I'm not digitally oriented at all. Yesterday, I had trouble unlocking the gate to a storage facility I'm using because I couldn't get the "app" to work. I couldn't remember my password, had the bluetooth turned off, was using a later "smart phone" supposedly more advanced than the antique I had been using which had served me better for quite a while. So, I'm the proverbial elderly person that just can't keep up trying to adjust to all the changes. The attendant at the facility had to coach me to do it.

EL's recent post reminded me it was the anniversary of TE Lawrence's death. Of course he was the archetypal legendary figure of the movie Lawrence of Arabia, and many other works.

I put the search term in the google and I got the first AI response to my search inquiry TE Lawrence and Heart of Darkness. Unfortunately, I did not save it because it was totally wrong. It had stated that there was no relationship between Lawrence and Conrad's work Heart of Darkness. After reading that ridiculous response, which I didn't even solicit, I was really looking for reviews which made the connection; I then did some browsing on Lawrence to refresh my memory. I had read a couple of biographies about him in the past, and read Conrad's work, so I understood there was an relationship there, albeit an abstract one. I then did some review of Said's work on Orientalism, and it's association with western imperialism, othering foreign peoples of the East, it's portrayal of exotic barbarism, and the implicit presumption of the superiority of the west. Consequently, we have the western rationale for manipulation, brutality, and domination of the "east" to "civilize" it. East can be anything other than the west, the near east, Asia, Africa, the Balkans, Russia, etc.

Today, I went back with the same search request, trying to document the flatly wrong reasoning process of whatever AI google is using, and found to my surprise, that this time, the AI response was more "thoughtful" or correct in cultural and political-historical terms. I wondered if it had followed my web browsing on Lawrence, Said, orientalism, and imperialism, because it seemed to have learned the course of the thesis that I had entertained, in my subsequent browsing. It didn't cite the exact same web sources that I had recently viewed but others with similar observations. This relationship I had understood from my study of history, Conrad, Arendt and other cultural input over decades of reading and personal experiences. This was some of the google AI output on TE Lawrence Heart of Darkness inquiry I got this morning:

T.E. Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia, was a British officer who played a key role in the Arab Revolt during World War I. While he did not write "Heart of Darkness," the novella by Joseph Conrad, some scholars and commentators have drawn parallels between Lawrence's experiences and the themes explored in Conrad's work.

Lawrence's experiences in the desert and his involvement in the Arab Revolt
T.E. Lawrence's actions and the psychological impact of his experiences in the desert during the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire have led to comparisons with the themes of colonialism, morality, and the human capacity for brutality explored in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness."

Parallels between Lawrence's life and Conrad's themes:

The "Heart of Darkness" metaphor:
Lawrence's experiences in the desert, particularly his involvement with the Hashemites and his personal conflicts with the Sykes-Picot agreement, may be seen as a reflection of Conrad's exploration of the darker aspects of human nature and the "heart of darkness" within civilization.

The "exotic other":
Lawrence's interactions with the Arabs and his own self-perception as an outsider within the British Empire bear some resemblance to Conrad's portrayal of Africa and its inhabitants in "Heart of Darkness."

I had had a similar experience before when someone was bragging to me about how great one of the other popular AI tools was, and in a test, I asked it to create a poem in a classical Chinese poetry format from one of the famous Chinese poets, and it just made one up in English, without correspondence in Chinese. In other words I wanted it to create the Chinese poem, and then translate it in the correct English format that also conformed to the conventions of such poetry. In other words, try to meet the format in both languages.

I was reminded of this latter example, because I just saw this video below explaining the famous Li Bai poem that virtually everyone in China, and many people in other East Asian countries know. The comments were as interesting as the video's translation, because there were several differing translations posted, one or two of which tried to conform to requirements of such a poem even in the English language while still retaining the meaning of the original.

One example in the comments on Thoughts on a Quiet Night by Li Bai:

@AndrewWang-p7r
2 weeks ago (edited)
I like your translation much more! Building off it a little, maybe you could try:

"Pale moonlight before the bed,
Perhaps it could be frost instead,
Gaze up at the shining moon,
And think of home with lowered head"

The AI translations of this and other foreign poetry and lyrics are typically awkward, and generally not aesthetically pleasing, that is, not art.

Historical example of the orientalist ethic at work? Tim Shorrock's great accomplishment:

US intelligence records obtained by an American journalist — and now out in Korean translation — show how meticulously the US watched as a junta massacred those protesting for democracy.

[Published 2022]https://t.co/kOSr6aDlnt

— The Hankyoreh (@TheHankyoreh) May 18, 2025

The May 18, 1980, massacre pales in comparison to other western misdeeds and atrocities throughout its imperial history up to the present date, where its moral depravity is "defacing the world." The collection of records and documentation however fulfills a need by the democracy movement in South Korea, and serves in small measure, truth and reconciliation with the past for the survivors, as well as a raison d'etre and direction for current South Korean political goals.

More on Imperialism, Lawrence and the Heart of Darkness: From:

Hannah Arendt’s Theory of Totalitarianism – Part One

By Anthony Court

Critics have long decried Arendt’s ‘preoccupation’ with imperialism as an ‘element’ in the crystalline structure of European totalitarianism. This is especially true of historians, who mistakenly interpret Arendt’s analysis of imperialism as a history of imperialist politics, rather than a brilliant and highly original interpretation of a mentality – of ‘brutality and megalomania’ – that would ‘destroy the political body of the nation-state’

...To the extent that race-thinking was an historical adjunct to European imperialism, it had already become politicised, although none of the imperial powers had adopted the notion of racial domination itself as a core value of the national political culture of their countries. Still, Arendt argues that the destructive potential of these ideologies was prefigured in the thinking of the modern imperialists and in the mentality of the imperial elites and bureaucratic foot-soldiers. Arendt views the injunction ‘exterminate the brutes’ as more than a literary device, whereas Conrad’s Heart of Darkness conveys the brutish mentality of the times, which was put to devastating effect in ‘the most terrible massacres in recent history’. Particularly Germany’s African domain and the Belgian Congo were the scenes of ‘wild murdering’ and decimation. Ignorant settlers and brutal adventurers responded ruthlessly to a humanity that ‘so frightened and humiliated the immigrants that they no longer cared to belong to the same human species’ (ibid.: 185). Racism and bureaucracy developed on parallel tracks, and they converged in the practice of ‘administrative massacres’.

The gradual substitution of race for nation was set in motion during the late imperial era. Conversely, the advent of modern bureaucracy as a substitute for government shattered the constraints against power accumulation that had been put in place by a liberal regime of limited government (ibid.: 186). In other words, modern bureaucracy revolutionised the state, expanding its reach and ability to control society (and colonies) in ways not envisaged by the proponents of the modern European nation-state. When applied to Europe’s imperial domain, a regime of ‘aimless process’ (ibid.: 216) provided the colonial administrator with an effective device for instilling order, without having to resort to the customary homeland practice of enforcing the rule of law. Once the enormous power potential of an administrative regime was freed of legal constraints and was placed in the hands of colonial administrators, a limitless horizon of administrative decrees replaced the customary legal and institutional constraints that form the basis of all forms of civilised government. This was a new experience for modern man, one that introduced into politics the ‘superstition of a possible and magic identification of man with the forces of history’ (ibid.). ‘The law of expansion’, the boundless terrain of imperialistic ambition, and the belief that the realisation of empire entailed entry into ‘the stream of historical necessity’ – of being ‘embraced and driven by some big movement’ (ibid.: 220) – promoted a new sense and intoxication with serving a power greater than oneself. Arendt quotes revealing passages from T. E. Lawrence, who at the end of his career seemed as uncomprehending of his true ‘function’ as he was desolate in its absence (ibid.: 218-21).[14]

Having brutally suppressed its imperial domain and twice unleashed world war it is, Arendt argues, precisely in Europe that ‘a new political principle’ was most urgently to be sought, one that would complement a ‘new law on earth, whose validity this time must comprehend the whole of humanity’

So much for my meandering thought in these times of trouble. I think of the pentagon and its domestic and overseas reach as compromising the domestic institutions as the preeminent agency of undemocratic empire undermining all other agencies, institutions, and standards of law. This laid the groundwork for worse, a complete moral bankruptcy.