HiveComb

With a discussion last night with @revisesociology and @azircon that started with AI teachers, I came up with the title for this post. The discussion ranged into AI as companions to combat loneliness, and while there are a lot of lonely people out there who will feel more comfortable avoiding the complexity of human behaviour by hiding behind a screen with an AI companion - I believe that doing so leads to degeneracy.

Degenerate(adj.)
late 15c., "having lost or suffered impairment to the qualities proper to the race or kind," from Latin degeneratus, past participle of degenerare "to be inferior to one's ancestors, to become unlike one's race or kind, fall from ancestral quality," used of physical as well as moral qualities.

That is the etymology.

It is to become physically and morally inferior to one's ancestors, and unlike one's own race. And I think that people should reflect on this a little before diving into a life behind screens, interacting with engineered environments for emotional and psychological safety, shying away from physical encounters with other other humans. Sure, it might be a strategy to not feel lonely - but an emotional state doesn't live in a vacuum and the "treatment" for loneliness is going to have repercussions that compound against a range of other states, physical, mental, and emotional.

Loneliness is a symptom of the disconnection of current society and a lack of healthy community. And while it is considered to be in "epidemic proportions" what people are failing to recognise with a lot of these new mental conditions, is that they are moods conditioned by behaviours, not by broken minds. For instance "half of young Australians suffer from anxiety" and while there are many things that exacerbate the problem, what they are not factoring in is their own degeneracy through their behaviours that have raised them on algorithmic interaction.

They have got what they wanted, when they wanted it, and they have been pushed more content that they have chosen, each fed instance being a little more tailored, and a little more extreme than the last. It has been happening for a couple decades now, but with the seamless absorption of smartphones into daily life, endless scrolls and even more accurately curated content available all day, every day - it has pushed people to avoid "random life" even more, making them less capable to deal with the unknown.

The unknown creates anxiety.

We all feel anxious, but most of us who are older or who have not lived our lives through screens, have lived enough experience to be comfortable with dealing with low-level unknowns, without it paralysing us to the point we are unable to go on. But anxiety in the young is triggered by a lot of very low-level conditions, largely because they have become hypersensitive to any forms of discomfort. Anxiety is a natural response, but the level it is triggered at for them is not a natural condition.

It is emotional immaturity.

Which might trigger many of the young who believe themselves to be emotional superior to the older generations, because they are more sensitive. But, that is not actually the case. A baby is sensitive too, and because a baby hasn't learned coping strategies, it cries and whines to get attention for someone to come and save it from the discomfort. And a toddler, not yet used to dealing with the emotions of disappointment, will throw tantrums when they don't get what they want.

They are emotionally immature.

And when babies and toddlers have been raised in this algorithmic environment that is designed to round the edges, reduce the randomisation, schedule life, and remove all sharp objects, they haven't been exposed to a great deal of the natural environment that build physical, mental, and emotional resiliency. The world in which they have learned their lessons is theoretical, and knowing is not the same as being able to do.

It is about "toughening up".

And I don't mean about burying the motions and all of that shit people will read into that term. I mean exposing oneself to the reality of life, which is random, disappointing, and unexpected. And this last part is vital to get over anxiety, because if you might have heard, "desire is the root of pain". And expectation is a desire for people, events and conditions to be a certain way. But while in an algorithm digital environment it is possible to maintain expectations where the code is the law, reality cares nothing for that code and life will life as it does.

Acceptance of change is key.

It is a funny conflict in ideology, where young people think they are accepting of others, yet in reality they expect everything to meet their own expectations - and of they do not or might not, they get anxious. With all of their therapized vocabulary they think they live a higher existence, but they are animals still, like those older than them, and fear the unknown.

We all fear it.

Yet we have created safe-zone environments that protect us from the unknown and provide a level of comfort through certainty, so that we don't get "hurt" by the unexpected. And as long as we can live in that bubble, we are okay. But, that bubble is not benign, it is also changing, right? and it is being used to push profits for corporations, and in doing so, leading people into more extreme behaviours - like terrorism, misogyny and high levels of anxiety.

Yes, I put all three of those things together.

Because they are conditioned attributes.

The good news is for young and old alike, is that we needn't accept that this is the way we have to behave, because we have the human ability to make new algorithms for ourselves. To change our culture at the community and the personal level to shift the way we move, think and feel. We are not lost causes, we are works in progress but in order to truly become a work of art, we have to act with intention. We have to take control of our experience, examine what needs to be done, and apply changes. In doing so, we do not lose ourselves, nor do we discover ourselves, because we are always who we are in the moment. What we do change however,

is our humanness.

Rather than degenerating, we become creative, generative forces of nature once again.

Taraz
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