The House of Diabolique - Singin' in the Rain, God's Rain

Join us as we thrust into house music..

01.06.02

Above it may look like I am losing my mind; actually I am growing a larger one.

Every once in a while, I get an email from someone who complains that their company has forbidden access to this website through their servers. For instance, we are not available at Young & Rubicam advertising. Most recently, Bozell advertising restricted access to our site. I'm really not sure why they do this, but a hearty FUCK YOU to both of them.

Again I was going to write about RuPaul this week but instead a certain email has prompted us to talk about reality and God (likely opposites).

As you read, listen to some clips of 'Mozart' .

Dear Machinebody,

Please do not take my way of addressing you as disrespect: I don't know your name.
I stumbled on your site during a search for 80's retro music. Because of the rather weird thermograph of, presumably, yourself and the diabolical references I normally would have quickly passed it by.

And what a foolish mistake that would have been. Sometimes the surface is more important than what's real; other times, not.

But I hung around long enough to read about one of your club encounters, which I though was funny and witty. That was quite a while ago. But--and you are ubiquitous--I recently came across your site again, during a search on Artificial Intelligence, no less! Since I enjoyed what you wrote the first time, I took a look at what you had to say recently. I was saddened to read that you either were or still are suffering from cancer. Subsequent visits to your site suggest that you have conquered it. I hope and pray that is the case. I also pray that you will recover from the side effects of chemotherapy.

I am indeed in remission from cancer. Thanks for the well-wishes.

I have a few points that I'd like to convey, if you'll indulge me:

First. Since you believe you are either a machine or that the machine is a metaphor for your existence here on Earth, then you must be endowed with Artificial Intelligence? If I'm right, then can I recommend the book "What Computers Still Can't Do", by Hubert L. Dreyfus (MIT Press, 1992)? Dreyfus is a phenomenologist at UC Berkeley and makes a very powerful case against Artificial Intelligence (AI). If he is correct then your intelligence is not artificial and it would reasonable to conclude that it resides in a human brain. But this is not a put-down, so please don't misunderstand. In debunking AI, Dreyfus also communicates an inspiring message on the awesomeness of human intelligence. Human intelligence is transcendent and cannot be boxed into an algorithm with facts as inputs. No machine could climb a tree and, looking at the moon, contemplate flying there. Again, Dreyfus illustrates this very convincingly. You might also want to read, if you haven't already, "The Emperor's New Mind," by Roger Penrose (Oxford, 1989). Penrose is a brilliant mathematician who, with Stephen Hawking, developed the Hawking-Penrose theory of black holes.

I would probably enjoy reading either of those books as much as I disagree with them. Certainly anyone out there who feels generous can get them for me via my Amazon wishlist .

I'm aware of Roger Penrose and should point out that plenty of physicists (including Hawking) disagree with his theories on human intelligence.

I counter by suggesting two books of my own: 'Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind' by Hans Moravec and 'The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence' by Ray Kurzweil . Just because machines don't climb trees or contemplate flying to the moon yet doesn't mean that they never will. They will. They will do things we can't even imagine. To suggest otherwise is short-sighted.

Roger Penrose has theorized that we may achieve consciousness through the gravitational collapse of quantum wave functions in individual brain neurons. This is beyond my understanding but just because it is doesn't make my brain magical. That consciousness exists at all means that it can be created. Why not by us? The question is not whether machines will someday be able to 'think', because we already do; but rather, when we will be able to create machines that think and surpass our own abilities.

Futurists are limited to imagining extensions of whatever is around them. Real futures are always more interesting and more complex. Jules Verne could have never predicted the internet because computers had not yet been invented. Likewise, our own ima ginations are limited by what's around us.

The future of machinery promises things that are therefore unimaginable. Computers today will beget something new which will beget something else, and it is only a matter of time before something man-made trumps us at what we currently do best, which is to think. Man-made intelligences will surpass us and eventually design for themselves beings superior to even themselves; beings far beyond our abilities and imaginations, and these beings will be machines; or for lack of a better word, super-machines.

Computers have already beaten man at chess. Imagine what they'll beat us at 50 years from now?

Would it surprise you if I said that the music you're listening to was not composed by Mozart, but rather a computer? You are listening to David Cope's EMI (Experiments in Musical Intelligence) project. He fed music by Mozart to a computer and then asked it to compose other works in the same style. If computers can do this now, imagine what they'll be able to do 50, 100, 300, 1000 years from now?

Imagine a computer that can scan your mind and then generate art - films, music, books - perfectly suited to your tastes. Someday computers may generate more artistic masterpieces in one minute than humans have in all of human history.

There will be no limit to what machines can do and rather than being skeptical or frightened we should be excited.

Second. Regarding your identification with machines and your fascination with your body and it's perfection: might it be due to the fact that you are ashamed of your body? You know that it will age and that its suppleness will become flaccid and its symmetry will be kneaded away. You have--and very courageously, I would say--born its infirmities. You must have thought that all those tubes, injections, the resulting loss of hair, the night sweats and so on were a little degrading? Who wouldn't? Further, the lassitude caused by the chemo must have made your body feel like a dead weight: brute, dumb matter. How could a mind such as yours, at once vibrant and elegant be chained down to such a rock? Again, please don't think of this as a jibe. It is a serious issue. It is a serious theme in Western philosophy. Westerners have been argued over the significance of having a body since the ancient Greeks, and perhaps even before. Plotinus was ashamed of it. Augustine called it brother ass (meaning donkey). Dreyfus (and Penrose) says that yours and my intelligence is intimately associated with our bodies; that disembodied intelligence is impossible. I hope I'm not reaching too far, but I do admit to having been ashamed of my own body and have found Dreyfus' idea that it is also an extension of our intelligence to be so uplifting that I can no longer be ashamed. For if human intelligence is nothing short of miraculous, then as its extension, so is the body. Your body, in spite of its frailty and eventual decay, is truly wondrous--as it is. It does not need to be "redeemed" as a machine. It does not need explanation in terms of Cartesian rationalism; for that, ultimately, is what you are trying to do. Again, very Western! Did you know you are a philosopher as well as a writer? (Please forgive me for talking to you as a young man. I turn 51 this month.)

My body is already a machine. It simply could have been designed better.

As for being ashamed of it, I am not. I am neither ashamed of it nor proud of it. It is simply there, and last year it betrayed me. I wanted to be a machine long before cancer happened, and that had more to do with my frail mind than my frail body, but now that you bring it up, more grist for the mill.

I know for a fact that the human body is capable of more pain than pleasure. I've taken almost every drug known to man and had the hottest sex. I know pleasure. All of it was eclipsed within the first two weeks of my ailment. Un-fucking-believable amounts of pain and as the weeks turned into months I was unable to even think properly. One thought dissipated into the next, it like being on PCP or acid and impossible to explain. Eventually I spoke as little as possible for fear of sounding insane, and I wonder where it is now, the sanity I lost.

In light of this I can hardly stand certain people who selfishly whine about their own fucking Melrose dramas.

I digress because I'm having trouble even now putting my thoughts in order. Our bodies can malfunction. So can our brains. Do we not have a right to ask for new ones? I pine for more than what I was given. Does this make me crazy?

Third. You wish to kill God. I say you are really seeking him. I say more: you know he is real. One doesn't expend as much intellectual and emotional energy as you do in your remonstrances against God without believing your putative enemy is very real. One does not bother to kill an imaginary being, unless one is schizophrenic and you certainly are not that.

Do not be so sure.

But this reminds me of when I used to rant about Chelsea boys. I'd get email from them accusing me of simply being jealous. Is it not possible to criticize something without having an ulterior motive?

I know what I'm talking about because I have met many who really don't believe in God, who truly believe he is imaginary, and they seem to live their lives, under the sun, without struggle. Men, such as yourself, with intellect and energy often don't want to admit to an intelligence, to a power, that is greater than themselves.

On the contrary I am quite well aware of how frustratingly stupid I am.

Certainly I do not believe in any Christian God, or the God of any religions here on Earth. I spit in the face of any faith-based God and such a God surely does deserve to die. Why not by my hand?

I will grant you this: if there is a God, it is only because there must be a thing in the universe which is the most powerful thing in the universe, and that this thing could be called God. However - whether this thing created us or knows all or is omnipotent or listens to our prayers or is even aware of our existence at all is questionable.

Suppose this thing is omniscient and omnipotent. Wouldn't an all-knowing, all-powerful being, by definition, have to include us in its makeup? How can something omniscient and omnipotent exist at the same time as anything separate from it? An omniscient, omnipotent being would have to, by definition, include all things.

Perhaps then we are an infinitesmal part of a infinite number of simulations in its mind; civilizations which rise and fall, expand and collapse an infinite number of times eternally within nanoseconds so many times in so many variations as to be inconceivable, all in this being's mind; but if this were to be it would make no difference. A simulated life is as real to a simulated being as a real life is to a real being, no matter how small in the grand scheme of things, and our struggle for meaning just as unfair and futile.

That is because they sense the power of their intellect. It makes them strive for self-sufficiency. As Schopenhauer said, they are bedazzled. C. S. Lewis, a Cambridge scholar, said he was brought to Christ kicking and screaming. Malcolm Muggeridge said much the same thing. Your rebellion (and rebels always want to kill their masters) is as old as the temptation of Adam and Eve. It is dramatic as Milton's Satan, who would rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. Satan takes God very seriously and believes in him too; so much that he too wants to kill God. He wishes to conquer God's creation and he believes he will succeed because he thinks that God is synonymous with Creation, which he adeptly beguiles. He is driven by vanity and a lack of understanding of transcendence. He cannot imagine a being who wills the universe into existence yet is greater than it. Rather than being discouraged by your desire to kill God, I find it salubrious. I believe that if you work through it and do not get discouraged and sink into complacency, you will emerge with understanding. You beat cancer, can you win the great spiritual battle for which, though you may not know it, you have been chosen? I pray that you will someday know your enemy as an ally.

Does God laugh when a baby is born dead? Does he have such a wicked sense of humor? If he did at least we'd know he had feelings at all. Which is more comforting: a God who is against us or one who is indifferent? Which is less comforting: a God who is not even aware of us? Or most likely, no God at all?

If there is a faith-based God he ought to be impressed by my rancor. Why would he fear a little criticism? When I get to heaven, if I don't kick his ass first, I will demand he makes me his partner if not his Lord. I will be a Supergod. I have many plans for this thing called the universe and they trump God's, I'm sure.

I will demand that God give me head, because I like getting head. Its one of the few things my body is good for. I've now been cursed with a post-cancer inability to easily cum but that ultimately isn't my problem, is it? Its the problem (pleasure) of whoever I'm with. I have a big dick and I bet God won't choke on it because after all, if he is so all-knowing he ought to know how to give me the best blowjob EVER. It will be his pleasure.

For those who might be offended - why? Isn't sex natural? There's nothing wrong or degrading about giving head then, is there? Why shouldn't God partake in one of the pleasures he gave us? There are few greater pleasures than giving me head, let me tell you.

Why would the Christian God choose to immaculately conceive, denying Mary the pleasure of his almighty fuck? Why would God create bodies capable of pleasure, and then shame us from taking advantage?

Maybe I'll get HIV before I die and pass it on to God so that he can suffer. I don't believe he's ever suffered. The whole Jesus thing is a damned die. One who knows suffering would not have created this Earth, and I speak not from my own life which actually is a blessed one but from the lives of others who have suffered and died without meaning.

Your God's world is slanted towards evil. Why? Why disease? But since there is, why is there no opposite to disease as there is good to evil, life to death, love to hate? Instead of catching a virus that destroys our bodies, why not catch a virus that gives us superpowers? People lose their sight but none gain x-ray vision. I know paraplegics, but none who can fly.

If God created murderers; why not others who create life? Why shouldn't that person be man? Blessed will be the day man creates a being superior to himself. When we do, we will have perfected what God could not. We will have proof of our superiority by creating a being superior to ourselves. I may be proven wrong one day when man actually creates God out of this need to have one. God may eventually be a robot that we create!

Where is your God's ambition? Why would he create inferior man? Man strives to create machines whose abilities surpass his own; God created mindless worshippers. What is God afraid of that I am not?

Lots of bad in this world has no corresponding good, but I do not let it defeat me. I am a pragmatic existentialist. I believe it is our job to make our lives good and happy. We must steal it from the crumbs life throws at us and have a right to demand it and be angry for more.

I don't mean to sound bitter because I'm not. I hate my identification with disease because I don't want to be thought of as sick. I want to be thought of as fantastic.

If anything last year gave me in all its bountiful HELL was even more of a determination to use my pitiful and scarce talents to conjure up more and more fun for myself. You see I feel I have very little natural talent at anything. Whatever I succeed at is by force of will. There is nothing in me that is special; Hawking has smarts, Monroe had looks; some are athletes and others are natural comedians. I am naturally nothing special. I believe this but don't let it stop me. I make myself beautiful and I make myself fun.

I create myself from vapors or the air in an empty room. Although this ability was taken from me last year, I now have even more of a determination. I fake it and it becomes real.

The fact is that many evil people prosper in this world, including God if there is one. But its foolish to let this stop us. Being happy in a universe so colossally indifferent is our greatest defiance. In this light, the movie-musical 'Singing in the Rain' is a radical work of art.

'So dark up above', indeed!

You know by now that I am a Christian, in fact I'm a conservative Lutheran. But I am also an artist who knows another artist when I see one. I believe that anyone who understands art is close to understanding God. Even Oscar Wilde understood this and I am not convinced that he was ill disposed towards Christianity. From De Profundis,

"And while in reading the Gospels--particularly that of St. John himself, or whatever early Gnostic took his name and mantle--I see this continual assertion of the imagination as the basis of all spiritual and material life, I see also that to Christ imagination was simply a form of Love, and that to him Love was Lord in the fullest meaning of the phrase…Christ, like all fascinating personalities, had the power not merely of saying beautiful things himself, but of making other people say beautiful things to him; and I love the story St. Mark tells us about the Greek woman…who, when as a trial of her faith he said to her that he could not giver her the bread of the children of Israel, answered him that the little dogs…--"little dogs" it should be rendered--who are under the table eat of the crumbs the children let fall. Most people live FOR love and admiration. But it is BY love and admiration that we should live. If any love is shown us we should recognize that we are quite unworthy of it. Nobody is worthy to be loved. The fact that God loves man shows that in the divine order of ideal things it is written that eternal love is to be given to what is eternally unworthy. Or if that phrase seems to you a bitter one to hear, let us say that everyone is worthy of love, except he who thinks that he is. Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling and , Domine, non sum dignus should be on the lips and in the hearts of those who receive it."

And Wilde goes on to say,

"…for I see in Christ not merely the essential of the supreme romantic type, but all the accidents, the wishfulnesses even, of the romantic temperament also. He was the first person who ever said to people that they should live "flower-like" lives. He fixed the phrase."

Sincerely,
DWS

Thank you for such a thought-provoking email although I disagree wholeheartedly.

We may live inside a fake, simulated world, but our burdens are just the same. There is a lot to be said for faking it. The queens of Paris Is Burning taught us that much. If I'm not feeling confident, I fake it and it might as well be real. If I don't feel fabulous. I fake it and then I am. By looking good you can fake yourself into feeling good.

But when religion fakes it, it isn't good enough. Scientists cured me of cancer; not priests. Science heats my home; not religion. Science admits when its wrong; religion never does. Science asks honest questions; religion claims false answers. Science is based on proof; religion is based on faith. Science is based on observable facts but religion is ultimately just made-up stories, isn't it?

Carl Sagan used to point out that science and religion are after the same thing - the meaning of life. But science will get there first so that's where I put my money.

Science doesn't fake it and neither should God. The stakes are too high.

God ought to prove himself, or not bother existing at all. I reject his existence. And I keep on singing despite the onslaught of rain.

'Got To Be Real' by Cheryl Lynn

I can think of one proof that your God may exist, and that is my hair. My hair, which I was told would likely grow back a different color and texture after chemo, has grown back looking even better than before. It is now even more flawless and perfect, something previously thought impossible, and therefore proof that there may indeed be a God - and that God is my hair!

-

I have a second email which comes from Daniel, a 12-year old self-identified bisexual (they come out at insane ages these days, huh?), who has graciously allowed me to quote part of his email:

'... lastly I want to thank you for what you wrote about 9/11. I grew up in Boulder CO and we moved here when I was 10. I love it but I want to go back because I'm still scared we'll be attacked again..'

Hey, New York is great. They attacked us because we're great. If they attack America again, I hope they attack New York because we can handle it more than any other city.

Unless they go nuclear. That would be a bit much and I'm sure there's a strategically important city with a population of zero somewhere in northern Alaska that would probably make a better nuclear target.

At least we're not in Tokyo. Giant monsters stomp on their buildings.

Addendum:
Only 100 people per year get the kind of cancer I had last year, which means I had a 1 in 60,000,000 chance of having it. And yet, I had it. As I write this, although I am in remission, I have 1 in 5 chance of being dead in 3 years in case it comes back. I am not worried, but because my life has become a probability, I have decided to play the lottery every week.

This morning as I was waking up I offhandedly made a Homer Simpson-esque bargain with God: he could prove he existed by having me win the jackpot today. I checked my numbers and it turns out I did win today , but not the jackpot. I won only $1.

Proof not that God exists but that if he did, all the more reason for me to bitch-slap him for having such an annoying sense of humor. He's like that kid who sits behind you in the bus and can't stop putting his wet finger in your ear. And then you turn around and he acts all innocent. I beat that kid up too.

He's asking for it, all right.

It's got to be real.

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