On AI And Consciousness

April 17, 2025

APR 11, 2025

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

Computer scientist and futurist Jaron Lanier made some comments on Vox’s The Gray Area podcast the other day that I’d like to make a quick observation about.

In the podcast, titled “Will AI become God? That’s the wrong question,” Lanier talks about how artificial “intelligence” has become a sort of quasi religion in Silicon Valley, complete with its own deity-like entity, and a kind of Armageddon-cult-like vision for our future.

Asked by host Sean Illing about people’s anxiety regarding AI and the possibility of human extinction, Lanier said many in Silicon Valley have come to view humanity as a mere birthing vessel for these new technologies, which will become our vastly superior replacement.

“What drives me crazy about this is that this is my world,” Lanier said. “I talk to the people who believe that stuff all the time, and increasingly, a lot of them believe that it would be good to wipe out people and that the AI future would be a better one, and that we should wear a disposable temporary container for the birth of AI. I hear that opinion quite a lot.”

“Wait, that’s a real opinion held by real people?” asked Illing.

“Many, many people,” Lanier replied.

https://x.com/voxdotcom/status/1909203318263709966

This is obviously disturbing, but it’s also just plain bizarre, because it shows how little attention these people are paying to the phenomenon of consciousness.

AI isn’t conscious. Saying AI should replace humanity is the same as saying fire should replace humanity, or white noise static from old televisions should replace humanity. It’s not conscious. There’s nobody inside it. It’s just the dark, empty buzzing of machinery, unwitnessed and unexperienced by any perceiving being.

It says so much about the worldview of these weird Silicon Valley cultists that this isn’t obvious to them. They think AI would be a superior replacement for humanity because they’ve paid no attention to consciousness. They’ve paid no attention to consciousness because they’ve lived completely unexamined lives. They’ve never reflected on what it actually means to be a living being having sentient experiences in this world.

Consciousness means subjective experience. It’s the hearer of what’s heard, the seer of what’s seen, and the perceiver of thoughts. We can know consciousness exists by our own experience of it, and we can infer that other people and animals must also have it because they have so many similarities to us. There is absolutely no reason to assume that inanimate, inorganic matter is capable of consciousness besides blind faith religious belief.

You see this with the way many of these cultists say people will be able to one day achieve immortality by uploading their minds onto computers. Julian Assange has talked about this Silicon Valley religious belief in the past, saying the following at a 2017 video conference:

“I know from our sources deep inside those Silicon Valley institutions, they genuinely believe that they are going to produce artificial intelligences that are so powerful, relatively soon, that people will have their brains digitized, uploaded on these artificial intelligences, and live forever in a simulation, therefore will have eternal life. It’s a religion for atheists. They’ll have eternal life, and given that you’re in a simulation, why not program the simulation to have endless drug and sex orgy parties all around you. It’s like the 72 virgins, but it’s like the Silicon Valley equivalent.”

Computers aren’t conscious. Sure you might one day be able to replicate the contents of a human mind onto some sort of software, but it won’t be “you”, because it won’t be conscious. There’d be nobody experiencing it. It would just be ones and zeros, unilluminated by any perceiving awareness.

Consciousness is the only reason life has value. It’s the only reason anything matters. Otherwise life would just be physical materials getting whipped about by natural forces without anyone feeling, sensing or experiencing any part of it. Suffering wouldn’t matter because it’s not being felt or experienced. Joy wouldn’t matter because it’s not being felt or experienced. There’d be no good reason not to torture someone, because there wouldn’t be any conscious experience of pain. There’d be no good reason to love anyone, because there wouldn’t be any conscious experience of love. Consciousness is the only reason life is worth living.

There is no basis on which to believe AI will ever be conscious. Consciousness isn’t some minor detail that science will easily work out once it gets around to it; it’s an all-encompassing phenomenon which has always been a complete mystery to all scientific fields. Science has no idea what consciousness is or why it happens, much less how to replicate it. It’s the single most important and fundamental aspect of every second of our waking experience of life, yet it remains a complete unknown to all of science. And this somehow gets left out of so much of the conversation about the future of artificial “intelligence”.

I guess it’s possible to become so mind-identified that you really believe you are your thoughts, and that a machine which can generate digital “thoughts” much more efficiently would therefore be a superior sort of being. You have to have spent no time looking inward and examining what it is that’s able to perceive thoughts in the first place. You have to have spent no time in meditation decoupling your sense of identity from the chatter in your head. You must be completely asleep at the wheel of your own life.

These are people who have spent their entire lives listening to their thoughts, without ever once taking a moment to wonder who the listener is.

And these are the people who increasingly rule our world. These are the people inserting themselves into our political systems. These are the people deciding what we may and may not say to each other online. These are the people setting the trajectory for the future of our species. These weird little cultists who are so pervasively unaware of their own inner processes that consciousness does not even feature in their understanding of what life is and where it is headed.

Just something we should all be aware of.

______________

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Letter to the Editor – Oakley Rankin

April 17, 2025

Grapevine: Comment—Political

Oakley Rankin

In better times the Progressive Conservative party of Canada encouraged responsible, democratic members such as Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark, Ellen Fairclough, John Diefenbaker, and Pat Carney who respected all parliamentary members as representatives of citizens. Preston Manning weaponized long-standing Western grievances to create the Reform Party. He then asked those members to be directly responsible to all their constituency citizens in conflict with party loyalty. This experiment to eliminate party responsibility was untenable and many conservatives defected to the Progressive Conservatives where they could ignore many of their constituency citizens. Steeped in their grievance they dropped the term ‘Progressive’ with its connotations of responsibility to all Canadian citizens and looked to ideological motivation for policy. They succeeded in forming a government with Stephen Harper. He mixed ideology and pragmatism to maintain an elective edge; he decimated the Federal civil service, he gagged Federal scientists and employees and destroyed much of their data, he eradicated the gun registry, he put stricter controls on what Federal Committees could say publicly, and he weakened the powers of Elections Canada to investigate election irregularities. He did this without a lot of fanfare and managed to win three elections. And he authoritatively silenced the social conservatives in his party who called for even more control over some groups of citizens: criminalization of abortion, prim and proper school curriculums excluding all mention of LGBT persons, and unrestricted gun ownership.

Ideology combined with social media led to increased Conservative incivility towards politicians of other parties; this has now reached its Canadian zenith with Pierre Poilievre. Poilievre espouses vituperation to suggest that the Liberals and the NDP are enemies not representative parliamentarians. He sets forth no distinct long-term policies but chooses to run on slogans which he determines will resonate with many citizens. He never speaks publicly about how he would use the notwithstanding clause in the Constitution to block the Supreme Court from overturning his legislation as Trump’s packed Supreme Court is doing in the U.S. If you are a fan of the CBC with current per capita funding one-quarter of the BBC and one-eighth that of Deutsche Welle you might think about Italy’s RAI; since Meloni replaced management with toadies and responsible journalists left, RAI is now derided as ‘TeleMeloni’. Or if you have any fondness for national arts think of Trump and the Kennedy centre. Poilievre’s only real policy is one of tax cuts to favour the wealthy and deliberately cripple government social programs to increase animosity towards any government which improves life for citizens; Poilievre’s proposed increase in TFSA contribution limits only benefits those who have enough in the first place to open a TFSA—not those who really need help. Poilievre looks to the inanity of the U.S. and believes that winning has nothing to do with policy but is all about defining enemies and impugning your opponent. Such a position is dismissive of even his own voters’ intelligence casting them as citizens uninterested in asking what his government would do if elected. Read through the 58 page, online Conservative Policy Statement to check out what they propose to do if elected; it contains no long term projects whatsoever but is a perfect example of meaningless political ‘motherhood’ jargon. ‘Climate change’ is mentioned only once in the Statement as something the Federal government must stay out of; legislation must be left to provincial and global agents. But possible tax deductions for resource businesses are promised in the Statement.

If you will be voting Conservative next year but are one of the majority of Canadians who believe that climate change is an existential problem you will be voting for a party, many of whose members don’t even believe in climate change, which not only offers no policies for dealing with it but states it never will.

If you will be voting Conservative because you feel their vituperative language ‘speaks truth’ and tells us things that no one else will, then you have a tenuous grasp on what truth is and the multitude of forces that create a culture. You are simply not informed on what a government in a democracy really is and how it is supposed to govern—warts and all—and you do not wish to improve it.

If, after 40 years of largely economically conservative governments in the West, you will be voting Conservative because you actually believe in their trickle-down fantasy that enriching a few beyond measure will raise the standards of the majority, you will be ensuring all but the wealthy a much poorer future.

If you will be voting Conservative simply to kick the rascals out you should probably stay at home because you will have to join the rest of us in living with the consequences of actions you never took the time to figure out.

If you will be voting Conservative because you believe democracy is broken and must be replaced by a strong authority, you have given up hope in humanity as have the techno-political types in Silicon Valley; the acquisitive Japanese-Korean billionaire Masayoshi Son sums up the world you desire:

‘Bill Gates just started Microsoft and Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook. I am involved in a hundred businesses, and I control the entire ecosystem. These are not my peers. The right comparison for me is Napoleon or Genghis Khan or Emperor Qin. I am not a CEO. I am building an empire.’

And if you plan not to vote, don’t complain about what you get!

Letter to the Editor – Barbara Baird

April 17, 2025

A Vote is a Chess Move, Not a Valentine!

This is recent polling data from our riding, Courtenay-Alberni, and comes from the useful website smartvoting.ca.

The situation reminds me of 2015, when we were so eager to get rid of Stephen Harper, and our Conservative MP John Duncan. We wanted to show them the door and boy, did we have our reasons!

The Greens, Liberals, and NDP all pulled together and put Gord Johns (who had the best chance to win against Duncan) over the top to be our new MP, and helped defeat Harper. This time, we could defeat the Conservative candidate again, but only if we all pull together to vote for our strongest centre/left candidate in our riding, in our case the NDP incumbent, Gord Johns.

Liberals, I feel your pain, but remember that no Liberal has been elected in 50 years in our area. A vote for the Liberal candidate in our riding will not help Mark Carney become Prime Minister. But denying our seat to the Conservatives will help Mark Carney. Don’t let your vote go to waste!

If this does not make sense to you, this little video does a good job of explaining how that works:

https://youtu.be/CVxViGdVvAY

(Note that you can go to smartvoting.ca to see the most recent polling for our riding or any other. They use aggregated data from all the reputable polls in Canada to make these projections.)

Letter to the Editor – Robear LeBaron

April 17, 2025

OF THATNESS AND OTHER SHMOZELS

Thank you Sally,Helen,Maxine,Alex and others, for continuing the

hard task of holding up the dark mirror in front of us.

Much easier the path of willful ignorance.

the sunday comics, the hockey game,the gossip.

I can’t do anything about politics.

Religion and culture are passe .

Economics is too complicated.

Pass the beer and chips, and click on another video.

respectfully , robear

Fallen Hero No.2, LDNR

April 17, 2025

https://printartphotoraphy.ca

Hunka

April 17, 2025

#1680

April 17, 2025

This n’ That

April 10, 2025

This n’ That Sally Campbell

A woman at a music event last fall asked me: “Do you write about anything other than that?” Surprisingly, I had the presence of mind to answer: “When you say ‘that’, what do you mean?” Somewhat taken aback, she was unable to give me an answer. Her question has occupied my mind from time to time ever since. From asking myself: what exactly do I write about? to wondering if it all sounds like exactly the same refrain, week after week, to consolidating my sense of purpose, to reassuring myself that it truly is ok if people are uncomfortable or disturbed by what I write. I remember that my intention has been to explore difficult questions, to speak about what is perhaps not being spoken about, to rattle us out of our comfortable, privileged perspective that really doesn’t want to be bothered with the problems of the world – the violence, the inequities, the racism – and our complicity in those problems. Another approach could have been to say: “Hmmmm. What would you prefer I write about?”

And I suspect I know the answer: good things happening in our communities, local news, gardening, dance classes. Thankfully there are plenty of people already doing that very writing for both Denman & Hornby, and doing it well! We need local news, and especially in such disturbing times, we need good news.

So, this is what I write about. Is this “that”?

Israel-Palestine, because Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid project has now led to an ongoing genocide in which Canada is complicit by reason of our media coverage, our arms sales and trade with Israel, our weapons components sent to the US for eventual use in Israel against Palestinians, and our government’s refusal to condemn, isolate and boycott Israel.
Militarism in Canada and elsewhere, because we are seeing a surge in warfare and war- planning, led by the US. NATO is an aggressive US-led arms buying and selling, war-provoking and war-making entity. We need to reexamine our relationship to it.

Nuclear Weapons & the Treaty for Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), (yet to be signed by Canada) because a mere accident could destroy life on Earth as we know it. Because we have created a monster, tested it in ways that have caused massive health problems and ecological damage, then spent decades trying to contain its proliferation, only now to see governments reviving funding for “upgrades”, countries developing “tactical” nuclear weapons, and leaders recklessly voicing threats of their use once again.
BRICS + and other Global South partnerships, because we need (especially now) to broaden our trade, foster good relationships with other countries and reduce our US dependence.
Canadian tax laws allowing Canadians to get a tax write-off for donations subsidizing illegal Israeli settlements and the Israeli military, including benefits for young Canadian “lone soldiers” signing up to serve in the Israeli army. It is illegal in Canada to establish charities serving a foreign military.

6.Recipesfrommykitchenbecauseweneedtofeedourwholebeingsinhealthyandsatisfying ways, because cooking is fun and creative, and baking with little kids is the best.

Resources to learn from, such as: Canadians for Justice & Peace in the Middle East, World BEYOND War, Mondoweiss, Jonathan Cook, The Grayzone, Helena Cobban & Just World Ed, Jewish Voice for Peace (US) and Independent Jewish Voices (Canada), Palestine Museum (films), Richard Wagamese, Eyewitness Palestine, Canadian Foreign Policy Institute & Yves Engler, Just Peace Advocates, Peter Beinart, and many more.
The UN, its agencies and its Charter, because as flawed as it is, it’s all that we have on a worldwide scale. It came into being post WW2 to prevent another world disaster, but thanks to structural flaws such as the “Big 5” veto, it lacks the teeth to give effect to its resolutions. The ICJ – the judicial organ of the UN – has ruled on Israel’s occupation (illegal) and its War on Gaza (Preliminary Measures Orders pending upcoming trial on genocide). The ICC, complementary to the UN but independent, has issued arrest warrants for Israelis Netanyahu & Gallant, and Hamas leader Deif. There is a warrant out for Putin. And for Bush, Biden, Trump? Alas, it would seem the Courts do respond to pressures/threats by the world’s hegemon. The ICC has steered clear of these particular war-makers.

After 35 years’ work in the field of conflict resolution, I like to share some of my learnings about conflict, about ways that’ve had practical value for me and for my clients over the years. Studying conflict and mediative approaches rescued me from 12 years’ grind of a law practice, which, rooted in an adversarial system of justice, is necessarily stressful. Integrative concepts like forgiveness and apology, circle peacemaking, and collaborative problem-solving are not mainstream in our justice system.
Indigenous teaching and learning. We are fortunate to be in the beginning of an ongoing reconciliation process, and together, finding ways to repair wrongs, restore damage and build respectful relationships with our indigenous peoples. Our world is in a turbulent transition time of decolonization, with unprecedented disruption and chaos marking the end of a global empire. We need to embrace indigenous recognition of interdependence of all beings, including respect and caring for Planet Earth before our self-created climate crisis wreaks more havoc on the only home we have.

So that’s that, some of it anyway. There may be more forthcoming, but for now, I’ll be taking a timeout from my weekly offerings to organize and self-publish a small collection of “This ’n That” for the benefit of my grandchildren. If you have a favourite article, recipe or a piece that made a difference for you, please let me know (and perhaps say why), to help me decide what to include (sally@sallycampbellmediator.ca). Big gratitude to The Islands Grapevine for their ongoing community-building work of publishing both local and global content consistently all these years!

Shucking Oysters: Golfer in Chief

April 10, 2025

Shucking Oysters: Golfer-in-Chief

By Alex Allen

“From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world… get ready for an incredible future because the golden age of America has only just begun. It will be like nothing that has ever been seen before.”

Such were the bookends of President Trump’s 2025 inauguration speech. Now, months later, not only has he reneged on his gilded promises he has made America mean-spirited and ugly again.

After flip flopping on tariffs for months, Trump displayed his dazzling magic on “Liberation Day.” With the sleight of his small hand $5 trillion in market value disappeared in two days. And yet Trump assured Americans: “We have six or $7 trillion coming in to our country, and we’ve never seen anything like it. The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom.” Is his wording a little odd? Not a booming economy but an economy that goes boom?

For the rest of us, in true Trump fashion he added: “The world wants to see, is there any way they can make a deal? They’ve taken advantage of us for many, many years. We’ve been at the wrong side of the ball. And I’ll tell you what, I think it’s going to be unbelievable.” So what does Trump do after he sets off one of the largest market crashes in American history? Leisurely boards Air Force One to play some winning golf and schmooze with the ultra-greedy and stupid.

The weekend of the tone deaf began with Lord Rump arriving for dinner at Trump National Doral golf course Thursday evening, where one can dine on sautéed Dover sole in soy-caper brown butter for $76. Meanwhile back at Mar-a-Lago, hundreds of guests were gathered for the American Patriots Gala, a conservative fundraiser that featured Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, wearing her signature bullet proof vest and the President of Argentina, unaware that Trump was elsewhere.

On Friday, thousands of tony golf fans descended Doral for the fourth annual LIV Golf tournament. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s $925 billion sovereign wealth fund and chairman of LIV Golf was there. Top sponsors included Aramco, the Saudi oil company; Riyadh Air, owned by the sovereign wealth fund; and TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media company. Business was good. Every room at the 643-room Trump Doral, including the $13,000-a-night presidential suite was booked.

The president spent much of Friday at another course, the Trump International Golf Club, sending out social media messages during the day, including, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH, RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE.” At Mar-a-Lago (a private club for the uber-wealthy with a $1.5 million initiation fee), Trump held another in a series of $1 million-a-head dinners. Since he’s been elected, Trump has hosted four blockbuster fundraisers. Another dinner, scheduled at the end of April, star-struck donors can “co-host” for $2.5 million or become a “host” for $5 million.

Like his TV show, The Apprentice, the evenings play out in similar ways. A group of people gather around a candlelit table where Trump listens to the beholden discuss their businesses, one by one. Hosted by MAGA Inc., one of Trump’s fundraising committees, groupees at some of his dinners have included casino owner Miriam Adelson and James Taiclet, chief executive of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest military contractor. This past weekend, billionaires Ronald S. Lauder, the cosmetics heir, and Steve Wynn, the former casino executive, were among the privileged guests. MAGA Inc. is one of a network of Trumpeter groups, including Never Surrender and Building America’s Future, a nonprofit with ties to Elon Musk.

On Saturday, as the tournament continued at the 800-acre Doral resort, the Donald showed up at yet another course, the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, where he won his second round senior club championship advancing to the Sunday championship round. Asked Sunday evening aboard Air Force One how the tournament went, Trump replied, “Very good, because I won. It’s good to win. You heard I won, right? Did you hear I won? Just to back it up over there, I won.”

Trump likes golf, so much so that he owns 18 golf resorts. Since the end of March, his golf trips have cost taxpayers more than $26 million – a single trip costs over $3 million. In his first term? One report estimated that Trump spent 307 days of those first four years golfing, costing taxpayers more than $151 million.

Golf is often seen as a game that teaches valuable life lessons, such as integrity, sportsmanship, and patience. In Rick Reilly’s book, Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, you’ll learn the opposite. “Trump doesn’t just cheat at golf. He cheats like a three-card Monte dealer. He throws it, boots it, and moves it. He lies about his lies. He fudges and foozles and fluffs.”

In an interview, Reilly said: “One time in LA, he was playing $50 a hole with these three guys, he hits it in the pond. They see the splash. By the time they get there, it’s in the middle of the fairway, and they’re like, ‘What the F, Donald?’ And he goes, ‘It must’ve been the tide.’”

As Reilly wrote, “Golf is like bicycle shorts. It reveals a lot about a man.”

The lyrics echoed in the hollow chambers.

April 10, 2025

The lyrics echoed in the hollow chambers.

This story was inspired by the original songs by Banjo Paterson (1895), Eric Bogle (1971), Shane MacGowan (1985),

Gabriel Jeroschewitz (March 28th, 2025).

The old man sat on his porch, the weathered planks groaning softly under the weight of his years. April, the month of fading autumn, painted the suburban street in hues of amber and gold. The Anzac Day parade was about to begin. He could hear the distant, muffled thump of the bass drum, the thin reedy notes of a lone flute testing the air. Around him, the street stirred with anticipation. Families emerged from their houses, waving small Australian flags, their faces bright with patriotic fervour. He watched them, a ghost in his living room, his gaze as brittle as the autumn leaves skittering across his lawn.

He remembered a different April, a lifetime and a world away. An April that smelled of eucalyptus and damp earth, before the salt-laced tang of the Aegean Sea filled his nostrils. Back then, April meant the first warmth kissing the Murray River, the air alive with the buzz of insects, and the boundless horizon beckoning him onwards. He was young then, a man made of sinew and dreams, his life a tapestry woven from open roads and starlit skies.

The lyrics echoed in the hollow chambers of his memory, a song from a lifetime ago. He’d tramped from the verdant basin of the Murray to the ochre heart of the outback, his ‘Matilda’ – a rolled swag – slung over his shoulder, the sun on his face and the wind at his back. He’d known hunger and thirst, but they were honest hardships, seasoned with the wild beauty of the land. He’d slept under a million stars, each one a diamond in the velvet cloak of night, feeling as limitless as the continent itself.

Then, the year the world tore itself apart, nineteen-fifteen. The call came, a resonant clang that shattered the quiet rhythm of his rambling life.

Work. He snorted, a dry rasping sound. What work did they mean? He’d known work, the honest toil of the land, the sweat and grit that built a man. But this… this was something else entirely. They gave him a stiff and ill-fitting uniform, a tin hat that felt absurdly heavy on his head, and a cold and alien rifle in his hands. They stripped away the freedom and wildness, replaced it with regimented lines, and barked orders.

He remembered the quay, a chaotic swirl of faces – tear-streaked, proud, bewildered. The air thrummed with a strange, febrile energy, a mixture of fear and excitement. And the band, perched on the troopship’s deck, played that jaunty, deceptively cheerful tune.

Waltzing Matilda. A song of freedom, of wandering, now a soundtrack to their forced exodus. How ironic. He could still hear the melody twisting in the wind as the land receded, and the grey horizon swallowed them whole.

Gallipoli. The name itself tasted like ash in his mouth. He hadn’t known hell until he set foot on that beach, the sand already stained a sickening crimson. The air crackled with the relentless whine of bullets, the earth shuddered under the incessant artillery barrage. Suvla Bay. He closed his eyes, and the image seared onto the backs of his eyelids, as vivid as if it were yesterday. Butchered. The word was not hyperbole. It was the cold, brutal truth. The Turks were waiting for them, dug in, prepared. The Australians were lambs led to the slaughter, wave after wave thrown against an unyielding wall of fire. He saw faces flash before his mind’s eye – young, eager faces, twisted in agony, frozen in death. He smelled the acrid stench of gunpowder, the metallic tang of blood, the cloying sweetness of decay.

Five minutes. That was all it took to shatter dreams, to extinguish lives. He remembered diving for cover, the earth erupting around him, the screams of men swallowed by the monstrous roar of artillery. He survived those first horrific minutes, only to be plunged into a nightmare that stretched into weeks, into an eternity. over again…

The band, that phantom band, is still playing in his memory. Waltzing Matilda, a macabre dirge for the fallen. They buried their dead in shallow graves, the sand still stained and saturated, only to return to the same carnage, the same relentless slaughter. Life became a cycle of terror, punctuated by brief, hollow respites.

Seven weeks. He’d existed, not lived. He’d become an animal, driven by instinct, by the primal urge to survive. He’d seen things no man should ever see, done things no man should ever have to do. The bodies piled up, grotesque monuments to the futility of it all. The living walked among the dead, indistinguishable in their shared misery, their shared trauma. The shell. He didn’t even remember the impact, just the blinding flash, the deafening roar, and then… nothingness. He woke in a dim, sterile tent, pain throbbing through his body, a nameless dread settling in his soul. He looked down, and saw the space where his legs used to be, the bandages stained a horrifying red. No more waltzing Matilda. The song mocked him now, a cruel reminder of everything he had lost. His freedom, his youth, his legs, his innocence. He had seen the worst of humanity, which had taken root in his soul, poisoning everything.

…

Heroes? He scoffed again, the sound bitter. They were broken, discarded remnants of a war that no one understood. They were shipped back, not in triumph, but in shame, in silence. He had been grateful for the emptiness, for the absence of pitying eyes. He didn’t want their pity. He wanted oblivion.

The band played. That damned song, a relentless, haunting refrain. But there were no cheers, no parades, no celebrations for them. Only blank stares, averted gazes, a collective turning away from the inconvenient truth of war, the messy, broken aftermath.

Now, every April, the parade marched. He watched from his porch, a silent sentinel, as the younger generations, oblivious and bright-eyed, waved their flags and cheered. He saw his comrades, the few remaining, their steps faltering, their backs bowed, marching in a phantom parade, a ritual of remembrance that felt increasingly hollow.

Glory. What glory was there in mud and blood, in screams and death? What glory was there in losing everything, in being broken and forgotten? The young people didn’t understand.

And he asked himself the same question, every year, as the parade passed, as the band played that cursed tune. What were they marching for? For a memory that was fading, for a sacrifice that felt increasingly meaningless, for a war that had stolen everything and given nothing in return.

The band played Waltzing Matilda. The music swelled, momentarily drowning out the chirping of birds, the gentle rustle of autumn leaves. But even as the music filled the air, it felt thin, brittle, like a ghost of a song. He watched the parade, bright flags, and cheerful faces, and felt a chilling emptiness. The horror wasn’t the memory of the battlefield, not anymore. The horror was the slow, inexorable fading, the forgetting. The horror was the realization that someday, the music would stop, the parades would cease, and there would be no one left to remember the lambs of Suvla Bay, butchered and forgotten. And only the silence would remain, a vast, echoing silence, broken only by the lonely whisper of the wind, carrying the ghost of a song, a song of a Matilda that no one would waltz with anymore.