The Ghost in the Cloud Chapters 15 & 16

Reflections on why I'm writing "A Ghost in the Cloud"

Excuse me if I am redundant. Some people are aural and would rather listen, others prefer to read so I've written my thoughts more clearly and in depth below and tried to say essentially the same thing in the video. I'm not too comfortable yet talking to a camera, but I think a vlog, as opposed to a blog, might be more interesting in some ways. With this posting, I seem to be doing both.

I posted my original story, The Ghost in the Cloud in January of 2009, though I think I had written it shortly after I arrived in the UAE, but my memory isn’t so good. The first chapter was just a short story, written in response to a documentary I had seen called “Transhumans” about very real technologies and “fuzzy areas” of ethics in science. I realized that many of the individuals and companies who have access to the materials and knowledge to put into reality certain products that can alter genes, or enhance humans or select the most promising sequences of DNA for designer babies, do not share my sense of ethics about tampering with human beings. The original story was in response to a small number of people who are working on AI, who think they would like to transfer their consciousness in to cyberspace where they think they will be able to live forever.

Since then I have meandered all over the place in my story telling. But one thing I have noticed about these stories is that I am writing out of my introspective personality. I notice that I tend to use the words ponder and reflect quite often. Most of my characters are people who think about the meaning of things, wonder about who they are, what they are, and what might result from the choices that are being made now. My characters, of course, spring out of my own head and therefore are different aspects of myself, and since I am introspective, my characters tend to be introspective. Even Jack, the cyberspace AI, spends a great deal of time “processing” and trying to understand exactly what he is.

I realized today that I do not live in an introspective culture. I live in a capitalist culture and capitalism is far from introspective. All our thoughts in this culture are chained and directed to one goal: the making of money, because at the core of capitalism lies greed. Greed is the fuel that runs the machine of industry, not oil or coal. Greed is the prime motivator of all we do in this culture. Greed fosters competition, which capitalist see as good because it drives us to do our best—ignoring the fact that there are very few winners and this completion simply sifts out and rewards the sociopaths among us because they are willing to win at the expense of others whom they care nothing about, justifying themselves by saying, “nothing personal, it’s just good business.” It is this love of money that drives the thinking of our capitalist intellectuals, and greed doesn’t bother with introspection—doesn’t want to think about the possible problems, the needs of people, or the needs of the soul—what profit is there in the soul?

I have no problem with capitalism as long as our culture can chain the beast and make it serve the people. Tax it, regulate it, and force it to pay decent living wages and benefits, care for the poor and disabled. But understand that the beast, if unfettered, would eat the people who chain it and would ravage the land until all the resources are devoured and all the pristine lakes and rivers are poisoned and all the land is developed into crowded, dirty slums.

Excuse me. I got off into a rant there. My point is that I am not exactly in sync with my culture when I say that I am introspective. Our culture likes to elect leaders who don’t think; we like people who simply decide and move on. We value decisiveness and quick gratifying actions—even if those actions are wrong. We just want someone who looks strong and tough and tells us what we want to believe. We want people who lie to us, give us the illusion of strength and direction. Introspective people aren’t like that, and they seem weak to us—unsure of themselves, they question and doubt their own actions. This is really too bad. I think that now, more than ever, we need introspection in our leaders. The world is just too crazy and its problems are so massive that we need people in leadership who ponder and reflect on things before they act, or even when they do to look at the results and question if it is the right thing to do and back up if need be.

The world I am creating in my story—especially in Suri Sangala—is a vision of a culture that is introspective. I tend to read at a slow pace with the minimalist music of Philip Glass in the background. The teachers in that world have a tendency to elicit or draw out the answers from their students rather than simply dictate to them what is true according to dogma or tradition. There is a kind of assumption that truth is in them already; when they are ready to see it, they will see it. The role of the teacher is to simply ask questions which the student must think about or ponder.

Suri Sangala is a testing ground for Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. There is no war, no politics, nothing to create stress. When all the external needs are met, people must begin to deal with what is in them. This sets them on a path to self-actualization. I’ve come to not like that term, self-actualization, because it means different things to different people. Here I mean a state of being where one is able to transcend the self and find a kind of realization that that we are connected to everything. Actions that an individual commits with that kind of state of mind or being are authentic and motivated by something beyond that individual; and something inside that person tends to bring balance, harmony, healing and peace where ever he or she may go.