Authentic Intelligence

I’ve been hearing so much lately about Artificial Intelligence that I am beginning to wonder if I should add it to my list of the things I worry about. Experts are predicting that the moment of technological “singularity” will occur far sooner than we realize, surpassing humans’ cognitive abilities. And then what?

I’m already trying hard to regain faith in the collective wisdom of humanity, in some notion I once held that the trajectory of history, while it included setbacks as well as advances, was cumulatively trending in an upward spiral, progressing, if you will, toward some state of greater enlightenment. My recent observations do not bear this out.

In fact, it’s been downright discouraging, even for someone like me who steadfastly believes in hope almost as a kind of religion. Apart from my personal sorrows, I am seeing the deliberate undoing of democracy from within and without. And millions of Americans have been absorbed into the cult of a criminal-clown, a character so unfit, despicable, and bizarre, his continued significance still fills me with dismay and disbelief.

War is raging between two intractable enemies: Hamas, and the right wing Netanyahu government. Not Israel, not Palestine, but two forces with whom no compromise is conceivable, and it’s hard to imagine how this will end. All I can think about are innocent people who just want to live their lives, and it breaks my heart.

There’s also still Ukraine, and a list of other wars about which we hear less, and natural disasters exacerbated by stupidity and greed, and poverty and homelessness in our own towns and cities, and the ominous shadow of climate catastrophe that looms like a doom foretold and inevitable.

Can technology untangle us? Can Artificial Intelligence yield answers? Could we actually implement theoretical solutions? The outlook isn’t great.

And yet I have learned, maybe for my own survival, to intermittently tamp down the worry and the grief, and I greet each day with gratitude and a sense of possibility. We do what tangible good we can do within our own small realms of influence, and we accept what gifts are given, and if we’re really on top of it, we even “risk delight”, to use Jack Gilbert’s term.

Is this holding pattern an example of denial, or is it insight, and savvy coping? Perhaps it is a manifestation of Authentic Intelligence?

I can also turn my grief into empathy; I learned that long ago. And I have a knack for wonder. Can Artificial Intelligence ever replicate these abilities? I think we miss a lot if we’re too rational. Do I contradict myself? Very well. I am large, as Whitman said. I contain multitudes.

I walked at the west end of this ranch a few days ago and caught a glimpse of four mule deer bounding and boing-ing across a grassy ridge, a quartet of fleet gray silhouettes, a poem of motion, but moving fast, running at a pace suggesting urgency, as though they had an appointment and were afraid that they might miss it. I move like that through my day sometimes, not gracefully—sloppily, but fast. “There are days the whole house moves at a gallop,” as Jane Hirshfield put it, and so it goes. I generally intend to return later to clear the debris I’ve left along the way, but there are always new detours and distractions. Life is quite engaging. Mysterious and bewildering, but always interesting. I’m glad I get to be here for a while.

I had finally fallen asleep recently at about 2:30 a.m. when I was awakened by a deep-throated boom followed by a long, “sensurround” kind of rumbling and the rattling of our bed. Lucky us, we didn’t even need to get up to see the rocket. It was visible through our bedroom window, a glowing sphere in a starry sky, sailing towards the ocean, trailing a plume of white light. These things happen around here.

My bed is a boat on a sea of dreams; I have chosen a dream that is seamless and more than it seems.  

We stopped at a nursery in town one morning, early, at the moment of its opening, and there were rows of plants in boxes and greenhouses, shining with life, and a bright blue sky with feathery clouds, and I remembered that nothing is ordinary, and I didn’t care to be anyplace else. I intuited a fact: that this too is reality.

I stand with Stanley Kunitz:

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

Now it is Thanksgiving, and Monte and I are having a day of quiet reflection, just the two of us, yes, exulting somewhat, every stone precious. And we are not who we were, though some principle of being abides, from which we struggle not to stray. (Thank you Stanley, from The Layers, one of the best poems in the English language.)

Monte and I have declined various invitations, (whether prompted by affection or pity I cannot say), to share feasts with others. My friend V refers to Thanksgiving as The Day Set Aside to Celebrate the Folks Who Started the Genocide of the Native Americans. In conversations with my siblings, it becomes The Day When We Yearn for Something We Never Had—in our family of origin, we were rarely all together, holidays were tearful and disfigured, and crucial beloveds have since died anyway. We tell ourselves that they live on in our hearts, and I believe that this is true, but it still feels like loss.

This intimate knowledge of loss is Authentic Intelligence. I heard an “On Being” interview with Nick Cave this morning in which he observes that loss is our universal state as human beings. “I think that if we’re honest with ourselves, most people feel this way: a sense of lostness about things and a need for something beyond that,” he says.

A sense of lostness, yearning, an incompleteness. Can Artificial Intelligence comprehend that experience? And the inherent contradiction of it—that what renders us lost and separate also makes us kindred spirits, for it is a state we share with everyone.

Maybe some of history’s teachings will eventually be heeded by homo sapiens capable of remembering, reading, and analyzing, as well as factoring in the emotional complexities and irrational dynamics of human behavior. Maybe disaster and crisis will unexpectedly result in stronger commitment, caring, and real change. Maybe, as Rebecca Solnit has written, hope itself is “a sense of radical uncertainty, with the possibility of intervention, to shape the future.”

Meanwhile, in the magnificent truths of Louise Erdrich, “You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.”

On this Thanksgiving, and every day, I feel, and I risk, and as for the reason I am here, that unreasonable reason is all that I know. I am filled with sadness and wonder in equal measure, swallowed up by beauty, grateful, as always, for the astonishing blessings I have been given, and humble with the knowledge that I am no more deserving of my privilege than so many others who are deprived and suffering.

And I ask my readers to forgive my useless hand-wringing, liberal guilt, the familiar Old World wailings of my ancestors, and the frequent quotes from writers and poets who always said it better…but this is all part of the mix. My Authentic Intelligence is a soup of infinite ingredients, seasoned with apprehension, dissonance, regret and remorse, but simmered with memory, mutability, and cumulative experience interpreted into lessons.

Oh, so many lessons. I know with certainty, for example, that the most meaningful endeavors do not have money as the purpose or the bottom line. I’ve discovered that the best form of publishing is reading a story to someone who will listen. And I have learned (again and again) that what I most regret are the times I was not kind. (But maybe my dead have forgiven me?)

I’m skeptical of the smart and tricky Silicon bros getting rich from all those apps and codes, and billionaires who believe they know it all and should rule the world, and I’m weary of relentless self-promotion on social media, and I’ve concluded that what makes us civilized is a willingness to look after one another.

In fact, I’ve learned that I don’t even know what I don’t know, that the world is infinitely, gobsmackingly more mysterious and miraculous than I imagined, and that possibilities exist that I cannot begin to fathom.

But it all distills into love. Yes, that sounds too easy and too trite. But then again, maybe it’s profound. In any case, I honestly believe it, even if I don’t know exactly what it means or how it manifests. I have arrived at this conclusion through whatever emotion, wisdom, and Authentic Intelligence I possess, gleaned over the course of seven decades. And I resolve to walk in the light of this belief.