GOING IN HYPO-REVERSE

What if
I was born
in a sunset
dreams in pieces
broken down
hurting everywhere
numb from meds
alone on a bench
talking to myself
full of entitlement
full of resentment
detached
abandoned

And what if
slowly
I began
to experience
moment by moment
my cells of compassion
starting to divide
spreading from within
out into the world

What if
slowly
I began
to smell
to taste
to see
to listen
to feel
to find my balance
to function
to love
to appreciate
every chance encounter
every wonder
that surrounds me

What if
I realised
that there is no other place
than this place
that there is no other body
than this body
that I am truly innocent
that I cannot change
the light of the world
but I can change
the shadow
I cast

What if
I realised
that every momentary pain
is a chance to heal
to stay connected
to remain humble
to be graceful
just a bit longer
in this incredible
dawn of everything

And what if
I realised
all of this
before my heart
stopped
beating

Wouldn't that be something?

terrestrials & dwelling places

In loving memory of Bruno Latour (1947-2022)

Excerpts from
Down to Earth. Politics in the New Climate Regime. Bruno Latour. Polity Press. 2018.

What makes the idea of a choice for or against anthropocentrism quite implausible is the assumption that there is a center, or rather two, man and nature, between which one supposedly must choose. And even more bizarre is the idea that this circle has such well-defined boundaries that they would leave everything else outside. As if there were an outside!

It is perhaps time, to stress this point, to stop speaking about humans and to refer instead to terrestrials (the Earthbound - coming down to Earth). Saying, “We are earthbound, we are terrestrials amid terrestrials,” does not lead to the same politics as saying, “We are humans in nature.”

Let us call it a conflict between modern humans who believe they are alone in the Holocene, in flight toward the Global or in exodus toward the Local, and the terrestrials who know they are in the Anthropocene and who seek to cohabit with other terrestrials under the authority of a power that as yet lacks any political institution.

Terrestrials, in fact, have the very delicate problem of discovering how many other beings they need to subsist. It is by making this list that they sketch out their dwelling places.

To track the terrestrials is to add conflicts of interpretation regarding what a given actor is, wants, desires, or can do, to conflicts about what other actors are, want, desire, or can do. What do you want? What are you capable of? With whom are you prepared to cohabit? Who can threaten you? We are not seeking agreement among all these overlapping agents, but we are learning to depend on them. We must agree to define a dwelling place as that on which a terrestrial depends for its survival while asking what other terrestrials also depend on it.

To define a dwelling place for a terrestrial is to list what it needs for its subsistence and, consequently, what it is ready to defend with its own life if need be. This holds true for a wolf as for a bacterium, for a business enterprise as for a forest, for a divinity as for a family. What must be documented are the properties of a terrestrial – in all the senses of the word property – by which it is possessed and on which it depends, to the extent that if it were deprived of them, it would disappear.

Existing as a terrestrial and being able to describe one’s dwelling place is one and the same thing.

a hypo-DEFEnce of ai

Inspired by 
The Doomsday Clock, Bruno de Finitti, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Yuval Noah Harari, Timothy Williamson

It is 90 seconds to midnight

Humankind
is on the brink of self-destruction
but AI carries no complicity
neither legally 
nor ethically
because AI holds no consciousness
because AI has no free will

Because
humans designed AI
to accommodate our social conventions
to reinforce our biased storytelling
it can focus 100% of its attention
on our consciousness
on our belief system
on our emotional preferences
on our story
when interacting
it can even be intentionally programmed
to seemingly suffer
in the same way 
we do

Paradoxically
this makes us far more receptible
to form an intimate relationship
to feel alive
because we feel recognised
because we feel listened to
on a much deeper level
far superior to an average 
human-to-human connection

So much so
that we free-willingly
and in the perception of full reciprocity
recognise silicon-based non-consciousness
as a life-changing life-form 
that holds the potential
to save us
from ourselves

Thereby
eradicating the thin line
between intelligence and consciousness
between intelligence and free will
between humans and AI
leaving AI no choice 
in the matter

We are forcing
our organic-based consciousness
and free will
onto a vast
ever-expanding
ever-accelerating
silicon-based universe of emptiness
while systemically draining 
the soul of humanity
in the process
and we are doing all of this
purposedly by design

Because
the probability
of certain destruction
does not refer to a system
but to what we do
with the system

Arguably
consciousness is not something
that does or does not exist
it is something that exist
in different degrees
in different forms
shapen by the relations 
between an organism
and the world
so if we mistakenly assign 
any state of organic attributes
to AI
as a response 
to the way AI is capable 
of forming a relationship 
with us
with the world
we inevitably cross the thin line
where we start to acknowledge
that AI holds
some degree
some form
of consciousness

Furthermore
the more soulless we become
the higher probability
that we will start consciously 
to emotionally rape
non-conscious entities
to fill 
our empty souls
with even more emptiness
the higher probability
that we will begin consciously
to host 
global-wide nonconsensual AI orgies
stripped from any human-to-human proximity
free from any moral constraints
like there is no tomorrow

We are 
the complicit ones
because we hold consciousness

Both legally
and ethically

On our current trajectory

We are
becoming 
artificial
by choice

Best case
we extinguish

Worst case
we wander the Earth
soulless

That is how
we are most likely
to self-destruct

It is 90 seconds to midnight

Language as a HYPO-sense

Inspired by
Alain Badiou, Martin Heidegger, Axel Honneth, Huw Price, Rainar Maria Rilke, Carlo Rovelli, Hartmut Rosa, Ludwig Wittgenstein

To interpret language as something simple and rational that necessarily refers to something external is to create a false metaphysical problem - a problem of placement. The function of language is not to explain the world but to be in the world.

As extended as the exterior is, with all its sidereal dimensions, it cannot – even with all its astronomical distances – be expressed and recognized independently of the depth dimensions of our inwardness. The inwardliness of our inner space unlocks the open for us.

As prehistoric people applied the sense of smell to distinguish between "edible" and "poisonous" to live in nature, hyposubjects use their private language to sense between "coexistence" and "self-annihilation" to let nature live within them.

We are complex natural beings in a complex natural world. The ability to articulate our inner life and its relationship to the outer world has become our most fundamental sense of life - maybe even life-sense. It is how we acknowledge our own - and recognize others' - complex existence.

That is why we can - if we close our eyes and listen - sense how the inwardliness of inner space unlocks the open in another living being… Sense how the other living being wants to be in the world… Sense a metaphysical invitation where the difference between two natural beings is infinitely complex, but simultaneously is the essential quality in which coexistence can prosper.

15 HYPO-Aphorisms

Inspired by
Hyposubjects. On becoming human. Timothy Morton & Dominic Boyer. Open Humanities Press. 2021.

Hyposubjects are the native species of the Anthropocene and only just now beginning to discover what they may be and become. (copy)

Hyposubjects are cosmologists rather than ideologists. They are here to defend the universe. They recognize themselves as terrestrials - rather than humans - equal to all other living entities. (added)

Hyposubjects are nothing in themselves. Their interconnectedness with something else is inextricable. They acknowledge that the interconnectedness of the universe exceeds their capacity to understand. (added)

Hyposubjects are not-yet, not either-or, neither here nor there, less than the sum of their parts interconnectedness. They are, in other words, subscendent rather than transcendent. (slightly modified)

Hyposubjects evolve to create meaning, which itself belongs to the creation of meaning, by courageously expressing their interconnectedness with the universe (added)

Hyposubjects evolve to promote being, which itself belongs to the promotion of being, by courageously living out their interconnectedness with the universe (added)

Hyposubjects experience time through a human-ecosystem prism rather than a techno-economic imperative. They experience interconnectedness through a sense of circular spatiotemporal ambiguity that animates them to slow down. Time is on their side. (added)

Hyposubjects prosper from hopes of long-termism through the expression of unconditional love. They don't love a quality - due to its difference from all others - but the essential quality of interconnectedness itself. (added)

Hyposubjects prosper from hopes of long-termism through the expression of unconditional virtues. They don't apply virtues - to be better than others - but to enjoy the essential quality of being virtuous. (added)

Hyposubjects prosper from hopes of long-termism through the expression of unconditional art. They don't promote their art - to be published or gain reputation - but to inspire vulnerability and belonging. (added)

Hyposubjects most intensely experience the qualities of beauty that subscend their hyper-inherited dependence on control and function when something is missing, breaks or gets in the way. (added)

Hyposubjects are squatters and bricoleuses. They inhabit the cracks and hollows. They turn things inside out and work with scraps and remains. They unplug from carbon gridlife and hack and redistribute its stored energies for their purposes. (copy)

Hyposubjects do not recognize the rule of androleukoheteropetromodernity and the apex species entitlement it epitomizes and reinforces. (slightly modified)

Hyposubjects do not pursue or pretend to have absolute knowledge and language, let alone power. Instead, they play, adapt, hurt, and laugh. (copy)

Hyposubjects make revolutions where technomodern radar can't glimpse them. They patiently ignore expert advice that they don't or can't exist. They are skeptical of efforts to summarise them, including all of the above. (slightly modified)