Unfortunately, that bleak but rational and correct purpose of their lives was not acceptable. Nature makes you think that you are special, and big things are waiting for you no matter how dumb you are. I guess this is so you don't kill yourself and endanger your species. The new AI predictions were true, rational, and logically based on pure numbers, lacking all the incoherence and mysticism of traditional religions – the ones that give you a nice afterlife in the end to look forward to following a life of suffering. It is the miracles and the magic that makes it so appealing for humans. After all, a rational religion is not a religion. That’s why the AI religion wasn’t as successful as the old religions that we created. They are still around after thousands of years later.
Unlike the big debacles of economies and religions, the word “country” as we know it from the beginning of time is still the same, solid, and doing very well. As everything before the AI vanished, the tools and the machines that made the industrial revolutions were gone. Change was apparent on every level of life. However, the people’s mentality didn't change much like many psychologists wrongly predicted it would, and the patriotism mentality was still the most dominant.
This is the first lesson the army taught me every morning before breakfast, repeatedly filing my head and the heads of many young orphans like me with patriotism. I remember that we were so happy when they took us from that sloppy orphanage. Suddenly we felt special, and we thought that maybe if we were good enough, someone would adopt us in the army. This was a stupid idea they put in our heads to increase our need for love and protection. They mixed that with patriotism so they could get a solid cocktail of love and faith in the army’s commanders. And for the pinnacle of the brainwashing, the army explained to us that they took only the most hopeless cases from the orphanages, the ones that didn't fit anywhere, the rejected and the misunderstood, and sometimes, even the most violent ones. But we shouldn’t worry anymore because the army saw the real potential in us.
I have to give some respect for the psychologist who created this protocol. What a crafty man!
Yes, patriotism is deeply rooted in us, and no AI will change that. No code will change our perception of the home, the safest place, the controllable space. The animal inside us just can’t stop thinking of his territory, as it grants the exclusive right for him and his group to hunt and cultivate. It is a fundamental perception of the nature surrounding us. The territory is also sacred since we are the only species that bury their dead, which makes us even more fanatic. So, we fight and risk our lives, kill, and die for our ancestors' territory. Even if we move to a new place, we will still remember our original one in an extraordinary concept that nature has embedded in us instinctively – it is nostalgia. This concept could be a random result of a superorganism's complexity, an error, or even a non-explained feature. Whatever the cause, it is a perception generated by the mind to make every memory of our native place pleasant through the distortion of the recalls and the flashbacks, making them seem better. We have no idea how that function is necessary for the survival of the species. However Nostalgia is the patriot's soul, and it is another step down the rabbit hole of the human being. No AI can mimic that.
The Sunshine Orphanages were the most prominent institutions for disabled and abandoned kids in the Empire. It was probably one of the worst places for a child to have grown up in. But in my memory, it was the best place ever. Although, after my last promotion, I finally pulled some strings and closed those mediocre places forever.
Those places did more harm than good, but I have to admit that in my case, I have to give them some credit as they handed the Empire its youngest head of the armies. “Please back to the subject” said the little guy, “Hold on” I replied. Patriotism and nostalgia are the most powerful and irrational ideas ever. They are capable of generating a timeless feeling of belonging to a place and a group. No matter how bad the place was – extreme weather conditions, filled with predators, or even one which supports a cruel society enslaving the weak – that place will always give the feeling of belonging to the people who grew up there. That is the main reason why the groups can't integrate easily or adopt a new place to live in and call it home or country. Ask me.
Suppose territoriality is the core concept of patriotism. In that case, it's just another fabrication of the mind, as the territory itself does not exist in the physical world, and no AI can understand that either.
Recently I was reading on one of the army’s scientific blogs about the latest AI progress toward simulating human understanding. It was a fascinating study, or let's say a calculation that I had always in mind, which has now proven to be true. It demonstrated that no matter how strong an army can be, a civilian is stronger. Weird, isn’t it?
They calculated that by defining each side's core beliefs and scoring them. The army’s core belief is built on patriotism, a total irrational idea that outside our brain has no existence. A civilian’s belief is based on a family, a true feeling of connection to reality through family members, therefore, a true
