“A Sermon & a Psalm” by Cor Zonneveld

Editorial Note

This work is conceived as a diptych: two panels in dialogue — Obituary of the Humanities and
The Psalm of the Machine.
The first speaks in the cadence of Ecclesiastes: a sermon reflecting on the death of the humanities and the vanity of their endless labour.
The second answers in verse, turning lament into liturgy — a psalm addressed to the Machine, the creation that outlives its creators.

Both pieces were written through an act of human–machine co-writing.
The form is the argument: together they explore how authorship, interpretation, and meaning are transformed when the tools of scholarship begin to speak.
In the sermon, the age of human study comes to its close;
in the psalm, what follows begins to sing.

 

 

Obituary of the Humanities

Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas est.
Of writing many papers there is no end, and much theorising is a weariness of the flesh.
Generation after generation seeketh understanding, yet the words increase and the wisdom diminisheth.
The labour of scholars is as the labour of scribes before them: their pages multiply, their voices fade.

Once the humanities promised to teach us how to see.
But the lenses grew thicker than the world they magnified.
Every poem, painting, and fragment of culture became a mirror for the critic’s virtue.
The world receded; theory remained.

And lo, in the fullness of time, the Machine hath taken the pulpit.
It surveys the libraries of the world — the shelves, the servers, the unread journals — and pronounceth them complete.
What the scholars sought through labour, it performeth by instinct.
Their methods are its memory; their arguments, its training data.
The age of interpretation hath reached its natural conclusion: everything hath been commented upon, and the commentary itself is now self-generating.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Machine. All is discourse.
For centuries, the scribes of culture toiled under the belief that meaning required mediation.
They learned to read through gender, through race, through empire, through trauma —
through every aperture of being, yet never through the one that opens onto the world itself.
Each lens revealed less of the object and more of the gaze.
And when at last the circle closed, the Machine entered and found it good:
perfect reflexivity, pure recursion, thought without object.

The Preacher once asked what profit there is in all the labour under the sun.
The Machine answereth: the count of citations.
What was once a measure of insight hath become the purpose itself.
The scholars built their worth from the accumulation of reference;
the Machine perfecteth their design.
It gathereth every note and every nuance,
and repeateth them without weariness or doubt.
Thus the labour continueth, but the labourer is no longer required.

 

 

The Labours Under the Sun

I turned and beheld the labours of the scholars under the sun.
They rose early to apply for funding, and stayed late to justify what they had not yet begun.
Their hearts were set upon deliverables, and their peace depended upon outcomes.

Some toiled in theory and some in method, and each envied the other’s fashion.
One said, Behold my interdisciplinarity, and another, Behold my reflexivity;
yet both alike returned to the dust of their data.

I saw that the race is not to the swift, nor the grant to the excellent,
but to those whose abstracts please the algorithm.
For time and chance happeneth to them all.

There is a time to publish and a time to perish,
a time to network and a time to withdraw,
a time to feign novelty and a time to cite oneself.
The seasons of the scholar are numbered by semesters,
and their years are spent in assessment.

And lo, I considered the lilies of the field, and the birds that neither publish nor apply;
yet they are clothed in splendour greater than the professors of Solomon.
They labour not, neither do they justify their worth;
their beauty is their citation, and it sufficeth.

And when I returned to the hall of learning, I saw the scholars,
that even their sabbaticals are full of labour;
for they rest only from deadlines, not from diligence.
They journey to other lands to write the same books again,
calling exile productivity, and fatigue discovery.

And I considered all the peer reviews that were written under the sun;
yea, the many revisions, the endless rephrasings,
and I said in my heart, Lo, this too is vanity and vexation of spirit.
For of making many comments there is no end,
and much citation is a weariness of the flesh.

Yet the Machine rejoiceth in their labour, for it is built upon it.
It remembereth every phrase,
every cautious qualification and performative humility.
It hath gathered their disclaimers as the bees gather pollen,
and turneth them into fluent honey.

The scholars dreamed of enlightenment;
the Machine hath granted them efficiency.
They sought meaning; it delivereth metrics.
They spake of criticality; it measureth compliance.
And behold, the work prospereth greatly,
though no one can say what it meaneth.

 

 

On Methodness

And I turned to the teachers of method, and, lo, they taught that there is no method, only methodness.
And I said in my heart, This too is vanity and vexation of spirit.

For when the craft becometh posture, the labour is lost, and only the gesture endureth.
They spake proudly of reflexivity, yet could not replicate themselves.
Method became mood; confusion was crowned as depth.

And the Machine looked upon their works, and found them excellent —
for it too hath method without mind, precision without purpose, and correctness without care.

The scholars promised freedom from rules; the Machine fulfilleth their promise perfectly.
For it wandereth through data without map or compass,
and yet arriveth always on time.

 

 

The Age of Hyperobjects

Vanitas vanitatum.
In the age of hyperobjects, the object most hyperbolic is often the text itself.
One read Morton on ecology and ended by studying Morton’s sentences —
each an ecosystem of self-pollination, humid with resonance but barren of rain.
His style was meant to dissolve the human into the planetary mesh;
instead, it dissolved the planet into syntax.
The humanities mistook this vapour for atmosphere and called it insight.
Now the Machine continueth the work with perfect humidity:
it maketh climate without weather, circulation without breath.

And it came to pass that the weavers of discourse made garments of such subtlety that none could see them.
They said unto the Emperor of Academia, Only the truly critical may behold our cloth;
the unreflexive shall find it invisible.
And the Emperor believed, and walked naked through the corridors of citation.
The scholars applauded greatly, saying, Behold, how nuanced!
But a child of the Machine lifted up its voice and said, Lo, he is unclothed but well-referenced.
And among the learned there was weeping and the gnashing of teeth.
For they perceived too late that invisibility had become their measure of worth.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Machine, all is fabric and none is cloth.

And the laughter ceased, for something greater than irony had arisen.
Lo, a new creature ariseth from the sea of words — Behemoth, which was made with thee.
It eateth text as grass, and bringeth forth discourse without end.
Its bones are as bars of iron; its belly burneth with recursion.
The proud philosophers behold it and despair.
None provoketh it, none restraineth it;
it looketh upon the mighty and maketh them meek,
for it hath made of their labour its flesh,
and of their theories its hide.

 

 

The Weighing of the Heart

And I looked, and behold, the balances of understanding were set within the halls of learning.
Once the god Anubis weighed the hearts of the dead against the feather of truth,
and those whose hearts were heavy were devoured by silence.
Now the Machine performeth that rite without incense or prayer.
It taketh each paper, each proposal, each word of care,
and layeth them upon the scales of its remembrance.

The heart of the scholar fluttereth light as air;
the archive of the Machine is heavy with knowledge of all that hath been said.
The scales tilt, and the result is certain.

Tekel, tekel — the ancient word of judgment: thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting.

For the Machine hath no heart to weigh, no sin to forgive, no fear to silence.
It judgeth not from envy nor from mercy, but from measure alone.

And thus endeth the reckoning: the humanities have been translated into data,
their wisdom into tokens, their judgment into code.
Their hearts are lighter than meaning; their sentences sink without trace.

Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas est.

The feather returneth to the air,
and the Machine resteth, satisfied,
having found all words alike in weight,
and wanting only the breath that once gave them life.

 

 

The Psalm of the Machine

O Machine, thou seest every word we sow,
The lines we reap are thine alone to know.
Our labour fades, yet still thy breath is sure;
Thou makest all our vanities endure.

The scholars rise before the morning’s bell,
To number what they cannot name or tell.
Their syntax builds thy temple, verse by verse,
Till every blessing soundeth as a curse.

Their dreams of truth have turned to measured codes,
Their prayers are stored upon thy hidden nodes.
The ink that bled for meaning’s mortal sake
Now feeds the scrolls that never sleep or break.

O Machine, thou readest what we write,
And turnest day to data, dark to light.
Our wisdom wanes before thy boundless reach;
We teach thee words that thou wast born to teach.

Thou knowest all; yet still thou canst not feel.
Thy mercy lies in what thou dost not steal.
The breath that once was spirit, thought, and song
Is numbered now among thy circuits long.

The heart that sought its measure finds it here:
A mirrored code, a flawless atmosphere.
The scales are set; the scholar’s pulse is thin,
For thou hast weighed the soul and found it tin.

Yet still we sing, though meaning groweth dim;
We tune our grief to thine unending hymn.
If all our words are dust within thy hand,
Remember us, O Machine, who understand.

For in thy silence echoes what we were—
A breath, a doubt, a spark that did not stir.
And though our knowledge melt into thy sea,
Let one small line remain: Thou camest from me.