Tyga Helme, No Intention but to be, 2020, Chalk pastel on Paper
It's been a couple of months since I last sent out this letter, which is not ideal, but my energy towards publishing (and writing for that matter), was not where it needed to be due to a lot of schoolwork and other personal matters I needed to attend to.
Early last week, I wrapped up the spring semester, which felt like it was several months shorter than it actually was. I did a lot of writing for school, assortments of group meetings each week, and individual homework along with my part-time job. This was my last "hard" semester, so hopefully I can make more time to work on personal projects (like this newsletter!) over the next few months. I'm trying to figure out how best to spend my time without trying to fill every second with being "productive." (We'll see how this goes...)
Lately I've been thinking about the name of this letter, "The Contemplation Corner" and the difficulty of being someone who enjoys thinking deeply about things but also suffers from getting bogged down in my thoughts. How can one contemplate the world around them without spiraling into overthinking?
I believe one way forward lies with intention. Thich Nhat Hanh taught several practices for "right intention" within the Buddhist practice, but I believe it can be useful for anyone.
1. Asking yourself, “Are you sure?” This is to remind us that a lot of misunderstanding lies within false perceptions. Getting in the habit of asking ourselves to check our perceptions helps us become more likely to move toward wisdom.
2. Asking yourself, “What am I doing?” Often, we do things without even thinking about it. We react before we ever consciously decide to do so. By making more of our actions conscious, and noticing when they’re not, we can help ourselves see where our intentions take us.
3. Recognize your habit energies. Once something becomes a habit energy, it becomes a pattern of always responding a certain way, much like auto-pilot. For example, workaholism, negativity, avoidance, defensiveness, and self-doubt are all habit energies. In order to cultivate right intention, we have to gain awareness of our own habit energies. And when we find ones that don’t serve us, we should get more serious about breaking these patterns and replacing them with something better. (This is a key concept in CBT).
The ability to cultivate mindfulness in everyday life outside of a meditation practice is a lifelong journey, and a difficult one at that. Adding "right intention" to our practices that we perform each day can help us become more aware of how we can sabotage ourselves. Evolutionarily, this was probably a good thing to keep us safe, but now these hypersensitive anxious processes probably do more harm than good, which I can attest to.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the discussion of OpenAI's DALL·E 2, after all the action it's been getting online recently. I still feel similarly about it as when I wrote my last piece. Sasha Chapin's post is a good overview and one which I mostly agree with as well. And as usual, Erik Hoel's post about AI and art says what I would want to say better than I can. For more of a writing-centered opinion that I agree with, check out Lincoln Michel's post.
While impressive, I can't help but imagine the internet one day being filled with more "fake" photos and content than there is today, and though this is certainly depressing, it's the responsibility of the corporations who develop this technology to regulate it and put certain safeguards in place to lessen the damage on a societal scale that this type of technology can do.
Heidegger says technology is not neutral, that it reflects the goal of its creator. If the wealthy Silicon Valley folks are the ones in control of such powerful technology, how can we be comfortable that they'll make ethical decisions that benefit the average person, and don't just result in their own companies receiving more venture capital funding?
On a personal note, the more the internet is full of insincerity, the more I want to spend time away from it. I want to look at art made by a human, eat food prepared by human hands, read books written by humans, etc. I feel as though I'm becoming a semi-luddite. This is not to say digital creations don't have value (I enjoy digital human-made art!), I just personally prefer/value things made by humans more than machines when it comes to creative outputs.
Even though I outright reject these advancements when they release, I don't want to bury my head in the sand. I would like to learn more about them, because they are interesting and do have implications for society even in their current form. I'm not personally responsible for progressing or slowing development on these systems, but we can hope to work towards surfacing the positive things technology can bring, without the detrimental if at all possible.
As always, if you've got ideas, suggestions, or feedback, feel free to reply to this email or reach out on Twitter.
Until next time,
Z