The times in which we live are almost enough to make me into a Gnostic.

• The stupidity on display everywhere has the flavor of fatedness. The fatedness, however, arises not out the beneficient providence of God but the delusions of a Demiurge. We have become entrapped in a lunatic mind. The levers are broken because the Engineer has disconnected the power.
• American voters will be forced to choose between two elderly men representing two dying ideologies. And every effort to find a way out of this bind serves only to heighten the hatred and division and further solidifies the goddamned inevitability of it all. We both must and must not act. Is some new Archon set to inherit this age? Has this Archon devised some perfect Chinese finger trap?
• Is reality an illusion? Whatever the answer to that question, Apple intends to wedge glass and silicon between you and the physical world. Enhanced reality, like enhanced interrogation, is a euphemism taken up by those who love their fantasies. Gnosticism told us that we were born into a world of unreality—a world from which, if we would listen, secret knowledge would deliver us. Soon enough, a large number of us will be paying premiums for beautiful blinders and immersive illusions.

I know I’m playing a bit fast and loose with some ideas here. On the other hand, maybe that’s sound strategy. Stay slippery; surf the weird. If we are in fact living in gnostic times, we should not count on predictability and solid reality. Perhaps the key skill we must learn is negative capability, which John Keats said is

when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason

Just as there will be merchants of illusion, there will be merchants of certainty. Reject them both and trust your gnosis.

Wendell Berry, “It All Turns on Affection”:

For humans to have a responsible relationship to the world, they must imagine their places in it. To have a place, to live and belong to a place, to live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see it illuminated by its own unique character and by our love for it. By imagination we recognize with sympathy the fellow members, human and nonhuman, with whom we share our place. By that local experience we see the need to grant a sort of preemptive sympathy to all the fellow members, the neighbors, with whom we share the world. As imagination enables sympathy, sympathy enables affection. And in affection we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving economy.

In this house we say Happy Holidays because even though we celebrate Honda Days, others may celebrate Toyotathon or Lexus December to Remember.

It probably says something about me that this is one of my favorite Aesop Rock songs.

In a recent continuing education course on AI, the speaker said, “No one will lose their jobs to AI, but some may lose their jobs because they don’t use AI.” On that first half, bullshit.

The second half, however, may contain some truth. I’ve reluctantly begun using the university’s enterprise version of Microsoft Copilot—mostly to answer questions about Excel so far. It’s useful. Basically a much more efficient search engine.

I don’t actually think I’d lose my job if I didn’t use AI—but over the course of the next few years my work could suffer comparatively without it. But here is where I need to be cautious: while I may find a tool to make my work more efficient, I must remember that the goal of my work is not efficiency. Ivan Illich:

Tools foster conviviality to the extent to which they can be easily used, by anybody, as often or as seldom as desired, for the accomplishment of a purpose chosen by the user.

Tools are not neutral. They are products of intelligence and have an intelligence of their own. Used mindlessly, they will shape the worker according to the tool’s nature.

What does this mean for my use of AI at work?

1. I will remain in control of my work’s purposes.
2. I will not use artificial intelligence as a substitute for my own.
3. I will not allow the values of the designers of AI—which perforce exist within AI itself—to override my own values.

Just received a shipment of coffee that a neighbor recommended to me.

An appropriate reading when you’re coming down with some kind of sickness:

It isn’t hard to inhabit Tao’s Way.
Just stop picking and choosing,

stop hating this and loving that,
and you’re there bright and clear.

A hair-width distinction is error
enough to split heaven-and-earth:

to face Tao’s shimmering Way
simply give up like and dislike,

for battling things you dislike
is mind’s great disease.

The Way of Ch’an, “Fact-Mind Inscription”, translated David Hinton.

Some of us have been saying to upset Christians for years that “Happy Holidays” does not exclude Christmas. Then the HR dept at work puts up signs that say “Happy Hanukkah” and “Happy Kwanzaa” but not “Merry Christmas.” Folks, you’re not helping. Also, should I complain that there’s no Yule sign? ;)

Amazing story (via @ayjay) on newly discovered ways that redwoods survive fire. We went on Tom’s Muir Woods walking tour in 2022. He told us that redwoods are practically immortal, if only humans would stop screwing things up.

Thank God for “thought leaders” who help us “pre-solve” problems.