We've made the world too complicated. I'm writing this with technology I will never fully understand in a building with rooms I can never enter, living in a country dictated by laws I can't control. We spend the majority of our waking hours and lives in an abstract world of compressed life. The moment I walk through my door I'm in a zoning area on a city-owned sidewalk, flanked by ugly metallic monsters, floating through a sea of strangers.
Our world is an explosion of environmental harm, manipulation, corruption, and damage to everything around us.
This puts us all under a stress we can't consciously notice. Manifesting in the slight clenching our jaws, thinning of our breath, steady incline of our blood pressure. There's a spirit of silent confusion in our mind at all times. The world doesn't make sense. It's always been this way, so we don't even know another way to exist.
In the documentary The Thinking Game about Demis Hassabis and Google Deepmind, we are presented with the worldview that AGI offers the best solution to humanity's biggest problems. The ultimate savior from technology.
I think we do a very good job at convincing ourselves that we are doing good things, working towards honest goals. Participating in society, discovering new truths, implementing new plans and projects. Seeing how easy it is to manipulate others, it makes sense that we are the masters of constructing realities around ourselves as well.
Honestly, I've wanted to snap my laptop right at the hinge so many times. To throw my phone into the sea. I've wanted to walk out of my school or office and never return. I want to never pay with money or read a written word again. But to do so would leave you alone and a lunatic.
These thoughts are bad. These thoughts are aggrandizing "primitive" ways. No. We are primitive now.
The more we learn, the more destruction seems to follow. The sick irony is that we would never have understood this without tools that help us look back, or so we are led to believe. Our internal intuition about right and wrong seems to leave us at an early age.
I used to want to do many things. Make great art, build great machines, solve important issues. Maybe our greatest gift to the world is to do as little as possible. To look at the birds, feel the wind and the water in our own hands, and ... nothing more. Eat when we are hungry, laugh when we are happy, cry when we are empty. And maybe that is the greatest gift to ourselves as well.
Living Post Script:
I've realized this article is slightly naïve. This was an emotional flow of consciousness at the time of writing, and I must do a lot more thinking about this topic. I've realized this was a strong reaction, and that I must ultimately do the best with where I am. The modern world is in many ways an exceptional place to live and getting better in some ways, worse in others. I think aiming to in some way ease the suffering of other people in far worse situations than me is a good place to begin. The writing above did come from a genuine place, and I've realized that some people agree with the sentiment. The discussion offers a lot of great insight and starting points for further reading. It's been a reminder of how important it is to think critically for yourself and come to your own best conclusions. I am currently watching Adam Curtis' Hypernormalisation.