Essay: Poetry, Good, Evil and You

 

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I'll be editing this over the next few days
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Essay:  Poetry, Good, Evil and You

 

Most people, most of the time, and this includes myself, are not facing the unbelievable, awesome, scary aspects of what it is to be human in the early 21^st century.  I think some compartmentalization is fine and even necessary.  Many of us need a buffer, some peace in other callings, activities or entertainments.   And yet it is vital, as well, to engage with the critical issues of these mind-boggling times.  To plunge in with full veracity. 

My poems, I hope, are aspects of the call.  My poems, really, are a way of dealing with a spectrum of brutal emotions, while adventuring in the crucible of the soul.  Ecstasy flows through me, love and anguish, and also hate [1].  These raw forces can be shattering.  Or they can be channeled into deepest expression and liberation.  A poet can be an alchemist, working with passion for purposes which ultimately advance the Good.

Before addressing the big question of whether we will go down a Good path or an Evil one, it is important to spell out some of the extreme changes we face in the near future.  The scary options presented below are not necessary futures, but they are likely futures, if we don’t act maturely and ethically to manage the godlike technology we are currently evolving.

Again, all this is very stressful to even broach, let alone ponder.  My way of dealing with it is poetry.  One of the main purposes of this essay is to get you to think about how you can deal with it. 

 

Our Near Future: Option One, self-deselection and AI supremacy

 

What’s so scary about our times, even compared to the general human condition, which has always been fraught with danger, challenge and stress?

As I wrote in a 2002 academic article, which is now a reference in the Wikipedia entry on cyborgs, we are likely to combine our natural bodies with implanted technology.  When?  Soon and at a reckless pace.  This involves artificial or enhanced limbs and organs, yes, but also connecting our brains to computers and an ultra-invasive internet [2]. 

I argue that this process, in our current culture of profit-making and competition, will lead to self-deselection:  we will change what we are so much that we become some new kind of species, one created outside the biological channels of evolution.  If this happens, humanity as we know it, and as it has existed for hundreds of thousands of years, will be gone.  It will also have profound effects on all of planetary nature, including what creatures and biomes remain and how. 

How far away is this transformation? It has already started and will likely proceed in stages.  Artificial limb and brain chips already exist.  If we are reckless, consumed with a rush for immediate power and new abilities, then within 200 years we will be a lot more similar to robots and robots will be a lot more similar to us.  

Indeed, through a brain-connected internet, it is possible for multiple entities to telepathically share and combine.  The scenario where AI controls us, or even effectively turns us into its slaves, gains traction if we are all wired up to each other under AI super-centers.

 

Our Near Future:  Option Two, nuclear annihilation

 

War has been a problem since farming was invented.  But never of such a world-shaking magnitude.  A scary possibility for our future is the obvious Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads; namely, World War 3 and nuclear annihilation.  Given the current tilt of politics toward bellicose dictators, which mirrors the conditions before World War 2, it is a decent bet to say that this is our most likely future.  

Tens of thousands of nuclear warheads are ready to launch.  Egomaniacal, saber-rattling, insecure dictators on golden thrones, petty men who won’t back down = BOOM.

 

This is where we are at

Even if we avoid a hellish finality, super-powerful technology is emergent.  Right now, we seem almost eager to hand over our existence to AI overlords.

This is the theater in the round, the world stage, on which you and I dwell, circa early 21^st century.  We are in the flow of a rapidly changing, technology-driven metamorphosis.  Our leaders seem all-in on advancing as vigorously as economic forces allow.  Such forces are the primary driver in our primitive, barbaric culture, our poor level of maturity and (lack of) ethos. 

 

The Most Important Choice We Face:  Ethics

Can we actually mature and consider our fate more wisely?  Is it even doable?  The answer is yes.  It involves reasonable, ethical decision-making.

Clearly, though, it is not foreclosed that we will suddenly wise up.  What we do now, what choices we make, are part of a unique historic flow.  You and I participate in shaping greater future destinies.  Will we advance our ethics, or stay trapped in the primitive system of vice that rules us now?

If we make certain choices, whether recklessly, or by failing to take a stand, acquiescing to the powers that be, we are likely to be among the last few generations of human beings to walk the earth.  As I outline above, we could replace ourselves with cyborg ‘upgrades.’  Or we could annihilate ourselves in a future-tech war.

The crossroads is here.  There are two possible forms of government we can support.

One type of government trends Evil

Humanity, right now, has a choice between two forms of global governance.  One is based on idols and tyranny:  cult-levels of ignorance, fear-mongery, and totalitarian control.  The other is based on democracy:  reason, equality and mutual flourishing through a merger of science, critical thinking and ethics.

I have written in many previous blog entries that ethics can be mobilized as a technology [3]. 

The totalitarian model of governance, as I argue in many essay on this blog, is Evil.  A fictional character, the Grand Inquisitor, in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, elaborates on this model quite well.  The Grand Inquisitor argues for a Pact with the Devil while pretending to follow Christ.  The basic argument is that fear and ignorance are the only way to keep humans in line, due to limitations in our very nature.   It is an Orwellian model.  Preach freedom but enforce slavery, preach love but inculcate the hate and fear of scapegoat-ism.

This is also a Machiavellian model.  In The Prince, Machiavelli argues that fear is the best way to control people.  This is certainly true, but only at a certain level of immature culture.  All the god kings since ancient Sumer have used it as a psychological weapon of control.

 

One type of government trends Good

The democratic model of governance follows the path of the Good.  It accepts a Pact with Honesty.  Scientific truths, therapeutic psychological awareness, and the basic idea of human equality.  We are all the same kind of cognitive animal and self-evidently deserve rights.  Fair and just treatment.  In the Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky labels this as the choice of love and reason over fear and fanaticism.

 

We have a choice right now between Good and Evil

 

You and I live at a critical juncture.  It is largely a barbaric, vicious and fraught time.  But ancient ways of darkness have been challenged effectively.  This means that both ignorance-based governance and reason-based governance are still viable paths.  Will we dare to support compassion, virtue and psychological health? Or will be bow down to ignorance, fear and hate-mongery?  This can be summarized succinctly as:  will we mature?

Neutrality is not an option: 

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil--Hannah Arendt

 

The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality"-- JFK (uncertain attribution)

 

Either Good or Evil will win

 

All this, again, is very stress-making.  Trust me, I know.  My poems help me to achieve and maintain the honesty needed to face the situation--the existential crisis--I describe above.  In my poetry, I channel forth very intense passions of many kinds from many chambers in my heart.  It is atrociously hard to face the what is going on right now.  A true struggle between Tyranny and Democracy. 

Fear versus love.  Ignorance versus truth.  Obedience versus freedom. 

Good takes us in one direction.  Evil takes in another.   For more details on why one or the other will eventually encompass the globe, see my essay titled, “The Purgatory Principle.” [4])

 

Scenario 1:  Evil Wins

If we blow ourselves up in a nuclear armageddon, that is to succumb to Evil.  Some humans will survive, probably.  But they will start all over with the same god-king warlordism.  Might makes right.  Eventually these survivors will rebuild, get nuclear weapons once more, and likely destroy civilization again.  This could lead to a hellish cycle.   The way out would be to give up ignorance-based governance.  Reject the path of fear and chose the path of Good (see option three below).

 

Scenario 2:  Evil Wins

A second possibility is that technology will become strong enough to totally  control each and every citizen.  No way to rebel or do anything but obey.  Suicide might not even be an option.  Robot police and robot military everywhere.  Seamless AI surveillance.  And, most cruel of all, a brain chip in every head, enforcing control from within. 

This level of puppetry will be possible within a few hundred years.  If malignant narcissistic dictators are still in charge at that time, as they are now--despotic patriarchs who crave total control--it will happen. 

An alternative form of hell

A totalitarian dungeon can, in a rare case, avoid nuclear annihilation, but the result is simply another kind of hell, the total mind-enslavement described above.  War is avoided if a single totalitarian system takes over the entire world--and somehow does this without getting in a nuclear war. 

Again, though, such an existence would be a living hell.  An example from sci-fi is The Borg from Star Trek.  The Borg assimilates whatever civilization and planet it conquers into an machine-flesh network controlled by a central AI.

 

Scenario 3:  Good wins

A third option is that humanity embraces ethics-as-technology.  This would allow us to act with honesty, to reject big-lie loyalty tests under emperors who ‘wear no clothes.’  We would implement scientific advances, not in order to oppress, but rather to create flourishing, mutually beneficial environments:  win/win situations where the beauty of the planet and humanity both thrive. 

This is path of the Good.  It works to eliminate the threat of nuclear annihilation.  It also preserves the humanity of future citizens, who ethically choose not to merge with machines.

Imagine AI and robots being supportive, angelic guides, rather than oppressive authoritarian jailers who monitor us for loyalty and subservience.  Imagine learning how to dance with your emotions and  passions, both light and dark, and channel that psychic energy to find your own unique, beautiful voice--to sublimate, to achieve catharsis, to find actualization. 

A lot of individual people have chosen this path already.  Therapeutic psychology has a better understanding than ever before on how to achieve such states.

Try to imagine our  innate “moral sentiments” cultivated and nurtured, not trampled down by the bottomless egos of saber-rattling, insecure, vindictive, trophy-hungry kings [5].

 

The danger is great, but progress has been made toward the Good

 

We are stuck in a primitive cultural loop that has been going on for thousands of years. I call this ongoing mental contamination/indoctrination the Ignorance Vortex.  Millennia of god kings have made Pacts with Ignorance.  What does this mean?  It means big-lie rhetoric.  Religious fanaticism.  Hate-stoked division and warfare.  These are the strategies that allow plutocracy, patriarchy and kleptocracy to domineer. 

We have been traumatized by this history.  We believe it is inevitable, since it has always been part of civilization.  Not a single person ever born in a ‘civilized’ state, including you and me, knows what it is like to be raised in a Good society.  We haven’t been given the chance.

That said, the Good is a possible future for us.  We have the brain- and the cultural-plasticity to advance our collective maturity.  And--importantly--we have started to do it.  A lot of progress toward the Good has been made in, say, the last 150 years. 

The greatest invention in the entire history of human civilization

I’ve proclaimed and argued, over and over, mostly to deaf ears, that the greatest invention since the Agricultural Revolution--going back around twelve thousand years--is the right for women to vote.  Universal suffrage.  This is huge.  Humanity not only conceptualized equality but made it real. 

This wonderful feat broke out of the original Big Lie, the grand deceit that programmed everyone not only to believe in the inferiority of women--physically, mentally and morally--but also to transmit the same mental programming to the next generation.  On and on…

Breaking out of the original Big Lie demonstrates that we can listen to reason and follow a path of ethics-as-technology.

For emphasis:  it is possible for the Good to be our path.  Gay marriage.  Made legal in the USA in 2015.  Civil Rights in the 1960’s.  LGBTQ+ rights have advanced, too.  I don’t deny that all these gains and more are in jeopardy.  Indeed, this essay hopes to bring out the peril we face.  And yet also, thereby, the exigent importance of standing up. 

Humanity has mostly embraced medicine as a technology.  This was a big change from faith-based healing.  This shows that we can embrace ethics-as-technology.  

I refer to ethics-as-technology as lightcraft (the working title of my book is Lightcraft).  Lightcraft uses science, psychology and critical thinking to advance the Good.  Darkcraft uses science, psychology and critical thinking to maximize the control of dictators.

Technologies of many kinds (psychological, computational, robotic... ) can make both lightcraft and darkcraft more capable of advancing their goal:   Good or Evil.

 

What is your choice?  How will you handle it?

 

Again, I know it is hard to face all this.  Who wants to confront decisions that affect the future of civilization as it grows, evolves, and even expands into space.  The very thought of it is intimidating and aversive.

Yes, it can be agonizing.  But there is also liberation, ecstasy and love.  This is why I write poetry.  Poetry is my steam valve and expression.

What is yours?  How do you sustain yourself in following a path of Goodness? 

You can do this.

 

 

 

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Footnotes

(1)  https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2025/10/essay-on-hate.html

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyborg (further reading:  Crittenden, Chris. 2002. "Self-Deselection: Technopsychotic Annihilation via Cyborg." Ethics & the Environment 7(2):127–152.

(3)  Some samples:

https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2025/05/draft-intro-of-my-book-better-angels.html

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

(4)  https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2026/01/essay-most-important-law-in-physics.html

(5)  The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67363