Category: video

Language and Generative AI: A Journey through Midjourney

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I am not a fan of Midjourney v7. I prefer v6.1. And I want to write about the correspondence of language, per my Language Insufficiency Hypothesis.

Let’s start with the language aspect. Notice how distant the renders are from the intent of the prompt.

This is my initial prompt. I used it about a year ago to generate the cover image with v6.1, but I wanted to see how it renders in v7. Let’s take a trip all the way back to the beginning. 

cinematic, tight shot, photoRealistic light and shadow, exquisite details, delicate features, emaciated sensual female vampire waif with vampire fangs, many tattoos, wearing crucifix necklace, gazes into mirror, a beam of moonlight shines on her face in dark mausoleum interior, toward camera, facing camera, black mascara, long dark purple hair , Kodak Portra 400 with a Canon EOS R5
Image: Midjourney v6.1 render set (from about a year ago)

As you can see, these renders are somewhat lacking in photorealism, but the “sensual” term in the prompt was not blocked.

Midjourney v7

Initially, I encountered a hiccup. After a couple of rejections on the grounds of morality, I removed the word ‘sensual’ and received the output. All of the output uses this prompt absent the sensual term.

As mentioned, I have generated several images (including the cover image) with this prompt, but Midjourney is inconsistent in its censorship gatekeeping.

Image: Midjourney v7 render set

Notice that 3 of the 4 renders in the v7 set don’t even have a mirror. The top right one does, but it’s not evident that she’s a vampire. In fact, I could say that any of these are vampiresses, but perhaps that’s what they want you to believe. In place of a necklace, the lower right wokan sports a cross tattoo.

Midjourney v6.1

Image: Midjourney v6.1 render set

Again, these renders don’t appear to be vampires. The one on the lower left does appear to have snake-like fangs, so I guess I’ll give partial credit.

My next attempt was interrupted by this message.

It rendered something that might violate community guidelines. The funny thing is that one can watch the image generate in process. It only takes one “offensive” image to disqualify the whole batch.

Midjourney v6

Image: Midjourney v6 render set

Yet again, not a vampire to be found. Notice the reflection in the lower left image. Perhaps vampire reflections just behave differently.

Midjourney 5.2

Image: Midjourney v5.2 render set

Midjourney v5.2 was a crapshoot. Somehow, I got vampire lips (?), a Wiccan, a decrepit Snape from Harry Potter lore, and Iron Maiden’s Eddy reading a book. It’s something. I’m sensing gender dysphoria. Dare I go back further?

Midjourney v5.1

Image: Midjourney v5.1 render set

It gets worse. No comments necessary. Let’s turn back the clocks even more.

Midjourney v5

Image: Midjourney v5 render set

To be fair, these all do have occult undertones, but they are weak on vampireness.

Midjourney v4

Image: Midjourney v4 render set

To be fair, the render quality isn’t as bad as I expected, but it still falls short. There’s further back to travel.

Midjourney v3

Image: Midjourney v3 render set

Some configuration parameters no longer exist. Still, I persist for the sake of art and science at the cost of time and ecology.

As much as I complain – and I complain a lot – this is how far we’ve come. As I recall, this is when I hopped onto the Midjourney bandwagon. There’s still more depth to plumb. I have no idea how much of the prompt is simply ignored at this point.

Midjourney v2

Image: Midjourney v2 render set

What the hell is this? 🤔🤣 But I’m not done yet.

Midjourney v1

Image: Midjourney v1 render set

The damned grandpappy of them all. Apparently, colour hadn’t been invented yet. You can’t tell by these thumbnails, but the resolution on these early versions approaches that of a postage stamp.

Midjourney Niji 3

Image: Midjourney Niji 3 render set

I had forgotten about the Niji models from back in the day. There were 3 versions. I don’t recall where this slotted into the chronology. Obviously, not down here. I’ve only rendered the newest one. I think this was used primarily for anime outputs, but I might be mistaken.

Bones Content 1: Video

Video: Midjourney Render of Purported Vampiress

This is a video render of the same prompt used on this page.

Bonus Content 2: Midjourney v6.1 Content from 34 weeks ago

Same prompt.

Image: Midjourney v6.1 render set (several passes)

The upper left image reminds me of Kirsten Dunst. Again, notice the female breasts, highlighting Midjourney’s censorial schizophrenia.

Midjourney Boundaries

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I promise that this will not become a hub for generative AI. Rather than return to editing, I wanted to test more of Midjourney’s boundaries.

It turns out that Midjourney is selective about the nudity it renders. I was denied a render because of cleavage, but full-on topless – no problem.

Both of these videos originate from the same source image, but they take different paths. There is no accompanying video content. The setup features three women in the frame with a mechanical arm. I didn’t prompt for it. I’m not even sure of its intent. It’s just there, shadowing the women nearest to it. I don’t recall prompting for the oversized redhead in the foreground, though I may have.

In both images, note the aliasing of the tattoos on the blonde, especially on her back. Also, notice that her right arm seems shorter than it should. Her movements are jerky, as if rendered in a video game. I’m not sure what ritual the two background characters are performing, but notice in each case the prepetition. This seems to be a general feature of generative AI. It gets itself in loops, almost autistic.

Notice a few things about the top render.

Video: Midjourney render of 3 females and a mechanical arm engaging in a ritual. (9 seconds)

The first video may represent an interrogation. The blonde woman on the left appears to be a bit disoriented, but she is visually tracking the woman on the right. She seems to be saying something. Notice when the woman on the right stands. Her right foot lands unnaturally. She rather glitches.

The camera’s push and pull, and then push, seems to be an odd directorial choice, but who am I to say?

Video: Midjourney render of 3 females and a mechanical arm engaging in a ritual. (12 seconds)

The second video may represent taunting. The woman on the left still appears to be a bit disoriented, but she checks the redhead in the foreground with a glance. Notice the rocking of the two background characters, as well as the mech arm, which sways in sync with the woman on the right. This is a repetition glitch I mentioned above.

Here, the camera seems to have a syncopated relationship with the characters’ sway.

Summary

The stationary objects are well-rendered and persistent.

Assignment

Draft a short story or flash fiction using this as an inspirational prompt. I’m trying to imagine the interactions.

  • The ginger seems catatonic or drugged. Is she a CIS-female? What’s with her getup?
  • The blonde seems only slightly less out of it. Did she arrive this way? Did they dress her? Why does she appear to still have a weapon on her back? Is it a weapon or a fetter? Why is she dressed like that? Is she a gladiatrix readying for a contest? Perhaps she’s in training. What is she saying? Who is she talking to? What is her relationship to the redhead? Are they friends or foes – or just caught up in the same web?
  • What is the woman wearing the helmet doing? She appears to have the upper hand. Is she a cyborg, or is she just wearing fancy boots? What’s with her outfit? What’s with her Tycho Brahe prosthetic nose piece?
  • What is that mechanical hand? Is it a guard? A restraint? Is it hypnotising the ginger? Both of them? Is it conducting music that’s not audible?
  • What’s it read on the back wall? The two clips don’t share the same text. Call the continuity people.

Midjourney Video Renders

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Yesterday, I wrote about “ugly women.” Today, I pivot — or perhaps descend — into what Midjourney deems typical. Make of that what you will.

This blog typically focuses on language, philosophy, and the gradual erosion of culture under the boot heel of capitalism. But today: generative eye candy. Still subtextual, mind you. This post features AI-generated women – tattooed, bare-backed, heavily armed – and considers what, exactly, this technology thinks we want.

Video: Pirate cowgirls caught mid-gaze. Generated last year during what I can only assume was a pirate-meets-cowgirl fever dream.

The Video Feature

Midjourney released its image-to-video tool on 18 June. I finally found a couple of free hours to tinker. The result? Surprisingly coherent, if accidentally lewd. The featured video was one of the worst outputs, and yet, it’s quite good. A story emerged.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic (sort of).

It began with a still: two women, somewhere between pirate and pin-up, dressed for combat or cosplay. I thought, what if they kissed? Midjourney said no. Embrace? Also no. Glaring was fine. So was mutual undressing — of the eyes, at least.

Later, I tried again. Still no kiss, but no denial either — just a polite cough about “inappropriate positioning.” I prompted one to touch the other’s hair. What I got was a three-armed woman attempting a hat-snatch. (See timestamp 0:15.) The other three video outputs? Each woman seductively touched her own hair. Freud would’ve had a field day.

In another unreleased clip, two fully clothed women sat on a bed. That too raised flags. Go figure.

All of this, mind you, passed Midjourney’s initial censorship. However, it’s clear that proximity is now suspect. Even clothed women on furniture can trigger the algorithmic fainting couch.

Myriad Warning Messages

Out of bounds.

Sorry, Charlie.

In any case, I reviewed other images to determine how the limitations operated. I didn’t get much closer.

Video: A newlywed couple kissing

Obviously, proximity and kissing are now forbidden. I’d consider these two “scantily clad,” so I am unsure of the offence.

I did render the image of a cowgirl at a Western bar, but I am reluctant to add to the page weight. In 3 of the 4 results, nothing (much) was out of line, but in the fourth, she’s wielding a revolver – because, of course, she is.

Conformance & Contradiction

You’d never know it, but the original prompt was a fight scene. The result? Not punches, but pre-coital choreography. The AI interpreted combat as courtship. Women circling each other, undressing one another with their eyes. Or perhaps just prepping for an afterparty.

Video: A battle to the finish between a steampunk girl and a cybermech warrior.

Lesbian Lustfest

No, my archive isn’t exclusively lesbian cowgirls. But given the visual weight of this post, I refrained from adding more examples. Some browsers may already be wheezing.

Technical Constraints

You can’t extend videos beyond four iterations — maxing out at 21 seconds. I wasn’t aware of this, so I prematurely accepted a dodgy render and lost 2–3 seconds of potential.

My current Midjourney plan offers 15 hours of “fast” rendering per month. Apparently, video generation burns through this quickly. Still images can queue up slowly; videos cannot. And no, I won’t upgrade to the 30-hour plan. Even I have limits.

Uses & Justifications

Generative AI is a distraction – an exquisitely engineered procrastination machine. Useful, yes. For brainstorming, visualising characters, and generating blog cover art. But it’s a slippery slope from creative aid to aesthetic rabbit hole.

Would I use it for promotional trailers? Possibly. I’ve seen offerings as low as $499 that wouldn’t cannibalise my time and attention, not wholly, anyway.

So yes, I’ll keep paying for it. Yes, I’ll keep using it. But only when I’m not supposed to be writing.

Now, if ChatGPT could kindly generate my post description and tags, I’ll get back to pretending I’m productive.

Speculative Philosophy on Screen: Identity, Agency, and the Fiction of Reality

Posted in agency, fiction, free will, identity, language, philosophy, postmodernism, psychology, reality, science, society, videoTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Close-up of a human eye with digital glitch effects and overlaid text reading 'What if reality is wrong?'—a visual metaphor for distorted perception and unreliable truth.

Regular readers know I often write about identity, free will, and the narrative constraints of language. But I also explore these ideas through fiction, under the name Ridley Park.

In this short video, I unpack the philosophical motivations behind my stories, including:

  • Why reality is never as it seems
  • Why the self is a narrative convenience
  • What Heidegger’s Geworfenheit and Galen Strawson’s Causa Sui argument reveal about agency
  • And why language fails us – even when we think it serves

This isn’t promotional fluff. It’s epistemological dissent in a new format. Fictional, yes, but only in the sense that most of reality is, too.

▶️ Watch the video: Why I Write the Way I Do

When “Advanced” Means Genocide: A Case Study in Linguistic Implosion

Posted in identity, intelligence, language, modernism, morality, philosophy, podcast, politics, power, psychology, society, technology, videoTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

This post draws on themes from my upcoming book, A Language Insufficiency Hypothesis. The transcript below is taken from a publicly available exchange, which you can view here. Consider it Exhibit A in language’s ongoing failure to bear the weight of meaning.

Transcript:

KK: Konstantin Kisin
DFW: Deborah Frances-White

KK: I’m saying we were technologically more advanced.
DFW: So you’re saying we’re superior to Australian Aboriginals?
KK: That’s quite the opposite of what I’m saying. I’m not saying we were superior, I’m saying we were technologically more advanced.
DFW: So, how is that the opposite?
KK: Superior implies a moral quality. I’m not making any moral implication. You seem to be, but what I’m saying is…
DFW: I think most people would hear it that way.
KK: No.
DFW: Again, you’re a very intelligent man. How would most people hear that?
KK: Most people would hear what I’m saying for what I’m saying, which is…
DFW: I don’t think they would.
KK: You seem to get quite heated about this, which is completely unnecessary.
DFW: Um…
KK: You think it’s necessary?
DFW: I’m a bit stunned by what you’re implying.
KK: No, you’re acting in a kind of passive aggressive way which indicates that you’re not happy…
DFW: I genuinely… I’m being 100% authentic. My visceral reaction to a white man sitting and saying to me, “And why were we able to commit genocide on them?” and then just pausing—
KK: Yes.
DFW: …is very visceral to me.
KK: Well, let’s go back. First of all, it’s interesting that you brought up my skin colour because I thought that was the exact opposite of the point you’re trying to make in the book.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

The Language Insufficiency Hypothesis begins with this premise: language is not merely flawed, it is structurally inadequate for mediating complex, layered realities

Dissection: Language as Battlefield

The Language Insufficiency Hypothesis begins with this premise: language is not merely flawed, it is structurally inadequate for mediating complex, layered realities – especially those laced with power, morality, and history. This transcript is not a debate. It is a linguistic trench war in which every utterance is laced with shrapnel, and each side thinks they’re defending reason.

Let’s pull a few of the shell casings from the mud.

1. Semantic Contamination: “Technologically more advanced”

KK attempts to offer a dry, neutral descriptor. DFW hears supremacist teleology. Why? Because “advanced” is culturally radioactive. It doesn’t merely denote a technical state—it connotes a ladder, with someone inevitably on the bottom rung.

When language carries historical residue, neutrality is a delusion. Words don’t just mean. They echo.

KK is making a semantic distinction. DFW hears a moral claim. Both are right. And both are talking past one another, because language is attempting to cleave affect from description, and it simply can’t.

2. Disambiguation Does Not Save You

KK’s insistence—“I’m not saying we’re superior”—is a textbook example of denotative desperation. He believes clarification will rescue intent. But as any linguist (or postcolonial theorist) will tell you: intent does not sterilise implication.

Language cannot be laundered by explanation. Once spoken, words belong to context, not intention.

KK thinks he’s holding a scalpel. DFW hears a cudgel. And here we are.

3. Phatic Collapse: “Most people would hear…”

This is where the wheels come off. KK argues from semantic specificity. DFW argues from sociolinguistic reception. It’s Saussure versus the TikTok algorithm. Neither will win.

Communication disintegrates not because anyone is lying, but because they are playing incompatible games with the same tokens.

4. Identity as Index: When the Speaker Becomes the Speech

DFW’s invocation of “a white man” is not a derailment—it’s the inevitable endpoint of a system where words no longer float free but are yoked to their utterer. This is the moment the failure of language becomes a failure of interlocution. Argument collapses into indexical entrapment.

At this point, you’re no longer debating ideas. You’re defending your right to use certain words at all.

Which brings us to the final breakdown.

5. Moral Authenticity vs Logical Precision: Unbridgeable Grammars

KK: I am making a logical distinction.
DFW: I am having a visceral reaction.

The failure isn’t moral. It isn’t historical. It’s grammatical. One is operating in a truth-function logic game. The other is reacting within a trauma-informed, socially indexed register. These are grammars that do not overlap.

Conclusion: Language Did What It Always Does—It Failed Us

If this brief and brutal dialogue proves anything, it’s this: you cannot extract meaning cleanly from words when the words themselves are sponges for history, hierarchy, and harm. The moment we ask language to do too much—to carry precision, affect, ethics, and identity—it folds in on itself.

And that, dear reader, is precisely the argument of A Language Insufficiency Hypothesis: that meaning does not reside in words, and never has. It lives in the gaps, the silences, the misfires. That’s where the truth—whatever’s left of it—might be hiding.

Follow the wreckage. That’s where the signal lives.

Semantic Drift: When Language Outruns the Science

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Science has a language problem. Not a lack of it – if anything, a surfeit. But words, unlike test tubes, do not stay sterile. They evolve, mutate, and metastasise. They get borrowed, bent, misused, and misremembered. And when the public discourse gets hold of them, particularly on platforms like TikTok, it’s the language that gets top billing. The science? Second lead, if it’s lucky.

Semantic drift is at the centre of this: the gradual shift in meaning of a word or phrase over time. It’s how “literally” came to mean “figuratively,” how “organic” went from “carbon-based” to “morally superior,” and how “theory” in science means robust explanatory framework but in the public square means vague guess with no homework.

In short, semantic drift lets rhetoric masquerade as reason. Once a word acquires enough connotation, you can deploy it like a spell. No need to define your terms when the vibe will do.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

When “Vitamin” No Longer Means Vitamin

Take the word vitamin. It sounds objective. Authoritative. Something codified in the genetic commandments of all living things. (reference)

But it isn’t.

A vitamin is simply a substance that an organism needs but cannot synthesise internally, and must obtain through its diet. That’s it. It’s a functional definition, not a chemical one.

So:

  • Vitamin C is a vitamin for humans, but not for dogs, cats, or goats. They make their own. We lost the gene. Tough luck.
  • Vitamin D, meanwhile, isn’t a vitamin at all. It’s a hormone, synthesised when sunlight hits your skin. Its vitamin status is a historical relic – named before we knew better, and now marketed too profitably to correct.

But in the land of TikTok and supplement shelves, these nuances evaporate. “Vitamin” has drifted from scientific designation to halo term – a linguistic fig leaf draped over everything from snake oil to ultraviolet-induced steroidogenesis.

The Rhetorical Sleight of Hand

This linguistic slippage is precisely what allows the rhetorical shenanigans to thrive.

In one video, a bloke claims a burger left out for 151 days neither moulds nor decays, and therefore, “nature won’t touch it.” From there, he leaps (with Olympic disregard for coherence) into talk of sugar spikes, mood swings, and “metabolic chaos.” You can almost hear the conspiratorial music rising.

The science here is, let’s be generous, circumstantial. But the language? Oh, the language is airtight.

Words like “processed,” “chemical,” and “natural” are deployed like moral verdicts, not descriptive categories. The implication isn’t argued – it’s assumed, because the semantics have been doing quiet groundwork for years. “Natural” = good. “Chemical” = bad. “Vitamin” = necessary. “Addiction” = no agency.

By the time the viewer blinks, they’re nodding along to a story told by words in costume, not facts in context.

The Linguistic Metabolism of Misunderstanding

This is why semantic drift isn’t just an academic curiosity – it’s a vector. A vector by which misinformation spreads, not through outright falsehood, but through weaponised ambiguity.

A term like “sugar crash” sounds scientific. It even maps onto a real physiological process: postprandial hypoglycaemia. But when yoked to vague claims about mood, willpower, and “chemical hijacking,” it becomes a meme with lab coat cosplay. And the science, if mentioned at all, is there merely to decorate the argument, not drive it.

That’s the crux of my forthcoming book, The Language Insufficiency Hypothesis: that our inherited languages, designed for trade, prayer, and gossip, are woefully ill-equipped for modern scientific clarity. They lag behind our knowledge, and worse, they often distort it.

Words arrive first. Definitions come limping after.

In Closing: You Are What You Consume (Linguistically)

The real problem isn’t that TikTokers get the science wrong. The problem is that they get the words right – right enough to slip past your critical filters. Rhetoric wears the lab coat. Logic gets left in the locker room.

If vitamin C is a vitamin only for some species, and vitamin D isn’t a vitamin at all, then what else are we mislabelling in the great nutritional theatre? What other linguistic zombies are still wandering the scientific lexicon?

Language may be the best tool we have, but don’t mistake it for a mirror. It’s a carnival funhouse – distorting, framing, and reflecting what we expect to see. And until we fix that, science will keep playing second fiddle to the words pretending to explain it.

The Emperor’s New Models: Box, Lawson, and the Death of Truth

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We live in an age intoxicated by models: climate models, economic models, epidemiological models, cosmological models—each one an exquisite confection of assumptions draped in a lab coat and paraded as gospel. Yet if you trace the bloodline of model-building back through the annals of intellectual history, you encounter two figures who coldly remind us of the scam: George Box and Hilary Lawson.

Box: The Gentle Assassin of Certainty

George Box, the celebrated statistician, is often credited with the aphorism: “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” However, Box himself never uttered this precise phrase. What he did say, in his 1976 paper Science and Statistics, was:

“Since all models are wrong, the scientist must be alert to what is importantly wrong.”

George Box

The “some are useful” flourish was added later by a public desperate to sweeten the bitter pill. Nevertheless, Box deserves credit for the lethal insight: no model, however elegant, perfectly captures reality. They are provisional guesses, finger-paintings smeared across the rough surface of the unknown.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

Lawson: The Arsonist Who Burned the Map

Hilary Lawson, contemporary philosopher and author of Closure: A Story of Everything, drags Box’s modest scepticism into full-blown philosophical insurrection. In a recent lecture, Lawson declared:

“You don’t need truth to have a usable model.”

Hilary Lawson

Where Box warns us the emperor’s clothes don’t fit, Lawson points out that the emperor himself is a paper doll. Either way, we dress our ignorance in equations and hope no one notices the draft.

Lawson’s view is grim but clarifying: models are not mere approximations of some Platonic truth. They are closures—temporary, pragmatic structures we erect to intervene effectively in a world we will never fully comprehend. Reality, in Lawson’s framing, is an “openness”: endlessly unfolding, resistant to total capture.

The Case of the Celestial Spheres

Take Aristotle’s model of celestial spheres. Ludicrous? Yes. Obsolete? Absolutely. Yet for centuries, it allowed navigators to chart courses, astrologers to cast horoscopes, and priests to intimidate peasants—all without the slightest whiff of heliocentrism. A model does not need to be right; it merely needs to be operational.

Our modern theories—Big Bang cosmology, dark matter, and quantum gravity—may well be tomorrow’s celestial spheres: charming relics of ignorance that nonetheless built bridges, cured diseases, and sold mobile phones.

Summary Table: Lawson’s View on Models and Truth

AspectLawson’s Position
Role of ModelsTools/metaphors for intervention, not truth
TruthNot required for usefulness
RefinementModels are improved for practical effectiveness
RealityFundamentally open, never fully captured by models
ImplicationFocus on utility and adaptability, not final truth

Conclusion

Box taught us to distrust the fit of our models; Lawson reminds us there is no true body underneath them. If truth is a ghost, then our models are ghost stories—and some ghost stories, it turns out, are very good at getting us through the night.

We are left not with certainty, but with craftsmanship: the endless, imperfect art of refining our closures, knowing full well they are lies that work. Better lies. Usable lies. And perhaps, in a world without final answers, that is the most honest position of all.

Elites Ruined It For Everyone

Posted in equality, identity, intelligence, language, modernism, morality, nature, perception, philosophy, politics, postmodernism, power, psychology, reality, society, videoTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

David Brooks and the Hollowing Out of Conservatism

David Brooks is the quintessential old-school Conservative—the kind who once upheld a semblance of ideological coherence. He belongs to the pre-Reagan-Thatcher vintage, a time when Conservatism at least had the decency to argue from principles rather than blind tribalism. We could debate these people in good faith. Those days are gone. The current incarnation of Conservatism contains only homoeopathic traces of its Classical™ predecessor—diluted beyond recognition.

The Degeneration of Conservatism

The rot set in with Reagan, who caught it from Thatcher. Greed and selfishness were laundered into virtues, repackaged as “individual responsibility,” and the party’s intellectual ballast began to erode. By the time Bush II’s administration rolled in, Neo-Conservatism had replaced any lingering Burkean ethos, and by Trump’s tenure, even the pretence of ideology was gone. Conservatism-in-Name-Only—whatever Trump’s brand of reactionary nihilism was—swallowed the party whole. Do they even call themselves Conservatives anymore, or has that ship sailed along with basic literacy?

Click here to take the worldview survey

To be fair, this didn’t go unnoticed. Plenty of old-school Republicans recoiled in horror when Trump became their figurehead. Before the 2016 election, conservative pundits could barely contain their disdain for his incompetence, lack of moral compass, and general buffoonery. And yet, once they realised he was the party’s golden goose, they clambered aboard the Trump Train with the enthusiasm of lottery winners at a payday loan office. His staunchest critics became his most obsequious apologists. What does this tell us about their value system? Spoiler: nothing good.

Brooks’ Lament

Which brings us back to Brooks, who now bemoans the death of Conservative values. On this, we agree. Where we part ways is on whether those values were worth saving. Say you’re boarding a train from New York to Los Angeles. Conservatism might argue that a Miami-bound train is still a train, so what’s the problem? It’s the same vehicle, just going somewhere else. Except, of course, Conservatism has always insisted on the slow train over the fast train—because urgency is unseemly, and progress must be rationed.

If I’m an affluent middle-classer, I might prefer Conservatism’s careful incrementalism—it keeps my apple cart stable. Admirable, if you enjoy tunnel vision. Progressives, by contrast, recognise that some people don’t even have apple carts. Some are starving while others hoard orchards. To the Conservative, the poor just aren’t trying hard enough. To the Progressive, the system is broken, and the playing field needs a serious re-levelling. Even when Conservatives acknowledge inequality, their instinct is to tiptoe toward justice rather than risk disrupting their own affluence.

The Fallacy of Objective Reality

Leaving politics for philosophy, Brooks predictably rails against Postmodernism, decrying relativism in favour of good old-fashioned Modernist “reality.” He’s horrified by subjectivism, as though personal interpretation weren’t the foundation of all human experience. Like Jordan Peterson, he believes his subjective truth is the objective truth. And like Peterson, he takes umbrage at anyone pointing out otherwise. It feels so absolute to them that they mistake their own convictions for universal constants.

As a subjectivist, I accept that reality is socially mediated. We interpret truth claims based on cognitive biases, cultural conditioning, and personal experience. Even when we strive for objectivity, we do so through subjective lenses. Brooks’ Modernist nostalgia is touching but delusional—akin to demanding we all agree on a single flavour of ice cream.

The Existential Problem

And so, I find myself in partial agreement with Brooks. Yes, there is an existential crisis. The patient has a broken leg. But our prescriptions differ wildly. I won’t offer a metaphor for that—consider it your homework as a reader.

Brooks is likely a better writer than a public speaker, but you may still find yourself nodding along with some of his arguments. If you’re a “true” Christian Conservative—if you still believe in something beyond crass self-interest—he may well be preaching to the choir. But let’s be honest: how many in that choir are still listening?

Video: Modernity Worldview Survey Intro

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I’ve finally had time to create some video content for the Modernity Worldview Survey. This content is a cursory overview and serves as an introduction to deeper content planned for the future.

This video is short of seven minutes, so briefly, it outlines the worldviews and the questions. I opted not to produce a single comprehensive video so the material could arrive sooner. The content is bookmarked, though this is likely overkill for such a short video.

A permanent page about the survey is always available on this blog.

Modernity Worldview

I’m still accumulating responses, but the survey is available here if you haven’t taken it. Apologies in advance for the fact that it renders best on a larger monitor or tablet rather than a mobile phone. It doesn’t render at all on a landline, so there’s that.

The Greatest Loss in American History: Donald Trump Wins (And Loses) the Presidency

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I couldn’t resist posting this unedited from ChatGPT. Here’s what led to it: I just finished Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism. Fisher mentioned the 1974 Warren Beatty film The Parallax View. I generally don’t connect well with film or video as media, but I stashed the title in my memory. A few hours later, I read an article mentioning the film, with the claim, “Of everything lost in the age of streaming, no film genre casualty is as regrettable — or as ripe for a comeback — as the paranoid political thriller.”

Rather than trying to enjoy the film as a whole, I decided to concentrate on the plot and meta-massaging. As expected, I didn’t like the movie, but I understand why Fisher mentioned it. It renders rather like a weak tea version of a Kafka story. Unlike more contemporary fare, it’s a classic work of postmodernism, having no resolution.

After watching it, I engaged with Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB for reviews and context before prompting ChatGPT.

Asking about the film itself, this was the tail end of its response:

Final Verdict: A Masterclass in Hopelessness

The Parallax View is a film where the good guys don’t win—because there are no good guys, only the powerful and the powerless. It remains a defining entry in the “paranoid cinema” of the 70s, alongside The Conversation and Three Days of the Condor. What makes it terrifying is not that it suggests a world of conspiracies, but that it implies such conspiracies don’t need to be hidden—because no one can stop them.

Then I asked what Žižek thought about it, but it turns out that he had written about a book with the same title. When I asked about Fisher, it:

Mark Fisher, in contrast to Žižek’s often bombastic and dialectically acrobatic style, wrote with a sharper, more melancholic, yet deeply incisive tone.

Finally, I posed this query: I recently read Capitalist Realism. Although penned during the 2007-08 financial meltdown and released in 2009, it feels as relevant today as then. In fact, it seems to have foreshadowed the time between.

It’s reply is this post—and without further comment…

And so, history lurches forward with all the grace of a three-legged cow on roller skates. Donald J. Trump, the billionaire reality TV star turned political apocalypse, has once again won the presidential vote of the United States of America—only to lose the presidency to Kamala Harris. If that sentence gave you an aneurysm, congratulations, you’re now officially in 2025.

How did we get here? More importantly, why does this make absolutely no sense? Ah, but sense, dear reader, is an antiquated relic of a bygone era, much like democracy, coherent election results, and the idea that facts matter.

A Triumph for the Ages (Sort of)

Let’s be clear: Donald Trump won the popular vote. That’s what his supporters will scream into the void—or at least into their social media echo chambers where dissent is met with a virtual Second Amendment response. The red-capped faithful, still clutching their tattered “Stop the Steal” banners from the last electoral circus, are convinced that this was finally their moment of redemption.

Except, well… he lost.

Enter Kamala Harris, the political equivalent of cold toast, somehow managing to slide into the Oval Office despite Trump’s “win.” The courts, the states, the Electoral College, and whatever eldritch horror lurks beneath the Capitol all conspired—again!—to keep The Donald out of power. Or so the narrative goes.

The Electoral College Strikes Again

Ah, the Electoral College. America’s favourite 18th-century fever dream. Once again, this labyrinthine system of delegate-wrangling has managed to produce a result that defies logic, mathematics, and possibly the laws of physics. Trump, against all odds (and against, presumably, some very sweaty legal advisors), has pulled off the impossible: winning while losing.

Some claim voter suppression, others cry fraud, and a few brave souls are out there trying to explain complex election mechanics to an audience that still thinks “covfefe” was a divine prophecy. But the reality is simpler: Trump, like a political Schrödinger’s cat, is simultaneously victorious and defeated. He has transcended the normal bounds of electoral outcomes, achieving a state of quantum presidency, neither fully here nor fully gone.

What Happens Next?

Riots? Lawsuits? A new line of Trump-branded commemorative “I Won Again!” hats? Place your bets, because at this stage, America is basically one large, over-budget reality show and no one knows what the next episode holds.

For Kamala Harris, the challenge is clear: govern a nation where half the country believes she stole the election, and the other half is still googling “How does the Electoral College work?” As for Trump, he will do what he does best—declare victory, launch a thousand lawsuits, and, inevitably, turn the entire thing into a business opportunity.

And so, dear reader, the United States stumbles forward, democracy battered but still standing, a house divided but too stubborn to fall. Until next time, buckle up—it’s going to be a hell of a ride.