Songs and Stories
In the Phaedrus, the seventh letter against writing, “that it is inhuman to pretend to establish outside the mind what in reality can be done only in the mind, and that it is a thing of manufactured product. Those who use writing will become forgetful, relying on external sources for what they lack in internal resources. Writing weakens the mind. Moreover, the written word cannot defend itself as the natural spoken word can rely on. Real speech and thought always exist essentially in the context of give and take between real people. Writing is passive out of it in unreal, unnatural world so our computers.”
This passage comes from Orality and Literacy by the Jesuit priest and professor Walter Ong and I am currently in the passage Writing Restructures Consciousness and what is so interesting about this work of literature and how conversation surrounding AI is going about. It makes me think of my godmother she used to tell me “The First and Last story” and how you knew it was true is that the gods would put their finger to your lip and say hush. And that's why you have a cleft under your nose. That's how she would prove that this story of “The First and Last” was true. So I say this because that is a story unto my godmother, some things are spoken. When I think about AI and the conversation surrounding it, and we have Sam Altman being like, we're gonna make this infinite being, and other tech bros are relying on the concept of this AGI.
I always think there are stories that they've never had and will never have. Even if A.I. has taken every part of literature and art it still doesn't have it all because the written word is but a finger; if the human body is humanity written works is but a finger, what we wrote down is such a small part of what makes humanity, what makes creativity what stories are.
When I think about the vulnerability and ease in which language can change depending on how the author wants to interpret it. I think, sure, we could see the sinister nature of a world in which we have created a highly biased, vulnerable to change, thieving thought machine, which makes us question our daily reality, the news we hear in each other. Or, I think, it doesn't have it all. It hasn't touched the core and will never capture the whole. And that is what gives me this beautiful outlook on the future of what it means to be a creative.
Because there are still stories to tell and songs to be sung and paintings to be created, that have not been touched by that which destroys as it creates, that steals to make itself real, that has harmed more than it has healed.
Because everything outside the mind is manufactured, and we, humanity, are the original source, the creators, of taking thought into reality.
