war – Esoteric Epistemology

This Robot Should Not Be Used As a Weapon of War

August 2, 2025August 2, 2025Tagged biomimicry, design, ethics, future, futurism, robotics, robots, science, technology, warLeave a comment

Why I see Spot’s future as more like a personal computer or car

I’ve been following the evolution of the robot “Spot” for several years now. A four- legged innovation on from the company Boston Dynamics, Spot is capable of balancing, traversing difficult terrain, and more.

Spot now has a few competitors on the marketplace, such as the bots from Unitree Robotics, ANYBotics, and Ghost Robotics. It is currently being tested by various militaries for military applications.

I’ve seen videos of Spot dancing, and videos of similar robots used by the US military with guns strapped to them. I prefer the videos of Spot dancing.

Open Dynamic Robot Initiative is providing a low-cost, open-source alternative to the competitors.

I’m hoping that people continue working on this kind of robot in the spirit of open source and collaboration. I’d like to see these robots cheaper and available more widely. I also I don’t want them drafted into the military!

I see Spot and robots like it as a more likely candidate for personal transport. If the robots are electric, they could be a great alternative to wheelchairs, cars, bikes, and motorcycles. We could even build giant ones that could serve as public transportation like buses or trains.

Right now, these robots are really expensive. They are definitely out of the price range of most regular people. I’m hoping to see a transition with these robots where they become more widely available for regular consumers to purchase, like we saw with personal computers after computers were first used more exclusively by scientists and the military.

An all-terrain robot’s possible functions

This robot can go literally anywhere. That’s why I immediately recognize it as a great alternative to wheelchairs and other mobility devices for disabled people.

It seems like it would be much easier to ride one of these things around and to be able to go up and down stairs or over terrain that isn’t flat than it would be to use a wheelchair.

While I think disabled people should be given priority if personal transport robots become a thing, it would be great for the modern American who is lazy, too! Or for anyone who is trying to get anywhere, if they were made street legal.

Design concept: robot ponies

I imagine these robots essentially being used the way that horses, ponies, oxen and other beasts of burden have been used by humans for centuries.

We should be able to ride them up and down the street, sidewalk, or bike lane at the speed of a plodding pony, a bicycle, or a car. We should be able to tie them up to charge in the sun in front of the bar like stopping to water your horse on the trail. We should be able to use them to pull a cart full of produce or a sleigh in the snow.

I also thought it would be cool if designers designed these robots to look more like animals. These four-legged robots already look a lot like many animals, but the headless design is creepy and sterile. The addition to Spot of the robot arm that looks like a bit like a head and a neck gives it an appearance a bit like a giraffe, an emu, or brontosaurus.

It would be fun to be able to add mods to your robot pony to make it look more like a real pony or even an imaginary animal like a dragon or a unicorn. That would make the use of these robots as personal vehicles even more fun.

Rethinking how we use technology

Ethics are important in product design. It’s important to think about why we are creating something, especially when it comes to things that have the potential to change the world in massive ways, like robots.

One thing that I learned from studying permaculture design is the concept of biomimcry. Biomimicry guides design methodology and ethics by observing and mimicking the patterns of the natural world.

I think it would be cool if we designed infrastructure like transportation and technology like robots to mimic nature as well. That’s why I conceptualize Spot’s future as “Spot the cute pony” instead of “Spot the killing machine.”

Still, nature contains killing machines too! Human beings would be silly enough to design something to resemble an animal that could’ve naturally evolved and then turn that thing into a predator.

Please, no murderous robots

Philip K. Dick wrote a 1960 book called Vulcan’s Hammer in which robots become extremely powerful, controlling human society and slaughtering people when confused.

Netflix’s Black Mirror had an unsettling episode about a robot that looks similar to Spot going rouge and relentlessly hunting human beings through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It is utterly terrifying to imagine these robots behaving like this in the real world.

I prefer to imagine a world in which these robots are more like creative and colorful art cars from Burning Man. I’d like to see cities that are more walkable and with more accessible public transportation. And there’s no reason why our personal vehicles can’t be fun and beautiful in addition to being functional.

Remember, product designers are driven by what consumers ask for, because they know that’s where the money is.

Personally, my design ethics demand robot ponies, not murderous K-9 units.

Think hard about what kind of future you want to see.

I Will Not Die For Your Stupid War

December 21, 2023June 29, 2025Tagged China, culture, nuclear war, peace, politics, protest, Russia, warLeave a comment

You gross old war pigs

child wanders through war rubble — Photo by Jordy Meow

We are literally at war with Russia right now. Take it from me. My grandpa literally fought the Nazis!

You could call it a “proxy” war, because we are providing weapons to Ukraine, which Russia has invaded, but that does not make it any less of a war between Russia and the United States.

We have a history of doing stuff like this! We arm one side of a conflict when we believe that it benefits our interests as a country. Sometimes we even arm both sides of a conflict and make ridiculous profits from selling weapons and construction contracts to rebuild the cities that are destroyed with American-made bombs.

When I was a kid, my mom took me to anti-war protests and she made sure that I knew the phrase “conscientious objector.” She made me repeat that phrase back to her.

My mom grew up during the cold war. She, like many members of my heavily military family, knows that war is always a possibility. She also knows that the last thing that someone like me wants is to participate in a war.

I’m going to say it right now, because I want to make myself absolutely clear.

I am not going to die for your war, you gross old war pigs.

I am not going to sign up to get blown up or blow up other people so that you can secure access to natural resources or settle some old score among the lizard-brained overlords who treat the planet I live on like some kind of macabre chess board.

I am not going to carry an assault rifle and use it to shoot kids or people who are adults but who already look like kids to me, at the ripe old age of thirty.

I am not going to participate in propaganda campaigns smearing Russia and China as evil communists who need to be liberated by American freedom. It is reasonable to criticize the domestic and foreign policies of these countries, just as it is reasonable to criticize the domestic and foreign policies of this country.

What is not reasonable is playing a gigantic game of Chicken or Russian Roulette with nuclear weapons pointed at all of our heads.

I will not die for your war, you sick fucks.

I’m staying home.

War is Hell–As Usual

December 10, 2023December 10, 2023Tagged culture, news, peace, politics, warLeave a comment

Why Can’t We Stop?

If you wander about Oregon Country Fair enough you’ll find the free library!

As a child, I found this book there: Addicted to War: Why the U.S. Can’t Kick Militarism.

When I was a kid, I read this comic book about the military-industrial complex over and over again, and it really impacted me. Now when I read about conflicts like Russia and Ukraine or Israel and Palestine, I ask myself questions like: “who is going to profit from this?” and “what innocent people are going to suffer?”

For many years, the US government has painted itself as a sort of “world cop,” interfering in global conflicts in what it claims to be the best interest of the countries it invades. In reality, this image couldn’t be further from the truth of what’s really going on.

The truth is that it’s the same story over and over again. We recruit and train the very same terrorist forces that then attack us, and then we use their attacks to justify further violence. We sell weapons to the fabricated governments that we install to serve our interests. We arm both sides of conflicts, and then our construction companies rebuild the cities that are flattened by the same bombs and drones that we manufacture.

We design some of the best medical treatments in the world and then withhold them from the women and and children whose hospitals and schools we flatten with our explosives, and to our own soldiers who come home maimed and betrayed by the country that they swore to defend.

Like George Orwell said: “The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.” The war doesn’t exist to defend freedom or fight evil, it exists to generate profits and to keep the vast majority of the planet on its knees in abject terror before a select few.

We use the oppression of women to justify invading the middle east, and then oppress women at home under a similar guise of empowering them. Women in Afghanistan are “liberated” by sanctions that are starving their children to death before their eyes the same way women at here in the US are “liberated” by having their livelihoods taken away when they fight back against male violence.

We complain about the lack of civil liberties in countries like Russia and China, and then we imprison or banish political dissidents at home, while bombarding our own populace with endless propaganda that is designed to stoke civil unrest and blind hatred between human beings.

The United States is like the abusive parent who uses the threat of a foreign boogeyman to frighten its children into blind obedience in the household. Our government says to us: “how dare you complain about how I treat you? Would you rather I let the boogeyman get you?”

These boogeymen are nothing more than old worn puppets, sewn hastily together for purposes of drumming up fear and coercing compliance.

It turns my stomach knowing that any portion of the money I’ve paid in taxes throughout my life has gone towards murdering and crippling innocent people, but I can’t deny that it’s the case. I’m complicit because I’m afraid, and so are you.

When I read about the atrocities committed by terrorist groups I do not see monsters and boogeymen. I see the faces of the women who kill their own children because they are abused by their spouses and the mentally ill who are shot by the police because they were abandoned time and time again by a broken system and became so ill that no one around them could see their humanity any longer.

I see human beings. Human beings who were children once and who have hopes and dreams and families just like you and me.

Kamikaze soldiers and militant dictators are not less human than you. They are very sick human beings whose personal and collective pain has exceeded their ability to cope with it in a sane way.

In the United States, so many of us are so sheltered and so far removed from real violence that we have forgotten why it exists in the first place. Wherever there are people in pain, there will be people waiting to exploit that pain for their own nefarious purposes.

Don’t be a pawn in their barbarous chess game. Think for yourself. Choose the path of peace.

The United States of America is Basically Doing the Holocaust

December 1, 2023Tagged crime, culture, history, relationships, warLeave a comment

We should probably stop.

Photo by Michael Fousert

During the Holocaust, specific groups of people became the target of propaganda and violence that was coordinated by the state. These groups included ethnic, cultural and social groups such as Jews, Catholics, Freemasons, gay people, trans people, disabled people, and sex workers.

People belonging to these groups became the targets of propaganda campaigns designed to destroy their reputations– but more importantly, to destroy their credibility. An important feature of the Holocaust was the culture of secrecy and the destruction of historical records. Because we do not, collectively, remember our history in a meaningful way, in a way which allows us to fully comprehend the horrors that human beings are capable of, we are continuing to perpetrate these horrors.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote about how totalitarian governments created societies of people who were lonely; not just physically lonely, physically isolated, but spiritually isolated from one another. During World War II, Nazis used propaganda and violent threats to create a culture in which speaking the truth was punishable by social isolation, shaming, unjust incarceration, and physical torture. They created a world in which human beings were incapable of having real intimacy with one another because they were no longer able to express to each other the truth of their experiences. This weakened the social and familial bonds between people, which made them easier to control.

This kind of spiritual loneliness, according to Arendt, is what created the perfect conditions for governments to control the minds of their citizens. Unable to find real human connection under conditions where it was impossible to tell the truth, human beings sought comfort elsewhere — from the authority figures who became stand-ins for the real human relationships which could no longer exist. They became loyal to an amorphous, faceless authority instead of to one another. Even people who lived in the same house, worked at the same jobs or attended the same schools could no longer truly relate to one another. People became passionately terrified of one another. There was a culture of paranoia.

Fear is the seed of hatred. By causing immense fear, by torturing the populace en masse by making everyone afraid all the time, not just of the state, but of each other, Nazis made people more willing to participate in their atrocities. They created a world in which human beings were willing to harm the ones they loved the most in order to avoid pain. In which they were forced to denounce their most deeply held beliefs at the barrels of guns. In which they informed on and turned in their loved ones. In which they were coerced into implicating themselves and other innocent people in kangaroo courts in which facts and evidence didn’t matter. In which people were so confused, so tortured, that they no longer trusted their own memories or senses.

During the Holocaust, it was not just agents of the governments who committed atrocities, it was everyone. Every single person who participated was, to varying degrees, culpable. And yet, when the criminals were tried, a select few were disproportionately punished for crimes which were participated in, condoned, and concealed by nearly everyone. These people became the scapegoats for the crimes of everyone else. Perhaps collectively, as a species, after such an event, we believed that using these people as sacrifices would absolve the rest of us of our guilt.

But guilt doesn’t work that way. Morality doesn’t work that way. Human psychology doesn’t work that way. The world doesn’t work that way. When people commit atrocities, if they witness atrocities, even if they are forced to say, even, for a time, forced to believe that the atrocities didn’t happen, some part of them will still remember. And then, regardless of whether or not they are held accountable by the laws of any state, people will punish themselves, and each other, regardless of how much anyone involved deserves any of it.

The collective guilt that resulted after the Holocaust led thousands of people to commit suicide and countless others to be left with permanent mental and spiritual scars that would never heal and would be passed down from generation to generation. The intergenerational trauma from the Holocaust and other genocides have left intergenerational traumas that fuel a cycle of hatred and fear and perpetuate unnecessary suffering across the planet.

The government and people of the country in which I live are perpetuating these same crimes, right now, as I speak. The government of my country perpetrates horrific crimes against humanity on what seems to be a perpetual basis, both at home and abroad.

In the country where I live, right now, as I speak, people are being locked away without due process and being treated in horrifying and inhumane ways while in captivity. They are being separated from their parents, children, brothers, and sisters. They are being denied medical treatment when they are sick. They are being asked to defend themselves at hearings in languages that they do not understand without representation by attorneys. People are being raped and sexually abused by government officials who are not held accountable for their actions. People are having their body parts, such as their reproductive organs, removed without their informed consent.

My country murders civilians en masse in foreign countries in order to maintain its control over global markets and natural resources. It relentlessly persecutes, tortures, and executes citizens who speak out against its atrocities.

During World War II, people with both immutable physical characteristics or religious, cultural and social associations like mine were tortured and murdered. Historically, the peaceful values of both my ancestral culture and both the religion in which I was raised and the one I currently practice were warped and distorted by state governments for propaganda of fear-mongering, hate-mongering, and social control.

During my lifetime, I have personally been subjected to treatment which constitutes torture and crimes against humanity. I know many other people belonging to the both the same and other cultural, religious, and social groups and as me who have been subjected to the same. My local, state and federal governments have condoned this treatment and failed to hold the perpetrators accountable. I have been subjected to this treatment, not, in fact, because of the groups that I belong to, but because I reported the atrocities that I witnessed and experienced and because I fought back. The same is true for many others around me, regardless of race, religion, culture, and the like.

It does not matter what ethnic, religious, social, or cultural group you belong to. During the reign of a totalitarian government, any person is potentially a member of a group that was referred to by Nazis during the Holocaust as “untermenschen,” or “subhumans.” This group still exists today, under the totalitarian government under which I live. Absolutely anyone can be labeled a member of this group, and absolutely anyone is a potential target.

Dear America — your human sacrifices do not absolve you of your crimes, and they will not absolve you of your guilt.

No matter who you are, one day you too, could one day be treated as “subhuman.” And also, no matter who you are, one day, you too could be the person who treats someone else that way. You might even be doing it right now. And if the propaganda and mind control that is inflicted on you every single day of your life has succeeded in breaking your consciousness to the point where you can no longer see the truth when it’s right in front of you — you might not even be aware of it. But you will be one day. And it’s gonna hurt.