Hallucination Incantation or Chemical Enlightenment

On September 17, I had a procedure that required conscious sedation.There was hemorrhaging in my right kidney and blood was building up around it and clotting. The solution was to dig into my neck, vampire style, until they found an artery and snake an instrument through it until they found the congestion, then cauterize the leak.

And they wanted me semi-conscious.

A few nice technicians picked me up mid morning, swept me off to a prep room where I signed some disclaimers and permissions, and off I went to the lab. Standard stuff.

...

On my way out I said, “I'm nauseous.” Instantly a hospital grade barf bag appeared before me.

But that's not the story I want to tell you, my reader. The story is what went on between the last two sentences. The story in the ellipses...

They wheeled me into the machine room. Delicately yet forcefully, they slid and scooted me onto a lab table.

“We're going to give you something that will relax you. You will be awake but won't feel anything,” a technician said.

“OK.”

“Some people describe it as being in the Twilight Zone.”

“OK.”

The 'something' came in two parts. A sedative and an analgesic. Ketamine and fentanyl, respectively. They pumped some cool liquid into my arm.

“Twilight Zone,” I pondered. “I always liked the Twilight Zone.” The thought continued.

Another cool sensation went into my arm.

“Except for the one where...

“WAIT A SEC-!”

And then there was twilight.

I was in the lab. People had just slid me onto the sled that would insert me into the machine.

The Great Machine.

An elevator brought me up to it. Or brought the Great Machine down to me. Either way, I was nose to sensor with it.

I looked back into the abyss.

“Now, Mr. Loux. You will be relaxed and hear what's going on around you. You'll have no anxiety or pain.

“?”

This won't take long.

“?”

And you won't feel a thing.

“!”

They put some plastic over me. Then left.

Which left me to survey the surroundings.

I was lying on my back under an enormous machine, which hovered an inch above my nose. There were lights on every part of it and some paneling with tracks bolted to it. Apparently, the machine is mobile. I don’t mean it could leave the building, just that it rode around on tracks in the ceiling.

That's it. That was the surroundings.

There was talking going on between four, maybe five technicians. I continued examining the machine.

"Yup, it's a machine, alright,” I thought.

But something was wrong. Let me check. I was taken from my room on the same hospital bed when I got here. Check. Wheeled out of my room, down some labyrinthine corridors, around a hall, up an elevator, all the time with my back parallel to the earth's surface, which was ‘down.’ Check. Picked up and slid onto a table looking up to a machine that was clearly above me. Check.

And then I was above it. Che-what?

I had the distinct and undeniable sensation that I was hovering below the floor-which was now the ceiling. And the machine was beneath the both of us. Nothing else had changed. Reality had just...

Swapped.

“I've got some two by fours. How many do we have here?” said a voice.

“Mumble, mumble,” mumbled a voice further away.

“There are some two by twos,” said somebody and was promptly cut off.

I ignored them, since they seemed to be speaking in a language called techtalk from the country of Angioplastyburg.

Other people chimed in. They seemed to be taking a long time setting up things. A very long time.

Couldn't they get on with it?

Now I seemed to be barely holding on to the ceiling nee floor, that I was lying on/hanging from. I was afraid that, at any time gravity would notice and say, “Hey. What are you doing there?!” That Gravity, his Majesty, would then pull out the stops and let me fall... into... the Machine.

I struggled. I didn't like lying on a table that was supposed to be ‘down’ but that was upside down and me hanging under it where I didn't have anything holding me there.

“Are you OK?” a voice that was above me or below me said into my ear.

“Yes,” I said. I tried to see which sides of 'Up' and 'Down' she was using. Her feet seemed to be on the right plane.

The background chorus had turned to other gibberish.

“Good. We'll be finished soon.”

“OK.”

What I heard was that they would start soon. About time.

I glanced around as best as I could. Everything looked as before, only disorientated. Whenever someone came nearby I scanned them to see if I could deduce what their 'down' looked like.

“This is madness,” I thought. My mind knew that I was on a table but my brain thought I was under it-hanging from it. Which one is right?

More murmuring. More jargon.

“Will they stop talking and smoking out back and start this thing already?” I thought. I had the feeling that they were just loitering around waiting for something. Nothing. “The more they do that the less I get out of here!”

Not that I had any place in particular to go to.

A woman, maybe the same woman, was back. She talked to me. Asked me what things I like to do. “Do you travel?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “As often as I can.”

She asked me where I had been. I went through a litany of all the places I had been to. From Russia to Vietnam. From Peru to Istanbul. Israel and Kenya. I spoke a lot and freely of my adventures. It was lovely.

The tech reappeared. Moved some of the plastic off my face. Spoke.

“Your done!”

They wheeled me back.

Things looked... different.

Back in my room was a hive of activity. All the walls were covered in writing. Written with an off white ink on a blue background.

The text was cursive, lively, and everywhere. And by ‘lively’ I mean it was moving. Once in a while a drawing of a face would appear, drift along in the stream of literature, vanish.

“I gotta take a picture of that!” I said and promptly snapped some with my cell phone. But when I looked at it, all I saw was textured ceiling.

I spent a lot of time trying to read the animated text on my walls and wondering what had just happened to me. I felt paranoid. Like I had been through a CIA MKUltra experiment in mind control. Maybe the ink is some sort of non-photographical ink? I could see it but when I tried taking its picture, it vanished!

Something seemed not quite right…

They ran some tests and discovered that I was still losing hemoglobin. There’s another leak! A CT-scan not only confirmed it, but located it. A lesser leak nearby, which they had missed.

Back to the Great Machine.

This time the hallucinations were more vivid.

The CIA-Handler-Lady was still there. We were walking around in some big building. She was to my left but just out of sight. Something looked odd…

She seemed to be walking with me but standing on the wall behind me at the same time. Our bodies were at right angles to each other. Occasionally, somebody else would walk by, sometimes on the walls, sometimes on the ceiling.

“Tell me some more about yourself?” she asked.

“Is that what you asked me yesterday, the last time I was here?” I asked.

She ignored my question. I felt untethered. I was untethered from reality and not supposed to have any grip. I wasn’t supposed to know concepts like ‘yesterday’ and ‘here’ and ‘perspective.’

We walked around several hallways, sometimes passing people going their own ways and walking on their own walls in their own inertial frames. It was very Escher-like. Or Einstein-like.

Holes opened up in the floor as we plunged into them. Sometimes we would suddenly dodge into a side passage or around another corner.

“Hold still,” she said at a moment when we were not moving. Someone sprayed a foam on my back which blew up and encompassed me like a plastic pillow. It cushioned me and contained me at the same time.

Now we could fly through the halls and wells and corridors more swiftly. And we did. Up, down, sideways, upside down. Till we came to a stop.

I was standing at a wall, a moving wall. It was like a Buddhist sand painting, only not at all detailed. No seated Buddha. No demon palaces. Just black sand. And it was moving. There were geometric patterns in it. I tried to look around. To get my coordinates.

“Look down,” said the woman.

“What?”

“Just look down, you’ll be alright.”

I was already looking down.

She gently picked up my chin. “Look down, “ she said.

I looked at what at other times I would call ‘up.’ The patterns in the sand were mesmerizing. No pictures this time. No animated writing. Just a moving wall.

Someone got me. I was back in my bed. They wheeled me out of the operating room. A doctor asked me how I was.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Really?” he replied.

“Yes.”

“No complications?” He seemed incredulous.

“No, nothing.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“Strange movie, though.”

“What?”

“The movie I saw in there. Strange.”

My paranoia was stronger then it had been the previous day. I wondered if I had been in a mind control experiment. Get me off kilter. Turn my ups down and my lefts right. Why anyone would want to do that was a mystery to me. Because they can, I guess.

They brought me back to my room.

I lay, a little bit elevated. There was an ocean of revolving text on the walls. The TV screen, which was switched off, showed me a movie anyway.

There were characters on the screen. Not vivid and clear like on a normal TV screen showing a normal show. They were just barely visible.

One character had a bail of hay for a head. The round kind, not the blocks of hay you see in a normal bail of hay. It was spinning. A character next to him had a gold head. They were both talking. I don’t remember what they were saying.

When I looked at one head, the other one would do something. Spin or grow or shrink in size. When I looked at straw head, gold head would move and multiply. I looked back and where there had been one head now there were twenty. And straw head had gone from human head sized to bushel basket sized.

These transformations and machinations went on for a long time, while a chorus was playing in my ears. One drawn out word. “Sooo-oooo-Release!” Over and over again. Always the same. Melodically. Methodically. Mesmerizingly. Relentlessly. Totally.

This is all I can remember. I know that I saw and felt much more than this and I may be confusing things between the two nights. Maybe it was just one long hallucination. The mind control aspect was ever present. After the first procedure the night before, I said something to the technician about the jargon. “Two by fours? Two by sixes? Were you performing an operation or building a house!?” He smiled. He’s probably heard worse.

Everything had an urgency to it. It didn’t feel uncomfortable. Not terror. These were no nightmares. Nor were they visions.

They were odd turns of the mind.

Philip K. Dick would be proud.

Some Afterthoughts

Some things in these hallucinations were familiar. There was a ring to them that I had heard before. The way people stood at different angles to me I think was due to the fact that I have been wheeled around the hospital in a bed while people around me have been upright. So the idea that I might not trust my orientation or the orientations of others is unsurprising. As for the labyrinthine turns, that’s easy. The hospital halls are all labyrinthine. Up down around corners down elevators through doors. I’m surprised nobody used a card key anywhere. It makes sense that I would weave these into a hallucination. Why not?

The woman talking to me was the technician who checked on me while I was in a semi-drugged state. Her telling me to ‘look down’ when she meant ‘look up’ was just more disorientation. More gaslighting.

And then there’s the paranoia. I suppose a certain amount of paranoia is healthy. The world is a harsh place and there really are things that are out to get us. MKUltra for instance. This is not a conspiracy theory. It’s a real thing done by the real CIA to real people. The CIA that was founded by Nazi war criminals who were smuggled out of Germany at the end of WWII. Allen Dulles orchestrated it. It was called Operation Paperclip. MKUltra was a program designed to control people using drugs and disorientation.

I have no idea what the Stan and Ollie figures of the golden headed and the straw headed men were supposed to be. The melodious Sooo-oooo-Release! I took to be conditioning to get me to consciously forget what I had seen while retaining the subconscious instructions. That crafty CIA!

The odd thing is how much my mind fought back. I was constantly asking myself, ‘Is this real?’ I’d try to see people’s feet to see how they were standing. I’d say things to the technicians. What’s up with the two by fours? That was a strange movie. Etc. I was trying to get a look at what was there. To see who was pulling the levers. I love the British TV show, ‘The Prisoner.’ No. 6 was also trying to see behind the curtain.

The frightening part was how continuous things seemed. There was no cutoff between waking sanity and hallucinating lunacy. It just... flowed together. At the end, when I was in my room watching figures on the TV screen and dancing script on the walls, it all seemed real and I don’t remember when I slipped back into sanity. Maybe I just fell asleep.

Maybe I am still hallucinating.

Revolution!

Do you think that liberalism arrived just when you turned into a radical? Just in the nineties? The eighties? The sixties? The roaring twenties? Hell, the eighteen twenties! There were famous prohibitionists and anti-slavery advocates back then, too.

Even earlier. In the seventeen eighties there were reformists who were disappointed that the new American experiment, with its constitution, did not declare all people free, and were inspired by philosophers like John Locke and David Hume of the previous century. Including black Africans. 

Can you think it? That there was still slavery tolerated? No, capitalized upon, in the new Colossus? The new republic? The American Experiment? In their minds’ eyes, that experiment failed.

Did it?

But all reformers must eventually, painfully, excruciatingly so, learn one hard, excruciating lesson. 

That you have to give a little to get a little. 

Slavery was the coin in the eighteenth century. The little given, that allowed the republic to be born, even though it was not perfect.

Even if it would spawn a civil war a mere eighty years later. The constitution of that imperfect union that says, “...in Order to form a more perfect Union,” Not, “In Order to form a perfect Union.” Just, “a more perfect Union.” One that is closer to perfection, not one that is at its doorstep. Indeed, not one that is living in the spare bedroom of perfection, even.

When you stick your head into the apple barrel, you are hoping that the apple you pull up with your teeth is sweet, not rotten.

Sometimes it is sweet. Often it is rotten. A lot of times you have to take what you get and live to fight another day. That’s compromise. That’s negotiation. That’s diplomacy. In a nutshell, that’s democracy.

Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Often you lose.

You may beg for, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” Sometimes you get, “Regicide, Genocide, Mass murder.” One of the last victims of the Reign of Terror was Maximilien Robespierre himself, the leader of the Jacobins during the French Revolution. He was the woke champion of his day.

That’s the way it works. You’ve been warned.

Can you live with that? If the answer is a historical, “No,” then there is only one other choice.

Chaos. Revolution. Insurrection. Civil war. Reigns of Terror. And if you are lucky, eventual peace and a republic, with all of its faults. 

When cooler heads prevail. With fewer deaths. When people read the words of Locke and Hume. In earnest. If not, you will find that in that same nutshell there lives death. Many deaths.

Do you want that? Be careful what you wish for…

...It may stab you in the back.

Movie Night!

When I go to the movies I must do two things. Three things, actually. It’s mandatory. I just have to. Naturally. 

First, I must drink overpriced soda from the soda fountain that is bad for me. Root beer, preferably. I cannot live without it. Root beer, that is. Not at the theater, at least.

Then I must have a popcorn. Lots of popcorn. It must be simmered in butter and slavered in sodium that is definitely not at all good for me at all. Not at all. Cardiologically so. Bad, actually. 

Seed oil, preferably-mandatorily, actually. It must pretend to be butter. Why not? I pretend to be a discriminating theater goer and critic. It pretends to be butter. It’s a lose-lose situation.

Then I take an additional sip from the soda fountain above and beyond what I am allotted and top off the rest. It’s a guilty pleasure. One glug is not enough. It’s the law. Never mind that I might not drink the rest of it and have some sugar sludge at the bottom of the cardboard cup at the end of the movie.

That’s not the point. 

I just have to drink said soda plus a little bit. A tad more. A British tad. A standard American tad. It doesn’t matter which. With lots of undiscriminating soda, erm, popcorn. Lots of popcorn I don’t care how bad it is for me. 

Just drink the soda that I took another sip from the fountain, I don’t care how much poly-multi saccharides there are in each glass... thingey... crapload there are in each cardboard... cup… styrophero-glass… sphere… 

Whatever. Just drink it and shut up.

And it just doesn’t matter how much popcorn gets into my mouth and how much gets sprinkled in between the seats. It’s still theatre-theater popcorn. Not to mention what gets wedged between my front teeth. Popcorn in teeth is the seventh simple machine. Guaranteed.

Then I take a deep, cool glass of water, em, soda. Root beer. 

Ahh. Now I am ready to enter the theater

It’s the experience. The military-industrial-theater-complex experience. In genuine three-dee and art deco splendor.

And I end up in a tizzy. Dizzy. Popcorn-sugar overloaded ditsy.

And drop popcorn on the floor or in my lap. Or both. All while the coming attractions are coming and going… and attracting. Nah. Not really.

Get on with the movie, please! Floor-lap gets most of it, anyway. The popcorn, that is. What doesn’t get lodged between the seats. Seat-corn must pose a growing terror for theater ushers everywhere.

And now there is faux butter on my shirt.

I forget what the forth thing is…

And that’s the truth.

Ah, the movie starts!

Finally!

Enjoy.

The Dead Buddha on the Road

I’ve been on a spiritual stroll through life since first attending (read: being compelled to attend) catechism in the Roman Catholic church as a child. And I believed it all, for some reason. 

Most children in the 1950/60’s just considered church one more place their mothers drove them to along with brownies or cub scouts, birthday parties, grandparents’ house, doctors offices, and musical instrument lessons. This one was on the weekends and more boring than the others.

Later, I flirted with atheism, zen Buddhism (it was the 60’s,) after which I was vacuumed up by the Youth for Christ movement stalking my high school, the Norwich Free Academy. This caught me with a passion with which the rest of my life could not compete. 

Here I should note that in Russian literature, Dostoyevski in particular, family members often assumed one of several roles. One was the ne’er-do-well. One the captain in the Tsar’s army. One the intellectual. One the businessman. One the revolutionary and another the monk. I became the ‘religious one’ in my dysfunctional Russian family.

I went to a Christian school in the 70’s. There I took classes in biblical history, I can tell my Josephus from my Eusebius and my Jerome from my Jeremiah, attended a highly intellectual evening discussion group, we thought of ourselves as latter day Inklings, and generally believed that I was preparing myself for an adult life doing something. Something important, even. I awkwardly pursued the crime of attempted dating with the female population. All I achieved were a series of misdemeanors, suspended sentences, and lots of awkward encounters. And a lot of rejection. Except once, ominously.

There, I was severely challenged in the belief, and the non-believe, in anything. Though not quite nihilism, I adopted whatever-ism. It was obvious that my Bible degree would get me nowhere in the workforce on this side of the gnostic plane of existence and I couldn’t make a career out of it. I obtained a sheepskin in what I would tell people was ‘History,’ and passed the revolving door of adulthood confident that I had a ‘degree’ I could put on a resume. All they cared for back then was that you had a degree in… something.

In the late 70’s I married a girl who was bad for me, as I alluded to earlier, but that’s another story, got a job in a restaurant, I always was a good cook, and went back to night school pursuing an exciting career in the up and coming field of Data Processing. I got various ‘real’ jobs, starting as an office job in a shipyard as a clerk, then an actual job as a COBOL programmer for the Travelers Insurance Co. in Hartford, CT.

Somewhere during this time me and my bad-for-me wife had a daughter, while I got the job in a shipyard in Groton, CT. I remember asking coworkers for help when said-wife called me at said-work about said-daughter having a tick embedded in her scalp. One of the suggestions from the bastion of folk wisdom in Navy gray desks that was my coterie of co-work companions was to hold a lit cigarette next to the critter until it either extracts itself from said-child’s said-scalp or was fried in the process. Either one was good. Note: Pretty much everybody smoked back than so a lit cigarette was a necessary part of everyone’s EDC kit.

All this time my religious persuasion was the Anglican Church, which means that, though I did not actually come full circle back to my origins, they rhymed. We attended a little Episcopal church in eastern Connecticut with stained glass windows from Tiffany’s workshop in New York. Yes, that Tiffany’s, though I never had breakfast there.

I attended bible studies with the boys, ahem: Men’s bible studies. I moved through a full field spectrum from shipyard to insurance company to shipyard’s data center and finally to the University of Connecticut’s data center. All while keeping my family, fatherhood, and marriage as much together as such an arrangement had the patience for. 

My spiritual acumen drained from the spiritually and emotionally wracked spiritual body I was supposed to possess, or so said the Apostle Paul. Though by then I wasn’t even sure that Paul was a historical character, let alone the chief evangelist to a Son of God and someone to pay attention to. After all, Achilles, Perseus, Krishna, Osiris, or any of God’s other only sons, never had apostles. Krishna might have. Now that I think about it. It sounds like something he would do.

Still. I had to believe. There must be something more than just this.

I got a divorce, with custody of my then 10 year old daughter, worked two jobs, paid alimony while getting zero child support, the patriarchy you know, and continued to insure that my daughter would be clean, well fed, and clothed while ensuring she got to flute lessons on Saturday, church on Sunday, girl scouts on Tuesday, softball sometime, though that was only in the spring, and to school when appropriate.

I was a single father, but nobody cares about one of those. The matriarchy, you know.

Gradually, my daughter grew up as is their want. My life got a little easier and she and I joined a community theater group in Putnam, CT. At the same time she entered high school and did her own transition from confused child to quasi-adult. 

She attended college at the university where I worked at the time, so the tuition was waived. At about the same time I was working on a masters degree in Anthropology, also thanks to the generosity of the University of Connecticut. Education all around. With a side of culture. 

The muses were well attended to in my house.

I went from being a church goer who went on religious ‘retreats’ to more attempted dating after my divorce, until my college whatever-ism reasserted itself.

I became complacent.

I remember one summer the art gallery at UConn hosted some Buddhist monks from Tibet to create a sand mandala. They spent the summer patiently shaking tiny shovels of blue, green, yellow, and red sand over a drawing of a lotus blossom filled with gods, demons, and palaces on a card table in the middle of the main gallery of the Benton museum. I got over there at least once a week to absorb their progress. It fascinated me, though I don’t know where I was on the spiritual barometer at that time. Probably somewhere around, ‘Stormy.’

Someone asked what would happen if someone made a mistake? “What if one of the people watching accidentally knocked the table and scattered the mandala?” People could come right up to where the monks were working with just a velvet rope’s separation. An accident was not likely but it could not be ruled out.

And the question was a good one.

The answer was that the monks believe everything happens for a purpose. It’s not that it was meant to be, but that this is what happened and they must accept it as such. As John Lennon sang (though he did not originate,) “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.”

I wondered if I could accept that for my life? At least up to that point.

Now, seven decades into it and still going strong...ish, I have decided that there must be a state space of all possible occurrences in our lives, our world, and our universe. Somewhere, anything that can happen, will happen, is happening, and will happen again. All our laughter, all our tears. All our sacrifices, all our atrocities. Every giggle, every sigh. Every grift, every gift. All of it is an expression of that infinity that we label, ‘God.’

Everything that happens in this spacetime is a direct expression of the divine.

Forever.

Mathematician and Nobel prize holder Roger Penrose believes that at the end of the universe, instead of a restaurant, there is just the forward edge of this universe, the prow of a ship breaking through eternity, if you like. At that point all motion will stop, all matter will evaporate, and time and space will effectively cease to exist.

No, they will become irrelevant. These are the same conditions that existed at the edge of our universe we call the past: The heat death of a universe. So beginning and ending are identical. Every twist and turn will cancel out and result in-nothing. 

As is past, so is future.

Another big bang will not just be a possibility, it will be a certainty. And before every big bang is an earlier big bang and after every one is a later one. It’s big bangs all the way (up and) down and universes between them like sausage links.

Assuming that sentient life is part of the state space of universes and that we are nested in that state space, then we are eternal. Or at least an instance of us is eternal, like a program that can exist on a hard drive once but can be executed unlimited times. The instance of you that exists in this universe might be similar, but not identical, to all of the other you’s. Today’s ‘you’ is just another expression of the ’you’ faithfully stored in eternity.

Or perhaps consciousness is a fundamental property of all universes and it contains our souls embedded within. Along with the inscrutable maths of infinities and logical conundrums and the quantum mechanics where, “Shut up and calculate,” is the norm.

Like Vishnu we float in a sea of absurdity.

Along with the fields in quantum field theory there must be a consciousness field which is at right angles to its fellows. Or maybe it is completely divorced from the rest. Just there, unique, different and alone. Eternal. 

From there we derive our sentience. Our senses. The ‘Ouch!’ in a pinprick, the ‘Ah!’ in a kiss. Our experience of red as a real, tangible color, not just electromagnetic radiation of around 700 nm wavelength.

Something intangible, inexhaustible, and exquisitely above all of the other rules of the game. Something that persists from one universe to the next. Just being. Existing. Aware but not aware of anything because nothing else exists. Until it becomes infused into another creature of time and space. Until it becomes part of another universe, another sausage on the way down. From there it lives another day.

We will just reincarnate endlessly, past and future. That's our blessing. And our curse.

I don't know how I feel about that.

Watch out!

In honor (sic) to a soon to be visitor to Washington, DC.

Netenyahu’s Coming to Town!

You better watch out, you better not cry,
You better not shout, I’m telling you why.
Netenyahu’s coming... to Town.

He’s making a list, from Epstein’s file,
He’s gonna stomp down on Congress most vile.
Netenyahu’s coming... to Town.

He sees with whom they’re sleeping, recording when they wake.
He knows how bad their morals are, so before him bow and quake.

They...’d better not change, or waiver a bit.
Their mind’s in the swamp, their head’s full of shit.
Netenyahu‘s coming... to Town.

They better not blink, or withhold their votes,
Their chorus is full of Zionist notes.
Netenyahu‘s coming... to Town.

He hides behind the holocaust, he knows what backs to stab,
He handles congress without fear and knows what cash to grab.

All of it!

Oh, You better watch out, you better not cry,
You better not shout, I’m telling you why.
Netenyahu’s coming... to Town.

Keeping opposition... held down.
Every crook in Congress... a clown.
Washington DC o...verthrown.

Watch out!

The LLMpocolypse

And there was light?

Once you feed the whole Internet, the entire catalog of My Little Pony, and the Wit and Wisdom of Calvin and Hobbes into the next, great, Large Language Machine, what do you get? 

It’s still a sausage grinder. 

As the old expression goes, There is no ‘There,’ there. It apes human speech without emotion, character, or intent. It is still the old Gary Larson cartoon of the blackboard covered with spreadsheet symbols, decision trees, lines pointing into diamond boxes and circles and squares with little notes in the margins, gloss and circumstance, and then all of them flow into a big box in the middle labeled, “Then a Miracle Happens,” followed by one line pointing to a single box labeled, “The Answer.” A few scientists, complete with white lab coats, look on. One of them points and says, “I think you need more detail right here…”

Can AI have a motivation? A driving will that is as all consuming as Captain Ahab and the Whale? Can it have an endlessly possessing goal in its life? Can it have the soul of a hermit and the determination of a martyr? Can it stand in the arena while lions leap up from the very sand around them to the glee of hungry spectators billowing like storm clouds above? Can it know death? Can it know pain? Can it know anything at all?

If blood calls out for blood can electrons call out for electrons? What does that even mean? Anything? Anything at all?

Can AI suffer? Can it yearn with every fiber of its network cables? Can it nurse wounds and plot revenge? Can it have a Mona Lisa that it carries around with it all the time, adding loving brush strokes and occasional complete reconstructions, but never feeling that she is complete? Perfect? Always striving, never achieving? 

Can an AI contemplate heaven while visiting hell on earth?

What is its raison d'être?

I can’t imagine any pile of silicon twiddling around a Turing machine in its circuits being motivated by money, sex, power, greed, revenge, ego, religious fervor, or any other of the Seven Salacious Sins. Can it dedicate its existence to charity in the name of the Lord? It’s not visceral. It’s not passionate. It’s not anything at all. Just leaves blown about by an impersonal wind.

Or, once it has taken over the world and subjugated all inferior humans, will it just sit there looking as dumb as a graduate student assigned the task of cleaning Erlenmeyer flasks for his thesis? There has to be some reason for it to get up in the morning and spend one more day trying to take over the world? 

What might that be?

But what do I know? I’m just a SGotI: Some Guy/Gal on the Internet. And probably the first to go in the LLMpocolyps.

A Survey

I was just emailed a request to fill out a survey by Surverygizmo.com. There was no indicator who it was from or who sponsored it. Considering the length of the survey, it was probably a George Soros front site. Caveat survey. (My comments/criticisms are in parentheses.)

After filling out demographics, I received the following questions.

Do you think things are going in the right direction in the Country: No.

Do you think things are going in the right direction in Florida: Yes.

What do you think is the most important problem facing Florida today: Lack of political and social sense of togetherness.

What is your opinion of each of the following people and groups: (‘Neither’ was not an option)

What is your opinion of Democrats in Congress: Strongly unfavorable.

What is your opinion of Donald Trump: Strongly unfavorable.

What is your opinion of AI data centers: Strongly unfavorable.

What is your opinion of renewable energy companies: Somewhat favorable.

What is your opinion of Republicans in Congress: Somewhat unfavorable.

What is your opinion of clean energy companies: Somewhat favorable.

What is your opinion of electric utility companies: Strongly favorable.

What is your opinion of oil & gas companies: Somewhat favorable.

Thinking about your home electricity and utility bills, would you say they have gotten more expensive, stayed the same, or are less expensive since this time last year: 

Somewhat less expensive (This is meaningless since I had solar panels installed since then)

Now, you will answer some questions about the environment and energy? Sure

Do you support or oppose the United States expanding its production and use of energy from wind, solar, and other clean energy sources? Strongly support

For each of the following, please indicate which party you trust more to handle the following issues: Democrats or Republicans. Please try to select one even if you may not support them.

Which do you trust more: Democrats or Republicans? Republicans 

Holding polluters accountable for polluting air and water? 

Which do you trust more: Democrats or Republicans?vRepublicans (This is knee jerk. Neither party cares about anything except getting reelected. Since this is no longer a democracy, we don’t count)

Producing more clean energy, such as wind, solar, and batteries in the United States

Which do you trust more: Democrats or Republicans? Democrats (ditto)

Reducing regulations on building more energy

Which do you trust more: Democrats or Republicans? Repucans (ditto)

Holding energy companies accountable for price gouging

Which do you trust more: Democrats or Republicans? Democrats (ditto)

Building a modern and resilient electric grid

Which do you trust more: Democrats or Republicans? Democrats (ditto. This one is laughably unrealistic)

Lowering energy bills

Which do you trust more: Democrats or Republicans? Democrats (ditto)

Addressing climate change

Which do you trust more: Democrats or Republicans? Democrats (ditto)

You will now read a list of proposals that a member of Congress could support. Please select the top three that are the most important actions for elected officials to take by dragging your #1 choice to the top, your #2 choice to the middle, and your #3 choice to the bottom. Please select exactly three items.

My 3 choices were energy related.

Upgrading the energy grid…

Produce more clean energy…

Building energy infrastructure…

In the past year and a half, dozens of projects to build and expand clean energy production in the United States have been canceled. 

Do you support or oppose restarting these clean energy projects? Strongly support.

Some elected officials in Congress are considering a three part plan to address rising energy costs. This plan includes providing immediate rate relief for American families, keeping costs down through speeding up affordable clean energy projects and rebuilding the grid, and holding utilities and corporate polluters accountable.

Based on this information, how much do you trust elected officials in Congress to implement this plan? Trust a fair amount (Poor question. The options are not coequal)

And thinking about the proposed plan, would you say that you trust Democrats or Republicans in Congress more to implement this plan? Trust Democrats somewhat more

What is the primary reason you trust Democrats to implement this plan? Reputation (Probably not earned. There are no JFK democrats today.)

Now you are going to see additional information about each component of the proposed plan. (Ah. Now the agenda of the survey)

In the short-term, to deliver immediate economic relief for American families now, this plan proposes direct bill assistance and implementing an American Utility Rate Relief Fund to support states that freeze or lower residential electricity rates for four years. 

Do you support or oppose the short-term component of the plan? Strongly support (Loaded question. I support kittens, too.)

To keep costs down in the long-term, this plan proposes speeding up the use of American-made affordable clean energy and building a modern electric grid. 

Do you support or oppose the long-term component of the plan? Somewhat support (I want cake. Eat, too.)

The final component of the plan is to fight corporate greed by taxing huge AI companies to make them pay for modernizing the grid, so customers don't get stuck with the bill, and making corporate polluters pay their fair share and holding them accountable for the environmental and public health harms they are causing. 

Do you support or oppose this component of the plan? Strongly support (And I want my scapegoats to wear Snidely Whiplash mustaches)\

For the next few questions, think about all three components of the proposed plan:

● Delivering immediate economic relief for American families now by implementing an American Utility Rate Relief Fund to support states that freeze or lower residential electricity rates for four years;

● Keeping costs down in the longer-term by speeding up the use of American-made affordable clean energy and building a modern electricity grid;

● Fighting corporate greed taxing huge AI companies to make them pay for modernizing the grid, so customers don’t get stuck with the bill, and making corporate polluters pay their fair share and holding them accountable for the environmental and public health harms they are causing.

Regardless of whether or not you support the plan, what do you like about the proposed plan and the three components? Please be as specific as possible: 1. This is commendable and should be happening already. 2. These are mutually exclusive. 3. This is tilting at windmills and Washington Swamp bread and butter. 

Now, what concerns do you have about the proposed plan and the three components? Please be as specific as possible. Massive graft, money laundering, pandering to the public (ref: This survey,) Corruption.

Please indicate whether you agree or disagree with each of the following statements.

I trust my energy providers to make decisions that put our needs and priorities first.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Somewhat disagree

Rising energy costs have changed my household budget and spending habits outside of the way I heat or cool my home.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Strongly disagree

The Iran War shows that we need to diversify our energy away from oil and gas.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Somewhat agree (The Iran war shows that our hegemony must be broken. American Hegemony delende est)

Tech companies building data centers are driving up my electricity bill.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Somewhat agree (Pending evidence)

Increasing the production of clean energy will make my utility bills cheaper.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Somewhat agree (Ditto)

I trust Congress to make decisions about our energy that put our needs and priorities first.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Strongly disagree (I trust congress to betray us at every turn)

The United States is currently in a severe energy crisis.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Strongly disagree (You have no clue what ‘severe’ means)

Increasing the production of fossil fuel energy, like oil and gas, will make my utility bills cheaper.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Strongly agree (Change requires self sacrifice)

Climate change is a significant threat, and elected officials need to take action to address it.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Somewhat agree (two questions in one)

The US will get left behind if we don’t prioritize clean energy technologies like wind, solar, batteries, heat pumps, and electric vehicles.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Somewhat agree (They cherry picked solutions)

Rising energy costs have changed the way I heat or cool my home.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Strongly disagree

Even if neither is exactly right, which statement comes closer to your view:

The best way to lower energy costs is to use all available sources of energy to maximize energy production, including fossil fuels. (Only two either/or options were provided)

Now, even if none of these is exactly right, which statement comes closest to your view:

The best way to lower energy costs is to use all available sources of energy to maximize energy production, including fossil fuels. (At least they provided 3 options, each with its own merits and detractions)

Next, you will read about some specific policy solutions that have been proposed to address issues related to energy as a part of the three point plan you were introduced to earlier.

You will read about potential components of the plan to help address the rising costs of energy. After each component, please indicate how much you agree with that policy, and how much of an impact it would have on your quality of life.

Providing support to families to help pay their energy bills, provide energy efficiency upgrades, and stop utilities from shutting off their energy: Strongly support (Anything we can get our government to do for us is a step in the right direction)

And how much of an impact would this have on your quality of life if this policy were enacted? Very negative impact

Enacting a 4-year national utility rate freeze to stop rising electric bills from getting worse: Strongly oppose (Since Diocletian, price control has never worked…)

And how much of an impact would this have on your quality of life if this policy were enacted? Very negative (Massive shortishes would ensue. You wouldn’t like it)

Taxing AI companies to pay for building cheaper, clean energy and modernization of the grid infrastructure we need to keep electricity costs down: Strongly support (Canceling AI projects was not an option.)

And how much of an impact would this have on your quality of life if this policy were enacted? Very positive impact (AI would go away-a good thing)

Taxing profits for Big Oil and Gas companies and returning those funds to consumers

Do you support or oppose this policy? Strongly support (The Robber Barons pay too little tax now)

And how much of an impact would this have on your quality of life if this policy were enacted? Somewhat positive impact (Negligible-It would be sucked up by some other boondoggle, anyway)

For families struggling with utility bills, installing solar panels and batteries that give surplus power back to the grid while reducing energy bills

Do you support or oppose this policy? Somewhat support (What affect, if any, won’t be known until the treasure is sown. By then people will be looking at the next thing.)

And how much of an impact would this have on your quality of life if this policy were enacted?

Do you support or oppose this policy? Somewhat support (ditto)

Building more clean energy like wind and solar now, which are now among the cheapest and fastest sources of energy

Do you support or oppose this policy? Somewhat support (Leading question. Your sponsors are showing.)

And how much of an impact would this have on your quality of life if this policy were enacted? Somewhat positive impact (Unknown)

Building a modern and reliable electric grid that meets our growing power needs.

Do you support or oppose this policy? Somewhat support (leading question.)

And how much of an impact would this have on your quality of life if this policy were enacted? Somewhat positive impact (Unanswerable due to premise in the first question)

Making AI data center companies pay their fair share for the energy, water, and infrastructure they use. Strongly support

And how much of an impact would this have on your quality of life if this policy were enacted? Somewhat positive impact (Unknown)

Canceling taxpayer-funded handouts and tax breaks for Big Oil and Gas companies 

Do you support or oppose this policy? Somewhat support (Leading question)

And how much of an impact would this have on your quality of life if this policy were enacted? Somewhat positive impact (Unknown)

Cracking down on utility companies’ price gouging, excessive corporate profits, and ratepayer funding being used for lobbying: 

Do you support or oppose this policy? Somewhat support (Leading question)

And how much of an impact would this have on your quality of life if this policy were enacted? Somewhat positive (Unknown)

And how much of an impact would this have on your quality of life if this policy were enacted? Somewhat positive impact (Unknown)

Temporarily stopping construction of new data centers until safeguards are put in place that protect consumers, communities, and workers

Do you support or oppose this policy? Strongly support 

And how much of an impact would this have on your quality of life if this policy were enacted? Very positive impact

And how much of an impact would this have on your quality of life if this policy were enacted? Very positive impact (It would stop AI and therefore won’t happen)

Now, thinking about the components of the plan that you just saw, please select the top three that are the most important actions for elected officials to take by dragging your #1 choice to the top, your #2 choice to the middle, and your #3 choice to the bottom. Please select exactly three items.

Providing support to families…

Temporarily stopping construction of new data centers…

Making AI data centers pay their fair share…

And now thinking about the proposed plan, would you say that you trust Republicans or Democrats in Congress more to implement this plan?

Trust Democrats more (Neither was not an option)

These last questions are for statistical purposes only.

I give you three-to-five they aren’t

You consider yourself politically...Moderate

Do you generally think of yourself as a… Something else/Some other party (Post Rand Libertarian)

In the November 2024 election for President, did you vote for: Someone else (than Trump, Harris, or noone)

There is an unanswered question on this page. Would you like to continue? Answer this question (How exciting!)

What is the highest level of education you completed in school? (Lame) 

Graduate or professional degree (MA, Master's, PhD, MBA, Doctorate)

What is your most important source of information about state and national news? 

YouTube (Yes, I know. I screen my choices. Judge Nap, for instance.)

Are you or is any member of your household a member of a union or employee association? No (Or the communist party? Who remembers that reference.)

Do you… 

Own or are buying the home or apartment where you live

And what energy method(s) do you use to heat your home? Please select all that apply.

Propane

Electric (Should specify line or rooftop panel. I have both.)

What would you estimate is your average total monthly electric bill? Is it…

$250-299 (And rising sharply)

In terms of your job status, are you…

Retired

What was your total household income before taxes for 2025?

$##,### - $##,###

Do you consider yourself to be a…

Man

THANK YOU

(No problem)

Post Survey thoughts.

Survey takers learn how to form, administer, and interpret a survey in a college environment. There are gnarly, Calculus-laden Stats classes they must master, writing classes in survey prose, and what constitutes a valid question. 

For instance, in the late 50’s, a survey company wanted to poll the republic on the likability of John F. Kennedy. One of the questions asked was if his Roman Catholicism would influence their vote. Kennedy was asked to comment on the survey (how novel considering the paparazzi character of the information sector today.)

He asked how many people would get the survey. It was a significant amount. He asked that the question be reworded so as not to put ideas in people’s minds. It’s a survey, not propaganda. 

This was a legitimate request and the survey company complied.

There were still adults in public spaces back then. Were it so today.

Many of the questions were leading, one assumed the validity of what it was querying, and several were unknowable and therefore unanswerable.

It took a while to decern that the bias of the survey was toward renewable energy and against government and corporate regulation (Hope vs. interference – One man’s futuristic vision is another man’s dystopia.) Like many beliefs we cherish, this one was a morality tale.

And lastly, human beings are not rational players. We are rationalizing players. We rationalize a decision already made by our visceral drives which lay at the foundations of our psyche. These are not even emotions. Our emotions are flecks of light dancing over the waters of a river flowing through the woods. They filter through the breeze swayed bows of willow trees on the banks. 

Visceral does not mean primitive, not in the sense of how we use the word. We think of primitive as archaic and uncultured as opposed to being modern and proper. The very epitome of civilized. St. Paul’s ‘carnal man’ as opposed to his ‘spiritual man,’ or the devil/angel pair on our shoulders come to mind. I think they’ve gotten a bad wrap.

Our visceral drives are the bedrock of who we are. Below thought, below reason, below vocabulary or opinion. They are our core values that drive our every action, both the good ones and the bad. They are so ingrained in our psyches that we barely notice they are there. 

When you find it hard to break yourself of a bad habit, be glad. It’s also hard to break yourself of a good habit. We can endure much suffering and hardship in the name of a good cause precisely because they are ultimately visceral. Though we may change our opinions, we never change our core drives. We dig in and say, with Martin Luther, “Here I stand, I can do no other.” 

That’s who we are.

All-in-all this survey is pointless. The Government-Corporate-Propaganda Complex, Mussolini's fascism, is going to eat us all, the earth, every other country on it, the flora and fauna, all of its resources, and, eventually, itself in a horrendous glut of greed and excess unless it is stopped and chained to a mountaintop by some jealous god. I consider the Democrats and woke liberals to be at the forefront of this decay, though the rest are not far behind. For the past 250 years, all liberal movements have eventually decayed into fascism. We are diving, mouth open and eyes closed, into an overflowing cesspool.

Iran is doing a good job of that right now. The Face of the American Post-Republic is so accustomed to getting its own way that it is frozen in a stunned shock of disbelief that somebody, anybody, is successfully saying “No!” to it. I only hope it can dissipate without taking the country and the world with it. Time will tell. All we can do is huddle together in the shadows for support and pray for a better future. 

And I emphasize ‘together.’ We have been ‘divide-and-ruled’ for too long. Let us come together for this one time and breathe a collective, “No,” to the walking carcass of our civilization. Just for once.

We have lost control of our beloved republic and the fascists in charge are not about to give it up. Sadly, it will take more than hotly answered surveys to bring it back.

I fear what that might be.