Snow, AI, Worship
It’s snowing—steady yet light, without wind. A sigh. An exhalation, yet each bit of moisture is what it is. No need to evoke science. It’s marveling that is wanted, first and last, the feeling that has me honoring this snowfall as a spectacle, an eminence, a typical miracle. Snow is my Earth totem. I was born in a snowstorm, bar mitzvah in a snowstorm, and married in a snowstorm. We feel that weather is always speaking to us, though what it says varies on our circumstances, which seem as endless as the weather, though neither is truly endless. The Earth is finite but its finitude is vaster than any human mind. I stand on the porch and am lost in the deep peace of the snow falling, this cold, thorough, barely audible deluge that turns everyone into a witness. We are all sharers.
Are all my spiritual words false? Must I put quotations there, where I try to evoke the mystical presence? Am I glib, one more seeker reducing the enormity and mystery to his size? Could be. As is the case with many so-called educated people, I am steeped in scientific materialism—explanations for everything and the belief that science is a good unto itself, indeed that human beings exist, in a sense, to further scientific progress. Who else will do it? The other creatures seem to be fine just going along with being creatures. Our dog seems happy each day with the Earth as it is. Her instincts work fine. The human pageant, as the old textbooks used to put it, is clearly something else.
At this fraught moment, humankind, as represented by those involved in artificial intelligence, seem to be going beyond explanation and into realms where no one has been and that offer prospects that according to many sober observers, such as Richard Heinberg, who is a senior fellow at the Post-Carbon Institute, pose “an uber-threat to the survival of humanity but also to all life on Earth.” As in, to choose one example, AI can create “thousands of new AI-generated proteins, when we already are doing an abysmal job of assessing the dangers of new chemicals.” We have very little idea of what we have done to the Earth with our countless inventions, discoveries, and patents but that doesn’t keep us from charging forward. “Forward” is always the right place to go, apparently. We can’t get enough of linear thinking, as in next discovery, next product, next election. We seem to believe we can just keep chugging indefinitely down the linear track. Who’s to stop us?
I seem to have strayed from my topic. It’s still snowing as I write this; I am still in that suspended place. I realize that snow in the north country is nothing special but that’s the issue, isn’t it? Everything on Earth can become nothing special, beginning with photosynthesis, and, so, we resort to whatever human beings come up with and designate our inventions, our coffers, our seeming conquests as special, thereby relegating the sustaining yet remarkable dailiness of the Earth to background noise. Nature remains natural and that is the wonderful rub, for we still love what is natural, beginning with love itself. It’s a rare suitor who confesses that the love he bears is “artificial.” I think of R. Crumb’s drolly human Mr. Natural. Crumb is a master parodist, part of whose genius lies in the truth beneath the parodic figure, hence Crumb’s reveling in all things natural, including boogers, big butts, flat feet, and armpit aroma.
A simple question to ask from the point of view of the snow is: What is this human intelligence? Why does it seek to make artificial intelligence? Is this intelligence, artificial or otherwise, the sum of life? Or just a sideline that may destroy, nonetheless, life on the planet as we know it? Will the intelligence make a new, better snow? Or does it have no use for snow? A sizable abyss looms here, one that the daily news, which has other abysses, will never touch. We have given intelligence as it manifests itself in science and technology carte blanche. Since such intelligence is scattered all over the planet and is fueled very often by corporate wealth, how else could it be? Those who are mere onlookers and consumers haven’t been asked to roll over and play dead, but they haven’t been asked their opinion about unabated “progress” either.
It would seem that what each and every day calls for is worship directed to the Earth that sustains us, some meditative time of thanks, be it silent or spoken, individual or collective. This would be a change, to put it mildly, but no one conclusively said we have to work most hours of the day. No one conclusively said that the sum of worship must be directed to a God in heaven. No one conclusively said that so-called civilized people are incapable of thinking about the fate of their grandchildren, to say nothing of the other creatures. No one conclusively said that wealth must outweigh every other human factor. No one conclusively said that explanation is bound to remove every mystery as to what we are doing here. And the worship is already there in countless poems, prayers, and songs that are directed to the Earth. This is to say nothing about the numerous Indigenous directives that praise the Earth steadily and movingly. It’s the spark of love, however, that gives praise a voice, a spark that is up against a massive, immovable facade, all the darkness of humans that has made death the prime angel.
Poems, legends, and dramas have stressed for millennia the folly of know-it-all pride. Such tales speak to a wisdom tradition that crosses all borders, races, tribes, and religious dispensations. It is there that we falter grievously for we don’t believe in wisdom. “Who,” we say, “are you to call something wisdom? Surely, your self-interest is showing through. Surely, you are merely the product of various retrograde cultural situations. Surely, you have an ideological agenda of some sort.” To present those poems, legends, and dramas to everyone, to direct attention to a form of keen awe that has flourished for something like forever, seems modest when compared to the material achievements of modern times. Achievements they are but our times are shadowed by a terrible emptiness, even the most “brilliant” of us, for without active acknowledgment of what nurtures us, one dimension of which is worship that speaks to reverence for the Earth, we are, for all our ingenious works and busy days, idle creatures.
I've read this at the perfect moment. At brunch this past Sunday, the conversation around the table with folks from 33 - 73 was largely about A.I. Interestingly, the most ardent enthusiasm for A.I. came from the 73 year old who sees A.I. helping those in health care in ways that allows them to be more than health care providers. I will share this with everyone there because, at least for me, again, you have shown the spotlight where it needs to be: the here and now and where we are. A thoughtful piece, Baron, thanks.
I worship snow and I'm glad you're continuing these essays. Thank you.