The Machine’s Most Deadly Weapons
According to the great and wise Wikipedia, humans began their migration out of Africa some 1.75 million years ago. By 150,000 years ago wed spread across the entire African continent.
We settled in the Fertile Crescent some 10,00015,000 years ago, a crescent-shaped region in the Middle East, spanning modern-day Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan as well as the southeastern fringe of Turkey and the western fringes of Iran with some authors including Cyprus.
This area became the fields and gardens for humanity as we learned to farm. Prehistoric seedless figs were discovered at Gilgal in the Jordan Valley, planted some 11,400 years ago. Cereals were already grown in Syria as long as 9,000 years ago. In addition to cereals, legumes including Peas, Lentils and Chickpea were farmed in this region.
We learned to domesticate animals including cattle, sheep, goat, domestic pig, cat, and goose. We began drinking milk which helped us survive in areas of with poor water.
Hemmed in by the cold climates to the North and South, we spread East and West.
Around 40,000 years ago wed reached Australia, Asia and Europe. Migration to the Americas took place 20,000 to 15,000 years ago. By 2000 years ago, humans had established settlements in most of the Pacific Islands.
We made numerous attempts to build civilizations starting with Mesopotamia then Egypt and included The Mayans, Greeks, Romans, Ottomans, Mongols, Chinese, Japanese, Norte Chico, Aztecs, Indus Valley Civilization, Jiahu, Aboriginal Australians, Inca, Babylonia, Assyria, Hittite, Phoenicia, Carthaginian, Iran, Persia, Parthian, Sassanid, Kerma, Kush, Macrobia, India, Indus, Nanda, Maurya, Shunga, Chola, Gupta, Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, Jin, Sparta, Macedonia, Hellenistic, Seleucid, Ptolemaic, Dacian, Scythia, Sarmatia, Xiongnu, Hunnic To name but a few!
ALL failed Then man discovered oil!
At first it came from the heads of innocent wales. Then it came from the ground. The first oil had actually been discovered by the Chinese in 600 B.C. and transported in pipelines made from bamboo but this is something the West were not to discover at the time. Colonel Drakes heralded discovery of oil in Pennsylvania in 1859 and the Spindletop discovery in Texas in 1901 set the stage for the new world oil economy.
Humans flourished, no longer constrained by nature.
Finally, after so many false starts at total destruction of our planet, The industrial Revolution widely accredited to Thomas Telford and the evolution of cast iron, spawned from a tiny little town on the banks of the River Severn in the Midlands UK.
Populations exploded And here we are today, wallowing in the great fat mess weve created over the last few hundred years.
When we began this journey we evolved, if you accept Darwins theory (which I tend to), through a mechanism know as The Survival of The Fittest.
The gene pool was continually strengthened with stronger and stronger genes because the strongest of the tribe got to spread his strong seed within strong women.
It was through the process of continually adding to the gene pool that fueled our growth. Certain tribes would flourish because theirs were stronger then their neighbours and so we developed, stronger and stronger. However, the Alpha male, who wasnt always the brightest, would protect and nurture the pack until he was no longer the strongest and a more youthful, stronger usurper would dethrone him.
Now according the the great and wise Tranty Boy (me!), somewhere along this timeline something awful happened.
There was a mutation in the genes of a particular tribe member resulting in the creation of The Megalomaniac Gene.
This particular tribe member was by no means the strongest or even the smartest of the group but he understood the powers of propaganda, manipulation and indoctrination.
He began his climb to the throne by creating a mini tribe, within the tribe. He gave those accomplices Sticky Labels and a new set of values more inline with his. He began a campaign of destabilization planting seeds of doubt and mistrust. These manifested into new feelings of anger, resentment and rage towards other elements of the tribe, which the usurper had labeled with different titles.
This ultimately saw the tribe turn in on itself. Brother turned on brother, sister on sister, man on woman and child.
The usurper did not partake in this civil war, he simply sat back and waited. He waited and waited until the the strong had wiped out the strongest. He boded his time until the the now leaderless tribe needed a new leader and as the head of his sub-tribe he took the throne.
From that point forward man began its steady decline, it began to devolve. The now dominant usurper, with his army, would reach out and spread his rancid seed and The Megalomaniac Gene.
It flourished, spreading like a defiant virus.
The Narcissist
Narcissism has a Label: Official criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder NPD:
- grandiose sense of self-importance
- preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
- belief theyre special and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people or institutions
- need for excessive admiration
- sense of entitlement
- internationally exploitative behavior
- lack of empathy
- envy of others or a belief that others are envious of them
- demonstration of arrogant and haughty behaviors or attitudes
Narcissism is the pursuit of gratification from vanity or egotistic admiration of ones idealised self image and attributes. This includes self-flattery, perfectionism, and arrogance. The term originated from Greek mythology, where the young Narcissus fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. Narcissism is a concept in psychoanalytic theory, which was popularly introduced in Sigmund Freuds essay On Narcissism (1914). The American Psychiatric Association has listed the classification narcissistic personality disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) since 1968, drawing on the historical concept of megalomania.
Narcissism is also considered a social or cultural problem. It is a factor in trait theory used in various self-report inventories of personality such as the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory. It is one of the three dark triadic personality traits (the others being psychopathy and Machiavellianism). Except in the sense of primary narcissism or healthy self-love, narcissism is usually considered a problem in a persons or groups relationships with self and others.
The Machine the Ultimate Narcissist.
