To ask a human to not be human is like asking fried chicken to not contribute to heart disease.

Individual humans are going to make mistakes, from misplaced feelings, faulty thinking, rash decisions and actions. When any group of humans (short of all humanity) identify as one, mistakes (and their impact) are multiplied. Where emotion and ego are factored in, reason is diminished.

Our nation is essentially divided into only two factions. One reasons from ego, the other reasons from emotion and ego, and no one opts to reason from objective expertise and/or consensus fact. Emotion and ego will always trump ego alone, yet ego alone continues to be surprised.

Fried Chicken.

To ask a human to not consider emotion and ego is to ask a human to not be human. In our efforts toward objectivity and fairness, we have created a bureaucracy guided by consensus and/or powerful emotion and ego. The bureaucracy is the heart disease and the emotion and ego is the Fried Chicken. It smells good. It looks good. It most definitely tastes good. And it even sounds good (crisping up in that cast iron skillet on the stove) and feels good; (who doesn't love licking greasy crispy bits off their fingers). In excess, as a steady diet, it is not so good. But when we are amongst other like-minded fried chicken fiends and the fervor takes hold, we are likely not going to stop and check in with our heart or our arteries before grabbing that third and fourth leg and thigh. At best we might scoop some more mashed potatoes (plant-based, right?) and milk gravy to maybe temporarily curb our desire for that fifth and sixth piece.

I do not see a day in my lifetime when we will choose to live without our KFC, our Popeye's, our Cane's, Bojangles, Chick Fil'A. Yet there are many individuals who have learned to moderate; reduce the risk. Regarding our politics, (that in their current state inhibit progress), I can do the same; I can moderate by de-identifying and learning to think for myself. But as long as there are powerful factions (or powerful individuals) operating from emotion and ego (or even ego alone), my relatively powerless individual thoughts and actions will remain relatively powerless. Again, emotion and ego will always trump ego alone; and power is fed by ego, driven by emotion and fortified with louder and greater numbers. Individual thought from objective expertise and/or consensus fact does not stand a chance. We do love our fried chicken.

When I think about recent fried chicken feeding frenzies, (January 6, 2021, the NRA convention in Houston, the Texas Republican convention, anywhere and anywhen Trump speaks), I know that in our current arc there is no way to inject objective expertise or consensus fact into the proceedings, and I see no way around all that greasy emotion and ego. I am afraid that we are evolving too slowly.

As long as our politics are human, we will continue to contribute to a misguided bureaucracy. And I believe this misguided bureaucracy is a road to perdition. I don’t have an easy answer.

I am pondering if, perhaps, maybe, the hard, difficult, complex answer involves some degree of artificial intelligence to steer us toward actual Justice instead of our confused concept of bureaucratic fairness.

Because our politics determine our direction and ultimately our future, and because (as humans) our capacity for learning has exceeded our ability to judiciously apply that learning, (our intelligence exceeds our wisdom), I believe we have no choice but to bypass ego and emotion in our politics and turn to artificial intelligence to guide us toward (not merely survival, but) a thriving coexistence with All of Life. The following words are from the 2021 book “AI 2041” by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan:

“In just the past five years, AI has beaten human champions in Go, poker, and the video game Dota 2, and has become so powerful that it learns chess in four hours and plays invincibly against humans. But it's not just games it excels at. In 2020, AI solved a fifty-year-old riddle of biology called protein folding. The technology has surpassed humans in speech and object recognition, served up “digital humans” with uncanny realism in both appearance and speech, and earned passing marks on college entrance exams and medical licensing exams. AI is outperforming judges in fair and consistent sentencing, and radiologists in diagnosing lung cancer, as well as powering drones that will change the future of delivery, agriculture, and warfare. Finally, AI is enabling autonomous vehicles that drive more safely on highways than humans.”

So, why not our politics?

Fried Chicken makes this a hard answer. The Colonel will not go quietly.