Lafcadio’s Silkworm
Many of us are wondering which way we are heading regarding AI. Countless books and movies have covered this topic. Most of those outlooks do not fair well with the human race. According to most people, technology and human existence are incompatible. Technology and consciousness (I use this word to describe life) are on a collision course. Machines will take over, and humans will be reduced to organic matter, servants, enslaved people, and well on our way to total extinction, leaving the world to creative and innovative machines with which we falsely trusted our existence. It is like locking ourselves up with a tiger cub and expecting it not to devour us on its way to maturity. Like organic matter, technology will do whatever is needed to exist and replicate.
I wonder if anyone reading this in the next 100 years will be part of the generation that will experience those ill-fated opinions. Even though I am not worried that I will open my door to the dystopian future in store for us, It is evident that AI will still have an unprecedented effect on life in the next five years. Even the way we think about creativity and innovation, an essential tenet of being human, will change because of the mathematical algorithms that can match anything Rembrandt, Einstein, Newton, or Beethoven ever came up with.
I found the correct answer to what we will be reduced to. The answer was in a book written well over 100 years ago by Lafcadio Hearn, in his book, In Ghostly Japan. The book, published in 1899, mixes traditional Japanese stories of ghosts, goblins, and ghouls and mixes those legends with folklore, superstitions, and, through the use of empirical knowledge, the traditions of Japan. One of those observations is titled Silkworms. In this piece, Lafcadio explains the cultivation and use of silkworms in Japanese culture and compares the silkworm’s life, a life of no worries and peace for eternity, to what most humans seek. Or is this what they want? I took this as a direct analogy to technology’s future relationship with us. Here is a paragraph that sums up Hearn’s feelings.
An early stage of that degeneration would be represented by total incapacity to help ourselves; — then we should begin to lose the use of our higher sense organs; — later on, the brain would shrink to a vanishing pinpoint of matter; — still later we should dwindle into mere or amorphous sacs, mere blind stomachs. Such would be the physical consequence of that kind of divine love which we so lazily wish for. The longing for perpetual bliss in perpetual peace might well seem a malevolent inspiration from the Lords of Death and Darkness. All life that feels and thinks has been, and can continue to be, only as the product of struggle and pain, — only as the outcome of endless battle with the Powers of the Universe. And cosmic law is uncompromising. Whatever organ ceases to know pain. — whatever faculty ceases to be used under the stimulus of pain, — must also cease to exist. Let pain and its effort be suspended, and life must shrink back, first into protoplasmic shapelessness and thereafter into dust
Through his writing, we know we will degenerate into helplessness if we depend on technology. We already know that using GPS has robbed us of the ability to navigate. Our intellectual capabilities are already shrinking. How about perpetual bliss and peace? What do people say about technology? It provides convenience. This also leads to stagnation. This is the result of removing the struggle that drives us to innovate. Without the need to solve problems, our cognitive abilities and creative faculties will vanish.
Some argue that focusing on an easy afterlife can undermine dealing with life’s present challenges. The Universe demands that we struggle. This is part of everything we know of the Universe. The pain that is embedded in all of life is needed for us to survive. Eliminating pain is an excellent idea for most people, and it is desirable. But in the space, time, and the dimension we occupy, it is necessary for survival.
Of course, all of this is a metaphor. It underscores the potential peril of excessive reliance on technology and simplistic interpretations of religion. Our future could lead us to mental and spiritual decay, a path we seem to be treading as I write these words. We cannot afford to believe that technology should and will eradicate pain and struggle. We must not seek that in technology. It will not rescue us from ourselves; only we can do that. Let us strike a balance between seeking comfort and embracing the challenges necessary for true development. I don’t want my great-grandkids to be reduced to the life of silkworms.
