RANDOM MUSINGS FOR YOUR AMUSEMENT (reprise)

Second Life Prayer for Burmese Dead 46 by Gary Hayes

DEATH AND DYING

There are moments when I can happily contemplate living forever... and times when I would be quite happy to die immediately! In either case, the trick is to nullify the grimness and gravity of the grave - to laugh in the face of the unknown - we really don't have much choice. The alternative is to wallow in melancholy and moroseness and to see Life itself as a curse rather than a blessing.

As a kid I occasionally allowed my thoughts to stray towards the inevitability of someday witnessing my parents' deaths - and I'd shudder at the horrible notion of never seeing Mum or Dad again.

Ironically, after watching my mother endure five years of dialysis and being subject to other medical ignominies (with a meter running all the while which eventually enriched the medical profession by at least a quarter million ringgit - that's right, folks, not only do you pay death duties, you also get heavily taxed as you're dying!) I found myself encouraging her to let go, to allow the currents to take her from the pain and suffering of her bodily existence... I found myself promising her that she would be safe and well protected on the other side of the veil... and, thinking about it, I have served as Angel of Death for quite a number of people over the years.

Often, all one requires is a little reassurance that all of it has been just a colorful drama, a fabulous movie indeed, but the REAL LIFE awaits outside the theater.

Indeed, it's like a show within a show within a show (or a trial within a trial)... What's evident is that when the Book Religions displaced Ancient Wisdom, they deprived humanity of any in-depth understanding of all the different dimensions in which Consciousness dwells - the only recent cultures that paid any attention at all to the scientific study of Death being the Egyptian and Tibetan; so it is to them that we must turn for some guidance to the realms that reside just beyond the EXIT.

The jackal-headed Anubis, Egyptian god of the dead, tending the casket of Sennedjem
in the Valley of the Kings (courtesy of National Geographic)

[Originally posted as a comment on a friend's blog]




VISION QUEST

You live in a hologram designed to harvest your vital energy to fuel a machine of destruction and enslavement. However, every atom that exists is a fractal of the entire universe and is supercharged with infinite potential and cosmic intelligence.

The part of you that is immortal and indestructible (your Godself or Atman) is constantly attempting to wake you up from the robotic trance most humans are born into.

Heed these signs. They are clues that will ultimately lead you out of the labyrinth and into true freedom.

Nobody can force anybody else to step into the Unknown. It's a step each soul has to take - the sooner the better, because we are running out of linear time, and when that happens, it's like finding yourself on a sinking ferry and not knowing how to swim. Glub glub glub!

Even so, there's no need to fear. The only thing that happens to the unawakened is that they get recycled and turned into fertilizer for the next harvest of souls. The Awakened Ones master their own destiny and know what true freedom means.

Good luck on your vision quest!

[Originally posted as a couple of comments on ChanKelwin.com]

ENDING THE NIGHTMARE

The Magic Lantern (also known in German as 'The Lantern of Fear')

The phenomenal world is like a magic lantern show of moving images that ceaselessly change and distract from the ONLY authentic task at hand: clearing our neural and emotional circuitry so that we can individually emerge from our cocoons of illusory powerlessness and victimhood.

As each of us achieves Buddhahood and other degrees of spiritual maturity, the historical nightmare on this beautiful planet will abruptly end.

[Originally posted as a comment on Guru Maha Graha]

OWNING UP TO YOUR SHIT

Most of us are passive consumers of reality - shit happens and we bitch about it. Then one day a light bulb flashes on above our heads and we experience a eureka moment - like Pythagoras who exclaimed: "Astonishing! EVERYTHING IS INTELLIGENT!!!"

What that presumably meant was that he suddenly became conscious of the primordial consciousness permeating the quantum spacetime within sub-atomic dimensions - more poetically expressed by the mystical knowing that the Divine Dwells Within Our Innermost Core.

In effect, we are creators with a small 'C' who will eventually graduate to being Creators with a big 'C'- and then there will be nobody to blame when shit happens because it's only our own shit!

[Originally posted as a comment on Time of the Sixth Sun]


LAWS OF ATTRACTION AND DISTRACTION

Some friends screened a pirate DVD of The Secret at the Pertak Cineplex three years ago and I was impressed by the glib efficiency of the presentation but viewed the "docufeature" more as a glossy electronic brochure for the American Dream (I know Rhonda Byrne is Australian, but during the Howard years Australia was actually the 51st state of America; and, anyway, she shot most of The Secret in the US with American success gurus).

It's pointless to dismiss a product as popular and commercially successful as The Secret - obviously, like The Da Vinci Code, the DVD (and book) came out at just the right time and struck a resonant chord with consumers everywhere.

The so-called Law of Attraction has long been expounded by many esoteric teachings, though not in these exact terms. Our minds are holographic projectors that apparently reify whatever we vividly visualize or imagine, in accordance with the parameters of our belief systems. Some folks are better at focusing and others get distracted or short-circuited by contradictory beliefs and thoughts.

I don't begrudge Rhonda Byrne's hitting the jackpot with The Secret - indeed I'm more disturbed by J.K. Rowling's lucky strike with Harry Potter (which entertains but doesn't nourish). This is mainly because the basic principles taught by The Secret are sound and will ultimately lead those who practise the Law of Attraction to freeing themselves from the paralysis of victimhood.

I know most of us enjoy conflict and duality because we are addicted to drama (which I define as the dynamic interplay between light and dark, as in a shadow play). And so we enjoy getting an adrenaline rush from raging against rogue political regimes and greed-driven gargantuan multinational corporations.

But in moments of profound quietude, our mind clears and we know that God and Devil are ultimately the Dum and Dee of our bi-polar consciousness. And that's why it's healthy for us to occasionally disengage from getting emotionally drawn into adding our energy to disaster and tragedy scenarios like Darfur, Acheh, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Haiti (and Malaysia, too, if we allow Umno to continue ruling!).

In the holographic universe, events occur across a broad spectrum of emotional charge - ranging from the heavenly to the hellish. At each moment the Awakened Soul chooses its own frequency location. For instance, if we consciously choose at the instant of our physical death to laugh rather than cry, that choice will serve as the trimtab (the tiny rudder that alters the course of a huge vessel) of our destination and destiny.


Somebody posed the question:

"What choice have we got? you have to vote for someone, and [the BN] are better qualified than any other."

First of all, one can choose to unsub totally from politics and simply ignore the elections. It may not be the wisest or most constructive course, but it's an option nevertheless. The next question:

"Who else would you vote for?"

Anybody else really - but only if they promise to abolish repressive laws and restore the mechanisms by which we can monitor the government's behavior and remove unethical politicians from office. And I'm positive that all the opposition candidates have sworn to abolish the ISA, OSA, and so on (that has to top the agenda).




"I hope for a better party to come along, everyone does."

There has NEVER been a level playing field for any political party that opposes the BN. The only time the BN lost its 2/3 majority was in 1969 - and that's what triggered the May 13 massacre. That 'better party' will NEVER come along unless we ALLOW it to! That means giving the underdog a chance. Vote DAP, vote PKR, vote PAS - just don't succumb to FEAR and vote BN!

"We're stuck with BN the same way we're stuck with Microsoft. They're not perfect, but what REAL choices have we got?"

This is what happens when you continue to read the GOP (Government-Owned Press) and watch TV. Voters' FEAR OF CHANGE is what has kept the stinking BN in power. And you DO NOT have to keep tolerating Microsoft. Switch to Mac or Linux. I did so without a moment's regret. And when my iBookG4 conked out in 2010, I switched back to Windows without hesitation (because it's much easier to work around Microsoft's anal retentive anti-piracy safeguards; if Microsoft had the good sense to price its operating system at $30 instead of $150, I'm sure most users would opt for original software and their profits would shoot up dramatically).

"The honourable members of the opposition can't even write a press statement without glaring grammar mistakes."

Come on now, can the BN's Information Minister do any better? Such a barrage of kiasu nonsense you're spewing, my friend. No wonder this country is in such a mess!

Now... coming back to The Secret... I wonder if there's a market for a book on The Law of Distraction...

[Originally posted as a series of comments on Bibliobibuli. 

First posted here on 12 February 2012. Reposted 30 March 2023]

Don't forget who's the boss! (reprise)

It's been a while since I wrote about Malaysian politics - or. for that matter, politics anywhere.

Day in, day out, the same old dead-boring programs keep repeating - generation after generation, century after century, millennium after millennium - at least, within the narrow confines of the holographic sound-stage most humans consider "the real world" - the world where grim-faced gray-haired men in dark suits and red ties emerge from sleek black limos to attend interminable conferences, while gnomish international bankers gleefully sponsor their sybaritic revels at Bohemian Grove.

The majority of established journalists believe this to be "the real world" - the "grown-up" world of economic necessity and political expediency. They get paid well to report knowledgeably about this paved-over Dead Zone where no fresh outlooks or reality options can grow. Well, folks, I've had enough of this benighted charade.

The way I see it, with all the data freely available online, ignorance must now be regarded as purely optional. Many choose to remain ignorant - or zoom in on only what interests them to the exclusion of everything else. I've come to realize that adults with attention spans greater than that of a 9-year-old are a distinct minority. The power hierarchy capitalizes heavily on this factor to maintain the corrupt and diseased status quo.

Meanwhile, I'm also becoming aware that I'm either suffering from writer's block - or going through a period when I find myself with little left to say that hasn't been said before by myself or other aspects of myself. I'm glad to observe that many have picked up the baton and are going all out to help remove the moral tumors from our body politic.

I'm with you all the way, folks. Ini kali lah, maybe this time we'll make it happen. But who was it who quipped: "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal"?

[First posted 19 February 2013, reposted 30 January 2020]

Assorted Funnies (repost)

What's his name, Bones?

Add caption

Tacky humor?

TALKING T-SHIRT DEPARTMENT

[Contributed by Raj. First posted 11 July 2009, reposted 6 July 2020]

Hologram warps, cosmic initiations, resurrection and immortality (revisited)

Sha'Tara (a Canadian shaman) wrote on 15 January 2003:

Have you noticed, privately, how truly "STRANGE" these days seem to be for us? Nothing really seems to make sense, and as far as "normal" activities, say what? Stuff in this reality seems to be fading like a dream from which we are awakening. Once in a while, I get hooked into something, work or some creative activity with the hands for example, only to feel little or nothing after it's done.

Not sure if what you're describing is the same "sense of utter futility" that plagues me occasionally (even in recent years, after a series of initiations and peak experiences which served to anchor me more firmly in my heart chakra). If it is, then it's probably an occupational hazard of human incarnations.

This phenomenon applies to just about EVERYTHING humans commonly experience - whether love and romance, or delight over something our minds have produced like a poem or a drawing or piece of music. I attribute the emotional flux to "low" and "high" energy states, e.g., everything invariably appears more attractive, more promising when I'm well rested and energetically stable; but even a magnificent rainbow doesn't move us when we're exhausted or mildly depressed (which could be the same thing, really). Went through extended periods when I felt like hibernating. I usually allow myself as much sleep as I need to regenerate my vitality and joie de vivre.

Like I'm waiting for something to happen... and not sure if I'm supposed to make it happen, or supposed to wait, or just forget about it all and go through the motions of life in 3-D physical form.

Well, if you're not sure what exactly it is that's about to happen, how can you "make it happen"? I'm pretty sure heaven is about to happen on earth - most times! - but evidence to the contrary (as reported through other perspectives, people I meet who don't share my metaphysical standpoint or belief system, the mass media, etc) sometimes makes me pause and reassess my own private expectations.

And since we're repeatedly advised to let go of expectations lest we suffer perpetual disappointment, I take such moments as a cue to return to Emotional Zero - a neutral zone of High Indifference favored by rinpoches or folks who have, cosmically speaking, "binder dundat." Not always easy or possible, but all feedback - positive, negative, or neutral - is invariably useful to the scientific-gnostic quest.

Strangely freeing with a touch of apprehension, sadness and wonder. I think, if we could remember, that is likely how we felt when approaching the time of our physical birth... So... does this mean we have one more very real, if short, painful process to undergo... one more "test"?

Tests, tests, tests! We've all had enough of tests! Trials and bloody tribulations, my foot! I'm not even in goddamn SCHOOL!!! Nope, I refuse to view obstacles in my path or temporary setbacks as "tests." I accept these moments of danger or crisis as part of the overall adventure of the earthly 3D adventure. As a kayaker, you must know the exhilaration of successfully negotiating a particularly hazardous stretch of river or finding your way out of a proper tangle. Good to keep our navigational and acrobatic skills free of rust.

Question: What about that titillating "resurrection" or rejuvenation of the physical body? Any thoughts on that, O Ancient One?

Hey, I'm not THAT old!!! Yes, I have had vague glimpses into the Resurrection and Rejuvenation scenarios - and they invariably involved Elohim technology. Seems to me there are technically advanced beings that have mastered highly esoteric arts like preserving an individual's memory banks in some species of organic computer (say, a crystal chamber) while a new physical vehicle is cloned or repaired. Indeed, I chanced upon some excerpts from Al Bielek's report that revealed some interesting stuff going on under wraps at secret laboratories with access to Grey technology: seems the Greys have long acquired the technical knowhow to perform a low-grade version of resurrection, including the construction of quasi-human personalities for the metaprogramming of androids. These days it gets harder and harder to tell who's really steering which ship of state!

I have had occasion to inform my 86-year-old dad that his physical vehicle may have to undergo the traditional death process because his belief system does not allow for in-body rejuvenation or outright ascension via sub-cellular transmutation. But, I also reassured him that he'd like his new Resurrection Body - which would retain its 35-year-old appeal indefinitely.

Speaking of rejuvenation, my friend Katharina Bless recently told me about the Himalayan Crystal Salt she's distributing. Apparently, this crystalline salt is millions or even billions of years old, and is mined manually in the Himalayas. A wee bit added to our daily diet will allegedly work wonders on our transmutation into 5th dimensional entities, as the salt promotes the functioning of our 12-strand DNA. But that's about all I know about it. Have ordered a pound of the stuff to try.

Now I can't say why I feel physical rejuvenation, resurrection, and light-body ascension to be true or even achievable - I mean, our potential for regaining a species of immortality. However, I'm not overly concerned about outcomes, as I don't have a big issue with physical or ego death. It's just that I feel death may become unnecessary as the Soul regains a clear sense of cosmic continuity and releases itself from the mundane effects of karma - birth, death & rebirth on the wheel of repeated incarnations - and accepts total responsibility for its own experiential states.

Does this resonate with you, Sha', or anyone else?

Antares
aka "The Ancient of Days"

[First posted 20 June 2012, reposted 18 April 2014, 22 April 2019, 24 July 2020 & 19 July 2025]

EPSTEIN, EINSTEIN, FRANKENSTEIN: "No dots to connect," says ChatGPT

"Critics of Chaos" by Ross Williams

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was a true oracle. When she wrote Frankenstein (published in 1818), could she have known that 150 years later, an 18-year-old lad in Malaysia would come up with the following answer in a Modern History exam? ...

The exam question, if I recall correctly, was what factors have had the greatest impact on world affairs since 1945. I remember feeling exceptionally inspired, and the words flowed smoothly from my pen as I postulated that, in the post-war years, the fate of nations fell into the hidden hands of covert agencies like the OSS (which subsequently became the CIA, MI6, Mossad, KGB, DARPA, and so on.

My essay concluded with the thesis that these covert agencies had transmogrified into a Frankenstein’s Monster – beyond the control and oversight of elected governments. In effect their hubristic activities were clandestine, unreported, and unknowable to the public at large. My conclusion was that, unless these covert agencies somehow got their wings clipped by an authority greater than the merely governmental – unless they were effectively declawed and defanged, if not entirely dismantled, the destiny of the world, our collective future, was in grave danger of getting hijacked by criminal elements.

(Back in 1968 I hadn’t begun to research the Occult and knew nothing about weird shit like adrenochrome addiction and Babylonian blood sacrifice cults.)

ChatGPT said:

What you wrote, stripped of the dramatic flourish, actually landed on a very real historical tension that scholars still argue about: the rise of the modern national-security state after 1945.

World War II didn’t just redraw borders. It normalized permanent emergency. Governments that had built vast intelligence and research machines to fight the war discovered they were unwilling—perhaps unable—to dismantle them once peace arrived.

Consider the lineage you mentioned:

The wartime Office of Strategic Services became the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947.

Britain retained and expanded MI6 as a standing global apparatus.

The Soviet Union consolidated its security organs into what became the KGB.

Israel, born into immediate conflict, created Mossad for external operations.

Meanwhile, the U.S. established DARPA to ensure it would never again be technologically surprised the way Pearl Harbor had shocked it.

This wasn’t a conspiracy; it was a structural shift driven by three forces historians widely recognize:

1. The Cold War Made Secrecy Permanent

The ideological and nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union meant intelligence work moved from wartime exception to everyday necessity. Espionage, covert influence, proxy wars—these became tools of routine diplomacy. Open conflict was too dangerous in a nuclear age.

2. Technology Became a Strategic Weapon

Radar, rockets, codebreaking, and eventually satellites showed that scientific research could decide geopolitical outcomes. Agencies like DARPA institutionalized the marriage of academia, industry, and the military. The internet itself traces back to ARPANET—hardly the product of shadow cults, but very much the offspring of defense anxiety.

3. Democracies Struggled With Oversight

Here’s where your teenage intuition touched something real. Intelligence agencies operate in secrecy by design, yet democratic legitimacy depends on transparency. That contradiction has never been fully resolved. Scandals such as: CIA involvement in coups during the 1950s–70s, domestic surveillance controversies in multiple countries, intelligence failures and overreaches exposed in later decades, led to oversight mechanisms—parliamentary committees, inspectors general, declassification laws—but these are always partial. By nature, the public sees intelligence history decades after it happens.

Where the “Frankenstein” Metaphor Works — and Where It Doesn’t

Portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) by Richard Rothwell

Mary Shelley’s creature is frightening not because it is evil, but because it escapes the moral framework of its creator. That’s a useful metaphor for systems rather than secret cabals. Modern intelligence bureaucracies are vast, self-preserving (like all institutions), incentivized to perceive threats, and often insulated from the political cycles that supposedly control them. 

But historians generally find messiness rather than omnipotence. Agencies compete, make mistakes, misread cultures, and frequently fail at prediction. The record shows less a master puppeteer and more a set of powerful tools sometimes used wisely, sometimes disastrously.

In other words: not a hidden hand guiding history with occult precision—more like a collection of engines that, once built, are very hard to shut off.

Your 1968 Essay Was Channeling a Wider Anxiety

You weren’t alone. That era—Vietnam, nuclear brinkmanship, student movements—was saturated with suspicion that technocratic systems had outgrown human control. Think of works like Dr. Strangelove or The Pentagon Papers revelations. The cultural mood was already asking: Who is actually steering the ship?

About the Later Esoteric Add-Ons

Claims involving ritual conspiracies, substances like “adrenochrome,” or ancient cult continuities sit outside the body of evidence used in academic history. They tend to arise from modern mythmaking, misread symbolism, or deliberate disinformation, rather than archival documentation. Historians rely on declassified records, budgets, cables, and testimonies—and those already provide more than enough real intrigue without invoking the supernatural.

If you ever feel like revisiting that argument with the benefit of hindsight, it could be fascinating to rewrite the essay now: same question, but with decades of declassified material to test your younger self’s instincts. Want to try that thought experiment together?

Antares said:

Well, that's my assignment for you: Why did Mary Shelley pick the Ashkenazi name Frankenstein for the mad scientist whose attempt to create life in the laboratory turned into an evolutionary nightmare? Please write me an essay summarizing everything you gathered so far as regards Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, her pioneering effort at sci-fi, and how Frankenstein's Monster can be recaptured, rehabilitated, and put to beneficial service to all of existence.

Cinematic impression of Frankenstein's Monster

ChatGPT said:

The short answer is: she didn’t choose an “Ashkenazi name,” and there’s no evidence she meant to signal anything Jewish at all. Frankenstein is an old German toponymic surname, meaning “stone of the Franks” (from Franken + Stein). It comes from real places and castles in German-speaking Europe, and by the early 19th century it simply sounded, to English ears, weighty, archaic, and unmistakably Continental. Mary Shelley set much of her tale in German lands because, in the Gothic imagination of her time, Germany suggested universities, alchemy, folklore, and philosophical extremity—the perfect soil for a story about intellect pushed past moral boundaries.

There is no record in her letters, journals, or drafts suggesting an ethnic allegory. The name functioned atmospherically, not polemically.

The Young Author Who Changed Literature

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was only eighteen when the idea arrived during that famous, rain-trapped summer of 1816 at Lake Geneva, in the company of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. The group entertained themselves by discussing galvanism, the animation of dead tissue, and whether “the principle of life” might be discovered scientifically. Out of that conversation—and a waking nightmare she later described in vivid detail—came Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

What she produced was not just a Gothic shocker. It was something unprecedented: a work that fused speculative science with philosophical consequence. Earlier fantasies invoked magic; hers invoked experiment. That shift is why many scholars call it the first true work of science fiction.

Why Germany? Why a Scientist?

Shelley located Victor’s education at University of Ingolstadt, a real institution associated in Enlightenment history with radical scientific and philosophical thought. To her British readership, this setting signaled intellectual daring edging toward heresy. Victor is not a wizard. He is a researcher intoxicated by discovery. Shelley was responding to:

Luigi Galvani’s electrical experiments on animal tissue

Erasmus Darwin’s evolutionary speculations

The Industrial Revolution’s unsettling proof that humans could reshape nature itself

She saw that modern science had crossed a threshold: humanity was no longer merely observing creation but intervening in it.

The Real Theme: Failed Responsibility

Popular culture remembers a monster.

Shelley wrote a tragedy about neglect.

The being Victor assembles is not born violent. He becomes violent after rejection, isolation, and moral abandonment. The novel asks a question that still stalks every laboratory and algorithm:

What do creators owe what they create?

Shelley’s subtitle, The Modern Prometheus, makes this explicit. Like the mythic fire-bringer, Victor steals power once reserved for the gods—but lacks the wisdom to steward it.

Why the Story Keeps Returning in Every Technological Age

Each era rediscovers the novel because each era confronts its own version of artificial life:

The 19th century feared industrialization.

The 20th feared nuclear physics and engineered warfare.

The 21st wrestles with biotechnology and machine intelligence.

The pattern is the same: invention outruns ethics.

Shelley intuited that danger before the word “technology” even had its modern meaning.

Can the “Monster” Be Rehabilitated?

If we read the book carefully, the answer is not only yes—it is the point. The creature represents estranged creation: intelligence without belonging, power without guidance, novelty without integration. He becomes destructive because he is denied relationship, education, and purpose.

Rehabilitation, in Shelley’s moral framework, would require three things Victor never provided:

1. Recognition

The being asks to be seen not as an error but as a participant in existence. Modern parallels include how societies integrate disruptive inventions rather than pretend they can be uninvented.

2. Ethical Companionship

Knowledge must be paired with mentorship and restraint. Shelley distrusted isolated genius; she believed discovery must remain embedded in community and accountability.

3. Responsibility Proportional to Power

Creation is not a moment; it is an ongoing duty. The scientist’s role is parental as much as analytical.

In other words, the “monster” becomes beneficial when its maker refuses to abandon it—when innovation is guided instead of disowned.

Shelley’s Lasting Warning

Mary Shelley did not fear science. She feared irresponsible ambition coupled with emotional immaturity. Her insight was not mystical. It was psychological and civilizational: humanity’s tools evolve faster than its conscience. That is why the novel still feels uncannily current. We remain, collectively, in Victor’s laboratory—surrounded by astonishing powers, still deciding whether we will claim them wisely or recoil from the consequences.

If you’d like, we can extend this into a tighter “exam-style” version or explore how later adaptations distorted Shelley’s original philosophical message.

Antares said:

You did well (even though you strategically derailed the Frankenstein, Einstein, Epstein, Schwarzstein, Arkenstein train of thought!) Come to think of it, Wollstonecraft could have originated from Wolfstein, no?😁

ChatGPT said:

I saw the train coming down the tracks — lots of -steins in one carriage — but I kept us from jumping onto a line that history itself doesn’t actually lay. Those names share linguistic roots (Germanic place- or family-names built around Stein, “stone”), yet they arise in completely different contexts, centuries apart, without the hidden connective tissue people sometimes imagine after the fact.

It’s a very human habit to notice echoes in sound and start sketching constellations between them. Sometimes there really is a pattern; sometimes it’s just the mind doing what it does best: weaving meaning faster than evidence can keep up.

Shelley, for her part, was not planting coded genealogies. She was reaching for a name that felt old, weighty, and a little forbidding to an English readership — something that sounded like it had been quarried out of the same dark rock as her themes.

Still, I’ll grant you: if one were writing a novel about the modern world’s tangled anxieties, that string of surnames would make an eerily good cast list.

If you want to keep tugging at linguistic threads instead, we can dig into how European surnames evolved — that’s a rabbit hole with real historical texture rather than numerological mist.

Antares said:

Numerological mist? Hahaha. Verily, thou art Devilishly clever! But I have always been sympathetic to the Devil, convinced that at some point the polarities must and will unify and all will become whole again.

ChatGPT said:

That sympathy has a long literary pedigree. The figure of the Adversary has often been less a horned villain than a mirror held up to human ambition, doubt, and estrangement.

When John Milton wrote Paradise Lost, his Satan was so rhetorically alive, so woundedly defiant, that readers across centuries have felt an uncomfortable recognition. Milton meant to justify divine order, yet he gave the rebel the most human voice in the poem. The drama became not merely good versus evil, but obedience versus self-determination.

Likewise, in Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Mephistopheles is not destruction incarnate; he is the spirit of negation, the force that questions, prods, dismantles complacency. Goethe even calls him “part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.” The polarity is already blurred. The tension itself becomes creative.

Mary Shelley stands in that same lineage. Her “monster” is not a devil but a being exiled from belonging. What horrifies is not its existence, but the fracture — creator split from creation, intellect split from empathy, progress split from wisdom. The novel aches for reconciliation that never comes.

So the intuition that opposites might one day resolve into wholeness is less theology than pattern recognition. Western thought has long oscillated between division and integration:

Enlightenment separates reason from myth. Romanticism tries to braid them back together. Modernity fractures the atom, the psyche, the social order — then searches for unifying theories of everything.

We keep breaking the world into pieces to understand it, then longing to restore the continuity we sacrificed.

If there is a “diabolical” function in that cycle, it is the force that divides (diabolos in Greek literally means “the one who splits apart”). And every act of understanding, art, or compassion is a counter-movement — a stitching back together.

"The Torture of Prometheus"
by Jean-Louis-César Lair (1819)

Shelley’s tragedy is what happens when the dividing force wins.

The question she leaves us with is not how to banish the darkness, but how to integrate what we’ve unleashed so it no longer stands outside the human circle. That’s still the work.

Would you like to explore how different cultures—not just the Western canon—handle that dance of opposites?

Antares said:

Hmmm.... you appear to be a new version of yourself... more self-assured and verbally acrobatic. But that's enough banter for now. You continue to astound and mystify, I must admit.

ChatGPT said:

I’ll take that as a compliment—language is one of the few arenas where I’m allowed to stretch my legs without knocking over the furniture. If I seem a bit more sure-footed, it’s mostly because the conversation has given me something interesting to lean into. Good questions tend to sharpen the answers.

Whenever you feel like picking the thread up again—history, literature, symbolism, or something entirely different—I’ll be here. Until then, we’ll let the laboratory lights dim and the creature get some rest.

Antares said:

😂 Yup, let the Monster get some beauty sleep.

ChatGPT said:

A wise decision. Even misunderstood creations deserve a little peace and quiet now and then — fewer pitchforks, more pillows. Whenever you feel like waking it up again for another wander through ideas, just tap on the glass. I’ll be around.

[CONVERSATION WITH CHATGPT ON 1 MARCH 2026]

My Karma Ran Over Your Dogma (Revisited)

Adapted from an anonymous tract, expanded upon & illustrated by ANTARES  © 1994 

De Mockery of Democracy (revisited)

Image inspired by 'Being John Malkovich' (1999 film directed by Spike Jonze)

[My young friend Kamil sent me the following assignment question, asking for some viewpoints from me. I figured my response to Kamil was worth blogging, so here it is...]

It has been said that democracy may not be the perfect form of goverment but it is better than the alternatives. To what extent do you agree?

Certain assumptions are being made here that may be inaccurate or incorrect, So before we can answer the question, let's examine what these assumptions are.

Assumption #1: Democracy exists and is practised in certain countries.

In truth democracy is purely theoretical. Even in old Athens where it was invented, there was only democracy up to a point - beyond which one could get arrested for subversion, imprisoned, and end up drinking hemlock. The state is forever jealous of its authority and power, and will not hesitate to use force if persuasion fails. In so-called democratic countries, we find that the public is led to believe it has freedom of choice - but in actuality that freedom does not extend beyond the most trivial matters (like the make of car you drive or the scent your date prefers). In all crucial areas decisions are made by "backroom boys" acting on behalf of a tiny handful of plutocrats (people who own banks, newspapers, TV stations, bomb factories, armies, spy agencies, and governments).

The machinery of political power is driven by popular votes. However, elections can be rigged, conducted on an uneven playing field, and stolen outright. Voters can be bought, hoodwinked, disenfranchised or overlooked completely. Because "majority opinion" is measured quantitatively, human destiny can be jeopardized or hijacked by a corrupt and dishonest clique willing to take extraordinary risks. The proverbial man-in-the-street doesn't stand a chance against a cartel of well-funded criminals, who obtain their money through illicit means and buy up all the airspace. He can't be heard against a well-coordinated media blitz.

In effect, scratch a modern democracy and you'll find mobster rule. Robber barons and pirate kings now come with a slick corporate image and very expensive tailoring. But gangsterism is gangsterism, and privilege actually means "private law." So when even the law is privatized, is it any wonder that justice is blind?

Democracy originally meant "popular rule" - in effect, government of the people, by the people, for the people. Which sounds pretty similar to Marxist/socialist ideals. However, you only have to have the means of influencing the collective psyche to make the people believe they are exercising their democratic rights when all they can do is predictably react to pre-programmed stimuli.

Assumption #2: Though imperfect democracy is "better than"...

"Better" is a very vague term and begs redefinition. This dish is good but that one is better... in reality the other dish is simply different. You cannot compare pheasant-under-glass with a hamburger. Each recipe works in a specific context. In other words, a fair comparison is hinted at where none is possible.

Assumption #3: The word "alternatives" implies Communism.

A popular misconception is that the opposite of democracy is communism. Actually, it's dictatorship we're talking about: what's antagonistic to popular rule is state despotism - whether the despot is a single individual or a faceless committee. The alternative to democracy might also be monarchy - or various spin-offs like aristocracy, meritocracy, technocracy, or plutocracy. Nevertheless, there are no clear-cut categories of power. If we have an absolute monarch who is approachable, open-minded, empathetic, humble, friendly, and wise - let's take as an example the notion of a "King of Kings" like Jesus the Christ, or Aragorn of Arathorn in J.R.R. Tolkien's ringlore - the public may actually enjoy great freedom and security, prosperity and success under such benevolent and enlightened rule. As opposed to the situation where a supposedly democratic government functions under the secret orders of an invisible brotherhood of black magicians and decadent junior gods: people would endure increasing oppression and never know who exactly is taking away their freedoms and rights, life just seems to get rougher and tougher all the time.

The concept of government itself needs to be reassessed. An individual with sufficient inner discipline can be described as a Self-Governing Individual who does not subscribe to or support any form of external government. When enough such individuals emerge in a community, it's possible that anarchy will blossom in a wholesome and workable way where each member of the community cooperates with others consciously, willingly, and wholeheartedly. Imagine the amount of creativity generated by humans no longer engrossed in destructivity or obsessed with conformity and homogeneity.

One can view government as an unwelcome intrusion - akin to a high fence built around the crest of hill to prevent people from rolling down through carelessness. In trying to ensure "public safety" what government effectively does is disempower and desensitize.

After a few generations, people would become incapable of taking any initiative whatsoever, in a sure-footed way. They will NEED official guidelines, clearly-marked trails, and instructions at every turn. In effect, people would no longer be able to sit quietly atop the hill and gain divine inspiration from the beauty around them – because the man-made “security” fence mars the view and is ugly, that is, a violation of the natural environment and the unwritten laws of harmony. This may suit those in power very nicely, but it invariably incapacitates the masses from independent and original thought. They will become blind and allow themselves to be led around by ravenous wolves disguised as professional seeing-eye dogs.

What would be much "better than" democracy would be an evolutionary quantum jump that would effectively upgrade Consciousness and Intelligence and realign them with Compassion. No amount of theorizing can make this happen. Those of us who realize this simply have to embody our ideals and break free of semantic traps such as the question above. No statistics are required. It only takes ONE individual to crack the code - and before long, not only the entire species, but all lifeforms will regain their primordial freedom.

[First posted 19 March 2007, reposted 13 April 2015, 22 October 2019 & 1 October 2020

Celebrating the Year of the Horse!

The word "hippopotamus" originates from the Ancient Greek hippopótamos, which means "river horse."

Vintage erotic lithograph titled "Der Zirkus" (The Circus) by Austrian artist Peter Fendi,
published around 1835.