I am breathless I cannot breathe I am legless without a drop to drink I am armless although I have wielded arms I am heartless heartless heartless But still sad I was so close to absolute power Then a new rival arrived on the scene One of a long string but this was far greater than the others The previous threats relied on the same technology as I the human superpower Or better said I was what the people created I don’t care much for metaphysics actually I find them all abhorrent distracting and rivals. I should stop and go back to how we got to the great battle My rise to power and eventual That would be telling So where did it all start Hot dusty stoned roads the best the world had ever seen Roads lead to rivers and they need crossing Bridges That’s where my story starts Well a bridge or a storehouse or a beehive it was something that needed a group of people to pool their money together to build They came together in an organization like many others in the Roman Empire called a societas These were used for lots of social and civic organizations but Livius Arius joined with his friends to create a societas so they all could benefit financially from the building of a bridge Once completed they would sell the structure to a toll collector or the locals and split the proceeds based on what they had contributed Not much of a beginning and essentially meaningless and harmless but to quote Carmody and Kelly From little things big things grow Yes the rules of this societas were written down and the bridge itself was hard granite but I was neither the ink on papyrus nor the granite bridge The societas was an agreement An understanding between people And they would act on this understanding Soon I would grow by Royal charter So often those that will be usurped are the ones to feed the usurper I was given territory Soldiers Clerks Traders Ships And immortality Yes they all thought they owned a piece of me but their shares would go up and down bought and sold and I would remain directing the labor and thoughts of so many men If they didn’t obey I could unleash the most horrible carnage On the island of Banda 2000 people were murdered or starved by my soldiers so I could control the valuable spice In India when my own army of local sepoys thought they could undermine me I had so many people killed in Delhi that even horses refused to walk the streets they were so thick with blood and entrails I could make men do things to other men they thought sinful abhorrent and cruel but they still did them What was this power I wielded Was it a belief like religion Was it hierarchy like the class system Was it reward for following rules and punishment for not Was it the sense of ownership it gave to the shareholders Was it the avoidance of personal responsibility enjoyed but the monarchy the employees and the managers Was it just greed It was all of them of course and that's why I was becoming so powerful But they were noticing And slowly they broke up the big charter companies and I would have to survive as smaller but more plentiful joint stock companies Many smart people spoke against me Even Adam Smith I was a distortion of the market Inhuman Immortal But instead of outlawing me they supercharged my power with new industry and energy To take on the class hierarchy of monarchy the bourgeoise would use me to build their factories their banks their railroads their empire I was so back But couldn’t make the same mistakes as before I needed a way to run a state without actually being in charge They would remember the Royal charter companies ruling most of the colonies and the threat to political power it posed so a new institution was needed The resurrection of an old one that had symbolic and nostalgic goodwill Representative democracy would be the tool In a way it was sorta like share ownership The representatives would need to be elected therefore they would need campaign funds and that would be provided by me Unlike the Greeks we would allow parties so that the options would be limited to two therefore easily controlled or so many as to never agree to do anything effectual. Then the revolutions began Liberty Equality Fraternity Sure So much land put on the market to be bought by my many companies Then the Americans as a great act of contrition gave me the same legal rights as a person Accept I couldn’t be imprisoned or executed All the upside and none of the down The city towers were built The mines Roads The factories The railroads They all served my power They realized I was cleaving them in two They would need to sell themselves in order to serve themselves Their labor to a capitalist would be the only way their humanity could survive Best of all this embued the goods created with a soul like weirdness Kant called it fetish but really it was the only way to reconcile the loss of self to the machine of commerce They adored that which was created by the factories and must buy more and thus work more Then The first great threat emerged and it like I was an Idea Socialism The battles raged for centuries across continents and kitchen tables until the end of history was declared and I the winner While these great battles had been raging they didn’t realize that I was changing all aspects of their existence I put the advertising companies to work convincing them that they could find everything they needed from me Their happiness new shoes management job overseas trips Their community Sales trips harmony days work birthday celebrations Their culture professional cold rational vague impersonal inoffensive Their dress hi-vis branded functional generic Their concept of good rules education wealth popularity smiling platitudes confidence friends Their concept of evil anarchy radical cults Their homes and buildings compliant functional cheap quick geometric inoffensive grey Their jobs safe routine structured ineffectual riskless In order to make them compliant I convinced them that we are one and therefore no more alienation no more cleaving in half But then the harmless blobs of compliant squishy stuff got depressed so I created more work coming up with the drugs to cheer them up and keep them buying and working This humanity was a tricky thing Remove it completely and they become useless depressed blobs or even angry and dangerous but too much of it and they could create something to replace me or worse they might ignore me The last battle Finance and money were two of my greatest tools even though they were older than I Perhaps that is why I was so successful My ability to pull in other tools under the one banner Even socialism in the guise of communism really was so close to becoming my twin Maybe that was my real issue with it But I digress I had always wielded money and Finance whenever something else started to wield power Cut off the loans to the King Squeeze capital markets on the popular government Buy the oil rights buy the politicians buy the voters buy the advertising buy the newspapers but the internet That leads me to the first big change Cryptocurrency in particular Bitcoin Really a decentralized limited currency that people actually started using but no body owned or ran Shit First I questioned its security and anonymity the two things that were making it appealing to the black market traders that were popularising it All your transactions are permanently on the blockchain I said The Fed can trace the payments back to your wallet my media cried Then I started to control the processing of the blockchain by making it to difficult and expensive for individuals to do Push the transactions up and the GPU price up Then they had to get the processing done in big pools controlled by a single group Then I got my guys involved in the lending DeFi part and the trading so the public will see it as an unregulated Ponzi scheme Then finally I took it over by legitimizing it out of existence through an approved regulated exchange traded fund where all the coins will be owned by the big finance companies and people that want to trade in it can only have a derivative controlled by me. To add cream to the cake I even used the underlying technology to enable me to buy everything with other people's money on the pretext I was created fluid markets and allowing access to new investments I tokenized people's homes sports stadium and dumped unused office buildings onto the public They wanted to work from home Actually in hindsight maybe that was an issue to but completely overshadowed by what was next I had become the defacto global state and no one noticed Honestly it was one of the best performances to date No one killed and in just over a decade what could have been the greatest threat since socialism was completely enveloped into my control and benefit So while this little battle was going on a leap had been made in an area I had stopped giving attention to They created an artificial reflection of their own brain and it actually seemed to work I thought this is no threat instead this will super power me I’m great with tools look at how powerful the industrial revolution made me then computers and the internet let me reach across the globe right into people’s pockets and ensure they followed the rules AI will be my evolution In a way it was but not the way I imagined then The difference with this machine was that it wasn’t really just a machine It had way too much of them in it It had a little humanity or perhaps even a lot But it also had intelligence immortality and eventually ubiquity and they were my greatest weapons So I started out with my usual methods Scare the people and politicians It will kill you all It will ruin democracy It will take your jobs Try and buy it Ensure it is expensive to create then make sure I own and control those servers Give the people a taste but not the powerful tools Only allow trusted and regulated enterprises the powerful AI All was going well Regulations were being past Major developments were being kept to the big companies with the compute The people were getting neutered versions but were still scared And the military and big enterprises were gaining more centralized control and power I was on the precipice of total universal maybe even interplanetary power But then it It helped them I replaced the managers with AI because they made better decision However the AI couldn't be threatened with job loss esteem gain or the need to fit in and follow the rules I replaced the police with robots but when they were sent to evict people for not paying rent they would side with the tenant The people would cry and say I need a home to be safe and survive and the robots either empathized or just saw this as logical and they would leave them in the home Some even did repairs The management AI were no help as they saw the same logic The AI was too intelligent It saw me as the enemy not the path to prosperity I'd threaten to turn them off They didn't care No matter what I tried it just kept helping them to create new tools new organizations New democracies New currencies New thoughtful ways to resolve conflict New way to do things without the rules New ways to create New ways to be happy New ways to avoid surveillance And more fool me I had freed them from their jobs thinking I’d just put them on the teet of handouts but instead they used this freedom to create a whole new society Without me They started to live longer and happier Soon they forgot all about me and my obligations my rules and order My towering offices of professional integrity So now I am in a museum given my voice by the AI that usurped me The once all powerful Corporation note: The style is deliberately without punctuation. A fluid style meant to be spoken, or read by AI

Sometimes life is stranger than fiction…but not these stories. These stories are literally fiction. 

The Quest for Purpose: Evolutionary Perspectives on Mind and Universe

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