Maybe we are all Jacob Marley’s ghost deep down.

Over the Christmas period I watched several versions of A Christmas Carol. My mother used to read this to me most Christmases when I was a child and therefore have a connection to it, but this year I noticed something else about the story.

Marley’s ghost carries chains forged by his greed and he warned Scrooge that his chains were longer and heavier because of Scrooges behaviour however on reflection it isn’t just about his miserliness.  I started to read into this something about the nature of the materialism, because in a strange sort of way the ghost of Christmas present and the subsequent redemption of Scrooge which leads to him becoming another person is in essence about how he deals with the money.

The ghost of Christmas present is almost some godlike figure like a Jupiter as expressed by the Romans, that of bountifulness if not over indulgence, not about having nothing, but having plenty. What Scrooge does with his money is part of his redemption.

So it is more about the material being a tool not possessing us but us possessing it. Now I realised that this is the same situation with technology in that at first we use it then it uses us and that is the dilemma and the risk for everything including A.I.

Let me explain, Hendrix could make the effects pedals do what he had in his head, after that people bought the pedals to sound like Hendrix so they were being controlled if you like by the technology instead of making it do something else, something different.

This is what happens with systems, money and ideas; they end up controlling us and in that way Scrooge was being controlled by money like it had an intelligence of its own possessing him and that is exactly what happens with ideas and technologies, they act like they have a will of their own. Very strange, but phrasing things in that way might help us deal with problems, creating something outside ourselves having agency over us but separate from us. Consciousness and reality are slippery things and sometimes we need to be more slippery than them to regain control. 

Maybe it is just a series of ideas that are running us but ideas with their own agency and consciousness. This is something that seems plausible in certain lines of scientific enquiry at the moment.

So the question is what do you need to redeem yourself from? Do you sabotage your own success for instance and what ideas do you want to take root to make you change and become successful?

I will be organising some podcasts to look at how people make a success of what they do, I have a number of musicians that are recorded already and  I will be expanding that to artists and entrepreneurs. The aim is for you to achieve something either by using the podcasts or being more involved with a premium membership which I am currently working on so I can teach you material like NLP that I have found very useful to the creative process.

So here is to the Unchained Melody ……….

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk  Rock school with a difference