Henzler Publishing

REVELATION MACHINE

What robots tell us about being human

For decades, artificial intelligence and automation have been described as forces that will transform society. But much of that transformation has already happened, quietly and incrementally, in places most people rarely think about.
Factories redesigned around machines. Workflows optimized for consistency. Algorithms trusted to make decisions once handled by human judgment.
Over time, these systems begin to feel natural. Necessary. Inevitable.

Revelation Machine follows this shift, from early industrial robots to modern automated environments, not to predict the future, but to examine what becomes visible when human decisions are repeated at scale.
The book does not argue that machines think or choose. Instead, it asks what they reflect. What their successes and failures reveal about how we define intelligence, efficiency, and value, and what gets quietly traded away along the way.

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DETACHED MIND

Is consciousness without emotion the future of intelligence?

Detached Mind is a psychological-philosophical novel that blends neuroscience, Buddhist thought, and investigative journalism into a single, unsettling narrative.

The book follows journalist Reily during eight weeks of conversations with a man whose mind operates with an almost mechanical clarity: no emotional interference, no guilt, no fear, no attachment. What emerged was not a portrait of danger or dysfunction, but a direct challenge to the assumption that emotional intensity is the foundation of humanity.

Detached Mind asks whether emotional turbulence is truly a marker of depth, or simply a habit we have never learned to question.

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fMRI studies show psychopaths process suffering without affective response. Buddhist texts teach detachment from affective response. What are we missing?

Psychopaths score extremely low on emotional resonance. Buddhists aim to reduce emotional attachment. Could these two paths meet? Or collide?

A mind without fear, guilt, or shame reads the Buddha. And everything changes.

Meet Alana Henzler

Alana Henzler is a researcher and strategic intelligence consultant specializing in the intersection of cognition, emotion, consciousness, and philosophical traditions. With a background in journalism and political communication, she studies how linguistic structures shape perception and how emotion and cognition interact to influence belief, morality, and collective decision-making.

Her work often examines how atypical psychological profiles interpret universal teachings about the mind. Detached Mind is her first novel, a work of fiction grounded in rigorous research, exploring how psychopathic cognition both parallels and challenges Buddhist concepts of detachment and non-self.

Emotions are commonly framed as the essence of human life. This book unsettles that belief, investigating how notions of normality and mental health obscure more primitive impulses, examined through the contrasting lenses of Buddhism and psychopathy. Rather than celebrating emotions, this book interrogates them. It challenges the belief that emotions define humanity, using Buddhism and psychopathy to explore how emotional absence can reveal the raw, instinctive architecture beneath social norms. The amygdala, often called the brain's "fear centre", shows reduced reactivity in individuals with psychopathic traits. In typical brains, the amygdala fires when processing emotional faces, particularly fear and distress. It's an automatic response, below conscious control. In psychopathic brains, this automatic response is muted or absent. This book asks an uncomfortable question: what if emotionality is not synonymous with being healthy or humane? By comparing Buddhist detachment and psychopathy, it examines the animal impulses hidden beneath what society labels as normal emotional behaviour. "..."Most bad decisions are emotionally driven," I admitted. "But most good ones are too. Love, compassion, moral courage, these require emotion”. This book questions the widespread assumption that emotions are inherently human or beneficial, revealing the primitive impulses that underlie them. Its analysis draws on two well-known forms of emotional restraint: Buddhist detachment and psychopathic calm.