Frontiersman, August 2026

When I was a little kid, I was forced to start attending school. They called it education but, actually, was the beginning of a process of being brainwashed, and conditioned to do things that I didn’t want to do, to be places that I didn’t want to be, and to associate with people with whom I didn’t want to associate. When free public education becomes mandatory public education, then education becomes brainwashing and conditioning. I didn’t have any choice and I didn’t know any better, so I tried to do what was expected of me. I tried to pretend that I liked it, because it was expected of me.

Later, as a adult, it appeared that I had more choices, but that was only an illusion. Actually, my so-called choices were constrained by situations that were not under my control. It takes a long time for a man to recover from childhood brainwashing and conditioning, if he ever recovers at all, but eventually I began to recover. I began to understand the difference between actual choices and mere alternatives. My so-called choices were all limited to only alternatives that had already been arranged, without my knowledge or consent. As I learned, I became less cooperative about doing things that I didn’t want to do, being places that I didn’t want to be, and associating with people with whom I didn’t want to associate. Eventually, I was no longer compatible with life as a corporate employee and I had to find other ways to survive.

I also began to understand the difference between friends and acquaintances. Now, I have very few friends, and they’re all friends that I made years ago. They’re also all a long distance away. I’ve discovered that, up close, at least for me, friends become tedious and then annoying. With me, they don’t last long. Maybe that’s a flaw in my personality, maybe not, but I don’t care. I decided that I like myself the way that I am and, long ago, I got tired of trying to satisfy other people’s expectations of me. Now, I try the best that I can to satisfy my own expectations. So my friends are old friends and they’re all a long distance away. I don’t presently have any new friends nearby. That’s fine with me. I live alone, I stay alone, and I like being alone. I can go for days without seeing another human being except for one neighbor that I sometimes can’t avoid, and the owner of the place where I’m presently staying. Other than that, I see other people mostly on the television or through a window, and that’s entirely sufficient. There are still things, people, and activities that I don’t like but, nowadays, I mostly manage to avoid them. For me, solitude is a good thing. Solitude suits me.

Population Studies
http://frontiersman.org.uk/Population/Curve.html

Caveat Lector
Sam Aurelius Milam III

I’ve been publishing this newsletter for more than 32 years. The newsletter isn’t even my first attempt to present what I believe to be the truth. Originally, I wrote letters to politicians, corporate executives, and various institutions. I learned some things but, otherwise, I didn’t accomplish any changes or improvements. Later, I wrote essays. The essays went largely unnoticed. This newsletter has also been largely ineffective. In the October 2019 issue, I replied to a reader who, responding to my frustration, suggested that I should get a radio talk show, and reach millions. I replied that the Nazarene had already reached millions, and look at the sorry results. For centuries, his so-called followers have been indistinguishable from all of the other bloodthirsty thugs and zealots, shunning, ostracizing, oppressing, torturing, maiming, or killing one another in the name of one alleged god or another. Reaching millions has been done before and, the more that I learn, the more it seems like a bad idea.

I’ve often been troubled by the negative tenor of my writing, but that’s the nature of the beast. A bridge that’s in good condition isn’t a problem. A rotted or defective bridge is a problem. I’ve tried to reveal problems. I have, maybe with a certain pretentious arrogance, claimed to be facing the truth, however great the cost. Maybe I should have been more careful in the claims that I’ve made because I’ve painted myself into a corner. I’ve been claiming to face the truth, however great the cost but now, my own claims compel me to actually do so. There’s truth that I’d prefer not to face. Here are some unpleasant but true things to consider.
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We've engaged in an uncontrolled population explosion that has exceeded the capacity of our planet to sustain us. In the documentary 8 Billion Angels, Jane Goodall quoted Mahatma Gandhi as saying, "This planet can provide for human need, but not for human greed." I believe that our greed has initiated an extinction event and that there isn't any reason to believe that we're exempt from it. I fear that we’re facing extinction, a truth that I’d prefer to not face.
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We've created a non-biological life form, corporations, that I call overcreatures. See Procreation, in the April 2008 issue. Overcreatures don’t have any interest whatsoever in our well-being, beyond our ability to serve their needs. If they find better servants than us, then we'll become expendable. With that in mind, consider that they’re developing a technology of robotics that will serve them far better than we can, and an infrastructure of autonomous robots that will surely be weaponized, which they will control, and against which we will be defenseless. It's easy to connect those dots. It’s another truth that I’d prefer to not face.
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We're developing an AI technology that we don't understand, that we won't be able to control, and that might not have any interest in us at all. Even if it doesn't intentionally eliminate us, it could just absentmindedly displace by using up our space, making us the next victims of habitat loss. It’s yet another truth that I’m loath to face.

Those truths are hard to face but next comes the really hard part. I think that, maybe, we might have been able to survive one or another of the three situations that I summarized above, by itself, but not all of them at the same time. Taken together, they’re a triple whammy that, I believe, we can’t survive. It seems likely that our society, our technology, and our population, will all crash. If that happens, then I expect that our condition will fall right past that of hunter-gatherer, without even slowing down, all the way to the status of scavengers. We’ve so degraded our planetary environment, and so squandered and depleted our resources that, even if there are any survivors who are competent to subsist as hunter-gatherers, then they probably won’t be able to find much to hunt or to gather. Instead, they’ll have to subsist on bugs and berries. If they live long enough to have descendants, then it will take those descendents thousands of years to reconstruct organized societies. It seems more likely to me that, having dropped into the situation, rather than having evolved into it, they won’t make any progress at all. It seems more likely that they’ll slowly devolve into some sort of neo-chimpanzees.

There’s an alternative to the slide back into the darkness of sub-sapience. That alternative is extinction. I don’t know how many times I’ve found that scenario presented in works of fiction, and elsewhere, throughout the decades but, in my opinion, the best portrayal of it was given by Nevil Shute, in On the Beach. His novel was powerful but I believe that the movie is more effective. In the movie, they got it exactly right, all the way to the tragically false declaration of hope that was displayed on the banner in the final scene of the movie “There is Still Time .. Brother”.

—from On the Beach, the movie, 1959

So, according to that banner, there is still time, but time until what? I’ve already expressed my gloomy opinion on that point and, as the old-timers used to say, there’s a last time for everything. Isn’t that what they used to say? Something like that. The only advice that I can give is to plan a way to shuffle off this mortal coil when the time comes, like the Australians did, in the movie. In the meantime, life goes on and, while it lasts, we must find something to do with it. In my case, I have a sufficient number of articles written, and in various stage of editing, to continue publishing this newsletter for at least another year, and I just keep writing more of them. I don’t know why. It seems kind of pointless but I keep doing it anyway. However, my old computers, and the associated equipment, are getting older and, one by one, they’re giving me problems or actually failing. It’s getting more expensive to replace the stuff with similar models, which are becoming unavailable. For various good and sufficient reasons, I either can’t or won’t replace them with the modern stuff. It’s also getting more difficult to maintain a presence in the internet, because of the ever escalating changes instigated by the various marketing swindlers who, by the way, work for and do the bidding of, the overcreatures. So, I might discontinue the newsletter and the websites, as matters of necessity rather than choice, before I actually run out of material to publish, or the time in which to publish it. Either way, it’s starting to seem sort of pointless but, so far, like the Australians did in the movie, I still keep living while I can.

I no longer have much interest in many of the things that were previously of importance to me. I’m still putting some effort into Sanctuary but that, too, seems pointless. In a few years, as such things go, I expect this entire part of the continent to be a Kudzu desert, inhabited mostly by small rodents, some snakes, maybe a few feral pigs, and Kudzu. Even so, I suppose that, at least for now, a pointless effort to preserve the local environment is better than no effort at all, so I’m still making the effort. If nothing else, it gives me a place to sit in my lawn chair, watch the birds and the squirrels, reminisce, and ponder.

Sources, References, and Additional Reading

• Proliferation, in the April 2008 issue
http://frontiersman.org.uk/2008/2008-04/2008-04.html#Proliferation
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Letter to the Editor, in the October 2019 issue
http://frontiersman.org.uk/2019/2019-10/2019-10.html#F_L_a_prisoner
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Kudzu Desert, in the October 2023 issue
http://frontiersman.org.uk/2023/2023-10/2023-10.html#Kudzu_Desert
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The Bright Side, in the July 2024 issue
http://frontiersman.org.uk/2024/2024-07/2024-07.html#The_Bright_Side
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The Robots Are Coming, in the June 2026 issue
http://frontiersman.org.uk/2026/2026-06/2026-06.html#Robots
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Keystone Species, in the June 2026 issue
http://frontiersman.org.uk/2026/2026-06/2026-06.html#Keystone
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More Adventures of The Lone Raver, in Pharos
http://pharos.org.uk/Ravings_Essays/More_Adventures/More_Adventures.html
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Sanctuary, in my personal website
http://sam-aurelius-milam-iii.org.uk/#Sanctuary
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8 Billion Angels, Thursday, December 31, 2020
https://8billionangels.org/
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On the Beach, in YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9HtPfZmChA
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Life After People, in Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_After_People

—Sir Barnett Cocks

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— Sam Aurelius Milam III, editor