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William Hunter Duncan's avatar

So sort of like sacrificing the deplorable many to the god that is the State/Corporation/Science Matrix? Get thee vaccinated or we shall turn away while you are sacrificed to ventilators and remdesivir? You who complain about globalization, AI, automation and open borders destroying your culture and prospects, let your streets be awash in fentanyl/meth/crack? You who question instituitions corporate, State and Education, may you be cast out, starve and freeze?

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Mark Bisone's avatar

This reminds me of the classic pickup line: "Are you an Aztec? Because you just stole my heart."

On energy (or prana, or teotl, or chi) as the irreducible material of reality: well, yes, duh. Transformation of energy is something a slime mold can accomplish. But it is the toddler's answer to the question, and is damned to the same childlike. solipsistic errors. When magnified on a civilizational scale, of course it results in rivers of blood and mountains of skulls, because the adult answer -- consciousness -- is embedded in the human form, waiting to be discovered by the worst and best of us as we advance through life. It's all about who gets there first, and what they decide to do with that knowledge.

How much tail could the average Aztec priest shag in a weekend, even before he washed his bloody hands? What dark fantasies was he free to explore with his flock, while frightening them half to death with apocalyptic prophesy? These seem like the more pertinent questions, if we are to understand them. That is the greatest tragedy of their extinction to me; we can't really know what their Saturday nights looked like.

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