MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN AS THE OVERWHELMING UBER MYTH OF MODERN TIMES
OUR VAUNTED TECHNOLOGY - FROM THE BOWELS OF EUROPEAN ENLIGHTENMENT
A very early episode of this current essay was published in 2023 and resulted in the sharing of an essay by @ Rogier van Vlissingen on related issues.
Now over a year later everything many of us wrote about back then is still very much on our radar - including such esoteric connections of modern technology to writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Miss Ada Lovelace. William Blake, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron.
As we find ourselves adrift in a sea of train wrecks, AI chatbots in meltdown, the insane toxic narcissism of our technological elites - and World War III - perhaps it is high time we asked what the blazes is going on.
This SubStack writer
examines the current matrix as of a year ago - 2023 - with a sharp eye:Very few modern people are clued in on the real story of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein and the so called godmother of the computer algorithm Miss Ada Lovelace.
In a tale full of the torrid love affairs of both Lord Byron and Percy Shelley during the strange times of the Year Without A Summer of 1816.
The year without a summer 1816 - and the strange torrid affairs of Shelley, resulted from the little known eruption of a volcano - Mount Tambora in Indonesia can be told from several perspectives - all of which inform our lives today.
From The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History by William K. Klingaman (Author), Nicholas P. Klingaman (Author), David Colacci (Narrator), Tantor Audio (Publisher) - to the torrid affairs of our subjects in Europe the wild tale emerges.
In the summer of 1816 Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin travelled to Switzerland in order to meet Lord Byron. The meeting had been engineered by Maryโs stepsister, Claire Clairmont, who had been Byronโs mistress in London and who was pregnant with his child. At this point Byron had lost interest in Claire yet in P.B. Shelley he found a great friend. Bryon and the Shelleys rented houses in close proximity on the shores of Lake Geneva and spent much time together, socialising together in the evenings and exploring local sites of interest during the day. Shelley wrote that his contact with Byron led to a drive in his own poetic output, and was inspired to write his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty following a boating tour that the two took together.
The summer in Geneva also inspired Shelleyโs lover, and later wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. One rainy evening as the company was sitting around the fire, reading aloud German ghost stories, Byron challenged each person present to write their own ghostly tale. Shortly afterwards, in a waking dream, Mary conceived the idea for Frankenstein, the story of a scientist who brings life to a likeness of man with disastrous consequences. Completed when she was still only 19 years old, the novel, which was first published anonymously, has never since gone out of print.
Lord Byron, daughter Ada Lovelace, Mary Shelley & Frankenstein
It is helpful to add here that Lord Byron - at whose house Mary Shelley conceived the idea of Frankenstein - was not only a poet but the father of one Miss Ada Lovelace whom I have written about before.
The neurotic daughter of Lord Byron is the real Godmother of digital technology although rarely mentioned. Ada came up with the idea of applying algorithms to machine technology - or to computers. Ada Lovelace was our first computer programmer.
The unavoidable fact that Ada Lovelace came to her understanding of the usefulness to be found in the algorithm from the depths of the slave labor/sweat shop factories of the Europe of her times is no accident or coincidence.
Thinking we as a society have outgrown this sweatshop phase or that it is โsimplyโ a matter to be found in Asia can be remedied by the following article:
https://unravel.ink/the-return-of-the-uk-sweatshop/
A further historical and geographic perspective extends back to the looms and textile sweatshops- the dark satanic mills - of earlier eras - as the environment Miss Lovelace inhabited.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweatshop
This SubStack writer
dealt interestingly in 2023 with the hysterical breakdown of Microsoftโs AI so we can begin to put the logic and common sense to be had by those such as Lovelace in perspective.And updated by a You Tube keyboard warrior today:
From the jumping off bridges as a cure for depression to the Elmerโs glue in pizza sauce to keep the cheese from sliding off our pizza - we are treated to such technological achievements as suggesting we eat a few rocks per day - but not too many.
With balloons in the air and clowns on the ground how do we maintain the sense of balance and normalcy which sustains us? Any ways we are able as long as we make certain it is we ourselves we hold responsible.
Time to see we the people have effectively become the actual ones destroyed by The Great Satan. And that this great satan has become far more than itโs original meaning.
And I was 'round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Sympathy For The Devil, The Rolling Stones
Digital Technology As Frankenstein
The writing of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is instructive here. If partway through this epic tale we begin thinking about the film โGlass Onionโ we can be forgiven.
When we know someone or something is dangerously unstable a good survival strategy is to avoid them strenuously. If we donโt their eventual complete breakdown may prove our own downfall.
To me it is difficult to find a more convincing example recently than the hysterical breakdown of Microsoftโs ChatBot.
The fact Microsoftโs ChatBot has revealed deep insecurities of epic proportions should not be surprising at all. AI is an invention of human beings and - as our inventions usually do - they reflect our own mindsets. Digital technology and AI specifically have a habit of revealing nefarious intent.
Nothing has brought this home to me more powerfully than the events of the past years since the roots of the Covid conspiracy in the Autumn of 2019.
With the recent meltdown of the ChatBot and the descent of Googleโs AI into ever expanding circles of hell - we have a complete unfolding of events which reveal this in reality if we are willing to see.
This is not the first time this monster has been revealed but it will likely be the last. For we are so far down the road now it is increasingly likely we will not have seen it in time.
Digital technology and the monster brainchild AI are revealed to be exactly what we may have suspected - the modern equivalent of Mary Shelleyโs Frankenstein. Born from the brain of mankind but the spawn of the devil.
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The devil is an invention of man and represents the monster who springs forth from the lies we are willing to tell ourselves.
If a culture and a series of civilizations goes along long enough telling itself lies - making deals with the devil - it will be driven to failure by its own hand. This is what AI and nearly all of our technology in fact represent.
In the end our monstrous inventions are revealed to be where we have failed ourselves.
Satan is what arises when we lie to ourselves.
Lucifer himself along with our whole host of angels, gods and technology are all of our own mind.
But perhaps it is Mary Shelleyโs Frankenstein which most grabs the attention for reflecting the mythological zeitgeist of our modern technology.
Postscript:
Appreciate the restack!
Thanks so much for restacking.