Finding our Voice by Letting it Go
on AI and authenticity
Dear friend,
I recently read a post by David Heinemeier Hansson about the dangers of losing our sense of purpose as AI takes work off of our plates.
I agree that many of us are likely to feel lost when all of a sudden our externally-imposed “whys” are taken away. It seems like this reality is coming fast.
But I believe this is actually very good news for all of us...
I believe that — conscious or not — humanity's development of AI is part of a societal movement. A means for shifting the way we live: from a survival-based, external "why" driven life to a creativity-based, internal "why" driven life.
That’s where we want to go. It's always been. And we’ve reached a point on the journey where we are ready to take the next steps:
To grow beyond our digital lives, our profile pics, our likes and follows, our masks.
To stop looking above the surface for who we are at our core.
To quit the activity of proving who we are in order to see and be who we are.
This is what we want. We're ready. But we're also, justifiably, terrified. Not about what will happen on the surface — when we cry "AI is going to take our jobs," we're not afraid of losing our money... we're afraid of losing our meaning. If something like Universal Basic Income takes care of our money, we’ll still be afraid.
The real fear is that when we finally have the time and space to look in the mirror — to explore who we are fully — we'll realize that we’re nothing special.
That is our real fear when we worry about AI and our job. It's the fear which has driven us for the past several decades of technological advancement, and social degradation.
But there’s a growing, deeper, higher part of us which knows, we have something to say. We're finally ready to find our voice, and to share it.
The movement of voice — receiving breath and releasing it along with a vibration that comes from a deep, true part of our self. It is an incredibly beautiful movement, requiring an incredible amount of courage.
Our voice is us — released into the world as vibration — a part of us we can never take back, and can never again hide or protect. A vibration which never stops moving, touching, and changing our world...
This is what it is to be human.
We are not here to consume; we are here to create.
We are at a crossroads. Just like anything worth doing, there’s the potential of crashing and burning... but also flying.
—Nathan
Originally posted at: http://nathanpeterson.net/finding-our-voice