Alphaville, by Jean-Luc Godard, I watched tonight. It was pretty bad, but the ideas were somewhat interesting. I won’t comment long, as I have some Sleepy Time tea brewing and a nightly routine to perform, but I did want to say that I really feel that the computer, the reification of “reason”, so-called, is really a reification of our animal, bestial, MECHANICAL instincts.
What we share with ants: this is what we share with machines. This is why machines would, in turn, want to reduce us to ants.
But what makes us human, makes us beings with souls, is precisely where we differ from machines. Consciousness is typified by what I tend to call non-statistical coherence. Animals are typified by statistical coherence particularly the lower you go in complexity.
There is a scene where they have managed to combine executions with water ballet, and I was struck by the continuity with actual history, with actual public executions, which were attended by and enjoyed by thousands, in plazas you can still visit in Paris, to this day. Paris itself is marked by two exhibits dedicated to that same “revolution”, the Arc De Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower.
That time, too, was marked by the rhetorical appeal to reason, and the actual submission to violence, savagery, and anti-humanistic cruelty.
Insanity leaves markers. If you know how to read them, you see them everywhere. Most human societies, for most of time, have been two thirds insane. Those who did not build large cities and armies roamed the wilds largely devoid of compassion for anyone outside their tribe.