While I am in the office during the day, Puusti the Dog sits up on the back of a couch, looking out the window at the passing traffic and people walking by. He isn't longing to go out at the moment, since it is getting cooler and wetter, plus I walk him often enough, but he does enjoy the views. Even at night he sits up there looking out, even though there isn't much to see for me.
Since I am home so much by myself, I get why people end up relying on pets to keep them company. The "crazy cat lady" became that way due to loneliness. Some will claim that it is because people are terrible that they drew away from human relationships to begin with, but that is a cop out. Yes, there are plenty of terrible people, but we all have the need for companionship and the fact is that we are getting worse at being in relationships. All relationships, not just those of the romantic persuasion.
Loneliness Should not be a thing in this world, considering how large the population is and how many ways we can stay connected. Yet, it is perhaps just these factors that are driving separation and disconnection. In the past, we used to spend our time far more locally and kinetically, not only getting to know each other in the real world, but becoming relevant in the lives of others also. Moving to the digital landscape and using it the way we do, has taken away a lot of relevancy because there it is far more pseudonymous.
Yes, people might have a real name and face at times, but even then it is a façade, a curated mask that covers true beliefs and more importantly, actions. We can take it at face value, but that digital face rarely aligns with the reality of the person behind it. Yet, we are attaching ourselves to strangers as if we know who and how they actually are, without any real insight into it. And the marketing empowered by our imagination, lifts them up on a pedestal, leaving those around us locally, looking pretty drab.
Most people probably don't agree with me and say they value the people around them, but if they are spending a lot of time on social media as well, it means they are compromised. They are comparing their reality, to the dis-reality they spend hours scrolling each day. And over the last few years, that dis-reality has been further warped by AI development that is so realistic it fools people daily into believing the impossible, or the never happened.
I think a lot of the problems we face as a species comes down to our inability to build strong, healthy relationships today. Instead, we are more influenced by feeling that we should have people support us no matter what we believe or do. The digital landscape is the equivalent of being a dictator surrounded by yes-men, where we demand what we want and get what we want, with very little effort and no pushback. We are informationally spoiled, but what we are surrounding ourselves with is rarely what is actually valuable for our personal growth, let alone the growth of our communities.
I don't think it will happen in my lifetime, but if there is a potential positive to having AI do all of the meaningful labour, then it could be that we then rediscover what it means to be in meaningful relationships and part of a valuable community. Not monetary value, but human value. The challenge with this is that even before currency for trade was invented, we traded our skill and abilities within our tribes. But, what will we trade when our skills and abilities are useless for providing for the tribe?
It is going to be strange, because even now I feel that many people are getting boring through a lack of real world personal experience, where all they can speak of is a regurgitation of their digital consumption. In the future, people won't have many varied tasks that they do, so can't talk about them. So, there won't be as much variation in experience. People will all be drinking from the same wells, creating very little gaps for interesting conversation. Essentially, we would be talking to ourselves.
Which is what many people are doing now with AI anyway.
And they believe they are having a conversation. It is a hallucination, but it isn't in the answers the AI is giving, it is in the belief that this is a healthy and valuable relationship. But, since health and valuable relationships are in such short supply and a lot of people haven't experienced them at any time in their lives, it might be easy to accept an inferior substitute as the real deal.
Or that loneliness is normal.
Taraz
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