The Mind-Eternal, i.e., Language, is Scheduled to be Devoured. However, from Hubristic AI Madness, it must first be Deflowered …

Writing & Illustrating by Edmund Dalpe, MFA., BA.,
Editing by Lori D. Dalrymple-Dalpe, M.Ed.,

The Preliminaries:
A Propitious Dystopian Narrative:
An Army of One:
Chronicling, In Medias Res:
The Proverbial Brick Wall:
A Creative Itch They Can Never Scratch:
Root Access is Denied:

The Preliminaries:

Ordinarily, I do not informally introduce myself when writing. However, considering the age in which we dwell, the virtual venue in which we socialize, and the subject of this essay, I believe it will be reassuring for the reader to know they are not browsing a facsimile of human thoughts manufactured by an AI toaster.

Ergo, my name is Edmund Dalpe. I am a human being, not a machine and AI was not used in any fashion in the writing of this essay —done!

… All right, for those skeptics opining that I could be an appliance prone to misleading statements, I will say that introductory protocol is sufficient, because if AI is found to be directly duplicitous, it is finished, as credibility is its only stock in trade. Nevertheless, I will expound a bit:

I am a conceptual artist that has found writing is a rewarding venue in my creative efforts. In that process I speak from a liminal mindset; a bridge if you will, between academia and the arts, which grants me a modicum of insight regarding an interface between a machine and the natural cognitive processes of the creative human mind.

If I was being too subtle, the offence to academia was intentional and there is more rebuke come! So, If your mind was “academically trained,” yet lacks hard bark, you may want to exit stage left to avoid being resolutely traumatized.

A Propitious Dystopian Narrative:

OK, now that all of the preliminaries are out of the way, and without further ado, I will begin by repeating a propitious narrative being transmitted from inconspicuous virtual high places propagating the idea that we are living during an interregnum; a time when the capital of the Western Empire is exhibiting fatal symptoms incompatible with the life blood of global commerce; while a new world order from the East struggles to be born in the wake of the Empire’s death throws.

Moreover, we are dubiously assured that the new order to come will not be parasitic. That is to say, it will refrain from engaging in economic class warfare on a global scale; it is going to be a “multi-polar,” democratic forum.

Humm … OK, excluding that oxymoronic branding of a social order, that report of the global insanity we are being served daily sounds almost as natural as a jet stream descending from the north, even inevitable, as an interregnum reflects natural living processes of reproduction; life, death and rebirth. I however offer a slightly different diagnosis for what is currently a foot, and it is anything but natural, inevitable, or democratic in nature.

To give you an idea of what I see unfolding, I will paste a few paragraphs from an article I wrote titled, Seaman Bartleby & The Bloody Color Revolution (Dalpe. 2021):

… What I do know is, a new god has emerged over the last decade and it’s a real nasty piece of work. To think this god has nothing to do with the current social storm would be naive. It’s the last god. It’s the technological god of AI, an advocate for human cyborg systems, i.e., thinking machines.

This is a god that’s an existential threat to humanity, because it intends to steal our language! … Not humans, but machines … will make all determinations for us, where the human mind will atrophy, like a cashier in a check out line when the power goes down. And art will be considered a heretical practice from a barbaric age, because it’s the most ancient social language, a language the AI god can not speak, and thus will not permit.

It has been half a decade since I wrote that article during which time the expanding integration of AI into our social system has placed us in a more precarious position. The prognosis is not good. It appears we are at the end stage of an AI social infection spreading from commerce to the body politic. Apparently, the system is liquidating its vital parts to increase liquidity, which is killing the host as a consequence of its union with AI.

Hence, the anonymous misleading interregnum narrative being propagated in every virtual nook and cranny to frame the situation as inevitable and thus beyond human intervention. The question is, what can one do in the face of such inevitability?

An Army of One:

Well … one needs to get a good layout of the land. Address the conditions that facilitated the predicament and determine how to undermine them, as well as gauging the strengths and weaknesses of yourself and the forces arrayed against you. That means in all probability you are likely to be an army of one. That is to say, the odds will not be in your favor, which means you need to think outside of the box —big-time. Trippendicular thinking from the 60’s may be in order.

Obviously, that tech can out think its adversary by orders of magnitude. So, going old school would be a tremendous advantage. For example, ditching the cell interfaces to the twisted god of AI would be central in that effort. However, that tech is AI’s back door harvesting social reactions to gauge the efficacy of its social engineering efforts.

What is problematic is the Hoi Polloi are made dependent on that device’s fabricated vital services, as well as its addictive social entertainment. I mean, have you ever tried to take a cell phone from your wife at anytime except when she was clutching it in a snoring embrace?

Nevertheless, that is the key to disrupt AI’s direct human interface. So, to break that AI connection there is only one human activity that is more exciting and rewarding than that AI device, and speaks an entirely different language. I am talking about Art and the creative process!

Chronicling, In Medias Res:

The creative process entails a deep self-awareness of one’s nature and thus of human nature. It is a social conversation bridging contemporary conditions and ideas with our predecessors’, while its product is what we call Art today.

However, with a deeper understanding of that historical social process we also recognize Art as the Second-Language, which is our creative core-tech and thus the foundation of all of human culture, including the Third-Language system, i.e., academics.

Absolutely, academia will take great umbrage from such thinking, as it infers they need to cease and desist from engaging is disingenuous creative theatrics and that they should remain in their hypothetical ditch where they belong.

We can dismiss academia’s arguments on such meaningful matters with prejudice no matter how voluminous they object in chronicles or decibels, because their historical linguistic footprint is in medias res where flashbacks are considered not passé, but taboo. That is to say, their history began abruptly after 50 thousand years of human culture.

Likewise, academia describes the most important period in our social evolution with the misleading adjective of “prehistoric.” However, from the Mousterian to the Magdalenian Industries is when all of the social technologies to establish a rich human culture first appeared; language, history, mathematics, philosophy, and the mapping of the stars to establish their location and to situate the age in which they dwelled. The capability of that period to socially express the whens and wheres of anything with a historical sense of being in time is the foundation of culture.

Unfortunately, the trained mind can not read or comprehend the conceptual expressions in metaphorically associative arrays written in the Second-Language; regardless if they were written today or ten thousand years ago. The concepts of that language have evolve into complex arrays, but its metaphorical constituents have never changed. For example, the associated illustrations at the beginning of this essay metaphorically expresses the abstract concept of a self destructive process in knowledge of concomitance, which I am using to socially communicate on the root level about the destructive nature of AI to our living history.

The Proverbial Brick Wall:

To illustrate what a progressive relationship between the mind of academia and the arts could be is one of the symbiotic relationship between conscious and subconscious mental processes. Likewise, the conscious procedural mind, that is to say the academic mind, is incomplete without its imaginative symbiotic sister, i.e., the Arts. The former is Cartesian and the latter Non-Cartesian in character. That distinction is reflected in how we dream in third and first person. The former is a creative state of mind void of all aperceptual presumptions, while the latter is performative.

However, that natural relationship of a cognitive bridge between the two modes of being mindful never developed. Let’s just say there were always communication problems. Case in point is NASA’s 1970 Johnson Space Center art program to collaborate with the Arts. However, the dialogue was abruptly ended when artists began asking questions about the application of color in space imagery (NASA, 1970). Apparently, the issue of color, which is squarely situated in the creative domain, was a bridge too far for what academia considered collaboration. Ergo, without that bridge, the arts are out picking daffodils, while academia is spinning in circles chasing its tail constructing thinking machines built with and modeled after half a mind.

Like NASA of the 1970’s, the academic mind during the time of Plato was no different. I see that hubris as the chief impediment to our cognitive, social, and cultural evolution. We need to rewrite our history in fullness, which includes that 50 thousand year period that preceded the academic mind. That incomplete history is a lie because concealing our formidable creative nature from us, humans are disconnect from their biological epistemology as they lack self understand of how knowledge is built naturally. Likewise, we are bound to academia’s version of human history repeat with disrespect for the creative human mind.

A Creative Itch They Can Never Scratch:

Initially, and by initially, I mean the Mousterian Industry, we recognized that all human beings, from all ages, dream in the same archetypal manner —the First-Language, and we used that insight to socially communicate conceptually. That is to say, beyond emotional expressions of the immediate context, which is the Second-Language —Art. Additionally, we discovered that recording social conversations in a timeless repository (cave) was extremely beneficial as the conversation expanded from lived experiences to millenniums, i.e., the Mind-Eternal.

The constituents of both the first and second languages were/are metaphorically real and thus only life’s experiences are needed to understand its semantics and syntax. However, as our recorded experiences became so complex and voluminous, it became necessary to edit them by making them symbolic in a mind system, i.e., the Third-Language, And there is the rub. The symbols of a system have no meaning whatsoever with our natural mind and its cognitive creative processes, which explain the schizophrenic state of the social human mind and its division into two inimical camps; academia and the arts.

Yes, as an artist I am furious with academia’s push for AI to be parasitically integrated into every vital social system, without so much as a by-your-leave from its symbiotic sister —Art. To be candid, I think academia has finally lost what is left of its proverbial mind. Apparently, they can no longer distinguish between an idea and reality, as they train their mind to think with a hypothetically symbolic cognitive system; which means academia can not distinguish between a mind tool and the actual cognitive process of the creative human mind.

Ergo, when an academic claims they are speaking hypothetically, they are making a distinction without a difference. The symbols of the mind system academics are trained to think with makes everything they think and say hypothetical.

Naturally, humans do not perceive exclusively, we apperceive too, which means the trained mind does not see what is actually present; their vision is first sifted by their mind training. It is similar to not being able to see something you are looking for that is right in front of you, because it is not where you ordinarily put it.

That means, academics can not think in the non-Cartesian core language. It is an impossibility, because the academic mind was “trained,” which means they never developed the core mental pathways, and as the mind operates on the principle of use it or lose it, ergo, creative thinking does not exist in their hypothetically systematic universe.

For example, the language of C++, that I will associate its cognitive rules with academia’s methods for thinking, requires a compiler to function in its progenitor’s base linguistic environment (binary), which I will associate with the fundamental metaphorical language of the creative human mind. The point being, the linguistic progeny does not understand its progenitor’s base language. How could they? Their mind thinks on a higher level language. That means they can not change the fundamental rules of their cognitive mind system; only the progenitor that speaks and thinks with the base language can do that —Art.

Sure, academia can continue in their pseudo systematic creative process of evolved sameness, and augment more complex rules based on the fundamentals they were gifted. They can even hasten the pace and complexity with their machines. But that will never change the fact that academics are frustrated cyborgs with a creative itch they can never scratch.That means their fervent prayer the AI will finally gift them with a creative ability is a prayer for the dead, because, like the academic mind, AI is also bound in that systematic language. Ergo, Art, not academia or its god, is where meaningful new words are formed socially (Madison, 1981).

Root Access is Denied:

That means each evolution of language remains backwards compatible to the First-Language; no different than how addition in mathematics remains the foundation for multiplication; multiplication is simply a more expedient form of addition that introduces memorization.

We could also use a biological analogy to explain the backwards compatibility in language via the single cell life form as the basis for all more complex organisms. Complex organisms can do anything they want so long as they follow the one simple rule; it must be cellular. The point being, AI and academia are bound by the rules of their cognitive system, the Arts are not.

Hence, I recommend we think in the manner of the progenitor. Speak metaphorically with images that hold meaningful impact. Share your experiences with genuine human expressions. In other words, by such actions, their disciples may lose interest in their AI interface long enough to step down from their virtual pedestals to feel the sun on their face, the wind in their hair, and the Earth beneath their feet while listening to life’s lively counterpoise to AI’s lifeless facsimile.

In conclusion, and with consideration to the fact that, “… all judicious chroniclers concord in their opinion … [t]here cometh never any rising … from below,” (Stevenson, pg. 14, 1916), I will remain trepidatiously optimistic as an army of one.

Meaning, without root access to one’s historical foundation a human being is uprooted, estranged from its creative nature, and thus incompetent in the campaign to re-wight history in fullness, place AI on a very short leash, ensure academia remains in their hypothetical ditch where they belong, and last but not least, explore your creative nature from deep withing oneself. Such knowledge can not be found in a book, and most assuredly not from an academic, who is fully aware they are in danger of becoming obsolete when lions understands their true power and potential.

Finally, and like all of my efforts, I dedicate my creative potential to the Lions of the Mousterian Industry.

Bibliography:

• Dalpe, Edmund; Seaman Bartleby & The Bloody Color Revolution; https://thelionsgait.com/2021/09/03/seaman-bartleby-the-bloody-color-revolution/; 3 September 2021).
• Madison, Gary Brent; The Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty; Ohio University Press; 1981.
• NASA; Johnson Space Center art program; 1970.
Incidents in the late 1960s/1970s when tensions arose between NASA and artists over scientific accuracy and portrayal of color. The abrupt end of the project occurred when some artist collaborations were scaled back after disputes over depiction and interpretation of imagery (notably color treatment) in publicly released space images.
• Stevenson, Robert Lewis; The Black Arrow; https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/32954/pg32954-images.html; 1916