I want to be very clear that I have no personal issue with Elon Musk. I use his name here as a metaphor for technology and technological entrepreneurship. I have watched his interviews and talks. Just recently, I watched an interview with him by Larry Fink (BlackRock CEO) at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. To me, he seems rational and capable, albeit a tad more quirky and creative than most of his contemporaries.
If someone wants to call him brilliant, in his field of expertise, he seems to be. He is certainly head and shoulders above his contemporaries. It seems that throughout his interviews and talks, his main goal is the survival of humanity, and achieving this to a large degree through our interplanetary expansion.
He is also interested in robots outnumbering humans and our every need and desire being sensed and fulfilled by these robots (AI). He certainly is not the first person to want this type of future for humanity, but up to this point, he seems to be one of the most capable of accomplishing it.
Here’s what’s absurd:
Up to this point, in no way, shape, or form is technology, generally speaking, improving humans’ lives. In my 60+ years on this planet—during which there has been the greatest surge in technology this planet has ever seen—the human condition has declined, not improved. The environment has declined. Overall happiness has not improved. Social anxiety has not improved. International relations have not improved. Stress levels have increased. Loneliness has increased. Mental illness has increased. Physical disease has increased. Social and ethnic strife has not improved. Disease has not been eradicated—quite the contrary!
Adding up the benefits and detriments of technology, in my mind, the detriments far outweigh the benefits. Even when you look at technical advancements commonly accepted as beneficial—like escalators, air travel, automobiles, plastics, or cell phones (this list goes on and on)—I could easily make a good argument that all of these have hurt us more than they have helped us. None of these things contributes to any meaningful health, happiness, or the well-being of all beings.
As intellectually muscular as Elon and his contemporaries are—which certainly doesn’t bar wisdom, yet at the same time doesn’t guarantee it—it seems wisdom is missing.
It seems that before we spread humanity and its ideas and desires to other planets, where we would create the same conditions (with our mentality) as we have here on Earth, one would want to figure out how to improve conditions here. Wouldn’t we want to fix that broken safety component before we start to mass-produce them? Is Elon excited to see pollution, wars, crime, poverty, and disease on Mars? That’s exactly what’s going to happen unless we address that stuff here on Earth first. Although Elon has his brilliance and he professes to do everything he’s doing for the good of humanity, I don’t see how anything he’s doing is actually helping humanity. I guess some people could say he is advancing society, but I guess those people and I have a very different definition of “advancement.”
Pertaining to AI, robots, and convenience, there’s a point where that stuff does more harm than good. Challenges are healthy and important for the body and mind. The creation of convenience is detrimental to the environment, as industry, transportation, manufacturing, etc. are the biggest contributors to environmental degradation. The machines and whatnot that are produced make us weak and keep us dependent, and much of it ends up as toxic waste in our dumps. A lot of times this dependency keeps us connected to—and even supportive of—people, corporations, regimes, and governments that are morally depraved.
What the tech industry is doing is no different from what humans have been doing since time immemorial, which is basically trying to sell us something shiny and new—something attractive, something fascinating. They’re just taking materialism into the digital world. And it’s simply making everything that’s always happened to us happen to us again, only this time much faster and on a grander scale.
If Elon is so smart, how come he doesn’t understand that disease is not coming from a lack of technology? It’s coming from a polluted environment and a polluted mental state, and happiness comes from helping others, not from the next bit of information given to us by AI. Harmony within and without comes from self-love, and contentment and satisfaction don’t come from bright, shiny new gadgets and more information transferred through Starlink and space travel, etc. It comes from gratitude.
The tech industry is the new snake oil salesman, and it has nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus and Buddha or the great examples of Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and Mahatma Gandhi. The truly great ones because they truly cared!
We’ve been through this before, people! We’ve been through this with television, and then microwave ovens, then cell phones, then the internet, then social media—and with each one of these new additions the quality of life (health and happiness) is being degraded. Now it’s AI.
Get on your yoga mat and tune into your breath! Yeah, it’s difficult because you are slowing things down, which counterbalances the busyness, speed, and velocity the world is moving at—and your brain is moving at. But without your breath, there’s no peace! And that’s the one true desire, isn’t it? Peace!
Every day you wait, it’s going to get more difficult!
sincerely, bryan