The Triumph of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence

 

I have not blogged about artificial intelligence yet. Many of us are worried about it. That includes me. I am terrified of it. Yet, I know it can be used for good as well as ill. That has now been proven! Recently there has been an example of the awesome good it can bring. And that is it can bring wisdom to a very important problem. Beer!

 

Researchers at KU Leuven university in Europe have analyzed the chemical makeup of 250 different beers in the Kingdom of Beer—Belgium. And they used that data with artificial intelligence to establish that there is a way to make beer better! They created a tasting panel that looked carefully at 180,000 online beer reviews and found that they could improve the beers with AI and how people would appreciate the new beers based on its composition.

In other words, AI have provided an immense service to humanity! We should all be grateful.

Strongman Government

Death of Democracy, Decline of the west, Democracy, Populism

 

Recently, I watched the Rachel Maddow show on television. She is an unrelenting liberal so I don’t watch the show very often, figuring I get enough of that already. After watching the show, I might change my mind. I just watched a small part of the show and it was very interesting.

First, she showed brief interviews with Trumpsters who had each been asked one simple question:  “If you had a choice of 4 more years of Joe Biden or 4 more years of Donald Trump as a dictator what would you choose?”

The answers were shocking. Each one chose Trump!  One said, “This country needs a dictator. I hate to say it, but it’s true.” He looked sheepish but he said it.  Another said, “Sometimes in life we need a good paddling from the principal to set our life on the right path. And this country needs a little of that.”  A young woman said, “I’d pick Trump all the way.” She also had a sheepish grin, but again, said it.  A number of them said “Trump” with enthusiasm.  They seemed to want a dictator.

Is it really true that Americans want a dictator? Dictatorship seems to have a lot of appeal in the US. Why is that?  Rachel Maddow said, many Americans want a strong man government and think that is what Trump will give them.

The Many gods of the Brothers Karamazov

Books, Classic Books, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

In a way there are many gods in the novel The Brothers Karamazov. Is Fyodor Karamazov—the father of the 3, or perhaps 4, Karamazov brothers—God? He certainly is God-like. He is fickle, absurd, unreasonable, and demands adherents be faithful no matter what. Sounds a lot like God doesn’t it?  His former serf Gregory is faithful to him when faith has not been earned or deserved. As Dostoevsky explains about Fyodor Karamazov, “For some complex and subtle reasons, that he himself could not explain, he felt an urgent and pressing need to have someone loyal and trustworthy by him.” Again this sounds god-like. If he is a god, then, of course, his 3 or 4 sons, are all sons of God.

 

Because of the absolute loyalty,  the father liked his youngest son, Alyosha who “touched his very heart, by being there, seeing everything, and condemning nothing.” Remember he is the one who judges no one. Alyosha gave him “something he had never had before—a complete absence of contempt for him…he treated him with invariable kindness—and a completely genuine and sincere affection which Karamazov little deserved.” Of course he treated everyone that way. He was a near saint. Or you could say he was God-like.

Elder   Zosima is certainly god-like. As is Alyosha. But so is Karamazov. He is an absurd god. But in many respect the god of the bible is also absurd. The God of the Bible is the god who lets a small child freeze to death in a shed in a Russian winter. Ivan could not accept such a god.

Dmitri (also known as Mitya) is a god to Katerina. She bows down to him, as Elder Zosima bowed down to Fyodor Karamazov and Dmitri to Grushenka. In fact, Grushenka had father and son “conquered and lying at her feet.” Again a bit God-like.

Dmitri also treats Alyosha like a god. He confesses to Alyosha:

“I’ll make a clean breast of everything, for there must be someone who knows the whole truth. I’ve already told it to the angel in heaven and now I’ll tell it to the angel on earth. Because you are the angel on earth Alyosha.”

 

What are we to make of so many gods on this religious quest?

 

 

God’s Fools

Books, Classic Books, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

In the book The Brothers Karamazov, the monastery was where Alyosha, one of the three sons of the patriarch Fyodor Karamazov, was learning how to find light and love with the assistance of his mentor, the elder, Zosima, a near Saint. The elder lives in a small room in the monastery that was far from grandiose. It is not the Vatican. Nor the lavish home of American televangelists. As Dostoevsky described it, “The whole cell was rather small and drab-looking. It has only the most indispensable furniture, and even that was poor and crude.”

It is interesting that we learn a lot in a chapter of the novel titled, “The Old Buffoon.”  The elder Karamazov as invariably he does, acts like a buffoon.  And he is exactly that.  In fact, he introduced himself to Elder Zosima that way, and then acted the part with gusto. He refers to himself as “one of God’s fools,” and even says there may be an unholy spirit in me too, but it must be one of minor rank—if it were more important it would surely have chosen better quarters.”

Miusov also acted the part of the fool. As Dostoevsky said of Miusov, “He rated his own powers of judgment rather highly, a weakness which was excusable in him, since he was already past fifty, an age at which an intelligent, cultured man of the world of independent means acquires an exaggerated opinion of his own judgment, sometimes despite himself.” I guess I am lucky, not being a man of means nor cultured.

The three sons are each fools but each in their own way.

Is elder Zosima an old fool for living so simply? In the novel when elder Karamazov plays the buffoon to such an extent that his son Alyosha can’t stand to see his father acting so in front of his mentor Zosima. But the elder Zosima, echoing Christ with Mary Magdalene, throws himself at the feet of the Fyodor Karamazov the father. According to Rakitin, “That’s the way it always is with God’s fools: they’re liable to cross themselves at the sight of a tavern and then hurl stones at a church.”

But Zosima impressively treats the fool like a nobleman. There are many of God’s fools in the novel, sometimes in disguise.  Some of the fools are very intelligent. Wise men are harder to find. Isn’t it always like that?

The way to light and Love

Books, Classic Books, Fellow Feeing, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

In the novel The Brothers Karamazov, Alyosha, also called Alexei is the youngest son and least like the father. He is the most likeable of all the Karmazovs, and I might even say, the most God-like of the brothers Karamazov. He did that by being free of resentment. He was filled instead with compassion and fellow feeling that left no room for resentment. Unlike his father and his brothers, He “never held a grudge when someone offended him.” Instead he had fierce, frantic modesty, and chastity.” He was “in no sense a fanatic…he was not even a mystic.” As Dostoevsky said, “he refused to sit in judgement of others.” Or like Bob Dylan said, “he knows too much to argue or to judge.” Some of us, (I am looking in a mirror now) could learn a lot from Alyosha.

 

What was his secret?  It wasn’t dogma. Or following rules. He had no need of either.  As Dostoevsky said, “he was just a boy who very early in life had come to love his fellow men.”  Simple but effective! As the author shows us in his novels, many men  claim to love their fellows but few are able to do that. Alyosha did go to a monastery but that was “simply because at one point that course had caught his imagination and he had become convinced that it was the ideal way to escape the darkness of the wicked world, a way that would lead him toward light and love.” This was his religious quest. He was as unencumbered by vows or rules as his Father was unencumbered by scruples. Near the end of the book Alyosha shows us that there is better way. But really the whole novel leads us there. I will get to that later in my posts on this book. I must meander there. There are no shortcuts to truth.

 

This is the genuine way of religion. This is the true faith of the religious quest. Religion without dogma. What a blessing that could be. Alyosha shows us the way by example.

 

The Quest of the Abandoned for an Absent God

Classic Books, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

Dostoevsky shows us in his magnificent novel, The Brothers Karamazov that the religious quest in the modern age is the quest to deal with abandonment by God. At least according to Ivan, the atheist son, when God leaves a child to suffer that is something he cannot accept. Even if suffering leads to discovery of God, a some suggest,  that is not good enough, for it is not worth the price.

 

The father Karamazov is successful in business ventures because he is “unencumbered by scruples.” Later Ivan accuses God of the same crime. He creates a world which many of us feel is a great success, but it contains suffering children so God considers that their suffering is worth the price. To Ivan it is not worth the price. The less unencumbered one is by scruples the more successful one will be. No one is more successful than God. But children suffer! He thinks there is something terribly wrong with such a world. It is not good enough and if that is the best God can do,  God is not Great as Christopher Hitchens said.

 

 

The Brothers Karamazov: Abandoned by God

Books, Classic Books, existentialism, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

In the book The Brothers Karamazov the brothers have a most unusual father. The father feels no responsibility to the sons and virtually abandons them all to their own devices. In the first sentence of the novel, we learn that the father has died under “tragic and mysterious” circumstances so I am not giving much away when I suggest that the most likely suspects are his sons. And it could be anyone of them, even though only Dmitri is charged with his murder.

 

The father had 3 “legitimate” sons and one other son who works for the father as a servant.  We never learn for sure whether he is actually a son or not. In that first paragraph we also learn that the father is “wretched and depraved but also muddle-headed in a way that allows him to pull off all sorts of shady little financial deals and not much else.”

 

The problem between the father and at least one of the sons, Dmitri, is that both love the same woman. And they compete for her violently. Here is how the prosecutor put it in his summation to the jury: “it was an amazing and fatal coincidence that these two hearts should have been set afire simultaneously.” And this set off “a month of hopeless passion.”  And no one could be more passionate than the Karamazovs for it was that passion that set off “the idea of parricide.”  This is such a powerful idea that, as defense counsel said, “the idea of it shocks and impresses us so much that the inadequate proof seems adequate and the questionable facts cease to appear questionable.” The idea is like a magic elixir that can transform a substance into something foreign. The very idea of it can make the false true and the true false.

 

However, as dangerous as that may be, there is more. Dmitri’s brother Ivan so different from him, is the atheist brother who argues that if God does not exist “all is permitted.” In fact, it could be said that the very idea of a dead God is a magic elixir that could mean all is permitted. That is where his religion ended.  Yet as the  defense lawyer explains to the jury, Dmitri’s father was not a real father for he effectively abandoned his children, therefore it would not be a monstrous thing for a son to murder such a father. It would be understandable. The consequence to Dmitri as his legal counsel explains, is that “my client grew up under no one’s protection but God’s, which means that he grew up as wild animals.” That seems like a horrible indictment of God, but it also gives license to Dmitri. For as we all know, if our parents disappear, we are given permission, in practice to do anything. The same with an absent God. All is really permitted. This is a lesson we also learned at the funeral of the very young Ilyusha who has an absent mother, not in fact, but in reality, for she has lost her reason. His mother was as bad a mother as Dmitri’s father was a bad father..

 

Being abandoned by a parent is as devastating as being abandoned by God. And that is the crux of the enigma of the religious quest in this novel. Abandonment by God is central to the whole idea of the death of God which gripped philosophers starting in the 19th century.

That shocking idea was born in the writings of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche and then carried on by the existentialists.

Re-Reading the Brothers Karamazov

2024 Trip to South East United States, Books, Classic Books, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

 

 

A couple of years ago I started two projects. One was to re-read at least one great classic book  each year. As a result I have re-read Albert Camus’s book The Rebel, Joseph  Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. I also started a project I call Religious Quest in the Modern Age based on a course taught by University of Winnipeg Professor Carl Ridd in the 1970s. I heard a short version of it in 1972 on television. In it he covered some of the same books. Teh idea of such a quest, has  an inspiration to me for 50 years! Some of the books I am reading overlap both of these projects. This is one of them.

I just recently re-read  one of the greatest novels I have ever read. It is The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It is a brilliant novel that is infused with a powerful religious quest by the main characters. All of them in very different ways. That makes it perfect for both projects.

The book is 936 pages long (with an introductory article) and very complicated. Often, I had to re-read lengthy passages to make sure I had caught on to what is going on. That makes for very slow reading. But it is very enjoyable reading. I feared It might take me half of our 3- month holiday to wade my way through it, making many of the books  dragged out to Arizona  unnecessary. I feared I would not get to them. But that was all fine. I could not have enjoyed  my reading more. It actually took me slightly less than a month to read even with the back and forth and making notes.

I originally read The Brothers Karamazov after or just after my first year of Law School in 1972. I decided that since I had such an all-consuming year trying to learn law and had married a lovely and wealthy young lady, Christiane Marie Jeanne Calvez, the year before, and she had a fantastic $600 in her account, that I should take advantage of this to take a summer off. I reached the daring conclusion that I should take the summer off instead of working and read Russian novels instead.  This probably struck her as insane, but she did not object even though we could have used the money. My bad.

That summer I read 3 of Dostoevsky’s long novels and it was an incredible experience. I recall intense dreams filled with startling Russian characters. And I loved it. And Christiane put up with it. She has frankly put up with a lot! I had worked for 5 years of University in which I studied intensely and figured I should take a lengthy break to avoid burn-out. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life. It was magnificent.

I know my wife wished I had learned more practical things like carpentry or plumbing, but I was focused on adventures of the mind. This year in 2024 it was a wonderful thing to re-experience. That is what re-reading classics is all about.

When I re-read the book in the winter of 2024 while in Arizona, I found it was everything I remembered and more. More than 50 years later I came to the book a very different person then I was the first time, a young man filled with piss and vinegar with a lot to learn. Now I am an old man mostly “vebrukt,” (broken) but unfortunately still with a lot to learn

And now I decided to re-read the greatest of those Russian novels. Perhaps even the greatest of all novels.  And once again, it was an astonishing experience. The novel is that good and I recommend everyone read it.  Do it now before it’s too late.

 

Demonization of Muslims

Hate, Right-wing Extremism

 

As Justin Ling the host of the CBC series Flamethrowers said, “The demonization of Muslims became a sport. One that would ensnare millions of Americans. And it was disgusting.”As one visitor to right-wing radio said, “The Moslems are fighting the Jews. The Moslems are fighting the Christians. The Moslems are fighting the Hindus. The Moslems are fighting the Buddhists. They’re slaughtering the blacks. Even the Moslem blacks in African Darfur. Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, wherever you want.”

The right-wing radio talk-show host made his point of view, and that of the right-wing in America when he commented to that: “well they certainly are adept at slaughter, I give you that.”

fter the 9/11 attack the right-wing attacks against Muslims escalated exponentially. As Ling said, “Every week brought a new terror alert. George W. Bush led the invasion of Afghanistan, launching the war on terror. And conservative radio is on it.”

The 9/11 incident electrified the American right. They had a new Satan to replace the presumably vanquished Soviet Russian Satan. The Muslims were the new Satan. it was time to unleash the hate, and American right-wing talk radio was up to the tast.

 

 

Glenn Beck and the Gospel of Hate

Hate, Right-wing Extremism

 

Following on the heels of Rush Limbaugh in the annals of right-wing talk radio in America, was Glenn Beck. In fact, Limbaugh took “credit” for Glenn Beck. “Glenn Beck is a result of my success,” claimed Limbaugh  And he might be right.

The September 11, 01 attack on America by Al Qaeda followed a couple of years later in 203 by an American led invasion of Iraq, together, supercharged the right-wing in America.  They had a new enemy for their gospel of hate.  And the pundits of right-wing talk radio were in heaven.  George W. Bush pushed the war as a “just war” to destroy weapons of mass destruction and to prevent another attack on America. He said that, and Americans believed it, despite the fact that Iraq had no such weapons and the United States had more of such weapons than the rest of the world combined. Only America and a select few other countries, has the right to such weapons. Everyone else’s use of them is somehow illegitimate.

Paranoia like that which has engulfed the United States leads to such magisterial leaps in logic.  And the American right wing feasted on such claims. They saw American acting in rightful defense from attack by a dangerous other. A follower of Satan. It was a battle of civilizations and religions against each other. The Americans also believed naively that the people of Iraq would immediately drop their weapons and turn on their own leaders as soon as they caught a glimpse of the righteous leaders of America.

As Glenn Beck, one right wing commentator said, “I truly believe that these Mullahs are far worse than Hitler. Hitler was crazy evil. I believe these guys are biblically evil.”  He also said, Nancy Pelosi and her acolytes want us to lose in Iraq. They want there to be chaos in Afghanistan. They want this. They’re rooting against their own country.”

The Dixie Chicks (later called “the Chicks”), until then were one of the most successful bands in America but when their leader said they were “disappointed in the president of the United States,” they were cancelled around the country. Radio stations across the country banned their music. Some radio stations hired steam rollers to crush their CDs. Some set up fires to burn their CDs and they became a favoured villain on American talk radio. All that for saying they were disappointed in their president!

Yet thousands of people also protested against the war on terror launched by George W. Bush. Glenn Beck organized a rally against those who opposed the war and their perceived  “liberal” allies. He called these “rallies for America” and dozens were held across the country. Beck said Americans should pay more attention to the torture chambers organized by Iraq then spending so much time criticizing the American president. The rallies were huge in many America cities. There were more than 100 such events in America and Canada. Thousands of people waved little America flags. One of them at one of these rallies had a tattoo of the twin towers burned across his entire back.

The devoted followers of American right-wing extremists were ecstatic. They had a new enemy to replace the evil communists who had been successfully defeated, only of course to rise again in the form of right-wing populists or right-wing dictators.