Exterminate all the brutes…The archetypical melancholic and clear-eyed masterpiece: “Civilization, colonization, extermination”

Based on works by three authors and scholars: Sven Lindqvist’s “Exterminate All the Brutes”, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States”, and Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s “Silencing the Past”.

This visual intervention breaks the delusion of today’s narrative. Thank you Raoul Peck for this. Howard Zinn will be gleaming and applaud your piece de resistance. I have been waiting for this documentary my whole life. As an African and an American immigrant, this is the truth that lies in the underbelly of “today”, which has been covered up by the veneer of ” Western-European distortion” soaked in intentional revision masquerading as “true history”. I watched the documentary with pain and joy as this “truth” to be out. The delusion filled with hubris, apathy and ignorance I have seen in European/White Americans is very disconcerting. Simply, they do not know “history”. The vapid idea that Europeans “discover lands outside of Europe” aims to wash away the true native inhabitants. History should only start from a European view, everything else is “insignificant or a blank slate” is their propaganda. This has warped White/European minds into a thick bubble of delusion of “white superiority”. As Raoul pointed out, white colonizers ludicrously substituted military superiority for “biological, religious and civilizational superiority”. Some of them created an amoral, nuanced and vacuous path by suggesting those past actions were “justified” and needed for human progress a.k.a Social Darwinism through romanticizing the past. But who’s progress? Not Africans, enslaved Africans nor Native Americans. Acts of savagery and dehumanization inflicted on Native inhabitants is justified because they are supposedly inferior. But who is the true savage in this picture? They became what they did, but such self-reflection cannot be reached. They carried the “Bible, gun and an iconographic flag” from the Christian Crusades, Africa, Native America till today’s imperialism. My great great great great great great grand aunt was KIDNAPPED from my mother’s village by British slave traders and British colonial soldiers but her story lives on. Till today, we (Africans, Jews, Palestinians, Native Americans and Aborigines) are still dealing with the consequences of apartheid, colonization, slavery and genocide. Also fact that the whites, political conservatives to the far-right still delves into such regressive and social Darwinist perspectives. We don’t want any violent revenge. We want “singular truth, reparations (when needed), economic restructuring, deconstruction of racial hierarchy, dignity, self-autonomy, national sovereignty and reckoning” to prevent another such vicious undertaking. “Today are the consequences of yesterday” but Europeans never attributed such idiom to slavery, genocide, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, apartheid, imperialism and colonization except for their Euro-centric-based knowledge and industrialization (which is always independent of time from their apathetic bubble).

Africa had a civilization, history, culture, academia and politics prior to colonization but Europeans vilified such knowledge and history as “savage, inferior or inconsequential”. Theocracies, monarchies, federalism, technologies, communal banking, democracies, republicanism and confederacies existed prior to colonialism in Africa. Africa’s current state of affairs and underdevelopment is tied to colonialism, imperialism, anti-communism hysteria, economic exploitation, IMF austerity measures, and coup initiated, financed and/or aided by westerners in the name of “Western interests “.This means “forced” cheap raw materials exports protected by IMF, World Bank and WTO and importation of finished goods from western nations. Domestic industrialization in Africa will always be thwarted. True history always matters. As we say in Igbo land, “A fly that has no counselor follows the corpse to the grave”. True history has to be told and reflected upon, or else, death knocks at the door for all humanity.

Raoul Peck

Currently Reading

During the pandemic, I watched the news with the alarming rates of infections and deaths from COVID 19 affecting African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans disproportionately. Why? Are these groups genetically predisposed? Are they more exposed because of their jobs of the “essential worker status”? Are they affected more because of the food desert climate they inhabit? Is it because of the lack of medical facilities within their neighborhoods? So it is either socioeconomic or genetic, but it became clear that socioeconomic inequalities were the dominant factor.

The fundamental biological fact is that genetic variability among humans is less than any other species on earth and is approximate 0.1 per cent. Also, there are more DNA variations between black Africans than between black Africans and white Europeans. The popular superficial characteristics that define race, e.g. hair texture, skin color and facial features, only represent a few of the thousands of traits that define us as a species. These superficial traits are tied to migratory patterns, population histories and gene to environment interactions. Therefore complete genetic segmentation of populations is complex and non-discrete, and on a gradient.

These scientific facts irrevocably end the fallacy of race as biological but simply a political-economic-social construct. But through time, geneticists, archaeologists and anthropologists either willfully or naively “mold” genetic data to justify the idea of racial biodiversity. Even clear-eyed antiracist scientists often fall into the trap of studying genetic data and end up actualizing such racial differences. For example, highly-educated scientists in academia in Europe, the US and India hold on to biased old ideologies of racialized genetic pre-determination despite lack of biological evidence for racial difference in humans. The scientific method is simply corrupted as these scientists start with illogical conclusions of the existence of a racial hierarchy of biological racial differences and walk backwards into theory, experiments, hypothesis and observations to validate their “prior racialized bias”. It is “subjective and mythologized” scientific inquiry; science in this frame is influenced by time, culture and place. It also goes against the scientific standard that “correlation is not causality”. These pseudoscientific beliefs have implications in today’s culture, medicine, science, education, religion, social policy and foreign relations.

Angela Saini writes a historical, personal, sociological and journalistic piece on the origins of the pseudoscientific concept of “race” and its resilience through time till today. She adds a tone of humorous-cynicism confronting fallacies in the logic of scientists, anthropologists and academics. The roots of the ideas of “race” ironically began in the “Age of Enlightenment”, prominently including Voltaire, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm, Fredrich Hegel, which coincided with Europeans colonizing the world and particularly transporting enslaved Africans to the Western Hemisphere. It resorted to setting European civilization as the benchmark to define other non-Europeans. Colonialization, slavery, Holocaust, Jim Crow, apartheid and imperialism were, therefore, justifiable means of engagement in dealing with “nonwhites” since they were “biologically inferior” by their irrational European standards and pseudoscience. So, any civilization outside of “white” was seen as “savage or inferior” even though societies in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and America existed thousands of years ago with cultures, trade, religion, science, language, urbanization and governments.

Europeans met Native Americans, saw and were amazed by the advanced agriculture, bigger cities, gold, many subcultures, trade by barter based on needs, weak social hierarchy, non-taxation and simplified government structure. So who is truly a “savage”?

Race is wrongly defined as innate, genetic and biologically deterministic of certain groups, thereby deadening the truth of a “universal human race or Homo sapiens” but instead “predisposed traits within certain populations headed to fateful racial destiny”. “Socioeconomics”, “history”, “lifestyle”, and “nurture” are non-genetic casualties that are commonly willfully neglected in investigating differences within the human species.

The reductionist view of tying intelligence and behaviors to race and wealth of nations has been a tool to promote racial hierarchy through time. There is a choice of neglecting the consequences of colonialization, slavery, genocide, Jim Crow, apartheid and imperialism, which have caused non-white populations to have suffered rampant inequalities. This counters the argument of genetic inferiority. These pseudoscientific ideas led to the rise of KKK, Eugenics, Nazism, Pioneer Fund-Mankind Quarterly publications, Richard Herrnstein’s and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve and political right-wing extremist movements. It is no surprise that people of European descent either directly or indirectly participate in the social ideology of “whiteness” based on the pseudoscientific notion of superior intelligence relative to others.

There is a thin wall separating the eugenics of pre-World War 2 from the genetics of Post World War 2. Even the scientifically respected field of genetics found its roots in Eugenics. Angela exposed the celebrated James Watson of the “double helix structure of DNA” discovery was a racist. The need for categorization resonating from non-human species research in works of Carl Linnaeus and Charles Darwin extended into human beings led to “scientific racism” then “eugenics and quietly rebranded into genetics. The Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science, a staple for eugenics research during the Nazi regime, was rebranded into Max Plank Society, the perfect example of this historical whitewashing. Otmar von Verschuer and his infamous diabolical protégé, Josef Mengele, were part of the Kaiser Wilhelm eugenics research group.

The horrid examples in the book about the cruelty that “Ota Benga” and “Sarartjie Baartman” faced is a testament to how the indoctrination of “superiority” made those white spectators become inhumane and vacuous entities akin to barbarism.

One comical part of the book was how “race” was expanded for superior racial talents to selectively pick “Dante, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo and Da Vinci” to be of “Nordic descent” despite their origins from southern European ancestry, which had been stereotyped as “unintelligent”. Another ludicrous pseudoscientific claim on enslaved Africans called the “slavery hypertension hypothesis” from Clarence Grim suggests that Black Americans are genetically predisposed to retain more salt because of an accelerated natural selection process during the Middle Passage voyage. So salt-driven evolutionary process protected the surviving Africans on the ships. Still, it retrograded them into a medical predisposition for hypertension. It is beyond humorous. Race categorization is regressive and a terrible proxy for human variation in the space of medical research. Grouping people of different ethnicities into the race columns in conducting medical research by assuming genetic differences fail to account for dietary, socioeconomic and environmental underlying causes. For example, lumping Middle Easterners, North Africans and Europeans as “whites” or African Americans and Africans as “black” in studying patterns and prevalence of certain diseases renders such research highly flawed.

Race inherently can be reconstituted, expanded or even abandoned since it is tied to sociological framing rather than scientific facts. Race was solely built for “social hierarchy/caste system”. In human history, no civilization is dominant, but instead, it is tidally short-lived. Finally, we refuse to realize that humans are more ethnically mixed but “genetically singular” than the artificial walls of race.

My only critique of her book is that the racial hierarchy concept had its roots before the Age of Enlightenment. The Post Constantine era and dark to medieval times in Europe where rampant antisemitism and islamophobia was a function of “religious superiority” worked similarly to race. English church and state created laws calling for the surveillance, herding, incarceration, legal murder, and expulsion of English Jews. Muslims were seen as “subhumans and evil”, so their murder was justified. This racist principle also justified the Spanish Inquisition sanctioned by the church and Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand to “cleanse” Spain from “Muslims and Jews”. This “supremacist” ideology in conjunction with religious superiority and pursuit of economic imperialism was also used as a predicate for military invasion and/or Christian Crusade to claim/steal Jerusalem from the “heathens and subhumans who were seen as unchristian by the joint European amalgam of “Western Christendom” which includes the Holy Roman Empire, English Kingdom, Spanish Kingdom and other European mini kingdoms “.

Currently reading

The fallout of the Tulip mania of the mid 1600s remains to be learnt, as the Dutch markets suffered decay. Old Dutch and modern economies in industrialized nations evolved to a system of credit driven speculative valorization of capital and assets independent of production and resources, which explicit deviates from an intrinsic value of labor, wage growth and average standard of living. As photons are to electromagnetism, derivatives, futures, options, CDS, MBS, CLO, and so on, are all capitalization carriers of fictitious capital. Lending from Karl Marx’s description of “fictitious capital”, Cédric Durand’s authoritative venture uses quantitative and qualitative tools in analyzing the growth of modern financialization at the expense of industrialization and fundamental-productive economics (since 1970’s) in industrialized nations. Financialization is the finality of an economic decline emanating from the “insatiable growth model of capital”. Capital begetting capital through speculative financialization placed on the stock markets resulting in accrued wealth and revenue to those who already own capital, funded by secured debt from central banks through the legality of government within the bounds of a neoliberal economy. Asset inflation becomes the tenet of this predatory capitalism. Aggregate demand with respect to industrialization including wage growth, consumer spending, social welfare and infrastructure becomes arbitrarily diminished in this neoliberal economy. Financialization are basically pervasive legalized extrapolations of property law, trust law, collateral law, bankruptcy law and contract law enforced by the nation-state and supranational bodies .
These bets or financialized products can be made with small to large amounts, whose value derives from the capitalization of anticipated revenues, which is inherently “fictitious” but can be “actualized in excess return” as long as a buyer is in the market, as seen in today’s stock market. Recessions and Depressions are not necessarily market correction junctures but instead dominantly consequences of sudden drop in demand for financialization products from buyers causing “market paralysis” especially in a tightening monetary space (in anticipated fear of inflation from Central Banks). But with time, the market is restored again by the “put” option set by Central Banks through pumping credit into financial institutions and corporations (interest rates cut, quantitative easing, bailouts, lending to primary financial institutions, funding repurchase agreement markets, relaxation of leverage ratio/capital requirement limit, bond purchasing programs and expanding international swap lines), which inevitably feeds back into speculative assets again. Bailouts get bigger with each burst of the financialization bubble.
Debt financed assets either as stock buybacks, low-interest loans or securitization becomes increasingly the engine of the economy rather than productivity or industrialization. This feedback loop keeps wealth within 10% of the population either pre-economic crisis or post-economic crisis while leaving behind “losses” to the lower 90%. The dead carcasses from an economic crisis are then transferred to the labor class and manifested as “austerity measures” including unemployment, wages cuts, reduction in social welfare, bankruptcies, privatization of social services and so on. This iterative sequence, whimsically called “business cycle”, increases the malignant financialization relative to industrialization of the economic system creating a “zombified corporate ecosystem“. Financialization is unequivocally a devolution of an economy from industrialization. The fatalistic decoupling of “production” from the economy creates credit driven speculative valorization of future actualization of gains of capital. This creates plutocracy, sprawling debt and vast social inequalities that renders a society unstable, anti-meritocratic, “anti common-good” and most especially “rigged”. This business cycle privatizes the profits but transfers the losses of financialization to the public. Even Adam Smith of “Wealth of Nations” was very cognizant of the imbalance of labor with capital due to capital’s inordinate buying power of the “law and government”.
History can attest to this predicament:
The political-socioeconomic evolution from gold standard based financialization in early 20th century crashed in 1929 which consequentially led to the Great Depression, fascism and World War II. The Bretton Woods-Keynesian-Social democratic system of post World War II was disrupted by the 1970’s stagflation and fiat currency establishment (Nixon shock) was introduced. In the early 1980’s till today, the neoliberal financialization created plutocracy, deconstruction of the administrative state, stagnant wages, decline in collective bargaining, cyclical unemployment, loss of economic growth, rentier capitalism and the inevitable rise of illiberal-ethnonationalistic democracies to autocracy.
The asymmetrical bailout response by the Trump administration, Congress to direct the Federal Reserve to overwhelmingly favor the “plutocratic circles of corporations” towards the voracious COVID-19 pandemic was built on the the facetious narrative of a “trickle-down effect of capital investment”. Instead asset inflation through stock buybacks and savings by securities purchases ensued. This created a “K shaped economy of a decoupled stock market from labor, economy and productivity” and envelopes what this book repudiates.

Inspiration……

Paradoxes behind the storyline of “Devs”: Science+philosophy+God.

As the lockdown loomed and doomed our spirits with COVID 19 pandemic reshaped our lives. I looked for intriguing TV shows to fill time outside of my girlfriend and writing my scientific publications from my Ph.D. thesis. The show “Devs” on FX came across my radar and the synopsis was already captivating. Cause versus effect, chaos versus determinism, time, quantum computing, ethics of surveillance capitalism and quantum mechanics were integrated into a TV thriller with echoing-droning synths and captivating graphics. There are very few TV shows and movies that tickle my insatiable predilections for science. “Devs” definitely surpasses my threshold.  A short description of Devs is as follows: 

Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno) is an encryption specialist. for Amaya, a sinister quantum computing company run by Forest (Nick Offerman). Lily soon becomes embroiled in the mysterious death of her boyfriend who also works for Amaya (artificial intelligence specialist) and it leads to the deeper mystery of the operations of Devs; an isolated and ultra-secret subdivision under Amaya. 

The programming and simulation lab within the “Devs” building (surrounded by Faraday shields) is housed in a three-dimensional fractal mathematical design called the “Menger sponge”  (lined with gold painted walls) which is suspended by an electromagnetic field. Menger sponge is constructed by starting with a cube, dividing every face of the cube into nine squares, like a Rubik’s Cube/tic-tac-toe grid (cube divides into 27 smaller cubes), removing the smaller cube in the middle of each face, removing the smaller cube in the very center of the larger cube (20 smaller cubes) and perform this iteration for the remaining smaller cubes till infinity. Within this technological marvel lies the mystery of “Deus” called a quantum computer. Quantum computing is a nascent operational system that aims to supersede traditional computing(quantum supremacy). It takes advantage of an atomic scaled (at and below Planck’s length; 10^-9m) phenomenon called quantum superposition.  It simply involves data in a quantum computer are stored and computed in “1” and “0” bits or qubits (2ⁿ) rather than “1” or “0” binary system in traditional computing. This allows for astronomical processing powers stored in a super-cooled and superconducting casing for the resultant heat.

In Devs, a quantum computer was deployed in resolving the ultimate unresolvable. To simulate time and space auditorily and visually based on the pilot wave theory (Bohmian mechanics of hidden variable theory). But  Devs accomplished it through another quantum decoherence view called Hugh Everett’s Many Worlds interpretation. Guess what? There is a difference. 

How microscopic properties translates into macroscopic properties as a function of time and space is the essence of quantum mechanics (field theory) transitioning into classic physics and relativistic mechanics. So moving from quarks and bosons to atoms, to molecules to humans to planets finally into galaxies. The properties in question irrespective of scale primarily includes energy, momentum (linear and angular), position and mass. Simply, quantum mechanics are the elemental structure like guitar strings, the guitar is physics, plucked and stroked into harmony expressed in chemistry and extrapolated into a musical piece/symphony known as biology.  

But how did Devs do it?

Are the expansive powers of today’s data surveillance capitalists leading to abridgment of human privacy and freedom or scientific necessity for human progress? Is such exploration, a challenge of God? These are the ethical and philosophical questions that percolate my head as I watched “Devs”

Tech billionaire Forest’s obsession to simulate time and space was driven by his desire to break space-time continuum and reunite with his dead daughter. This obsession leads him on the road of immorality and narcissism to “play God”. His interpretation of nature is deterministic therefore his evil ways are pre-ordained inexorability, therefore affords him exculpability from any unrighteousness. The proverbial necessary evil is needed for his abhorrent selfishness.  He plays indifferent to the torture and killings carried out by his psychopathic henchman because it serves his greater good. Free will is to be upended for determinism, to be omnipresent. The sacred and mysterious grounds of religiosity, free will and God should be scientifically explored for psychopathic emotional gains is his mantra. The Devs’ obsessions with the visuals of Jesus Christ crucifixion are of Arc biblical and religious significance. So religion was dragged into the Devs. The disheveled and humble appearance of Forest masks the ruthlessness and dissociative demeanor in pursuit of his goals. This juxtaposition is the current archetype that permeates Silicon Valley from the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Jeff Bezos. Data collection and mining has become the central theme of Silicon Valley at the expense of democracy, privacy,  knowledge and egalitarianism. The utilitarian commoditization of a highly surveilled populace as products to be sold to commercial spaces and governments pushes us further into a dystopian technologic-totalitarian space defined by misinformation and human dependency. This human to technology dependency is sold facetiously to the general public as a tool of democracy, a democratized knowledge sphere, an exercise of citizen power and human interconnectivity for a utopian future. This envisages powers are vested in a new private government. Information is now power, not money not people not military might not intelligence. An asymmetrical technological access and control builds a new social hierarchy. It is essentially god-like power. It is the anthesis to the dogma of scientific inquiry which is scientific communal human progress within the realms of morality. The ethical conundrum of “playing God” should always be considered at every provocative scientific venture. The hubris to bend the human will, own human privacy and demystify the universes can be lead to madness and depression. Sometimes I wonder when Forest often stares blankly at empty space; the mind of a depressed and obsessive mind. Robert Oppenheimer of the Manhattan Project famously said after testing the first atomic bomb in 1945, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”; well-known line from the Bhagavad-Gita. In Forest, it evolves to “Now I become a new God, the manipulator of this world” is now suffice. Some questions in nature are left unanswered for a reason, no matter how tempting.

Did they resolve Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen’s criticism of quantum mechanics (EPR paradox)? Did they remove the probabilistic consequential uncertainty in Schrodinger’s time-dependent quantum mechanical equation? Did they nullify Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle? Did they prove reality is dependent on the observer/measurer of subatomic particles (Niels Bohr’s anti-realist subjectivity) in contrast to mutual non-dependency of the universe with observer/measurer of subatomic particles (Albert Einstein’s realist objectivity)?  These are the scientific trivia that percolate my head as I watched “Devs”

Lyndon, the young technological prodigy within the Devs team substituted Forest’s unitary adherence to Bohmian mechanics of hidden variable theory for Hugh Everett’s Many Worlds interpretation and he made a major crack into a quantum-mechanical system which allowed him to add an auditory and high resolution to the grainy visual projection of time and space. Therefore he reduced uncertainties in one prediction by normalizing it across different predictions. So the least plausible prediction of the future had the most uncertainty and the most plausible had the least uncertainty. He then inevitably creates new errors (deviations from a unitary reality) through this quantum decoherence model.

Newtonian, classical and relativistic physics are highly deterministic therefore prediction of the behavior of particles in space and time (above Planck’s length) involves knowing all the properties of matter. Quantum mechanics is limited in information, the behavior of particles is in a state of deterministic chaos because only some are known. So knowing more of the unknown reduces knowing the already known in quantum mechanics. Simultaneity in characterizing particle properties above Planck’s length is deterministic while uncertainties are consequential in characterizing properties at and below Planck’s length. More precisely, the probability of finding the particle in space at a point  is directly proportional to the square of the wave function (Born’s rule). 

The major schools of thought of understanding the quantum decoherence includes: 

1. Copenhagen interpretation (Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg): It simply is that quantum particles do not have properties until measurement by an observer. So Schrodinger’s equation’s probabilistic predictions of quantum particles’ temporal trajectory are not as important as wave function collapse ensuing after measurement in determining the particle properties. Therefore, the behavior of particles in grounded states is unimportant until a measurement is conducted as it transitions to an excited state by an induced frequency-energy machine and absorbs (excited) then releases photons (returning back to ground state).Particles are abstract manifestations but the measurements of particles are real, so measurements give particles its properties. Subjective anti-realism is the scientific philosophy that can encapsulate this interpretation. 
2. Many Worlds interpretation (Hugh Everett): With quantum particles jitters or fluctuations spread across the wave function as allowed under Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Therefore every possible outcome is actualized as quantum particles jump into existence across the probabilistic wave function.  There is no wave function collapse as a result, there are just parallel worlds of different configurations dependent on the probabilistic wave function (resulting in higher variance between different points on the wave function). Therefore measurements occurs in different parallel worlds. It spreads indeterminacies of the quantum mechanical system across different realities. It is a objective anti-realism.  

3. Pilot way theory (Louis de Broglie and David Bohm): It simply is the quantum world that is independent of the observer/measurer. Therefore, there is intrinsic mechanical order regardless of the observer.  The Schrodinger equation provides a mathematical template to show the temporal evolution of the wave function; therefore provides half of the information of the quantum mechanical system. The other half lies hidden in the unobserved or intrinsic configured world or guiding equation. Together they force the quantum mechanical system to be deterministic and non-local. Therefore individual particles are already predetermined to move along the specified folds  (concentrated energy-amplitude) of the wavefield across space-time at predetermined momentum to end up in a predetermined position. It mimics the predictive trajectories of deterministic classical and relativistic physics. The position of an individual particle is dependent on the intrinsic configuration, the intrinsic configuration is governed by the momentum of wave function and the wave function is dependent on the boundary conditions of the the universe.

It resolves the paradoxes associated with Many World’s interpretation and Copenhagen interpretation by introducing the hidden variables of the intrinsic configuration but opens a problematic door into faster than light communication through non-locality.  It breaks from the traditional duality of light properties; wave and particle. Therefore, an intrinsic unobservable system or equation predicts how the wave “guides” the particle. So measurements results of the symbiotic relationship of particle and wave with no wave function collapse. It is a nuanced form of realism. 

John Stewart Bell introduced the “Bell theorem” to evaluate the compatibility of the hidden variables theories (EPR and pilot way theory). He wrote, “If a hidden-variable theory is local, it will not agree with quantum mechanics, and if it agrees with quantum mechanics it will not be local”. Therefore quantum mechanics will always be probabilistic which makes it incompatible with the determinism arising from hidden variable theories. This was the underlying scientific reason why Lyndon in Devs got derided and fired by Forest after implementing the Many Worlds’ interpretation. Lyndon was a Many worlds fundamentalist (which unfortunately led to his destruction) while Forest was a Pilot-wave fundamentalist. As Forest said the Many Worlds’ interpretation was a cheat code aimed to get the answer but created amplified errors by introducing variances of outcomes. Therefore a Jesus in one word isn’t a Jesus in another world, his identity, consciousness and physical appearances will be variant across universes. Forest must have harvested a large amount of data across the universe (with and without the consent of governments or people) to parametrize hidden variables and fed into the quantum computer for processing in an aim to combine the two halves of the Pilot way theory. So free will is an illusion and history is pre-determined according to Forest as long as the hidden variables of the unobserved is known. Lyndon’s view of Many Worlds’ leads him to the bridge to ascertain its predictions by hanging on the bridge of which multiple worlds would have different outcomes about his death or return back to Devs. He inevitably opens the door to quantum immortality; death in one world doesn’t mean death in all worlds. 

Lily meet Forest in the last episode and watched the near future as both of them stepped inside an elevator before Lily shoots Forest dead, and bullet punctured the elevator’s glass walls and caused pressure imbalance in the vacuum and break of the electromagnetic field causing the elevator to fall resulting in death. Forest believed that this projection was already determined and inevitable. However, upon entering the elevator,  Lily throws away the gun which was a variant of the projection but Devs employee Stewart (Stephen McKinley Henderson) sabotages the elevator and both of them die. So the outcome was the same but the configuration of the outcome was variant from the projection. Therefore, Hugh Everett (Lyndon) was right; determinism is a fool’s errand. The irony was the only place of determinism existed in the Devs system of “constructed reality” where the consciousness of Forest and Lily was finally uploaded. 

Does free will truly exist?

This is a thought that ran into mind. I discussed this once months ago with my girlfriend’s sister who is an ardent Christian. In the Bible, God is seen as all-knowing, so in a way, he lives in the world of the Pilot wave theory but how can God square that with giving free will to humans which are in a state of probabilities. He knows the beginning and the end, so our paths are already predetermined; so why the final judgment. This is a paradox. Isn’t religious faith willfully dissonant to this conundrum or blind faith? Is God a consequence of uncertainty and complexity of life or is he independent of the observable universe?  This uncertainty is an open argument of the paradoxes underlying free will or determinism in this world.

I believe that God lives in a 99.9% deterministic world but leaves a 0.01% probability for human free will to take rein. It provides a pathway (highly tough) for humanity to find salvation. It is my spiritual and metaphysical bridge of  Bohr’s anti-realism with Einstein’s and/or Pilot wave theoretical realism. 

Currently reading: The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin

This is Corey Robin’s scholastic polemic on the philosophical, historical and sociological incision into the minds of intellectual conservatives, slavery apologists, neoliberals, fascists, nativists, theocratic tyrants, white supremacists, libertarians, authoritarians, imperialists, neoconservatives, ethnonationalists, free-market ideologues and absolute monarchists. It emphasizes the political theory of reactionary forces through examining its upstarts, pitfalls, deviations and contradictions. Conservatives have a narrowed and selective view into history where their actions are seen as epistemological and rightful while the costs are naturally ordained on others. Conservative intellectualism finds its voice in recreating and eulogizing a revisionist past devoid of any past ills to bring into the present. It is an anti-progress and contradictory enterprise insipid of political, scientific and socioeconomic intellectualism. It defines the “social” in human existence to be “static institutions” irrespective of the innate human need for “progress, freedom and equality”. There are common threads through history that defines the reactionary mind and its prerogatives including social hierarchy, absolute power, economic exploitation, obsessive disgust of societal progress condemned as decadant decay, blind loyalty in the form of nationalism, rejection of modernity, mythologized violence, singular identity for a designated will, disdain for critical thinking, utmost economic inequality, intolerance of the tolerant, rugged individualism for the submissive majority in contrast to the bequeathed few, mythologized and romanticized view of the past, masculine virality, obscure-divide–obfuscate tactics to coral the masses in the form of democratic feudalism, abstract to apocalyptic sense of violence, an exaggerated sense of dispossession, shameless adaptability through hypocrisy (absorbing the energy of rising revolution) appealing to the masses by redirecting the anger of societal socioeconomic inequalities towards “external actors and/or domestic agitators” and condemnation of the “decadent, weak and cowardly” old regime then building a new power structure that whimsically mimics the old regime. Essentially, aristocracy, tyranny, social darwinism, nihilism, obliteration of knowledge, immoral interpretation of traditionalism, theocracy, the subjectivity of capital/class, the adovocation of markets, devaluation of labor, quantification of humanity as utility, pseudo-scientific racism/eugenics, hubris, social control and paternalism are the reactionary ideologies evoked to stave off their  perception of civilization decline through rising calls for egalitarianism of opportunities. These are their dogmatic virtues in the pursuit of the so-called “sublime”. Positioning on the rigid hierarchy is defined by class, gender, capital, military ranks, labor, race, and education. This caste system provides different access to  liberty, capital, civil-human rights, freedom and state protection. Therefore, it is socio-economic-political feudalism for absolute order and submission at all costs. This power structure stretches from the public to the private parts of society.  

Policies aren’t their animated vehicle for action but instead instigated to act “unequally and oppositely to any rising egalitarian democratic forces and focusing on their disgust against the societal change of their old order of social mores”. Freedom to oppress, subjugate or dominate not the freedom from wants nor inhumanity is the governing principle of a reflexive conservatives. The usurpation of the hierarchical order of the private to the public square evokes fear that evokes melodramatic scenes of an anarchic, defanged, dystopic and lackluster society in the mind of reactionaries. Therefore such usurpation needs to be quenched through by any means necessary. Simply, the reactionary mind is the defined by the “polity of a melodramatic fear and victimhood”.  “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely and such attained corrupted power becomes a source of incoherence, delusional statis and contradictions“ should be a  bumper sticker of the reactionary movement.  The pursuit of reinstituting power over an insurgent left bereft of understanding its implications is the sole vigor for the rise of counterrevolutionaries. They mimic the mass movements of the left but arm their following with delusional, immaterial and superfical power to oppress the “others” and protect the dominating power. Upon achieving success with the annihilation of the left, the precipitation of incoherence, inertness and incompetence comes to bear. It is therefore apparent that the counterrevolutionary movement is cynically “quixotic”. In dealing with the incoherence and contradictions in its philosophies and governance, they choose to become insincere, bored, visceral, apathetic, and non-reflective; in a short form, they resort to “gaslighting”. This inability of ideological self reflection nor policy advocation could lead into the downward spiral of evolving from megalomania into cultish-fanatic nihilism. This is a predicate for spectacular mass violence of the fascistic order devoid of humanism, liberty, progress and rationality”. Thus an an Orwellian state is born. 

William F. Buckley made a confession to Corey Robin. Capitalism is “boring,” said the founding father of the American right. “Devoting your life to it,” as conservatives do, “is horrifying if only because it’s so repetitious. It’s like sex.”

This hierarchy is manifest destiny for reactionaries because the “others and lessers” lack personal virtue, have a poor work ethic, culturally deficient, lack discipline, unintelligent, show weak competitive animal spirits, biologically inferior and are easily captured by personal vices. Social hierarchy is therefore a natural order of which opportunities, wealth, capital and status should always be given, taken, owned and protected for the professional-managerial class, aristocrats, whites, elites and monopolists. Edmund Burke, Georges Sorel, Alexis de Tocqueville, Ayn Rand, Joseph de Maistre, Thomas Hobbes, Ludwig von Mises, Antonin Scalia, John Calhoun, Winston Churchill, Phyllis Schlafly, Richard Nixon, Irving Kristol and Francis Fukuyama are some of the reactionary figures of which Corey Robin builds his coherent political theory. It is unusual that he didn’t delve into  William F. Buckley, Newt Gringrich, Southern Strategy practitioners and white Christian evangelicals. It is the top ten best political books I have ever read.

This book affirms my belief that Donald Trump is not heterodox from the conservative toolbox but instead, another bombastic machination of the arc of counterrevolutionaries. Trump simply is an incoherent and incompetent neo-fascistic vulgarian. 

The difference is—-more malignant narcissism, more blatant white nationalist appeal, more willful incongruence to science and truth, and more rampant incompetence. The keyword is “more”. Trump is simply an accelerant to an already burning fire. Trump in my view is the perfect conservative; the hybrid of white identity politics, conspiratorial theories, melodramatic cultural resentment, megalomania, bottomless unscrupulousness, plutocracy and authoritarianism. Robin pointendelty stated that caveat to his strain of conservatism is that he openly exposes how rigged, vacuous and casino-like capitalism is, moral emptiness in politics, the fake bravado of the elites and foreign relations is centred on economical transactions not humanitarinism.   

As Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs magazine postulated isn’t “right-wing populism” just fascism?

It is not a coincidence that social democratic societies ooze of the egalitarianism of opportunities not an outcome, radical economics, dynamic pluralism, symbiotic relationship of citizenry/society with the state, intellectualism and morality within the bounds of contextual rationality while conservative-totalitarian-fascistic societies bathe in the pool of visceral, incoherent, amoral, anti-democratic, plutocratic/oligarchic, repressively hierarchal and nihilistic characteristics in a loop of incoherence. 

Currently reading…….

Brian Greene; a theoretical physicist, mathematician, and string theorist at Columbia University takes the reader into the fascinating realm of parallel bubble universes separated millions to billions of light-years apart in an expanding infinite space as a natural consequence of the “Many Worlds interpretation” of quantum mechanics. He then introduces the reader to string theory, which attempts to unify quantum mechanics and gravity or general relativity. He also opens the reader’s mind into the theorized quantum parallel universe reality proposal from string theory wherein the universal existence is a holographic 3D projection from the distant 2D surface.

Currently reading…..

Ronan Farrow, the New Yorker journalist and former United States diplomat  details the devolution of American diplomacy which are replaced by the tentacles of military industrial complex. From his personal account, key international figures, former United States Secretaries of State (Henry Kissinger to Rex Tillerson), famous diplomatic broker Richard Hollobroke  and other bureaucratic diplomats, Ronan captures  the  policy misfortunes, neoconservatism, short sighted counterintelligence measures, budget cuts, macroscale Westernized political doctrine rather than regionalist political compromises,   financial  mismanagement, and Washington antagonism that envisaged the derailment of the global leadership of Unites States with time.

Currently watching……………..

Broad city=New york+hipster subculture+Jewish girls+insanely hilarious+off kilter banter

The Bridge (Broen)= Scandinavian+mystery+psychological warfare+eccentric female detective and characters+dark noir

One Mississippi= Southern America culture+dark humor+satire+drama+lesbian+romantic love+family secrets and death

White gold= 80’s era+UK version of Wolf of Wallstreet (Ed Westwick)+shady opportunistic businessmen+colorfully flamboyant+wickedly funny

Chance=San Francisco+psychological thriller+domestic abuse+mystery+dark noir+psychological drama+questionable ethics

Casual=California+dysfunctional family and friends+navigating modern-day dating+drama+comedy+edgy talk

Podcast weekly dosage…….

Robert Reich; Former Bill Clinton Labor secretary and currently  Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley progressive perspective on topics related to economics, wealth inequality, government policy, Trumpism and democracy…..

Jeremy Scahill of the  independent news media: The Intercept, conveys a no hold barred, introspective and scrupulous look in the  intersection of geopolitics, militarism,  global and/or American pseudo oligarchy class under the tidal and incomprehensible reign of Trupism….

Ezra Klein of Vox discusses politics, domestic and foreign policies with  and/or without invited guests from politics to media 

Neil Degrasse Tyson; astrophysicist and Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City creates a space for non-scientific guests to educate,explore and sometimes question the scientific realms of the everyday life and the universe…….

 

Michio Kaku; theoretical physicist and proclaimed “futurist”  provides  fascinating and “super nerdy” discussions of various science subjects especially physics and the implications of these subjects in the future ………

Tom Keene (The chubby guy always in a bowtie) and David Gura discuss condensed news in global finance , economics and  global markets with the  occasional interviews with money market players

Felix Salmon of Slate media talks about news surrounding finance,  investments, quants, Trumponomics, economics and global markets

Charlemagne Tha God and Andrew Schultz provide  satirical, smart, stupid and whimsical perspective on social issues in everyday life…….

Currently reading……………….

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present……This insightful book covers the African American exploration from slavery to present day of forgotten historically unethical, inhumane and horrid medical and/or scientific practices in which unlawful experiments, grave-robbing, eugenics, inferior care and  unauthorized autopsies leaving behind a legacy till present of a  reasonably paranoid and distrustful-dichotomous relationship between African Americans and the medical instructions, prisons, military and government………She warned that these tactics are being deployed in Africa under the guise of “humanitarianism and/or science”

Currently reading……

Borrowing the writing style of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein report on the Watergate scandal , “All the President’s Men”, Johnathan Beaty and S.C Gywnne provide intricate details on the rise and fall of the corrupt laden, mysterious and sophisticated dark web of geopolitics in BCCI bank ( Bank of Credit and Commerce International) from 1973 to 1991…….

Opinionated look at the Nigerian’s economy……….

General Muhammed Buhari-Incoming President of Nigeria

President Johnathan Goodluck-Outgoing President of Nigeria

This past year has been marred by economic downturn that will dictate the future of the Nigerian financial security. The oil price drop caused a snowball effect that has dampened the GDP growth from close to 7 percent to 4.8 percent for the 2015 year. The oil drop caused the Central Bank of Nigeria to remove its leverage of artificially supporting the naria with respect to the strong dollar by spending federal reserves leading to the dramatic drop of the naria by 10 percent, increasing fear of foreign and domestic investors’ confidence and downgrade in credit rating to BB minus. Regrettably, I still expect the currency to fall to 230-245 Naria to dollar in the coming months. Ratings downgrade is also attributed to the Boko Haram insurgency (which is on the dwindling recently) and election instability (relatively peaceful transition). Nigeria, Iran, Russia and Venezuela has been heavily hampered by the drop in oil prices, weak demand from Asian countries especially China and petroleum oversupply from United States. As the this coming year marks the return of Muhammed Buhari as a democratically elected president over the  outgoing Johnathan Goodluck. Buhari has to debate either to apply three methods of resuscitating the economy either passing austerity measures, conducting Keynesian economics or implementing mixed economy policies. Here are some key facts, suggestions and insights:

1. Total debt in Nigeria ($67.73 billion) is summation of external debt ($9.71 billion), federal domestic debt ($47.05 billion) and states domestic debt ($10.97 billion) with Lagos state leading the charge of over $600 million. The numbers might look small in comparison to United states with total debt sitting close to $18 trillion. The fact is America although in a recessive economic state generated $16 trillion in GDP while Nigeria generated $526 billion in GDP in 2014. The American invariably can sustain and accumulate more debt than Nigeria because of the simple word called “diversification”. Nigerian economy has primarily focused its revenue generation from petroleum production (roughly 70 percent) which is showing the over-reliance of a certain commodity on the economy therefore the Nigerian economy should mirror the periodicity of oil prices. The American economy is diversified in retail markets,energy,tourism, mining markets, healthcare, military, food, entertainment, financial services, construction, agriculture that generate revenue internally and externally. Diversification encourages healthy competition, revenue generation, privatization, job employment, expansive and emerging markets and increase in foreign investments. The Nigerian debt to GDP ratio might be low sitting at 11% but its credit rating disallows Nigeria from borrowing and reduces yields from government bond in comparison to USA’s 102% debt to GDP ratio which is offset by diversified economic portfolio and strong Standard and Poor ratings (AAA).

2. Inflation rate – Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) controls both the monetary policy and the federal spending unlike the European countries that has European Union/European Central Bank (EU/ECB) control its monetary economy and its individual countries control its  spending power. Nigerian system is advantageous because our debt policy can be managed  concurrently with our government spending avoiding crisis similar to  Greece. CBN currently runs an interest rate of 13% in comparison to USA Federal reserve rate close to zero percent (0.25%). At Nigerian current interest rate, it disallows loans and borrowings for small businesses and expansion of projects by current private companies. I am not advising that we should mimic American interest rate which is inappropriately too low  that could cause another financial bubble that caused the 2000 tech crash and 2008 real-estate crash-globalized debt obligations (recession). An interest rate of about 2-8 percent is ideologically a safe bracket where the federal government keeps stimulates privatized sectors’ and public lending while encouraging a competitive capitalist atmosphere. The Nigerian inflation rate has been increasing rapidly over the past few years sitting currently at 8.7 percent and projected to sit around 11% this year compared to United States that hovers around -0.10%. Americas’ extremely low inflation rate is associated with weak demand from industrialized countries, low employment, weak exporting power and strong dollar. Nigerian inflation has been on the upswing unexpectedly due to the oil price drop with no direct effect on wage increment to match the inflation trend causing the middle class to decrease, reducing purchasing power, encourages public savings and poverty increase. If there is an increase in goods generated by the government as a result of diversification, it creates more demand with a reduction in  money supply will minimize  inflation rate thereby stabilizing the effects of the oil prices. It was expected the Nigeria to deflate with the worldwide oil glut and national currency drop but the internal and external demand has been stagnant, rising unemployment and stagnant wages growth produces a counter-effect of inflammatory and unexpected inflation. There has to be a balance set by the Ministry of Finance and Central Bank of Nigeria between interest rates and inflation rate because lowering the interest rate might irrevocably cause inflation to increase rapidly.

3. Financial policies has to institutionalized to be passed and implemented to face the dire circumstances that coming in the facing years. We cannot adopt full austerity measures that will cripple federal spending, increase employment, increase tax cuts especially to the wealthy (trickle-down economics), lower interest rates, constrains structural  microeconomics, private sector driven, stimulus deterrent,cutting social benefits and programs, crowding in financial phenomena but inadvertently expect debt reduction thereby reducing debt to GDP ratio. Taking Keynesian economic approach increases federal spending, lower interest rates,  expands structural  microeconomics, stimulus allocations, increases taxes, retains social benefits and programs, crowding in and increase in government regulation leading to market simulation and restoration of investors’ confidence but erodes the debt to GDP ratio by increase debt. Austerity measures are seen as “conservative” while Keynesian is seen as “liberal” approach to handling financial crisis. The common key for both financial policies is that they both increase demand but austerity causes economic strangulation and Keynesian policies increases debt and government over-dependence . It is evident that looking at the recovery from the 2008 world recession that America using more of a Keynesian approach outperformed the European austerity measures both are both still in financial strain. Nigerian can use this playbook to ply a more “mixed economy” approach that uses the best of austerity and Keynesian economics to simulate our economy in the upcoming months. Currently USA runs a mixed economy system which should be used in Nigeria. “Socialized capitalism” is my pseudonym that defines mixed economy. Nigeria runs a corrupt- laden and bloated federal system  resembling a more socialist leaning capital economy.  Nigeria has to become more capitalist, the government is bloated and privatization on the ideals of diversification is the key to economic growth. Nigeria has to create external aggregate demand from other countries to boost more exports and create a more balance of demand. Diversification and raw material exports under Keynesian principled financial policies are keys to gates of economic success. 

In conclusion, Nigeria often deemed as an emerging market but corrupt has to appropriate its financial policy to mirror a more Keynesian-mixed economy that will encourage increased federal spending,marginal increase in taxes, closing tax loopholes, reducing wasteful expenditures on unscrupulous projects, reducing executive, legislative and states’ arms of Government’ salaries and benefits, encourage corporate profitability under government oversight on corruption, cutting pensions on past politicians, increase financial accountability on petroleum industry, promote trade unions, reduce interest rate, fight unexpected inflation, adopt socialized capitalism, encourage states revenue, increase oversight of federal financial allocation to states, create a surplus, invests in education and infrastructure, increase financial market liquidity with investors’  confidence, create a diversified financial portfolio, attract more domestic and foreign investors, avoid trickle-down economics and balanced federal oversight on increasing privatization.  It is well quite ostensible to see Greece financial implosion and its domino effects on the fragile Eurozone  without considering the economic model of Keynesian-mixed economy.CBN has to history match inflation rate, wage increase, employment rate and GDP growth in project a balance system to avoid excessive inflation, stagflation or excessive deflation. 

Neither a free market capitalist state nor socialist state does not create a strong middle class but a socialized capitalist system does!!!  

Yanis Varoufakis- Greek Financial Minister….a student of the Keynesian economics….He has been adamant about austerity measures stipulated by IMF, EU and ECB (Troika) and German chancellor Angela Merkel.

Chrisitine Lagrade- IMF Managing Director

Angela Merkel- German Chancellor

Can’t wait for a trip down …….”Zoolander train”…… for the really, really ridicolously good-looking people

Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) and his frenemy, Hansel (Owen Wilson) at Valentino Paris 2015 show….for”The Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too.”

 

 

Political subversion and human rights abuse by the “American military machine” under the thumb of the American Pseudo- Imperialistic government

These critically acclaimed documentaries capture the systematic use of the American military industrial complex to unjustifiably cause somewhat irrevocable detriment to the world in the name of anti-terrorism, anti-communism, democracy, capitalism, globalization, pro-neoconservative,anti-islamic fascism  since the 1950’s to present day. The first documentary called  Taxi to the Dark Side is a 2007 Oscar award wining piece directed by American filmmaker Alex Gibney details the effects of torture as a means to retrieve classified information from supposedly terror suspects under the inept jurisdiction of national security during the Iraq and Afghanistan War disregarding Geneva Convention’s stipulations and rewriting laws to absolve the White House administration of any wrongdoing. Why We fight directed by Eugene Jarecki, is a 2005 documentary film that shows the subversive use of the ever expanding American military to shape foreign policy and dictate itself as the strongest geopolitical power despite the dire warnings of Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address in 1951.

I still contemplate whether the safety net that precludes our current geopolitical hostile climate is strong by the actions of controversial and sometimes unjustifiable American foreign ideologue and its impact in the foreseeable future.

Does God exists?

The existence of God has is the final question that humanity has faced without a clear, definite and  empirical evidence. The institution of  religion has used “faith” to quantify the unknown invariably establishes the “omnipotent God”. Science indirectly searches the essence of God or “unknown” depending the person’s religious latitude  to explain the often random, chaotic or orderly blueprint of the universe. At the World Science Festival Bill Blakemore hosts scientists Lawrence Krausstht(Atheistic American theoretical physicist and cosmologist who is Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University) , Ken Miller (Catholic American cell biologist and molecular biologist who is currently Professor of Biology and Royce Family Professor for Teaching Excellence at Brown University) , Guy Consolmagno (Catholic American research astronomer and planetary scientist at the Vatican Observator), and philosopher Colin McGinn (Atheist) of University of Miami to bridge , mutually exclude or mutually include science, faith and religion.

Currently reading……..!

 

Steve Coll’s in-depth factual look into the historical, political and foreign sway on the World stage of ExxonMobil starting from United States , Indonesia, Nigeria,Russia, Middle East and Venezuela. The “ExxonMobil way” is the iron clad bible of modern day corporate culture.  I was fascinated with the intricate network and policies that ExxonMobil corporation ensues of free market capitalism and big oil.  Bewilderment is the only human expression that quantifies the turning pages of this book.

My favorite line in the book: “I’m not a U.S. company,” Raymond says, “and I don’t make decisions based on what’s good for the U.S.”- Former CEO Lee Raymond when asked on building more U.S. refineries as a form of  corporate patriotism  to offset future domestic gasoline shortages and international geopolitical crisis  

Dear Misery?

The double-edged flaired obquity called life

that flows at its own pace

sometimes smooth, sometimes rough but eventually worthwhile.

Too often, the brights lights of hope are sheared

by the essence of shadowy mystery

Why God?

It seems that one step of progress leads

to two steps of regress

Such agony

But the spirit of perseverance, patience and sacrifice

drives me to sustain this

despair and lead to true

happiness…..

Always push for greater height and never settle.

Silicon Valley-HBO series

The confluence of nerds at Silicon valley that produces innovative technological products at the expense of pure comedy, anti-social behavior and business savy…This show is beyond hilarious…highly recommended

Warren Buffett’s recommeneds this book!!!!

Warren Buffet’s mentor: Benjamin Graham

My analysis: Unprecedented, insightful, fundamental financial playbook   in short to long term value investment independent of time that advocates disciplined decision making in achieving the insatiable goal of making money.

CAPITALIST ANTHEM