By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29768619

In September of this year we’ll recognize 35 years since poet Richard Brautigan shot himself in the head, committing suicide at the age of 49 in 1984. I was thinking about Brautigan today because a link to the excellent Adam Curtis documentary All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace popped up on my Twitter feed. The BBC documentary series outlines the spread of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophies into America’s Silicon Valley, and it examines the cybernetic utopia promised by the virtue of selfishness at the speed of integrated circuits. The series takes its name from one of my favorite Brautigan poems…

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

Watch Part 1 of the series on Vimeo but first check out this great interview with Curtis talking about his unique style of storytelling…

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more occult posts.

Join our Patreon campaign to receive exclusive, personalized, patrons-only art and music giveaways, and become an insider in this creative practice that keeps Insomnia awake.

Support independent art, music and writing at:

Bitcoin: 39tcfRTLCyeAD7kmYuxJviFiJP5hBUNHJk

Ethereum: 0x14Ba8044FF25BfDe2b62eFC6d21d7435DeB31796

Steemit

Peepeth

I came across an interesting article earlier today. With the rise of Trump I thought the religious right and the Ayn Rand extremists in the Republican party had been ousted. Unfortunately, the fake Christians seem as empowered as ever, and according to this piece, Ayn Rand has never held more sway over D.C….Here’s the word from The Guardian…

Rand, who died in 1982 and was alternately ridiculed and revered throughout her lifetime, is having a moment. Long the poster girl of a particularly hardcore brand of free-market fundamentalism – the advocate of a philosophy she called “the virtue of selfishness” – Rand has always had acolytes in the conservative political classes. The Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, is so committed a Randian, he was famous for giving every new member of his staff a copy of Rand’s gargantuan novel, Atlas Shrugged (along with Freidrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom). The story, oft-repeated, that his colleague in the US Senate, Rand Paul, owes his first name to his father Ron’s adulation of Ayn (it rhymes with “mine”) turns out to be apocryphal, but Paul describes himself as a fan all the same.

No one’s illuminated the cult of Rand at the heart of American politics and technology better than filmmaker Adam Curtis. Here’s the director’s visionary three-part BBC documentary “All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace…”