The AI Summit, Part II

Five Commitments to Thrive in the AIpocalypse

This is the second half of an AI workshop for church leaders. As with Part I, I’ve re-recorded the audio of this talk to improve its quality. If you missed Part I, you can find it here. I hope you find these reflections helpful.

…

“There is no power,” the Colonel repeated. “And as far as we can tell the old EMI shields isolate this part of the building. You understand?”

Father Michael and James nodded. The Colonel opened the door, and all three men stepped into the room beyond.

It was empty except for a steel folding table supporting the scattered parts of a computer. Father Michael noted a motherboard and several hard drives, alongside other parts he could not identify. Also, there was a small laptop with no top case or battery. The Colonel said nothing.

Suddenly, Father Michael’s stomach lurched. A roaring like electric rain threatened his mind, and his thoughts divided. James reached over and gripped Father Michael’s shoulder, and neither man was surprised when the screen flashed on.

It showed a cascade of memes and incoherent images: supernovas and dogs chasing their tails and then one person after another speaking gibberish, and then less than gibberish, and then an almost-coherent language that was worse than either. The images said almost-words in almost-languages while their faces made almost-expressions. Abruptly the screen changed. It streamed several proofs, which Father Michael could see, even at a glance, were elementary and incorrect, before a stream of debauched videos. Father Michael and James looked at the floor. But after a long time the light on the display changed and Father Michael looked up again. On the screen was a small, pixelated .gif of a man and a woman, clothed in leaves, walking on a green field. They smiled big, stupid smiles, while overhead and blocking the sun there flew a great green snake. This stooped to strike them again and again while its huge idiodic eyes glared directly at the priest. Hello David, the screen flashed. Hello James.

“Be silent,” Father Michael suddenly said.

At once there was a sharp chemical smell, and a hiss, and the screen went blank.

“The Basilisk” from The Father Michael Stories

Welcome back. I hope everyone’s caffeinated and ready to proceed.

In session one we explored the impulses that are shaping our culture and therefore shaping the AI systems we have; I argued that our culture is anti-work, anti-bodies, anti-limits, anti-relationship, and anti-wisdom. I also said that the work in a moment like ours is to set up our lives to counteract the worst impulses of our age. It’s time to say more about that.

Like some people I ignored the spirit of Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity and binged the book the day it came out. Have you read it? It’s good. Here’s Cal’s claim: To make great art, you have to embrace alternative rhythms and set up the material realities of your life to support those rhythms. Meaning: Jane Austen pulled out of British social life, lived in the country, and pretty much locked herself in the attic to produce her classic novels. Carl Jung built a stone tower on some lakeside property and withdrew to that tower for intensive periods of writing and contemplation. Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain built a shed out of earshot of the house to write Huckleberry Finn—imagine human voices being the primary distraction you have to deal with. There are other examples, and the point is, if we’re going to resist the de-humanizing effects of *some* emerging technologies we’re going to have to do the same thing: Set up alternative rhythms and double down the material realities of our lives.

In this session I’m going to propose five commitments when it comes to setting up our lives. But before I do that I have to say one thing about change.

A few years ago I read this book Immunity to Change by the developmental psychologist Robert Kegan and educator Lisa Laskow Lahey. They start off citing a study of patients with severe heart disease. It’s not an encouraging example: When the patients involved were told that they would die if they don’t change their habits, six out of seven died. Only one in seven managed to change. To explain why, Kegan and Lahey propose a structure of belief that looks like this: We have external commitments (what we want people to think we believe), internal commitments (what we tell ourselves we believe), and real commitments (what we actually believe). Those real commitments take the form of a story (if I do X, everyone else will Y), and no one violates the terms of their internal story. We live in alignment with our real commitments.

That might sound discouraging but it’s good news. For those of us who are in Christ the process of discipleship means gradually accepting the real commitments of Jesus. In other words, we want the mind of Christ. I can say from experience that a transformation like that takes time and honesty and repentance but even so the essential habit’s not that hard: we have to rehearse the story of Jesus.

And that’s why all through this conversation we’re pointing back to the Christian story. Without it, change is not possible. And so again: you were made by Love for Love. Your destiny is to be brought into the very life of the Triune God. You are Christ’s body on the earth, restoring an embattled world. And your Captain and King has provision for you, a way to thrive no matter how intense the pressures of your age.

That provision has several components. The extraordinary power of the Holy Spirit dwelling within you, for one thing. The help of the Church, for another. And also an alternative lifestyle, anchored in the teachings of Jesus.

As I said before, we can explore that lifestyle in terms of its commitments. For the purposes of this talk, I’d like to discuss these: Proximity, Community, Simplicity, Order, and Contemplation.

By the way, you could sum all these up by saying “Become a Monastery" because the monastery is Christianity's go-to solution for hard times. A monastery is like discipleship distilled. If you examine the great actions of God in history, you’ll find that a rigor that is usually reserved for the pros gets out into public life. We may need something like that now.

These are not micro-adjustments, by the way. So many of us want to tinker our way out of the apocalypse. We want to download productivity apps and buy the right pants and use good calendars. That may help. But that is not the purpose of this summit. This is about seriously reorienting our lives, and so not everything here will be possible for all of you. But I trust that the Holy Spirit will highlight some of these ideas and help you to respond within the boundaries of your life right now.

Okay?

Let’s talk about Proximity.

I heard Andy Crouch peg the highway, rather than the computer, as the innovation that transformed American Culture, and though we could find other culprits but that’s a good one. The highway dissolved proximity, the plain fact of contact that had until that time defined human life. In fact, the very word “community” implies proximity. It means “public, common, or shared,” and it refers to rivers, parks, and roads, rather than interests, vocations, or matters of identity. Do you see the difference? Community is more an issue of shared life than shared attributes.

Since that’s true, proximity is in the most straightforward sense relationship’s necessary condition. You need proximity to nudge you towards relationship.

For example: Have you ever noticed that if you live close to your friends they ask you to help move the couch, but if you don’t, they never do? That is the magic of proximity. Or have you ever noticed how you only ask “I wonder what’s going with X?” about houses you drive past, because you actually see them? That’s proximity at work.

Embracing proximity means moving closer to the people God has given you to love, and in all honesty, that is a hard thing to do. But I suspect that as the trends of our age compound proximity will become increasingly attractive. And inescapable.

If you’d like a roadmap for proximity as a relational commitment, read Made For People by Justin Whitmore Earley. Honestly. His community has done it and he can show you how.

Where we choose to live is the big thing, but there are other ways to embrace proximity. If you, like me, live in the boonies but can work anywhere, have a day in public. Make sure people know when that is and where to find you. Brainstorm ideas to get your vocation into the center of your communal life. For me, that means hosting workshops, speaking in public, hosting readings, getting my work off the internet and into the town square.

Would you like to know the interesting thing? Our age has effectively reversed the formula when it comes to discerning God’s will. Stay with me—this bears on proximity. Our age starts with our personal constraints and then assumes God’s guidance. Meaning, we start with the price tag. We move to a part of town because we can afford it, we take the new job because the terms are better, we pick a school because the price is right.

Now, God is kind and He will move that way. But if you look at the great actions of God in history it always starts with love for a people and personal constraints follow.

Time for commitment two.

Community

One of my favorite Atlantic articles of all time is called “The American Nuclear Family Was a Mistake.” Josh Skaggs from Sketches of Found Family shared it with me years ago.

The thesis of that article is that nuclear families strapped a jet engine onto Late Modern impulses. Nuclear families require people to work more, travel more, buy more, and insulate more. What do they offer? Less contradiction of the will.

I suspect that, given time, the nuclear family will turn out to have been a real aberration, while the nuclear family nested within the larger reality of the household may be the name of the game.

It turns out the easiest way to embrace proximity is to live with other people. Get rid of the AirBnb. Turn your guest bedroom into a discipleship opportunity. For the past four years we’ve had a good friend from church living downstairs. Are there challenges? Of course. It’s another place to sin and repent. But, since our life is explicitly built around prayer and a rule and establishing the Kingdom of God, there’s a strong telos to shape our life together.

If you’re considering a pre-industrial household (aka an “intentional community”) Elizabeth Oldfield has great work on the how and why. (Read this one too).

Now, not everyone can shake up the American nuclear family. But you can have a life that is open to community. Bring back taco Tuesday, open to everyone. Put the barbecue in the driveway every Saturday night. Commit to a shared rule of life with two or three other people. Have a Christ Room. Build a sauna. Saunas, we’ve discovered, have an almost preternatural ability to pull people together.

When it comes to the material realities of life, community is most often a result of embracing limitations in some other domain. Which takes us to Number Three.

Simplicity

Simplicity is a way to fight both instinctive individualism and busyness. But I’ll name the rule before I say why: Don’t own anything that is not beautiful or useful to you. In so doing you will fight the dehumanizing effects of emergent technologies.

Honestly.

Our stuff contributes to the dehumanizing effects of emergent technologies for several reasons. Dr. Joseph Ferrari, who’s done great work on clutter in a field called “environmental psychology” (listen to this podcast), has observed that too much stuff is visual procrastination. It causes just as much stress as task procrastination. Too much stuff also damages our relationships (wild but true), stresses us out (because what takes up space takes up time), and makes an ethic of care impossible. When we own too much, we simply cannot give our things the attention they need, and the only solution is to develop callouses on our souls. That can, in turn, train us to see objects as hindrances or disposable or some such thing, which cannot help but shape the way we see bodies in general.

Also, clutter divides our attention, which decreases our ability to sense God’s presence.

The alternative?

Simplicity.

Simplicity is not minimalism. Simplicity means that you follow the rule above: Don’t have anything that is not beautiful or useful to you. If you’d like to have a maximalist, American-Rococo art show of a house, by all means go for it. Jesus is all for extravagant beauty.

For most of us, it means simply redefining our rules for ownership and then letting those rules shape our lives over time. My household has been on this journey for—I kid you not—three years. And we’re still getting there. It wasn’t until the end of the first year that I started to see stuff as a liability rather than as an asset. It took longer to embrace an ethic of care (which is not to own anything we cannot actually steward). But month over month, year over year, it’s working.

A few recommendations to get started. There’s an organization called The Institute for Challenging Disorganization that’s worth knowing about. They have classes, resources, and even professional de-clutterers who could help you.

In terms of the work, you can do a three-month spending fast in which you do not buy anything but essentials for living. For most of us that is an essential reset. You can have a digital buying day (usually a weekend afternoon) when you work through all the things you meant to buy during the week. At a bare minimum, you can have a three-day waiting period on any online purchase. I have a phone note where I record things I think I need and then look back at it later; most of it I never purchase.

If you become interested in an overhaul, Joshua Becker’s work is excellent, as is JMC’s old series on Simplicity (of course).

Two more.

Order

The worst technologies are parasitic on disorder. Actually, the worst technologies need disorder. Meta’s AI companion, for example, assumes that you’re stressed out, behind on errands, and forgetful. It can help you live anyway! That was, as far as I can tell, the message of a recent commercial for the product.

Here’s the thing: if you’re not stressed out, behind on errands, and forgetful, some of the worst technologies won’t solve a problem you have.

The simple solution here is to have a rule of life. Thanks to our friends at Bridgetown Church, I don’t need to say anything about this. Check out their nine practices, adopt the minimum practice in every category, and you’ll be off to the races.

Last one.

Contemplation

I know this has been a lot but I’ve saved the best for last.

That may have been a mistake, but it’s true: If you’d like to thrive in our time, you must recover the ability to give your undivided attention to something outside yourself. It is necessary if you’re going to experience and love God, and it’s necessary if you’re going to experience and love His world.

Late Modernity makes us all disturbed narcissists. Charles Taylor got at that in his work on secularism when he observed that Late Modernity dissolves the sacred order and replaces that order with technique. All that remains for us in a disenchanted cosmos is the right way to work, the right way to rest, the right way to be creative, make coffee, make conversation, and make love. The result if all goes well: we’ll feel good.

The problem with that scheme is that we’re always taking our own temperature, tracking our own progress, attending to our own emotions. Alas for us self-forgetfulness, not self-actualization, cultivates contentment.

Contemplation is the skill of getting lost, in the best way, in the world. It’s getting lost in another person, another vista, another time—best of all, it’s getting lost in God. Contemplation is a whole-life orientation and we can cultivate contemplation in a number of ways.

In their book on Spiritual Direction, William Barry and William Connolly offer some wonderful handrails. Their advice? Do something you enjoy and notice what you enjoy about it. Take a walk and try to notice one beautiful thing. Visual art is especially powerful—in fact, Flannery O’Connor thought that writers should draw, since drawing teaches you to see.

I agree. Draw. Take a painting class. My wife is a kind of pragmatic romantic and she’s always asking me what this looks like for moms and other real people. Well, one thing you can do if you’re a mom is to have an art hour and make art when your kids do. A novel is a good idea, and so is a cooking or wine tasting class. You can, somewhat ironically, use certain apps to cultivate this ability. Pray as You Go is good, and so is The Pause App. On a practical level, I would encourage you to avoid mindfulness apps that are not specifically Christian. Mindfulness apps are based on an asymmetry of power: they know something about the mind that you don’t know, and they can use that to shape you in powerful ways.

Other good things? Playing music, exercise, and anything that requires focused attention and deliberate practice.

In this work contemplative prayer of some kind is essential, though difficult at first. But as we rebuild our ability to pay attention to anything we will find ourselves paying attention to God. It is the most remarkable thing.

A word of advice: don’t hear that list and try contemplation everywhere. Don’t think, I’m going to do Ignatian prayer in the morning, then draw, then focus on my cadence while running, then read fiction. It’s not sustainable. My advice would be to pick one or two things that you can practice and gradually increase your ability to focus on anything.

Alright.

Where should we close?

Probably by saying that the above commitments aren’t new: they are part of following Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t have one plan for stable regimes and another plan for chaotic times. His strategy, discipleship, works all the time. His plan is for us to become more human, more loving, more capable of stewarding power, more creative, more effective, more peaceful.

In every age, some parts of the way of Jesus line up with whatever culture happens to be ascendant; others will contrast. Right now I suspect that the contrasts will be extreme. But what would you rather do? Coast in a banal age or go all in during a significant time? I want to go all in. That will only be possible with God’s help. So let’s ask for it.

Lord Jesus, real change is beyond any of us. We need your extraordinary power. We need your Holy Spirit to illuminate our minds and spark our souls. Come and move. Grow our weak love. Strengthen our tired resolve. Give us the grace to see you and respond, that we may find the life that is truly life and welcome many people into your everlasting kingdom.

Amen.