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This question kept popping up in my mind this week: When is a person not a person? Could it be the particulates in the Canadian wildfires messing with my brain? Probably, but even before the worst of the smoke from up north came rolling into our area giving us a record-breaking 800+ AQI reading (301+ is considered “hazardous”) this question had been bothering me.
When is a person not a person? first came to me after I read an article about artificial intelligence. Many in the Big Tech field claim that AI has obtained “consciousness” and has “feelings” like a normal human being has, and it should be treated as such. However, there’s also a growing number of scientists, psychologists, and others who make the opposite claim.
AI is a sophisticated “large language model” that mimics life, but it isn’t alive. It can’t be conscious, which essentially means it’s able to suffer pain and joy like humans do. A computer with an LLM program has large memory banks and access to the internet, so you can say it has intelligence, but since it doesn’t have consciousness, it can’t put the two together and become what we’d call a person.
AI can’t use all the knowledge in the world it has at its digital fingertips and say, “I know what it feels like to be an AI, and I’m suffering a heartache today.” Well, it could say things like that, but does it actually feel things like a heartache or the loss of a close friend or the joy of eating ice cream on a hot summer’s night or holding your newborn baby for the first time? There’s the rub...
...Sticking with just human beings, however, When is a person not a person? For this next part you must suspend disbelief and consider who persons are through the eyes of the law. The law states quite clearly when a human being is not considered a person or has the rights of a person. It’s confusing because most of us define a person as a human being who possesses consciousness, self-awareness, and the capacity for moral reasoning. But that’s the psychological definition of a person, not the legal one. There is a difference—a big difference...
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If
you don’t think it's possible to write an article incorporating a climate catastrophe story along with the opening bell of an
alternative party presidential run story, then you have another thing
coming to you! It’s also includes poorly written filks of old
tunes as segues. (Sorry about that, but they just seem to fit.)
In
the news climate-wise, people in New York City were forced to
give up breathing this past week due to particulate pollution caused
by Canadian wildfires. The
Air Quality Index (AQI) in parts of Brooklyn
reached
484 — nearly
double San Francisco’s highest hourly reading during
California’s 2020 fire season. And
it wasn’t just New Yorkers who were gasping for air. The smoky haze
and micro-particulate clouds covered skies from Illinois
to Ohio to Pennsylvania to South Carolina to New York State to Maine…
In fact, just about everybody east of the Mississippi experienced
horrible air quality indices this week.
Who cares though, right? Breathing is for sissies! We're told that unhealthy AQIs can cause serious health issues for vulnerable
populations such as asthmatics and those with COPD as well as
children and the elderly. But what’s more important—keeping poor
working class people alive or growing sociopathic billionaires’
bank accounts? You know which group is more important to please for
those idiots in Washington DC and in your own statehouse, don’t
you? For your sake, I hope you do.
The
fossil fuel industry takes no responsibility for causing
a build up of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere
due to the
polluting by-products which
come from combustion engines and coal-fueled power plants. It’s not like carbon monoxide and other gases have caused the
so-called “greenhouse effect” that bring on heatwaves and dry up
the forests of North America. No, not at all. It’s just coincidence
that record breaking spring temperatures this year occurred. In no
way could they have helped to spontaneously ignite tender-dry forests
that have continued to burn unabated for weeks now. Pure
coincidence.
It’s
also pure coincidence that my garden in Northwest Ohio
hasn’t seen a speck of rain in over 21 days—setting a dry spell record that
is unheard of in the Midwest since the “Dust Bowl” era of the
1930s. The brown, hazy skies and dry winds that smell like a
permanent bonfire have only caused me to reach for my emergency
inhaler a dozen times this week.
Well,
who doesn’t need to quit breathing from time to time? The tears
streaming down my face from my smoke-irritated eyes can go a long
ways in filling our bone-dry rain barrels, too.
If
you’re thinking I’m being facetious, think again. Between the
millions who are still suffering from the lasting effects of COVID-19
and this recent air quality disaster, who knows just how many
Americans have or will suffer a debilitating illness that could
disable them for life? The time to take action to eliminate
the use of fossil fuels and other polluting methods to generate power
isn’t today—it was yesterday. In fact:
A newstudyby 50 leading scientists conducted to supplement the “information gap” betweenIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) reports said globalgreenhouse gas emissionshave soared to a record high and are threatening to push our planet into “unprecedented” global heating.
Which
leads me to the next story…
Oh,
hazy day! Oh, hazy day!
When
Cornel West… came to show us the way!
(*Sung
to the tune of Oh, Happy Day)
Cornel West at BGSU in 2017
This
next story is one that has captured the focus of many a leftist
thinker. Dr. Cornel West, academic, philosopher, and former
Bernie Sanders delegate to the DNC, has announced that he is running
for the presidency in 2024. The biggest controversy at the start of his candidacy is that Dr. West has stated
he is running as a People’s Party (MPP) candidate. He’s not
running as a Green Party candidate or as an independent but as a
candidate for an alternative party that barely exists.
To
say this has caused an explosion of conversation and cursing in
online forums where Lefties hang out is an understatement. Dr. West’s
decision to go with the MPP is being questioned on several levels.
Does he realize that the MPP doesn’t have ballot access (or even
statewide organizations) in more than a handful of states? Would he
be open to becoming a “fusion candidate” that several
left-leaning alternative parties such as the Green Party US would be
glad to nominate, thus giving him broader ballot access and more
experienced organizers? Chris Hedges has said he’d speak to his
good friend about switching to the Green Party. Could we see a
West/Hedges 2024 ticket? We’ll see.
UPDATE:
Chris Hedges did talk to Dr. West and he has decided to run as a Green
after all! The West campaign website doesn't reflect this recent change
in Dr. West's plans yet, so please be patient.
It’s
early days so
Dr. West has time to change his mind about running, or
he could simply
switch his choice in a party
and run in one with less controversy attached to it. The MPP has fallen apart
(in spite of its auspicious start with West, Nina Turner, Paula
Jean Swearingen and other big names supporting it) because of sexual
harassment and financial misuse charges brought against its current
chair
and founder Nick Brana. One would hope Dr. West would address the
harassment mess and that Brana would step down so West could run
without being associated with any nasty business.
Dr. West is a decent and compassionate human being. He might
actually believe the voting public will look past the inadequacies of
the People’s Party and concentrate on his message. One
would hope
that proves true, but for now… The
discussions and debates continue online. (UPDATE:
Even with Chris Hedges talking Cornel West into running as a Green,
things are still relatively up in the air and the discussions are
ongoing. You're not going to please everyone, in other words!)
West posing with friends in 2017 (photo by author)
To
draw these seemingly radically different stories together—hazy, polluted
skies and Cornel West running for office—I’d like to posit that
only a presidential candidate of Dr. West’s moral caliber would
do anything worthwhile to end the reign of the
fossil
fuels oligarchs and help put our ailing
planet back on a path toward wholeness.
My
reasoning? The duopolists
take millions of dollars yearly from capitalists who
don’t
care about the health of the people or our Earth. (I
suppose these rich types expect a ticket on Musk’s or Bezos’
rocket to their “Elysium” in space once they’ve destroyed our
world.) Leftists
candidates like Dr.
West
would more
than likely put
the fates of the poor and working classes before the billionaires’
bank accounts.
During
a Cornel West administration, we’d probably
see action taken to convert our energy
grid from dirty
to clean energy sources, along with punitive measures taken against capitalists who don’t cooperate
in
these lifesaving measures. That’s why it’s imperative those who care
about their lungs, their family members’ lungs, and the health of
the entire planet leave the duopolists’ ranks and join with independent thinkers to destroy the corrupt, planet-killing system
currently in power.
With
cleaner skies, the end ofwars
for oil, health care for all guaranteed,
civil rights assured for the people, we’ll be singing:
Roll
out those non-hazy, crazy, lazy days of summer!
(*And
you thought I was done with the filks? That’s what a lack of
clean air gets you. Bwahaha!)
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