I have been an optimist all of my life and remain so in my old age. Consequently, I am unprepared for all of the frightening information that I read in our newspapers and that comes to me from multiple sources. This morning I read an article about a man who has worked with AI and said there is a possibility that in 10 years AI could destroy humanity if we don’t implement some serious regulations. What am I to do with that? Go up on a high mountain and commit suicide, as some have done in the past after predicting the Biblical end times?
I don’t know what to do except to just keep trucking along, appreciating each day as it comes and sending up my thanks to whatever Higher Power is above all of our human imaginings and actions. Fortunately or unfortunately, I am getting a bit forgetful, having forgotten a meeting I wanted to attend last evening. I was reading and lost all awareness of time and what I had planned to do. Forgetting, like getting lost in a book, print or ebook, may be one of the gifts of aging, for it is one way I can tune out the discouraging news that seems to overwhelm me.
I simply refuse to allow myself to give way to fear, for that seems completely unproductive. Fear, from my experience, has left me incapable of responding. It starts powering my worry wheel. It creates anxiety. It makes me feel helpless. Instead, I try to look at what I can do in my situation and seek to do that, even though my impact gets smaller the older I get. It all reminds me of something I read in The Midnight Library by Madeline Martin. In it she writes, “Folks in these stories had a lot of chances of turning back, but they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to the awareness that there is something in the world that is worth fighting for.” That about sums it up for me. There is a lot in our world worth fighting for…not with weapons and violence… but with caring, humor, forgiveness, and love. Love, along with all of the other virtues, is a deliberate choice, by the way, not a feeling.
I have no control over much of the insanity that seems to pervade the world today and is magnified by instant communication. I recently watched a documentary on Cagula, so having leaders/rulers who are nuts is nothing new. But I do have control over myself and my reactions. I can release negative vibes into the world via my anxiety and fears, or I can release positive vibes by remaining, not a blind optimist, but an optimist who is not afraid to release as much loving and grateful energy as I am capable of doing.
We’re not all programmed to be as consistently positive as I am, I realize. There are many whose DNA seems to predispose them to anxiety and depression, which seems to be documented from some of the early literature we have. Look at the book of Job, the first book of the Bible. It ends not on what I would call a positive note, but one of acceptance. Much of the Bible is about predicting doom and gloom if people don’t change. Thus, acceptance of reality, I have learned, is a real gift as it opens us to change. Look at all of the Psalms in which the writer is filled with anxiety and fear, but then shifts to feelings of gratitude. Look at what happened to many of the Apostles as they communicated a message of hope. Theirs was not a happy ending, yet they kept going. Consequently, it is with this awareness that Scripture constantly reminds us to practice gratitude ( that is, to praise God), for when we begin with gratitude, options open to us that can lead to constructive change. Viktor Frankl discovered this when he was incarcerated in one of the Nazi death camps. He learned, through extreme effort, that when life there felt unendurable, he could mentally focus on what was good, pure, lovely, and kind by filling his mind with memories of the love he had shared with his wife. As a psychiatrist, in the years following WWII, his whole approach to treating those who were traumatized, depressed, and filled with fear was teaching them gratitude and getting them to remember experiences of being loved and giving love.
So there we have it. Whether AI destroys the world in 10 years, or we run out of fuel to power our electricity due to the war with Iran, or global warming creates ever more destructive storms, we still have to live one day at a time. We can live in fear and anxiety, or we can live each day with an attitude of gratitude, confident that the good vibes we release into the wider universe will never go to waste.