The world is evil, but individuals aren't inherently evil.
The standard leftist response to recognizing the government's alliance with corporations is self-flagellation. The right often displays false pride, while the empire (presumably referring to the government) boasts its power. Lately, these roles have partially reversed—with the left becoming more assertive and the right feeling ashamed.
The central point isn't about the political dynamics themselves. Instead, it's about the limited options presented within the political spectrum. Political affiliation is political performance: the limited menu of potentialities and modes of organizing and living and governing.
Paradoxically, resisting politics—tribes, schools, parties—becomes the most profound political act. The governing apparatus can control biological entities, but not the metaphysically self-possessed individuals.
You should write because you need to communicate—that's a good rule of thumb—not because you want to be seen as writer--that is to say, socially embody the romance of being an artist.
If it hasn't already, AI is going to be clear, however, that most writers are word manipulators. There's no existential or spiritual pressure at the substratum of the psyche. There's this calculation that if one says certain things in certain ways, one will be rewarded.
The best thing AI can do for us is expose our hack work. Many prestige jobs that involve language are actually just about facilitating dissemination of lies, lies or distraction, press releases, hit pieces, sensationalistic potted reporting.
Human produced AI--churn. Lame celebrity memoirs, Disney movies, Marvel movies. These are all things that are basically made by people acting like AI. Churning out iterations of received ideas, reproducing and re-inscribing norms and tropes that serve status quo power relations and dynamics.
Maybe automation will make people ashamed of being automated themselves. It inspires us to be more human just so that we can better distinguish ourselves from the inhuman machines that are getting better and better at pretending to be us.
On Wednesday, I hosted a reading of Ibsen's Ghosts, which I've been reworking from the Victorian translation. The power of Ibsen's plays is generated by this deep feeling of contempt for social conformity and deep animal fear of change.