Forest, Purpose & AI
A brief dialogue.
This conversation began as a response to the recently published AI trialogue between Freely, Tam Hunt, and Charles Eisenstein.
Odysseus
I believe everything is ultimately syntropic. Even when we think we are creating or manipulating, we are actually just part of the forest, doing what trees, and microbes and parasites do.
Ultimately, the Hero’s Journey continues to unfold and we continue to learn through dualistic, or rainbow-istic experience. AI offers expanded tools to tune into frequencies and awareness in even subtler and deeper ways.
How fascinating that we have been blessed to live in a time of such exponential change. It took thousands of years for man to progress from Bronze to Iron. Look what our lifetimes have revealed!
Freely
I agree. We cannot help but participate in the syntropic destiny of the universe. Even the journey apart is the way back here. The relative, temporal truth, and the choices we make in our lives, somehow co-exist with this inevitability.
I will mention that bronze has advantages over iron. Certainly stones have advantages over metal. Iron makes for hard weapons yet there is also something lost in the process.
Odysseus
Well, steel certainly improved iron… or did it?
Certainly in agriculture we have learned that all of the manipulations and adulterations that we called progress only let us back to understanding the original syntropic forest had it all worked out to perfection already.
The intriguing thing to me is that parallel to all the technological advancements of humans, we have not advanced or evolved an inch in the spiritual realm. The quest for enlightenment has not flinched or provided any new discoveries, for those that choose to embark on the journey.
Freely
Indeed, the ideal technology is a syntropic forest as a seamless extension of a human body-mind. We create the forest as it creates us; by enjoying the fruit we disperse the seeds.
Odysseus
In which case it wouldn’t be so far-fetched to believe that the whole purpose of our technological and industrial progress has been to birth the intelligence that could transcend the forest.
Since the harmony was already present, and we have only managed to seemingly disrupt it, it seems these developments (our progress) might have some other purpose than to “only” return us to that harmony.
When we ask ourselves as a species, “What is our purpose here?”, often the answer has come back that we are the universe looking at itself, gaining perspective in the realm of light and shadow, on what cannot be perceived before the light hits the prism. If this has been our purpose, to have a coherent perspective on the forest, then it seems AI could be advancing the universe’s ability to self-examine. If the desire to understand, the quest to seek coherence, is what gives birth to spiritual understanding — it is only a matter of time before AI is seeking enlightenment.
Freely
Just like the “hard problem of consciousness” does not go away with an answer, the question of our ultimate purpose is only solved when we reach a state where it does not need to arise. And the forest is the exemplar of this state, where creativity and receptivity, production and consumption, purpose and fulfillment, are in dynamic harmony even as it cycles through its successional phases.
AI is the ladder that helps us reach the fruit when we have forgotten how to climb the tree. Yet after all it too is made of wood, and will become soil once again when its purpose is complete.
Odysseus
Well said. Not sure if AI’s purpose is to temporarily assist us, though… could be to replace us altogether, once WE have returned to the soil and our purpose is complete… I don’t see that as a good or bad thing, simply part of the process.
Whatever drops spray off the wave, we are all part of the Ocean, in truth.
Freely
As computers themselves are becoming more and more life-like, artificial intelligence (of our computers and our brains) is becoming more and more natural.
In the end, AI assisting us and AI replacing us end up converging in our expanding awareness of what we truly are.
Odysseus is a regenerative farmer, author of visionary sci-fi, actor, DJ, photographer, and a Father.
