"Trick or treason?": the portfolio & the plumbing

Update 1: a Perplexity news item on Sept. 2 led to both an enquiry & a class direct-to-web.

Update 2: that direct-to-web AI facility lead to a series on my Andrew Zolnai Private blog here.

Update 3: on Andre ZolnAI Private blog, NY Times prompted another social commentary here

Note: all here in particular & throughout the blog in general are observation not criticism.

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After digressing to AI social impacts here & here, let's do "a last one for the road " on social commentary we left off here. This will, however, be the last of this blog... Thanks for reading!

The Odyssey

Ezra Klein is my favorite NYTimes presenter: he waded into the Odyssey (IMDb) commentary maelstrom with a thoughtful take on YouTube; Christopher Nolan's Finest Trick refers to the trickster in socio-politics thru time.

At a Community-building group in Calgary ending 30 yrs. ago as I moved to Dallas, I'm still in touch with its leader of my alma mater's International Journal of Fear Studies here: his favorite was the coyote or trickster archetype per Joseph Campbell (Perplexity); 10 yrs. later in the So. CA San Bernardino Mtns. below, a Serrano Indian drum leader told me of "(the) Coyote in Serrano and neighboring Southern California traditions (...) trickster archetype: a disruptive, amoral, yet culturally essential figure who tests norms, exposes human folly, and drives narrative change" (Perplexity). 

It struck me in the context of this blog that Ezra Klein developed here the commonality among "People of the Book" (Wikipedia) on inclusivity (my words):

• Leviticus 19:34
• Matthew 7:12
• Hillel, Shabbat 31a (Babylonian Talmud)
• Qu'ran 4:36 (last two from Perplexity)

... All say grosso modo "do unto others what you'd have them do unto you"!

He goes on: "Was using the Trojan Horse a trick or a crime? To Homer, Odysseus is a hero. To Nolan, he's a man in search of redemption." For in effect "Cruelty is weakness. It is only compassion and reciprocity that can build a durable and decent society." And finally in his NYT opinion piece here:

Yuval Noah Harari, the Israeli-born historian [said]. “A lot of the thinking, and also the practice, about what it means to have freedom of thought, what it means to be a powerless minority, was done by Jewish thinkers,” he told me. He added:

"For 2,000 years, Jews all over the world saw studying and learning as the highest spiritual activity. After 2,000 years, you ask them: What have you learned? You have studied for 2,000 years. What have you learned?

And then people like Netanyahu tell you: Oh, we have learned that you need to be a Roman, that you need to be strong, that you need to build legions, that you need to destroy cities. This is the only thing that matters in life.

It’s a legitimate value system. Rome had its usefulness. But if after 2,000 years, the Jews simply become the Romans, what was the point? Why did you waste 2,000 years, then? You could have just become Roman back then."

Let me add: it is a pity that Jewish and Muslims are at each other - perhaps precisely because they are so similar, like they're all Semitic in Israel here - in neither case is there separation of church & state, as there is in parliamentary systems; both remained 1,500 years in the past - the very period during which the West developed parliamentary governance. 

My framing

This whole blog is devoted to the evolution from the tribal model (Middle East) to the parliamentary model (the West) - see also the endnote - is that not akin to a business evolving from a sole proprietorship (an individual) into a public liability company (a group), in order for the group to survive the lifespan of the individual?

In yet another NYT opinion piece here on the 1788 East India Company impeachment proceedings, William Dalrymple reports the summary by the prosecutor:

"Corporations,” he said, “have neither bodies to be punished nor souls to be condemned. They therefore do as they like.”

In other words, we have a conflation of pre-democratic government-cum-religion and post-industrial soulless corporations! I argue in my Medium four-part mini-series "Welcome back to the New Middle Ages" (starting here) that we are regressing to the "bad old days" for one very simple reason: lack of means to address the hurts that beset us daily; that "sh*t happens" is not the issue... the issue is our inability to recover from hurts & maintain our inherent zestfulness we're born with - see on Medium here the reason behind it:

There’s no comprehensive & free or affordable mental health care, like there is physical health care: medicine progressed because society needs us to function; psychology didn’t as much because there’s no incentive.

So while Nolan infuses the Christian into the Greek Classics - the portfolio -  I argue that the underlying cause of the current miasma is neglected psychology - the plumbing.

Note: that metaphor is thanks at the very end to an unrelated Perplexity prompt here. 

Update

A Perplexity news item Iran's factions defy Khamenei as Trump declares regime 'in total disarray'  here led me to ask what velayat-e faqih meant here? A suite of Perplexity prompts lead to a full web page implementation! Velayat‑e Faqih: Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Vatican, and Jewish Tradition is posted as-is on my Private blog here. Not only did it give a full treatment of Iran's regime (expanded to Saudi, Vatican & Jewish ones) in Part I, Perplexity also proposed a class in Part II to help share beyond socials... Will you please drop a comment below on what you think?

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Endnote: aside from that update, this is of necessity a gross simplification designed to tease out a key trend. Britain's king opens Parliament & heads the Church of England, Iran and Israel have parliament equivalents, Bahrain introduced one thirty years ago, & Kuwait actually dissolved theirs while I was there... because they were only rubber-stamping various princes' edicts! Drop a comment below to ask for specifics peppered throughout this blog.

"How the mighty have fallen"

Finis: these last two posts on the perils of AI infrastructure here, and social commentary on AI below, close this blog on lessons-learned from my recent travels starting in Kuwait. They are indexed on my AI blogpost here, the featured banner post of my main blog here.

Update 1: just in time, Pope Leo XIV's first major Encyclical on AI & two counterpoints at the bottom.

Update 2: "one more for the road" on an important topic here.

Update 3: speaking of important topics, another dire warning here about what AI is doing in light of this year's AIs going rogue...

So this is how dystopia starts... in great silence

Update 4: two deep dives into data center perils & promises as 'last post 1 & 2'

Update 3: someone of consequence echoed my last point at the bottom.

Update 2: added the Tinkerbell Effect in the middle (HT the US Independence's 250th Anniversary).

Update 1: my next post looks at it from the other end of the looking glass, starting with looking in at an influencer's provocative yet mistaken take on AI.

Roma(ni) stories

Update: the series on mores follows here, after two on AI social impact next here.

It all started with an online chat among Hungarian diaspora, where I noticed English 'chav' & magyar 'csávó' sounded similar; sure enough, Perplexity said:

"East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet"

 In the literary commentary The Nobel and the Booker remind us of the apocalyptic and absurd in Central European fiction, the author says:

"I felt – and this could very well be personal – that the only country that can truly be described as Central European is Hungary. Just over a couple of hours by train from Vienna, the gateway too Western Europe, Budapest, with its scattering of Turkish thermal baths and eclectic blend of art nouveau, gothic, baroque, and communist architecture, is far less of a Western city than its Austrian neighbour. Budapest remains outside of Western Europe not only geographically but also historically and culturally. But while it is touched by some of the major historical narratives of Eastern Europe, Budapest stays on their fringes too, as does Hungary on the whole. Lacerated by both Nazism and Communism, submitting to Hitler and “saved” by the Soviets, Hungary defines that space that is both misunderstood and hybridised – Central European."

My car story in Kuwait

 

click to enlarge, AI generated 

About exactly 15 yrs. ago, I returned from Kuwait City for good. I sought a job 15 mo. prior at the local ESRI distributor: my visits the previous 15 yrs. to Muscat Oman, Al Khobar Saudi Arabia, and  Bahrain (see here) w a quick jump to Doha Qatar, had left an impression on me; I also learned that my contract written in Arabic held no water,  thru the language itself not thru any misdeed (see also here). I must thank a red-haired Liverpuldian who went native - learned Arabic, converted to Islam & married a local girl,  now in Qatar telecom I think - for intro to local customs. Did six mo. in Milan and over a year here presage a similar restlessness to his, and my eventual departure from England & my 30 yr. marriage?