Representation, a set of capacities we acquire from the cultures we’re born into, is dangerous and self-interested. It attacks and replaces aspects of our imagination and relational awareness which would otherwise blossom in its absence.

The associated capacities impose as side-effects a variety of deadly myopias and other threats which we are only rarely empowered to observe or consciously avoid. Similarly, the ways we relate with cached knowledge are fraught with peril, and we are similarly blind to these matters.

So, essentially, although we do not have any reasonable insight into the foundations of our intelligence or the dangers associated with activating it… we run around believing we are intelligent, confusing the power of the appearance of the vehicle with the capacity to navigate it skillfully.

The invariable result is catastrophe. The reason we do not understand why we keep repeating such results throughout human history is that we mistakenly believe that because we assembled the vehicle we can pilot it. But the operation of the vehicle is fraught with invisible and unimagined dangers. Until we can recognize and deal with them, our ‘intelligence’ is going to essentially blow our own head off every time we activate it.