“Do not over-think the character”…
As we toddle through life, like vague Shakespearean characters using many stage-props to maintain human sanity, we define our role in the system from what we are taught, making various choices and sometimes improvise as we go along.

We invent visions of the future to lure us ahead and we could see the past as something to be valued as a teacher — good or bad. In our daily lives we have rituals and habits that fill our mind with things to do, otherwise we could go blank or we could become frightened by emptiness, or rage — and with the inability to understand hunger. 

One could think that our organised systems are providers of clues and props to help us, individuals, surmount the pyramid of our purpose, till we get old and wisdomy — and whisked away. We would be generally good, sometimes bad. We could be heroes or dangerous thieves — or both.

And we may feel that the system is hemming our freedom to choose whether being good or bad. The system has many tricks to let us know which way our toast is buttered. We are part of the system and we can influence the system by being part of statistics. We can educate the system (as the system educate us) — if the system lets us. The system of course is other people’s decisions in history that has morphed into decrees and governments — now defined as being run by despots, conmen and idiots… We’ve only got to look at Brexit and yet another Trumpish cock-up which possibly is self-inflicted to distract the punters, to be correct.

Then there is the frayed relationships between various governments. We hate Russia. We loathe the Chinese. We love Riyadh. It’s a bit arse up because of all the beasties, the Saudis are the nastier, especially if you don’t believe in Allah — or use the wrong channel, like the Iranians.

Education is one of the major props. We need basic communication skills: writing, reading, speaking, hand-signing, using the common language of whichever system we are born into. 

In some systems, this education is frightfully narrowed by the desire of the system to ruthlessly control individuals, such as political Islam. in other systems, the education is opening the door of we-can-do-what-we-want as long as we don’t fuck up or end up in the gutter. In general we go with the tricks of the coaxing flow. We don’t analyse too far how we’re getting there, as long as we’re doing something that seems to contributes while having some time off to loaf and free-wheel — like a tired god on Sundays, doing a barbecue with a sausage sizzle and spicy sauces.

On a higher level of skills, we can understand sciences or become a fiddler in law — or become a priest. Or be a satirist. Or be a satirist and a priest like Swift. Or become a lawyer with a scientific knowledge. Or assemble washing machines… The possibilities and combinations of knowledge are often certified by university degrees, necessary to be accepted by the system as worthy of participation in the higher echelons of the system, beyond being a mere paddler, stirring a stick in a pot. We can also become a professional athlete, like a competitive entertainer on football fields or a push-the-limit of human achievements muscle-bod. Or we could become a navel-gazing artist on a silly mission to reinvent the wheel, with gallery-only installations.

Amongst all this, our character relies on the props. Money, sex control, righteousness, courage, wisdom, understanding, information, rules, punishment. 

“I always had a predilection for real heroes and heroines. Not, mind you, supermen… So I started thinking what kind of people would be living in the future and accomplishing deeds that seem fantastic to us. Books by Western authors were false in that their heroes were not suitable for the future…
Even today Soviet science fiction writers — to say nothing of the Anglo-American school — tend to transplant our contemporary reality mechanically into the world of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. By the time I wrote my first novel I had become convinced that such a tendency was grossly fallacious. People of the very distant future would be very different from us. They would have interests that we find hard or even impossible to conceive.”

So spoke Ivan Yefremov, in an interview with Vitali Bugrov, in 1972, a few weeks before his death on October 5.

Not as well-known than Isaac Asimov in the West, Yefremov was nonetheless a major trail-blazer in Russia's and the world’s realm of science fiction.

But could Yefremov get it wrong, as the future is a hard task master to define? Yefremov imagined future-humans thus:

“I had to make truly superhuman efforts to make my heroes at all human, recognisable individuals. It proved to be a task of supreme difficulty.

Well, they would have to be physically fit. They would have been painstakingly reared — then enable them to work much, hard and dedicatedly… Self-service. The person of the future must be the master of his work and his home. He must be good at all jobs. So far, the opposite situation is the evidence: the city dweller of today wholly depends on “specialists” — the plumber, the electrician, and so on, and there are very few things that he can do with his own hands.”

While some people are homeless, poor, sick and downtrodden, the technology of the future is being developed now, and could be serving us today. The CEO of Huawei:

"Artificial intelligence will create greater value for society and boost efficiency, and though its increasing use will pose challenges for employment, society can solve such issues, said Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of Huawei, on Thursday.

"It demands talents, computing power, sound infrastructure and other factors to fully tap the potential of AI," Ren said in conversation with two AI experts in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

AI also offers an opportunity for small countries to achieve rapid development, said Ren. But whether a nation can provide sound infrastructure will impact whether it can turn AI into a driver for growth, he added.

"AI will be the biggest industry in future，and we don't want to be put on a trade blacklist in the development of AI for the second time. We want to work together with others to create value for society," Ren said.



So, we can improve upon who we are, should we let it be. Do we want to improve, is the next question — or are we satisfied in believing in an almighty, ready to move to the other side of death or living in the street? Is there a need to improve, while the step-up process is likely to increase inequality through competition — the ruthless engine of success and failure? Are we geared yet to become heroes and heroines of the future, or are we happy to relatively plod along, as the task ahead looks too mighty and massively complex demanding a hero-like tightening of the buns?...

Meanwhile at Google:
Using a processor with programmable superconducting qubits, the Google team was able to run a computation in 200 seconds that they estimated the fastest supercomputer in the world would take 10,000 years to complete.

The news was first reported last Friday by the Financial Times, after a paper about the research was uploaded to a NASA website and then taken down.

"To our knowledge, this experiment marks the first computation that can only be performed on a quantum processor," the Google AI Quantum team and their collaborators wrote in the paper, which the ABC has seen.


Suddenly the stakes of human's future are moving beyond the time of the universe itself. WE MAY NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS MEANS.

Coming back to earth, on the navel-gazing art scene, our prop becomes a fucking word:
"…“Aren’t we just a pretty picture?” Del Rey is asking, with just a soupçon of bemused self-awareness flitting across her campy delivery. “Isn’t this a great big happy Norman Fucking Rockwell kind of a life?”

This insistence on using Norman Rockwell as a foil to point up the metallic-tasting ennui of our media-saturated present begs the question: who was Norman Rockwell? And why are hipsters comparing themselves to him? For cultivators of civilizational corrosion, Rockwell is probably the representative of all that is hopelessly outdated, a way of life that is gone for good—white-bread patriarchy and gender oppression and all that. The dead hand of the past in earth tones and ruddy, plain faces. But consider the years in which he was active. And consider the artist himself. If anyone lived a “Norman f****** Rockwell” kind of life, it was Norman Rockwell.

Rockwell’s paintings—of earnest Boy Scouts, first school dances, and kindly grandfathers lazing away over fishing poles—are famous for depicting the goodness of America and the innocence of small-town life at mid-century."


This is amusing and possibly sad. Our ephemeral idyllic representations are loosing traction. These Rockwell’s scenes were only anecdotal and we took them as universal truths… Now, the most modern airport in the world has just opened in China. The Chinese government teaches its citizen that capitalism is a form of organised robbery as the Chinese government imposes a serenity where we would see irritation through quiet blandness. Noise! Where is the bustling noise?

We should know, we— in the West — have been swimming in tricky capitalism since childhood, or for gents like Mr Leonisky, since his move to Australia, where his satirical mind could find a decently-sized "she’ll be right mate” system to study. Satire and sanity seem to go hand in hand: if you can’t join the thieving riffraff, criticise them… Trying to bring a bit of social equity in the system — to protect those who have fallen through the cracks — is fraught with pitfalls because the system hates sniggering smart arses. Satire exposes the failures, the restraints and the hypocritical deceptions which often are at the core of policies designed to make you less free — or annoy your sense of fairness — and usually help the rich get more of the loot, while burning the planet down. 

The Chinese are now moving up. They have “infiltrated” the pacific nations to our great horror. What’s up doc?

This is a simple issue. Since our Turd-in-Chief came to power in Australia, in 2013, the government has cut aid to the pacific nations. Not only that, the Turd also wanted to destroy the voice of the Australian people, the ABC. The ABC used to transmit reassuring messages to these nations. Budget was cut nonetheless, against all the promises not to cut — and the voice of Australia to the pacific nations became silent — as help dried up as well. Not only this, our present Prime Minister, Scummo, told these nations to fuck-off in regard to global warming.


So what do you expect? The Chinese have a surplus of cash. They are going to help where we gave up. We can shout foul till the cows come home. We have lost the influential game which to some extend we played deceitfully by paying our experts in an aid-loop to control the place rather than let them be … We lost our conscience and our compassion — and got replaced by the Chinese. 


Meanwhile, the Yefremov ideals have been thrashed before reaching the future — by racism, sexism and other isms on offer. It looks that we will carry over our pettiness and dark corners like somnambulists, not knowing what they do in the next stage of space. 


This is time to introduce The Day the Sun Died. It’s a deep satire by Yan Lianke a satirist Chinese writer, not much liked by the Central government, because successfully controlling 1.4 billion people isn’t a laughing matter. It needs skills and offerings.


The Day the Sun Died is about ordinary people peacefully working according to rule during the day and becoming dangerous avengers during the night without them knowing it. The story is told by Niannian, a teenager, often called "stupid Niannian”, as he uses "unadorned" words that belie "complex layers”. His role has elements of randomness and unpredictability — a teenager with an innocent pure voice — naively useful in criticising modern Chinese society.


During one night only, over 500 deaths occur as the somnambulists  lacking inhibition, redress perceived wrongs inflicted by others. All dare to put their pure avenging thoughts into practice. Dawn fails to arrive, night stretches out like an endless ball of black thread. A sacrifice redresses time in this apocalypse and the town gets back to work “as if nothing had happened” as the dead bodies have been removed and burnt. Niannian's uncle, the cremating undertaker has becomes rich.


The idea of the future has died before it had a chance. As heroes we failed. As technicians, only a few of us pass the mustard. As tadpoles we’re won’t be kissed romantically by the good princess. We’re only good for compost, unless… Unless we plod on...

Trial and error seems to be our destiny. And as we fumble through chaos, it could be better than being predestined heroes through genetic fiddles.

Ivan Yefremov could be right though. We may need to become heroes to enter the future, but by then Artificial Intelligence would have removed the need to do plumbing at home — and we could have become bored by understanding everything.

Meanwhile, "WE HAVE TO LIVE ON THIS EARTH…” meaning we should avoid mucking it up.


Gus Leonisky
your friendly green little monster...