Happy Easter if it's something you celebrate. For my fiancee Amanda and I, Easter is really just an opportunity to buy discount chocolate after the fact. Here’s hoping that in the era of shrinkflation and inflation, there are still good deals to be had! (And isn’t that the true meaning of Easter?).
I also adore the quietness of our town - Bathurst - during public holidays. Weekends and public holidays mean little to a full-time artist; I do the same thing every day regardless - I create. But during public holidays there’s less traffic, more families in parks, and the vibes are chiller. I love soaking up those chill vibes.
This letter is coming in WAY LATE! It was due a week ago; I’m sorry for the delay!
Following the Newcastle Writers Festival (more on that soon), Amanda and I spent 4 days having our first mini-holiday in almost 3 years, and just chilled out on the beach.
I finished writing Letters to Our Robot Son on that same beach three years ago, following the festival where I was touring my memoir. It was a beautiful and spiritually rewarding return to a sacred site for me, and I did my best to enjoy every minute.
It was the first time in more than half a decade I was able to almost truly relax. I say almost because I was foolish enough to check emails and social media during the time and caught the urgency of other people and bureaucracy more than I’d have liked; a rookie error (I am not used to having time off).
Next time; I won’t just keep my phone on silent, I’ll throw it into the sea!
Newcastle Writers Festival
I adore writers festivals. They are in many ways my favourite part of releasing a book. Putting aside the attention (I sure do love all that attention, I’m a wee little whore for it), it’s so much fun to meet readers and to spend time with other writers.
Most writers are all so poor and busy that events are really the only way most of us can catch up. I got to pick the brain of Siang Lu, this year’s Miles Franklin Winner. Despite texting with him regularly, I’d never meet him in person, which was a real treat. Same with author and Marvel actor Zoe Terakes - who I’ve zoomed with and interviewed over the years (at one point we were in talks to do a film together), but who I’d never met in person.
Audiences this year were ravenous to hear about A.I. in particular.
Both my sessions at the festival sold out, and I did a 20 minute spot on ABC radio talking about A.I. and the arts (photo above). It’s so weird to have people actually want to talk about a topic that for years friends thought I was a bit nutty for going on and on about.
As you may know, I’ve been working on The Heart Saga for 21 years this year. Letters to Our Robot Son is the first book in that series. I’ve been concerned with the intersection of class and technology, including A.I., for a long time - ever since Google declared that they weren’t building the world’s best search engine but the world’s first A.I., at the same time that they leaned on their (former) motto “Don’t Be Evil”.
The combination of those statements got me thinking two decades ago, and here we are. (Curiously, Google dropped “Don’t Be Evil” as their motto in 2018 and moved it to the final line of their mission statement instead - making it a literal afterthought for the company these days).
For years I’ve been warning people of the approach of A.I. - I signed the first deal for Letters in 2021 - although it’s really only been in the past 18 months that the average person has begun to comprehend how transformative the technology will be for society.
I have a lot more to say on the subject yet, believe that.
The Last Millennial
Soon I’ll be releasing a novella which deals with the future of A.I. head on - and if you’re a paid member of my website (thank you thank you thank you), you’ll be getting that for free! Otherwise it’ll be available for purchase on my site.
Formerly known as The Battle of Newtown, the novella was originally part of the first draft of Letters to Our Robot Son. The book initially had split timelines - between 2040’s and 2128 - although it made it over 600 pages in length, which was waaaaay too chunky.
So, I extracted some of the material to create two spin-off prequel novellas instead: The Last Millennial and MARYX (Or My Life as A Shopping Centre). The former is the backstory of some members of The Resistance, while the latter is the backstory of Frankie the friendly robot.
More on that soon!
War
I spent much of last year making three bold predictions to numerous audiences:
- Democracy and capitalism as we knew them were dying, as I wrote in The Australian newspaper last April. This is a part of a slow civilisational collapse
- An economic collapse is coming, likely this year (driven by A.I. and private equity)
- We were again headed for war - Iran and Mexico were the countries I had pegged; I expect the U.S. will invade Mexico in the second half of the year
These predictions were part of T.O.M.C.a.T., which I’ve talked about in these letters to you before; my Theory of Modern Civilisation and Time (the acronym is new).
As I said in an interview with the Mudgee Guardian last August:
"We are on the cusp of a major shift in world politics, in democracy, in capitalism. We assume that wars and revolutions are artefacts of history, but humanity is more cyclical than that... history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme."
In Letters to Our Robot Son, I expressed a similar sentiment:
“War is like fashion; it looks a little different each time, but it always makes a comeback.”
Amanda and I began doing two things after Trump returned to power. We increased the speed of collection for our digital movies (nearly 1500 shows and movies now, and counting, bought over a ten year period) and we bought portable solar panels and batteries.
We don’t have the means to fortify our home, and we’re renters anyway. We’ve lived as frugally as we can since Covid; we only eat two meals a day, we almost never drive, we recycle our floss, we take only a mini-holiday maybe once every 3 years. There’s nothing else we can cut back on.
What I needed to protect though was stories and the capacity to continue to make them.
I will explain the underlying mechanisms of T.O.M.C.a.T., and how I made these predictions, and you’ll find those explanations in my work. That is what The Heart Saga is! The series of stories is my way of trying to explain the model through storytelling, because what I’ve bet half my life on is that we are in a new era - not just of destruction but opportunity.
Revolution
The collapse of civilisations is part of the breathing in / breathing out of any system.
Peter Turchin believes that civilisations collapse because of “elite over-production”, and I think that’s what we’re seeing in the world today. Two groups of elites, the “old money” (the military-industrial complex, media and financial systems) are competing with the “new money” (tech bros and influencers).
To make it easier:
Democrats & most American institutions = Old Money = Elites
Trump and his goons = New Money = Counter-Elites
In Letters to Our Robot Son, this theme of two elite groups fucking ecosystems was represented through the Knowers and the Sons of the Acolytes, or The Workers and The Chosen.
Too many wealthy people want more wealth and power, and so they’re tearing the world apart to try to upend the other faction. The average person (ie; the working class) is irrelevant to both sides, just as peasants were to the nobles centuries ago during previous collapses.
Whether life and death or the big bang of the universe itself, existence may not move in circles, but it does move in spirals. I have a specific name for the creation & destruction of intelligence: Downward Intelligence Streams, which I’ll talk more about in an upcoming book.
I’ll also be talking about time and non-linear consciousness (and how artists tap into that) in a major essay to be released next year.
For us as a society, the opportunity comes when people are librated from the constraints of an old system. This topic is way too big to describe with any justice here, but I do truly feel that the chaos being unleashed today will become the seeds of cultural revolution tomorrow.
People will demand human-made works for example, just as they demand free range eggs, single source coffee beans or ethical chocolate today.
A.I. will both fuck up (and help) us all, but what A.I. will never do is create. Rather, I think that as a species we’ll strive harder to stay “ahead” of A.I., which can only regurgitate what came before it.
Only humans can create.
Creation is a divine act, which requires humanity. Anything else is an imitation. While the field will be flooded with shit (it already is - think of all the A.I. slop out there), the act of creation, of breathing something new into the world, will exclusively remain ours and ours alone.
While, the money of the world fights and fucks itself over, we will be forced to innovate. We will be forced to become cohesive. We will be forced to reject some of the fuckiest things about capitalism and politics and the ruling class. The systems of government and bureaucracy which have enslaved us (especially the young) will continue to corrupt and weaken, giving us the opportunity to reveal their inner cruelties.
This is why I write.
I want people to know that what we’re going through isn’t a punishment, it’s a rebalancing necessitated by the greed of a few, and if we keep love in our hearts and look for the opportunities to create and innovate, we can live better lives further away from consumption and materialism.
There is so much more to life than that which is dictated by elite groups and counter-elites (together: “The Ruling Class”). So much more than has been programmed into us by nation states and their bureaucracy.
That is the opportunity.
To see beyond our conditioning, towards the essence of our existence. It only comes along once every 250 years or so, and I can’t wait to tell you more about it and more importantly - how you can join the revolution.
Photos:
Me going into ABC radio last weekend to talk A.I.
Photos from Newy Writers Festival
My first ever piece of stitched Fan Art for Letters to Our Robot Son - this blew my mind!
Guy on Roof
The tree by Newcastle Beach which inspired Last Tree from Letters to Our Robot Son