A great piece on the many absurdities of AI:
Hi everyone, I haven't been active in Solid Ground for a while, but I am still alive and kicking! I now work as personal assistant to a mind-bendingly weird and diva-esque artist-lip-syncher-performer named Fiona Blueberry. She is blissfully clueless about politics and seems to be completely unaware of the culture wars. Working with her is a breath of fresh air. If you need a mood lift, I encourage you to watch this video we made together. Happy 4th, everyone! Wishing you fun/love/peace on this holiday. :) www.fionablueberry.com
Came across this piece on Substack about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's commencement address at Harvard in 1978. While the piece gets repetitive, it's worth sampling what Solzhenitsyn had to say about the West, to its elites, a full fifty years ago.
Again, this sense that our collapse has been in standing right in front of us all this time, observable to those with eyes to see, as we grapple with what might turn out to be late-stage effects of the loss of a moral and spiritual solid ground (pun intended, ;).
After finishing C.S. Lewis's THE ABOLITION OF MAN, I immediately started again. The good news is that the book is very short, and that the second read is a revelation (at least for this reader). I've repeatedly resisted sharing excerpts w the group, but this time, I can't resist. (I'm repeatedly staggered by how prescient a group of early to mid-twentieth century writers were about what was coming, Lewis among them.)
This excerpt is from "The Abolition of Man" essay; p. 59 of THE ABOLITION OF MAN collection, in my edition. Four paragraphs; emphasis Lewis's:
"I am only making clear what Man's conquest of Nature really means and especially that final stage in the conquest, which, perhaps, is not far off. The final stage is come when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself. Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won. We ...