Manunkind

“A world of made is not a world of born.” - e.e. cummings

Last time, I revisited e.e. cummings and took an old 90s long form Kodak commercial and set it to a narrated version of one of the poet’s most well-known works. This time, doing much the same in video but with one of his later and less romantic works - one of his statements about our soul. Full text below.

cummings was a latter day Auden, imho. And like Auden could romance with the best of them but also be clear-eyed about the human condition, with the best of them [poets]. Myself too, (a taste here) much of my earlier poetry was romantic in nature but now I’m turning more Russian, going deeper into our nastier [in]side(s).

I’m just surviving this week. So damn hot! And when it is hard it is hard to think - the easier thing is to drink. And I’ve been doing that. Trying to write, this post among them but it keeps meandering hither and yonder. So finally just erased all my fine puffery, my “meanings” [and is it not strange how “mean” language is at its root? When we really mean something, we can’t but be mean? Just saying.]

But back to being born, the argument of cummings and myself against the machine, and the whole belief set of materialism that promotes everything as a mechanical lego set. No soul, no taste, no feeling. Just blind atoms knocking about at night. I reject that view, and like cummings pity the trees, poor stars and stones. Which would you rather be: a made man or one that was busy being born?

“He not busy being born, is a busy dying.” Robert Zimmerman

cummings highlights that as man moves his beliefs and the power of culture into the “made” column, he loses himself, he turns evil. He aligns himself with the inorganic, the purposeless, the dark matter of existence. He loses the narrative, the light and spark that is beyond the darkness of that material, that made and without soul, love, doubt, being in others shoes.

In the video I produced I used public domain clips of Adam Curtis’ work, highlighting his views on hypernormalisation - a term first used to explain the state of affairs pre-Berlin Wall and summed up in the joke at the time, “We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us.” Much of this is true today, so many just treading water, their money (pay) just goes to survival. My recent bike journey across America confirmed this high and low in the souls of Americans. Curtis too, applies this to our current time, a time where there are no alternatives, we are stuck and so just accept the status quo and force ourselves to enjoy the simple and fake distractions we are offered [by those pulling the levers of the machine, who benefit from the status quo, the apple cart that keeps going forward].

The world is bat shit crazy but nobody, I mean so few, see this or even care.

We have a pedo misogynist president of the so called free world building prisons and spending air time going on about “golden curtains”.

We have stock markets at record highs but most people without $500 to their name. 100s die on the streets each day, forget the once in a lifetime floods.

We have a world where you’ll be banished for protesting and calling out a genocide and the murder of innocent children yet it is ok to profit and send weapons to bomb them. You’ll even get a medal, a big salary! Two boys, sent home breadless from a food distribution center. And then …

We have a world where our bed is filled with shit and being destroyed each moment. The environment, climate change, sustainable development are now dirty words, or never mentioned - what the hell? The story of progress we now have is one of melting wax …

We have a world where AI hucksters sell us “the made” as greater, better, faster, stronger, more [you add the adjective] than “the born” and try to get us to confuse the two. I mean, people believe AI is enlightened and really, truly alive and a person …

It’s all bat shyte crazy. I’m choking on it daily. What a piece of work is man! I’m reminded of Shakespeare’s great call on this. See my remix of his monologue below. I’m not completely pessimistic like Wells but I’m with Shakespeare, man, he/her delights me not.

I was once a total, all-in, ed-tech evangelist. Technology was going to save us all, save our souls too. I remember 2010-11 something, walking into the Google corporate office in Boston and seeing the big “Don’t Be Evil” motto in large letters, a huge mural on the wall. Damn right, I said!

But alas, Google is with that made, not born. Not doing technology for man’s sake, our benefit but for profit. Project Maven, Nimbus, "The Gospel" - AI for the IDF on the battlefield roars on, genocide generated as targets are chosen by algorithm and missles targeted, bombs dropped. Share prices go up ... and on the side, FREE for education. Hell, why not? The money is rolling in. Death goes down easy with this kind of coca-cola.

So much of the world is kind of like this …

I’ve been writing lots, I promise a sweet love poem or two next time. But for now, just got this bad taste in my mouth that I offer.

I hope to come up with alternatives. I keep raising my voice, so loud that I’m banned in many places and the others get zero views - shadow banning does exist. But if not me, who?

Wishing you cool thoughts and even cooler than me abodes. The answer is somewhere in a breeze …

David

Revisiting Hamlet, Act II Scene II, lines 280-291

Recently – for the life of me I don’t know why – I’ve lost all spark and wish to act in any way. Yes, this mood of mine is a fine image for this manly earth, a useless wave in the ocean of all. Look outside, the cities, look at it, it is so full of frantic energy; marvelously dancing to its own drummed designs. It is all a waste to me, nothing more than a putrid and rotten carcass of what was possible.

And man”kind”? What a piece of work, we are! How loathsome our logic, how haughty our hubris. In spirit and sight a stubborn stain. In deed, a devilish sprite. In understanding, how always infantile. The scum on time’s pond. Us, the bastard of all beasts. And of me, so what, my useless smudge? We inspire no one, except our vain selves.

'pity this busy monster, manunkind'

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
                          A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

E. E. Cummings