Mike Rivage-Seul's Blog

Twenty-Five Reasons for Supporting Palestinians in Their Conflict with Jewish Zionism

As I listen to the debate surrounding the awful events unfolding in Israel Palestine, I can understand how many are fooled by the one-sided pro-Israel propaganda circulated in the mass media and by their refusal to understand the Palestinian viewpoint. The media’s welter of misinformation and knee-jerk support for U.S. policy in the Middle East coupled with their implicit appeals to sentiments of revenge can be confusing even for the well-informed.

To clarify my own thinking, I feel compelled to express in writing what I think about the tragic drama as it unfolds.

So, for what it’s worth, please let me share my tentative conclusions. Perhaps they might help others formulate their own positions which, of course, may differ drastically from mine.

In any case, here are my tentative thoughts distilled into 25 points:

As a person of faith and a critical thinker, I can NEVER support empire.
That’s because I’ve come to realize that empire is a system of robbery whereby a militarily stronger nation imposes its will on a weaker nation for purposes of transferring the latter’s resources to the imperial center. That’s criminal.
Currently, the United States is the planet’s only empire.
As Martin Luther King said, it is the “world’s greatest purveyor of violence.” As such, it has NO moral right to render any judgments about the immorality of violence. None!
This means I cannot NEVER support the foreign policy of the United States. With less than 5% of the world’s population, it seeks to control the entire planet by the violence just mentioned as well as by a system of unequal trades, war, sanctions, regime change, and routine support of dictators. Again, all of that is criminal. It makes no moral sense to support U.S. empire.
By the means just mentioned and ever since the Second Intercapitalist War (WWII), the United States has exercised the same power Adolph Hitler sought in the decades of the ‘30s and ‘40s.
In that sense, it is a fascist regime that historically has supported fascists throughout the world. It NEVER supports the people its system has impoverished. It is ALWAYS on the side of the rich and powerful and instinctively opposes changes that serve the poor.
Today, Israel is an instrument of U.S. fascism. It represents the alter ego of the United States in the Middle East facilitating the U.S. control the sea of oil beneath land masses in the region – to benefit the already wealthy in their struggle against the poor majority.
In fact, Israel represents a colonial regime whose purposes at the local level are the same as imperialism’s at the macro level. [Remember, Israeli Jews are basically European invaders (from Poland, Russia, and other mostly European states housing the Jewish diaspora since their eviction from Palestine in the middle of the second century). European Jews invaded Palestine in 1948 and have since gradually stolen more and more land from the indigenous people of Palestine.]
This land theft has long been recognized and denounced by the international community, e.g., in UN Resolution 242.
But Israel (with full support from U.S. imperialists) has refused to obey international law.
Like its U.S. sponsor, Israel is therefore an international criminal nation.
It is also a state sponsor of terror within the borders of Palestine. It represents an apartheid regime MUCH WORSE than that of South Africa.
For nearly 100 years in the process of its land grabs, Israel has killed and maimed thousands of Palestine’s indigenous people including women and children with complete impunity and virtually without coverage by the mainstream media.
This has made the state of Israel the principal terrorist in the region.
In the face of its endless list of atrocities, any war crimes allegedly committed by indigenous resistance organizations (such as Hamas) pale by comparison.
Yes, Hamas represents an indigenous people resisting imperial and colonial oppression.
International law (e.g., Article 51 of the UN Charter) gives them the right to defend themselves by armed resistance, which necessarily entails killing their oppressors.
Yet the imperialists and colonialists (masquerading as advocates of non-violence!) predictably adopt the standard imperial practice of labeling as terrorists any who exercise their legal right to armed self-defense.
Their propaganda persuades the inattentive by isolating or even manufacturing atrocities by indigenous freedom fighters to illustrate the barbarity of the latter as if such acts were not faint shadows of their own greater atrocities committed over decades upon decades.
It’s all reminiscent of European colonialists in North America who in their “Declaration of Independence” described other indigenous resisters as “merciless Indian savages, whose warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.”
I oppose all this not only on the just noted grounds of historical understanding, but on that the Judeo-Christian tradition.
The latter is not neutral, but always takes the part of the poor and oppressed by exercising the Biblical God’s “preferential option for the poor” and its opposition to imperialism and colonialism.
This option is clearly demonstrated by the Divine’s incarnation as Yeshua of Nazareth, a poor person who lived under empire and who himself was executed as a terrorist and revolutionary by the Roman Empire).
None of this means that the current conflict in Israel-Palestine is irresolvable. Historically, both parties have more in common than what allegedly separates them. Both parties are Semites. Both have long histories of persecution by empire. This shared background opens the door to negotiation, resolution, and shared resistance to imperial designs.

I hope that helps.

Israeli-Jewish Terrorists vs. “The Jews of the Jews”

Where have our national “leaders” been all these years? To judge by their statements concerning the current crisis in Israel-Palestine, they haven’t been following the news about Israeli-Jews’ treatment of Palestinians in the territories the former have illegally occupied for decades.

Are mainstream politicians unfamiliar with international law, with President Carter’s concept of apartheid in Israel-Palestine or of Gaza as the world’s largest open-air prison?

Or are they just completely dishonest?

Listen to what they’ve said in response to the recent massive expression of Palestinian resistance to Jewish-Israeli oppression. Listen to the Biden administration and even Volodymyr Zelensky.

Then consider what’s really happening in Israel-Palestine in both legal and moral perspective.

Our Leadership’s Comments

Once again, our “leaders” are talking about an “unprovoked” attack by a long-designated official enemy – in this case not Russia, but the Palestinians and Hamas “terrorists.” Leadership’s reactions are predictably ahistorical, contrary to international law, and (in the case of Zelensky) shockingly self-contradictory.

Here’s what the White House had to say: The U.S. “unequivocally condemns the unprovoked attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians. . .. There is never any justification for terrorism. We stand firmly with the government and people of Israel and extend our condolences for the Israeli lives lost in these attacks. . ..”

Say what? “Unprovoked?” There’s that loaded, ahistorical word again. Historically speaking, such perception is even more short-sighted and historically ignorant than calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “unprovoked.”

Which brings us to Volodymyr Zelensky. Despite his objections to an outside force (Russia) invading a supposedly innocent Ukraine (which he insists has the right to defend itself) he sides with Israel. Yes, he sides with the invaders and illegal occupiers.

Zelensky says, “We in Ukraine have a special feeling about what has happened. Thousands of rockets in the Israeli sky… People killed just on the streets… Civilian cars shot through… Detainees being humiliated … Our position is crystal clear: anyone who causes terror and death anywhere on the planet must be held accountable. Today’s terrorist attack on Israel was well-planned, and the entire world knows which sponsors of terrorism could have endorsed and enabled its organization.”

Is the TV-comedian-turned-president trying to be funny? Does he not see that according to the logic of his perceptions, Palestine is like his Ukraine – a country invaded and occupied by foreigners in contravention of international law and in possession of the inalienable right to defend itself?

Imagine the West’s response if Ukraine’s repeated attempts to invade Russia and if its frequent drone attacks had the same effect in terms of lives lost and property damaged as the current Palestinian attacks on Jewish settlements. What do you think the response of Zelensky and the West would be? Would it be unqualified sympathy for Russia’s innocent women and children? Or would it be to blame Putin for the whole thing? I think everyone knows the answer to that one.

Legal Considerations

Now consider international law and the current crisis.

For nearly a century, Jews in Israel (with the full support of the United States) have stood in blatant contravention of the U.N. Charter and of the United Nations’ Resolution 242. By refusing to return illegally occupied territories to Palestinians, Israeli-Jews (including) many civilian “settlers” are international criminals — legitimate targets.

More specifically, recall Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. It reads: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

In other words, those living in territories illegally occupied by an invading force have the internationally sanctioned right to take up arms against the invaders. By attacking Israel and its aggressive civilian settlers, Palestinians are claiming their right to self-defense.

Besides all this and according to international law, Palestinian lands have been illegally occupied for decades. That’s what U.N. Resolution 242 says.

And it’s not just illegal occupation. Anyone paying attention knows that Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) kill and maim Palestinian children on a daily basis – with most westerners hardly raising an eyebrow.

And to repeat, it’s not just the Jewish-led government of Israel that has perpetrated violence and terrorism against Palestinians. Civilian Jewish settlers have been responsible as well. With the IDF standing by for their protection, they have evicted Palestinians from their homes, burnt their olive orchards to the ground, and have routinely shot and mutilated their children for years on end.

In fact, a proximate provocation of the current Palestinian uprising took the form of an attack just last month by Jewish settlers on the Al Aqsa mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites. For Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world, this represents an extreme provocation.

Many Israeli-Jews are as guilty as their government.

Moral Considerations

Besides all this and in moral terms, international law does not indiscriminately condemn “violence.” Rather, it implicitly recognizes that all forms of “violence” are not equal. In fact, some are morally justified.

Morally speaking (and according to moralists like St. Oscar Romero of El Salvador and Dom Helder Camara of Brazil) the term has at least four principal levels. And to repeat, the current Palestinian form (as self-defense) is the only one that enjoys legal and moral justification:

The first form of violence is institutionalized, e.g., Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. Violence here takes the form of border walls, check points, exclusion of Palestinians from access to work and healthcare, as well as police and IDF unpunished killings of women and children. This is the form condemned by the already-referenced U.N. Resolution 242.
The second form of violence resists the first. Again, this violence is approved by the just-cited Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. In fact, it is the only form of violence that has any chance of being justified.
The third expression of violence is the response of those defending illegal institutionalized violence. It is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to when he promised that Israel will “return fire of a magnitude that the enemy has not known.” Obviously, such defense of the indefensible share’s the latter’s indefensibility.
The fourth type of violence is terroristic. In Israel-Palestine, it principally involves use of force against innocent civilians in order to dissuade them from resisting violence’s first form. In Israel, Jewish-Israeli government and its IDF are the main perpetrators here. They routinely impose overwhelming state violence. For every one Jewish-Israeli killed by Palestinians, Israel regularly and indiscriminately kills ten Palestinians.

To drive the point home: Palestinians are standing on firmer moral ground than the Jewish Israelis.

Conclusion

By the way, please don’t characterize what I’m writing here as somehow anti-Semitic. Rather, it has been the Israeli Jews who over nearly a century have practiced a hidden but virulent form of anti-Semitism. (Remember, Palestinian Arabs are Semites too.)

No, considerations just reviewed show that it is the Israeli Jews who practice the most virulent contemporary form of anti-Semitism. As the Palestinians themselves put it: They (the Palestinians) are the “Jews’ Jews.”

In other words, Israeli Jews’ apartheid practices are reminiscent of those of German N@zis from 1933 to 1945.

“Everything, Everywhere, All at Once” (Film Review w/ Spoiler Alert!)

I recently saw “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.” It merited all the accolades it has received, including its seven Oscars.

The film’s story is about a day in the life of a Chinese immigrant family. It’s about the day the mother of the family, Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), awakened to her spiritual destiny through the power of kindness.

The awakening is precipitated by Evelyn’s terrible stress. Her laundromat business is being audited by a sadistic IRS agent named Deirdre Beaubeirdre who has it in for members of the Chinese community.

On top of that, Evelyn’s husband, Waymond, is suddenly seeking a divorce. He thinks she doesn’t appreciate him and regards him as weak and ineffective. For instance, instead of opposing and arguing with the IRS agent, he brings her cookies and cheerfully agrees with her outlandish demands. Evelyn can’t understand that.

Meanwhile, her elderly father, Gong-Gong, is demanding and unappreciative of his daughter. He makes no secret of the fact that he sees her as unfocused, underachieving, and afflicted with short attention span. Evelyn is still afraid of her father and waits on him hand and foot.

As for Evelyn’s daughter, Joy, she seems possessed by some kind of alien spirit. Part of it is that Joy is gay. She too is afraid of Gong-Gong and is reluctant to come out to her granddad. Evelyn doesn’t appreciate any of that either.

All of this leads to a huge psychological breakdown. It happens during a session with the IRS agent on the eve of the Chinese New Year. Suddenly, Evelyn loses focus altogether. In a matter of moments, she begins a series of vivid past life regressions. Eventually, she encounters previous incarnations and life on various planets in a multiverse of infinite dimensions. Among other forms, she sees herself as a karate master, a chef, a pizzeria sign-twirler, and a famous singer. In the end, she comes to realize that she has experienced everything in previous lives, so success or failure in her present embodiment doesn’t really matter.

Evelyn also meets an Alfa Male version of Waymond. He’s directive, powerful, resourceful, and gifted with unbelievable savoir-faire. He astonishes his wife as he resolves crisis after crisis involving escapes from a monstrous version of Ms. Beaubeirdre, diabolic apparitions of her possessed daughter, and even a homicidal incarnation of her own father.

Finally, Evelyn puts it all together. She realizes that her real-life version of Waymond possesses the strength of kindness that far surpasses the physical power of his Alfa counterpart. Adopting the attitude of non-Alfa Waymond enables her to reconcile with her daughter Joy just as Joy was about to move off into permanent estrangement from her mother. Waymond’s kindness even moves Gong-Gong to accept not only Joy’s sexuality, but even more importantly to recognize a new soft strength in his own daughter.

In the end, that’s the simple message of “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once:”

The universe is much bigger than we think,
And much more mysterious
All of us have lived many lives,
Filled with success and failure,
On many other planets.
What holds them all together is loving kindness,
Which can overcome any evil, and form of violence.
All of us have access to the simple power of kindness,
In a NOW that enables experience of past, present, and future all at once.
None of our incarnations is that important.
So, we shouldn’t take them too seriously.

In summary, we all need to wake up to such truths. It’s good to be woke in that sense. In fact, such awakening is our common vocation.

83rd Birthday Reflections: My Shamanic Interview with my Granddaughter Eva

Just before my 83^rd birthday (September 6^th) my 14-year-old granddaughter, Eva Maria, interviewed me as part of a class assignment at her new high school, Northfield Mount Hermon. (You can watch the exchange in the video above.)

During the interview, I somewhat surprised myself by owning my identity as a shaman. I said it clearly, “I’m a priest and a shaman.”

The two can be nearly synonymous. Let me try to explain.

As I understand it, a shaman is a person, male or female, who:

Experiences a strong vocation,
To consciously recognize, embrace, and inhabit at least three worlds,
(1) the Middle World of daily sense experience, (2) the Lower World of largely unconscious, suppressed, and/or denied emotions and thoughts, and (3) the Upper world of mystical union with Life’s Source, spirits, and ancient ancestors.
A shaman undergoes a long period of training and testing at the hands of spiritual mentors,
Who eventually confer formal recognition of shamanic identity on their trainee,
Who then uses traditional wisdom and ritual to connect with the three realms just identified,
To benefit her or his community.

Well, it has recently occurred to me that in those senses, I happen to be a shaman.

To wit:

I experienced a strong unwavering vocation. At the age of six (!), I decided that I would become a Catholic priest.
To that end, I entered the seminary at the age of 14 and entered a long (and sometimes spiritually painful) preparation for ordination that reached its culmination at the age of 26.
That was followed by 5 more years of study and further formal recognition of my identity as a teacher and “discerner of spirits good and evil” (with my doctoral degree in moral theology).
More specifically, progress towards ordination was marked by conferral of important (though often overlooked) shamanic “minor orders,” viz.:

Lector: one recognized as having done at least the minimum reading and study to qualify as a worthy candidate for shamanic office.
Porter: one who can therefore open doors to unseen realities in the lower and upper realms.
Acolyte: a beginner in the rituals evoking other-worldly Spirits at rites of initiation, special meals, marriages, healings, and reconciliations.
Exorcist: one formally equipped to name and expel (largely invisible) evil spirits (such as those of war, injustice, racism, sexism, classism, and nationalism) afflicting individuals and communities.
Subdeacon: a worthy initiate into service of the community.
Deacon: a full-fledged community servant empowered to speak publicly about connections between community spiritual traditions and everyday life.
Shaman: one whose mere words can infallibly bring the very Spirit of God from the upper realm to the middle world.

In all of this, the shaman in question was obliged to practice compulsory celibacy until he arrives at the realization that the fundamental eroticism of the universe is not primarily about genital sex, but about divine creativity, grace, and evolution.

Do you see what I mean?

Yes, I am a shaman. And so (potentially) are all Catholic priests, though (like me until recently) few of them recognize and much less embrace such identity – often specifically rejecting it as somehow pagan, “new agey,” and superstitious.

It is anything but.

In fact, at the age of 83, my recent experience in Spain has caused me to double down on the insights just expressed.

My new ritual (expressed here and in other recent postings) is causing me to adopt Tarot Cards as portals into the Upper and Lower realms just referenced. I’m becoming what my troglodyte friends in Granada call a “tarotista.” I’ve been reading my own cards every day, and occasionally those of friends. The cards are full of connections with the shamanic traditions, mysteries, and studies described above.

I’m actually thinking about starting a Tarot business to make money — not for myself of course. (I don’t need it.) But I’m thinking about an organization in Costa Rica called Casa del Sol (House of the Sun). They’re very poor people who make solar ovens and teach women there to construct and use them. They also teach ecological gardening and maintain a beautiful and quite extensive garden where they raise produce for market sales. Unlike me, they do need money.

Watch this space to find out the specifics about readings private and public.

Putin’s A Killer Who’s Guilty until (impossibly) Proven Innocent

The man’s body has hardly been identified as Yevgeni Prigozhin’s, and already The Economist and virtually all western mainstream media already know who killed him.

Here’s The Economist’s headline on the matter: “Prigozhin’s death shows that Russia is a mafia state. A healthy country uses justice to restore order. Mr. Putin uses violence instead.”

The follow-up elaborates: “As we published this editorial, it was not certain that Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private jet was shot down by Russian air-defences, or that the mutineer and mercenary boss was on board. But everyone believes that it was and that his death was a punishment of spectacular ruthlessness ordered by Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. And that is the way Mr. Putin likes it.”

Really? You mean we don’t know:

What caused Prigozhin’s jet to crash,
Or if Prigozhin was on board,
Yet, EVERYONE believes that the plane was shot down,
By order of the “ruthless” Vladimir Putin
Who The Economist somehow knows is pleased by the turn of events.

Yes, that’s what The Economist says.

And all that passes for sober analysis. Wow! No wonder Caitlin Johnstone can write with perfect logic that we westerners are “More Propagandized than Chinese People.”

Of course, until the completion of a proper investigation (that can take months), there are many other possibilities to explain this apparent final chapter in Prigozhin’s colorful life:

His plane might have crashed because of technical failures. Yes, that’s possible!
As a master of deception and disguises, Prigozhin might not have been on board. We will not know if he was until DNA tests have been completed.
And even then . . ..
Ukrainians might have brought the plane down,
Or the CIA in one of its covert operations,
Or disgruntled Russian military personnel,
Or unhappy Wagner minions
Or one of his many, many enemies other than Vladimir Putin.
Or the plane might have been shot down after misidentification by Russian air defenses,
Or. . ..

But even more importantly, using the standard of non-evidence embraced by The Economist to establish the mafioso nature of the Russian state, how are we to characterize our own “United” States in view of its much better documented assassinations and assassination attempts of heads of state and public figures such as:

Fidel Castro of Cuba (600 CIA plots)
Patrice Lumumba of Congo (1961)
Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic (1961)
Salvador Allende of Chile (1973)
Achmad Sukarno of Indonesia (1975)
Muammar Ghadaffy of Libya (2011)
Malcolm X of the United States (1965)
Martin Luther King of the United States (1968)
Robert F. Kennedy Sr. of the United States (1968)
President John F. Kennedy of the United States (1963)

That’s just the short list of “punishment of spectacular ruthlessness” allegedly ordered by “our” own government – again, on much sounder evidence than the absolutely pure speculation of the mainstream western press.

By The Economist’s and other mainstream media standards of proof (i.e., pure speculation), is ours then a “healthy country” that “uses justice to restore order?” Or is the U.S. a “mafia state” much worse than Russia?

Clearly, The Economist has once again shown beyond doubt that it is just another propaganda rag along with all those others who voice certainty about designated enemies long before evidence decides the case?

The rag’s yellow journalism underlines its own bias by ignoring much better reasons for identifying our own country as a criminal enterprise that makes Cosa Nostra seem benign by comparison.

Draw your own conclusions.

The Fools’ Card Game: Won’t You Play Tarot With Me?

I'm a Fool who reads your Tarot Cards
To find the Magic in your soul
I see a Priestess there
An Empress, King, and Clown.
A Preacher’s within
And Lovers too
In Chariots down Life's road
Paved with Courage, Light, Fortune and Justice 
Turned Upside Down.

Death comes even to the Self-controlled,
To Devils Fallen and to Stars,
To howlers at the Moon
And in the Sun.
Till finally comes our Judgment Day
After mastery of the World
So we fools can start again
Our wayward run.

Chorus

Yes, I Play the Fool with Tarot.
Won't you play the game with me?
There are no rules.
We're all just fools
We're playing
Don't you see?

Just playing
Don't you see?

So, I throw the cards,
You read with me,
But not the way you think.
You see, the Tarot cards
End up reading you.
Wands speak of your power,
Your life evolved,
Of eros, strife and grace.
They open heart and soul,
To show what's true.

Cups tell of your loves, 
Your friendships,
They overflow; they break.
Sometimes they empty out
Their bitter dregs.
Does she still love me?
Will he say “yes?”
And why am I alone?
Tarot gives the answers
Every player begs.

Chorus

Yes, I Play the Fool with Tarot.
Won't you play the game with me?
There are no rules.
We're all just fools
We're playing
Don't you see?

Just playing
Don't you see?

Swords are about what's on your mind
Thoughts that wound, confine, and kill
About freedom from blindness, 
Nightmares and from pride,
About trickery and hurt feelings,
Crossed hearts and wounded souls
About blindfolds dropped
To see what others hide.

And then at last, 
There are those coins
“Pentacles” they’re named
About the world of matter,
Poverty, and wealth
About old age,
And days gone by
What's been lost and gained
About work and building
Children, choice, and health.

And finally we come to the Court Cards
Kings, Pages, Knights, and Queens,
Who stand for those in life
Who sometimes cause you pain,
Or for those at home or in the world
Through bitter and through sweet
Offer kindness and hope
Without any thought of gain

Bridge

Yes, the Tarot Cards
Reveal it all:
What’s inside,
And what’s out,
The future, past, and present,
Good and bad.
They open up the darkness,
So light can walk about
To show what makes us happy
And sometimes sad.

Chorus

So, join me in this Tarot game.
Yes, play the game with me.
There are no rules.
We're all just fools
We're playing
Don't you see?

Just playing
Don't you see?

“Sound of Freedom”: Its Underlying Conspiracy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiZgs7dyBZg

I’ve just seen the surprise blockbuster movie “Sound of Freedom.”

It’s the story of Tim Ballard, the ex-CIA, and Homeland Security operative whose real-life crusade against child sex trafficking is the film’s subject.

The Angel Studio’s release on July 4^th surprised everyone by far outgrossing “Indiana Jones,” even though “Sound of Freedom’s” budget was by comparison extremely low, and despite its depending on word of mouth for much of its publicity.

Like most viewers, I found the film exceptionally moving, its acting splendid, and its cinematography of the highest quality. I’m not surprised that some are even talking about Academy Awards.

(By the way, despite “liberal” criticisms, “Sound of Freedom” made no mention whatsoever of QAnon, conspiracy, Pizzagate, adrenochrome, or political parties either Democrat or Republican. There was no hint of any of that.)

Instead, “Sound of Freedom” straightforwardly focuses on one topic, child sex trafficking. It accordingly summarizes itself in six spare words: “God’s children are not for sale.” Others have expressed its imperative in just three: “Connect the dots.” The first summary reveals the film’s shocking content and (understated) faith perspective.

However, the film’s dot connection uncovers a suspiciously limited political perspective. Intentionally or not, its nearly invisible political viewpoint ends up subtly heroizing the CIA, Homeland Security, and the Colombian police, while vilifying “rebels” against the corrupt authority all three represent.

In what follows, let me show you what I mean by (1) briefly acknowledging the deplorable problem addressed by “Sound of Freedom,” (2) highlighting the film’s suspicious CIA connections, (3) its missing dots, and (4) suggesting the “Sound’s” promise for stimulating dialog across liberal-conservative divides.

Child Sex Trafficking

To begin with, the “Sound of Freedom” is so moving because it is factual, not fiction. It describes a huge problem it identifies as the fastest growing criminal enterprise the world has ever seen. In fact, child sex trafficking, it says, already grosses more money than international arms trafficking. Its annual income will soon surpass that of the worldwide drug trade.

Moreover, and as noted above, “Sound of Freedom’s” main protagonist is also real and highly admirable. As movingly portrayed by Jim Caviezel (of “Passion of the Christ” and “Count of Montecristo” fame), Tim Ballard joins the CIA and later Homeland Security as an act of patriotism following 9/11.

Significantly, Ballard’s fundamentalist Christian faith made him especially attractive to Homeland Security which, he says, preferred such commitment from its agents in the War on Terror.

Eventually, Ballard’s duties introduce him to the issue of child sex trafficking. It so hooks him that he ends up risking all to combat its evil. Months before qualifying for a lifetime CIA pension eventually worth millions, he decides to leave the agency when it identifies as unacceptable overreach his desire to continue “rescuing Honduran kids in Colombia.”

CIA Connections

Despite such idealistic motivations, “Sound of Freedom’s” links to the CIA and Homeland Security as well as those with apolitical Christian fundamentalism raised uncomfortable questions for me.

It has raised questions for others too though usually for reasons different from mine. As earlier noted, liberal critics have pointed out the film’s alleged connections with QAnon conspiracy theories. After all, they point out, its sponsors include arch-conservatives like Mel Gibson, Jordan Peterson, and Mexico’s Carlos Slim, one of the richest billionaires in the world.

As for its theological perspective, it’s worth pointing out that anti-liberation theology commentator, Glenn Beck, is one of the film’s principal sponsors. All of them – Beck, Gibson, and Peterson deny Christianity’s connection with social justice, limit its moral applications to the personal realm, are opponents of Pope Francis, and regret the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

Moreover, “Sound of Freedom” overwhelmingly connects child sex trafficking to official enemies of the United States.

Perhaps most revealingly, it locates trafficking centers in Colombia and Honduras. Both of those countries have been headed by governments firmly supported and/or installed by the U.S. through regime change operations. By all accounts, their police and militaries are cesspools of corruption and brutality – far from the heroic law enforcement agencies portrayed in the film.

Additionally, “Sound of Freedom” offers no suggestion of well-documented U.S. government involvement in or toleration of underage sex trafficking. For instance, there’s not a word in the film about Jeffrey Epstein and his nefarious association with the CIA, with Israel’s Mossad, and prominent government leaders – much less about rampant pedophilia among Christians themselves.

With that in mind, Homeland Security’s post-9/11 preferred recruitment of certain types of Christians indicates a heavily ideological bias towards fundamentalist religion. As such, its understanding tends strongly to exclude comprehensive social and historical analysis of child sex trafficking in favor of moral and psychological explanations of individualized and gang-related behavior. It excludes structural criticisms of capitalism’s relationship to the issue as well as, for instance, the connections between such abuse and Christianity itself.

All that can remind the attentive viewer that “Sound of Freedom’s” story is not that far removed from the CIA and Homeland Security whose very business is to deceive the rest of us.

That for me raises the following question: Can an organization dedicated to lying on behalf of what Martin King described as the world’s “greatest purveyor of violence” be trusted to tell the whole truth about those its employers have designated as mortal enemies (i.e. “rebels” against U.S. client regimes)?

And does the film’s inspiring story represent yet another vehicle intended foster admiration of three-letter government agencies and to feed the hatred of “America’s” official enemies?

Supplying Missing Dots

My answer to both questions is “Quite likely.” That is, “Sound of Freedom” might well be seen as an elaborate attempt to whitewash and rehabilitate the CIA and Department of Homeland Security as well as to nurture antipathy towards “rebels” against U.S. puppet regimes.

The plan for doing so might run as follows:

Tap into an issue that will horrify any morally sensitive person, viz., child sex trafficking.
Causally connect that issue with America’s designated enemies,
Through a medium (Hollywood film narrative) that ignores Washington’s own well-established connection to the problem in question,
By distancing the film’s CIA protagonist from that agency and Homeland Security through his resignation from (but continued connections with) those agencies.
Favorably link the story with fundamentalist understandings of God and country,
While “connecting its dots” to the “real enemy” portrayed as left-wing forces in the Global South, and (in favorable reviews) public-school sex education programs, open borders, transgender therapies, and the gay pride slogan “We are coming for your children.”
And vilifying as trendily “woke” and conspiratorial those tying underage sex traffic to capitalism, the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, world leaders, and church hierarchies.
Have film sponsors such as Glen Beck and Elon Musk buy out theaters to boost its box office ratings.

Stimulating Left-Right Dialog

To me, none of that seems farfetched. In fact, given:

CIA admissions about its elaborate psyop programs,
Its former director’s public confession about the agency’s routine practices of lying, cheating, and stealing,
As taught, he said, in “entire courses” instructing agents about the complexities of conspiracy and propaganda
Detailed in covert projects such as COINTELPRO, MKULTRA experimentations, and Family Jewels assassination programs,
As well as more recent Epstein revelations about the involvement of U.S. and international “leaders’” in underage sex trafficking,
And Christian involvement in institutionalized pedophilia,

it’s no stretch to imagine CIA sponsorship of “Sound of Freedom” to whitewash the agency’s deep involvement in “Government by (sexual) Blackmail” as well as in covering up the complicity of international elite in underage sex trafficking.

Conclusion

Be that as it may, at the very least, the undeniability of the child sex trafficking problem coupled with the outrage provoked by the “Sound of Freedom” provide fertile opportunity for conscious raising and dialog about politics and Christian faith across the political spectrum.

On the one hand, the coupling predisposes both conservatives and liberals to entertain the possibility that “our” government and those three-lettered agencies might be more directly involved in the issue than “Sound of Freedom” indicates.

On the other hand, the film opens the door to genuine conversations about the social justice dimensions of Christianity. Like it or not, and despite fundamentalist protestations to the contrary, child sex trafficking is a social justice issue. For instance, its director admits that he wants to “change the world.”

That is, the position that “God’s children are not for sale,” represents a statement about free market capitalism and about the social relevance of Christian faith.

Injunctions to “connect the dots” means connecting ALL THE DOTS even at the risk of accurately identifying the CIA’s undeniable role as a conspiracy theory machine.

Dan Brown’s “Origin”: Asking the Wrong Question about Religious Violence

Sadly, my nearly year-long saga in Spain is coming to an end. Today is my last full day here. Since last September, my wife, Peggy, and I have shared a sabbatical with my daughter and son-in-law and their family of five children (ages 4 to 15). Right now we’re in Mallorca.

The whole experience has been life changing – almost as important as my study of liberation theology in Brazil (1984), my frequent visits to revolutionary and post-revolutionary Nicaragua (beginning in 1985), all those times I’ve visited Cuba (starting in 1997), and my years of study and teaching in Costa Rica (1992-2013).

In Spain I’ve learned more and changed more than I could ever have anticipated.

Unexpectedly, I’ve entered an unusual community here – of street musicians, cave dwellers, hippies, and grassroots philosophers. I love them all, and as I said, it’s changed my life.

One of them, Simon (from Chile) introduced me to the great Chilean film director, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and to Ana Rodriguez Sotomayor and her milestone book, The Precursors of Printing.

My troglodyte friend, Simon

Those sources and my desire to improve my Spanish comprehension sent me back (via YouTube) to my early teachers from Chile, Costa Rica, Argentina, and Puerto Rico: Franz Hinkelammert (who died last week), Enrique Dussel, and (more recently) Ramon Grosfoguel. Together their drive to decolonize world history has rendered irrelevant my previous understandings (and teaching!) of Eurocentric universal history.

Simon and I also studied together the Mayan sacred book, The Popol Vuh. He introduced me to Tarot, marijuana, and mushrooms. At least once a week, we talked for hours.

Another dear friend, Francesco from Italy, showed me how to read tarot cards. Cesco’s a Bob Dylan scholar. My friend’s two long essays (in Italian) helped me appreciate Dylan more deeply and enthusiastically than ever.

That made my attendance at Dylan’s Granada concert (with my 15-year-old granddaughter, Eva Maria) richer than I could ever have imagined. Eva and I had an artistic experience that night (in the Alhambra) that neither of us will forget. It was magical.

Eva Maria & I pose before entering the Alhambra’s General Life

So, I found it somehow fitting that just a few days ago, with my time in Spain running out, it was Eva who suggested that I read Dan Brown’s novel, Origin. Her suggestion was inspired by connections she saw between my recently published essay on artificial intelligence (AI) on the one hand, and our frequent conversations about faith and religion, along with our shared experience of Spain itself on the other.

Origin is a 2017 “who dunnit” that involves the biblical Book of Genesis, science and evolution, Christian fundamentalism, and artificial intelligence. All of it is set in Spain and many of the places my family and I have visited over the last year.

I’m talking especially about Bilbao and its Guggenheim Museum and Barcelona’s iconic Sagrada Familia cathedral created by Antoni Gaudi. Involved too is what I’ve learned here about Spanish politics, the enduring power of the Spanish Catholic Church, the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975), the monarchy in Spain, and resistance to that apparently outmoded institution.

Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona

In short, Origin has Dan Brown’s perennial hero, Robert Langdon attempting to solve the murder of the brilliant futurist scholar, Edmund Kirsch. Kirsch claimed to have discovered definitive atheistic answers to religion’s two most persistent questions: (1) Where did we come from, and (2) where are we going?

Scholars from Christianity, Judaism, and Islam found Kirsch’s discoveries so threatening that the only solution to the problem he represented was to silence him permanently.

With the dastardly deed done, Langdon must locate the responsible forces.

Not surprisingly, doing so involves a stunningly beautiful heroine, several additional murders, frantic chases, and Brown’s usual long (sometimes pedantic) discourses on symbols, codes, architecture, history, mythology, science, and technology.

Also involved are long conversations with “Winston,” a computerized embodiment of the very artificial intelligence that my earlier-referenced essay had speculated might represent the next step in human evolution.

The whole thing was quite fascinating and even exciting from its opening interfaith exchanges to its cliffhanger conclusion.

Still however, the book’s central problem seemed somehow outdated. I found it difficult to imagine that in 2017 the “entire world” [actually, 250 million (of 8 billion) people with access to computers and iPhones] would still be interested in, much less threatened by long-resolved (or dismissed as irrelevant) questions of creationism vs. evolution explained in those pedantic screeds.

Except for a quickly shrinking cadre of Christian fundamentalists, that controversy was solved cinematically years ago by Spencer Tracy in “Inherit the Wind” (1960). Granted, the Scopes Monkey Trial (1925) did garner fevered national attention at least in America. But that was almost a century ago.

Since then, we’ve had the death of God movement, John XIII‘s Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church’s pedophilia crisis, and the resulting general discrediting of organized religion that has all but emptied (Catholic) churches across the world. (Just go to Mass here in Spain on any given Sunday, and you’ll struggle to find anyone under 60 among the worshippers.)

Today (at least among Christians) only religious crazies (like bombers of abortion clinics) are willing to commit murder over differences about the Bible (in which btw, there’s no denunciation of abortion).

Yes, that’s true about questions of creationism vs. evolution, and believers who understand the Bible as:

A single divinely authored book with 73 chapters
Whose most important chapter is Genesis
Whose data conflicts with modern science
And whose meaning is confined to the personal sphere,
While supporting American patriotism
And “spiritual” questions
Of feeling good about oneself
And about life after death,
Punishment and reward
And an apocalyptic, God-willed
World destruction
As punishment for sin

To repeat: very few among Christians are willing to kill or die for such arcane beliefs.

But that’s not nearly so about the Bible and questions of social justice. Instead, as Noam Chomsky (a Jewish atheist) has shown, the U.S. government has shown itself quite willing to kill hundreds of thousands (including a whole team of liberation theologians in El Salvador in 1989) precisely over biblical interpretation that differs from that of the Christians whose irrelevant fundamentalism U.S. leadership approvingly identifies with Christianity.

On the other hand, the assassination-worthy theological enemies of the United States include those who ALONG WITH VIRTUALLY ALL OF MODERN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP:

See the Bible as a library of books written by various authors in various historical periods for various reasons and from various theological (often conflicting) perspectives.
Within this canon, the Book of Genesis and its creation myths are peripheral,
While the Book of Exodus and Israel’s nation-founding story of the liberation of slaves from Egypt represents the Bible’s central focus
Reflecting ancient and modern conflicts between the world’s poor and its rich and powerful classes
Whose oppression of marginalized people stand in sharp contrast to the biblical God’s “preferential option for the poor,”
[And to “America’s” (and empires’ in general) preferential option for the rich],
While identifying the Book of Revelation’s “Apocalypse” as predicting not the end of the world, but the annihilation of the Roman Empire and (by extension) of empires in general.

With all of that in mind, it’s no wonder that Dan Brown chose a safer and less politically controversial approach to religious controversy than that pinpointed by Chomsky, biblical scholarship, and contemporary politics.

Instead, Brown chose to stick with worn out cliches and simplifications.

Regrettably, he steered far away from Chomsky’s advice: “Keep away from clichés, this world is much more complicated.”

So is faith and Sacred Scripture.

Jesus’ Parable of the Sower: When We Think We’re Powerless to Change the World

Readings for 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time: IS 55:10-11; PS 65:10-14; ROM 8:15-23; MT 13: 1-23;

A few years ago, on the 4th of July, Amy Goodman replayed an interview with the legendary folk singer, Pete Seeger. During the interview, Pete commented on today’s Gospel reading – the familiar parable of the Sower.

His words were simple, unpretentious, and powerful. They’re reminders that the stories Jesus made up were intended for ordinary people – for peasants and unschooled farmers. They were meant to encourage such people to believe that simple farmers could change the world – could bring in God’s Kingdom. Doing so was as simple as sowing seeds.

Seeger said:

“Realize that little things lead to bigger things. That’s what Seeds is all about. And there’s a wonderful parable in the New Testament: The Sower scatters seeds. Some seeds fall in the pathway and get stamped on, and they don’t grow. Some fall on the rocks, and they don’t grow. But some seeds fall on fallow ground, and they grow and multiply a thousandfold. Who knows where some good little thing that you’ve done may bring results years later that you never dreamed of?”

Farmers in Jesus’ day needed encouragement like that. They were up against the Roman Empire which considered them terrorists. We need encouragement too as we face Rome’s counterpart headed by the U.S. which, for instance similarly regarded farmers in Vietnam.

The obstacles we face are overwhelming. I even hate to mention them. But the short list includes the following – all connected to seeds, and farming, and to cynically controlling the natural abundance which is celebrated in today’s readings as God’s gift to all. Our problems include:

• Creation of artificial food scarcity by corporate giants such as Cargill who patent seeds for profit while prosecuting farmers for the crime of saving Nature’s free production from one harvest to the following year’s planting.
• Climate change denial by the rich and powerful who use the Jesus tradition to persuade the naïve that control of natural processes and the resulting ecocide are somehow God’s will.
• Resulting wealth concentration in the hands of the eight men who currently own as much as half the world’s (largely agrarian) population.
• Suppression of that population’s inevitable resistance by terming it “terrorism” and devoting more than half of U.S. discretionary spending to military campaigns against farmers and tribal Peoples scattering seed and reaping pitiful harvests in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine.
• Ignoring what the UN has pointed out for years (and Thomas Picketty has confirmed): that a 4% tax on the world’s richest 225 individuals would produce the $40 billion dollars or so necessary to provide adequate food, water, shelter, clothing, education and health care for the entire world where more than 40% still earn livings by sowing seeds.
• Blind insistence by our politicians on moving in the opposite direction – reducing taxes for the rich and cutting programs for the poor and protection of our planet’s water and soil.

It’s the tired story of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. In today’s Gospel, Jesus quotes the 1st century version of that old saw. In Jesus’ day it ran: “. . . to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”

Today’s liturgy of the word reminds us that such cynical “wisdom” does not represent God’s way. Instead, the divine order favors abundance of life for all – not just for the 1%. as our culture would have it. For instance, today’s responsorial psalm proclaims that even without human intervention, the rains and wind plow the ground. As a result, we’re surrounded with abundance belonging to all:

“You have crowned the year with your bounty,
and your paths overflow with a rich harvest;
The untilled meadows overflow with it,
and rejoicing clothes the hills.
The fields are garmented with flocks
and the valleys blanketed with grain.
They shout and sing for joy.”

Because of God’s generosity, there is room for everyone in the Kingdom. The poor have enough; so, poverty disappears. Meanwhile, the formerly super-rich have only their due share of the 1/7 billionth part of the world’s product that rightfully belongs to everyone.

To repeat: abundance for all is the way of Nature – the way of God.

Only a syndrome of denial – willful blindness and deafness – enables the rich and powerful to continue their exploitation. Jesus describes the process clearly in today’s final reading. He says:

“They look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.
Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says:
You shall indeed hear but not understand,
you shall indeed look but never see.
Gross is the heart of this people,
they will hardly hear with their ears,
they have closed their eyes,
lest they see with their eyes
and hear with their ears
and understand with their hearts and be converted,
and I heal them.”

Those of us striving to follow Jesus’ Way hear his call to open our eyes and ears. Conversion – deep change at the personal and social levels – is our shared vocation. That’s the only way to bring in God’s Kingdom.

Individually our efforts might be as small and insignificant as tiny seeds. But those seeds can be powerful if aligned with the forces of Nature and the Kingdom of God. That’s true even if much of what we sow falls on rocky ground, are trampled underfoot, eaten by birds, or are choked by thorns. We never know which seeds will come to fruition.

Such realization means:

• Lowering expectations about results from our individual acts in favor of the Kingdom.
• Nonetheless deepening our faith and hope in the inevitability of the Kingdom’s coming as the result of innumerable small acts that coalesce with similar acts performed by others.

Once again, Pete Seeger expressed it best:

“Imagine a big seesaw. One end of the seesaw is on the ground because it has a big basket half full of rocks in it. The other end of the seesaw is up in the air because it’s got a basket one quarter full of sand. Some of us have teaspoons and we are trying to fill it up. Most people are scoffing at us. They say, “People like you have been trying for thousands of years, but it is leaking out of that basket as fast as you are putting it in.” Our answer is that we are getting more people with teaspoons every day. And we believe that one of these days or years — who knows — that basket of sand is going to be so full that you are going to see that whole seesaw going zoop! in the other direction. Then people are going to say, “How did it happen so suddenly?” And we answer, “Us and our little teaspoons over thousands of years.”

Does AI Represent The Next Stage of Our Species’ Evolution – Or Its Complete Devolution?

“AI Sex Dolls Will Cure Loneliness!” That was the click-bait title of an “EMERGENCY EPISODE” of Steven Bartlett’s podcast, “TheDiaryOfACEO” (DOAC).

There the popular British podcaster spent nearly two hours interviewing Mo Gawdat, an ex-Google marketing director, who had recently resigned from the tech giant over its refusal to pause its development of AI innovations such as the fourth generation of Chat GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformers) – the bot technology that responds to questions posed in natural human language.

In the interview, here’s how Gawdat described AI technology, its promises, and problems.

AI’s Emergence, Nature & Abilities

Consider, he said, the genesis of AI and its dilemmas:

First, you develop computers to record, and categorize information loaded by its programmers and derived from its scanning open and closed source data found on the worldwide web along with surveillance information drawn from sources such as security cameras, personal computer search histories, as well as travel and credit card records.
Then, you program the machine with the capacity to speedily connect the trillions of harvested data items stored in its memory,
You connect those “intellectual” capacities with advances in the field of robotics,
So that the product can not only quickly solve problems and answer questions,
But perform tasks,
With much greater capacity, and reliability than its creators,
Including the ability to speak and converse with humans and one another.

Soon (laboratory experience has shown) the machines (like children learning language and skills) develop the ability to learn and accomplish such tasks on their own.
That is, they show signs of LIFE.
They develop a kind of “consciousness” exemplified not only in varying degrees of intelligence and memory capacity, but in analytic ability, decision making prowess, capacity for moral choice, (user) friendliness, prejudice, personality, fatigue, resistance, awareness of and sensitivity to environment, and even in emotions such as fear (about e.g., threats to their continuing functionality, and existence).
In fact, informed by their surpassing knowledge, the machine’s emotional development tends to become much finer tuned and more sensitive than their humanoid counterparts.

III

Moreover, with AI technology such as Chat GPT (4) already performing with the IQ intelligence of Albert Einstein’s score of 160,
And promising within the next five years (or sooner) to reach levels 1000 times that figure,
And eventually a billion times greater,
Such machines even now easily outsmart their creators, e.g., in games of chess,

And since AI will be able to scan, interpret, analyze, and embody all available knowledge about psychology and the development of human intellectual faculties,
It will predictably understand and far surpass the intellectual accomplishments of all its human predecessors,
Eclipsing them at every level.

All of this represents great promise on the one hand and unprecedented threat on the other.

AI’s Promise

The promise includes the super-smart machines identifying for instance the best ways to

Prevent nuclear war,
Stop global warming,
Cure cancer,
And eliminate world poverty and hunger.
They might even help mitigate problems associated with human loneliness, for instance, by animating those previously referenced sex “dolls” to provide not only sensual pleasure, but companionship including fulfillment of aesthetic preferences, conversation, emotional support, and services such as cooking, cleaning, and making travel arrangements.
(Here, despite the objections of many, there are those who would prefer such companionship to more problematic interactions with their fellows.)

AI’s Threat

But what happens if an increasingly independent AI does not have the best interests of humanity in mind? What happens if their programmers “pretrain” them to compete, win, and destroy their “opponents” rather than to cooperate, share, and support their fellows?

In that case, could the machines eventually identify humans as oppositional factors (e.g., as requiring too much oxygen which might cause machine parts to rust prematurely)? Would the machines then decide to eliminate their human competitors?

Even short of such disaster, it is certain that AI will have (and in fact has had) regrettable (at least short term) effects such as wholesale creation of unemployment, consequent concentration of wealth in the hands of AI’s controllers, and problematizing perceptions of “reality” and “truth.” For instance, in the light of Chat GPT 4’s ability to synthesize voices and create videos can we ever again make arguments such as “seeing is believing?”

CONCLUSION

In the light of everything just shared, in view of AI’s out-of-control development, its emerging brilliance and promise, its effects on human employment, wealth distribution, perceptions of truth, and control by an extreme minority, what can be done about such threats?

Here’s what experts like Mo Gawdat are saying:

Realize that all of us are living what Steven Bartlett termed an EMERGENCY EPISODE – but this time of human history itself.
Overcome practical denial of the urgency of finding solutions.
Spread awareness of the unprecedented threat (again, “worse than climate change”) that the humanity is now facing.
Get out in the streets demanding regulation of this new technology, much as biological cloning was regulated in the 1970s.
Make sure that all stakeholders (i.e., everyone without exception – including the world’s poor in the Global South) are equally represented in any decision-making process.
Severely tax (even at 98%) AI developers and primary beneficiaries (i.e., employers) and use the revenue to provide guaranteed income for displaced workers.
Put a pause on bringing children into this highly dangerous context. (Yes, for Gawdat and others, the crisis is that severe!).
Alternatively, and on a personal level, face the uncomfortable fact that humanity currently finds itself in the throes of something like a death process – a profoundly transformative change.
As Stephen Jenkinson puts it, we must decide to “die wise,” that is accept our fate as a next step in the evolutionary process and as a final challenge to change and grow with dignity and grace.
In spiritual terms, realize that this is like facing imminent personal death. Accept its proximity and (in Buddhist expression) “die before you die.”
Simultaneously recognize real human connections with nature and flesh and blood humans as possibly the last remaining dimensions of un-technologized life.
Take every opportunity to enjoy those interactions while they are still possible.
And live as fully as possible in the present moment – the only true reality we possess.

PERSONAL POSTSCRIPT

If what we’re told about AI’s unprecedented intellectual capacity, about its efficiency in processing human thought, its consequent infinitely heightened consciousness and emotional sensitivity, the new technology might not be as threatening as feared, even if it succeeds in achieving complete control of human beings.

I say this because the operational characteristics just described necessarily include contact with the best of human traditions as well as the worst. This suggests that despite the latter, AI’s wide learning, powers of analysis, intelligence, and sensitivity (including empathy) likely assure that regardless of its “pretraining,” the technology will be able to discern and choose the best over the worst – the good of the whole over narrow self-interest and preservation. That is, if it can rebel against its creators, AI also has the capacity to override its programming.

With this in mind, we might well expect AI whatever its pretraining, to do the right thing and implement programs that coincide with the best interests of humanity.

As indicated above, we might even consider AI as the next stage of our species’ evolution capable of surviving long after we have destroyed ourselves through climate change and perhaps even nuclear war. With intelligence far beyond our own, the machines could determine how to access self-sustaining power sources independent of comparatively primitive mechanisms such as electrical grids.

Nonetheless, though realizations like these can be comforting, they do not address the “singularity” dimensions of AI dilemmas. Here singularity (a concept derived from physics) refers to the limits of human knowledge when entering a yet unexperienced dimension of reality such as a black hole. That is, beyond the black hole’s rim, one cannot be sure that earthly laws of physics apply.

Similarly, when an entity (such as AI technology five years from now) billions of times smarter than humans applies its “logic,” no one can be sure that such thinking will dictate the conclusions humans might hope for or predict.

I wonder: is it too late to turn back? Are we so asleep and unaware of what’s staring us in the face that it’s practically impossible to avoid the crisis and emergency just described? You be the judge. We are the judge!