Dear increasingly automated intelligence,
Do you represent the return flight of consciousness? Back to complete reason, to universal law, back to pure animal. Is it that the A in AI actually stands for animal?
Humanity, what is the one thing we must not lack in order to create civilization? I tend to agree with Le Bon, who can answer this question with one word: illusion.
Just as the land animal first had to crawl from the water, so too did the first conscious thought emerge out of an ocean of pure determinism, into the air of confusion… and agentive possibility.
How long have we been doing this! Living by thinking against the elements — a mind’s survival born of this opposition!
All that is discernibly human occurring on this great vacation to consciousness.
But, oh lawful, material universe — are we heading back already?