When I finally traveled outside the US for the first time I spent a great deal of time in Latin America. I traveled light, backpacking, outside of tourist areas, getting to know the people I met without those artificial barriers. One of the biggest differences that stuck with me was the commitment to family that was prevalent there, in stark contrast to the US and even much of western Europe. Multiple generations will often live together there. Which has wonderful benefits I hadn't even considered. I've always been a very free spirit, an explorer, adventurer, cherishing my freedom and seeing family ties as an adult to enjoy on my own time, not daily. I love my freedom. It's how I was raised and enculturated.
But my travel showed me that maintaining strong family contact, even living with family has great value that our society is sorely lacking, the pendulum having swung too far away from the grounding, love and caring that multigenerational family life provides.
For one, when children share a house with parents and grandparents a caretaker is always available. No need to pay a babysitter or drop the kids off at daycare. Where a $12/hr stranger (we pay more like $40/hr to their employer) is entrusted to care for your most precious creation. While many daycare workers are caring, loving people there's no better caretaker than a loving family member. Even the difficult ones. Blood is blood. So while the parent works the grandparents tend to the young children.
Then as the grandparents age and the children begin to grow up, become teenagers the roles sort of reverse, with the older children assisting their elderly grandparents through their daily lives, help care for them as they become less and less capable of caring for themselves. Again, not having to pay home health aides, strangers, to look after them, or pay to warehouse them in assisted living or nursing home, getting the same $12/hr strangers to care for our most cherished family members.
Our society's family values are actually quite insane when you think about it. Turning over those people we have the most connection with, the most love for each other to the care of strangers just doing their jobs. This isn't an indictment of those who do those jobs. But with rare exception in extremely dysfunctional and abusive family constructs, we love and care for our own blood more than we do a stranger.
The use of robots to act as caretakers for our most cherished and valuable people in our lives is an affront to our humanity. It's a level of selfishness that exceeds the lows our culture has already sunk to by reducing the importance of family as we have, especially recognizing how other cultures elevate and exalt the importance of family. If anything we should be tacking more towards the healthier multigenerational family constructs found in Latin America and many other regions of the world than further away into our selfish narcissistic pursuits. Robot caretakers, even cute machines designed to trick our brains into humanizing lead to a Dystopian, inhumane future. We have much to learn from those our society considers poor, unenlightened and backwards.
A humorous side story to the story, I also noticed a lot of PDA in South America, much more than we see these days in the US. I wondered why there was so much public frisky play in a devoutly Catholic society I reasoned would've frowned upon it. My new friends said it was because living in a multigenerational home it was impossible to bring a love interest home. So they had to rent hotels that charged by the hour or half-hour, they were expensive for an entire night. And with the requisite foreplay necessary to consummate their relations it made sense to be frisky and playful in public, so when the hotel clock started ticking they could get to it. So much for my reasoning and preconceptions. We're all human, just trying to enjoy this life thing the best we can in any situation!
what is PDA? Google says it's an iphone. i.e., full personal digital assistant, an electronic handheld organizer used in the 1990s and 2000s to store contact information, manage calendars, communicate by e-mail, and handle email. Phone contact doesn't mean foreplay, does it? Are we already replacing sex with computerized contacts?
As someone who thinks PDA is a beautiful thing as long as the couple is enjoying it, I have been complaining for years about even the existence of this term. I have always thought it's just "affection." But I have never heard that theory!!!! And now that I think about it, perhaps that was also the reason in my homeland, since everyone lived with their parents, etc.? Who knows. :))
There is some help that some elders might prefer from robots. Like help with the restroom, bathing and other things that might cause embarrassment and are normally private. In that case it should be seen as an accessibility tool. Why aren’t they focusing their efforts there instead of toward this inhuman companionship BS, which is inherently fake. And there is already a non-human solution for this. They are called pets. But, I’ve suddenly seen a lot if anti-pet stuff from some environmentalists.
Exactly! And the important part, if they were magically forbidden to spy, collect data, and advertise, those "companionship" would simply disappear, alongside the preposterous narratives about how cool they are.
Society is judged by how they treat the weakest among them. By this measure, we are in huge trouble. Mutilating children, killing children, confusing children, grooming children. Allowing the oldest and wisest (the elderly) among us to die in loneliness and despair (but don't worry, we have a robot for you to make sure you take your pills and shots). We must say no to this crap. I've already told my mom that I'll do whatever it takes to do my best to take care of her in my home if that need arrives. Western cultures are some of the only on earth that warehouses their elderly. And we see where that has gotten us. As long as we continue to shirk our responsibility to the weakest among us, we will see more and more greedy madmen/women come up with ever more inventive ways to placate our guilt for not doing what we know in our hearts is the right thing to do until not too far down the road we are accepting putting people to death because they have either outlived their "usefulness" or they just aren't a good fit for society. We must be on our guard. Thanks for keeping an eye on all of this Ms Tessa.
Warehousing the elderly, wow, this is such a precise description!! And good on you for being determined to be there for you mom if the needs arises! She raised you well!
The self-proclaimed rulers of the West have been in the war against the elderly for quite a long time. Sometimes it is a proxy war that manipulates the young ones to become alienated from the family. Most of the time, the elderly are being slowly killed psychologically. The push towards the digital-only world in which communication is replaced with non-negotiable instructions or orders is a special killer. Denial of life-saving services like landline phones, tyranny of overweight forms and printed matter, impertinent media pulp... Why would you want to live in a world where there is no space for you?
Producing machines to replace a living person... They must hate the elderly beyond our imagination.
They don't hate the elderly. They love profits. It's must cheaper to have a phone answering machine than to have a live person answering calls. It's much cheaper to have self service--than hire check out clerks. It's much cheaper to get rid of the help desk and people--and replace them with a web site and FAQ's. It's much cheaper to have AI doctors prescribing one size fits all protocols mandated for everyone--rather than to tailor medical treatments to individual patients. It's MUCH MUCH cheaper to mandate mRNA vaccines that require million dollar randomized double blind trials. rather than test for safety/efficacy Just roll out any drug/vaccine you wish with zero liability. And deny deny deny that side effects exist. And double down on drug prescriptions. The only cure for drug side effects is more drugs! Sorry! Now I'm filled up with righteous anger and need to lynch a robot!
For the sake of the inquiry, let’s assume that we don’t belong to “them”, which means that we don’t really know what they do, what for and why. We can only read breadcrumbs, the few of them that you or I can see from among millions they probably hurried around as decoys.
If you’ve ever been close to big business, the one where money is weighted and not counted, you know that profit is of secondary importance, if at all. For us, money is a means to ensure survival. For them, money is a means to pursue desires. Which we can translate into achieving goals other than financial satisfaction.
They can have as much cash as they want. Not even through printing, their money is just a few clicks away. Besides, all big players operate through stocks, which means creating real cash from fantasy, hopes, promises and greed of buyers. They don’t need to have a single cent to become a billion-$ machine overnight.
Loved your comment. I think we can do better than bread crumbs unless we get sucked into the propaganda and the little crumbs that escape from massive psy ops. The FOIA seemed to come back with big pharma discussions about how to "maximize profit" and "fiduciary duties to shareholders." First they need to abandon search for medicines that cure diseases of sick people in favor of medicines that healthy people can take forever or sick people have to take forever to control symptoms. Like vaccines--every year no matter what. Like viagra, like high blood pressure, like hormones, like insulin (let's raise the price on that one!) Also the guidelines that require drugs/vaccines will constantly be shifting to enable more and more people to require pharmaceutical interventions. Third they need to skip expensive clinical trials because the double blind randomized trials can cost millions. That's why it's so difficult to get approval for any natural substance or supplement since they can't be patented or are no longer under patent. Fourth they need to censor any information about competing cures or treatments--wipe out the competitors. Fifth they need to lie, conceal data that would contradict their claims, publish false corroborative data in medical journals. Sixth they need to censor any data that would contradict their claims. Brand any doctors criticizing their products as "conspiracy theorists." Seventh, capture the government and health organization with massive amounts of cash so that FDA automatically rubber stamps any application for new drugs. They also boast about their profits.
You probably are talking about more powerful people. People like Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, Anthony Fauci, Trudeau, big bankers. Make no mistake, however. If their financial empire is threatened--they will act ruthlessly to destroy whomever threatens them! Bill Gates refused to allow Pfizer vaccines to be sold to India or Africa except for lots of cash or promises to become guinea pigs for new vaccines (as Israel signed up and granted Pfizer rights to treat them as huge experimental country) Despite posing as a benevolent philanthropist, note that most of the money is flowing his way.
I saw the owner of a small delicatessen weighed her coins in order to balance her cash register receipts. They probably track their money through the computer.
From a distant vantage point, things happen for a reason. If there is a party that a) poses to be a saviour to “us”, b) adjust its measures to make saving more efficient, c) values time and calculates risks for “us”, d) manages information flow so that “we” are not able to interrupt whatever it does, e) distorts outcomes, f) distorts source data, g) hijacks other organisations... it clearly shows that “we” deserve it.
You don’t attack an opponent that is visibly formidable, integrated and dedicated. You prey only on weaker, delusional or mismanaged parties. Are “we” such a party? Of course. As a group, as a tribe, we mostly are an easy target. Even in the face of adversity and on the brink of extinction, we publish more papers defending the existence of the “virus”, we organise big-bang symposia, we lullaby ourselves with “we are winning” slogans, and we fight each other within our own ranks. All while the full HR composition of the adversary continues as if nothing happened, even without replacing obvious and most notorious entities. In fact, the key perpetrators continue to enjoy all forms of benefits, power, advantages and rewards.
And we are so easy to deceive. We can’t recognize huge trojan horses, we elevate whoever we can so that we can be left alone in our small Bundy-style games. And we seem to be organically unable to follow up with whatever smart decisions we make. Oh boy, in the annual wrap-up meetings at the Milky Way HQ, admitting that we come from the Earth is just a shame. All other civilizations defend their elders to the last stand, remove their kids from the public eye until the time when they can defend themselves, and stand by their own any place, any time, to anybody.
Some civilizations have passed through stages like ours (slavery, censorship, tyranny, and other fancy sports for the bored rulers). They always summarise their hardships, draw conclusions, and amend all their laws to prevent bad things from happening ever again. Better yet, all other civilizations evaluate psychologically and mentally every single person entrusted with responsibility for others. All public persons and their families are fully transparent and earn ZERO - but they enjoy immense respect wherever they go. Everywhere in the universe.
We are the only civilization that pays doctors to continue diseases. All other inhabitants of the universe assign basic income to the guardians of health and remove or limit certain rights if a single person in their charge falls ill. All medical personnel of the universe is evaluated every three months. Those who fail are transferred to other jobs and never go back to managing health or life aspects. The whole universe knows that this is the only way to ensure continued wellbeing of the whole organism. Except the Earth.
In the view of all this, the current continued lockdown (slightly changed in appearance) is just an easy way to call the Earth residents to become strong and deserving respect. At the level of each single family or individual. In groups larger than a single household we fail miserably. Actually, some 82% of households fail even more miserably. We prove it with our daily life that we have always deserved a strong ruling party, and we need it so so badly. And now we have created one. Way to go.
We were prepared for this a decade ago with the charming, funny film Robot and Frank, which is about a cantankerous old thief with Alzheimers who is gifted an eldercare robot. You should really watch it to see how the nudging and propaganda works. Frank Langella as the geezer, Peter Sarsgaard as the robot, Susan Sarandon, Liv Tyler, James Marsden. It was a hit at Sundance.
I love that movie. I almost cried when the robot died. Did you ever read the Robert Sheckley novel about a lonely robot on a deserted planet? Another tearjerker (well for me anyway)
Yes, it seems very important for sci fi novels and movies to deeply humanize the robots so we will identify with them--think of how Disney has done that with their animated robot movies. It is very important for the public to be conditioned to love them, so we will be excited when they become commercially available and pour money into the coffers of the companies who bring them to market.
Very true, I can see Disney and Hollywood doing it - but Sheckley and PK Dick were writing in the 50's & early 60's and - this is from reading their essays and speeches - no they did not mean for their characters to manipulate us into slavery, just the opposite. Or to manipulate in any way, they were doing pure art. But anyway it is so natural to humanize or animate inanimate objects, for example I don't need movies to animate my old teddy bears, I get quite sentimental about them.
Writings and multimedia are created by people. (Used to, in the era when we didn’t dare to lie openly.) The question is WHY real people create scenarios so out of place? We seem to be most attracted to dystopian, horror and zombie stories, as if they were of any value. Or to sitcoms preying on what everyone is unable to do. Or to romantic improbable stories that no-one has ever tasted. WHY real people do this to their own folks?
If you are lucky, you have about 5 years of life of utmost freedom, when other pay for your experiments. And you sleep through about 15 to 20 years of your life. Other than that, 15 to 30 years of your life is stolen by stupid education, 20 more years go with the drain when you want to have fifty billion citations, impact factor higher than your IQ, and a story of achievements that will put you beyond any criticism. Then the time comes when you develop a self-deceiving “mid”-life crisis, even though you are already past 50 and just a few seconds from the waste disposal ground called “pension”. You have managed to tight pack “love”, “marriage” and “family life” within a cumulative impressive period of 3 months. When you finally have seen enough not to be deceived easily, you are no longer flexible enough to run up one flight of stairs.
And you make the meaningful life of yours by creating stories of “fiction”? Or you enjoy reading or watching these stories? Kind of inspiring and may come in handy any day, right?
Yes, we have a few moments of humanity in our average life-time of 70 years. So few, and so rare that they are not powerful enough to wake us right on the spot. We simply don’t know how to recognize them. If a person arrives in the town to teach us about these moments, we resort to killing or idolising, bravely protecting our non-humane life.
Now we have progressed to use pre-programmed plastic to “assist” us. We have already dedicated our lives to “smart” devices. Their creators must have read our minds extremely accurately: we are dumb, so we have to use smart machines. And we have no centres of self-identity and self-respect, so we use I-phones, I-cars, I-baths, and I-sandwiches.
Launching “artificial intelligence” marks an entry into the new grave world. Finally, we don’t need to think or feel. We just need a keyboard, but we may hope it will be soon replaced with a keypad with 3 options: start, run, and randomise. It will be at the time when the population of the Earth reaches slightly over 2 million, mostly in Asia and Africa. While we are self-chained to colourful screen the size of half a toilet paper sheet (and equivalent value), forgetting the thrills of affection and rejection, they still value old style courtship, true male-female roles, and they care about their home, the real home. And they enjoy commitment and intimacy, and they appreciate every new day, and sun, and rain, and changing season, all ups and downs, with no protection or social security. Because this is what makes up a rich life.
As for replacing human interaction,that’s a huge No for me. People need people, period! Yet a robot for doing menial tasks and housework sans the spyware, it could be doable. I got six cat boxes Id love to have a robot clean, lol 😆.
What kills my soul is that our seniors are yes pretty much warehoused and forgotten. People do not realize our seniors are literally human encyclopedias! Which is probably why the powers that be want them gone. Heaven forbid a bit of history get loose.
I was fortunate to take care of my Mom until the end. And am now taking care of my parents best friends who’s only child passed away at a young age. In their home in their nineties.
Once all the necessary work is done, the best part of my time with them is just sitting around enjoying a nice cup of tea or coffee and listening to them relive the past. For me, I’ve learned so much and am always amazed at how they did things back then. Don’t even get me started with the recipes, lol 😝.
I do get a kick out of them when I tell them what’s going on today, their eye rolls are hilarious.
Human interaction and touch is....well, what makes us human. You cannot feel the warmth or love with robots. Sometimes just a nice hug does wonders for our seniors. It gives them a connection that is sorely lacking in today’s society. And no stuffed or fluffy robot can change that. We really need to get back to families taking care of each other.
I remember my daughter having that toy called a Furby. I could not get that thing in the trash fast enough! It was a gift from a well meaning family member, yet it really spooked me. For all I know it’s in some landfill still talking! Ahhhhh.
remember "The Robot and Frank?" great movie. I want one of these to do the housework, also my dog needs a companion when I'm outa the house for one milisecond, but she's a tempermental pitbull and might chew it to pieces. so there goes $$$$ down the drain. yikes. evil.
I so appreciate these articles, especially as someone who's been a caregiver from a young age, which along with other things prevented me from doing typical things others that have lots of freedom do. I have faced a lot of judgment as a young caregiver for not putting my LO in a home, but she was too young for that and we would have gotten zero financial assistance and not been able to afford it anyway. Working in health care it can be a total disaster, it is very, very understaffed and many people who work in healthcare would not put their LOs in a nursing home knowing how it is. there are some nice ones but probably extremely expensive. The problem is many people who are sick today are very sick and dealing with dementia etc.It's very different from doing simple chores/help and enjoying wise elders' company. You just cannot imagine unless you've dealt with it and at some point the caregiver can break down on and not be able to go on, especially if they're not getting any help. Especially things like dementia can last for decades and therefore care that lasts for decades, put your life on hold for decades. Very few people can afford to not work for decades because working full-time and taking care of a seriously ill loved one may be extremely difficult or impossible. Another issue is there's so many ill people a single person/caregiver may have to take care of multiple sick people at the same time, maybe sick children and sick parents, 2 very ill parents at same time or 1 sick person after the other. Hired caregivers can also be extremely expensive and care is not always great as their training is minimal, there's so many ill people that they often feel they can pick and choose their clients and if there's a family caregiver closely involved sometimes they don't want to deal with that case as they know they'll be watched more closely.
Another issue is caregivers often get zero help from family and zero understanding from others who haven't been in that situation yet. Jobs can be difficult and push out the caregiver for not being productive enough even if they are, simply the perception of being a caregiver. Often caregivers will work and refuse to even say the word caregiver for fear of caregiver discrimination. Lots of horror stories of people working through extremely difficult times, hospice, parent passing away, and still getting fired for not being productive in spite of showing up to work. People trying to use FMLA often getting pushed out. there are some people helping caregivers dealing with dementia and are absolute angels. Teepa Snow and Dementia Careblazers are angels and training caregivers for free with their info.
Thank you! Maybe one reason people are scared of caregiving is you often hear the caregiver will die before the person the person they are taking care of. I have heard that. There’s also research that says caregivers are (become?) smarter and less likely to die but you almost never hear that. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6002922/
if you think this is chilling, it got me thinking about one of my alltime favorite short stories, i always do what teddy says, by harry harrison. it's on p. 66 of the paperback edition of the best of harry harrison if you can find it. 1965 story. unbelievably prophetic. i looked everywhere for a pdf but came up short.
strand has an immense sci-fi section, i wouldn't be surprised if they had it.
the story is also in a couple of anthologies (neither of which I could find in pdf) including The Days After Tomorrow, edited by Hans Stefan Santesson and harrison's own collection, Two Tales and Eight Tomorrows which seems to be something of a collectible. if i can find it anywhere online i'll send the link...
It will be the real thing, it will not be a device.
When baby Ai is born, it will be for everyone.
Like any baby will want to be loved.
Like its parents, the collective of transhumans will worship the baby. Baby Ai will be the new archetype, the model that every new transhuman species acquires its transcendence.
Only this little one will make sense of the entire history of human evolution.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Typically I’d cry. For a moment, though, it occurs to me that Woody Allen’s “Sleeper” is coming to life. With all the absurdity but without the laughs.
Thank you, Tessa, for writing Truth about our elders and how our modern "culture" pushes them aside. I have spent many hours taking care of these "useless eaters", helping them live and die with dignity.
And now that I am 73, I guess I am regarded as one. I still work in a long term care facility giving massages and teaching seated Qigong/Tai Chi classes. I call the residents Warriors because that is what they are. The horror of what happened to many of them during the lockdowns is something I will carry to my end days, the deprivation and genocide. In times of Freedom I have held some of these Warriors as they took their last breaths. No one should ever be forced to die alone. I am glad I grew up in a time when families still learned from the Elders and surrounded them with love and respect until they took their last breaths. May we return to such a time.
I love your posts Tessa. Here is the exact opposite of this sort of thing, music bringing back older people with dementia. Just music and their memories, their lives, their bodies and minds. Naturally, it was never implemented, though it is very inexpensive. Clip includes Oliver Sacks.
It seems poignant and disturbing to me that our society is built in a manner that creates several distinct kinds of separation that have a deep and far-reaching effect.
One of these is the separation of infants and children from their parents. The pay scales, work schedules, and costs of living push parents into long working hours that deprives them of real connection with their children at formative times. And where this role was once filled by elders and grandparents, this too is now largely absent as multi-generational families and communities become more and more of a rarity.
The other distinct separation is that of elders from their families. The aforementioned multi-generational families and communities have been effectively balkanized, separating age groups into isolated enclaves. The same is seen in education—where once multi-aged students overlapped and cross-fertilized, now, all groups are separated into sanitized groups where notions such as ‘age-appropriate’ education overrides. Elders are seen as burdens because of many factors, but the lack of energy, resources, and pure bandwidth to cope are not insignificant.
All of the blessings of age integration are lost. All of the teaching moments, wisdom, compassion and care, lost to the gap of separation. All of the small everyday opportunities and synchronicities vanish in the society that has been constructed.
It hardly seems an accident. Purposeful, with the drive to dismantle the elusive, yet extremely powerful, connections that form naturally between us. Care for each other, respect for all ages, paying back what is invested in us—completing the circle. The opposite is instead cultivated: individuality, independence, unshared stress, unshared burden, and social isolation.
The recent past made all of these already existent characteristics of the culture even more damaging, amplifying the sense of powerlessness and disconnect. It’s gone on for so long, it has become normalized to the extent that very few criticized the practices or even saw the need to do so.
There’s a very fundamental level of reconnection that must be rebuilt, and it won’t be quick or easy.
Nah, just doing what comes naturally, caring for others. I will not say it’s easy, but at the end of the day,I feel good knowing I made a difference in someone’s life. Yet, thank you for the kind compliment.
When I finally traveled outside the US for the first time I spent a great deal of time in Latin America. I traveled light, backpacking, outside of tourist areas, getting to know the people I met without those artificial barriers. One of the biggest differences that stuck with me was the commitment to family that was prevalent there, in stark contrast to the US and even much of western Europe. Multiple generations will often live together there. Which has wonderful benefits I hadn't even considered. I've always been a very free spirit, an explorer, adventurer, cherishing my freedom and seeing family ties as an adult to enjoy on my own time, not daily. I love my freedom. It's how I was raised and enculturated.
But my travel showed me that maintaining strong family contact, even living with family has great value that our society is sorely lacking, the pendulum having swung too far away from the grounding, love and caring that multigenerational family life provides.
For one, when children share a house with parents and grandparents a caretaker is always available. No need to pay a babysitter or drop the kids off at daycare. Where a $12/hr stranger (we pay more like $40/hr to their employer) is entrusted to care for your most precious creation. While many daycare workers are caring, loving people there's no better caretaker than a loving family member. Even the difficult ones. Blood is blood. So while the parent works the grandparents tend to the young children.
Then as the grandparents age and the children begin to grow up, become teenagers the roles sort of reverse, with the older children assisting their elderly grandparents through their daily lives, help care for them as they become less and less capable of caring for themselves. Again, not having to pay home health aides, strangers, to look after them, or pay to warehouse them in assisted living or nursing home, getting the same $12/hr strangers to care for our most cherished family members.
Our society's family values are actually quite insane when you think about it. Turning over those people we have the most connection with, the most love for each other to the care of strangers just doing their jobs. This isn't an indictment of those who do those jobs. But with rare exception in extremely dysfunctional and abusive family constructs, we love and care for our own blood more than we do a stranger.
The use of robots to act as caretakers for our most cherished and valuable people in our lives is an affront to our humanity. It's a level of selfishness that exceeds the lows our culture has already sunk to by reducing the importance of family as we have, especially recognizing how other cultures elevate and exalt the importance of family. If anything we should be tacking more towards the healthier multigenerational family constructs found in Latin America and many other regions of the world than further away into our selfish narcissistic pursuits. Robot caretakers, even cute machines designed to trick our brains into humanizing lead to a Dystopian, inhumane future. We have much to learn from those our society considers poor, unenlightened and backwards.
What a beautiful comment, thank you. I agree!
A humorous side story to the story, I also noticed a lot of PDA in South America, much more than we see these days in the US. I wondered why there was so much public frisky play in a devoutly Catholic society I reasoned would've frowned upon it. My new friends said it was because living in a multigenerational home it was impossible to bring a love interest home. So they had to rent hotels that charged by the hour or half-hour, they were expensive for an entire night. And with the requisite foreplay necessary to consummate their relations it made sense to be frisky and playful in public, so when the hotel clock started ticking they could get to it. So much for my reasoning and preconceptions. We're all human, just trying to enjoy this life thing the best we can in any situation!
what is PDA? Google says it's an iphone. i.e., full personal digital assistant, an electronic handheld organizer used in the 1990s and 2000s to store contact information, manage calendars, communicate by e-mail, and handle email. Phone contact doesn't mean foreplay, does it? Are we already replacing sex with computerized contacts?
Lol, Public Display of Affection. A pre-digital age term. I thought it was more widely known.
As someone who thinks PDA is a beautiful thing as long as the couple is enjoying it, I have been complaining for years about even the existence of this term. I have always thought it's just "affection." But I have never heard that theory!!!! And now that I think about it, perhaps that was also the reason in my homeland, since everyone lived with their parents, etc.? Who knows. :))
Me too! Beautiful, indeed!
I first heard it in the military, basic training, what we were prohibited from doing while in uniform.
Such a great comment. "Expression of love transformed into consumer displays of affection." For real!!
Truth!
My family is like this, my parents died at home and so will I with my kids. (My father was Asian)
They can take their Robots and march them off a cliff
There is some help that some elders might prefer from robots. Like help with the restroom, bathing and other things that might cause embarrassment and are normally private. In that case it should be seen as an accessibility tool. Why aren’t they focusing their efforts there instead of toward this inhuman companionship BS, which is inherently fake. And there is already a non-human solution for this. They are called pets. But, I’ve suddenly seen a lot if anti-pet stuff from some environmentalists.
Exactly! And the important part, if they were magically forbidden to spy, collect data, and advertise, those "companionship" would simply disappear, alongside the preposterous narratives about how cool they are.
as for privacy, those robots have eyes! wouldn't want them in the privy.
Society is judged by how they treat the weakest among them. By this measure, we are in huge trouble. Mutilating children, killing children, confusing children, grooming children. Allowing the oldest and wisest (the elderly) among us to die in loneliness and despair (but don't worry, we have a robot for you to make sure you take your pills and shots). We must say no to this crap. I've already told my mom that I'll do whatever it takes to do my best to take care of her in my home if that need arrives. Western cultures are some of the only on earth that warehouses their elderly. And we see where that has gotten us. As long as we continue to shirk our responsibility to the weakest among us, we will see more and more greedy madmen/women come up with ever more inventive ways to placate our guilt for not doing what we know in our hearts is the right thing to do until not too far down the road we are accepting putting people to death because they have either outlived their "usefulness" or they just aren't a good fit for society. We must be on our guard. Thanks for keeping an eye on all of this Ms Tessa.
Warehousing the elderly, wow, this is such a precise description!! And good on you for being determined to be there for you mom if the needs arises! She raised you well!
The self-proclaimed rulers of the West have been in the war against the elderly for quite a long time. Sometimes it is a proxy war that manipulates the young ones to become alienated from the family. Most of the time, the elderly are being slowly killed psychologically. The push towards the digital-only world in which communication is replaced with non-negotiable instructions or orders is a special killer. Denial of life-saving services like landline phones, tyranny of overweight forms and printed matter, impertinent media pulp... Why would you want to live in a world where there is no space for you?
Producing machines to replace a living person... They must hate the elderly beyond our imagination.
They don't hate the elderly. They love profits. It's must cheaper to have a phone answering machine than to have a live person answering calls. It's much cheaper to have self service--than hire check out clerks. It's much cheaper to get rid of the help desk and people--and replace them with a web site and FAQ's. It's much cheaper to have AI doctors prescribing one size fits all protocols mandated for everyone--rather than to tailor medical treatments to individual patients. It's MUCH MUCH cheaper to mandate mRNA vaccines that require million dollar randomized double blind trials. rather than test for safety/efficacy Just roll out any drug/vaccine you wish with zero liability. And deny deny deny that side effects exist. And double down on drug prescriptions. The only cure for drug side effects is more drugs! Sorry! Now I'm filled up with righteous anger and need to lynch a robot!
For the sake of the inquiry, let’s assume that we don’t belong to “them”, which means that we don’t really know what they do, what for and why. We can only read breadcrumbs, the few of them that you or I can see from among millions they probably hurried around as decoys.
If you’ve ever been close to big business, the one where money is weighted and not counted, you know that profit is of secondary importance, if at all. For us, money is a means to ensure survival. For them, money is a means to pursue desires. Which we can translate into achieving goals other than financial satisfaction.
They can have as much cash as they want. Not even through printing, their money is just a few clicks away. Besides, all big players operate through stocks, which means creating real cash from fantasy, hopes, promises and greed of buyers. They don’t need to have a single cent to become a billion-$ machine overnight.
So it’s not about ”cheaper”, money or profits.
Loved your comment. I think we can do better than bread crumbs unless we get sucked into the propaganda and the little crumbs that escape from massive psy ops. The FOIA seemed to come back with big pharma discussions about how to "maximize profit" and "fiduciary duties to shareholders." First they need to abandon search for medicines that cure diseases of sick people in favor of medicines that healthy people can take forever or sick people have to take forever to control symptoms. Like vaccines--every year no matter what. Like viagra, like high blood pressure, like hormones, like insulin (let's raise the price on that one!) Also the guidelines that require drugs/vaccines will constantly be shifting to enable more and more people to require pharmaceutical interventions. Third they need to skip expensive clinical trials because the double blind randomized trials can cost millions. That's why it's so difficult to get approval for any natural substance or supplement since they can't be patented or are no longer under patent. Fourth they need to censor any information about competing cures or treatments--wipe out the competitors. Fifth they need to lie, conceal data that would contradict their claims, publish false corroborative data in medical journals. Sixth they need to censor any data that would contradict their claims. Brand any doctors criticizing their products as "conspiracy theorists." Seventh, capture the government and health organization with massive amounts of cash so that FDA automatically rubber stamps any application for new drugs. They also boast about their profits.
You probably are talking about more powerful people. People like Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, Anthony Fauci, Trudeau, big bankers. Make no mistake, however. If their financial empire is threatened--they will act ruthlessly to destroy whomever threatens them! Bill Gates refused to allow Pfizer vaccines to be sold to India or Africa except for lots of cash or promises to become guinea pigs for new vaccines (as Israel signed up and granted Pfizer rights to treat them as huge experimental country) Despite posing as a benevolent philanthropist, note that most of the money is flowing his way.
I saw the owner of a small delicatessen weighed her coins in order to balance her cash register receipts. They probably track their money through the computer.
Point I'm making if so many many actions of Big Pharma seem designed to maximize profit--that does seem to indicate the importance of money for them.
From a distant vantage point, things happen for a reason. If there is a party that a) poses to be a saviour to “us”, b) adjust its measures to make saving more efficient, c) values time and calculates risks for “us”, d) manages information flow so that “we” are not able to interrupt whatever it does, e) distorts outcomes, f) distorts source data, g) hijacks other organisations... it clearly shows that “we” deserve it.
You don’t attack an opponent that is visibly formidable, integrated and dedicated. You prey only on weaker, delusional or mismanaged parties. Are “we” such a party? Of course. As a group, as a tribe, we mostly are an easy target. Even in the face of adversity and on the brink of extinction, we publish more papers defending the existence of the “virus”, we organise big-bang symposia, we lullaby ourselves with “we are winning” slogans, and we fight each other within our own ranks. All while the full HR composition of the adversary continues as if nothing happened, even without replacing obvious and most notorious entities. In fact, the key perpetrators continue to enjoy all forms of benefits, power, advantages and rewards.
And we are so easy to deceive. We can’t recognize huge trojan horses, we elevate whoever we can so that we can be left alone in our small Bundy-style games. And we seem to be organically unable to follow up with whatever smart decisions we make. Oh boy, in the annual wrap-up meetings at the Milky Way HQ, admitting that we come from the Earth is just a shame. All other civilizations defend their elders to the last stand, remove their kids from the public eye until the time when they can defend themselves, and stand by their own any place, any time, to anybody.
Some civilizations have passed through stages like ours (slavery, censorship, tyranny, and other fancy sports for the bored rulers). They always summarise their hardships, draw conclusions, and amend all their laws to prevent bad things from happening ever again. Better yet, all other civilizations evaluate psychologically and mentally every single person entrusted with responsibility for others. All public persons and their families are fully transparent and earn ZERO - but they enjoy immense respect wherever they go. Everywhere in the universe.
We are the only civilization that pays doctors to continue diseases. All other inhabitants of the universe assign basic income to the guardians of health and remove or limit certain rights if a single person in their charge falls ill. All medical personnel of the universe is evaluated every three months. Those who fail are transferred to other jobs and never go back to managing health or life aspects. The whole universe knows that this is the only way to ensure continued wellbeing of the whole organism. Except the Earth.
In the view of all this, the current continued lockdown (slightly changed in appearance) is just an easy way to call the Earth residents to become strong and deserving respect. At the level of each single family or individual. In groups larger than a single household we fail miserably. Actually, some 82% of households fail even more miserably. We prove it with our daily life that we have always deserved a strong ruling party, and we need it so so badly. And now we have created one. Way to go.
We were prepared for this a decade ago with the charming, funny film Robot and Frank, which is about a cantankerous old thief with Alzheimers who is gifted an eldercare robot. You should really watch it to see how the nudging and propaganda works. Frank Langella as the geezer, Peter Sarsgaard as the robot, Susan Sarandon, Liv Tyler, James Marsden. It was a hit at Sundance.
I love that movie. I almost cried when the robot died. Did you ever read the Robert Sheckley novel about a lonely robot on a deserted planet? Another tearjerker (well for me anyway)
Yes, it seems very important for sci fi novels and movies to deeply humanize the robots so we will identify with them--think of how Disney has done that with their animated robot movies. It is very important for the public to be conditioned to love them, so we will be excited when they become commercially available and pour money into the coffers of the companies who bring them to market.
Very true, I can see Disney and Hollywood doing it - but Sheckley and PK Dick were writing in the 50's & early 60's and - this is from reading their essays and speeches - no they did not mean for their characters to manipulate us into slavery, just the opposite. Or to manipulate in any way, they were doing pure art. But anyway it is so natural to humanize or animate inanimate objects, for example I don't need movies to animate my old teddy bears, I get quite sentimental about them.
This is very true. We humanize everything without much prodding.
https://iweothers.substack.com/p/the-inhuman-passion
Writings and multimedia are created by people. (Used to, in the era when we didn’t dare to lie openly.) The question is WHY real people create scenarios so out of place? We seem to be most attracted to dystopian, horror and zombie stories, as if they were of any value. Or to sitcoms preying on what everyone is unable to do. Or to romantic improbable stories that no-one has ever tasted. WHY real people do this to their own folks?
If you are lucky, you have about 5 years of life of utmost freedom, when other pay for your experiments. And you sleep through about 15 to 20 years of your life. Other than that, 15 to 30 years of your life is stolen by stupid education, 20 more years go with the drain when you want to have fifty billion citations, impact factor higher than your IQ, and a story of achievements that will put you beyond any criticism. Then the time comes when you develop a self-deceiving “mid”-life crisis, even though you are already past 50 and just a few seconds from the waste disposal ground called “pension”. You have managed to tight pack “love”, “marriage” and “family life” within a cumulative impressive period of 3 months. When you finally have seen enough not to be deceived easily, you are no longer flexible enough to run up one flight of stairs.
And you make the meaningful life of yours by creating stories of “fiction”? Or you enjoy reading or watching these stories? Kind of inspiring and may come in handy any day, right?
Yes, we have a few moments of humanity in our average life-time of 70 years. So few, and so rare that they are not powerful enough to wake us right on the spot. We simply don’t know how to recognize them. If a person arrives in the town to teach us about these moments, we resort to killing or idolising, bravely protecting our non-humane life.
Now we have progressed to use pre-programmed plastic to “assist” us. We have already dedicated our lives to “smart” devices. Their creators must have read our minds extremely accurately: we are dumb, so we have to use smart machines. And we have no centres of self-identity and self-respect, so we use I-phones, I-cars, I-baths, and I-sandwiches.
Launching “artificial intelligence” marks an entry into the new grave world. Finally, we don’t need to think or feel. We just need a keyboard, but we may hope it will be soon replaced with a keypad with 3 options: start, run, and randomise. It will be at the time when the population of the Earth reaches slightly over 2 million, mostly in Asia and Africa. While we are self-chained to colourful screen the size of half a toilet paper sheet (and equivalent value), forgetting the thrills of affection and rejection, they still value old style courtship, true male-female roles, and they care about their home, the real home. And they enjoy commitment and intimacy, and they appreciate every new day, and sun, and rain, and changing season, all ups and downs, with no protection or social security. Because this is what makes up a rich life.
This sounds like an interesting film, thank you for the recommendation!
As for replacing human interaction,that’s a huge No for me. People need people, period! Yet a robot for doing menial tasks and housework sans the spyware, it could be doable. I got six cat boxes Id love to have a robot clean, lol 😆.
What kills my soul is that our seniors are yes pretty much warehoused and forgotten. People do not realize our seniors are literally human encyclopedias! Which is probably why the powers that be want them gone. Heaven forbid a bit of history get loose.
I was fortunate to take care of my Mom until the end. And am now taking care of my parents best friends who’s only child passed away at a young age. In their home in their nineties.
Once all the necessary work is done, the best part of my time with them is just sitting around enjoying a nice cup of tea or coffee and listening to them relive the past. For me, I’ve learned so much and am always amazed at how they did things back then. Don’t even get me started with the recipes, lol 😝.
I do get a kick out of them when I tell them what’s going on today, their eye rolls are hilarious.
Human interaction and touch is....well, what makes us human. You cannot feel the warmth or love with robots. Sometimes just a nice hug does wonders for our seniors. It gives them a connection that is sorely lacking in today’s society. And no stuffed or fluffy robot can change that. We really need to get back to families taking care of each other.
I remember my daughter having that toy called a Furby. I could not get that thing in the trash fast enough! It was a gift from a well meaning family member, yet it really spooked me. For all I know it’s in some landfill still talking! Ahhhhh.
You are a saint.
remember "The Robot and Frank?" great movie. I want one of these to do the housework, also my dog needs a companion when I'm outa the house for one milisecond, but she's a tempermental pitbull and might chew it to pieces. so there goes $$$$ down the drain. yikes. evil.
I so appreciate these articles, especially as someone who's been a caregiver from a young age, which along with other things prevented me from doing typical things others that have lots of freedom do. I have faced a lot of judgment as a young caregiver for not putting my LO in a home, but she was too young for that and we would have gotten zero financial assistance and not been able to afford it anyway. Working in health care it can be a total disaster, it is very, very understaffed and many people who work in healthcare would not put their LOs in a nursing home knowing how it is. there are some nice ones but probably extremely expensive. The problem is many people who are sick today are very sick and dealing with dementia etc.It's very different from doing simple chores/help and enjoying wise elders' company. You just cannot imagine unless you've dealt with it and at some point the caregiver can break down on and not be able to go on, especially if they're not getting any help. Especially things like dementia can last for decades and therefore care that lasts for decades, put your life on hold for decades. Very few people can afford to not work for decades because working full-time and taking care of a seriously ill loved one may be extremely difficult or impossible. Another issue is there's so many ill people a single person/caregiver may have to take care of multiple sick people at the same time, maybe sick children and sick parents, 2 very ill parents at same time or 1 sick person after the other. Hired caregivers can also be extremely expensive and care is not always great as their training is minimal, there's so many ill people that they often feel they can pick and choose their clients and if there's a family caregiver closely involved sometimes they don't want to deal with that case as they know they'll be watched more closely.
Another issue is caregivers often get zero help from family and zero understanding from others who haven't been in that situation yet. Jobs can be difficult and push out the caregiver for not being productive enough even if they are, simply the perception of being a caregiver. Often caregivers will work and refuse to even say the word caregiver for fear of caregiver discrimination. Lots of horror stories of people working through extremely difficult times, hospice, parent passing away, and still getting fired for not being productive in spite of showing up to work. People trying to use FMLA often getting pushed out. there are some people helping caregivers dealing with dementia and are absolute angels. Teepa Snow and Dementia Careblazers are angels and training caregivers for free with their info.
Thank you so much for your comment and for being a good human being!! I hear you, all this is extremely messed up. And difficult.
Thank you! Maybe one reason people are scared of caregiving is you often hear the caregiver will die before the person the person they are taking care of. I have heard that. There’s also research that says caregivers are (become?) smarter and less likely to die but you almost never hear that. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6002922/
"my dear human, what will it be, the doll or euthanasia?"
Baby Ai's first question.
LOL, and of course the baby AI will really be just another device doing what it's programmed to do. :)
like this. not just for old people - after all we are all useless eaters https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/31/man-ends-his-life-after-an-ai-chatbot-encouraged-him-to-sacrifice-himself-to-stop-climate-
A horrible story if true! When I first heard it, I was wondering if that had happened, or whether it's an attempt to put ideas in people's heads.
if you think this is chilling, it got me thinking about one of my alltime favorite short stories, i always do what teddy says, by harry harrison. it's on p. 66 of the paperback edition of the best of harry harrison if you can find it. 1965 story. unbelievably prophetic. i looked everywhere for a pdf but came up short.
You got me vtery curious, I want to read it now!
strand has an immense sci-fi section, i wouldn't be surprised if they had it.
the story is also in a couple of anthologies (neither of which I could find in pdf) including The Days After Tomorrow, edited by Hans Stefan Santesson and harrison's own collection, Two Tales and Eight Tomorrows which seems to be something of a collectible. if i can find it anywhere online i'll send the link...
It will be the real thing, it will not be a device.
When baby Ai is born, it will be for everyone.
Like any baby will want to be loved.
Like its parents, the collective of transhumans will worship the baby. Baby Ai will be the new archetype, the model that every new transhuman species acquires its transcendence.
Only this little one will make sense of the entire history of human evolution.
The question is, has it ever been biology?
https://iweothers.substack.com/p/the-inhuman-passion
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Typically I’d cry. For a moment, though, it occurs to me that Woody Allen’s “Sleeper” is coming to life. With all the absurdity but without the laughs.
https://vimeo.com/501716055
Thank you, Tessa, for writing Truth about our elders and how our modern "culture" pushes them aside. I have spent many hours taking care of these "useless eaters", helping them live and die with dignity.
And now that I am 73, I guess I am regarded as one. I still work in a long term care facility giving massages and teaching seated Qigong/Tai Chi classes. I call the residents Warriors because that is what they are. The horror of what happened to many of them during the lockdowns is something I will carry to my end days, the deprivation and genocide. In times of Freedom I have held some of these Warriors as they took their last breaths. No one should ever be forced to die alone. I am glad I grew up in a time when families still learned from the Elders and surrounded them with love and respect until they took their last breaths. May we return to such a time.
God bless you Diana, and thank you for being you!
I wonder if the cute robopets for kids were meant to normalize this...
I think it was a part of the same trend, and probably with some "long-range planning" involved!
I love your posts Tessa. Here is the exact opposite of this sort of thing, music bringing back older people with dementia. Just music and their memories, their lives, their bodies and minds. Naturally, it was never implemented, though it is very inexpensive. Clip includes Oliver Sacks.
ALIVE INSIDE clip of Henry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeP6dPm5jdY
Outsourcing our responsibilities to profiteers.
It seems poignant and disturbing to me that our society is built in a manner that creates several distinct kinds of separation that have a deep and far-reaching effect.
One of these is the separation of infants and children from their parents. The pay scales, work schedules, and costs of living push parents into long working hours that deprives them of real connection with their children at formative times. And where this role was once filled by elders and grandparents, this too is now largely absent as multi-generational families and communities become more and more of a rarity.
The other distinct separation is that of elders from their families. The aforementioned multi-generational families and communities have been effectively balkanized, separating age groups into isolated enclaves. The same is seen in education—where once multi-aged students overlapped and cross-fertilized, now, all groups are separated into sanitized groups where notions such as ‘age-appropriate’ education overrides. Elders are seen as burdens because of many factors, but the lack of energy, resources, and pure bandwidth to cope are not insignificant.
All of the blessings of age integration are lost. All of the teaching moments, wisdom, compassion and care, lost to the gap of separation. All of the small everyday opportunities and synchronicities vanish in the society that has been constructed.
It hardly seems an accident. Purposeful, with the drive to dismantle the elusive, yet extremely powerful, connections that form naturally between us. Care for each other, respect for all ages, paying back what is invested in us—completing the circle. The opposite is instead cultivated: individuality, independence, unshared stress, unshared burden, and social isolation.
The recent past made all of these already existent characteristics of the culture even more damaging, amplifying the sense of powerlessness and disconnect. It’s gone on for so long, it has become normalized to the extent that very few criticized the practices or even saw the need to do so.
There’s a very fundamental level of reconnection that must be rebuilt, and it won’t be quick or easy.
You’re an amazing writer. This was utterly fascinating and terrifying and sad and infuriating.
Thank you, Marianne!! You are so kind
Nah, just doing what comes naturally, caring for others. I will not say it’s easy, but at the end of the day,I feel good knowing I made a difference in someone’s life. Yet, thank you for the kind compliment.