RE: Faith, Artificial Intelligence and Singularity
There are, fortunately, no artificial angels. AI is fundamentally grounded in denial - denial of a spiritual reality, and in particular a denial that is widespread, even fundamental, in modern science - that there is nothing special about life, that life is mere complexity of matter.
This denial of life and spirit is the identifying characteristic of the influence of Ahriman. But Lucifer is also very much in the game in the pitiful conceit of these ‘engineers’ that they are the cleverest of the clever.
Machines do not have intelligence, they do not think - but they can be expressions of, even in some sense embodiments of, a cold Ahrimanic intelligence which precisely seeks to end human evolution.
As ever, one hopes that Goethe was right when he put these words into the mouth of Mephistopheles:
“I am a part of that force which always desires evil, but which always produces good”.
The fundamental mistake is to think that mere cleverness is the supreme quality of the human being. It is not. There is vastly greater ‘cleverness’ - better described as wisdom - in the universe than any human can hope to emulate; or any machine created by a human.
We will not be saved by cleverness. Cleverness without morality has led us to the brink of annihilation. Our human task, as Rudolf Steiner said, is to transform this planet of wisdom into a planet of love - love in its highest sense as service of the other, whether human, animal, plant, including the beings which stand behind and even literally embody all forms of life.
In the perverted transhumanist vision, the earth and its current inhabitants are of no special significance. Conventional religion is part of the problem because it has effectively denied the spirit in nature.
Regards,
Paul Carline
UK
RE: Apologia
I see the First Class Lessons on the Archive. I just reread you Apologia – it is so well expressed. Thank you for your work, it is important.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA241a/English/eLib2016/FstCl1_apologia.html
Warm blessings,
Kristina Kaine
Australia
* Thank you very much for the PDF files that I requested, per the instructions on the site. I'm especially grateful for that spirit of making such wisdom available to all. I read a few other articles on the site and plan to look at it further and become more familiar with your work.
All the best and thank you,
Dan Morgan
RE: Dementia
Dear Frank,
Thank you for your issue #113. Judith von Halle's thoughts on dementia & the young Rudolf Steiner's 'Ring' were especially appreciated. By the way, just a fun fact: Zoltan Istvan is of Hungarian origin! His real name is István Zoltán.Cheers, Norbert Hanny (from Hungary)
*
From the post on Dementia and Judith von Halle's book, where you quote: "In this way Ahriman tries with every means to take away man’s conscious control of his remembering process." This is a clear misunderstanding of how our memory works. It is we who must wrest this from Ahriman; Ahriman is only doing the job he was created to do - albeit in a way that is when uncontrolled, evil. If you understand evil, it is in the way Rudolf Steiner speaks of it: it is what is good in the wrong place or the wrong time. Dementia is one expression (only one!) of what happens when people are unaware of this - and this is Ahriman's challenge in a nutshell. Those who have dull auras are those less well prepared to understand what it is they should be fighting for and how. Indeed, it is a rare person who does, and they are usually mature but under the age of twenty five. The problem is that these things are so easy to lose! I meet those who at a young age could have taken the keys and worked with them, but in never having met anyone who could inform them, never knew... that is the tragedy of Ahriman that I must live with. Writing of the kind promulgated by von Halle isn't going to help them do this because the way she writes tells me she is one of those I have just spoken about.
Gemma Laming
RE: Kubla KahnThank you, this poem has been on my mind for the last couple of years. Together with Yeats' Second Coming
Magdalena Zoeppritz
Germany
MUY bueno tu ensayo, Frank, en cuanto a la tanatofobia de tu amigo. Es un hecho desagradable del que muchos no pueden maginar su alcance. Los intervalos de la vida los comprendo. Una continuación permanente sería aburrido en cualquier obra de teatro. Ergo los intervalos son necesarios para la obra de la vida hasta que Dios disponga (si lo hace) el final del tiempo.
Carlos Moyano
Argenina
Hi there, I was deprecating the Southern Cross Review on my private site, mainly on account of the front covers... so thought I'd check. Only to find a lady wearing clothes! I also found your spy story, which was really quite special once the hiccups of the first paragraph were out of the way. I loved the 'Moscow Rules' (was that a pinch, or do you really know about these things?) and of course, your boring auras... "So he explained that we were too young and innocent to have interesting auras." But then, auras don't work that way, do they? They're a link to our past, and our future, so they don't really get interesting unless you get up and do something. Those who don't have interesting auras usually, well, don't. If you'd like to know the colours of mine, just ask. Anyway, the story was atmospheric and had the ring of truth to it, in as much it must have fed on some very real memories. That is Ahriman's gift to us, isn't it? And even He can't change the past, can He? Gemma Laming
*
Thanks Frank; once again a real beauty! I wonder how much is documentary and how much is delightful fiction. And: is your mind made up as far as "Hellsichtigkeit"(clairvoyance is the English word?) goes? Kind regards from Potsdam - on a property that was crossed by The Wall (the one that has it's anniversary today!)
Helmut Reichardt
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