Jasun Horsley on the Holocaust, Philip K. Dick, and “the technological body of evil”

Is a disembodied demonic entity or entities taking over our minds…and the world? That’s the thesis of Philip K. Dick’s classic The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. It’s also a theme explored in Jasun Horsley’s PKD-inspired Big Mother: The Technological Body of Evil. We’ll also touch on the #GazaHolocaust as well as THE Holocaust (TM), which Jasun has been discussing at his Substack.A few quotes from Big Mother:“The evidence suggests rather that artificial intelligence will arise (in fact, already has arisen) not from but through computer technology, from an external source that is able to ‘possess’ the machine and animate it, which in fact can only become known to us through the medium of technology.“As the author Philip K. Dick anticipated by some 50 years (in Martian Time-Slip), there is growing evidence that children with autism respond more naturally to objects than they do to people (especially trains). Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Center at the Uni- versity of Cambridge in England (as well as other ‘autism experts’), has suggested that robots, computers, and other electronic devices appeal to autists because, unlike people, they are predictable. Autists, Baron- Cohen says, ‘find unlawful situations toxic. They can’t cope. So they turn away from people and turn to the world of objects’.”“As we have defined it, autism is a condition of hyper-sensitivity or extra-consensual perception in which the ordinary physical senses are seen to overlap with apparently ‘supernatural’ or ‘paranormal’ potentialities, such as psychism, precognition, etc. The earliest depictions of autism in the field of science fiction were by Dick (‘The Minority Report’ in 1956, and Martian Time-Slip, in 1964), and emphasised this overlap. The autists in Dick’s fiction are psychics whose capacity to perceive the future and other extra-consensual realms makes them both a threat to humanity and an essential aid to it, a force to be harnessed but also, like the androids in Dick’s later novel, to be feared.” This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com/subscribe This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com