CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Ontological Shlock and Awe

My son, 13, and his friends, in episodes of post adolescence flippancy, refer to robotic technology in sci-fi appropriated, derisive terms such as “clankers” and “oil backs”, withal, a hint of angst about their future, albeit veiled in mockery.

Take note, tech utopian fantasists: In Atlanta, in an all too biblical on-the-nose augury, robot driven, Uber Waymo cars– i.e., bereft of the requisite programming to apprehend and react to natural disasters — proceeded into flash flood-engendered water pooled streets and stalled out. Atlanta witnessed a preview of the tech-authoritarians so-called “post-human” world careening towards the reality of Nature’s elemental titans.

The Shipwreck, Francisco Goya

Increasingly, in the news cycle, we hear rumors that things “alien” will soon be “disclosed.” Let’s hope so. Notions and concepts of a novel kind will be required for us, self-caged homicidal primates, to remain a viable presence on this breathing earth.

On a personal basis, given the choice, I would rather choose to be buffeted by the unimaginable than to be surrounded by people so small of mind that I suffocate from the tedium of having to humor them to be allowed to have a (cramped, airless) place in the world. Capitalist/consumer man — you have constructed a shoddy architecture of belief that has proven catastrophic for the life-sustaining processes of the earth and ruinous to ourselves.Donald Trump is both an emblem and an accelerant not the cause. Trump’s hubris embodies his own counter-argument against Trumpism — he could just be the coup de grâce blow to final stage capitalism. As a man, he is shambling reductio ad absurdum in (rotting before-our-eyes) flesh.

The alien – the alienating – has become quotidian. The Thwaites Glacier, referred to as the Doomsday Glacier, is melting at an exponential rate. Wildfires rage, rendering generational endeavors to monuments of blown ashes. Men — whose minds are empathy bereft wastelands — are erecting data centers where hubs of the heart should stand. Of........

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