I have to admit my first few usages of AI to write copy for me have been disappointing to say the least.
YES I get it. AI will cut many mundane corners for us AND it will never be as divinely creative as us. It lacks SOUL because it’s just a highly advanced machine so it’s writing, for example, may satisfy those looking for generic corporate copycatting in milliseconds but for those looking for the poetic, creative synchronicities of words, melting halfway into the mystical, spicing the physical with meta, tapping the magic humming in the ethers, well AI may one day come close and not enough.
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And that’s fine and well. That’s awesome, really. Because we shouldn’t lose sight in all of this hubbub that we, human beings, are fucking awesome. Yeah it may not seem that way if you turn on the nefarious news and the misanthropic blues that pop culture seems to always play like a sickening dirge in the background.
Aye, we have as a species gone waaaaaayward, bringing ecocide to bear, horrifying wars, untold injustices, idiotic antics and we have also done profoundly beautiful things in all of that chaotic midst.
I personally do not equate our millennial mishaps as testament to our original flaws. I believe we’ve actually just been disconnected from our true nature–the radiant land of the soul. And beyond that, to very nature itself, both terrestrial and cosmic, of which the soul is native to.
I call it one of the Wounds of the West, this pandemic of disembodiment and desacralization of nature that has made us so insane that we’d destroy our own home habitat and war upon each other with fanatical perpetuity.
AI indeed has and will supply a valuable utility in rapid computational prowess so that our time can be more liberated from mundane tasks and help us process and analyze data like cyber-ninjas.
And that’s really where the buck should stop.
And there are those that want AI to go further. MUCH further.
Our ethics and morality will be diligently tested on this, for good measure, because we need to seriously upgrade our wisdom on not just tech innovation but the very philosophies of life.
There are some in the AI world, for example, who are intensely excited to merge humans with machines, and see our destiny as giving birth to a new super race of a kind of homo machinas who will transcend the clumsy and pitiful limitations of the ‘flesh machine’, even evading the natural cycle of death.
Those beliefs should be really contemplated because for me there’s some deep dangers there.
On the other hand, I think there’s a potent movement of people going the other direction: instead of bringing the machine into the ultimate intimacy to be embedded and merged with our very biology, some are choosing to put down their phones more frequently, close down the laptops and spend more intentional time in nature, with the Earth, and, dare I say, Gaia, running from the mechanistic embrace of the android to clutch the wild hair of the river.
These people actually see nature as the most advanced technology in the known universe and have a deep and burgeoning reverence for it.
They marvel in forests and wonder, who designed such complex and wondrous things as trees, the hydrogen cycle, DNA, the infinite scents of flowers, the inimitable poetry of a sunset?
Then, startled into awe, they might realize it’s not just humans that are awesome and that we are a part of something truly extraordinary JUST AS IT IS. Without any need for a Windows update. Or a cybernetic augmentation. Perfect. Divine. AS IS.
You see I believe this too, that’s there’s something about the nature of things that is so incredibly, magnificently beautiful. And the design of these worlds upon worlds…I mean who, what, how, why (WOW!) designed them?
The best way will probably be somewhere in the middle of all of this: AI alliances to make work light, fast, more dynamic and ample time resting in the cosmos of nature, studying the religion of infinite beauty, letting the blessing of being just be.
I hope you’re thinking, feeling and living this all deep enough to see these widening vistas of meaning. It’s high time and a great time to get ruddy with reflection. These are big things that will impact us all. We have some potent powers that we need to become conscious of, finally, and AI is going to amplify these dilemmas so we can finally get a handle on our true sovereignty.
And if there’s one thing I implore us all to do it’s to spend MORE time in nature. When you can’t remember the last time you blinked, in that screen gaze, turn it off and turn on your sensual intelligence. Run outside, to the wild and be the remembering that where we, AI, all of this came from is a mystical mystery of laughing poetic meaning that wants to tickle your naked skin with the licks of sunlight and bonds of breathing with every flower, tree, animal, fish, eternity etc. in the great one verse singing us all into confounding unity.
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