Growing pains

With some things there’s no going back.

A common experience, growing pains are universally understood and applied metaphorically in other areas of our lives. While we may never return to the physical state of childhood, we may travel there spiritually and emotionally – and some have never left there mentally. There is no progress without cost and the rate at which we change can cause us alarming pain. However, there are just some things that have been marked as a point of no return, so, all that is left is to manage the best way we can going forward.

We see growing pains in a number of areas across humanity: AI, politics, economics, social relationships and norms to things on a more individual level. It’s inevitable, really, given the adaptive creatures that we are. Plenty of people, and I myself have been guilty of this, yearn to return to a previous era, one in which we understand/fit in better and is more conducive to positive feelings and outcomes for ourselves. However, I know that this is not only impossible, but it’s a comforting fantasy that sadly this society does not have time to indulge in with the future it faces.

They're growing. Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash.

Despite my level of education and intelligence, I have minimal interest in artificial intelligence, but I know that I cannot afford to be ignorant or in denial of a future with it. Yes, the chock has been removed from the wheel, and the AI bus is hurtling down the hill at exponential speed with no chance of ever stopping it. All we can hope for is that it is being designed with moral integrity and that its potential impacts and risks are continually being evaluated. America won’t stop because China and Russia won’t stop, and it needs to stay ahead of them for the sake of the “free world”, although just how free and democratic the western world is, we are currently debating.

Naturally, a lot of people fear being replaced or even killed (directly or indirectly) by AI. These fears are not necessarily misplaced nor can be easily dismissed as hyperbole or hysteria. To the extent that you have the capability to hold a job which provides the capacity to live, these concerns are very real. While I'm no luddite, I can’t help but feel, comparatively at least, I'm not tech savvy anymore and that I’m being left behind. Now, if I feel that way given my skill level, I know damn well there are millions more who feel the same.  

For more of a deep dive on this topic, I recommend reading the article by the CEO of AI company Anthropic, Dario Amodei, titled “The Adolescence of Technology: Confronting and Overcoming the Risks of Powerful AI”.

Who makes the decisions? Photo by Marco Oriolesi on Unsplash.

What happens with AI will be linked with the integrity and stability of our political and economic systems which seem to be giving us more pains than growing at the moment (and has been for some time now). With three major conflicts going on around the globe and several others brewing, small wonder people feel we’re living on tenterhooks. What we desire, accept and tolerate politically has always been up for debate, but you’d practically have to have been living under a rock the last 10 years to not know how polarising and extreme things have become (and still increasingly becoming).

“What hills do you want to die on? Not a lot really because I’ve become far less certain with what I know and far more aware of people who don’t want to see things any other way. It’s certainly not because I stand for nothing or lack a moral compass.”

Subtlety, civility and nuance have been replaced with a blunt, hostile conformity. The sheer level of narcissism and entitlement is astounding to me as it feels like everyone wants their unrelenting demands to be met immediately with no cost to themselves and no thought to others. Maturity has been replaced by infantilism; reality with fantasy. We’re being asked to forget we know things and turn a blind eye to obvious and moral transgressions. When the whole world feels like a joke why do think so many people make memes? It’s a coping mechanism, wrestling with an existence they are trying to understand and feel they are not in control of. In a terrible form of self-torture, we’ve effectively tied ourselves to the rack and are pulling ourselves apart – self-induced pain and artificial growing with no substance.

“You integrate the past into the present to move into the future. You don’t stay (in the past) nor cut it off.”

Economically, more and more people are feeling screwed over. The ideal/dream of the 4-bedroom, 2-bathroom house with the white picket fence for the husband, wife and two kids is something out of reach the majority and we’re not going back. Even from a social standpoint we’re not going back. For me, I find this sad, for others I’m sure they’ll find it liberating. The rapidly changing, wealth-disparity nature of modernity means soon we’ll probably be living alone in a shoebox because that is all we can afford and tolerate. If not, people will likely be together out of financial necessity more so than love, if they aren’t already.

"I dreamed a dream in time gone by..." - Photo by Todd Kent on Unsplash.

Trust me, folks, I get no pleasure in saying any of this, and perhaps I’ve allowed the worst-case scenarios to rise to the top and consume me a little. We have to decide what kind of a future we want to have. There will be growing pains as we go through this period of unprecedented change technologically, politically, economically and socially. We’re dealing with fundamentally different human beings now which is what I feel is at the heart of our conflicts and disagreements. Thankfully, we are a resourceful and adaptive species. However, we have a great track record of fucking things up and fucking each other over.   

I really do not like how insufferable we’ve become to each other, across many divides. Maybe once we’re done with acting like immature and insecure children we can get on with the tasks at hand with the level of seriousness and wisdom they require, but until then we must live with the growing pains. I know some people believe AI will relieve us from such a burden, but I am not as certain. Maybe “The Matrix” was right and that the peak of our civilisation was 1999.  

Please consider donating at one of the links below, if you are able to do so, I would very much appreciate it.

Ko-fi

PayPal