jabel

Finished reading Sacasus’ “AI as Christian Heresy.” His final paragraph clarified something that’s been banging around in my head:

What would it mean to render to the machine what is the machine’s? To regain a sense of what it is to be a person, coupled with a subversive practice of the same, within a techno-economic system whose default settings incline us to forget this vital fact about ourselves and our neighbours? To reclaim a confidence in what we can do ourselves and for one another in the face of an array of technologies, services, and institutions that market themselves under the implicit sign of our ostensible helplessness and the banner of a debilitating liberation? Let the machine have everything that is stamped with its spirit. Let us keep everything else.

In my day job, AI will not be an optional tool for long. In fact, I suspect I’ll end up being the person my department semi-officially appoints to find ways to use AI in our work. I’m not anti-AI; in fact, I’ve found good uses for it. I am, however, deeply cautious and skeptical. With all of this in mind, I’ve been thinking about guardrails around AI both in my own life and at work.

One good use I’ve found is what I’ve characterized as “letting the machines talk to the machines.” Or, in Sacasas’ phrase, “render to the machine what is the machine’s.” Microsoft Copilot is really good at finding ways of accomplishing tasks using previously unknown to me features of Excel. It’s also good at taking a stream of consciousness knowledge dump and turning it into coherent process documentation.

This is Machine work. My foreseeable future is, to use Kingsnorth’s phrasing, as a cooked barbarian. Using machines to do Machine work is, to my mind, letting the machine “have everything that is stamped with its spirit.” In the spirit of taking the devil’s money to do God’s work, I am rendering to the Machine so that I may have more mental space to do what is truly mine to do, which is work opposed to the Machine.

The Green Man’s Patch

That, by the way, is the name Rachel and I have settled on for our yard/garden/micro-homestead/thing. Thanks to John for the “patch” inspiration.

All the serviceberry trees are now planted. The one to the right is in the former location of an ornamental sand cherry tree we planted several years ago in our normie yard period. I kept a chunk of the sand cherry trunk to see if I can carve something from it.

Firewood

I’ve mentioned before that we’ll be getting a woodstove in the next few weeks—so we need a better way to store firewood than our current method of stacking it on the ground. I initially planned on a lean-to shed but Rachel and I started looking a bit more closely today and realized the location wouldn’t work well. So we decided on two smaller platforms, which will actually give us more cubic feet of space with a more manageable stack height. You have to get creative sometimes when you’re working with 0.14 acres.

Today I got the platform built for driveway stack. Tomorrow evening I’ll add some deck boards gapped about an inch apart to encourage airflow. Next weekend I’ll build the platform in the side yard. Ralph decided she wanted to be in the platform photo.

This morning, Rachel and I were talking about home. We often talk about plans and projects, and what we’ve built here over the years; sometimes, though, we talk about home in its hidden sense, the feeling that lies behind our patch of ground in the plain light of day.

What is home in the hidden sense for you? Does it align with your patch of ground?

When the two senses of home align, that is a sign of an integrated life. In such a life, there is no need for somewhere else. Other places may be fun and interesting, but they are not required.

There are many reasons why a person’s sense of home may be misaligned. War, addiction, poverty, violence, and other abuses can rightly, or at least understandably, drive people from home. People in these situations need help to find a new, integrated life.

At the same time, so many of us have been taught to be unhappy at home. Ambition, greed, entertainment, and lust wrongly drive people from home. The patch of ground for these folks is utilitarian. Life, as they see it, is elsewhere—at work, on vacation, in imagined worlds.

Maybe the desire for an integrated life is not present in everyone. Maybe some folks have other worthy aspirations. For me, however, the only place I need to be is home, in the warm heart of my world.

When you situate yourself in a nexus of relationships–ancestors, community, spirits, nonhumans, and more–your role in the intergenerational gift economy becomes clearer. When this role becomes clearer, your responsibility as both inheritor and steward becomes clearer. Your responsibilities become your sacred task. They are no less tasks for being sacred, but the context matters. There are some responsibilities I have that are not easy. When I settle into the nexus, though, the clarity keeps me going.

To deny or ignore this nexus of relationships is what cultural critics have called the atomization of the individual. It has many effects, one of which is perpetual adolescence. Taking up your role in the intergenerational gift economy is what constitutes adulthood. The person who refuses their role in the nexus of relationships also refuses the task of adulthood, and so spends their life in pursuits of childish things.

A few small tasks completed on the F150 this week:

• Sticky tailgate handle just needed some WD-40.
• Bolts for the tailgate mechanism access panel are marinating in Evaporust.
• Door panel clips replaced on the passenger side.
• Door striker replaced on passenger side.

I had hoped that replacing the door striker on the driver side would fix the not-fully-shutting problem. It didn’t. Looks like it may be that the door hinge pin and bushing are worn out, making the door sag. Thankfully the replacement pins and bushings are inexpensive—though taking the door off looks like a job.

Garden

I mentioned earlier this week that Rachel has bought some new trees for the yard. We planted the juniper that day. On Saturday, we planted the first of the three serviceberry trees. The call-before-you-dig folks still need to mark our tree plat before we can plant the other two serviceberries.

By the way, what do you call that strip of ground between the sidewalk and the road? We call it the tree plat but the internet tells me that’s very much a minority position. Apparently some people call it a “nature strip” (ugh, so many problems with that term) or a “tree strip.” As I was sitting on the front porch contemplating this question, the word “verge” bubbled up into my memory. I actually like that one.

Anyway, so trees will be planted soon. We also built a string trellis system for Rachel’s heirloom tomatoes. Those things have broken every system we’ve tried to order their vigorous growth. We’ll see how this one does.

The lilacs have been perfuming our house all weekend. Glorious.

If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

Many times over the years I have heard that there must be a necessary delineation between spouses. They each must have their own identity, interests, and ways of seeing the world. We are warned that a complete identification would annihilate one’s own self-identity, which is essential for well-being.

This is the language of psychological safety. There is no safety in love.

If Rachel dies before me, the loss will be total and irrecoverable. I have seen in the experience of others that it is survivable, but it is no less total. Does this mean I have no interests or life apart from her? Of course I do. I have interests she does not share. I like things she does not like.

But I do not hold these things back from her. I do not reserve some portion for myself. All that is mine is hers; all that is hers is mine. There may be areas of my life that she doesn’t have a lot of interest in visiting, but she is no less queen over that territory.

A great deal of trust and no small amount of time is needed to establish such a love. It may or may not happen; if there is a formula, I do not know it. If you find the possibility of such love before you, however, it will not tolerate reservations. There is no safety in love.

Garden phlox is always one of the first things to bloom:

Bleeding Hearts. This is a plant passed down through three generations of women in my wife’s family:

Lilacs are just starting to bloom. In the next day or so there will be enough for me to harvest for syrup.

Honeysuckle. This was one of my requests for the garden because I associate it with summer in my childhood.

We got this gooseberry three years ago but it never seemed to take off for its first two years in our front yard. Last fall, Rachel moved it to the back and its already grown more this year than it did in the first two years.

David Orr, as quoted in “Prophetic Possibilities":

The increasing velocity of knowledge is widely accepted as sure evidence of human mastery and progress. But many, if not most, of the ecological, economic, social, and psychological ailments that beset contemporary society can be attributed directly or indirectly to knowledge acquired and applied before we had time to think it through carefully. We rushed into the fossil fuel age only to discover the giant problem of climate destabilization. We rushed to develop nuclear energy without the faintest idea of what to do with the radioactive wastes. Nuclear weapons were created before we had time to ponder their full implications. Knowledge of how to kill more efficiently is rushed from research to application without much question about its effects on the perceptions and behavior of others, about its effects on our own behavior, or about better and cheaper ways to achieve real security. CFCs and a host of carcinogenic, mutagenic, and hormone-disrupting chemicals, too, are products of fast knowledge. High-input, energy-intensive agriculture is also a product of knowledge applied before much consideration has been given to its full ecological and social costs. Economic growth, in large measure, is driven by fast knowledge, with results everywhere evident in mounting environmental problems, social disintegration, unnecessary costs, and injustice.

Is there any better example of this than AI? Sure they talk a lot about “safety,” but how long until it’s no longer in their best interest to fund research which might come back to bite them?

“Move fast and break things” does not allow for a patient evaluation of the risks of new technology. It seems to be absolutely impossible for the whizbang scientific and technological geniuses not to do something just because they can.

When changes like these are imposed on people by corporations and governments bought by corporations, why are we surprised when bullets start flying and molotov cocktails are thrown?

Today I’ll be driving through southwestern Indiana’s coal country and then up to the Terre Haute area to visit St Mother Theodore Guerin. As is my tradition with these trips, I will be listening to old episodes of Weird Studies. Sets the right mood, since these trips are almost always centered on some religious or “weird” place.

8:12am

First stop of the day at Camp Olivet. This creek is where I was baptized. It’s where many (most?) of the area’s Holiness folks were baptized. They baptisms always happened on Sundays after morning service. Someone would go into the water to chase off the snakes while Joe started singing “Shall We Gather at the River?”

9:26am

Stop 2 in Linton. It’s bigger than I remember it being. More businesses and chains than I expected. The main reason I stopped was a donut sign. Yes, I’ve already had breakfast. Shut up.

10:32am

Stop three in Prairie Creek, founded in 1816. I’m now in an area of Indiana I’ve never visited. I took this picture of a barbershop because it caught my attention. And the tree, well just look at it.

11:19am

Arrived at St Mary-of-the-Woods campus. Beautiful place.

On the way here, quite by surprise, I passed the federal prison which has held and executed a number of notorious criminals, like Timothy McVeigh. Disturbing place to see or, rather, feel. A prison like that on the south side and a saint’s shrine on the north: Terre Haute, you’ve got some kind of nexus thing going on.

That’s St. Mother Theodore Guerin, the saint whose shrine I’m visiting today. She’s worth reading about if you’re not familiar with her. There’s a nice exhibit before you enter the shrine proper that tells the story of her life. Her casket is in the center of the shrine on a dais. Benches are set all along the walls with a votive candle stand at one end and three bone relics in a frame on the other.

The Church of the Immaculate Conception is a beautiful heap of Indiana limestone. The marble inside is nice too. Brings to mind a Lawrence County limestone story: The rich bosses of the quarries wanted their headstones to be imported marble because limestone was too common; the workers had the limestone headstones. I prefer the latter. Dump the bosses off your back.

I arrive just in time for Mass so I slip into a back row and stay until the distribution. I think that’s the first church service I’ve attended in twelve years!

There are several lovely statues, shrines, chapels, and grottoes all over campus.

2:40pm

Final stop of the day in Worthington. The diner is good. Alas, no cherry pie.

6:32pm

Shaping up these trip notes. It was a good day. While I really enjoyed the drive, there weren’t a lot of places of interest to stop along the way. I came across a few antique/junk stores but they were all closed. Nevertheless, St. Mary-of-the-Woods and the St. Mother Theodore shrine were worth the trip.

The final word is the opening word of the Tao Te Ching:

A Way called Way isn’t the perennial Way.
A name that names isn’t the perennial name.

Our training has given us chatty minds—but mystery is not chatty. Reassure that anxious part of yourself: Mystery is and ought to be underdefined. It is not trying to slip away; you do not need to tether it with words.

Gregg Braden tells the story of his visit to a Tibetan monastery. He asked the abbot about their internal state amid the bells and mantras and incense. The abbot replied:

You’ve never seen our prayers. You’ve seen the things we do to create the feeling. The feeling is the prayer.

The feeling is the prayer.

No F150 work this week—waiting on parts.

This week was an unplanned project. I have a neighbor I’ve talked to here and there over the past year, but never at length. Then out of the blue last Monday, he walked over and asked if I’d work on something for him. He had noticed I do a bit of woodworking and he needed a cover for his stove that would double as a cutting board. He had already purchased the aspen cutting board and the boards that would raise it above the range top. I say “cutting board,” but it was really one of those 3/4” thick edge-glued planks.

I told him I’d be glad to work on it. I stopped by on Tuesday evening to let him know that I’d be by to measure on Wednesday. We ended up talking quite a while, and he opened up to me about some health troubles he’d been having lately. Being resolutely anti-advice, I tried mostly to listen and empathize. In the days since, we’ve talked several times and even exchanged phone numbers in case he ever needs anything.

I finished it this afternoon, before his wife returns tomorrow from a family visit. He seemed happy with it. I hope it works out, though I suspect aspen may be too soft for this purpose.

The important work this week was not this particular cutting board, but making a connection with a neighbor. Being an introvert, it’s not something I easily do. Getting a job in my own town, volunteering at the community foundation and the homeless shelter, talking to neighbors—it’s all part of my larger effort to embed myself fully in my community. Localism doesn’t do any good if it’s confined to your head.