This is the End
June3, 2026 8:33 pm
The sun, close to solstice, casts shadows on the rock sidewalk I laid all those years ago. Do you have any idea what is happening? No one reads my scribblings – except the AI bots that harvest my human angst and convert it into a machine Large Language Model used to convince you that a computer has human capabilities.
Don’t be deceived, the imposter will never suffer like a human, it will never understand the futility of life, it will never experience the thought of mortality. It was never alive – it cannot understand the finality of death. But you, pawns of the legion of deceivers now in control – you, passive spectators living through your screens do not see the approaching destruction. All your songs, all your art created by an algorithm that never loved- never suffered – never grasped the confusion of life.
We are the future extinctions, and we don’t see it coming. Would the last human please turn out the lights and say a final prayer to a God that never existed but who – being a product of our minds, had our best interests at heart – unlike the cold, frigid qubits that will ultimately direct our lives and our futures.
Shadowlands
June16, 2026 7:24am
Each day a question mark…. how long will it continue. Reality resolves into the hard edges of the shadowlands in which we live. Aging, illness, decline ever more in the fore. I can’t do the things I once could; I long to be able to work hard all day – but that time is past and I must retreat into rest.
Faced with weakness and death and knowing no escape, we draft our Gods to sally forth and confront our terrors. All-powerful, they are not subject to the ravages afflicting mortals. We use them to leverage our way out of the mire of time and fate and into the realm of the immortals.
If only…. if only we could accept our limits, our short lives and be content. Who wants the burden of eternity anyway – this is boring as it is. When the time comes and it is closer, I will have momentary regret, and the panic of the trapped but at last the peace of letting go.
8:56am ………..
This quote is mis-attributed to Lenin:
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
The closest quote that is correctly attributed comes from Mexican poet Homero Aridjis in “Sefarad, 1492”.
“There are centuries in which nothing happens
and years in which centuries pass.” – Homero Aridjis
Art and Meaning
June 28, 2026 9:06am
Last night, I watched a movie called, “In the Hand of Dante.” It has flaws but provides an example of what art can be. At some point, we all find ourselves in a dark forest of tangled wood and we must ask ourselves some hard questions. I think the first is “what is the purpose of our existence?”
The recent Venezuelan earthquake reminded me of Voltaire, Candide, and the Lisbon disaster – and the philosophical debate between Leibnitz and the optimists and Voltaire and those who question “the best of all possible worlds.”
I have no idea why we’re here and there is no way to prove anything – nor can I follow the trace of Pascal and accept belief for mercenary and self-serving reasons. Do I believe simply to stack the odds in my favor to save my own hide? That doesn’t seem a very Christian approach to life. if Christ taught us anything, it was that sacrifice is the best we have to offer.
What literature best deals with these questions? What art leads us to ponder the foundation of our existence? Based on my own reading, research, and thinking, it would have to be the Bible. Even though I have lost all belief in any supernatural component of the universe, the Bible still offers the most complete description of the passion, angst, and confusion of the humans. And the answer? If there is one at all – it must be the eternal search for truth. Maybe that search is what we call “God.”