Starting with
the obvious question from Pictorial 86, exactly what is wrong with the
micro-surgery med-tech Baltimore robocorp Galen? Nothing’s wrong with it –
that’s the whole problem! What it does it does well.
It’s like
saying, “what’s wrong with DNA?” Nothing, it does its job well, almost
perfectly. Modern products are pretty perfect – that’s why it’s such a struggle
working out what is wrong with the system.. a Dyson hoover, a Musk Tesla..
They’re good and
they do what they should, and one of the reasons is that they exist in a
hygienic environment of design and manufacture. This environment is born of
physical boredom which feeds the ego through “the mirror of nothingness” (or
dragonfeed).
What I’m really
saying is, DNA may be perfection PLC, but it’s not reality. It could only be
reality if we lived in a world of data, but that world would be an illusion.
Why? Well,
because data is the dragon the ego feeds off. It is physical boredom. A world
of physical boredom is weak. The physique cannot be denied, and data feeds into
sexual fantasies and psychoses (see Hyborian Bridge 99 reason applied to
pleasure).
This world is
hygienic, born of weakness. It has no ambiance and so is dull, prey to
phantasms of the mind. Strength is dirt and cleanliness. The body conquers
through strength what weakness invites (the dragon of ego-lust).
The real problem
is the world of the dragon (screens) is very convincing to the ego (of the
acolyte) through “the mirror of nothingness”. You remember in Milius’s Conan
(1982) there is “the riddle of steel”? It’s a very interesting riddle, and
there may be more than one answer but, from the perspective of what I’ve been
writing about for awhile, Man is known as the tool maker.
The plot has Conan’s
father forging the sword and telling him, “This you can trust.” Later on,
Thulsa Doom says, “Flesh is strong” (meaning steel is weak). Then, as the end,
Conan is under Thulsa Doom’s hypnotic spell, he sways, lost and faraway, then
sees in his hand his father’s sword, and suddenly strikes!
In a primitive
way, he could have just seen that, “This is my sword in my strong arm – it is
there to kill my enemies.” His mind was cleared of illusion and he struck.
The riddle could
be saying, trust the strength of your arm, your flesh, but not your head which
is also flesh. The world is deceitful and this sword will slice through
illusions. So, it’s not necessarily about a struggle (Howard) or the will
(Nietzsche) as about the head (brain) versus the body (brawn). As a side-issue,
2001 has Bowman while Apollo 11 had Armstrong (both Scottish border
names from the medieval battlefields).
Now, in order
for that to hold water, head and body have to be separate, distinct entities.
When Thulsa says, “Flesh is strong”, he may have meant the flesh of his head –
his hypnotic powers of suggestion (as a side-issue, Milius could have made
Thulsa more obviously magical and Howardesque.) By turning away from steel he
is moving into the flesh of his head – not his body.
But that
equation doesn’t hold if head (brain) and body become one, as in Blake’s print
of Newton.
Pictorial 59
One way to look
at this print is that the body of Man (Newton) becomes the tool of his brain.
Man becomes his tool; the two become one.
“Tool” in this
context has a very wide meaning, ranging from anything numerical (used in
industrial processes – meaning everything AI) to the sexual (Hyborian Bridge 99.) In other words,
the mixing of brain and body creates a confusion between the two (see Grace
Slick quote Hyborian Bridge 62/1).
One question you
might ask is why might this be happening now rather than in 1770? Probably
because we live in an accelerating
future
In Newton’s day
none of this would be visible; it would all be the height of decorum. As Grace
Slick says, the 1770s, in terms of artefacts is much more enduring and authentic
than the Nokia fabrication.
Hyborian
Bridge 61/2
The end-product
of Newton is that Man becomes the tool of AI (note also that in 2001 a bone becomes a spaceship powered by AI). The way out of that sorcerous land
of illusions is through sweat, dirt and dance; and the way into a psyche of the
flesh, blood and bone. The psyche arises from the physical strength of blood
and bone. This is quite a pulp scenario. The adventurers of The Eye of
Zeitoon (prev) have an almost mercenary moral code of guns and cartridges
and military hardware. Alongside it they have an Apollonian vision of rugged
freedom (Zeitoon), and romantic Dionysian urges of man and woman riding into
wild terrain, campfire glory.
The physical
strength lets in romantic traits that exist in the harmonic cosmos (could we
but see it!) This is the cosmos of the strong arm that is distinct from the
head (that can be fed illusions; the dragon or “mirror of nothingness”). Of
dirt and sweat and dance; flesh, blood and bone.
So, the 60s may
have been a time when the harmonic was more visible to men and women of dirt
and dance. Also, I suppose Jean-Luc Godard, whose Alphaville (65) has a
future Paris run by AI, which eventually succumbs to a riddle posed by the man
of myth, PI Lemmy Caution.