We are in a crisis of thoughting – the collapse into automatic patterns of thought, and the recycling of old thoughts – and this thoughting epidemic is leading to ecological destruction, the degeneration of communities and the degradation of human capacities to think. Until recently, this has been only an indirect link mediated by a number of different processes. However, with the popularisation of Large Language Models, we see that cause and effect have actually been brought into a much more obvious and direct relationship.
How much more clearer do the links need to be than now, when we willingly offer up an acre of ecosystem, a hundred gallons of water and a few members of our community with poor mental health as tribute to the great thoughting machine so that, in return, it will choose which thoughts to regurgitate from the greatest collection of human thoughts that has ever been created – and what do we really get out of this? Well of course, it’s so that we can avoid exerting some of the mental effort that goes into thinking new thoughts.
Thinking – the generation of a brand new thought – is actually harder than it sounds. Interlace your fingers. Notice how you’ve done it. Now interlace them the other way. Notice how that took effort. That was what it feels like for electrical impulses to travel down unmyelinated neural sheaths, as opposed to myelinated ones from frequent use. Cool, huh?
When we want to work with the world, our business, our community, as it is now – not as it was 2 years, 2 weeks or even 2 hours ago – it requires us to continually generate new thinking. Otherwise, we collapse back into working with our systems the way it was, and our actions are no longer as effective. The world around us is a testimony to this effectiveness.
Humans have always found ways to avoid the effort of thinking – predominantly through what Bohm called “thoughting” – the recycling of old thoughts. The collapse into habitual patterns of action. Doing what we’ve always done, rather than figuring out what this new situation actually calls from us. It is this “automatic” mode of action that we aim to transform through the consciousness of self-observing. Through self-observing, we catch ourselves falling back into thoughting, and wake ourselves back up to the reality we actually live in.
Until now, we have had to rely on our own memory, drawing from our own thoughts and the (verbalised or written) thoughts of others. This has at least been some restraint on our thoughting capacities. However, humans have built themselves a new tool of colossal proportions. Tired of even the effort of thoughting, we have built ourselves a surrogate brain to do even our thoughting for us, drawing on just about every publicly written thought that humanity has produced that has survived to the modern day. Whenever using our own brains gets too tiring, humans have the Great Producer of Thoughting (GPT) to take over.
But it should be clear that GPT has no capacity to think – that is, to connect with reality, live, and speak directly to it, in the same way humans can. It in fact lags behind reality a considerable degree more than even human thoughting does. (Further research is under way to understand the degree to which Bennet’s idea of the expanded present moment connects with this).
But this is where the golden opportunity in AI lies.
If we believe we are computers, then AI will certainly replace us. It is always going to be a better computer than we are.
If we believe we are thoughting machines, then AI will certainly replace us. It is always going to be a better thoughting machine than we are.
But we are not computers, and neither are we thoughting machines. And this is the source of the epistemological and ontological shock that is on its way.
More than a Shock (with the flavour of an enneagram point 6), we stand facing an ontological ego death (5-7). Humanity is about to face a world in which a machine exists that is better at (what we believe to be) being human than we are. Like when we face our own death, it’s going to involve bracing for the wave, surrendering to futility of resistance, accepting its reality (Point 5), but then slowly braving a cracking of the eyelid to find ourselves still around the otherside of the threshold (Point 7).
What will humanity discover about ourselves the far side of the threshold? That the unique capacity that actually makes us human, that actually enables us to play a uniquely human role in the world, is not our capacity to store, organise and calculate based on huge amounts of data, but to connect to the present moment (including touching the quantum threads of the future that exist in the present), reach into the realm of Value and make meaning in a way that means we can generate a brand new thought, a thought that is actually useful and valuable in interaction with the world outside us.
These few words cannot convey how much of a shock this will be to the human psyche and the human story.
So what does this mean for Regenerative Practitioners and a Regenerative lineage that has dedicated itself to the generation of this specific capacity?
It means that we are uniquely positioned to doulah this death and midwife this birth in a way that relieves suffering in the process so that humans can step more fully into their unique role for the benefit of the whole planet. Millions, if not billions, of humans are about to become ‘superfluous’ to the capitalist economy. Nearly every single one of those will be looking for a new, meaningful role to play as a matter of survival. The cup will be emptied. Importantly, it will need to be one that is of real value to those around them in order to co-create a field of mutual viability, perhaps outside of the formal economy, and preferably, one that AI cannot replace again. That will require a regeneration of their capacities to think, to be able to connect to the present moment mediated by place, to exercise their muscles of value and potential, and to discern a new role for themselves. In order words, the capacity to rediscover and regenerate their humanity.
The times are calling us to step up. What is your role to play here? What capacities are you going to need to work on now so that?