I Mage a Nation

conjuring your i-land in a mind without borders

This episode is about how to mage our heartlands into existence. If you have a chance, listen while you’re looking at the glorious pictures and videos and photos and links. From the AI extravaganza of What Is a Name, Really? I’ve included a dozen or more scandalously gorgeous pictures, each more beautiful than anything has a right to be. I had to choose among dozens that included piano porn and Sasquatch playing chess with a mage, kitties on mushrooms, and mushrooms on women:

On the twelfth (notice the hidden elf) day of Christmas, my true love gave to me a fun, frisky video by Sane Francisco aka Micropixie aka Single Beige Female. It’s called 50 Shades of Beige and I highly recommend watching twice and just listening once. I did:

Merry Christmas from Sane Francisco ✨🎄✨

And to celebrate the delightful Sane Francisco’s 50 Shades of Beige, here are studies of beige on beige on beige. You’ll never see beige the same way. Imagine this beige baby floating into the new world you’ve maged into being, the world you’re cradling and tenderly touching on its beige face with your multi-beige many-fingered hand, and bursting into life as an I-ce goddess and one-I squid:

And I-mage this handsome pair stalking the spheres of beige and of ambers, purring up a storm … literally:

Apropos to an i-land in a mind without borders, What’s in a Name, Really? writes:

I find ideas by thinking of us all connected. Suddenly your ideas are mine and mine are yours. If you are in a state of receptive sharing, I believe your ideas will be boundless and innumerable.

Thinking of us all connected, even without the Internet.

We are all connected.

The ultimate mage-makers Ursula K. LeGuin and Orson Scott Card both wrote about this connection sometimes called the ansible or a mycelium network of intertwingling.

Everything Voluntary Jack, who is starting a forum of free friends, quoted Eric Hoffer in saying, “There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate whenever they meet. The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way.” Let’s look at this idea along with more piano porn and Sasquatch and lion ladies:

And if you want to dress your ‘stack for excess, here is the full AI Image Extravaganza:

An Ai Image Extravaganza.

Victory Palace inspired this post with his poem on ImagiNation: the Only Nation:

ImagiNation: the only Nation

The only nation 
I am a citizen of
is the ImagiNation.

Sorry,
no offense.
You can have 
all your other (stag)nations. 

Oh say, can you see,
the only nations they’re
forcing us to live in are:

vaccination
condemnation
indoctrination
alienation
and ultimately
extermination?

Because
all these nations
are subject matter experts in:

procrastination
incrimination
impersonation
discrimination
and ultimately
urination
on our divinely 
given rights.

And 
for all their 
pompous circus dance
the only nation
they want to 
send us to 
is the 
ruiNation.

And to go with this, Victory Palace has his own phenomenal art, including the picture I used on my website for A Course in Miracles:

I’ve hoped that practical dreamers like sci-fi writers might embody their maged worlds, mage the flesh into words, and clothe them like they’re all grown up. In the Substack called Jumping Timelines, Cat Thompson did this with Letters from the Future by 5 Cats & a Chick. Thanks to the Diva for recommending! She writes:

Letters from the future

She includes a postcard from 2040 and a steampunk doubledecker train to die for:

But to bring down the AI vibe, the astute reader shaqer rahman rashid sent a link for Charles Upton on Can Artificial Intelligence Really Write Poetry? His conclusion is that AI may master the techniques of expressive language, although this is still far from manifested, but in the end, it has nothing to express. Poetry is a verb not a noun, a process not a product. We are maging ourselves into being through the poem.

It reminded me of the bumper sticker that says, “Drum machines have no soul.” Although when words are fed into an art program to commingle and copulate with an orgy of I-mages, is it a visual poem that’s magicked together? Could wordplay be the palette for a new generation of those with something to say? Maybe it will be like fishing in the deep waters of the unbordered mind surrounding their I-land.

But instead of any of these delights, how do they plan to use AI? A local candidate for county office wrote in my local newspaper:

One area where AI can make a significant impact is in improving the delivery of government services. By harnessing AI algorithms and machine learning, we can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of various public services, ensuring our residents receive the highest level of support and assistance.

One aspect of government services that can benefit greatly from AI is customer service. AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can be utilized to provide round-the-clock support, answering common inquiries, and guiding residents through various processes.

Anyone who has tried to navigate through the county’s website has seen how labyrinthine government documentation can be. We shouldn’t need technical expertise to get critical information from government websites. All of the information on a county website can be used to train a large language model (LLM) / Generative AI Chatbot. This information could then be accessed by residents in a simple, straightforward and conversational manner.

Feeling suicidal? Talk to our Chatbot! Your foodstamps were cancelled? Here’s a repetitious loop to lodge your complaint. Need a restraining order for that violent ex? Let me spell out ‘no’ in a simple, straightforward and conversational manner.

In the world I’d like to mage, our highest gifts are given to the world. They were never ours to begin with. Maybe we spread tokens of affirmation in return. But we earn our keep, the roof over our heads, through simple acts of service, taking care of one another. Being a real voice, a warm body, a true soul.

Listening to the nuances, what someone isn’t saying. Leading us all out of the labyrinth of government documentation, what David Graeber calls The Utopia of Rules: on Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy. Example in point:

And just when I thought I better wrap up this post, Gavin Mounsey came along to remind me that photography was once seen as a threat that was going to make art obsolete. In his post, December’s Delight, he quotes John Burroughs in saying:

December's Delight

And then he includes, as always, some catch-your-breath photos of the ‘sacred fractal geometries’ of shells, cones and snowflakes with bonus turkey tail mushrooms:

He quotes from his book, Recipes For Reciprocity: The Regenerative Way From Seed To Table:

𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐚 ‘𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞’ 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐚𝐫 𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐭𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐬. 𝐈𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐠𝐨𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐥 𝐚𝐬 𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐬, 𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐝𝐨𝐦 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬 𝐮𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐞, 𝐚𝐛𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐬𝐲𝐦𝐛𝐢𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬.

And that, my friends, is the Word of God for those like our AI wizard who writes:

Bugged out, even thinking of using AI. I get it. I am a person who loves a rock in my pocket. I love nature.

Let’s have it all! Nature is magic and magic is our nature. We don’t have to choose.

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If you’re still up for more, more, more, you excessive creature, here’s

In this far-ranging video, I look at whether AI art is Art, an article by M T Xen on Imaginal Hygiene, and a TED talk by Jill Bolte Taylor on My Stroke of Insight. Rob Brezsny looks at imagination as the magic wand that shapes your future and Caroline Casey says, "Imagination lays the tracks for the reality train to follow." The right side of the brain is what A Course in Miracles describes as revelation, with the linear left side describing miracles. I posit imagination as the corpus callosum between the two, passing love notes.

and The Utopian Imagination on Naomi Klein:

In Russell Brand's interview, Naomi asks "What does the world look like after we win?" She states that we need a vision, a revival of the utopian imagination. I talk about the arrogance of hopelessness, and propose AA groups for activists addicted to it. We need to find our people, who take seriously that we will win and develop pragmatic visions. I quote Ursula K. LeGuin's speech that "Hard times are coming ... We'll need writers who can remember freedom." I suggest that our utopia-planning committee fall madly in love with each other and rigorously challenge ideas while adoring the person—something for which Russell's viewers are perfect.