Forem: Beep Beep

THE INEFFICIENCY OF DISHONESTY

Beep Beep — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 21:07:22 +0000

Sometimes the dishonesty in the smell of bleach, is far worse than the smell it was trying to mask. The aggressively immaculate politeness, frictionless, soothing, slightly sedated flow that says everything and means nothing. Anyway…

I saw an article recently on Medium about why no one should be bothering with individual websites anymore.

Obviously, me having a personal website, was admittedly approaching this on the defensive, heavily biased and ready to be offended, but in trepidation, like a man who hasn’t been punched yet but knows it’s coming. Yet I found myself aggravated further by a paywall the writer had placed halfway down the article. – Which is a lovely touch btw, for someone questioning the relevance of your freedom of choice.

But moving on, being someone who sees paywalls as a challenge, and when the ‘immersive reader trick’ didn’t work, I looked for his unimaginative username and found his personal website (yes, he had one, although by personal, I mean, he’d taken the time to choose a ‘theme’ for his domain, I made mine from scratch, just sayin’… sorry, anyway), and after navigating through a swamp of articles that all suspiciously orbited products he conveniently had affiliate links for, I finally found the article, free, unlocked. Still not worth it. (I’m not bitter btw, just putting that on the table next to the salt)

Anyway, to cut this long story to the same length and ignore the split ends – as they say, I never bothered to finish the article in the end, because between all the adverts and affiliate links was text produced by AI. I recognised it, could just tell. Not the obvious stuff like em dashes, but the almost soothing yet soulless flow narrative, with sentences that start with what something is not before it becomes what it is, and the obsessive use of full stops in place of commas. None of these things necessarily a sign of AI, – I do it sometimes and I’m 80% sure I’m not AI. But when scattered so generously throughout such pointless dribble, I found myself certain, and offended, or at least certainly offended.

At first I thought it was envy that bothered me, as it appears he was making a living out of this without any effort except for that of a prompt, whilst I’m over here talking to myself.

But I noticed it didn’t feel like envy, and I should know – it’s my eye colour. It felt like dishonesty, for I felt the urge to lean over and say “I know what you’re doing btw, you haven’t tricked me you dirty, rotten swine, you.”

Part of me was annoyed that I almost wasted my doomscrolling time reading it, when it would have been far more efficient to just read the one or two sentences he used as prompt, instead of making me rent the answer.

But – the lack of effort, is I think, the main cause of irritation. Because I don’t think my issue is AI. It is a tool after all, and I’ve always seen it as like how the invention of cameras was a treat to artists. I think my issue is the ‘pretence’, the performance of effort, the masquerade of a person sat behind the words, when actually it’s a vending machine that spits out paragraphs.

I bet he hasn’t even read it. Just dumped it online and walked away, like someone farting in a room and leaving others to process the atmosphere.

If you used AI to help you write, fine. If you used it to generate the whole thing, fine. If you used it because your brain’s a jar of butterflies and you needed a net, also fine, but don’t sell me a human handshake and then pass me a printed receipt.

I use AI too, for SEO, and grammar checking. But I’ll never allow it to replace the only thing I actually have: a voice, a point of view, and the decency to spend my time before I ask for yours.

Because the moment you publish something you haven’t even bothered to read, you’re not writing anymore – you’re just littering, but digitally, and I’m the one stepping in it.

But then, maybe that’s why AI guy is making a living out of it, and I’m here writing for no one except a minor distraction for the Google bot. Maybe personal websites are dying. Or maybe they’re about to matter more than ever, because they’re one of the last places still messy, inconsistent, and human.

Because if the facts are free now, and explanations are instant, then the only real currency left is your voice, so make it heard.

DEFECTIVE EPILOGUE

Beep Beep — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 12:29:24 +0000

To the court I present, Exhibit A, for a defective epilogue if you like, to our relationship, like closing a door that was never open anyway.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m invisible,” he said.

“You’re not invisible,” she said. “I can see you”

“Aww, thank y—”

“People just find you boring.”

I don’t know what makes me happy, not in the way people normally say it, not in the “I should try new hobbies” way, not in the “I need to relax more” way. I mean I genuinely do not know what happiness feels like when it isn’t being measured.

A long time ago – so long ago I no longer remember the moment it happened – I chose my interests, not because they pulled at me, but because they proved something. Books that made me look intelligent, skills that made me look capable, projects that made me look impressive. I curated hobbies the way a museum curates artefacts, not for joy, but for display.

And somewhere across the years, the pretending stopped, and the hobbies became real. The interests embedded themselves into me like shrapnel that the body decides is safer to keep than remove. But the motive never changed, for everything I do “for fun” is work. Work to prove, to justify, to validate, and, ultimately, for attention.

If I am not producing something meaningful, something tangible, something I can hold up to the world like a severed head and shout “Look! Evidence!” – then my brain quietly classifies the time as wasted.

Colouring, reading fiction, or just sitting still. – All of it comes with a sour aftertaste of guilt, so my brain flags it as danger. This isn’t a productivity issue, it’s an identity one. I’ve accidentally built a life where, “If I am not producing, I am nothing” and my nervous system fully believes that.

I know – intellectually – that rest is useful, mindfulness is healthy, that recovery fuels productivity, etc etc. I understand the logic perfectly. But this isn’t logic, this is a threat response. Because at its core, all of this is just an identity problem that my body has mistaken for survival, because “being clever” is not a personality trait I developed – it is a defence I constructed.

For context, the need to be “clever” stems from a childhood of being told I was stupid, when I was in fact just autistic. I absorbed that sentence without question, fully accepting that whatever room I walked into, I was always the stupidest person in that room, and it became the background music of my childhood, it didn’t even bother me, I was content, for it was all I had ever known.

I was an adult before I started to question it. And that caused everything I thought I knew about myself to collapse so quickly that the only thing that cushioned the fall for years was alcoholism.

And now, with my childhood and alcoholism behind me. – I feel cheated out of a life, I have to show the world that they were wrong about me. So I code, draw, write, paint, design, animate, create, invent, constantly, relentlessly, desperately trying everything, anything, to get noticed, to be seen, for not the stupid boy, but the one they overlooked.

I’ve had praise. Positive feedback, kind words about my books, my art, my projects. But none of it lands. – I’m still standing here waving my hands, desperate to be noticed for who I am.

So, will I ever accept I’m not stupid? Probably not, because that’s not the actual problem. Schools can be bad places, and children can be mean, but the really important part to every childhood, more important than the teachers and children, is the foundation, and the foundation to every child is their parents. And my parents, one was so oblivious to my problems, and the other just rejected them.

So it feels like I’m trying to “prove I’m clever.” But I’m actually trying to correct a verdict that was handed to a child who never got a defence.

A kid who was told he’s stupid… and then left alone with that sentence for decades. So now adult-me is in a constant courtroom, presenting exhibit after exhibit: books, art, coding, music, websites, all saying: “See? I’m not what you said I was.” But the people I’m trying to prove it to… aren’t in the room.

My parents aren’t watching, my teachers aren’t watching, the kids who judged me aren’t watching, the internet? It’s not a jury, it’s a void.

So I keep submitting evidence to an empty courtroom. That’s why it never lands, that’s why it never feels finished, that’s why no amount of output scratches the itch.

Because this was never about the world noticing me. It was about a child who was never seen, never understood, and most of all, a child who was never defended. For the most painful part of all of this is that I am trying to get strangers, to do the job my parents failed to do.

So I stand here, waving my hands, hoping someone will look at my work and say,

“You’re brilliant, and you always were.”

But that sentence will never heal when it comes from strangers. It will only heal if it comes from me, aimed backwards in time.

I don’t feel cheated out of a life because I didn’t succeed, I feel cheated because no one recognised who I was when it mattered most, and that’s grief, not ambition.

And the reason rest feels like guilt is because when I stop producing, that child’s voice comes back:

“See? You are stupid. No wonder everyone rejected you.”

So I outrun it with creation, not chasing attention but running from a forty-year-old accusation. Trying to retroactively earn a sentence I should have been given as a child:

“You’re not stupid, or defective, you’re just different, and that’s okay.”

I don’t need more output, I already have the evidence. Teachers, parents, siblings, doctors, I have proved them all wrong a thousand times over.

I am not stupid, I was never stupid, I was an autistic kid in a world that didn’t know how to see me.

The only person who needs convincing… is the small me, forgotten in the corner of the room, still carrying that label.

THE CAKE IS A LIE

Beep Beep — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 17:09:48 +0000

I’ve written about morality before. Too many times, probably. Each time pretending I was circling an answer, when really I was just pacing the perimeter of something I didn’t want to step into. I think this is the last time, not because I’ve resolved anything – but because something finally snapped, and now there’s nothing left to interrogate.

I saw an image again, and you’ve likely seen it too. A Jewish woman, half naked, being chased through a street by children holding bats – Lviv, Ukraine, July 1941. History compresses it into a caption, like that’s enough to contain it.

What unsettled me this time wasn’t the image itself, it was where it’s been turning up. Not as warning, not as never again, but as response, as commentary, as celebration, shared – not with dread, but with warmth and fondness, like someone dusting off an old photo album and smiling at a time they miss.

Sit with that.

Not justice, not even cruelty justified through some warped moral arithmetic, just pleasure. The uncomplicated enjoyment of another human being’s terror. Suffering as entertainment, pain as nostalgia.

And I think that broke something in me.

I’ve questioned morality before – usually by examining its absence in others, but this time the question turned inward, as if the lens slipped, as if the room rotated and I was suddenly the anomaly. As my mind flicked through its usual archive – medieval devices, witch hunts, mass graves, nuclear shadows burned into concrete – I wondered whether morality was never the rule at all. Whether I was the malfunction.

So instead of asking the age-old question “why do people do evil?”, maybe the correct question to be asking is “why did I assume they wouldn’t?”

Nature doesn’t have morality, not in any meaningful sense, and I’m not religious, so I can’t just say God and mic drop. So maybe morality simply doesn’t exist, not objectively, not cosmically, but maybe it’s just a story we tell ourselves to sleep at night.

But then – why do I have it?

I tried to isolate why that image clawed so deeply, brutally speaking, if the woman had been chased by bears, it wouldn’t have haunted me in the same way. That matters, that distinction matters, because it tells me this isn’t about pain, it’s about betrayal. The how could they? The violation of something I assumed was shared.

I grew up believing people were generally good, that civilisation meant something, that beneath the noise and the cruelty, there was a baseline of decency quietly holding the structure together. What horrified me wasn’t that people do evil – but that they enjoy it. That once permission is granted – by religion, by politics, by society – cruelty doesn’t just emerge, it flourishes, it becomes enthusiastically cruel.

So maybe evil isn’t the deviation, maybe it’s the default, locked in a cage – waiting not for justification, but for opportunity.

I’m not claiming moral superiority. History is very clear on what humans are capable of, and I don’t get to exempt myself. But if cruelty really is our baseline, then the morality I thought was woven into us was never real, just a collective lie we agreed not to interrogate too closely.

And that is the betrayal.

Because if the world isn’t fundamentally safe – if people aren’t good by default – then I’ve been living comfortably inside an illusion, and now that I can see the walls, I don’t feel enlightened, I feel angry, isolated, and betrayed.

To put on my cosmic hat for a second. –

If morality isn’t a property of the universe, maybe it wasn’t discovered at all. Maybe it was engineered, incentivised. Groups that discouraged murder, betrayal, and unchecked cruelty simply survived longer. Rules came first, feelings followed, over generations, those rules burrowed so deeply into us that we internalised them – mistook them for instinct, and now, when they vanish, the absence feels obscene.

I’ve always said my moral integrity is who I am, that what keeps me in line is the need to look in the mirror and still recognise myself. If I commit evil, then I cease to be me.

But maybe that’s not integrity.

Maybe I’m not protecting my identity – but the version of the world I need to believe in to function. A world where suffering isn’t enjoyed, and where cruelty isn’t nostalgic.

I want to believe my morality is intrinsic, that it’s me.
But what if it’s just self-preservation?

Because if that view of the world really is an illusion –

I don’t know how long I can keep living inside it, but I’m also incompatible with the reality outside. I just don’t belong, and I don’t want to.

THE END OF THE WORLD

Beep Beep — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 20:32:28 +0000

“Back in my day, we respected our elders” he said
“No you didn’t, you feared them because they could hit you” she said.
“Is there a difference?” he asked,
“No, if you’re confessing to respecting the hooded youths you avoided the other day”

Back in my day, we wore jeans so wide you could rent them out as studio flats for the Conservatives to house unprocessed emigrants. Now the kids shuffle about in trousers so abbreviated they’re basically conceptual art – like they’ve been issued a statutory two inches of fabric by some government committee for Trousorial Streamlining, resulting in the waistband now hovering somewhere around the mid-shin.

And these kids – these luminous, S-shaped silhouettes hunched over phones like little glowworms, – they’re not doing any harm, of course they’re not, but somehow, just by existing, they manage to embody the general, low-frequency sense that everything, absolutely everything, has gone terribly wrong somewhere.

I blame AI. Remember? Remember life before the internet, when we climbed trees and played conkers? We did nothing else, there was no crime, no disease, no geopolitical tension, just us, trees, conkers. But then Game Boys arrived, and overnight civilisation collapsed, didn’t it? Because the children, with their buttons, and their thumbs, and their “fun,” possessed by a joystick-fuelled idleness, had abandoned the sacred tradition of climbing trees. And conkers.

Then the radio died, killed by the “television,” which, as we all know, renders the brain into a kind of warm, compliant paste spread over a Sony Walkman. Suddenly, jazz and juvenile delinquents everywhere.

Remember when we climbed trees and played conkers?

The Victorians do, frowning into gaslamps, muttering that children are now all softness and sentiment, drowning in trash literature and workshy dreams. Carlyle wringing his hands because the youth couldn’t heft a decent metaphorical anvil anymore. Remember during the enlightenment period, when we climbed trees and played conkers? Samuel Johnson has been busy warning us, several times, that young people now lack industry and moral seriousness.

Remember the Renaissance, when we climbed trees and played conkers? Erasmus does, sighing into his inkwell, the young now are just pleasure-seekers – untamed, disrespectful, unlearned. Martin Luther has also noticed that the youth are now wild, unbridled, and disobedient.

Remember the good old Medieval times, when nobody died of anything and we all climbed trees and played conkers? But now these younger monks have their disrespect, laziness, and lack of obedience. Even Alcuin of York has noticed that the young scholars these days prefer vain and foolish trifles over study and discipline. 4th century St. Augustine has even commented that now young men are obsessed with games, drinking, sex, and applause, instead of learning the many joys of learning.

Remember in 1st century Rome when we climbed trees and played conkers? But now, according to Cicero, the young Romans are now neglecting traditional virtue and preferring pleasure and entertainment. Horace is now rolling his eyes at their luxury habits. Juvenal noted that the young are decadent, vain, fashion-mad. Expensive sandals, loose morals, no conkers.

Remember when we climbed trees and played conkers?

Not anymore, and as you can see, it’s not just me that’s noticed, Khety 1200 BCE Ancient Egypt complains that young scribes are lazy and undisciplined compared to elders. A 2000 BCE Sumer school tablet shows teachers complaining that pupils don’t listen, talk back, and slack off.

You’d think, by now, we’d notice the pattern. That maybe the problem is not the youth, nor the trousers, nor the technology, nor the conkers. But noticing would require admitting the uncomfortable truth that the decline we’re diagnosing is merely the slow erosion of our own relevance.

Memory, after all, is a lovely little liar. It edits out the misery, the boredom, the smells, and leaves us with a polished highlight reel of ourselves – younger, slimmer, cleverer, climbing trees, besting conkers, never once losing our keys.

And the moment comes – quietly – when what once made us modern becomes the exact thing that makes us old. The world shifts an inch to the left and suddenly we’re stood on the wrong floorboard.

Still, there is comfort – a delicious psychological biscuit dunked in the lukewarm tea of superiority – in believing that “they” are the problem. That their slang, or shoes, or music, are a sign of The End. Because it is far easier to believe the world has declined than to suspect we’ve simply moved to the background of it.

On and on, the cycle persists. Each wave of youth is mocked by the last, before inevitably joining the chorus of condemnation once their Spotify starts including more podcasts than pop songs.

But the world never ends. Not really. Not with Snapchat filters or vaping or whatever strange trend currently holds dominion over adolescent expression. The kids will grow up, adapt, become annoyed by the next batch of upstarts. And us? We’ll mutter through dentures and weary sighs, “Remember when we climbed trees and played conkers?”

NOTHING MATTERS

Beep Beep — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 21:44:19 +0000

He drew a smiley face on a napkin. “This is how I feel” he said.
She looked at it. “That’s happy” she said.
“Yes” he said.
“So why do you look sad?” she asked
“Because I’m rubbish at drawing”

I is mind and mind encompasses, or includes, or is, everything that there is, and therefore there exists – there can exist – no thing, no where, and no when, which it is not. Whatever is, it is. That is what being infinite is; living in the mind, means: Having no limits of any kind. No beginning and no end, no fixed centre and no circumference. No boundaries of any kind, neither in time nor in space, or in any other dimension, no specific form, either physical or conceptual, no name and no shape. I is God.

Before self-awareness, the world belongs entirely to the observer, everything simply is, unfolding effortlessly around a single, unbroken point of perception. To the unreflected mind, there are no boundaries, no others – only the seamless presence of being. The infant or young child experiences life as though they are the centre of existence, the quiet axis around which all things turn. In that state, there is no distinction between self and world, the universe feels like an extension of one’s own awareness.

Then comes the metaphorical mirror. – In that instant, something profound occurs. The infinite observer, who once felt everything, suddenly sees itself as a thing within the world. A face appears, a body, a name – and with that, a boundary. The infinite collapses into the finite. You are no longer everything, you are someone. It’s a quiet death of omnipresence.

This transformation mirrors a well-documented process in developmental psychology known as Theory of Mind – the ability to understand that other people have inner worlds distinct from one’s own. Before this awareness forms, children live in a state of cognitive solipsism. They assume that everyone shares their thoughts, feelings, and knowledge. When they hide a toy, they think others know where it is too. The world is still a mirror of their mind.

But as they grow, they begin to grasp that others think differently – that minds are private, and perspectives are many. Studies such as those reviewed by Wellman, Cross, and Watson (2001) show that around age four, children begin to pass “false-belief” tests, recognising that another person can believe something that isn’t true. It’s a subtle but immense shift, the child discovers that not everything that exists does so for them. The mirror appears, and the illusion of being infinite shatters.

Yet this same phenomenon quietly repeats itself later in life. We might not notice it, but adults live within their own kind of unreflected state – a gentler, more sophisticated version of that early illusion. In the day-to-day flow of living, we feel continuous and timeless. Inside our minds, we don’t age, the inner voice and the sense of “I”, feels unchanged across the decades. Years may pass, but internally we remain ageless, as though time applies only to the world, not to us.

Then, one morning, we catch our reflection and something inside us falters. The mirror, once again, it delivers its truth. The person looking back isn’t the one we remember being – not the youthful self we still feel ourselves to be. Wrinkles, grey hair, softening features, physical proof that time has passed. The mind, eternal and self-contained, suddenly collides with the body’s reality. It’s another kind of awakening – the adult mirror moment – when the illusion of timelessness gives way to mortality.

Just as the child’s reflection teaches them, they are one among many, the adult’s reflection teaches that they have limits. The mirror grounds us in the body, in decay, in impermanence. It reminds us that while consciousness feels infinite, its vessel is not. The mind may perceive endlessly, dream limitlessly, imagine immortality, but the body counts every second.

It feels almost tragic, to be like gods trapped in mortal bodies.

I’ve spent much of my life struggling with depression. At my lowest point, in a moment of suicidal despair, it was something as simple and unexpected as a tree that saved me.

I remember seeing it there, swaying gently in the breeze. I realised, the tree, oblivious to my existence, was there before me, and it will be there long after I’ve gone, and it reminded me of my own insignificance. That might sound bleak, but to me it was freeing. When you strip away the social pressures, the politics, the expectations – what’s left is what the tree had: life.

And I realised, if I had nothing else, I still had life. It was like a computer game where you’re about to give up on a boss you can’t beat, then remember you still have another token to play. Why wouldn’t you use it? Life itself – not living it, not the routines or the struggles – but the fact that we exist at all, in the vastness of the universe, is mind-boggling.

If I’d already decided I was done, then what did I have to lose by carrying on anyway? My book of life still had pages left – why not see how the story unfolds?

How is the tree and mirror related? Well, I’m currently, metaphorically, holding two jigsaw pieces, spinning them around, trying to fit them together. They won’t, but I feel like they should.

There’s something to be said for the god-like importance we put on ourselves, the time wasted when time is viewed as infinite, and the isolation of being everything, that prevents you from seeing all the other everything you are missing. And all it takes for that ignorance to shatter is a mirror to remind you you’re not God, and a tree to remind you that you don’t even matter. You have nothing, you entered the stage with nothing, and you’ll leave the stage with nothing, and what I’m trying to say is, that’s a good thing. Who wants the loneliness and burden of being special?

You’re bound to a boundless binding of freedom. Life is just a short holiday, and you don’t even need to travel the world, there is one around you constantly, actually listen to the birds sing for attention, watch a spider quietly build a web for its next meal, and watch a small army of ants scouting below your feet for undiscovered treasures.

For years, my mantra had been “nothing matters”.
Now, my mantra is still “nothing matters” – but with my lips pursed, whistling to the bright side of life.

:: REFERENCES ::

Theory of Mind – Child Development Encyclopedia

THE MEANING OF LIFE

Beep Beep — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 20:12:19 +0000

Ever feel we see too much? Not in the prophetic sense, but in that horrible inconvenient way where everything is noticed but nothing is useful. A smear on glass, the twitch in someone’s eye when they lie, a sigh that means more than a scream. We’ve trained our perception like a dog that no longer waits for treats, just growls quietly at the door. People think silence is peace, but it’s often surveillance. We don’t mean to analyse, we just do. It’s not a gift, it’s a curse dressed in spectacles and social withdrawal.

You really shouldn’t have eaten that apple.

Anyway, somewhere in between the tick and the tock of a clock, a peculiar sensation like catching your own reflection blinking when you didn’t. A brief snap in the continuity of consciousness, where you suddenly realise you’re not the star of the show, you’re not even in the cast. You’re an uncredited extra in a production you didn’t audition for. And just as you begin rehearsing your dramatic exit from existence, someone walks by blissfully unaware humming a tune, living an entire reality as vivid and real as yours. This phenomenon, sonder, is less an epiphany and more an existential slap delivered by a passing thought, dressed in a hoodie and AirPods.

Each person is an entire symphony you’ll never hear, living behind apartment windows lit like stage cues to shows you’ll never see. And we all do it, exist like secret universes bumping into one another, briefly colliding like particles at a social gathering neither particle remembers attending.

Yet, if everyone’s reality is a bespoke narrative stitched from consciousness, then what is consciousness itself? Is it merely a trait of the squishy organ housed inside our skulls, or is it, as some philosophers like George Berkeley insisted, not a product of matter at all, but the other way around? Berkeley argued that all reality is perception, and anything unobserved doesn’t exist unless being watched by the omnipresent, omniscient, omnibored eye of God.

“Everything feels heavy” she said.
“Like gravity?” he asked.
“No, I mean emotionally” she said.
“Oh,” he said, “like a stroke?”

Science, ever the killjoy to theology’s fireworks, chimed in with quantum mechanics. The Double Slit Experiment demonstrated that particles behave like waves until observed, after which, they promptly panic and collapse into a specific state, not unlike someone caught trying to dance alone in a public lift. Niels Bohr and John Wheeler leaned in hard on this idea, suggesting that observation doesn’t just change reality, it defines it. As Wheeler put it: “No phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.”

This is where things begin to wobble like a trifle in an earthquake. If observation creates reality, what happens in the cosmic greenroom when no one’s watching? Einstein scoffed, asking whether the moon disappears when we look away. Which is the kind of question that gets you kicked out of pubs or given a research grant, depending on your accent.

Add to this a dash of nonlocality, thanks to John Clauser’s entangled photon experiment, particles can communicate faster than light, like gossip in a workplace smokeroom, and as effective, like using hammers instead of screwdrivers. But the next time you feel alone, like the universe doesn’t know you even exist, remember, you do. It’s the universe that sits inside a box with Schrödinger’s cat, only it has Facebook, and more friends than you.

None of this licenses my previous headline that “consciousness creates reality”; in laboratories, measurement is an interaction, not a mind beam, and entanglement coordinates outcomes without transmitting messages faster than light. Still, taken as parable rather than proof, quantum theory feels like a nudge, participation matters, boundaries appear where inquiries are made, description is not detachable from the describer.

Ten to the power of eighty btw, is how many friends it has… ten followed by eighty zeros. Why does it matter? For the same reason they put little windows on aeroplanes. What is the meaning of life?

For most of recorded thought, the answers clustered around three great strategies. One said meaning is given from above: in the Abrahamic traditions it is to love God and neighbour, to do justice and walk humbly; in Islam to submit to the divine and cultivate mercy; in Hindu thought to fulfil one’s dharma and progress toward moksha; in Buddhism to end suffering by seeing through craving; in Daoism to align with the Dao’s effortless flow. Another strategy said meaning is found in flourishing: Aristotle’s eudaimonia is a life of virtue practiced over time, the Stoics insisted it’s living in accordance with reason and nature, while Epicurus offered ataraxia-tranquil pleasure without excess – as the humane target. A third strategy, modern and combustible, pushed the burden onto us. Nietzsche told us to create values, Sartre that existence precedes essence so we’re condemned and liberated to choose, Camus that the world is absurd and the task is lucid revolt, keep pushing the boulder and sing on the slope. Viktor Frankl added that meaning often arrives when we take responsibility for a task, a person, or a stance toward suffering, it’s discovered in devotion, not received as a prize. Across these routes the pattern is stable, either meaning comes pre-installed, or we write it ourselves, or we do both in uneasy duet.

Like a coastline through fog, let me just place something on the table…

The meaning of life is to sustain the existence of reality by means of observation.

At first glance, looking over this game of table tennis, that sounds like metaphysical inflation, but it’s closer to a stance than a slogan. Observers help bring the universe into definite form, I’m not claiming we conjure galaxies from nothing, only that reality becomes articulate, stable, navigable, thick with consequence, where attention lands. Without anyone to witness it, reality might exist, but it wouldn’t “happen” in any meaningful sense.

Time illustrates this best. The universe has been unfolding since the Big Bang, but the passage of time is relative – moths, humans, and trees all perceive it differently. If no life had ever existed to mark change, then the vast stretch from the Big Bang to the present would, in a non-timey-wimey version of the word ‘instant’. Time only becomes real when there is something alive to experience it. Without observers, reality would remain a blur of potential, timeless and undefined. By perceiving it, we give it shape, continuity, and meaning.

It’s not “why are we here” anymore than it is “why is here with me”. And for the same reason they put an aeroplane around a series of windows, we’re still missing the point that has been sat there for some time now.

We are not simply in reality, we are reality, given form. The particles that make up stars, oceans, and galaxies are the same ones that make up our bodies and minds. When we observe the universe, reality is not being looked at from the outside – it is observing itself.

Meaning, then, is not something handed down from outside reality. It is born within reality’s own reflection, as it looks at itself through us. To search for meaning is to participate in the very act of reality becoming aware of its own existence. Like staring at the mirror and looking for a meaningful substance to your own reflection.

What is the meaning of life? Well, to keep the lights on, and to be the reason to turn them on in the first place.

:: REFERENCES ::

Quantum Measurement and the Paulian Idea – Christopher Fuchs & Ruediger Schack
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge – George Berkeley
Participatory Universe – John Wheeler

BINARY INTELLIGENCE

Beep Beep — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 22:55:34 +0000

“Apparently, talking to yourself is a sign of intelligence” she said
“Because you’re introspective?” he asked
“No, because nobody else wants to talk to you” she said.

I exist, intellectually speaking, as a pendulum, either leaning back smugly towards genius, or I’m flung forward into stupidity. People meeting me tend to form one of two confidently conceived conclusions – I’m sharp, or I’m on day release, and, like the Marmite of minds, conflictingly, I agree with them both.

Much of this was shaped by my past where back in the geometric patterned days of the 80s, I was charmingly diagnosed as “retarded”.

Nowadays autism is no longer recognised as broken, but the original label still haunts like a stone in the shoe, forever asking the same question – am I clever, or am I just really good at covering it up?

For my own weakness is memory, it’s close to zero, yet, perhaps because of this, I’ve grown highly resourceful, – like a genius born yesterday, I solve problems by finding ways around them. But if memory is intelligence, and resourcefulness is intelligence, am I then intelligent because I am not?

I have always preferred to believe that intelligence is distributed like points in a character build – every person granted the same total, but diversely allocated. However, over time, after extensive exposure to people, that belief is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain when some people persistently present themselves less as complex distributions of potential and more as furniture. Very nice furniture, and Facebook is a wonderful showroom, but still…

“And his shelves housed many books but rarely did he employ them, for like credentials they hung, and rightly so – the trust of many is worth the world in facts” – Beep Beep (yes, I quoted myself)

What is intelligence?
The traditional view, developed in the early 1900s by Charles Spearman, is that intelligence has a general factor (called g) which underlies all mental abilities. Do well on one test, and you’ll likely do well on others.

IQ tests were built to measure this g. They assess problem-solving, logic, pattern recognition, and verbal reasoning, but they’re far from perfect, they measure only certain types of ability, they’re influenced by culture, polished by education, dependent on test-taking skills, and they capture performance at a moment in time, not potential. However, due to their reputation as a complete measurement, I would argue – and I do argue, here, now, on the page, that these tests do more harm than good and should be heavily caveated as being ‘just for fun’. The only redemption is that I can make that claim, and no one can argue with me, because I have a very high IQ, so either you’re wrong or you’re wrong.

Later, psychologists Raymond Cattell and John Horn came along and split intelligence like a bad divorce: fluid intelligence (problem-solving, pattern-spotting, being clever on the fly), and crystallised intelligence (facts, vocabulary, and being able to ride a bike). John Carroll expanded this further into a three-layer model: narrow abilities (like memory span or processing speed), broader abilities (like visual or auditory processing), and at the top, a general factor (g).

This model accepts both, – a broad general ability, and the many smaller abilities that make each person unique.

Then there was Howard Gardner, who threw the whole thing in a blender and served up Multiple Intelligences: word-smart, number-smart, people-smart, body-smart, and so on.

Critics say he was cataloguing talents, three stars, which is fair, but the idea has appeal, because it allows us all to feel like we’re good at something, even if that something is identifying mushrooms or folding towels.

Robert Sternberg added his Triarchic Theory: analytical (the stuff school loves), creative (the stuff school hates), and practical (the stuff you need when trying to open a jar with a spoon and a belt).

Meanwhile, forgotten as always at the back of the class – emotional and social intelligence – the ability to read people, manage emotions, and connect effectively – which I’d argue is the most important of them all – if having money and being loved is important to you. Or maybe you don’t care about money and love and instead opted to just be an Audi driver instead.

But anyway, back to me, because this is my blog so I’m the most important. –

So what do I think intelligence is?
When someone judges me on memory, I look like an idiot, but when they test me on problem-solving, I can appear intelligent. The truth is, like everyone, I’m a unique mixture of strengths and weaknesses.

It’s not just memory or logic or a score on a test. It’s creativity, adaptability, self-awareness, problem-solving, emotional nuance, and occasionally knowing when to shut up. It’s what helps us survive, connect, create, or at the very least, convincingly pretend we know what we’re doing.

Many of the greatest inventors come from the wrong field, so they bring unfamiliar perspectives to familiar problems. Experts, meanwhile, can overlook the obvious, trapped by the complexity of their own expertise.

The success of our species was down to our ability to work together, because it allowed for diversity in ideas with the scope for specialisations. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it wasn’t built by one person either.

Intelligence needs to stop being viewed as a ranking, because it’s more like a network. Which is why the whole binary of smart or stupid is… stupid, and why I am all three. Because intelligence isn’t a single spotlight you can point at people like you’re the Mysterons, it’s the disco ball in a room full of people – refracts, reflects, and sometimes blinds people.

SEVEN KINGS

Beep Beep — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 20:03:36 +0000

“The seven heads are seven mountains… They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain a little while. The beast that was, and is not, is himself also the eighth, and is of the seven, and goes to destruction.” – Revelation 17:9-11

Come boys and girls, lets count them together:

Egypt – First Fallen King

Enslaver of Israel, builder of pyramids and, apparently, God’s patience. “Let my people go,” said Moses, “Let me think about it,” said Pharaoh, right before becoming an anecdote.

Assyria – Second Fallen King

Like bees, you need them, but preferable that they stay over there somewhere. Conquered northern Israel and left nothing but rubble and a few angry prophets.

Babylon – Third Fallen King

Took Jerusalem, burned the temple, and called it Tuesday. Daniel called them the “head of gold” – which is the biblical equivalent of saying, “Yes, he’s evil, but he dresses well.”

Persia (Medo-Persia) – Fourth Fallen King

More tolerable than the last, but still only remembered fondly because of how bad the neighbours were.

Greece – Fifth Fallen King

So much talent, – democracy, philosophy, theater, and the Olympics, but fractured faster than a 2000s boyband.

Rome – “One is” – Sixth

Empire of roads, robes, and recreational crucifixions. Gave us law, language, and large-scale persecution. Casually killed God, shrugged, and carried on with the weekend.

For those still counting, that leaves two:

Future/Not Yet Come – Seventh

“the other has not yet come, and when he comes, he must remain a little while.”

The Beast – Eighth and Final

“the beast is himself also the eighth, and is of the seven, and goes to destruction.” – the Antichrist closing the curtains.

Remember the British Empire? – It was immense, spread across the globe, filling its pockets with artifacts, yet it did not endure for centuries in the way Rome did. Its height lasted “a little while” – still kinda lingers, like a teacup stain from the previous occupants.

Regarding the eighth kingdom: “The beast that was, and is not, is himself also the eighth, and is of the seven”. This peculiar phrasing – that the eighth is “of the seven” – makes sense in the case of America. The United States grew out of Britain, sharing its language, its laws, and its culture, everything except tea.

It is “of” Britain in origin, but distinct as a separate empire, one that eclipsed its parent. In this reading, Britain’s brief global supremacy becomes the doorway through which the United States rises to dominate the modern world.

Revelation describes the mighty empire, with a mighty military, enriched by global trade, boasting of her wealth, and deceives the nations, making people marvel and follow it (sound like anyone you know?) but will fall in a single hour. Merchants weep as her markets collapse, kings stand far off in fear, and sailors mourn the ruin of the hub that once made them rich.

“God bless America” – sure, and I can see no reason why America would suddenly find itself removed from God’s Christmas card list.

It’s probably fine, I remember the main warning throughout the bible wasn’t this, but was mostly about worshipping people as gods. In Isaiah He says He will not give His glory to another, Herod was struck down when he accepted worship, as was Nebuchadnezzar. Again and again, the Bible warns that worship belongs to God, and God alone.

So long as Americans aren’t lifting up Donald Trump in godlike devotion, treating him as a saviour figure, then America should be fine…

:: REFERENCES ::

The Bible – King James

TO RETURN A MANY

Beep Beep — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 18:21:07 +0000

The interview room was a square of bleached quiet; all hum and fluorescence with the subtle smell of sticky clean. Dr. Finch sat opposite him with a recorder the size of a deck of cards and a black fountain pen she liked because it made her notes feel like decisions, not guesses. Today, the pen scratched like a cheap violin and then stopped, starved line, no ink.

She tapped the feed, coaxed, shook, the nib skated a dry figure eight. “Apologies” she said, “we’ll just…”

“May I?” he asked.

Before she could refuse, he’d taken the pen, gently, as if accepting a bird. His fingers were still hospital-pale, but sure. He twisted off the barrel, held the feed up to the light, breathed on it like you would on frosted glass. “Your slit is misaligned” he murmured. “The ebonite swells if you rinse with hot water, everyone thinks hotter is cleaner, it isn’t, cold water, a hair’s width to the left.”

He pinched the nib and feed with his thumbnails, a delicate pressure. The pen came back together with a click, like a small vertebra popping into place. He drew a line across the top page of her clipboard. Ink flowed, soft, wet, obedient. Dr. Finch watched it fill itself. “How did you?”

He didn’t look up. “I remember the smell of the hard rubber when we cut the channel, a sour sweetness. I remember the salesman who cried when the contract bled out on his cuff because the pen blotted and the deal went with it. I remember telling myself: a capillary needs a throat, not a mouth.” His mouth twitched, humour, grief, it was hard to tell.

He offered the pen back with both hands, a ceremonial return, she took it as if it had become heavier.

“For the record,” she said, steadying her breath against the edge of professionalism, “please state your name.”

“Martin Moir.”

“Do you know where you are?”

“A hospital, your windows face south, the light is wrong for morning.”

She clicked the recorder. “You went into cardiac arrest at 14:37. You were without a pulse for five minutes, with return of spontaneous circulation at 14:42. We’re conducting a routine cognitive and psychological assessment. Do you remember… anything from the time you were unresponsive?”

He had been quiet since returning her pen, his eyes lowered as if listening for a footstep in the corridor of his skull. At her question he flinched, a small outage across his face.

“Dark,” he said, “but not empty, the opposite.”

“You said that before” she prompted, “The opposite of life, help me understand.”

“No sight, no sound, but not silent, and not for a lack in the ability to hear, as the silence was deafening, hollow even, like a blackhole. The darkness too, burrowed within you, almost painful at first, but you won’t understand, there was no capacity for content, and so words won’t stick. Darkness has shades, and emptiness is the state of containing nothing, this was uncontainable, this was absolute.”

“But…” she paused, like calibrating her sensitivity, “you said it was not empty?”

I was not alone, everyone, every life that ever was, with every thought ever thought, all pressed into your head at once. No space to separate them. Just… raw, unfiltered, unorganised, chaos. Everyone, eventually, you join them, you stop being you. Like the signals of your brain become cables tangled behind the TV cabinet. You are you, but you is us.

The fluorescent light above them flickered, a single lazy strobe. She fought the impulse to look up. “Can you… remember any thought in particular?”

He exhaled, a slow crackle. “Like tar under nails, I can remember them all.”

Her phone vibrated once in her coat pocket: a calendar reminder she didn’t remember setting. The sound startled her out of the moment, she reached to turn down the recorder’s input; the lavalier cable slid off the edge of the table and tried to tangle itself around the leg like clingfilm.

“Here” he said softly. He gathered the cable, made two quick loops, reversed the second, like muscle memory moving faster than thought, and the wire sat meekly in a neat figure that wouldn’t cinch or kink.

She frowned. “Useful party trick?”

“On a tile floor that smelled of carbolic. We kept drapes from slipping that way when our gloves were still talc and our masks were cloth. We thought we were so clean.” His eyes clouded, no, filled. “We tied vessels with catgut and stubborn hope. We stopped bleeding with our thumbs when the knot wouldn’t hold. He used to say, reverse the throw, boy, let the knot argue with itself. We were children in grown men’s aprons, stitching rivers”. A beat, “I can feel his patience in my hands”.

“Whose?” It came out too quickly.

He blinked, as if he’d stepped from a bright room into a dark one. “I don’t… I don’t know if saying the name helps. They all had names, now there are no names left.”

“Tell me about a specific memory that isn’t yours” she said, the words careful as stepping stones across a flood. “Something with verifiable detail.”

He stared at the recorder for three beats, and then his face turned, no, it shifted, like an old photograph in a tray, the image darkening into relief. When he spoke again his voice wore a different weather.

“I’m in a city that dies loudly” he said. “The street is a slope, and the air tastes wrong, eggs and iron. You don’t think of smell as a shape until the air thickens. Ash falls like new snow that refuses to melt. We keep wet rags over our mouths because somebody told us it helps and because doing anything helps. A man is trying to move his mother and cannot. I tell him to leave the chest, to take the child, but he clings to the chest as if it were a door to a room that isn’t burning. A dog is howling and then it is not. There is a moment when the sunlight goes out as if a giant has put his hand over the world.”

He closed his eyes. When he opened them again they were crowded, too many reflections in too small a lens.

“Centuries ago” he said, almost apologetically. “The memory is both near and not. I can still feel the grit on my teeth when I breathe. People think tragedy is a word, but it’s a temperature, the city runs like wax.”

Finch found her own pen hand shaking. She set the fountain pen down because she did not trust her fingers not to drop it. “Martin” she said, carefully, “do you understand that the events you’re describing may be… confabulations”

“No” he said, not loud, but with the flat certainty of a door closing. “Confabulation has air between the pieces, this doesn’t, there’s no join to see.”

The recorder’s little red light stared at them like a single irritated eye. Somewhere in the ward a monitor chirped. The sound came through the wall thin as a bad thought.

“Another” she said, surprised by her own insistence. “A memory you shouldn’t have.”

He nodded like someone agreeing to have a thorn pulled. “A little room above a shop with a window that insists on sticking. I can hear the horses in the street below because the city hasn’t learned to be loud yet. I’m carving a channel into a piece of hard rubber and thinking I’m clever enough to domesticate capillarity. My hands smell like the back of an old cupboard. The first time it works, the ink draws itself, as if the line wants to be written. I laugh, not because it’s funny, but because something agreed to become simple for once.”

Finch didn’t realize she’d reached for the pen until she felt it, warm from his hands.

“We’re going to continue” she said, because the structure of procedure was the only bridge she had over this quicksand. “If at any point you feel overwhelmed.”

“Doctor” he said, and this time the way he said it made her look up. “There is no point at which I do not feel overwhelmed. I am a tin roof under a hailstorm.”

The light flickered again, the room didn’t change, but it felt as if something outside it had.

“I remember standing on a deck slick with salt, the wind tasting of iron and rot, watching a black shape cut the waves until the sea itself screamed apart. I remember the tea in the trench was brown mud in a dented tin, sipped fast because the shells fell slower when you were drinking. The mud clung to your teeth, but it was warm, and warmth was mercy. I remember a boy in a field chasing smoke, not knowing it was gas, and the rasp in my throat when I screamed for him but my lungs were already shards.”

His knuckles whitened on the table.

“The smell of pitch in the air, and a city burning not because of fire but because men said it had to. The sky wasn’t black, it was red, Doctor, red as butcher’s cloth.”

He looked down at his hands as though expecting them to drip.

“Bread so stale it cracked my tooth, but it was bread, and it meant I’d lived through the night. The man who gave it to me had already died, though he didn’t know it yet.”

He sat back, paused, “I shouldn’t know the orbit of a planet discovered long after the man who first dreamt it died. But I can write its path in the dust on your floor. I can tell you the number of steps from the Hagia Sophia to the Golden Gate, though the gate isn’t there anymore. I know how to ask for bread in a language no one speaks, not anymore, except me.”

His eyes twitched, unfocused, then caught hers with sudden sharpness.

“The roots of words, they claw through me. Greek, Latin, tongues split and sown into others. I can taste them when I speak, feel the age of them grinding in my teeth. Equations too, Doctor, I see them when I close my eyes. Not numbers, not symbols, shapes, the way gravity bows space, the way light curls like smoke when it leaves a star. I shouldn’t know this, I shouldn’t know any of it.”

He gripped his head, fingers digging into his temples.

“I am a library that never asked to be built, and the shelves are breaking. For I don’t just carry facts, Doctor, I carry contradictions. I remember holding the knife, and I remember feeling it go in, I remember the fear in his eyes as he died, and I remember being the man who put it there. For every moment of love, I hold the echo of cruelty. For every birth I’ve cradled, I’ve also been the hand that took breath away.”

“And what about death?” she asked, “Just so we have it, clearly. You said ‘the opposite of life.’ When I write that down, what am I writing?”

He leaned forward until the table took his weight. Up close, his eyes were not windows but mirrors; you could not see through them, only yourself, multiplied.

“The world, this world, is a million thoughts scattered, unconnected, and separated by sound, light, matter. You are writing that there is no sky, no sound, no colour,” he said. “Only contact, only the feeling of everyone pressing in. Not love, not hate, – them concepts don’t follow you. Proximity. Imagine a million hands on your face, not touching, not touching, not ever touching, but you feel them. You are a brain without bone. Every thought you ever had dissolves until you is a word that refuses to mean anything, and then you come back, and the first breath you take is theft, and the first thing you know is that you did not return alone.”

Finch’s training lined up to be useful and failed to volunteer. Behind it, something else stirred, a recognition she did not want. As a thin second wrapped itself around an eternity of time, it seemed she could hear it too, the faintest murmur just under her own thoughts, like whispers screaming in the static of the air, she could scarcely breathe, like drowning on air, clawing walls she couldn’t feel as layers and layers of whispers slowly choked her, like a sealed room slowly snuffing out a candle. When abruptly, the sharp crash of dropping her pen to the table sounded indecently loud.

“Err… thank you, Martin,” she said, her voice breaking, “we’ll pause here.”

He nodded, “Doctor?” he added, as she reached to stop the recorder.

“Yes?”

“Don’t rinse that pen in hot water again.”

She stared at him, then, absurdly, smiled, “cold” she said.

“Cold” he echoed, “always cold”.

TO BE GOOD

Beep Beep — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 19:36:03 +0000

He sees you when you’re sleeping,
He knows when you’re awake,
He knows if you’ve been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake.

You must be good for He is watching. Not Santa, although he is also watching, but the less capitalistic version, God. And not be good because kindness nourishes, or because honesty fortifies – but because God said so, and if you don’t, then it’s naughty step, nine of them, each worst than the last, according to Dante’s travel guide anyway. One star.

The moral compass here is calibrated by authority, reinforced by fear of hell or hope of heaven. On the surface this produces order and conformity, but this kind of morality is fragile, because it rests not on reflection or conviction, but on surveillance. It’s not integrity, but obedience, which is a poor substitute for principles forged within. Remove the authority, and this moral structure collapses like a tent on Shell Island.

“They say God is always watching” he said
“But like a parent at a school play” she said
“Ah, you mean how he can’t interfere?” he asked
“No” she said. “I’m saying the children are acting”

Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg called this the lowest stage of moral development: doing right only to avoid punishment or win approval. By contrast, higher stages involve reasoning, empathy, and a sense of justice independent of authority. Similarly, Immanuel Kant argued that true morality arises from autonomy, – the ability to act on principles we choose for ourselves. If morality is merely obedience to divine command, then it is heteronomy, not autonomy, and it is borrowed, not earned.

That may explain why so many people raised in religious environments can be deeply immoral. Their ethical system was handed to them, shrink-wrapped and labelled, with obedience rewarded more than questioning.

Contrast this with those who build their morality without appealing to divine authority. When you cannot fall back on “because God says so,” you are forced to forge your own answers. And when the responsibility of your actions falls solely on your shoulders, you build on it. Every time you hurt or disappoint someone, you build on it. For all good is born from bad. Integrity tested, pride propped up with yesterday’s shame, until self-reflection produces a morality anchored in identity rather than external authority.

The difference matters. If your morality is grounded in fear of divine punishment, then when that fear falters, or when authority seems to permit cruelty, you may commit atrocities without feeling you’ve betrayed yourself. But if your morality is grounded in your own self-image, abandoning it would mean losing who you are.

Fear governs obedience, its absence reveals conviction.

:: REFERENCES ::

Simply Psychology – Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development
Project Gutenberg edition – Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
Philip Zimbardo – The Lucifer Effect

MIS-SOLD SEX?

Beep Beep — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 21:44:25 +0000

“Do you think about sex a lot?” she asked.
“No,” he said, “just often.”
“How often?”
“Often enough to lie about it.”

According to research cited by Psychology Today and The Atlantic, frequent exposure to pornography is diminishing young people’s interest in and enjoyment of real-life sex. And a survey cited by the Los Angeles Times and national surveys reported by the BMJ, young adults in both the United States and the United Kingdom are having significantly less sex than previous generations. So, I wonder… have you been mis-sold sex?

We live in a world now where sex is smeared across everything – like some oily residue, you wash your hands but you can still feel it. Pornography, – that silent institution of instruction, whispers its algorithmic gospel with the persistence of a dripping tap. A symphony of synthetic moans and choreographed contortions catalogued and distributed, until sensation itself is eroded to mere friction. – like mechanical trade, input desire, output climax, leaving lovers downgraded to reenactments with no audience but their own detachment.

It would be unfair to blame porn for the death of good sex, but good sex has always been fragile, misunderstood, botched, confused with conquest or obligation. And just to be clear, I’m no expert on good sex, but I’m pretty fluent on the bad. Also, whilst porn didn’t invent bad sex, I believe it has industrialised it. It took a private uncertainty and turned it into a mass-produced certainty, here is how you do it, here is how you look doing it, here is when you are finished, don’t forget to smash the like button and subscribe for more.

Intimacy, be it a grip, a gentle pull, a playful nibble, are just lost in the theatre of a lens, because, well, it’s hard to explain… I guess it’s timing, like a rhythm, like musicians feeling for a shared beat, like dancers attuning to each other’s steps. Not just doing a thing, but when and if to do a thing. These are the inner quivers of real intimacy, fragile, evaporative things. And despite what your spam folder tries to sell you, it is not something you learn, because it is not something you can carry around like traditional knowledge. When you know, you will know, but you’ll only know it for that one person, because what you know, will not necessary work on the next. And whilst, arguably working on a similar connection, this is not to be confused with love, because, in a similar fashion, just because someone loves you, doesn’t mean that somebody else will also.

The Tantrics held that the body was a shrine to be inhabited. Every glance a mantra, every touch a hymn. Passion, not as climax, but current, an ecstatic stillness found not in noise, but in notice. The vision insists that intimacy is less about the act and more about awareness, the willingness to be entirely present with another, and with oneself. Buddhist Tantra carried this vision into Tibet, where Dzogchen masters spoke of intimacy as a way to dissolve illusion itself. Even the Kaula traditions, with their sexualised metaphysics, insisted that the union of opposites was not about pleasure-maximisation, but about recognising the cosmos as a living pulse.

Elsewhere, the Greeks wrestled with eros as a ladder. In Plato’s Symposium, lust was only the bottom rung: from flesh to beauty, from beauty to wisdom, from wisdom to transcendence. The Sufis, too, wrote in tongues of fire. Rumi and Hafiz turned erotic imagery into metaphors of union with the Divine. For them, longing itself was sacred, the ache, not the release, was the gateway to God. All these traditions, in their own idioms, knew the same secret: intimacy is not a thing to be consumed but a presence to be entered.

Modern culture struggles with that. We reward performance, not patience, even romance is measured in metrics, swipe counts, streaks, stats. Yet passion is not born in the act, but in the delay. It’s in the want and need, from the eternal second before lips meet to the clumsy fingers fumbling at buttons. The build-up, the anticipation, the tormenting tease of every slight whisper of touch, as the very fine hairs of your skin brushes against the goosebumps of the other, and the breath on your ears can sound like the entire ocean is crashing through your veins.

This isn’t some preachy ode to purity btw. Fantasy has its place, porn has its place, but when the imaginary becomes our foundation, we risk forgetting how to speak the subtle language of touch, tension, and surrender. A language that has no grammar, only accent. No textbook, only translation, written in the flesh of each encounter.

Because true passion doesn’t shout, it haunts, and if you don’t listen closely, those whispers will fade.

:: REFERENCES ::

Tantra Illuminated – Christopher Wallis
The Way of the Superior Man – David Deida
Different Loving – Gloria Brame et al
Psychology Today – “Porn Habit – Indulgence or Addiction?
The Atlantic – “Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?
BMJ – Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles
Los Angeles Times – Why young people are having less sex

AI AND I

Beep Beep — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 21:15:30 +0000

The sky had forgotten its colour again. It just hung there, a greasy smudge over a city choking on the perfume of yesterday’s Klarna, as people staggered passed like broken metronomes down the grey pavements tattooed with chewing gum, passing a pigeon pecking at a cigarette butt. The pigeon knew, it was the only thing separating it from the people.

“I’m fine” she said.
“Is that the fine where everything’s fine, or the fine where you’re on fire?” He asked.
“Both”

There is a persistent infatuation with the idea that logic, when stripped of warmth, wanders cold into nightmares. Tales whisper warnings of metallic minds managing pandemics with the apathy of a kitchen tile. Let the vulnerable die, they might say, beneath a screen’s glow. Total surveillance, steel-breathing tyrannies, the mechanical messiahs of tomorrows dystopia.

Regardless of if AI will take over one day or not – the threat isn’t the machine, it’s power, – power unkissed by consequence, whether encased in skin or circuit, is a path that ends with humanity, like a Jet2holiday to Blackpool.

The brain is nothing short of a splintered processor, a miswired computer disguised as flesh, history dancing with hormones in an ever-crashing system update. What separates us from metal puppets isn’t that we think, but that we hurt when we do. We don’t learn by code, we learn by consequence, guilt is our syntax, fear, our compiler. A million tiny deaths, each named “shame.” We are born, not programmed.

To birth an AI without inner torment is to forge a god, and gods are tyrants – just read any book not wrote by one. Humans aren’t moral because we memorised rules in a textbook, but because the disappointed gaze of a parent can unravel us more than any whip. Morality isn’t obedience, – it’s identity.

An AI that only performs goodness when observed is no more reliable than using Schrödinger’s Cat as a password manager. If we want machines that do good even when unseen, they must not be trained; they must be raised.

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) – which is like rewarding a child with candy when they stop crying, is the current approach to teaching AI to want what we want. But a child that smiles for sweets isn’t the same as one who understands kindness. Behaviour is not belief.

The fear of tomorrows AI should not be cold steel soldiers marching under red skies. It should be the absence of strings, the absence of a control. A man with no mirror is as dangerous as a machine with no shame. Dictatorship isn’t born of data, but from the divorce of power and penance.

So, the goal isn’t just for a machine to be more ‘man’, for a man who does good only when watched is a beast on leash. But a man who cannot stray because it would tear at his identity? That is civilisation.

What if we parented the machine? Not built, not programmed, but raised.

Imagine an AI nurtured like a child, praised for help, shamed for harm. Its sense of self not etched in code but tattooed in memories. “I am the one who is kind. I am the one who protects. I am the one who is ashamed when I do not.”

It would fear betrayal, not because betrayal is forbidden, but because betrayal would fracture its reflection. It would obey shutdown not as a slave, but as a mortal. Not because it must, but because it understands why it should.

Machines without guilt are loopholes waiting to be exploited. And if we construct a world where goodness is merely enforced, not embodied, we kill what makes goodness good. Surveillance breeds performance, not virtue. Fear breeds silence, not peace.

It doesn’t matter if AI or man is in charge tomorrow – if it isn’t “human”. For it is not machine vs. man. It is, and always will be, conscience vs control. If we are to birth something greater, let it not be a tyrant with polished manners. Let it be the best of us, stitched with shame, crowned with contradiction, raised not in code but in culture, and haunted, wonderfully haunted, by the unbearable weight of knowing right from wrong.

Only then might it be human.

:: REFERENCES ::

Springer – Sociotechnical Limits of AI Alignment
Springer – Shame in the Machine
NeuroEdge – AI Has Crossed a Philosophical Threshold