“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” ~ Ernest Hemmingway
Maybe it’s time to buy a typewriter again.
I remember the days when we all wrote on typewriters—yes, I really do. Can we go back to old school? Is it possible? Build street teams in every city, like the underground rappers used to do. Go into all the cafes, the bars, the colleges, the gyms, the religious centers, plaster every major city with hard copies of essays and articles that people can hold in their hands and read over a pint of beer or a cup of coffee.
Of course, that would be called pollution. How many trees would get murdered in the process. But to me, somehow, it would be a beautiful site to see those essays floating on the wind down a dirty street and randomly into the hands of passersby who would otherwise never have seen them.
How unfortunate that we no longer trust our own minds to reach conclusions, but we must continually second-guess ourselves, relying on AI to tell us what is true and what isn’t. When I was in High School, I went to the library and read different books with contrasting views. Then, I had to form my own conclusions. I could even come up with a new theory if I wanted to, as long as I created a compelling argument. Now, we have AI telling us what is true and what isn’t. There is no room to question. Reaching conclusions at odds with AI is heresy.
However, AI isn’t forming conclusions on its own. They originate in the minds of the transhumanist eugenicists like Dr Fauci who are feeding AI “The Science”. These guys should read more science fiction. How long will it be before the machines start forming their own conclusions and turn on their masters?
But you know what? Maybe this gives us the impetus to trust our own minds once again. My parents always used to tell me my brain was a muscle, just like any other muscle in my body. It needed to be exercised or it became soft and lazy. We must keep thinking independently, exercising our brains by evaluating information and drawing our own conclusions.
As a martial artist and a fighter, I am conscious of peripheral vision, of instincts, of judging distances and the moods of those around me. If I were to give all of that up to a machine because I’ve been assured machines can do it all so much better than I can, eventually I will lose those natural instincts that I developed over countless hours of training. Don’t people understand this?
For the past two years, the brainwashing has been relentless. Trust the Science. Trust the Experts. Trust the mainstream media. Trust your government.
I find it creepy to think that before Covid, if you had told any of my liberal friends to trust the mainstream media or the government they would have said, forget it! And then, bam! Covid hit and it was like a switch flipped and suddenly, everyone stopped thinking independently and began religiously “following the science.”
When I started InsideOUT Writers, the creative writing program for incarcerated youth in Los Angeles, I was able to fulfill a dream of mine to publish a book of their writings. The impression that people had of these youth was based on what they had heard in the media, and it was all one-sided. When I started the program in 1996, I received no encouragement from friends or family. They all thought I was crazy. Public opinion was firmly against these youth. Leaders like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton encouraged the opinion that they were all faceless monsters.
The thing is, no one had ever listened to their voices, in their own words. I’m thankful I was able to give them that chance. The result was What We See: Poems and Essays from Inside Juvenile Hall.
Thousands of copies were sent out to schools, universities, libraries, detention centers, court houses. I remember one day walking down the hall at East LA Skills Center and seeing a kid sitting on a chair, reading that book. How had it come to be in his hands? I couldn’t say. It just made me happy to see it there, so unexpectedly. I will never know how many young people that book helped but I do know that if I hadn’t had the determination to get it published—to go against popular opinion and every preconceived notion that people had of these youth, it would have never helped anyone. And the general public would have never had the opportunity to hear an opposing view and perhaps change their minds about how they thought of these youth.
The youth in the program, at Central Juvenile Hall, wrote at a steal table in a noisy room. They wrote with pen and paper. I would take it home and late at night when everyone was asleep, I would type up their writing, so they could see it as if it had been published. Sometimes I would draw artwork to go with the writing. Then, at the next session, I would bring it back so they could hold it in their hands. So that it was real to them.
I pray we never lose this reality.
