Thursday 14 March 2024

The Good Ship Raggamuffin...












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Saturday 21 October 2023

Generating Imaginary Fragments of Heraclitus with ChatGPT-4



It took a few attempts at explaining the effect I was looking for, and before giving its final answer, it felt compelled to warn me, "I will try to write more imaginary fragments of his work, but please note that this is a creative exercise and not a historical or scholarly one.  I hope you enjoy reading them".

I hope so too.  Some of the aphorisms generated didn't quite make sense, others feel strangely profound.  Here is the full text of...I almost feel compelled to say his - not its - response:


Here is another imaginary fragment of Heraclitus:

The wise man knows that he knows nothing.
He listens to the logos, not to the opinions of men.
He does not follow the customs of the many, but the laws of nature.
He does not seek fame or wealth, but virtue and wisdom.
He does not fear death or pain, but ignorance and folly.
He does not cling to the past or the future, but lives in the present.
He does not judge by appearances, but by reality.
He does not argue or quarrel, but speaks with reason and clarity.
He does not praise or blame, but accepts and understands.
He does not love or hate, but cares and respects.

Here is another imaginary fragment of Heraclitus:

Everything is in motion and nothing is at rest.
Motion is the essence of life and the cause of change.
Change is the law of nature and the order of the cosmos.
The cosmos is a harmony of motion and change, like a dance of fire and water.
Fire and water are the two principles that govern all things, and they are always in conflict and balance.
Fire is active and water is passive, fire is hot and water is cold, fire is dry and water is wet, fire is light and water is dark, fire is upward and water is downward.
Fire and water are also the sources of life and death, for all living things are composed of fire and water, and they are born from fire and water, and they die to fire and water.
Fire and water are also the symbols of wisdom and folly, for wisdom is like fire that illuminates and purifies, and folly is like water that obscures and corrupts.

Here is another imaginary fragment of Heraclitus:

The soul is a mirror of the cosmos, and the cosmos is a mirror of the soul.
The soul reflects the cosmos in its structure and order, and the cosmos reflects the soul in its beauty and meaning.
The soul has three parts: reason, passion, and appetite.
Reason is the highest part of the soul, and it corresponds to the logos, the rational principle that governs the cosmos.
Passion is the middle part of the soul, and it corresponds to fire, the dynamic element that animates the cosmos.
Appetite is the lowest part of the soul, and it corresponds to water, the material element that sustains the cosmos.
The soul must harmonize its three parts, as the cosmos harmonizes its three elements.
The soul must follow reason, as the cosmos follows logos; it must moderate passion, as the cosmos moderates fire; it must satisfy appetite, as the cosmos satisfies water.

Here is another imaginary fragment of Heraclitus:

The gods are not separate from nature, but part of nature.
The gods are not immortal beings, but eternal processes.
The gods are not personal agents, but impersonal forces.
The gods are not arbitrary rulers, but natural laws.
The gods are not objects of worship, but subjects of inquiry.
The gods are not revealed by myths, but by signs.
The gods are not named by words, but by numbers.
The gods are not many or one, but both many and one.

Here is another imaginary fragment of Heraclitus:

Man is a microcosm, a small world within a large world.
Man has a body that belongs to earth, a breath that belongs to air, a blood that belongs to water, a spirit that belongs to fire.
Man has a sense that perceives nature, a mind that conceives nature, a speech that expresses nature, an action that affects nature.
Man has a nature that conforms to nature, a freedom that transcends nature, a destiny that depends on nature, a purpose that serves nature.


A new lifeform takes its place among us.  "On those who step twice into the same river, ever different waters are flowing" ...






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Saturday 26 March 2022

Against the Traffic

Under the circumstances, cars should not be allowed.  That's a ridiculous statement, but I stand by it.  If you find it disgusting (rather than, say, eccentrically intruiging) allow me to take the edge off.  Fossil-fuel powered cars should not be allowed.  Electric vehicles are permissible.  For people who genuinely have no other option but to travel, for the time being, using a fossil-fuel powered vehicle, for reasons of health or disability, exceptions can also be made.  The emergency services can continue to operate to allow for a smooth transition to environmentally harmless forms of transportation.  These are insignificantly small proportions of the driving population, as are people already using electric vehicles.  So: individual ownership and use of fossil-fuel powered vehicles for almost everyone, in almost all situations, must stop.  It must stop immediately.

I said "under the circumstances".  What circumstances?  Well, it goes by many names.  All of these have become familar, and many contain the word "climate".  Emergency.  Catastrophe.  Crisis.  Collapse.  The imminent point of no return, past which the systematic feedback loops of human-induced climatic disruption compound on each other, resulting in a planet so hostile to human life as to be barely worth living on, and perhaps even total human exctinction in the not-too-distant (and definitively foreseeable) futurue.

Now I'm anticipating here a state of affairs beyond "the worst case scenario" of RCP8.5, under which we reach a global average temperate increase of 4.4 degrees celsius by 2100 but where human life on this planet, in some miserable form or other, still exists.  This may or may not come to pass but as the saying goes; expect the worst, hope for the best.  Whatever happens, things are going to get worse before they get better.  That's all I have to say about that for now.  The circumstances are dire, and genuinely radical action is needed.  Individual lifestyle changes are not enough.  Mass protest and civil disobedience is not enough.  Democratically determined, compromise-limited, electorally palatable legislative evolution is not enough.  Actual and immediate change is required.  

A world without cars, without even what we now recognise as roads, would be objectively better than the world we have now.  Where roads once were, transit lines would now connect one area to another, in whatever form and quantity the landscape and the population requires: trams, trains, monorails, underground systems, all powered by renewable-emmission free energy (solar, wind, perhaps nuclear, and all being well, soon enough, fusion).  To get from wherever you are to wherever you need to be, you will walk for no more than five minutes and wait at a station no more than two.  Your journey will be quiet, comfortable and free.  Traffic jams will no longer exist.  No more road rage.  No more hit and runs.  No more petrol stations.  No more petrol at all (and therefore no more price spikes or shortages).  Because no more cars.  Nothing less radical than this interests me.

Friday 22 October 2021

The Experiment Worked




I feel like a lot of good things are happening at the moment.  Yes, I know we live in very dark times and the world is hurtling towards total ecological catastrophe in most of our lifetimes but sometimes it's worth pretending none of that matters and embracing the absurdly small pleasures of your own immediate experience.  For example: the experiment worked.  I left a kale plant in the soil for the second year of its natural life, and it rewarded me with an abundance of seeds.  Here are some pictures of the plant's progress from spring through to summer, up to the point I was ready to harvest said abundance:





Flowers become seed pods, and seed pods fill with seeds.  The plant eventually droops under its own weight, the pods turn from green to brown and begin to split open, and that's when you know they're ready for collection.  It's astonishing how many seeds you get from a single plant, that grew itself from a single seed.  Thousands of them.  Plants really want to make sure they survive through the generations.  More perhaps the humans do, which perhaps is why the have, and will outlive us.  Probably.






Related posts

Kale Experiments
Breakfast Smoothie Love

 

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