Death Devil taking the soul of a dying man, 1508, 16th century.
What is a soul? Many philosophers and psychologists have made reference to the human soul throughout the ages, yet the struggle to define what it really is, continues.
I believe that the battle for our souls eternal is very real. It strikes at the very essence of our being. It goes beyond our corporeal form.
This is a battle for everything we are, everything we have ever been, and everything we could still become.
Writing in The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn mused on the corruption of one’s soul when befallen to totalitarianism:
…government power can perpetrate all sorts of atrocities upon human beings, body and soul, but it can never fully succeed in quenching the human spirit. Yes, some people will submit and will die spiritually. But others… will endure and prevail.
Despite all of the indignities inflicted upon them, their innate human dignity will remain intact. In this sense, totalitarianism must always fail.
This statement is as impactful on the psyche as it is eerily prescient for what we are all being subjected to at the time of writing this in the year 2022.
What does it mean to die spiritually?
Perhaps it means to betray one’s own values, principles, and morals within one’s own heart. Maybe it means for someone to be so beaten into submission, that their sense of right and wrong is superseded by fear, aggression and malice.
Fundamentally leading to an unwavering conformity to unjust suggestions, imperatives, and a disconnectedness to what it means to be a human being.
Solzhenitsyn also said:
The soul must suffer first, to know the perfect bliss of paradise….
Harsh is the law, but to obey is for weak men the only way to win eternal peace.
If we were to take the easy option of conformity and kotow to subversiveness at the behest of the totalitarian state, we may perceive ourselves as not suffering in the immediacy, yet would we be weak, and would eternal peace elude us?
There is value in suffering.
The most universally shared form of suffering lately seems to have been in the breakage of familial social bonds, in loneliness, in solitude, and in being prevented from being reunited with loved ones.
Suffering can strengthen one’s resolve to withstand the storm that rages on unabated. If only we allow ourselves to feel it.
On the subject of suffering, Friedrich Nietzsche posited the following:
Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people…and ask yourself whether a tree that is supposed to grow to a proud height can dispense with bad weather and storms; whether misfortune and eternal resistance…do not belong among the favourable conditions without which any great growth even of virtue is scarcely possible.
Enduring hardship is intrinsic to the experience of suffering, and can be a great teacher within itself. Suffering can liberate the mind and enable us to make changes to our behaviour for more positive outcomes in the way we live our lives.
Opportunists not wanting to let a good crisis go to waste, seek to further embed technology and AI within our daily lives; necessitated by the manufactured crises being engineered all around us.
The parasitic agenda pushers of a discombobulated human state of anxiety and a diminished sense of adroitness, are actively capitalising on this misery.
I give you ‘Woebot’, the ‘friendly’ AI chatbot aimed at helping out with adolescent angst, and supplanting the role of parenthood…
I cannot think of anything more dehumanising.
As human therapists and counsellors slow down and cease to avail themselves for in person face to face dialogue with eye contact, is this horror show really a viable and effective alternative?
Whether you’re anxious, overwhelmed, or just mad… Woebot can help you get things off your chest and tackle your problems… This is your safe space… a judgement free zone.
Woebot suggests the young girl should tell her Mum what is bothering her in a “kind, respectful way.” Down the line after a few software patch updates, we might see Woebot getting a little more preachy and instructive…
Your Mum is an evil bitch, you should runaway to the nearest Government wellness centre for teenagers. Photograph your Mum’s passport and upload to the app before you leave home, we will help to adjust your Mum’s attitude in a FEMA re-education camp immediately.
The Woebot chatbot comes across as a classic case of mission creep. Catch the kids at the grassroots level, then foster their isolation and alienation from their peer groups and their own family.
Indoctrinate their cognitive development in order to turn them against their own family. Then abracadabra! The state has stealthily ‘raised’ a generation of good little drones loyal to the government organs.
Why bother ever stepping outside again, when my ‘doctor’ can download my uploaded voice recording and tell me if I’ve got moneypox.
As the upbeat soundtrack from the video segues into asking the viewer to voluntarily, anonymously (?), contribute their own voice to the colive database, one cannot help but wonder if that database could be used for something more sinister….
Speculatively, we could all be resurrected as interactive (sentient?) artificially intelligent chatbots, after donating our voices to the greater good.
Now we have come full circle. A soul cannot be something so shallow as a series of sounds, speech patterns, predictive algorithmic behaviour and programmable responses, that it can be replicated in the cloud, can it?
What if the preserved voice recordings were spliced in with biotechnological sensor readings on emotional responses to stimuli, chemical imbalances in the brain, and impurities within the bloodstream?
Ergo, the complete amalgamation of the human condition; neurologically, emotionally, physiologically…
Spiritually?
Sigmund Freud also weighed in on the introspective nature of determining what one’s soul is, what it means to them, how it affects the physical and mental condition:
Look into the depths of your own soul and learn first to know yourself, then you will understand why this illness was bound to come upon you and perhaps you will thenceforth avoid falling ill.
We are slowly being manipulated into believing that a soul can be artificially created. The insipid nature of our assimilative inclination is moving at a break-neck-pace towards merging with technology, machines, and embracing transhumanism. This can surely only cause a decaying and cauterising of the human soul.
Dear reader, would you readily choose the path of human interconnectedness and directly lived physical experiences in reality?
We are all human souls, we are flawed, we are full of love and emotion, we are complex beings.
This beautiful blue planet still exists beyond screens, outside the capture of a lens, apart from recording microphones and sensors.
All you need are eyes to see it and ears to hear it.
Nicholas Creed is a Bangkok-based journalistic infidel impervious to propaganda. Follow Creed Speech on Substack here. If you liked this content and wish to support the work, buy him a coffee or consider a crypto donation:
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