Pictorial 68

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Ah yes, Isaac Asimov’s1950s classically logical 3 laws of robotics – who could improve on them? Mathematics prodigy Stuart Russell, of CHAI Berkeley, has stepped into the breach with

 

Deep thought or shallow throat? Pictorial 1

 

This to me was proof that “they” are all the same. After all, “human behaviour” could be anything from Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers to Neolithic proto-city dwellers to Modern Man.

It’s clear he doesn’t mean human behaviour in the slightest; only the behaviour of the human head when attached to algorithms that facilitate its behaviour. I propose to take this as the ultimate example and prototype of everything else in the modern scene. When “they” say human they mean the detached head that is attached to a machine-facilitator.

To “them” this feeds their egos since they are in a perspective illusion of light (electronics) as opposed to the physic al universe of balance and proportion under the cosmos of stars.

This latter universe is the universe of moral squareness where Man faces his destiny in the flesh and blood movements of action. These are the bastions that have been declared off-limits by the acolytes of perspective illusion – the straight-line logic of finance oiled by words of weasel politicians.

The athletic movements and lifedeath economics of cowboys on the west and meatyards on the east (Pictorial 27). The rumble of buffalo hoofs and the holler of Indian braves. This is human behaviour in the realistic sense of the proportionate balance of the body-in-action.

In that sense, Howard’s historical adventures are realistic and not overburdened with facts that may have the effect of hurting the head without the startlingly grand vistas evoked by prosody.

The moon was setting as Cahal splashed through the calm waters of the Jordan, flecked with the mirrored stars. The sun was rising when his horse fell at the gate of Jerusalem that opens on the Damascus road. Cahal staggered up, half dead himself, and gazing on the crumbled ruins of the shattered walls, he groaned aloud. On foot he hurried forward and a group of placid Syrians watched him curiously. A bearded Flemish man-at-arms came forward, trailing his pike. Cahal snatched a wine-flask that hung at the soldier’s girdle and emptied it at one draft.

“Lead me to the patriarch,” he gasped throatily. “Doom rides on swift hoofs to Jerusalem – ha!”

 (The Sowers of the Thunder, Sword Woman and other Historical Adventures,

page 269)

John Watkiss

The great cities of those far off days – Vienna, Alexandria, Samarcand, Athens – existed under the cosmic symmetry of a physical reality that escapes Modern Man. We who live under the authority of straight-lines and words (Pictorial 67) can no more experience the power and glory of the physical shape of the universe.

That is to say, the universe that reveals its shape in the emanation of psyche. The universe that has an uncertain timescape related to movements of planets (Hyborian Bridge 67). In this setting, there can be no human authority, since none can command the planets.

The physical reality that emanates psyche is distinctly primitive, since there are no straight-lines, nor accurate Rolex watches. Nevertheless, one experiences primitive things and one can’t experience accuracy.

Accuracy is simply the convincing illusion that approaches the vanishing point of technique, or nothingness. One experiences time through the body as a visceral process – the eternal sunset – the power and the glory.

member of Tembe tribe, Alto Rio Guama

el Borak by Jim & Ruth Keegan

Coco Gauff

BWS Fantastic Islands

Howard’s historical adventures take place in a universe that echoes the physical power and glory of the human figure. It’s a universe where the general prospect is mythical, where figures stride like giant shadows over fiery landscapes.

Is it coincidence that the image of a cowboy riding into the sunset has a similar giant shadow? The frontier society departs from straight-line orthodoxy. We are still prisoners of inductive reason and Newton’s knives (C7 etc); prisoners of acolytes who speak because they cannot act.