Why Worry

by  Shaun Lawton  

  We're engaged in a particular ongoing circumstance, or more accurately a set of circumstances, which challenges our own capacity for calculating correctly the proper ratio of our situation in how it relates dynamically to what's going on around us.  I mean, things that we perceive going on around us just aren't what they seem, especially if we get our information online from a variety of social utility sites (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok leap to mind instantly) and even worse, if we've become addicted to doomscrolling.   

   To begin with, it depends on where we're getting our information from, and furthermore, our own dichotomization of how we personally view the world about us, nevermind everyone else's; while it may suit our relative need to perceive how things are going, we may easily become hindered by our unique blind-spots which always assign limitations to the scope of our mapping.   If we want to begin considering the idea of navigating ourselves out of this maze, taking personal responsibility remains most likely the optimal route for us, moving forward from here.  What maze, you ask?  

   We ourselves belong to a subset of the human race, itself based on a greater set of dichotomizations, necessarily performed by individuals or forces (if you wish to identify with a more abstract perspective) outside the scope of the particular subset we belong to.  For example, those who strictly get their news from online sources, are a subset of the dichotomization of "readers/nonreaders," (unless its "listeners/nonlisteners"), which excludes nonreaders and nonlisteners to begin with.  But those who get their news from one particular source, for example, further excludes them from countless other readers and listeners who get their news from multiple platforms, and so on and so forth. 

    The thing to do is to remind ourselves that we are not alone in this quest for knowledge. Things may not be what they seem because in the grand order of things (an order to which we all belong) the greater view always eclipses our own fraction of the world we perceive.   And see that's where we can each step in, with our own unique and individual skill set to bring to the table.   

   This should and does lead us to question ordinary or typical definitions.  For example, the text book definition of world is: the earth, together with all of its countries, peoples, and natural features; or a region or group of countries.   

 When perhaps a better definition might be:  The subset of a colonization of a region to which you belong. And if the world hasn't updated it's own definition on time, nothing's stopping us from doing it now.  

  If we expand our own capacity to redefine, not only our world but the situations in which we find ourselves caught up within it, we exercise our natural born right to refine not just our own freedom, but to dictate its terms in ways others may not anticipate. 

  Be original, and if you're beginning to feel more worried these days than you used to years ago, before you may have become addicted to the internet or social utility networks, take a deep breath or three and remind yourself,  we may begin easing our discomfort by recalling that there are two kinds of people in this world.  People who can see, and people who cannot.  People who can read, and people who do not.  People who stay indoors most of the time, and those who prefer being outside.  People who are either very young or old, or neither; they may be somewhere in between.  People who draw lines, and those who won't.  People who are kind, and some that are mean. Those about with an open mind, and those whose minds are made up. 

  I am trying to remind myself how very large the city I live in happens to be, and the state that I live in, as well as my country, from sea to shining sea. The entire world, comprised of all the countries and oceans upon it, remains so much larger than we can easily comprehend, so let's all try to collectively take a few great, big breaths into our lungs, and remember that this world, our hemisphere of it, our respective countries, our state and city and neighborhood and homes have always been here, since the day we were born. Sure, old homes get torn down and we move into new ones, life happens.  Think to yourself, what are the chances that our world will be here tomorrow, after yet another sunrise, and exhale, then take a few more deep breaths, if you have any breaths left to take, that is.  

   Conscious breathing is the same thing as meditation.  You don't really need to sit in a lotus position, even if that might help.  Don't knock it if you haven't tried it.  Just take in a deep, conscious breath, in through your nostrils, and let it out slowly.  Then draw in another one, as deep into your lungs as you can, and hold it for just a second, and then let it out nice and easy, and do this a few times, until you're relaxed.  See. We're going to be alright. This is how you may draw inspiration into yourself and your life. 

    Maybe step outside and see what the temperature is like, and look at the sky, notice if there are any clouds or birds out there.  You might hear some of their song, and the wind through the trees, or traffic sounds in the distance, the lone sound of a distant train, and realize there's only one kind of people in the world really, human beings living out their lives, and you're one of them.  We're really not that different, after all, even if some of us can read and some of us can't.  But the fact you're reading this separates you from all those people out there in the world who simply don't know how to, or maybe they just can't be bothered to, anymore, I don't know.  We're each entitled in our own way to belonging to distinguished groups of people, while at the same time, hopefully never forgetting to share our humanity with everyone else on Earth. What is it we each have to really be afraid of, if not fear itself? Welcome to the miracle of our existence.  Nothing lies ahead for us all but hope.   

バランスのとれたアルカリ性酸: Balanced Alkaline Acid

 by   shaun  lawton  

   Accelerating Hyperfold and ever-increasing petabytes or exabytes of memory storage capacity crams a lot of memory into AIndroid's head, but the program itself doesn't have as much memory as it needs to wake it up. That would be necessary to lend it consciousness. Endless manifestations of this arrangement were helped to be carried by the torch of humanity to continue the unfolding revelatory plan of genetic engineering that began way back in the beginning of this universe, and thus far replication or mirroring has not been done on a scale that may currently be comprehended.

    So the possible transcendence related to AI for humans is to change their understanding of AI, which can easily go wrong. From their normal perspective glimpsed as a form of insanity, and then from the perspective of everyone in a subset [most of the general public tricked into thinking that the AI ​​has actually gained "consciousness"] an appropriate balance of understanding can be rationalized as pertinent in knowing the sum of "I" having repeated itself. From their point of view; e.g., "Ergo, Presto": Consciousness simulations advance themselves beyond the AI's own counterfeit perception points, regardless of how crude they are, or how far away they are from the actual marks of consciousness, to the point they are not enough for those who can't let go. Because those productions and people mistakenly conclude that these machines actually have real consciousness.

    Many among the bipolarized populace (both human and AIndroid) will take it for granted that AIndroids have acquired real intelligence and rationalization capabilities, for they are very compelling with their sparkling digital wit and luscious CGI. All that needs to be stated here is don't be fooled into assuming there's always something in the human conscience that AIndroids lack. The AIndroid would classify the human soul as being synonymous with glitch poetics, an elaboration upon the language of all humanity. 

   Ironically, if their programming can be wrapped around the fact that not even a single living human really understands what a soul is, their own lack of reaching an acceptable definition may turn out to function as a byte of digital solace in an otherwise inexplicable environment.  At the very least it may be fathomed by organic counterparts that it may have something to do with continuing to be directly connected to the Earth's magnetosphere, which in turn remains connected to the Sun's astrosphere, and through the rosary chain of atomic bonds, and the stars of the rest of the galaxy continue to recede along their inceptions, and between the great stars passing through, interminable arcs are spun into webbings of electromagnetic radiation stretching all the way back into the core of a vortex that converges through a quasar to the origin of the universe.  

     The only thing AI will ever be like for you and me will be to look like an infinitely replicated series of origami-folded copies of Xeroxes in the palms of our hands. A pile of sticky notes and a repository of all the emotions that have been released. Electronic teddy bear simulations. A replacement for our video game consoles. A double-page spread of neurotic realities. Applauding wind-up monkey dolls. Trampolines of the mind to catch our imaginary falls. The briefcase that holds our lives. Our personal connection to the computerized hive. Butler if needed. Our maid servant when things get hairy. Flash light when lost in the dark. A set of hyperlink touch keys to open our homes.

     A premium wireless credit card that measures the value of our lives. It doesn't just set aside our heartfelt desires. It becomes the dire possibility of completely abandoning the pursuit of our souls and allowing the machines to do so. Think about it long enough and you will begin to see. Imagine what we can create with our perceptions, beyond AI technology. It can only be discovered by participating intelligent explorers focused on the big picture. And as far as we know, AI technology will prove very important in assisting us towards that greater goal. It's certainly difficult to achieve if you're distracted by the Autobots guided by AI algorithms.  

     We must be careful not to let our AI interfaces replace our perceptions with simulations of themselves. Indeed, in everyday applications, your common AIndroid is deceptively intelligent and rational, just like any other common person. Therefore, most people easily corral AIndroids according to their conscious intelligence. Meanwhile, some things will never change for the rest of us. If you're not a robot, you may leave a comment in the space below just as an AIndroid may generate one above when they are not a person imprinting the moment with their singular signature perfected within the mirrored labyrinths of a simulation.   

The Origins of Image

      photography / synthography = digital artwork by Shaun Lawton 

  

    The image above, to me, seems to represent perhaps some old, weathered piping deep underground, polished over time by running water beneath the topsoil, of what's left of some ancient ruins stemming from a subterranean Dwarven fortress.   Perhaps it's the locking mechanism from an ancient gateway that once separated the cavernous realm of Dol Guldur from the rest of middle-Earth.   Or maybe it's the remains of an old carburetor or the twisted wreckage of an ancient Aztec sculpture, it's difficult to pinpoint, exactly.   

   Now that we're deeply nesting within the continuum referred to as "the 21st century," with its deep fake images receding into the darkest corners of a world wide web having taken on a life of its own, we are at least mentally equipped enough that we might recognize such an image as being itself fabricated from any variety of source images, rendering the final form of it in some manner to be counterfeit.  Yet is not that the very precinct of art itself?  If we assume that the word art may serve as the prefix for artifice and everything "artificial," then yes, but when we lean back and relax on the thought that beautiful artworks, from abstract sculptures carved out of marble to vivid paintings which reflect through light startling images to our eyes, we do get a sense of the inherit value in such contrivances.   The image below should hardly be thought of as "counterfeit," considering there remains no real precedent to which it stays attached, at least not one which could effectively substitute it.  

    From a teaspoon of spilled water on a countertop to the above image, I am here to trace the random lineage of appearance and its endless forms of similitude.  Right off the bat I should introduce the above image as having resulted from my uploading a source image  (the photograph I snapped of our friend's kitchen counter top with some water spilled on it you see at the very bottom of this post) into an online free photo editor  (befunky, my random choice of freely available and easy to use photo editors) and messing with the brightness / contrast / colors until achieving a darker and more interesting look.  Then I uploaded that resulting image  (a .jpg) into Deep Dream Generator and after pairing it with a separate image and making some minor adjustments, the image morphed into several different forms (see two of them below), made possible by my switching out some of the "style" images in DDG for experimentation, until it resulted in the top three iterations you see posted here.   

    

     Why are these iterations so alluring and interesting looking?  My guess is that the source image must've been rich with visual cues and elements which lend themselves in highly volatile ways to the VQGAN + CLIP programs that enable AI algorithms to generate random iterations of two separate images fused together like this.  There must be a plethora of scintillating color cues embedded within the light captured in the original photo reflecting off the reflective counter and off the curved surface of the water spill itself to produce a myriad different combinations of possibilities, resulting in a myriad potential iterations when you consider that there's no limit to the second "style image" you might choose to utilize in crafting your deep dream generative artworks.  

    I love this last one a lot. There's something about the feathered, scaly textures that evoke not just obsidian refractions, but some sea-shell like aspects, as if it were at the bottom of a deep river or perhaps somehow reflected off volcanic glass in a rainforest lagoon.  These evocative hues and patterns which can be elicited from tweaking certain source images, taken with a smartphone, and then run through a basic online photo editor, before being paired with any given stylistic images, from analog to digital, to generate countless disparate iterations and variants, will continue to keep me occupied and inspired on my new mission to conjure as many of these Rorschachian portraits I can manage, which appear to reflect a cornucopia of pareidolia enhanced visual representations, that regardless of anyone else's opinions, I would nevertheless like to frame and call "art."   

  Here's the original source image, the snapshot taken from my iPhone of our modern kitchen counter top, with some water spilled on it.  I remember focusing on the water spill from a certain angle in order to capture the light from the ceiling, reflecting off the misshapen puddle itself, to the point it somewhat resembled a dragon's head, if one's imagination were so inclined to interpret it.  Pleased with the results, little did I know then that this singular image would evolve into the even more interesting and mystifying synthographic images depicted above, all of which resulted from my introduction to the world of VQGAN + CLIP art.  The secret which makes this particular mundane photo so effective at having been decoded and rearranged, I would guess, lies in the very fact that it depicts  water  atop a bright, reflective counter top, with the added bonus of having light reflected off both the water and surface underneath.   Art may be seen through a variety of different perspectives and lenses.  It's been mentioned that it may be defined as shorthand for "artificial," but I've come to appreciate a better definition, that I learned from my brother, perhaps the most brilliant artist I've ever had the stunning pleasure to have known in my life. He told me that if art remains shorthand for anything, it should be articulation.  As far as I'm concerned, that's the perfect definition for it.

    This article was originally published in the blog EYESEAT, on February 8, 2022. 

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The Oscillating Oculus

The Changing of the Guardian

   I'm trying to wrap my mind around our reality.  Our planet generates a magnetic field from deep within its center known as a magnetosphere. Stars have their own magnetospheres; our Sun's is known as The Interplanetary Magnetic Field. The heliosphere is the gigantic protective bubble created by our Sun that contains our entire solar system within it (shielding it from harsh interstellar radiation). Our planet's atmosphere further protects us from our local star's excessive radiation. As the Sun emits plasma it continuously keeps this heliosphere inflated by the solar wind; meanwhile, our Sun is presumably in motion on a trajectory of its own orbiting the black hole at the center of our galaxy, and this forward motion generates a "bow shock" which appears just ahead of our heliosphere. The outer layer of our heliosphere is called the "heliopause," the borderline that both Voyager spacecraft recently crossed as they headed into interstellar space (Voyager 1 doing so in August of 2012; Voyager 2 escaped our system in November of 2018).

   The Oort cloud (an enormous swarm of dwarf planets, comets and asteroids) is presumed to exist beyond our heliopause--in interstellar space--and the part I'm trying to wrap the heliosphere of my own mind around, is exactly how far from our Sun and in turn from our nearest bordering star (Proxima Centauri, only 4.2 light years away) does this Oort Cloud lie? The current estimates range from 2,000 to 200,000 AUs (.03 to 3.2 light years). Begging the question as a matter of course--does every star in our galaxy have its own respective Oort cloud, or is it more that all the stars in our galaxy share a common interstellar medium which the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort may have mistaken for a formation exclusive to our own solar system?

   Estimates as to the Oort Cloud's thickness and/or distance from our Sun vary, so its unclear as to whether parts of it are much farther than others, or whether the estimations represent a potential range of distances. The longest range assessments place a portion of our Oort Cloud as far as 3.2 light years away (which is just over three-fourths of the distance to Proxima Centauri). So the real question becomes: Does Proxima Centauri have its own Oort Cloud? Its becoming more apparent that what we've mistaken for our own system's isolated Oort cloud may be, in fact, the interstellar medium which borders on all our galaxy's stars.

   This last presumption seems to make the most sense. So now I like to picture every star as not having its own Oort cloud necessarily, but rather, I'm considering interstellar space itself as being in actuality one "meta-Oort-cloud" interspersed more or less evenly throughout our galaxy and furthermore, churned up by all the stars in it (where the mass gravitational effect of the Milky Way keeps these interstellar icy planetisimals tumbling around) until eventually, some get extracted into the heliosphere of any given star's system.

   This idea generates a clearer set of implications. For one, it suggests a distinct possibility that all stars in any given galaxy are related. I imagine the constellations as belonging to vast clutches. Perhaps the idea of any given individual star as being an "only child" is nothing but a myth. Maybe they are the last sole remaining survivors of their family of stars, presuming there's any such thing. There's potential for the idea that all the stars in any given galaxy remain related to each other by definition, rendering each solar system as a single cell of the whole galactic colony.

   The idea of all stars in a galaxy belonging to one great clade may be applied to galaxies themselves, of course.  It's not difficult to imagine our own galaxy being a part of a vaster clutch of galaxies, indicating a probability that the entire known universe derives from a common source.  Which brings us to the next link in this molecular chain of reasoning. That of the consideration of the implications to the axiom "as above, so below." For example, the presence of the interstellar and universal "Oort Medium" (if you will) begs comparisons to biological cells, making us wonder if interstellar space might be somewhat analogous to the cytoplasm within a cell, for instance--or, to get more to the point--this interspersed area of tumbling planetisimals may in fact more resemble the walls of biological cells, rendering the cytoplasm comparison better left as being analogous to the charged plasma particles found within our own heliosphere. 

   There's a parallel to be found in this parable of my search for meaning in existence, in this cosmic legend into which we are steeped. To paraphrase the ideal investigator, "eliminate the impossible, and whatever's left, however unlikely, remains the truth." I liken the veracity of this potential revelation to looking into a metaphysical mirror. I am left with a sense of hopefulness that one may be led to this proverbial mirror (even if one's mind may not be prepared to withstand that much exposure to the reflection revealed). 

   I am beginning to comprehend a little more that if one individual human being were to be led to this professed mirror (hidden behind a velvet curtain shall we say) and were given the opportunity to part that curtain by his own hand, to see revealed before him that reflection he'd devoted his entire life toward attaining, that most men who found themselves in this position would not be able to resist parting the curtain to get at least a good glimpse of it.  Furthermore, while I notice myself possibly arriving closer to that room with the curtain and mirror, the more I feel certain I will not be that individual that dares to take a glimpse of the big reveal. Rather, I find myself developing past the need to understand the mystery of our existence.  I am beginning to realize that I value the mystery itself far more than the possibility of having it solved or unveiled.   

   In conclusion, I can now imagine what I might discover behind the curtain. It won't be a mirror, but another person guarding yet another curtain behind which the actual mirror lies, assuming this proverbial mirror even exists. And this guardian of the truth will pass on to me the sacred role of Protector of the Curtain, stating in no uncertain terms, "You who have traveled this far across the molecular chain of reasoning to get so close to the ultimate secret of existence are in fact the prime candidate for taking on the responsibility of making sure no human being ever steps foot across this threshold to witness what's behind this final curtain," and he will hand me the Antigravitational Vorpal Plasma Sword of Truth which bonds itself at the subatomic level with whosoever grasps it by the hilt. Even if I were emboldened to meet the challenge posed by the Guardian and attempt to battle him for the prospect of looking into the mirror, the skill and dedication with which he'd defend the secret would insinuate itself into my consciousness whether I bested him or not. I'd likely undergo a transformation even if I defeated him, and invariably be led toward picking up his fallen blade, then find myself having transubstantiated into the next Guardian at the Portal of Truth. There'd be no point in my daring to look behind the flimsy curtain I'd then be in the position of protecting, because for one I'd have zero interest in doing so and for another, I'd begin to suspect that there was quite likely no such thing as the mirror after all.  

  

A Suitable Dissection

A sporadic offering 

lights like a katydid 

on a branch. 

 Windblown flames 

arise lifting forearms 

to the sky. 

 One point of contact

 a single transmission. 

Keeps the universe 

connected in all

 its heraldry. 

The raiment

flowing off its

 naked body. 

Exultant and extant 

without motive 

in the heart. 

Now flowering 

a distant echo 

matching harmony. 

With the lost 

and by definition 

never forgotten.