Amor Mundi

Samuel Delany

Roger Berkowitz
Julian Lucas profiles Samuel Delany, one of  the most vibrant and extraordinary writers of our era. I first encountered Delany’s Babel 17 in a college course. I was obsessed with the “Return to Nevèrÿon” series in graduate school, and his books Mad Man  and Times Square Red, Times Square Blue provoked me in the most profound ways. I regularly recommend or gift his memoir The Motion of Light on Water. There are few personalities, writers, and intellectuals with the capacity to surprise and provoke that Delany possesses. His independence of mind and impartiality against the world are extraordinary, something that to my mind unites him with Hannah Arendt.

The Joy of Being In a Rageful Movement

Roger Berkowitz
David French captures something essential about the endurance of the Trump MAGA movement. So many outside the movement see these MAGA voters as angry, enraged, violent, and racist. And one must admit that the movement is all of those things, at times. But what outsiders forget, or what they are unable or unwilling to see, is that the movement is not built on rage.

Digital Humanism Summit on Generative AI and Democratic Sustainability

Roger Berkowitz
I spent last week at the Digital Humanism Initiative Summit on Generative AI and Democratic Sustainability in Vienna. Over fifty scholars, computer scientists, regulators, and activists from more than 20 countries met for two full days to think together about the threat AI poses to democracy. Watch the recorded public presentation and read our provisional statement.

Power and Authority

The last 10 days have seen the Supreme Court reject the dangerous Independent State Legislature theory that would have allowed, amongst other things, state legislatures to deny the will of the voters and direct their electors on whom to cast that state’s electoral college votes. The Court also ended affirmative action in colleges and universities calling it a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, said that the effort to use an emergency authorization law passed in the wake of 9/11 does not give the Secretary of Education the right to administratively forgive student debt, and decided that a web designer does not have to take on clients whose views violate her firmly held religious beliefs. While the decision denying the State Legislature theory has been praised by liberals and some conservatives, the decisions on affirmative action, student debt, and the conflict between free speech and equal protection have been wildly unpopular amongst liberals. The result is that many on the left are once again calling for reform of the Supreme Court. 

The Age of Constant Change

Roger Berkowitz
That AI is an engine that affirms our lying world does not mean the world is static; on the contrary, the world that AI above all reflects back to us is the world created by academics, journalists, writers, artists and those content producers—those members of the cultural elite that N.S. Lyons calls “Virtuals.” Virtuals make their living, Lyons writes,  “by manipulating, categorizing, and interpreting symbolic information and narrative. “Manipulate” is an important verb here, and not merely in the sense of deviousness. Such an individual’s job is to take existing information and change it into new forms, present it in new ways, or use it to tell new stories. This is what I am attempting to do as a writer in shaping this article, for example.” In this way, Virtuals bring about a world that is in constant change, a world of “fast culture” and unending progress. 

The Seductiveness of AI’s Coherent Fiction

Roger Berkowitz
Babette Babich turns to Nietzsche to think about the question of why we are enthusiastic about AI. One reason, of course, is the belief that AI will "solve" our social problems. Diseases will be cured, welfare reorganized, poverty overcome. AI will solve the irresolvable social problems that we humans have not been able to. Of course, this belief in the power of AI to solve problems of human organization depends, first, on our willingness to outsource human challenges to inhuman logic, and, second, to our willingness to actually implement solutions to human problems that we humans can't understand. 

The Danger Zone of Heightened Sensitivity

Roger Berkowitz
There are many criticisms of identity politics. Perhaps the most damning is the one simply follows through the logic of identity politics to its ultimate dystopian endpoint. This worry about the profoundly anti-human impact of identity politics is at the heart of “The Doctor,”  Robert Icke’s adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s play “Professor Bernhardi” that is currently running at the Armory in New York City. Jesse Green reviews the play and offers a thoughtful critique of identity politics. 

Caving In

Roger Berkowitz
Francine Prose writes about Elizabeth Gilbert’s decision to pull the publication of her new book in response to protests from Ukrainian activists. The offense in Gilbert’s book is simply that it is set in Russian, albeit Stalinist Russia. These activists who take offense have not read Gilbert’s book. They simply believe that since the book is set in Russia, it will be offensive and do harm to Ukrainians. Prose takes issue with this worry and Gilbert’s decision to cave-in to such pressure.

Daniel Ellsberg in Memoriam
 

Roger Berkowitz
Daniel Ellsberg died this week. A military analyst for the Rand Corporation, Ellsberg is best known for his act of principled courage in leaking the Pentagon Papers to the Press.