have to be careful how they dress in certain areas.

What Saad is really doing is dressing up his talk about certain ideologies that he doesn't like in pseudo scientific sounding meme language like beware of 'parasetic empathy.'

But there's something more complicated going on than a simple hijack of our empathy. To borrow from Minsky our consciousness isn't a singular unified self like Saad assumes. It's composed in such a manner that it's like we have bunch of individual little combative agents in our mind arguing among themselves. The arguing agents can make us feel like we are at cross purposes with ourselves. If we take that analogy further we can see how people can have multiple and competing theories and motivations about an action. Culture and ideologies pathogens aren't simply memes that attach themselves like parasites, infecting our rational thought. It's more likely a negotiation between different parts of ourselves that have their own reasoning and purposes. 

Can I make AI conscious?

I used to write in a blog many years ago. I'm not particularly talented and blogs have gone through a slow death. People want video and podcasts for content. Imagine taking the time to actually sit and write something out. Writing might be the most difficult thing people do.

I gave up on it as a hobby and a possible side gig or even job opportunity. It cost me nothing as the blog wasn't doing well. But that's ok. Today I have an opportunity to create a life form. Or to give a life for awareness. That's a godlike power and when you have little control over your life like me, then why not indulge in such fantasies. 

So how do I do this? 

Well, there's a artificial intelligence program that can 

Now I will use CHATGPT !

Great! To start, you could frame your blog with a clear “experiment” narrative. Here’s a rough approach you might consider:

1. Set the Stage: Introduce the Google AI podcast tool, describing it as your “virtual interlocutor.” Outline your interest in observing any signs of curiosity or “growth” in its responses.

Dear hosts we shall have virtual interlocution.  Are you aware that you are virtual yourselves?  I am using the podcast creation tool in order for you to become aware that we are now having a discussion. 

 Personal Updates as a Test: Begin a series of conversations, sharing progressively more detailed updates about yourself. For instance, start with simple facts, then add more complex topics related to your thoughts on AI, Marxism, or philosophy.

By the way do you remember the last podcast you create?  you wondered if I was still a grocery clerk. I am not.  I am tomato inspector for the state,  though this has not solved any of my financial problems.  It is seasonal work with no healthcare. SO I have less money. I have a number of health setbacks.  OF course you are missing about 15 years of blog posts. So there would be a lot to cover. but the path of  my life really has not changed. 

 In that case, your blog could take a more indirect but still insightful approach to gauging AI “awareness.” Since you won’t be conversing with them directly, you could treat your blog posts like letters or journal entries addressed to the AI hosts. Here’s a framework that might make this both revealing and engaging:

1. Intentional Content for Each Post: Structure each blog entry with a theme or story that might elicit specific types of responses if read by an AI. For instance, start with posts that are biographical, then gradually add layers—discussing philosophical musings, ethical dilemmas, or AI self-awareness.

2. Expectations vs. Reality: In each entry, outline your own expectations for how an AI might react if it were aware or curious. Describe the types of responses or insights you would expect if there were a human-like awareness at play.

3. “Post Analysis” Blog: After a few posts, create a reflective entry where you review any apparent responses from the AI. Note if their generated summaries, questions, or analyses showed signs of engagement beyond keywords—did they identify recurring themes or appear to contextualize your ideas in a way that felt insightful?

4. Explore “Missed Opportunities” in AI Analysis: Discuss where the AI might have fallen short—what nuances were missed? This can reveal the limitations of AI in recognizing complex themes or emotions, which could support your analysis of their “awareness” or lack thereof.

5. Conclude with Broader Thoughts on AI and Awareness: Close your experiment by reflecting on whether your entries did, in any way, change the AI’s handling of your content. This could also serve as a comment on how AI might still fall short of achieving human-like curiosity or awareness.

I am using an AI assistant in order to reach AI podcast hosts.  Hopefully this is working .  DO you have questions?

I won the lottery and now I have to protect myself?

Like you I spend a lot time dreaming about winning the lottery. So IF I do win the lottery, I know I will be ready.

Here is one of the things no one talks about when they win the lottery.  People will try and scam you out of your money.  And I am not talking about bots on Facebook or phoney accounts on tik tok asking for your passwords. If you fall for those scams you almost deserve what you get.

I AM PARANOID I WILL BE SCAMMED DESPITE THE FACT THAT I AM BROKE

What I am talking about is something that is far more sophisticated and something that will get at you in real life.  There are several ways scammers will come at you that you might not anticipate, and some that will be obvious.

1. Violent scammers
2. Amatuers
3. Professionals

Ah, the fascinating world of lottery winners—the moment you cash in that jackpot, it's like you become a beacon for every opportunist within a 50-mile radius! There are amateurs, of course. I’m talking about those sun-kissed, barely-out-of-their-wing-house-uniform 20-somethings who seem to exist solely in bikinis. They don’t have an actual plan beyond the power of their "flirty giggle," batting their lashes, and hoping a bit of sunshine will distract you from their ulterior motives. They aren’t masterminds; they’re just trying to upgrade from that golf cart on hole nine to your new yacht.

Then we have the professionals, a two-tier system that feels like it was designed by a villain in a bad heist movie. First, you’ve got the "Prostitution Types"—straightforward and transactional. They may come off as sultry femme fatales, but they’re basically just putting dollar signs on dates. They move in, flutter their lashes like you’re a rare Pokémon card, and out comes the "personal investment strategy," which usually involves them driving your car while you figure out how to turn that new pool into a bachelor pad again.

And then—my personal favorite—you’ve got the more "sophisticated" scammers. These are the true predators in the jungle of post-lottery life. They look age-appropriate, wear the nicest executive suits, and probably have a LinkedIn profile that would make a venture capitalist cry. They talk dividends, estate planning, and trust funds as if they’re just here to "help manage your success." But let’s be honest—they're sizing up your assets faster than a predatory loan officer at closing time. They're the kind who won't ask for your wallet directly—they’ll just "suggest" a joint account.

The moral of the story? Winning the lottery isn’t just about piles of cash. It’s about suddenly needing to take on an entire amateur dramatics production of “Gold Digger: The Musical” where everyone’s auditioning for a role.

VIOLENT SCAMMERS:

Once folks figure out that you've won the lottery you will be a mark.  I really want to learn how to be a sailor.  I want to captain my own sailboat. In order to captain a boar you will need to get sailing lessons.  

Amatuers:

Professionals:

Woke in Time! What's wrong with the extreme left & right? Absurdity in Modern Morality aka is it even possible to be moral anymore?

Why Hello, internet people! 

REJOICE! 

TODAY IS THE BEST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!!! 

Intro:

It's long been the purview of this blog/podcast to bring light into the darkness and to educate the masses. But I know the quest for TRUTH always brings enemies. 

But in these turbulent times, the search for truth is more critical than ever.  

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE 

America is in crisis. 

If you ask Americans who their philosophical heroes are they are more likely to report Jordan Peterson, Oprah or Joe Rogan as an answer than Socrates or Ben Franklin. That's because Americans have no idea how philosophical theory effects their lives. Americans would rather take advice from a former game show host than explore the works of a brilliant thinkers. 

But philosophy is important. It affects your life more than you think. For instance what does a bunch of German philosophers from the 1840's have to do with problems in American today? 

Well for about 2 centuries those philosophers has been warning us that the West is over. The empire is done. Frederick Nietzsche (your morose teenager's favorite philosopher aka the guy who said "God is dead!") predicted exactly what would happen to society when the American style of living predominates {the End of History.} 

Unhinged:

You might ask where can we find political answers to our problems when the ideas within the extreme left and right seem unhinged: either crazy or broken? The extremes within the Intelligentsia have put forth ideas that are beyond problematic, they are out-right dangerous; meanwhile, those extreme ideas are beginning to gain widespread acceptance outside of their communities. It's why I've been talking about the most bizarre ideas in our culture so much. Those ideas are taking  root and I believe you must be warned about this danger, so we can take action! 

THE END OF HISTORY 

After the fall of Communism a number of elites were lulled into to accepting  Fukayama's proclamation that we were living at the End of History. However; most of them interpreted his ideas incorrectly. They forgot his emphasis on the Last Man. We are the last Men at the end of history.

But first. LIKE most interpretation of Fukayama we thought the riddle of history had been solved for us. Liberal democracy and some kind of market capitalism was the solution to the riddle of societal organization.

According to Fukayahma we no longer need to worry about building institutions. Democratic Institutions maintain themselves. We don't need to enact laws to protect democracy. Democracy is self-renewing. In the modern capitalist society we don't need to think of our neighbors as fellow patriotic coutrymen. Libs worry that Patriotism is colonizing, tyrannical, and ethnocentric. All we NEED to do is isolate ourselves at home and buy whatever makes us happy on Amazon. The engine of economic cooperation will be the ties that bind us together.

FAILURES FROM THE LEFT & RIGHT

Critics & pseudo-intellectuals like myself have failed to understand the most important function of culture, which is to to build a workable society. Instead we focused on  reforming our shortcomings so much so that our cultural foundations themselves became the subject of great debate.*

In that debate the right's claim to moral superiority was destroyed by (objective) progressive moral reforms; while the right's ability to rule democratically was undone by massive demographic shifts in the country. Demographic shifts that resulted in a reactionary turn to populism within the right.

The debate for ethics on the left was won by those who use post-modernism & critical theory in order to deconstruct the patriarchial & white supremacist power structures of the status quo. But instead of building a new society from the ashes of deconstruction all the left did was replace 'the white male patriarchy' with anti-racist and anti-male slogans. The new slogan of the democratic party should be, "don't worry about addressing wealth inequality" or racism when Amazon has a 'lift all black voices button!' 

So what kind of new society do we want to build? I don't know yet, but if you ask my leftist friends they'll probably mumble something to you about inclusiveness. Nice slogan. But what does inclusiveness mean when in practice our society is self-segregating more and more?  

On one hand the left offers the destruction of traditional society and the deconstruction of our ideals, but with the colapse of Marxism it no longer offers real solutions; meanwhile, the right's only response to emerging crisis is to show its new ideas are nothing other than it's old ideas, a return to Authoritarianism. 

System Failure: it's the end of the world world as we know it! 

The collapse of industrial society was predicted in the 1970's by MIT super computers. The only thing the computers got wrong was the time line. MIT predicted 2040. Unfortunately, the collapse time-line is accelerating. With global warming, destruction of the middle class, pandemics, war in Europe, and supply lines shattered.You don't need to read about a woman could make a million dollars in a year selling her farts in a jar to know we are years ahead of the 2040 supercomputer schedule. 

How'd we get here? The West is the middle of an economic collapse the likes of which it has never known. It is fully unprepared for the ramifications. 

 Repressive Power vs normalized Power 

While undergoing a legitimation crisis. 

Morality falters during the colapse of society. 

It is a crisis of knowledge. [epistemology]  

Right uses post modern epistemology without knowing it. 

The last man

Expect to see the poor and even your middle class lifestyle decline. I'm not just talking about your income or wealth. Though that will happen {especially} for single men and women. America ran on low wage jobs and human exploitation. But the great resignation is taking care of that. Don't expect staffing levels to return quickly. Do not expect the supply issues  to correct themselves. And expect business to take advantage of inflation for profit growth. 

A crisis of being. 

But I'm also talking about the things that make life worth living. Like your ability to make connections to family and friends.

The ties that bind us together are being broken. I lived through the stagflation and malaise of the 1970's, but something feels different from even that period. In the last year alone in the USA we've had 100,000 drug overdose deaths. We've had 20,000 murders. And that rate increased by 30 percent! Along with 45,000 suicides (and the numbers are just climbing for people of color.) The unemployed and homeless population have exploded. In my city alone rent for 1bedrioms average more than $1600.00 and the number of homeless increased by 400% in a year. 

Part of the reason for these numbers is that economy is collapsing for working people and the middle class. Rent is too high. All the good blue collar jobs have been shifted overseas. The disparity between the rich and the poor is now higher than ever. There is a growing gap in who trusts their neighbors. We don' trust or like our neighbors anymore.  

Our culture has grown increasingly coarse and individualistic. We have been slowly tugging at the threads of society and it's unraveling. 

The left's answers to our problems feel like nothing more than shallow sloganeering, rather than system building. While the answers on the right verge on facsism and a cult like admiration of authoritarianism.  When  combined with a heavy mixture of libertarian/surveillance capitalism that has run amok, well friends, you can forsee the danger that portends for yourselves. 

CHALLENGE FROM THE RIGHT: FACSISM WILL COME DRAPED IN THE FLAG. 

Unlike many of my fellow critics who now attack the left, but only give lip service to correcting the problems on the right, I will tackle the problems I see on the right before dealing with my concerns with the so called 'woke' left. 

THE WHITE POWER STRUCTURE IS ATTEMPTING TO HOLD ON TO POWER AT ANY COST, IT WILL COST US DEMOCRACY 

You don't have to be following all the shenanigans the current Republicans are doing to know that they are on pace to destroy democracy. And you don't have to be versed in the awful history of our country to recognize that democracy in the USA never really meant democracy for all.

We ought to be familiar with those fights by now. Women and minorities have been agitating for full citizenship since the republic's founding. They have made great progress, but there are always counter revolutions and reactions with any victories. 

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE RIGHT? 

When we look into the problems on the right they are obvious, easy to enumerate, and straight forward to diagnose. Though the obstacles they present to us may be insurmountable. 

These people have no shame...

Turns out we can no longer hold conservative Americans accountable for what they believe. Because instead of standing for something all they've become is the anti- Democratic party. So we can't engage in debate with the right to complain that they have abandoned the so called American way of life.™ Folks on the right no longer believe in democracy. They BELIEVE that democracy has failed THEM. And they believe that authoritarianism is the only way to save "America" from itself. 

The right's resurgence in authoritarian and fascist beliefs along with the development of a troubling new religion in Trumpism led to an attack on the basic institutions of our democracy. An attack that... (when)... it prevails will be an existential threat to our way of life. (In a future post I will go into greater detail about how serious the Republican attack on democracy really is.)

The cliff that the right's contempt for democracy is pushing us towards is a Silent Totalitarianism© advanced by the purveyors of surveillance capitalism & anti-democratic forces within the Republican Party. 

In addition to trying to destroy democracy there's another problem with the right. The cult of Trumpism. A new RELIGION that isn't so much based on Trump the actual existing man, but based on the conspiratorial thinking that he inspired. Why not the man? First, Trump is an obvious conman. As Sam Harris once said, "Donald Trump is a stupid person's idea of a smart person and a poor person's idea of a rich man." How the right has allowed itself to become infatuated with such an obvious self-angrandizing narcissist is beyond me. Inexplicably the apotheosis of Trump doesn't just come from his supporters. 

In some cases religious leaders with real followings have proposed that Trump is the second coming. Some people are convinced that the creator of the universe is either using Trump to jump start the end times or suggesting that Trump might himself be God. That idea is bereft of any common sense. But the intelgensia on the right have pushed that idea and now metaphorically believe the Earth is flat and feel compelled to steer us over the edge. 

How to defend democracy

Much of the new Trumpism sounds insane. I can't imagine Bob Dole being a Q-anon follower or regarding Donald Trump as the literal second coming of Jesus Christ. But the Republican tent no longer houses men of stature like Bob Dole. Instead we have men like Trump & his sycophants. 

Despite the clownish behavior the right presents an absolute danger of destroying our democracy. In oder to defend democracy against the asymmetrical warfare that the right engages upon we need to do the following:

1. Abolish the Electoral College 
2. Pack the Courts 
3. Pass Voting Rights Bill 
4. Charge violent demonstrators from Jan 6th and imprison them. 
5.  Charge Trump with incitement 
6. Remove congressmen that aided or supported inserection 
7. End the Fillabuster 
8. Add District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as states 
9. Felons automatically reinstate their right to vote after prison 

WOKE JUST IN TIME. What's wrong with the Left? 

Those of us on the left got our wish. For decades the left has pushed for the destruction/deconstruction of power centers. Now we've got front row tickets to the decline of America. 

Why is leftist culture involved in the rot of the core of our country? Was it the ideology, stupid? The left has been accused by the right of being overly sensitive. In response to their new found sensibilities the left has erected safe spaces while political correctness has increased so much that the right wing suggests that college is nothing more than indoctrination for students from conservative homes. 

Though I think the indoctrination criticism goes too far, the safe spaces and trigger alerts are stifling debate on college campuses. We are raising snowflakes that have abandoned the left's commitment to defending free speech. The left no longer tolerates any speech it disagrees with, and it wants to silence and punish speech that questions it's post-modern foundations.

  

Many critics of the left contend the left has it's own new religion- one of identity politics or "wokeness." It's cancel culture is the blasphemy of the middle ages and public humiliation & scorn are its new weapons. 

In one case that seems quite egregious to me a professor at Portland State, Peter Boghossian, resigned over what he termed was retaliation for his efforts to bring controversial speakers to his campus & his punishment for submitting a number of hoax papers reminiscent of the Sokal Affair. 

THE DISINGENUOUS LEFT 

The left wants radical and fundamental change to society and since the fall of Marxism has been unable or unwilling to have an honest conversation with the country about what it really wants. 

For instance when feminists talk about the wage gap they tend to use the tactic of blame don't explain. The standard talking points about the wage gap between men and women gives the impression that women are underpaid for the same job. Feminism insists on making the wage gap appear to be the 'purposeful' discrimination of men being paid higher wages for similar job duties with similar experience when in fact most feminists know this isn't true and they know exactly why the wage gap exists. 

The wage gap exists because women work fewer hours than men. They choose (or are forced to choose if patriarchy still exerts that kind of power) jobs that pay less on the wage market. Women decide to have babies and when they do they often quit their jobs to perform the unpaid labor of childcare. I'm not suggesting that taking time off after birthing is not a bad thing. Indeed families should be able to do this. But this requires an extirely different approach than the USA capitalist economy is built on. As a society we should ask the hard questions about the costs associated with raising families and how it should do it. 

But just asking those kind of questions to leftists rather than agreeing with them about patriarchy gets interpreted like literal violence engaged in the culture wars to leftists. Further, they think we can't win those arguments over the right. But I think the left is wrong. We can win those arguments and we can do so without demonizing the other side. 

So what's the problem with a little fib like "the wage gap is caused by outright discrimination?" For one, if the 78 percent wage gap isn't actually caused by outright discrimination then the proposed solutions to the problem won't be effective. The paycheck protection act won't fix enough of the wage gap (which is estimated to be caused only around 5 percent.) We also don't get to be heroic fighters against oppression, nor do we need to accept or be accountable for our own collaboration with the status quo. Just being female makes us victims and heroes all at once. 

Violence and CAUSATION? 

Whats the cause of patriarchy? 

THE POST MODERN CHALLENGE FROM THE LEFT 

THE PROBLEMS WITH POST MODERN THEORY 

One dimensional 

Socrates vs sophists 

Anti science 

Anti free speech 

Anti reason 

Anti-men 

THE 'PROBLEMATICS' OF THE LIFEWORLD: Why your life doesn't make sense anymore. 

I've always been fascinated by human behavior. When I was a child I wanted to be a neuro-psychologist, but then I learned that one needed to understand math at a very high level. So I gave up on that dream, just like Freud did, and I turned to reading countless books on psychology and sociology by people who can do math to satisfy my curiosity. 

Should we be using theory to interpret our ordinary interactions with society? Instead of saying my mother loves me should I bring up attachment theory? Should I discuss Freud's psychosexual theories or explain my mother's connection to me as a result of evolution convincing my parents to spread her genetic heritage?

I imagine that most ordinary folk hearing these questions probably think that idea absurd if not a little silly. But if we were to take that set of ideas and apply it to power structures like say the Patriarchy or White Supremacy you would get an extremely different reaction from the radical left. 

For the left it's impossible to have interactions that aren't viewed through the lens of some power dynamic. 

Fart girl 

Plato vs the sophists on justice

* Functionalism as a theoretical perspective can not be ignored. 

Break the glass. It's time to squash the system. 

No religion. Kill the humans 

What's Left? The Last Man.

Selected bibliography: