Tour Day 7 Blog
I recently read that AI exploits a certain way of viewing the world that the author calls optimization, or the tendency to make everything easier and more efficient. They assert that this comes at the cost of a cultivation mindset, or the acquisition of knowledge by means of effort, some struggle, and hard work that cultivates the tendency to rely on your ability to reason out problems. Personally, I love AI and what it could mean for the future of humanity, but I have to admit that I have tried to force myself to use it in such a way that it augments my own thinking and to resist the urge to outsource my thinking. This blog, for example is not AI – I want to be connected to you guys, and I think that my writing is of higher quality than what AI would produce on my behalf. I do use AI to proofread it and clean it up a little which has the added benefit of not having to bug Emily to be my editor.
New G does a good job of creating cultivation mindsets, I think. Last night we did our mid-tour worship service. The worship committee members collected everyone’s phone so that we could be focused on the moment where we were able to pause and soak in the backdrop of mountains behind our hotel. All of the speakers (except for Matt, the old guy – who will likely be buried with his phone) had their vignettes written out by hand on paper; it was their own words out of their own brains. You might have thought it was the 90s.
We work so hard to scrub the pain out of life, but we just can’t quite get over the fact that we are physical beings in a physical world that can’t be AI’d away. Yesterday was a poignant reminder of that. You might have heard about the forest fires that have been going on. Well, while we were spared actually burning, we did have to deal with the aftermath – unbelievable amounts of smoke, enough to completely block entire mountains from view. Then, Emily and I were in the truck and the parking attendants wouldn’t let us park with the bus or the cars; not big enough for one and too big for the other. We ended up driving 5 miles down the road to the park and ride only to find out that the ride down was $110 and we wouldn’t even get there until it was time to leave! THEN, in the closing minutes of the worship service a swarm of mosquitos descended on the grassy patio where we were sitting and proceeded to attack us like we were Custer at Little Bighorn.
Life is so often the enemy, or at least you would think it is by the way we treat it, like it is a problem to be solved. And rightly so. It is dangerous to live, and our species has accomplished some miracles beyond belief in our efforts to mitigate most of those dangers. The author of the article I was reading said that it is a well documented fact that humans strive when the effort is difficult, but not too difficult – we have a sweet spot where suffering is concerned. I for one welcome advances in medicine that might keep me from the worst ravages of disease, but I don’t welcome optimizing the life out of life.
So tour remains difficult, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Today (I’m writing this the morning after…we didn’t get to bed until late) we are headed up to the Columbia Ice Fields where we are going to walk on a real life glacier! The great news is that we have another night in the same hotel, so we get to spread out a little in our rooms without having to worry about packing up this morning.
Well, I better get ready, I hear Emily drying her hair which is the signal for me to hop in the shower.
We’ll see you on the other side of the Ice Fields!
Love you all,
Joseph
