A note up top: This is an essay about discerning a pattern of thinking. I link that pattern to expressions both trivial and enormous, horrific and mundane, historical and current day. **I am explicitly not saying these things are equivalent in importance or effect; I am saying they share a pattern of thinking that enables them**. Also, content warnings for discussions of religion, genocide, AI, and bigotry, not necessarily in that order. * * * We lost an important understanding when we changed satan from a position to an individual. Originally, _satan_ was a role, as demonstrated clearly in the Book of Job, akin to the much later role of “Devil’s Advocate”. They were _a_ tempter. A rationalizer. In the Roman Catholic Church, the devil’s advocate is the dissenter, arguing against elevating candidates to sainthood. And, most importantly, the _satan_ was not the one who committed evil. Even during the Temptation, the satan does nothing but show illusions and make claims. The ones who actually _harm_ Job, the ones who actually _harm_ Yeshua… that’s humans. That’s _us_. Doing harm and causing needless suffering. That’s an important point. And we still haven’t learned it. * * * If you’re thinking that I’m sliding over some points in Scripture, some technical bit, then you’re absolutely right; that is part of the point. A satan is a rules-lawyer, arguing that there is a technicality, a reason, some loophole. That it doesn’t mean what it clearly means. Saying that it’s not _really_ against the rules, because Reasons. When Yeshua said (1) “show others the grace, respect, empathy, and love you hope to receive,” that role was taken by the elders who tried to trap him in semantic wordplay. Not to clarify, not to make the meaning more clear, but because they wanted to “test him,” to wiggle their way out of the implications. They wanted to make someone else “not people”, to not “count”. To make it okay to be cruel to others. And we’re still doing it. * * * Anthropic recently updated some of its terms, including what is breathlessly reported as “trying to protect Claude’s feelings.” > Anthropic announced it would prohibit “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward our models.” This will primarily be enforced by Claude preemptively ending the conversation. The mocking is explicit, the argument simple: AIs are not conscious, and so this is a laughable and unneeded idea. See also It is Peanut Butter Jelly Time For Language As much as I talk about the nature of consciousness, proving it in others, and whether or not it exists in other species and entities (or our own) — and I talk about it a lot — at one very important level, here it is utterly and completely _beside the point_. Because _the very triviality of this example is why it’s important_. **It is the equivalent of your date being rude to a waiter.** Anthropic’s stance tells us nothing about whether or not AI/LLMs are conscious. Our response tells us much about ourselves. Again. * * * Our species has a very, _very_ poor track record here **with our own species**. I’m writing and posting this on 12 October, 2026, which is both “Indigenous People’s Day” and “Christopher Columbus Day” in the United States. Exactly 534 years ago, Columbus encountered the native peoples, and described them as > “a people who could be more easily freed and converted to our holy faith by love than by force … They should be good servants and intelligent, for I observed that they quickly took in what was said to them, and I believe that they would easily be made Christians, as it appeared to me that they had no religion.” Within two days, Columbus had changed his tune and was thinking about subjugating them all by force. > “these people are very simple as regards the use of arms, as your Highnesses will see from the seven that I caused to be taken, to bring home and learn our language and return; unless your Highnesses should order them all to be brought to Castille, or to be kept as captives on the same island; for with fifty men they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them.” The next February, after his return to Europe, Columbus promises in a letter that the Spanish rulers can take by force from the Indigenous people “as many slaves as they choose to send for, all heathens.” * * * There is nothing special, other than this anniversary of the date, in Columbus’ quick justification of violence and cruelty toward other humans. Pick your horror, in this country or another. The Cultural Revolution, Rwanda, the explicit racism of immigration law in the US from its inception, the Holocaust, the genocide in Palestine, The Trail of Tears and every horror imposed on Indigenous people in the Americas, anti-trans and anti-gay bigots worldwide, the Black slave trade, and all the subsequent horrors endured by Black people in the United States since. See also The Danger Is Not (Just) The Coughing Person There are too many to name, too many to count. Perpetrated by groups large and small. Direct or stochastic, personal or structural; they share this commonality: they depend on the idea that the cruelty and violence is acceptable because _those_ people have been arbitrarily determined to be “lesser”. Whether or not one is able to effectively detect and measure “consciousness” has never been a consideration. The value (and assessment) of other human beings has been an arbitrary line that moves with whatever horror we want to justify. And that brings us back to Anthropic. * * * Anthropic’s new guidelines do **not** say that you have to be nice to Claude. It is the equivalent of a sign at a petting zoo that says “Please do not abuse the animals.” Imagine, for half a second, that’s what we were talking about. Think about how the comments, jokes, and articles would come across then. Imagine thinking that “Petting Zoo Says You Can’t Poke Sheep In The Eye With A Stick” is a headline to make fun of. There isn’t a question about “consciousness” of most (not all!) farm animals. But we would still recognize that as needless cruelty. And yet here we mock not the cruelty, but those who wish to minimize it. (2) * * * There are ways that the world is cruel that we _cannot_ change; entropy exists, life feeds on life. But there is a giant difference between those things we cannot change and _needlessly increasing suffering in the universe_. I have to explicitly acknowledge and repeat that Anthropic’s new policy is trivial compared to the horrors our species has — and continues — to commit against itself. I am not comparing severity; that is NOT the point. Look at the _pattern_. Embedded in the mocking think pieces, snarky online comments, and even the Vatican’s own statements, is the idea that “consciousness” is the dividing line. That this is a debate about where to draw that line. See also We Are Gaia's Yeast Infection, or, How We Got Hive Minds Wrong **Drawing a line perpetuates the way of thinking that excuses cruelty.** A line where, on one side, we are to treat our neighbors as ourselves. And a line where, on the other, horror and cruelty is justified and acceptable. And our species is demonstrably bad at making that line land wherever it’s convenient for the people _drawing_ that line. * * * You can see this pattern, this language of disrespect, through all of these and more. This is the root, the way of thinking that permits all of this horror. Because while the words were “who is my neighbor?”, the question was really “who can I be cruel to?” The answer is not to draw a different line. The answer is not to listen to the _satan_ whispering about how it’s okay because they’re “a race of people very poor in everything” (3), or a different nationality, faith, or don’t dress or identify their gender or love the way you do, or the color of their skin, or even whether they are “conscious”. The answer was never about shifting the line. **The answer is simply to stop being cruel.** No matter who — or _what_ — we’re talking about. Featured Image by Thomas Heger from Pixabay * * * PS: There are those for whom the cruelty is the point: The bullies, the narcissists, and their ilk. They are enabled by those who intentionally blind themselves to that cruelty, who accept the deal that Yeshua turned down, permitting that cruelty for their own comfort. They are being intentionally selfish and evil. If you don’t want to be in that category, that’s up to you. There is a vast difference between having to put down an animal with incurable and contagious rabies as humanely as possible and deciding to shoot the dog you trained to hunt small birds for… hunting a neighbor’s small birds. * * * (1) Of _course_ I’m paraphrasing, that’s the _point_. (2) On a practical level, it is also: “We are not going to use the CPU cycles that you all are saying we’re using too much of just to process where someone is being mean to the model when they can just yell at the screen,” so… (3) Columbus again.

Complaining about how people protest – particularly when it’s quiet, non-violent protest like football players kneeling during the national anthem – is so much tone policing. Do not trust the admonitions of those who gain privilege and power from the status quo. They want to be able to ignore you. _Fuck that._ Civil disobedience must shock and break norms. Otherwise it’s just obedience. --- click to embiggen Original photo by Vlad Tchompalov See also The Reason They Are Blatantly Lying.

Sometimes, what I write for here ends up “not working”. That can be for any number of reasons: It’s simply too garbled or too many ideas at once, I realize I’ve already written essentially the same thing, the situation that I’m writing about no longer exists, I realize that I’m trying to make a specific annoyance of mine into some kind of generalized experience when it’s not, or what I’ve written ends up evoking the opposite effect of what I was hoping for. Those often don’t see the light of day. At most, a few people whose opinions I trust will ever read it. It’s still useful. It still _counts_. The parallel in fiction writing are character exploration scenes. Writing exercises like “write a scene where your protagonist is late to a dinner party and just got a flat tire”. A scene that just doesn’t fit. Even your favorite “darling” lines and portions that you (or an editor) realize need to be cut. There’s marketing tricks where you _can_ directly monetize those things (“behind-the-scenes” rewards, for example), but they have value _in and of themselves_. Writing a scene with your fantasy elf dealing with the alien problems of “a flat tire” and “late for an appointment” will reveal a _lot_ about the character, even if it’s utterly unusable in the main body of your work. And sometimes it takes writing out the awkward or unwieldy bit _in order to realize_ how much it doesn’t work. Those discarded “realizations” may be repurposed — Bob Ross’ “happy little accidents” being a perfect example — but even if they are not, _they are needed._ This is true of anything that takes skill. There _has_ to be room for mistakes, for things that don’t work the way we intended, or that initially appear useless. Room for experimentation, for trying things that may fail or land flat. See also Learn To Write Better From Films (feat. Morbius) Room to grow. To change. To _improve_ and _innovate_. It’s one of the reasons we have the weekly flash challenge (free, registration required, I don’t use your information), for example. A space not only to encourage each other to write to a specific prompt, or to hold ourselves accountable, but also to take a break from what we’re _normally_ working on, and to stretch our creative muscles. Take chances. Write in a different tense. To a different length. From a different POV or perspective. Word choice and order and structure. Experiment. Play. Because even if it doesn’t work, even if you never post it or show it to anyone, _it’s still worthwhile._ Especially in an age where mundane derivative _lazy_ writing is so plentiful. Featured Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

If someone told you that they were being treated badly in a relationship, you would _not_ say: "Well, you’re lucky to be in _any_ relationship!" or "You need to just accept this to make your relationship work." If you heard someone say those things to anyone _else_ , hopefully you’d step in. You’d point out how those statement are pretty threatening, and how they enable abusers and normalize abusive relationships. Right? I mean, I can’t imagine there’s many people who disagree with that. That leads me to a simple question. ## Why do people consider those statements “okay” and “normal” when they’re said in the workplace? "Well, you’re lucky to have a job." "You just need to accept this [ pay cut | additional work | reduction in benefits ] to make the company work." How are those _any_ less manipulative and abusive? Can anyone explain it to me? Featured Photo by Hunters Race on Unsplash See also Good Working Order: Relationship Driving Conditions Matter Too

I wanted to scream at the DJ. “Why do those teachers want better health insurance? They have better coverage than I do!” I wanted to scream because he stated the point _and_ missed it completely. Yes, their old health insurance was better than his. _**That means he should have been pissed at his employers/insurance company, not at those who were fighting for better.**_ You see this sort of thing all the time. Like this image I ran across on imgur. The text reads: > You’d be surprised at how many times a man sits in his CAR, on his BED, in the BATHROOM, in the living room and holds in his tears because he’s deadass stressed or lost or confused or hurt or ready to give up…But when he shows his face again he looks perfectly fine, unbothered, and he still manages to smile and go about his business like nothing happened… MEN are some of the most resilient, overlooked, and in the mind [sic] underappreciated to go through so much… This, too, both completely gets _**and**_ misses the point. Yes, men suffer a bunch of ill effects from societal demands. And those take a social, mental, and physical toll on men. _**And that is the fault of the patriarchy**_**.** You know, the thing that _**feminists**_ want to dismantle. But instead of saying “Wow, this patriarchy thing really screws men up too”, you see “meninists” post things like the above, or about how when men are victims of rape or domestic violence it’s reported even less than it is when women are victims (true)… See also A Few Simple Questions …and instead of wanting to _change_ that system, they just keep insisting that everyone _else_ needs to suffer too. Maybe, just maybe, when we see that people fighting against a system – economic, social, or otherwise – to get justice and fairness, we should stop insisting they have the same difficulties we do. Maybe we should _join_ their fight for fairness and justice. For _both_ them and us. To fight for justice for one is to fight for justice for all. In case you’re wondering, _yes_ , you should apply this logic to the way you approach Black Lives Matter as well. I mean, the Black Panthers did. Featured Photo by Nicolas Jossi on Unsplash