Big Conversations
Matt Wolfe of FutureTools.io wrote at the end of last week that “March 2023 will likely go down in history as one of the most pivotal months in the history of AI. This will be seen as the month where everything exploded…the month where those creating the AI finally said “Whoa! We need to slow this whole thing down. We’re moving a little too fast.” There was a letter written and published by the technorati (basically a bunch of wealthy straight middle aged dudes) posted on the not-at-all intimidatingly named “Future of Life Institute” asking to make current systems more “accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal” and to bring in new systems of governance. The fact that it was headline signed by Elon Musk probably ought to strike fear for all of us - if someone as seemingly lacking in moral compass as Elon is calling for a slowdown, there’s likely genuine risk. The rapid acceleration of AI raises fundamental issues around our values and beliefs and stimulates conversations that are long, long, overdue. Big Conversations about how we want to live, what we truly value, and how on earth we change course as individuals, and more critically, societally.
Transpersonal therapists enter training typically with a diffuse idea that there is something “more” to life, and that our psyches are more than a collection of chemicals and impulses creating an experience. Ideas of individual and collective soul and spirit and connectedness infuse our work, we nibble at the edges of mythology, religion, and metaphysics, but there are no prefab answers. What I found and still find is that “out in the real world”, with clients, these conversations are difficult to have, for many reasons, but primarily because what brings clients to therapy are issues that reflect our culture. We want fast fixes and tangible techniques…being in a space and not “achieving” some kind of “progress” can feel frustrating to both client and therapist. Sure, transpersonal therapists are trained to hold a wider space and be comfortable with exploration, silence, ambiguity and frustration, but we’re also people trying to make a living in the current culture, so we try to find a balancing act between the urgency our clients commonly come with, and the longer, deeper, work that many of us feel is more important and rewarding.
I don’t have a tidy way to bring my perspective as a therapist to this AI conversation because there are so many threads which are worth Big Conversations. So many directions to go. And the easy thing to do is to turn away. And let’s be clear - to keep afloat in a capitalist society, the mandatory thing to do is to turn away, because there’s always something pulling on our attention to be completed, or consumed. Or we need a break and don’t really have the energy to consider deeply. We feel obligated to disconnect - from our intellect, our emotions, our bodies and our souls - just to keep on going. We can’t get in deep because we’re so flipping busy with “stuff” - and we feel we don’t have the tools to tackle the complexity of what really does matter.
I’m not pretending to have the tools yet…but I’m sounding the klaxon. The klaxon which says “Wake up - we’ve been asleep too long. We’ve believed what we’ve been told by the patriarchy, by hetero, cis, mono-normativity, by the colonialist, white, capitalist society we’re deeply integrated in.” It is so much easier to sleep when we’re exhausted. It is so much more comfortable to consume without facing the emptiness inside. It is so much simpler to follow when we lack the resources to create meaning for ourselves.
But ease, comfort and simplicity are slipping away anyhow. You feel it, I feel it, we all feel it. Alongside the slipping, though, I want to start to feel roots, depth, not-knowingness, hope, imagination, and integrity. I want to feel the messy, powerful, curious forces that we everyday humans bring when we actually start to have the Big Conversations.
