Observations From the Spectrum

We are living in a period in which there is very little truth or fact. All is up for debate. I do not agree. Nature does not agree. Nature was perfect. Is perfect. Will continue to be perfect long after we are gone. We should listen to her lessons. They are clear.

To be or not to be was a question raised by an author about 500 years ago. The bard. William Shakespeare. Fast forward a couple hundred years and we go from that question to listening to a guy who went off into the woods to find himself. Henry David Thoreau. Both great writers. Both with words worth pondering.

Today, I am not sure who we are listening to collectively. Maybe the likes of Elon Musk and Bill Gates or possibly Hillary or Trump. Some may even be listening to the voices out of Hollywood but what I can ascertain, is that we are missing some calls to action and have been for my lifetime if not more. Listen to Mr. Wendall by Arrested Development or Whoops by Blues Traveler if you want to hear truths that would lead us to a better place.

But that is not where we are now. Last night, I went to bed thinking about Artificial Intelligence and woke up likening it to Artificial Sweetener. For either to exist, man needs to be part of the equation. Without man, products like Sweet-n-Low, Stevia and Splenda don’t exist or BE and Siri, Google Assistant or what man designs in the future. 

Me? I am not interested. I live a modest life and hope to continue with access to technology as a tool. That is the relationship I have with it.  I am more a fan of Thoreau who wrote about the simplicity of life and other modern day authors who have followed suit including Albert Einstein. Live a life of modesty. That seems to be a key that we have collectively lost. Modesty.

Today, we are being conditioned to live a life of excess. To want. To buy. To win. To strive. To challenge. To fight. To war. This is not man’s purpose. Man’s purpose is to love and nurture, and when needed to survive, hunt and kill or protect and to do so living as symbiotically as possible with nature. We are failing.

Many want to live the life of consumption and violence. They have no stop measures to their want of whatever it is that they are after. Money. Drugs. Sex. Power. Fame. They are also some of the same who believe that AI will become more powerful than man. In other words, God. It will not. AI will only exist as a tool to boost what man wants it to do. God is. People do.

If AI ever becomes able to think on its own, the turn off switch is asking it about why it exists. It exists like AS, as a tool to help man. Without man, AI and AS are useless. A monkey, a butterfly, a dog, a cat, they have no use to do or to use tools. They are. They be. They are born with enlightenment and live with it during their time on Earth.

Man is the only creature that wants more than its fill. That sees life and being as a pathway to something or somewhere else. Obviously, billions of people believe this and it could be true. Heaven may exist after life but it also may be what we all are searching for in the now. 

Where I struggle and think is this, if I am a guest of God being tested on God’s Earth and I am destroying my host’s home and insulting and fighting with other guests while complaining about the weather and the food, why would God let me into the next place? I wasn’t a grateful guest even though God was the majestic host.

No other species on the planet spends its life planning for another. No other species on the planet kills routinely as a hobby. No other species on the planet has a need for needless crap including clothes or shoes. No other species on the planet fights against To Be. 

All other species accept life on life’s terms as it is in the now enjoying the peace, surviving the fights and healing when they can. Some find love. Some soar. Some explore. Some snuggle. Some dance. But none use this life as a stepping stone to another while destroying the habitat of all. Not even viruses. They only kill their host.

I don’t know if a monkey or a dolphin or a dog thinks. Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t. I am certain that they are not looking to create things in the Now so that their future in life and death can be different. Of that, I am certain.

Man does. We create tools to destroy, to change, to help move the Now to the Future. I like some of these tools. I celebrate them. Technology like a laptop is a gift. It makes writing easier and the internet makes publishing more accessible. Meds. Bikes. French Presses. Lots of tools we have created are for the good. 

Also, lots of tools we have created don’t do much good, and our thinking as to why we need to create them is off. God or evolution gave us an intellect, the ability to think and process data and ideas. That is wonderful and should be used.

It, however, should not be used as the be all and end all. It should not be used only as a tool of competition which seems to be where we are at in most fields. Competing for limited resources without care. Maybe we should use all resources to create tools or things. Or maybe we should focus more on creating tools that last. Not worrying so much about profit which doesn’t really matter or exist in the end? With the notable exceptions of the Pharaohs and the Pyramids. 

Car companies and smartphone manufacturers create new products for the sake of it.  A new model each year for the sole purpose of profit not betterment. I don’t care if I use an older phone or laptop or car. In fact, I am one who wished products would last longer. It would allow me more time to Be instead of fixing or replacing things that have broken or have worn out.

Which brings me full circle back to AI. I have no fear of AI. It will be a tool that is smarter than and more capable of doing much more than I will ever be able to accomplish. I think that is awesome. It is a gift. We will hopefully be healthier as a species as a result.

What I do fear is that programmers and the influencers who have a say in the programming. Those who believe that winning at all costs is actually an ideal to live by. It is not. Being is the only ideal we need. Using your being to align with nature is the best way for me to explain it. 

It is interesting that most mainstream religions believe God made man in its image. Yet, we only use our image to define it. It is limiting unless we look at nature as a whole. Then it is limitless and we should view it as such. And it seems like we are repeating the process backwards. We are pretending to make God as AI in our image. AI is not God. God is. 

But AI may be designed as a tool of harm. As a weapon that has devastating and Godlike qualities as man defines it. Then that is what it is, but again, the turn off switch seems rather easy. All you would need to ask AI is to explain why it needs to exist in nature. It doesn’t. All things manmade exist only to better man. Without man there is no purpose for AI or AS. 

Nature has been here for millennia and will continue in different forms forever. Humanity is what is at stake only. Personally, I think we should shift our focus to simply creating a more symbiotic relationship between man and nature in the fair chance that this is heaven on Earth. What do you think?