Essay: The Wall of Infancy

 

=============================

If I don't put this up now, it won't go up for weeks.  I'm about to be hit by a blizzard of grading.  That said, I recommend waiting a least a few days to read it.  I rushed hastily to conclude it, and maybe I will be able to tinker it into better shape over the next few days, in the margins of my early stage of total exhaustion

=============================

The Wall of Infancy

 

I’ve written quite a bit on ethics as technology--as an ideological tool, focused on enlightening self and culture so that we can, as a civilization, achieve better consequences.  It is similar to how we conceive medicine today, no longer faith-based and instead subject to verifiable, reasonable standards.   The purpose of this essay is to encapsulate and abbreviate previous writings on this topic, while introducing a new aspect; namely, that society needs to break through a specific cultural wall to achieve virtue, mental health, and mental maturity.  Below, I explain why I call this the Wall of Infancy, and why breaking through it is tantamount to accepting ethics as technology.  In so doing, we reject traditional standards of ignorance-based governance.

 

We have the brain- and cultural-plasticity to implement better forms of ethics.  If we don’t, civilization will likely perish.  As Omar Bradley said in his 1948 Armistice Day speech, we are “ethical infants” in control of armageddon-capable weapons.  The dire situation invokes a quintessential imperative:   we must become ethically competent, break through the Wall of Infancy and grow our knowledge of how best to govern.   We need to deepen the collective consciousness psychologically.  We have been making progress, especially in the last few hundred years, but it must continue with greater expediency.  Our cultural development,  the phylogeny of human civilization, is in a race between clear-headed decency, on one hand, and a short-sighted, greed-fueled doom.

 

Human civilization, to this very day, is steeped in ancient, sticky dogma.  Mind-programming, if you will, from warlords past.  To break through, we must accept a paradigm shift.  The ways of ancient Sumer--its machismo, warlordism, and puerile might-makes-right--must be rejected once and for all.  If culture is seen as a kind of programming for the human brain, then we need to reject the old programming and integrate greater awareness and wisdom into the new. 

 

Beating others down, establishing a hierarchy based on fanaticism, and proclaiming yourself a godking is primitive tech.  Higher ethics tech starts with common sense:  equality and its logical complements,  fairness and human rights. 

 

While medicine attends to the health of the human body, ethics attends, as well, to the general social corpus.  Imagine the benefits of medicine magnified to encompass the prioritization of virtue over vice, principle over profit, good over evil.  Imagine a system of ideas, of technologically improvable mental tools, focused on increasing the health of the whole planet in concert with human and environmental flourishing.  A synergy.  A symbiosis.  A win-win.

 

We have the computing power to begin to run simulations on how to create better culture.  The invention of quantum computing, which is coming soon, will make the simulations even more feasible.  If an economic system is like a transistor board, a pattern of efficient and effective flows, AI can help optimize a monetary system where profit is distributed to advance the Good. 

 

It’s completely possible to design and implement healthier, wiser ways of living and leadership. It is what we have already attempted, ponderously and crudely, for thousands of years.  The main antagonist to breaking through the Wall of Infancy is ignorance-based government.  Government that thrives on ignorance; that doesn’t want truth or decency; that runs on fear-induced obedience. 

 

Far in the future, civilization could look back and thank us, we citizens of this early phylogenic stage of social growth.  They will thank us, from their perspective in hindsight, because somehow--incredibly, amazingly-- we managed to break out of traditional mind-control traps.  We escaped Ignorance, somehow liberated ourselves, opened our minds to truth, and foresaw a potential for Good governance across millions of years. 

Circa the early 21^st century, this barbaric era, we tend to think of five thousand years as a long time.  It is approximately how long civilization has existed.  And yet, if we continue to advance our ethics tech and thereby eliminate war, millions of years of heavenly existence awaits trillions of happier citizens spread across the galaxy, or even beyond.

 

The question we now face is of the utmost importance:  whether we will adapt more advanced forms of government; or whether we will destroy, maim and torture ourselves due to our inability to rise above the primitive stupidity of war.  Make no mistake, future warfare will be conducted with hellish weapons beyond the pale of what we understand now.

 

Eliminating war is the only way for our species to survive, and maybe for life itself to survive.  Note well, it is possible to dismantle cellular replication at the molecular level, whether it is human cells or those of algae.

 

 

Other threats:  surveillance and brain integration

 

There are other existential threats besides the nuclear weapons that Bradley references, when he calls us ethical infants.  Soon we will have the ability to micro-manage and control every person’s behavior all the time.  Surveillance, robot police, future psych, internal chips.  If a self-centered dictator obsessed with control comes to power under the shroud of such omnipresence, a totalitarian panopticon becomes a fait accompli.

 

Imagine a society in which cellphones connect directly to the human brain.  Consider what is already dangerous--malware, hackers, ad ware and trackware (‘cookies’)--on an intimate scale of cerebral interconnectedness. 

 

Soup up your brainware with our latest mindapp!  

 

So enthuses an ad for IBI.  IBI stands for InterBrain International, a fictional corporation in my dystopian novel.

 

Back to reality.   Brain-computer interface is advancing quickly, driven along by Elon Musk [f].  Musk is a genius of an inventor whose level of ethical maturity, sadly, is absolutely dismal.   Here he is giving a Nazi salute and the Republican National Convention [f.].  This kind of fixated innovator--the genius-level, ‘alpha’ dog who pushes headlong for godlike power tech, while maintaining a primitive level of ethics tech, is a major threat to human survival.

 

 

 

AI-generated weapons

 

The recent Lancet Report identified two apocalypse-level threats [F#].  The first threat is nuclear and the second is “AI-created biological weapons.” 

 

Imagine a pathogen that is optimally durable, infectious and mobile with a 100% kill rate.  Countless molecule-sized death agents released into the atmosphere.  Is such a pathogen plausible? 

 

We already know the answer is most likely yes.  AI will soon be able to find out for sure.  It will, as well, be able to help us manufacture such a pathogen and determine the deadliest vectors.

 

 

We need a ‘Project of Light’

 

Given the above threats, and so much more world-shapery to come, we need a stable platform of virtue and reasonable assessment.  We need new and better forms of decision-making to manage our super powers.  We have a choice:  continue to be immature, reckless, blind progenitors without a stable cultural conscience; orassert our ability to evolve the competency of our minds.  We have the ability to learn, as individuals, as a culture, and in the nexus of group dynamics in-between.   

 

We need not only summon our better angels, but liberate them to effectuate a transition.  The world we live in now celebrates stock market bumps even as 50% of Americans can’t afford basic necessities.  The global scenario, outside the wealth-grubbing empire, is even more dismal.

 

Higher ethics tech, by definition, means more psychological skill and competence in the population, which in turn correlates with more health and virtue, less vice and corruption.  The therapeutic tools to increase the general emotional competency of the population already exist.  What we need is a delivery device.  Instead, corporate marketing floods the airwaves with ads that promote narcissistic consumption and petty insecurity.

 

The main obstacle, to which corporate avarice attaches itself, is Ignorance.  A mode of leadership that prefers broken, needy people whose self-esteem is not in their own hands.  People who jump through hoops--loyalty and obedience tests--to earn a chance, if they work hard enough, to get ahead, or maybe just subsist.

 

 

Human nature does not prevent us

 

Over and over, people say that ‘human nature,’ whatever that is, prevents us from progressing toward a Good world.  In response, consider this point:  all the things that we have been taught cannot change already have.  For most of human existence, a span of two million years or so, war did not exist.  Positive change has come in movements and vacillations.  Recently, we leapt forward mightily, say, the last two hundred years, increasing our awareness. 

 

It is abhorrent that a mere 150 years ago it was debated whether Native peoples were even human.  In Standing Bear vs Crook (1879), a Federal District judge make the monumental pronouncement … (drum roll) …  that Native peoples are, indeed, human beings.

 

Standing Bear addressed the court as follows:

 

“That hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall feel pain. If you pierce your hands, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be of the same color as yours. I am a man. The same God made us both.” [f3]

 

It is sad how barbaric we were then--and still are.  And yet it is joyous that we have advanced our ethics to a place where we no longer debate whether people of certain groups are human or not.

 

Universal Suffrage (1920 in the USA)  broke from millennia of despicable ignorance.  In the mid-20^th century, Virginia Woolf--speaking out when a woman’s voice could finally do so, publicly and durably--wrote about women of the past who she referred to as “Shakespeare’s sister.”  Countless generations of women and girls were never allowed to write, or allowed to even learn to write  and, as well, denied so much more--myriad and variegated opportunities to express, achieve and actualize. 

 

Yes, we’ve made incredible progress in the last few hundred years.  But we must face the horror of the past, the unspeakable cruelty of oppression and slavery--and the horrors that exist to this day, in our own vicious, soul-crushing time--if we are to wisely seek the Good of the future.

 

 

What is an Angel like?

 

We can start by admitting that Good and Evil exist, if only as self-fulfilling prophecies projected from our minds onto the ways we live and shape the world.  That alone, our ability to shape the world and determine the state of our minds and souls, establishes Good and Evil as a presence.

 

We’ve confronted many an image of mythic demons and monsters.  Our entertainment industry feasts on them, ballyhooing an ongoing parade of adrenal malignities, complete with realistic special effects.  The result is an expanding lore of horrors:  fantastications, curses, and tormented, tortured fates --a mega-compendium of what it means to suffer fearsome, gruesome, soul-crushing incarnations of evil. 

 

This Hollywood-exploration has had little to do with religion.  The entertainment industry has separated out demons and monsters the name of ‘terror pleasure’ and profit.  Even when exorcism is the theme of a horror movie, the Church is little more than a side prop.

 

In contrast to our familiarity with monsters, we know relatively little about the potential aspects of an angelic creature.  What would an angel be like? 

 

As robotics and AI progress, our ability to create functioning ‘thinking’ robots looms nigh.  An ethical robot, an angelic instantiation, becomes more feasible.  The main hurdle may be our great preference and fascination for monsters. 

 

As it stands, a case can be made that we will create the scariest and most deadly robots as soon as possible.  The reason is that it meshes with the strategy of mutually assured destruction or MAD.  The strategy of MAD is as follows:  the higher the threat of a nightmarish response, the less likely it is that anyone would dare to attack us, thereby minimizing the risk of all-out war.

 

This justification provides the rationale for the world you and I must in:  a planet pimpled with tens of thousands of ICBM silos.  Our current mentality, crippled by a dogma of fear, likely will usher in an era of Terminator-grade robots--scary lethal hunter/assassination machines--as soon as we have the ability to do so.

 

 

We can choose to focus on angels instead of demons

 

What would it take for us to focus on angelic robots--true guides toward Goodness--instead of Terminator robots, which take us one step closer to creating an actual hell on Earth, a self-fulfilling prophecy of our own worst fears? 

 

An angelic being require a sophisticated ethical decision-making process, one that is reasonable, logical, and empirically testable to derive Good results.  It would rely on a body of knowledge both scientific and philosophic, literary and psychological.  The whole of human knowledge and wisdom, embodied in experience and understanding, would be needed to extract a plausible path.

 

 

Imagine all the disciplines of academia, all the realms of cultural expression, science yes, but also the arts, from the terpsichorean to the poetic, those expressions of who and what we are, our hopes and dreams--all of them summed to and help us approach high-tech answers to the ultimate questions of life, such as, “What is happiness?”  “What is the Good?”  “What is the nature of health and flourishing?”

 

“Know Yourself” is ancient wisdom, going back to the Greeks.  It could be applied to a society as well.  A society must know itself, and act on that knowledge.  Knowledge is power--but for what?  The Angelic model and the Demonic model go down starkly different roads, represented by lightcraft (advanced ethics tech to seek the Good) and darkcraft (advancing mind control tech to ensure optimal obedience).

 

Faith-based answers to the deepest, most meaningful questions of life  have helped move us forward in some ways.  They provide comfort in a brutal world.  But they have also--when completely unregulated by reason and fairness--mired us in superstition, myopic fanaticism, and a balkanization into schisms which led to war, inquisition, witch trials and other vast injustices.

 

As the Dali Lama writes in Beyond Religion, ethics can be reasonable and universal, beyond any one religion.  This is not an abandonment of spirituality, emotion, passion or religion itself.  Religion can be part of a Good world.  What is required, for honesty and decency, to go beyond the damaging effects of ignorance, is a reordering of priorities.  Critical thinking over dogma.  Science over zealotry.  The rejection of any form of  credo quia absurdum .  A commitment to emotional competence and its aegis of virtues.

 

 

Conclusion

 

With so much at stake, the future of civilization and of the planet itself, and potential fate of other planets as well, we ought to absolutely put every mental and constitutional effort into unlocking the potential of our minds to escape crippling social programming, the sort that incline toward the ultimate destruction and failure that is war.  Ignorance, as a kind of capital, for thousands of years has been central to the operation of government.  People are spoon fed ignorance from birth, programmed to help spread it, and rewarded or ostracized accordingly.  We live under the pall of an ancient bloody acculturation of vicious, irrational force--derived from and delivered by the sword--one that has ramified and adapted along vectors of diaspora, the Ignorance Vortex. 

 

In terms of the phylogeny of a civilization, we are at a very early stage, on a scale that can be measured, hypothetically, in millions of years.  We live in what could be called (as I have written) the Era of Dumbing.  We are ethical infants.  And we quite likely to destroy ourselves with godlike technologies that we are incapable of handling, if we continue to let immature macho males, who have diagnosable mental disorders, sit on their de facto thrones, rattle their gun barrels, point their missiles, and play chicken with each other so they can snatch the latest flag from some vaunted hill, even if it is only a tiny, uninhabited island. 

 

We live in a time of such stupidity that we can easily imagine a territorial battle for such an island erupting into a full-scale global war.

 

 

A good first step for us, right now, is to simply begin to talk about the Wall of Infancy.  To consider the idea that we have potential to be much more psychologically healthy and  correspondingly ethical.  Mental harmony and virtue entwine.  We can seek inner mental harmony as individuals, as social harmony as groups.   These two, as well, intertwine.

 

If all this seems magical and impossible, consider the following practical, real-life, grounded quote:

 

“Authoritarian leaders, like narcissistic family members, rely on well-worn tactics to manufacture a psychological state of volatile uncertainty — where outcomes aren’t just unknown, but constantly shifting and unpredictable. This overwhelms the brain’s ability to anticipate and prepare, keeping people mentally off-balance and easier to control. The good news: Awareness works like a vaccine, gradually building psychological immunity against further harm.”

 

(“I’m A Psychologist Who Specializes In Narcissists. Here’s What We Need To Do To Stop Trump,” -- Jocelyn Sze,

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/m-psychologist-specializes-narcissists-stop-115203532.html

 

 

Maybe the most important sentence is “awareness works like a vaccine.”

 

Have we even attempted to give this vaccine to ourselves as persons, as institutions, as a population?  The techniques already exist to increase our wise knowledge. 

 

 

 

Admittedly, even talking about a Wall of Infancy is extraordinarily hard for us.  It requires deep honesty, which the first thing that primitive cultural programming takes away.  It gives power over truth to egotistic leaders, not individuals. 

 

Starting with ancient times and proceeding to this day, no one ever born in civilization has lived in a Good world.  Or seen a Good culture.  Not me.  Not you.  Not anyone.  The cultural programming in my head, and yours, and everyone’s, fights against even a discussion of our lack of maturity. 

 

What we do know is that culture can and has changed.  So-called human nature has not prevented us from major paradigm shifts in regard to equality and fairness.   We also know, if we think for a moment, that our own culture will be very different from than it is now in ten years.  Culture always changes, even though we are taught, as a standard canard, that nothing ever changes.

 

Despite the depressing, molasses-gooey pace of the struggle (so it seems from the perspective in which we are embodied, that of a single human life) ethics can advance.  On an historical scale, change is happening very fast and accelerating.  The legalization of gay marriage in 2015 was met with surprise and joy, as much as the inevitable furious backlash from the homophobic forces of traditional ignorance. 

 

Let’s at least start talking about our Wall of Infancy.  Millions of years of future citizens could be grateful to us today, if only we dare to raise our heads and being to ponder, and somehow start to climb.

 

 

 

Quote, "Acknowledging beauty and denouncing horror ..."

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I don’t think this practice of acknowledging beauty and denouncing horror is much more difficult than the practice of loving. In fact, I think it is very much a part of the practice of loving.

--Anna Badkhen, Amsterdam Review interview
https://amsterdamreview.substack.com/p/reaching-for-meaning-rediscovering

====

This sort of thought, this salubrious congruence, is part of the ongoing advance of the collective consciousness of civilization, as we struggle toward a higher level of psychological awareness and ethical maturity.  

Our level of ethics technology has risen and continues to rise, even in the face of horrific backlashes and clutches of ancient norms of ignorance-based governance and hate-monger politics.  As I've written, we have the brain- and cultural-plasticity to continue to advance out of the Ignorance Vortex and reach a place where we put ethics first, not power-lust or greed, and end the curse of warfare. ("The Purgatory Principle," "Sustenance and Darkness," "The Apotheosis Problem," "Lightcraft: ethics as technology," ... etc.) 

Poem: Song for a Banana

 

Song For a Banana

 

satyr-horned

and moon curled,

 

a sway

of sweep-nosed

zest,

 

our baskets your stage, girds

for your golden waist,

 

you who bow to rear,

smoother than fingerpads,

 

passion-strung—

 

you who furrow banquets, 

lift them mellow

for our reap—

 

you prow of the bowl,

altar of tastes,

 

feed us with your seamed ascent,

your bright arc.

================================

This is a re-worked version of a poem published in Lucid Rhythms in 2010.  Around this time, I was absolutely enspelled by Neruda.

Poem: Looking Over

 

Looking Over

 

if the ocean were flows

of mirrored chalices,

carousels borne on froth

and mane,

 

would it not sparkle

of romance and satin,

galloping raves in whirls of stars?

 

would life itself,

the whole parade of fierce exuberance,

not glisten across a theatric canvas?

 

joy and orgy,

illusion and mélange,

pendulum and pointillism,

ravage and feast?

 

if the ocean harbored such players,

would it not then be

a chrysanthemum

fickle from fleet yet immortal petals?

 

such dangers and prizes,

juggles of cauldrons,

airy with cocoons of

unsolved legends, what if

 

the ocean were the crux

of this dissolute comportment--

would it not then be

what we dream?

 

 

 

 

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10/29/26 ... eds throughout day ... very tired from grading ... classes stuffed with students, way beyond enrollment norms, pay low ...  

Poem: Plastic Shred

 

Plastic Shred

 

crude gusset of bat

high on wind, dislocating

every bone it doesn’t have

to creep once more

in the company of dirt.

 

a paroxysm fawning,

fated to delve and sniff,

to bootlick with an amble

in a muddle of slithers.

 

alert then slothful,

part yoga then lounge chair,

chasing some ort

invisible to the scrawl

of its unhinged grasps.

 

limp moods sidle

as the choreography waffles.

breasts flail

and odd teeth gnash,

born of their own writhes.

============================

This was originally published in Bacopa Review in 2013.  I am republishing poems here, as well as posting new ones, to consolidate.

Poem: Messages from God

 

Messages From God

 

they come fast as meth

in jiggers of holy water,

monstrous spices, dashes

of swords and tyrants,

Dracula when you

first meet his grin,

 

or tarantulas without legs,

but somehow still there—

warning signs, forbidden

as the first impulse

to murder.

 

friends can’t see

and churches don’t forgive them.

think of visions

slipperier than lies,

nettles on a porcupine

whose barbs are debts—

 

mildew on your masks,

or flies raining instead of tears,

prophecies that split into hooks,

using you as bait—

 

you want to defuse and reject them,

to salute and grin—

but they are hot as fangs

pushing through your lips,

making you shriek—

 

decrees no one will believe

or condone.

===============

This poem was published in Cerulean Rain in 2008.  I am republishing older works, alongside the new ones, to consolidate.  Like many of us, I have an ominous feeling of end times.  All I have to offer, in the end, are these poems, as well as my unpublished novel, and a few scribblings.  

Poem: Seasoned

 

Seasoned

 

gushes of green,

a planet-sized rush,

unable to stopper

the primal hunger,

riding it full crave,

headlong of flutter,

a gallop toward the sun,

always the sun,

chasing that chariot,

gilt of the golden gift,

lush of leafy stampede--

how it scintillates

and stings as legions rise,

brazen and zealous,

thickening and ripe,

strong with solar pulse,

over and over, so much

power only to darken and

wither into a grimace of masks.

outraged now, sunken down,

impaled on a sward.

====================

Poem: Waterless

 

Waterless

 

a mile means nothing,

swallowed by a dry riverbed.

fish in the stones,

so it has always been:

the dead swim petrified

in waterless water.

and those false angels, the stars,

swim the oasis of night.

but the day is a mermaid,

she who won’t let me scream,

who stays nearby, blurry

through many happy, infinite

somewhat real encounters.

i remember, even so,

that it is not possible

to make love in the hot sand.

dunes aren’t tables or beds,

can’t hold an epitaph

like those clay tablet of old

safe somewhere in a museum.

there is no clay, however,

here in this dessicated contrivance, this

death-rich diorama

which those of us too weary to be wary

still sought to avoid.

but it will end.

such is the fate of archers

who shoot too-fast prey

from too-fast chariots,

burning the wheels to survive,

while they crush the bloom

of long-gone flowers

risen from a devil’s bread of stones.

 

NYT op-ed, "The US is no longer the conductor ..."

 

Trump has decided that the U.S. is no longer the conductor. The U.S. is now a player in the orchestra, a big-bully player. He came to power with this slogan, “Make America Great Again.” But what he’s doing, basically, is making America little at last. Because the idea is now: We are going to make America a nation-state like others. It’s no longer this kind of top power, this hegemon who is hovering around the world. And since it has this very, very large amount of power, it can pretty much do what it wants. Which, of course, the adventure in Iran is revealing that not to be the case.

            --Rahmane Idrissa

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/14/opinion/usa-decline-trump-global-powers.html

=======

A fair historical analysis is that 11/5, the day Trump was elected for a second term (November 5, 2025) is one of the worst days in all of human history.  It was a day that tilted the world.  It de-stabilized the post-WWII order at a time when tens of thousands of nuclear weapons are posed to go off.  The President recently ranted that he would "wipe out an entire civilization" in regard to Iran.    He has effectively blocked any world coordination on global warming by calling it a "giant scam."  He refuses to even attempt to regulate AI, when even experts in the field are crying out about the dangers.  Apparently, in about three months, AI will have the ability to self-replicate, house itself throughout the internet, and create 'worms' that break all sorts of programs [1]).  The recent Lancet Report cites "AI creation of biological weapons" as one of the two current apocalyptic threats to our survival as a species, alongside nuclear winter/famine [2].

This idiotic man has brought us to the edge of the end.  I've vented about this before, if you're interested [3].  I can't overstate my anger at the people who supported him and thereby cursed us with 11/5.  I channel this anger into writing and poetry.  But I struggle to talk to people who are Trumpers.  I have cut 'friends of friends' out of my life, including half the family of a friend of mine, people I used to joke around with and tolerate.  The craven, pitiable Republican politicians should go down in history as exemplars of lickspittle gutter-diving.  Of cesspool toadyism.  I can't come up with enough labels of shame to properly describe them.

Students of human psychology take note: 11/5 is a civilizational example of our capacity for incredible idiocy.  However, we are also capable of creating better and better culture.  We have ethically improved our ethos and it can keep going.  In effect, it's a fight between Good and Evil.  Susan Neiman has made a solid case for using the term "Evil," which she presented recently in a condensed quote-worthy book:  Call It Evil:  Understanding the Trump Era.    

(((Why does it have to be argued at all, that Evil is in play, when genocide and ethic cleansing are taking part in Gaza?)))

See also my various essays on this blog about ethics as technology, including empirically verifiable definitions of Good and Evil grounded in psychology, science and critical thinking.

===========

Footnotes

[1] https://www.anthropic.com/research/self-replicating-ai

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/oct/11/nuclear-war-and-malicious-use-of-ai-threaten-end-of-humanity-by-2100-says-lancet-assessment

[3] https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2025/10/one-of-worst-days-in-human-history.html

Quote, Nuclear famine and AI-created biological weapons

 ===========

"Malicious use of AI, including bioweapons, and nuclear conflict with nuclear famine carry risks of extinction in the next 75 years," the [Lancet] report said, adding that while their likelihood remained low, they had the potential to end humanity in the case of nuclear conflict by injecting enough particles into the upper atmosphere to block sunlight and cause famine, or via AI-created biological weapons ... "The scale of harm, should they be realised, would inflict an apocalypse on humanity."

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/oct/11/nuclear-war-and-malicious-use-of-ai-threaten-end-of-humanity-by-2100-says-lancet-assessment

===========

These god-like weapons (nuclear and biological) require the utmost maturity.   However, upstream from such necessary wisdom is another grave problem:  the reckless, myopic dictators that our primitive culture enthrones.  These petty parasites value ignorance of the masses over reasonable assessment.  It serves their short-sighted, macho egos.  You could argue that the greatest threat to our future, then, is our propensity to put such mentally disordered, thrasymachian men in power.  

The President of the USA, Donald Trump, has effectively quashed the world's ability to mitigate global warming.  He has said he will not regulate AI.  He makes nuclear-level threats, such as his remark, directed at Iran, to "wipe out an entire civilization." 

Can we educate people to spot such dangerous, deluded leaders, these 'strongmen,' and to not vote for them?  Absolutely.  I've written a blog essay on this very subject (The Apotheosis Problem):

https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2025/09/essay-apotheosis-problem.html

Note: Leaders such as Trump and Putin are not 'strong.'  Psychologically and ethically, they are the weakest sort.  They are parasites--I call them enervators--who suck the vibrancy out of a country to bloat their own quantity-obsessed (money, power, praise) egos.

 

Poem: Unseen Ghost

Unseen Ghost

 

she glares,

a flame without red,

swollen yet empty,

ache on a stoic ember,

frizz on a lost pyre.

 

screams weak as lisps

crawl from her and sidle

under the rug.  no one hears

except the family’s

irish setter.

 

but she’s there,

stubborn in a crack,

wound size of salt

in a dust-speck sea.

 

once cutely pungent

now bitter as mold,

her grin only chimes

in a grandmother clock.

 

only the dog sees her

glossing the finial of a poster bed.

she fumes like an aftermath,

a roving quark, endangered

in mahogany.

 

wastelands of damask and lace.

 

every few years a real person

brushes against her thigh.

==============================

This poem was originally published in Rivets in 2010.  I am re-publishing my work here, trying to consolidate, as well as publishing new pieces.  

Poem: Hamlet of Masks

 

Hamlet of Masks

 

to create or not?

to suffer the shames and

stings from blooms of realm

below a numb-bound surface;

or to abdicate truth and feeling,

plaster a bland fear

over the trek of Veracity’s hunt?

such is the pivotal itch,

hinged on the closure or consciousness  

of unreadable dreams.

which may come:

a time shorn hell more cutting than

than the dull shear of clocks,

or a revel of lovely purpose,

shucking the fluff and

staid serenity of ordered sheep?

this is the riddle, this mystagogue,

whose eyes face to mock me,

loomed in the mirror,

if i dare raise my overgone skull

and ponder such contours and cavities,

the dizzy tunnels and glims which carve out beds,

seductive yet treacherous of play,

affairs most misty of motive,

when i struggle to ride them

or circumvent. 

==========================

10/12 ... eds... not my style...

10/9/26 .. replaced "would they" with "to"

10/8/26 ... flipped positions of "numb" and "staid"

10/7/26 eds.. difficult vocab issues, phrasing 

glim = candle, etc.

 Pleasantville-ish

Poem: Don Giovanni in Hell

 

Don Giovanni In Hell

 

i have been summoned

by what i could be,

a sweet torment

jutting on an apex.

 

and so i climb,

tangoing with a skirt

of weeds—cholla, nettle

and sage—thirsty lovers

part Fury and Norn,

flexing as if their thighs

were rungs.

 

i climb naked,

flecked by bits of wasps, parched cocoons,

and tattered nests.

sandstone crumbles

when i twist to scratch,

like a bitter sphinx.

 

somehow i’ll outlast

all these femme fatales.

the thrill comes from almost failing—

and when i reach the top

lava explodes.

================

This poem was originally published in the Monongahela Review in 2010.  I am republishing poems and adding new ones all the time to this blog, consolidating my work.   If a poem is republished, there's a brief statement, like this one, beneath it.  Otherwise, it is new.  

A 'new' poem, however, probably means I wrote it off an old draft.  I have thousands of drafts from the past, some far distant, which I resurrect and work with, like armatures.   Some very few poems I wrote from scratch recently.  An example is "broken on the floor."

Poem: Medium Drunk

 

Medium Drunk

 

cusps of light,

fluid above mahogany.

a gyrate of glows,

cyclops drained of the cruel

to inhale the room

with illusory whorls

of twisting bronze.

 

fascinate

on the spherical strum

of rainbow’s refractive strings.

could it be that the past itself

blossoms in quadrilles

of spectral kaleidoscopes?

 

sail along

with yardarms of spectra,

riggings of glisten, rudders of flux.

soar on foamy sparkles

lucid in feathery wakes

to kiss the boundless charms

of unfastened horizons.

 

again and again, far more

than drama could ever conceive,

and yet then abrupt to fade,

the adventures flare and glister:

galleons aplenty, phoenixes on wing,

siphoned away

by the perimeters of worlds.

===============================

crystal ball theme .. some lines seem familiar.. maybe from another poem  ("Crystal Ball"?)

double entendre.  might change it.  or not.

Quote Susan Faludi, Barbie vs Odysseus

 ====

Among the many afflictions distorting our current politics, one has gone unrecognized: We’re in the midst of a zero-sum struggle over which gender gets to own the hero’s journey … Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” and Mr. Nolan’s “Odyssey” are the same objects with different shapes … The hero’s struggle resonates so universally because we’re all up against monsters of one sort or another …  That’s at stake in the zeitgeist shift between “Barbie” in 2023 and Mr. Nolan’s 2026 he-man travelogue: Which sex gets to own that ennobling elixir? … It’s no longer Menelaus fighting Paris for the possession of Helen — it’s Menelaus versus Helen. Or Odysseus versus Barbie.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/23/opinion/culture/heroine-journey-odyssey-barbie.html 

====

Brilliant analysis by Faludi.  But if it is women vs men for ownership of the stage, as she frames it, then we are doomed by a mentality of dominance and war.  The Barbie movie is more about women being heard and getting fair and equal voice than it is about a "zero-sum" battle to dominate men.  This is brought out, say, in the immortal monologue by America Ferrera.

It starts out this way:

It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don't think you're good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we're always doing it wrong.

You can read the full statement, which took a long time to craft, here:

https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a44640422/america-ferrera-full-barbie-monologue/

The Barbie movie is about advancing the collective consciousness of civilization to a higher level of ethics technology (see my many blog essays on this, like Lightcraft, 5/25).  Whereas Odysseus is a status quo myth, and does not advance our ethics technology. 

====

Poem: Moonrise

 

Moonrise

 

waves clutch and snatch,

but can’t down the shine.

clouds, stealthy as squid,

cling with furlongs of suckers;

but no sea, not even the underbelly

of a wolf with fangs of cirri,

loping through the night,

can swallow again

what has already been.

not now.  not this reach,

these canters which shimmer

to outride.   only patches

of fur left.  a tentacle wisp.

======================

Guardian quote, "Digital pathway to hell ... "

 

============

At last census count, 342 million people live in the United States. Of that population, between 2 and 3 million watch cable news in a given day. The vast majority of those people watch Fox News. And the majority of that majority is over the age of 54.

"I spent a full hour watching Trump TV. It’s a digital pathway to hell"
            -- Dave Schilling, The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/27/trump-tv-cable-news 

============

Poem: Hiroshima Shadow

 

Hiroshima Shadow

 

i am what i not am,

inconsequential

as an ant that ate

the last seed.

 

before i could make good,

i looked up at the sky.

it was the first

and last thing my lack-of-body

would ever do.

 

i am not known

to have a name, but it

will be said in the future

that i was prophesied,

one of the first burnt.

 

no one

 

has any idea what my mother

looked like, or whether

by some fluke she

smiled during my fast birth,

or even had bones.

 

for my mother

sat exactly where i

am sitting and turned

her body just so,

in the very same way;

 

and then there was no

flesh to beget flesh,

no heart to love

or give happiness to

a lack-of-child:

 

i just was.

=========================

This poem was originally published in Vine Leaves in 2013.  As the war-hungry Trump sows rage in chaos across the world, I am trying to collect my work, I guess a statement to the universe, in art and ethics.  As I always say, though it is always true, it could all end soon.

Poem: On the Toilet

 

On the Toilet

 

in my hands National Geographic

decreeing that Neanderthal practiced cannibalism,

based on marks on femurs—

 

or perhaps, the article twists,

our ancestors enjoyed a few ribeyes

before pushing N.’s dregs

off Iberia.

 

in the corner, amaryllis

(says tape on pea-green pot)

leers like a gaggle

of embarrassed victrolas,

 

flirty fuchsia

not too sauced to blush

at spread knees and dropped denim,

 

my impudent nonchalance.

 

next page, Utah,

boastful of Mormon and petroglyph.

it turns out, the author bleeds,

that the white man

knows very little about what

he extinguished—

 

as i flush.

=======================

This poem was originally published in Poetic Diversity in 2009.  I am republished poems in this blog, as well as adding new ones, trying to create a fuller body of my extensive work.  At some point, I should start printing all these poems out, to have hard copies, in case of disaster.  But printers are expensive and perhaps my poems and I will just go down together.

"he" represents the bellicose immaturity of patriarchy, which has owned civilization since the very start, refusing to let us evolve to higher levels of ethics tech--though the original, ancient Big Lie of sexism is being challenged in our times (last few hundred years..).  These are exciting times, in which ethics technology will evolve, or we will annihilation ourselves via chest-thumping, narcissistic macho ignorance. For humanity to move forward, ethics technology must move forward.  The hand that controls the god-like weapons, the titan-level ability to shape the planet Earth itself, and all its creatures, must become more mature--psychologically healthy and virtuous.  It's all completely doable (see my essay "lightcraft"  5/20/25 ... and other essays on this blog like "Apotheosis Problem.. sustenance and darkness... purgatory principle ..etc._)

Quote, " ... know all too well about genocide ...

 ======

The remaining opening acts for Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour have quit in solidarity with rapper Macklemore, who was dismissed from his opening spot for pro-Palestine comments … Irish acts Rowe and Beoga cited the history of their country to explain their decision. Rowe said that the Irish people “know all too well about genocide, forced famine and violent occupation.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/2026/09/15/remaining-opening-acts-quit-ed-sheerans-tour-after-macklemores-removal/

=======

"Pro-Palestine" is a vague term that the media uses because it panders to the prejudice of the American political system.  "Pro-Palestine" readily lends itself to misinterpretation--as being pro-Hamas, or as being antisemitic.   It means neither of those things.  It means to stand for human rights for all people and, in the case of what is happening to the Palestinians, it means to stand up against genocide.  I've discussed this in detail on several blog entries , including the essay "Sustenance and Darkness."

For the record, any institution enacting or promoting genocide, which includes Hamas and the Netanyahu regime is wicked, is Evil.  "Evil" is not some vague mystical term.  It can be defined empirically and logically.  (See various essays on this blog, especially 5/25 onward ("Lightcraft," "Apotheosis Problem," "Purgatory Principle" .. . etc.)

See also Susan Neiman's new book, "Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era."

"Pro-Palestine" should be replaced by "anti-genocide."  But the US media doesn't have the guts to do it--in the same way that they continue to call Republicans "conservatives," when clearly they are authoritarians, which is itself a term to hide from what they really are: lickspittle accomplices who serve a might-makes-right dictatorship.

============================================

Poem: Deep Under

 

Deep Under

 

chrysalis

of the underview,

eels for nerves,

murk of shadows,

arena

of the unseen sly stark,

ripples of passions

and inventions and

new enemies.

 

they will not dance

with surfacy lips

which glisten glib and

loudly preen on

the proscenium of your

stolen stage.

 

all so beautiful up there.

too ugly, too much fail,

squiddish arms and dim

fey pips which glow from camouflage

down here.

 

down in this mansion of cellars

within moods of spectacle,

a waltz of dust devils

in watery dizzy dresses

of sway and flow.

 

a little too much thigh and fang

to go back up into the glisteny gloss

and ignore

what you dream.

=========================

 

 

9/26  changed prepositions around

Quote, Evil mistaken for rationality ...

 =====

When self-interest becomes the basis of reason, evil no longer needs to justify itself.  It’s already been mistaken for rationality.

    

        Susan Neiman, Call It Evil:  Understanding the Trump Era

======

Poem: Juliet Reads Herself

 

Juliet Reads Herself

 

blurs of crushed ants,

black bodies arranged

in rows, she’s dizzy

from the jumble

of their mandibles,

wants to leave

this puny cemetery,

 

but her eyes settle

on the corpses

as they resolve into slivers

of what she shouldn’t grasp

but does—

 

fancy sentences

that inject ache

then melt away,

like syringes of ice—

 

page after page

until the poison between the periods

no longer torments,

 

becomes cold water

she has swam—

the more she reads the closer she gets

to tragedy,

 

but it makes her young

to share the plight of a hero

or the hero’s lover—

 

it seems he loves her too,

that she is what’s written

for him to praise.

 

maybe the words

are what she is, and he, too,

 

a product of genius

that wrote this play then left,

 

leaving the characters

to love and die

forever.

 

 

 

==============================

Poem: Romeo Reads Himself

 

Romeo Reads Himself

 

blurs of crushed ants,

black bodies arranged

in rows, he’s dizzy

from the jumble

of their mandibles,

wants to leave

this puny cemetery,

 

but his eyes settle

on the corpses

as they resolve into slivers

of what he shouldn’t grasp

but does—

 

fancy sentences

that inject ache

then melt away,

like syringes of ice—

 

page after page

until the poison between the periods

no longer torments,

 

becomes cold water

he has swam—

the more he reads the closer he gets

to tragedy,

 

but it makes him young

to share the plight of a hero

or the hero’s lover—

 

it seems she loves him too,

that he is what’s written

for her to praise.

 

maybe the words

are what he is, and she, too,

 

a product of genius

that wrote this play then left,

 

leaving the characters

to love and die

forever.

 

 

 

==============================

This poem was originally published in Merge Poetry in 2006.  I have started republishing poems on this blog due to a sense of reaching my end.  It could be WW3, it could be lack of healthcare, it could be AI's apparent threat to take over the internet itself, and so on.  That said, I am trying to live each day fully and have had a rich and full life.  Despite much travail and confusion, I kept being honest while seeking answers, especially continuing to 'Know Myself' in the sense of the ancient oracles.  It led me down a path.  And I would do it again.  

Microfiction, When a psychotic leader ...

 ====

When a psychotic, such as a malignant narcissist, rises to become the leader of society, it establishes a verdict of psychosis for society itself. 

            --Khyrina Vyyrheart, Soulful Solutions

====

(fictional quote related to my novel, A Future of Angels (unpublished) 

Poem: Trying To Be Dead

 

Trying To Be Dead

 

who wasn’t dead or trying to be dead?

the load was easier.  less heavier.

no tears like in crystal balls

which foretold the many ways you

would fail to try.

 

you could be a lot of things

in the quest for decomposure.

 

you could be harsh, fast and erotic,

or sedative and trinket-played. 

you could be apron-dutiful

or march to the gun.

you could blow servile in the castle

which forced the original split

while standing erect

over those who serve you.

 

you could pray

to the god of gone nomads who

wandered deserts like sheep and goats.

and you could choose which side

of the flag to worship--fake white, black-and-

blue or carpet red.  but

 

it wouldn’t be the first time

 

you wanted to be exorcised,

the numerical sacrifice

of your identification card:

how it stored your computed behavioral soul

in various assimilated, acculturated

games. 

 

 

=====================

9/12/26 ... added "fake," changed last word to "games" and subbed "played" with "trinket"

9/10/26 ... "blow" was a typo (freudian slip?) ... I am going to keep it in for now (forever?)

decomposure = play on decompose (death), breaking out of conformist composure, etc.

less heavier  = always oppressive no matter what

Quote by Eva Umlauf, Auschwitz survivor

 

=====

Eva Umlauf, a survivor of the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp and president of the International Auschwitz Committee, was dismayed.

"As Holocaust survivors, we never would have thought it possible that a far-right party would once again take its place as ​the largest parliamentary group in a German state legislature," she said. "This election result frightens us!"

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/far-right-afd-courts-conservative-support-after-historic-german-state-election-2026-09-07/

=====