Memories of childhood in New York City. The Church and school around the corner attended by most of the 96 kids who lived on 113th street-- vendors who offered pony rides in colorful carts, a knives and scissor sharpener, horse drawn milk wagons, door to door salesmen sellling everything from a huge suiitcase, stoops, imaginations stirred by radio serials, rag curls,-- and street games. Seldom a car in sight.
Innocence, obedience, honesty and all the virtues expected of the young. Neighbor helping neighbors known by open doors.
Absent choatic music, , television, computers, cell phones, and isolation.
Except for WWll with air raid wardens, id tags, search lights and rationing --- the glory days!!!
We seem to be thinking similar thoughts, though yours always seem to expand and elaborate on mine.
In my piece yesterday I touched briefly on ancestral reverence, which I'd say is letting the memory of those who came before speak to you and guide you.
Your analysis of computer "memory" seems spot on. Having a vast "card catalog" is not memory, and blindingly fast processing speed doesn't equate to thinking, so AI seems to me no threat at all. What is any of that compared to our God-given ability to slip the stream of time?
Robert, my husband has been writing about this issue for decades now. The sad push to have everyone embrace "multiculturalism" -- which is really a modern cult of self-realization -- has come at the expense of ALL cultural memory, and has as its goal the severing of the present from the past. The disregard with which the greats who came before us knows no bounds, and the concerted effort to teach our young people to despise the past, to despise their ancestors, and ultimately to rob them of the common cultural heritage of all mankind is stunning at this point. When the "highest good" is defined as the indulgence of self above all else, we are doomed to chaos, with no culture at all. Meantime the wisdom, the art, the music, the astounding achievements of our ancestors -- these are still there for us to visit and enjoy and learn from. But we have to take these things back, and right now the effort to do that on any universal scale is simple being squelched or (in our schools) derailed by a revisionist ideology that chooses to negate what it does not even understand. Our times are more Orwellian than Orwell imagined. AI has no soul, but its threat is in that very absence, if we increasingly allow it to become more than a tool, but as and end in itself and ultimately who has control of it. We have ready to share an article of Tony's called "The Dehumanities," one of these days. The humanities connect us to the past -- and teach us about that stream of time of which we are a part. But that isn't what our current power-grabbers want, unless it is to deceive the ignorant into thinking themselves greater than those who built what we now take for granted, to tear down the foundations of our human culture. The battle is cosmic.
Memories of childhood in New York City. The Church and school around the corner attended by most of the 96 kids who lived on 113th street-- vendors who offered pony rides in colorful carts, a knives and scissor sharpener, horse drawn milk wagons, door to door salesmen sellling everything from a huge suiitcase, stoops, imaginations stirred by radio serials, rag curls,-- and street games. Seldom a car in sight.
Innocence, obedience, honesty and all the virtues expected of the young. Neighbor helping neighbors known by open doors.
Absent choatic music, , television, computers, cell phones, and isolation.
Except for WWll with air raid wardens, id tags, search lights and rationing --- the glory days!!!
We seem to be thinking similar thoughts, though yours always seem to expand and elaborate on mine.
In my piece yesterday I touched briefly on ancestral reverence, which I'd say is letting the memory of those who came before speak to you and guide you.
Your analysis of computer "memory" seems spot on. Having a vast "card catalog" is not memory, and blindingly fast processing speed doesn't equate to thinking, so AI seems to me no threat at all. What is any of that compared to our God-given ability to slip the stream of time?
Robert, my husband has been writing about this issue for decades now. The sad push to have everyone embrace "multiculturalism" -- which is really a modern cult of self-realization -- has come at the expense of ALL cultural memory, and has as its goal the severing of the present from the past. The disregard with which the greats who came before us knows no bounds, and the concerted effort to teach our young people to despise the past, to despise their ancestors, and ultimately to rob them of the common cultural heritage of all mankind is stunning at this point. When the "highest good" is defined as the indulgence of self above all else, we are doomed to chaos, with no culture at all. Meantime the wisdom, the art, the music, the astounding achievements of our ancestors -- these are still there for us to visit and enjoy and learn from. But we have to take these things back, and right now the effort to do that on any universal scale is simple being squelched or (in our schools) derailed by a revisionist ideology that chooses to negate what it does not even understand. Our times are more Orwellian than Orwell imagined. AI has no soul, but its threat is in that very absence, if we increasingly allow it to become more than a tool, but as and end in itself and ultimately who has control of it. We have ready to share an article of Tony's called "The Dehumanities," one of these days. The humanities connect us to the past -- and teach us about that stream of time of which we are a part. But that isn't what our current power-grabbers want, unless it is to deceive the ignorant into thinking themselves greater than those who built what we now take for granted, to tear down the foundations of our human culture. The battle is cosmic.