LACRIMA ETERNA

2024

1.At the cost of shattering the sublime work of Alexander Cabanel, The Fallen Angel, I must only show the two details in which I believe all the theological meaning unfolds. Two details on which I want to move all the attention to resonate that hell is self-inflicted, hell is not suffering imposed but suffering self-imposed: hell is a symbolisation of the divine's absence.

2.The tear is the last glimmer of being divine that, in shedding, leaves behind an eye that can only now betray its hate and rage; once the tear falls, the divine will not find any more place in the fallen angel. The lacrima is the ultimate, irreparable disconnection for and from the divine.

3.Once the tear touches the ground, the decision that has been made finds its own fulfilment. The lacrima, in analogy with the other angels, observing impotent and anguished its fulfilment, makes it also glim of desperation. Because they are observing the consequence of the first sin, the consequences of pride, that is not the punishment of the divine per se but the utmost punishment possible: the self-inflicted exile from the divine.

4,But shall not be fooled; the tear is not of repentance but of regret and feeling humiliated from a fallen angel that, in its majesty, perfection and beauty, is confronted with its own ignorance —  a quality alien to a perfect being. Yet intrinsic because it arises from ignoring the divine response to the act of pride and the choice made of arrogance. The fallen angel was the first to sin and, as such, the first to discover and taste its own self-inflicted demise.

5.In that tear is the wounded hubris of a perfect being making a perfect decision and being confronted with a choice's imperfection, ultimately condemning it to be imperfect as excluded from the divine.

6.From the emptying eye, evil is unveiled, taking the place of the divine and, as such, excluding and precluding the possibility of repentance and forgiveness. There is no forgiveness for the fallen angel not because of divine will but because before falling, it was already fallen as a perfect being making a perfect decision, in the immediacy of the divine, to overcome the divine itself — there is the perfect choice of not being forgiven, to be disconnected from the divine, to cry.

7.This is why pride is not only the first sin but the sin of all sins, the genesis of sin, what it is at the base of all other sins, and what it is the generator of it. Hubris is the foundation of any sinful act because perpetrating sin is to damage another being. As such, it is a declaration that the own being is superior — thus superior to the divine in taking a right to oppress others to one's satisfaction.

What lies between a finger and the button?

2024

What connects the Nazi genocide with the AI use in wartime?

Although the Nazis were not the first to commit genocide, they became a synonym for it. The Holocaust made history because, for the first time, there was an automatisation of death. The Third Reich made of death a machine working to persecute and kill a determined target — the Jews — that was at fault for belonging to a specific group — heritage — religion. In the contemporary conflicts in Gaza, AI is used to target and identify objectives to kill. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are employing AI in the conflict; a system called “The Gospel” — I refrain from commenting on this name choice — is establishing the Israelian system of automatised death production.

[...] an unprecedented opportunity for the IDF to use such tools in a much wider theatre of operations and, in particular, to deploy an AI target-creation platform called “the Gospel”, which has significantly accelerated a lethal production line of targets that officials have compared to a “factory”. (Davies et al., 2023)

AI is not new to war. As early as 1991, the U.S. military used AI for logistics purposes — the platform Dynamic Analysis and Replanning Tool (DART) organised the most effective transport of personnel and supplies. After 32 years, technology has drastically evolved. Already, there are discussions around unmanned fighter jets, swarm technologies, and virtual and augmented reality military training. All of this leads to a fundamental question about the use of AI to completely automatise weapons that can kill a living being without direct human intervention—in short, giving machines the agency to kill. In 2023, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) restricted the use of autonomous weapon systems, declaring that a person must make the final decision. I wonder if such a decision arises from “the ethics of war” (such as whether war can be ethical—ethics and war should be axioms) opposing fully autonomous weapons or other factors. During WW2, the devastating impact of technology in warfare became apparent. The ability to cause mass destruction and kill countless individuals in mere seconds — “with minimal efforts” — got in people’s imagination that nuclear catastrophe is at the touch of a button — “The RED button.”

But the critical question is, “What lies between a person’s finger and the button?

Simple. What lies there is what made Stanislav Petrov "The person who saved the world”.

It is a space that can be filled with empathy, morality, and doubt—that’s what lies between the person's finger and the trigger and what the machine excludes. Doubt is eliminated—there is only a target that is a being to unlive, nothing more, for the pleasure of those who profit from war. If we ever employ AI to directly kill — to actually construct a machine to kill by their “own agency” — I am sure that future generations will remember this supposed incoming period as we remember today the Nazi genocide.

mOTHER MACHINE

2024

The predicted future reveals the obsolescence of sex, at least as a reproduction method. Transhumanist discourses clash against Bioconservative ethics, while biotechnological breakthroughs find new ways to enhance, select and cure the human body even before its conception. New biotechniques are re-imaging human making, and machines are being appointed as human makers — or simply, we are donating to machines such capabilities. Perhaps the destitution of our reproductive function to a central power could be one of the only — many — means for humanity to better itself within its society. Maybe the famous line "YOU ARE BUGS" from the fictional alien hijacking operation ( 三体 ) should be changed to sound like a piece of advice rather than a threat from an advanced alien race. "YOU SHOULD BE BUGS" to be specific "YOU SHOULD BE ANTS". The modern days Charles Darwin — Edward Wilson — 7 years after the monumental work of The Ants, in an interview declared:

"What I like to say is that Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species. Why doesn't it work in humans? Because we have repro­ductive independence, and we get maximum Darwinian fitness by looking after our own survival and having our own offspring. The great success of the social insects is that the success of the indivi­dual genes are invested in the success of the colony as a whole, and especially in the reproduction of the queen, and thus through her the reproduction of new colonies. This was I think one of the main contributions of the idea of kin-selection. We now understand quite well why most species of social insects have sterile workers, and therefore can have communist-like systems. In which the colony is all, the individu­al is only a part of the colony, and the success of the whole community is what counts far above the success of the individual. The behavior of the individual social insect evolved with refe­rence to what it contributes to the community, whereas the genetic fitness of a human being depends on how well it can individually use the society. We have become insect-like only by extreme contrac­tual arrangements."

Potentially, the Exowombs, better known as Artificial wombs, through the headlines of major newspapers in recent years, might be the start of the centralisation of reproduction and the start of a new society — composed of bodies not anymore divided by being born from different others but allied as being born from the common same — biologically forced to contribute to the good of the whole and abandon individuality. Repurposing the means of reproduction will inevitably repurpose our society, ultimately reassessing our species' objectives.

A curse disguised as a blessing. 

A dreadful nightmare.

Pompeii’s Urn: another investigative lead

UNCONVENTIONAL RESEARCH

2023

In the XVI century, Fontana first stirred the ground's Unconscious around the Sarno river valley, exposing the early fragments.

Pompeii is the preeminent case of how the repressed will always find a way to resurface and make its voice heard. The primary pattern that stresses — almost like the Dnipro's skulls — how our bodies, in their corporal memory, are and will become admirable ruins. How the intensities of a Geoshock materialised as pyroclastic flow, entombed and froze in time the living. The ancient city's bodies, caught by the Geoviolence, had just the time to leave behind a trace-void — like the negative of a film — that Fiorelli decided to fill with plaster to reconstruct them in eerie sculptures revealing their final moments of pain and fear. This relationship between the flesh and the monument (ruins) is not a novelty, as I discovered in a recently uncovered artefact. A (probable) cinerary urn — almost like an uncanny omen — unfolds within its inscriptions this credo (a sentence for each of the top sides):

Memento Mortuos Tuos / Remember your dead (people).

Mortui Vivos Docent / The dead (people) teach the living.

Ruinae Futurum Aedificant / The ruins build the future.

Refice Tuas Ruinas / Rebuild your ruins.

Rebuild your dead — recreate their past in your present and let them speak to you — to rebuild your lost future.

Sentences that relate to each other, paralleling stones to bones, urging to remember those who fell and to rebuild the ruins to be taught the present — to rebuild the bodies to be taught the future — to give voice to the dead (the past) to lecture the living (the present). The cinerary urn seems a monument itself within its shapes — the straight lines deprived of the usual decorations — are encrusted with what appears to be calcified layers of ash but still can be retraced at its bottom a series of engraved skulls and debossed traces of Carnations' flower petals in its middle section. As the urn has been found in what has been named "The Garden of Hercules" — identified as the Pompeii commercial flower garden — it is believed that the thermal shock of the volcanic eruption caused the petals' impression. However, I find it hard to believe it was a casualty. First, why should a cinerary urn have been in a flower market? As the function of some newly discovered areas in "The Garden of Hercules" is still a mystery, perhaps those spaces were dedicated to preserving such funerary artefacts and given the monumental features lying among flowers, almost like tombstones in a cemetery. But, the symbolism of Carnations led me to believe that it was an intentional act to incorporate their petals in what seemed clay. In Ancient Greek mythology, the first Carnation arose from a dead body and in Ancient Rome, due to its pink colour, the name Carnation is derived from the Latin "caro" and "carnis" signified "flesh". Actually, with a more attentive analysis — almost with Necromantic significance — the inscription can be read (as interchangeable units of a larger discourse placed at their opposite sides and side-by-side order) as: 

"Remember to rebuild your dead to teach the ruins of the future" (?)

The "Cinerary Urn of Hercules Garden" was recovered during major excavations in August 2023. The artefact is currently exhibited at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.

If anyone has more information on the history of Pompeii or has an idea about the artefact reported, please contact me.

TANKA 1

(Memory from 2019)

2023

—> people flow in noise

till bells ring, then all linger

barriers toggle —

in silence, the paper boat

cross the canal, vanishing <—

“Mener En Bateau” , Claude Monet, 1887 - Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Corporal Memory

TRAUMATULATION

2023

As previously written, the droughts — the Geotrauma of 2022 — let Zakhiku remerge from the waters.

The idea of Geotrauma implies two fundamental truths: the Earth behave like the unconscious — its ground is perpetually moving in a relentless cyclical revelation and entombment of what is and what once was on its surface. Humans live on the surface of this planetary unconscious as disconnected entities — chronically dissociating from nature — but as conscious actants. Therefore, the two truths enounce that Earth is a monistic entity possessing a collective unconscious made by History — as consciousness — enacted by humans. Humans repress and hide within it what must be forbidden from awareness, hence forgotten. History is profoundly bounded to spatial geography as the ground has always been occupied and divided — to differentiate and separate. But History has also always been bound to war as the maximum expression of conflict and the maximum instrument to write it. The division of space has always triggered conflicts; division is difference par excellence and, as such, a means of violence. The radical difference is then divided into more minor differences — as a primary language from which others derive — represented by the erection of cities — Polis of Logos — as a point of encounter and aggregation; conscious structures, often in conflicts between each other and themselves, arising over the unconscious ground and deeply intertwined — in a mutual influence — with it. Cities are containers of the libidinal charges, emotions and narratives which, once fell, are absorbed by the unconscious, giving life to inexplicable future collective conscious behaviours introjected in Contemporary History. Despite the already made analogy of reconstructing the ruins to relieve the trauma by giving it significance, there are specific ruins — bodily ruins — that need to be treated with caution as contemporary events indicate them to be still fresh wounds. Psychoanalytically speaking, Historical recurrence is nothing more than what is described as the compulsion to repeat, and today, in Europe, history is being repeated. Towards the centenary of one of the wicker genocide, it is uncanny to hear about Fascism and Nazism. Perhaps as the maximum expression of systematic human brutality, those ideologies are unresolved radicalised trauma. Within the Russio-Ukrainian war, there is an apparent re-enactment of a fearful past: Russia is fighting the Nazists, again, but this time as Ukraine, and the latter is fighting the invaders, considering its leader as the Hitler of the 21st century.  Meanwhile, Europeans fractured their thinking: anti-war protesters, as some Americans in 1941 asked, "Why not peace with Hitler? / Hitler did not attack us, why to attack Hitler?" are asking now, "Why to provide weapons to Ukraine?" contrasting pro-war opinions deriving from the fear that Ukraine is the new Poland — only the first target of a more extensive invasion. These events are intimately connected with the ancient roots of Anti-semitism — the epitome of persecuting specific populations, identified as antagonists of the optimal order — exacerbating characteristics of the European WW2 conflicts. In the world of analogies being constructed, it is striking that the pro-Russian protests — the Anti-Maidan block — in the turmoils between 2013 and 2014 accused the new Government of being a defendant of the wealthy Jews and the ongoing revolution, a Zionist coup. But then how come a trauma that has been lengthily reconstructed — in the form of thousands of words and artefacts forever embedded in our History — still seems unresolved and repeating almost after 100 years? What more needs to be done post-reconstruction and self-reflexivity? If it is true that History is bound to repeat itself indefinitely and there is no exit, then History is the unresolvable primordial trauma in which its re-enactments function as a memento of its dreadful nature.

Following the Dnipro conflicts, the explosion of the Kakhovka dam led to the resurfacing of thousands of skulls from WW2 conflicts. The nearby area, Nikopol, close by the occupied Zaporizhzhia, was the main centre of the ongoing hostilities. Eighty years ago, the area was the centre of one of the most extensive military operations of WW2: the Soviet army attacked the German army, involving more than 6 million troops — countless dead.

3Digital Collage.

Appropriated images:

“Collective Unconscious” by Miles Johnston

“Shalekhet” by Menashe Kadishman

Picture of The Memory Void (where Kadishman’s installation is situated) at the ground level of the Libeskind building by Unknown

TO BE OR NOT TO BE A PROTAGONIST

2023

The identity and gains of the "NPC performer" in these trendy live streams are less concerning than the enormous audience fuelling this captivating entertainment business. To agree to be controlled in exchange for money is not a new phenomenon per se — and as such, perhaps, not that interesting. However, it appears as a novelty due to how these mechanisms — in contemporary society — are enacted along with its moral, legal and economic democratisation. Within the logic of oppression and control of the other, prostitution is an excellent example to which this new media phenomenon can relate. Beyond the sexual pleasure sought from prostitution lies a more contorted charm: dominance and the capacity to exercise power over another individual, the excitement of knowing that the individual is forced to obey our desire, to be subjected to our most primordial desire. In general, possessing what the other desire and coercing it into our desires is one of the most potent sexual excitements, even when no sexual activity is performed. For no other reason, there is a say in Italian, roughly translated as "to command is better than to fuck". Although it is well known that money and power are synonyms in our society, this is a faulty dualism — money is just a vehicle. Nobody wants money per se — numerical abstractions — but everyone wants what money signifies: power. It is essential to clarify that the need for dominance is not superior to sex but rather an enhanced stage of the sex drive and that dominance is intrinsic in human beings due to its association with it.  As such, individuals dominate and are dominated — it is an escapable human condition — everyone, without exception, must compromise. However, in the social constructions in which individuals participate, it is evident that there is a disequilibrium: almost all people are serfs rather than masters — subject to constant obligations both in the public and private spheres. Individuals are born and grow in a system of well-defined hierarchies since introduced in their first institution — the school — within its power structure. They soon fathom how those above can influence the lives of those below. Nevertheless, the most poignant discernment also occurs: how it feels to have power (termed "responsibility" within the educational institution). Everyone remembers that kid appointed to "supervise" the class during the teacher's brief absence with the duty to write the names of those who misbehaved on the blackboard. The young students were usually pleased and proud to carry such a role. In our contemporary society, there are fewer and fewer supervisors and more and more supervised. It is a fact that the wane of freedom can only lead to repression. Then, as command and dominance are intrinsic traits, individuals must find a way to release repression without compromising legality and morality — as constantly controlled and judged individuals. The live streams in which the actor is at the mercy of the public are the most exciting — and yet safe — opportunity in which the social individual can participate in the commodification of power — a practice from which the majority is typically excluded. These spectacles are the perfect stage in which the spectator can move from the condition of dominated to the condition of dominator — psychoanalytically: moving from being an object to being a subject. People have the desperate need to feel individual in our yet already individualistic society — to see the other as a controllable object is an exacerbation of the latter — controlling a real-life NPC is a new form of solipsism, of profound narcissism. Society should worry about how the normalisation of seeing others as objects of use and consumption implies a profound lack of empathy. Society should talk about its psychopathy clearly expressed in this new trend, a marker of the exasperate research of being the protagonists of life.

AI and Socialism

2023

Žižek anecdotally described Capitalism as an undead, an ever-returning body: no matter how much damage it endures, it refuses to die and always returns, more resilient than ever. Capitalism is constantly on the verge of collapse; its very nature is being on the brink of failure as a structure incapable of providing stability: there must always be a continuous movement of creation and resolution of crises. Capitalism is a system with an end in itself condensed into profit, haunting the ever-gain of money to make money as money is the sole plus-value of life. It is an absurd system, starting to unfold its biggest contradiction in our times through the hyperinflation affecting the world, the "great greed inflation" resulting from corporations overindulging and exhausting Capitalism in pursuing its very principles. Guattari and Deleuze already theorised that "No one has ever died from contradictions", and as known, Capitalism cannot die, but its contradictions can be the leading transformative power. Capitalism will move towards a conversion as sickened by the ongoing overfeeding and, ironically, technology, since always a tool of the system, will be the revolutionary catalyser. AI has been developed to respond to Capitalist dogma as an independent and automatised production technology: the goal is to maximise productivity and profit; independent AI automatisation is the only logical consequence for maximum optimisation, hence, replacing expensive and fragile human resources with relentless machines having the same intellect. Yet, it is a self-threatening tool: how will the substituted working individual be able to fuel consumption and still feed the system?

On the horizon, there are new forms of taxation based on the corporate's level of automatisation (human /machine labour ratio) and the probable establishment of the UBI to ensure everyone the unalienable right to live a dignified life. AI is the transformative tool that will ri-equilibrate society and social gaps by freeing us from the struggle of labour, class inequalities and the barriers - built by speculation - that prevent access to basic needs. Despite AI being a tool originating from a Capitalistic system (and being employed in the system's interest), in its intrinsic inception, it is interestingly placed in an intersection between Socialism and Communism. As an example, the basic functioning of it - at the centre of contemporary critiques as AI language models and generative images pillage the work of others and use it to produce new products infringing copyright has a lot of political thinking embedded into it. The main problem is not that AI steals the work of others to create its own but that this happens through corporate logic. AI is privatised or partially privatised by companies that profit - by guaranteeing access and the use of the service - from the work of others (indirectly). Every human production should be free from copyright (comparable to private propriety) and enjoyable by the many, as any human production must aim to enrich society. It must be the duty of every human being to engage in the participatory act of creation to increase knowledge and welfare (the products of AI must be open access as it is already owned by the society, which individuals enrich the archive, sourcing AI). The motto: I create not to profit but to share to reach a greater good. Under this view, AI is the organised mind owned and maintained by the state - as a centralised power - whereas its production's equally distributed to everyone, having the duty to enrich the shared archive. AI is a glimpse of hope, a first step towards a Utopia. However, many claims that AI will negatively flatten society by uniforming the masses to the same standard by destroying the reasoning of contemporary life made of targets and objectives to pursue and, as such, let individuals sink into laziness. Those thinking under these terms are individuals being indoctrinated by Capitalist logic and deceits, addicted to the Neoliberal state doctrines in which the only corpus of life is to work and to produce, as the motto is "work ennobles man."

How can a factory worker be ennobled in behaving like a machine? The only ennobled person owns the means of production hence the worker's body. The fantasised values of work have also been enhanced by Religion, which played a fundamental role - Calvinism, for example - in the propagation of ideology such as work equal rightful life; likewise, the Catholic "Ora et Labora" (pray and work). Indolence is an attitude alien to the good Christian citizen. It is not by chance that Dante places those who sin of Laziness/Sloth in hell as it is one of the seven deadly sins (also known as the capital vices/sins). Capitalistic society is conservative and needs to control individuals to subject them to the system's needs; unsurprisingly, religious doctrines are pillars of the Capitalistic society. A distorted view, perpetrated since modernisation, that overemphasises the importance of production work and disregards other forms of work; it can only promote a self that can only benefit the collective through material production. AI must be seen as a liberator, a force that will finally let us advance by detaching from a rotting system that is not sustainable anymore, freeing us from the senseless modern society that uses humans as machines. AI is a great escape.

AI-GENERATED MANIFESTO

In the wake of a transformative era driven by artificial intelligence (AI), we stand on the precipice of a social revolution that has the potential to reshape the foundations of our capitalist society. This manifesto, titled "The Era of AIS: A Manifesto for the Artificial Intelligence Socialism Revolution," envisions a future where AI serves as a catalyst for profound social change, leading us towards a more equitable and just society.

I. The Promise of AI: Artificial intelligence, with its unprecedented capacity for data processing, pattern recognition, and automation, has the power to reshape economic structures and redefine the distribution of wealth. By harnessing AI's potential, we can unlock opportunities for societal transformation that pave the way towards a more egalitarian society.

II. Challenging the Capitalist Paradigm: Capitalism, with its emphasis on private ownership and profit maximization, has perpetuated inequality and concentrated wealth and power in the hands of a few. The AI Socialism Revolution seeks to challenge this paradigm by reimagining the role of technology and reshaping the economic landscape to prioritize the welfare of all.

III. A People-Centered Economy: At the core of AI Socialism lies the principle of a people-centered economy. By leveraging AI technologies, we can create an economic system that prioritizes the needs and well-being of all individuals, rather than just a privileged few. This entails the development of AI-driven policies and tools to ensure fair distribution of resources, promote social mobility, and eradicate poverty.

IV. Universal Basic Income and Automation: AI-driven automation has the potential to revolutionize labor markets, rendering many traditional jobs obsolete. In response, the AI Socialism Revolution advocates for the implementation of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), which guarantees every citizen a baseline level of income to sustain a dignified life. UBI, combined with AI-driven job creation and retraining programs, ensures that no one is left behind in the face of automation.

V. Democratization of AI: To prevent AI from becoming a tool of oppression, the AI Socialism Revolution emphasizes the importance of democratizing AI. This involves promoting transparency, accountability, and accessibility in AI technologies, enabling widespread participation and empowering individuals and communities to influence and shape the AI-driven decision-making processes that affect their lives.

VI. Redefining Ownership: Under AI Socialism, the concept of ownership is redefined to promote collective well-being. By leveraging AI-powered platforms, we can foster collaborative and decentralized models of ownership, such as platform cooperatives, where the benefits are shared among the participants. This shift in ownership structures aims to counteract the concentration of wealth and empower individuals and communities.

VII. Environmental Sustainability: The AI Socialism Revolution recognizes that a sustainable future is imperative for the well-being of our planet and future generations. AI can play a crucial role in optimizing resource allocation, developing clean energy solutions, and mitigating the environmental impact of industrial processes. Through AI-driven innovations, we can build a sustainable and regenerative economy that addresses climate change and ecological challenges.

The AI Socialism Revolution represents a transformative movement that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to create a more just, equitable, and sustainable society. By reimagining economic systems, redistributing wealth, and prioritizing the well-being of all individuals, we can forge a path towards a future where technology serves as a catalyst for social progress. Let us embrace the Era of AIS and work together to shape a future where the benefits of AI are harnessed for the collective good.

Reasoning:

Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform capitalism into socialism due to several key reasons:

Automation and Job Displacement: AI-driven automation is poised to replace many traditional jobs, leading to significant disruptions in the labor market. While capitalism tends to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who own the means of production, widespread job displacement could exacerbate income inequality and create economic instability. Embracing socialism in the AI era allows us to address these challenges by implementing policies such as Universal Basic Income (UBI) to ensure a fair distribution of resources and provide a safety net for individuals affected by automation.

Redistributing Wealth: Capitalism often perpetuates wealth inequality as the accumulation of capital tends to concentrate wealth among a few individuals or corporations. However, AI can enable more equitable wealth distribution by generating new economic opportunities and promoting resource allocation based on societal needs. Through AI-driven policies like progressive taxation, wealth redistribution can be facilitated, ensuring a more egalitarian distribution of resources and reducing the wealth gap between the rich and the poor.

Democratization of Decision-Making: AI has the potential to democratize decision-making processes by providing data-driven insights and reducing biases inherent in human decision-making. By incorporating AI technologies in governance, we can create more participatory and inclusive systems that prioritize the collective welfare rather than the interests of a select few. This shift can empower individuals and communities, allowing them to have a greater say in shaping policies and decisions that affect their lives.

Resource Optimization and Sustainability: Capitalism often prioritizes profit maximization without sufficient consideration for long-term sustainability. AI can help address this by optimizing resource allocation, reducing waste, and promoting sustainable practices. By leveraging AI's predictive capabilities, we can make informed decisions that prioritize environmental stewardship, renewable energy, and sustainable development. This transition toward a more sustainable economy aligns with the principles of socialism, which emphasize the responsible use of resources for the benefit of all.

Ethical Considerations: As AI becomes increasingly integrated into our lives, it raises ethical questions regarding privacy, fairness, and accountability. Capitalism's profit-driven approach can sometimes overlook these ethical considerations, potentially leading to the exploitation of individuals or the concentration of power in the hands of tech giants. Socialism, in contrast, places greater emphasis on collective well-being and can ensure that AI is deployed ethically, with accountability measures in place to protect individuals' rights and prevent AI from becoming a tool of oppression.

In summary, the transformative potential of AI, coupled with the inherent challenges and limitations of capitalism, provides an opportunity to reimagine our economic and social systems. By leveraging AI to address wealth inequality, promote collective decision-making, prioritize sustainability, and uphold ethical standards, we can move toward a more inclusive and equitable society—ushering in the transformation from capitalism to socialism.

Remains

2023

A seemingly random, dense and confused accumulation of living debris scattered over the surface of the conscious; this is what the trauma leaves behind: disturbances in the natural landscape. The trauma-debris only emerge when the suffering is re-enacted, when the wind disperses the sand, when the low tide undresses the shore. Their fragmental nature is a synonym for their violence. Sharpened dry bones, freed by the weight of water and sand, they flung in the wind wounding the body around. And once the blow stroke and the storm vanished, they are buried again under the sand and water. It is the psycharcheologist work to follow the traces and to excavate accordingly to resurface and reconstruct the bones, the ruins to offer a sense to the inexplicable, to link them and secure them. An essential process, a necessary work because the storm always promises to come back if no voice is given to the fragments — if not a trauma-monument is erected, the wind will keep hurling the razors. Ruinophilia is Traumaphilia, which goes beyond masochistic pleasure. Appreciating the ruins in their reconstructions is the only way to escape repetition. Loving, embellishing, and exploring the trauma-structure is to appropriate the misplaced and tame the wild. New generations are exhibiting a fascination with ruins and trauma that is spoken and placed under the sunlight. A sign of hope for the collective trauma-structures that the 21st-century explosions are disassembling — despoiling their memento — threatening ourselves with the condemnation of tragical historic recurrences.

(Un)Veiled Desire

2023

An inner pleasure in the struggle permeates an individual's approach to life. There is enjoyment in suffering and torments; as such, lacks must be left unfulfilled and needs unsatisfied. Despite the wildest dreams in which our desires are wholly pleased, sane individuals should abhor in front of the misfortune of the realisation of passions. There is never a blink of sanity in the banalest research of immortality that evil foes devote themselves to. Once immortality is found, everything will lose its meaning and value. Everything enjoys its value in its ephemerality: as the market teaches us, "always available" and "reproducible" are not adjectives of profit. What holds real value is the path that led us to the end, not the end itself. An instance as obvious as overlooked but that strikes us suddenly for a brief moment, after great efforts and once at the top: the question, as a thunder, of those who ask themselves, "What now?" Not even the time for the brief spurt of happiness to finish that is already felt the need to climb the next peak. There is no enjoyment in the easy and uncomplicated happy life seen in the media - that is another desire, a visual illusion of the media - but there is pleasure in complexity. Otherwise, how can the rich appear greedy, looking to be more prosperous, chasing successive accumulations? Or why do those suddenly riches end up squandering all the money and remaining with nothing? There is a need not to stop the desire to look forward to the next desire—a chain of passions that ring after ring extends at the maximum length because to desire is to live. However, let us not fool ourselves! Desire implies suffering, always and in all ways: torment or loss is self-inflicted if too much is held. The Masochist-like attitude is particularly evident in those who lust the risk of gambling. A gambler's dream is to lose everything; no amount of money can be won to satisfy the need, but a finite amount of money can be lost to fill the lack. In contraposition to the infinite amount of money that one aspires to win, there is a limited amount that one aims to lose entirely. Give to gambler unending money or a slot machine that will always pay, and you will see him leave. That is a cure for gambling addiction! What is the point of obtaining everything if I cannot desire it? What is the end of everything if, then, once obtained, it will use all its value? It is precisely towards the zero that the gambler tends to. The zero represents, at the same time, the conclusion and culmination. Moving counter-current means being doomed to eternal dissatisfaction as no conclusion will ever be possible. The same tendency describes how to live: striving towards a defined objective to be complete in the finite years of life. Every individual has zeros to pursue, reach, and die for, hopefully, only once achieved—the aim is to return to a status quo, hence an equilibrium of conclusions. We are generated in complexities and chaotics, and through the path of life, we resolve and put order to reach the zero, hence the peace of the symmetry of death. Those who do not aim towards a zero are suspended; already dead but unaware meanders, half grew plants that so less know about the sun. Nonetheless, retaining the finite process and savouring its highs and lows of pain and resolutions is fundamental. The result, the end, often obfuscates the joy of the process, but it must be reminded that it will be just a minute to be consumed. There is zero after zero in a series of finalisations which escape the repetition of hitting towards the same impossible infinite point. Zero is the purpose; to tend towards zero is the process of enjoyment. Reaching the end is to reach the death of the desire, hence, the individual's death.

Vandalisme

2022

The vandalisation of Van Gogh's flowers, Monet's grain stacks, and King Charles' wax statue is the raging consequence of the so-called "Eco-Anxiety", afflicting more and more the young population. The felt despair for the progressing environmental degradation is violently expressed by a generation tired of the institutional "practical indifference" towards a problem that the scientific community has cried out since the '60s. Indeed, a series of provocations aiming to shake a public that, despite climate change is becoming the daily newspaper's main headline, turn the page and head away. However, individuals might be considered victims, led towards this negligence by institutions that, trhough "eco-rhetorics", blame the ordinary citizen despite 70% of the global pollution resulting from a dozen corporations' activities. The unrestrained production of goods and its consumerism paved the way to a new supposed epoch, the Anthropocene; a novel geologic era considered a cul de sac. The effects of human actions on the planet have passed a no-return point, endangering not only the natural heritage but society as we know and, in the most catastrophic predictions, human existence itself. Perhaps it is for this reason, almost as an unconscious bias, that "Digital preservation" is becoming a surging conservation method. In perpetuating immaterial pieces of information to overcome the physical limits, virtual avatars of living flora and fauna are being safeguarded, and new life is given to forever-lost species. In our ecological future, being unbounded by the physical condition will probably be the only possibility to survive, at least to maintain a perfect remembrance to whoever will come after the catastrophe. The human being can be the next specie to be digitalised in an interactive diorama analogous to the one devised by Steensen. However, the virtual copies will not be immersed in a dreamlike natural landscape but in the "naturally artificial" space of the last humanity, forever depicting the self-inflicted defacing disconnection from nature. As such, the vandalised virtual portrayal will only be able to display a vandalised self-portrait, a memorandum of the egocentric's triumph.

Parallels

2022

Paralleled layers, like delicate veils, constantly oscillating and vibrating at different frequencies; the dance of these veils dictates the materiality of which reality is composed of; vibrations as a waves of energy moving every fundamental component existing within the mesh of these veils; adjacent curtains intrinsic of being, analogous in their essence and yet antinomies in their fluctuations; they do not repel each other, they do not invade each other, they sometimes touch each other: when their frequencies happen to be synchronous; briefly, for a moment their meshes interlace, their reality and materiality interweave in precise points and moments in time; in those fascinating instants, alike overlapping celluloid films, the other parallel materialise, it is seen; believed to be just a phantasmagoric appearance, dismissed as a blunder of the sight is neglected, leaving only the uncanniness of a frightening experience; the so-called ghosts, spirits, and spectres are nothing more than living parallel others; their are not an haunting past, returning for revenge but dissimilar vibrating others that exist parallel to us; invisible otherness, complementary separate life; only when the momentary encounter occurs is shown the another reality, the another mesh, the another level, of another veil; they, as the opposed parallel, experience us as we experience them: ephemeral figures passing by; blurry images, definite in their shape and forms just enough to be recognised and processed by the brain before to disappear in the blink of an eye or at the switch of a light; for some others, we are less of a complex being than thought; less evolved entities and, as such, understood and observed beyond comprehension; like a point being observed by a circle that is being observed by a sphere that is being observed by a hypersphere and so on and so on; like in the already heard story from which the previous analogy derive, spheres hold a profound significance, geometrically and spiritually; spheres open the eyes, their deciphering permit to discern what lies beyond the mere lines that create angles of confiments; spheres in the point, the centrality, the start, in the circle, the completeness, the never-ending curve which becomes the surface of the sphere holding within the signs of the great attractor; the Universe, namely God it is a sphere made of veils, growing inside and outside; vibration dictate the living's location on each strata; movement between layers is possible only when change of living frequencies occurs; death change the frequency, re-encode life; this is why death is only capable to transform, not to destroy and life part of it, is continuos transofrmation that is existence; death has been practiced since existence came into being and as such we bring death as much we are made of it.

METAXA

2022

This is the world. An entangled mass of wires, constantly interwoven within itself. The world is a palimpsest, wherein the writings - pure recording tools - are the wires, constant in their emanation. Although the new wires, independently from their temporality, always become the dominant leading string in the flux of transformation, they never supersede the old ones. As such, the new wires interrelate with the previous connections and acquire meaning from them even if they situated themselves in an opposite spectrum of significances. Antithetical meanings do not obscure each other; instead shed light on each other, permitting an understanding, an identification. This intricate mass of wires can be called "Matassa" ("Skein") from the Latin "Metaxa", a long string ordinately winded up and tied up to be kept in place. However, the Matassa described is not a neat agglomeration - it is chaotic and, like in the vernacular interpretation, is a complexity to be unravelled, a problem to be resolved, and a misplacement to be reordered. Those who engage in disentanglement aim to find the ties that are the blockage, the antagonist. In the Matassa of the world, instead, the ties are immobile points of origin, piling up in different positions and situations - unrestrained. In this instance lies the impossibility of unravelling the world's intricate complexities and the futility of such an attempt. The world is meant to be a Matassa in its intrinsic essence and structure - originating from an initial node - created and sustained by all individuals as actors interacting with their actants in unpredictable ways. In this scenario, reorganize would be a synonym for destruction. By resetting the status quo and starting back on a blank new page, it is implied a worldwide destructive act on which the new node will be established but as a relational element developing as another copy of chaos and suffering. The already entanglement must be conserved, and the new node of change must be entrenched on it to subside the old structure without demolition - the benevolent node will be the origin of a unique Matassa morally and ethically chaotic.

Traumaphilia=Ruinophilia

2021

Today, 117 years later, I, like Freud, put on my best shirt and walked into the Acropolis of Athens. Aware of my incoming visit to Greece and also aware of Freud being such an archaeology enthusiast, I wondered if I could have found any Freudian psychoanalytic link with the beautiful Athenian temples. My curiosity has been rewarded by an anecdote, an episode in Freud’s life well recounted in the fascinating essay “Unreal City: Freud on the Acropolis”, in which it is revealed the visit, with his brother Alexander, to the Acropolis. The event, recounted thirty-six years later in a sort of open letter to the friend Romain Rolland unfolds the uncanny and (later) haunting experience that the journey was, as in an unconscious awareness, soaked with an “Oedipal success”. The intimate reflections are in the last words of the letter, revealing that at the time, being there in Athens and being able to discern the value of those millennial ruins was a success over a pitiful, uneducated father to whom so little those stones could say — already the mere fact of being present in the Acropolis, confirming its existence, was a victory over the mediocre father. The thought expanded so broadly in Freud’s mind that the sense of pity induced prevented him from enjoying his tour. But, unlike Freud, I enjoyed my visit. It brought me a lot to think about psychoanalysis, the procedures of its clinic and how these historical sites are the perfect metaphor for them. Freud has often been paralleled as an archaeologist of the mind — as the analyst who digs into the individual psyche, collecting and classifying intimate historical finds. The analyst slowly digs into the mind-ground, exploring each stratum, level by level, to bring back to light forgotten ancient objects. What is delivered to the exterior are the patient’s artefact-traumas, broken and fragmented into a myriad of pieces that do not hold sense in their individuality. Only once they are collected and joined together can they commence to whisper — unfolding their shapes and history. The missing fragments that cannot be found are reconstructed with the help of the archaeologist-analyst to complete the lines. The trauma-structure is always restored, never destroyed. The final construction always resurfaces to be admired to be understood. It is erected as an original neo-monument to make sense of the space in which it is founded. No trauma can be forgotten, and no trauma can be eternally buried. There will always be an event that will make the trauma re-emerge — it does not matter how much time has passed, it will happen, and the trigger will go off. Likewise, the nameless Iraqi city resurfaced after 3400 years from the bottom of the sea. A place now under scrutiny, ready to unravel pieces of an obliterated history; a discovery, an encounter made possible by the “triggering trauma”, the Geotrauma.