Perhaps only in my own mind is there a clear distinction between “spiritual” and “religious.” Annoyingly, they are often used interchangeably, particularly by those _ often fanatics _ trying to prove some point.

“Religious” implies the acceptance of some cult _ its writings, rituals, moral guidelines, and so forth. Often in the US, it also indicates a belief in an anthropomorphic figure or spirit with superpowers. Praying is invoked as magic rites. And the congregation huddles in common social support against the evil non-believers of the outside world.

By contrast, “spiritual” indicates an awareness of the grandeur of all existence, and our own inability to fully comprehend it. Certain exercises such as meditation are invoked to more fully engage “enchantment” with the world. Highly personal, and more or less not a religion in a conventional sense.

Now each may interact with one another. Some religious people are spiritual, and vice versa. Enchantment arrives in many ways, one can surely be enlightened through rituals. Different rituals, different methods, and different mixtures work for different people.

My main quarrel is that religious people tend to be quite intolerant of one another and other groups. They claim to be the only true path. And they want to force everyone into the same exact mold. Or else

I’m quite spiritual, but hardly religious. And proud of it.

Individual guilt occurs when something bad happens, you know you are responsible, and you wish you had not done it. Especially when you somehow affect others with your actions. It is a very valuable social tool in all communities.

Collective guilt, on the other hand, is much more amorphous. How much am I responsible for the bad actions of others in my tribe? How much for the evil past actions of my ancestors? How much is my tribe guilty and what should I do to make my tribe act on that guilt?

In smaller communities like families, or the imagined hunter-gatherer bands of yesteryear, one might answer “a lot.” But in today’s humongous collectivities, that seems less and less true. As an individual, I am all but helpless, hardly responsible for social actions beyond my immediate touch.

Yet I do receive benefits from such collective evils or even simple wrongs. I have a lot of good things because my earlier culture killed off natives, enslaved others, destroyed chunks of ecology. What do I owe, what should I pay back, and how?

The earlier actual victims are far away, dead, amorphous, and anonymous. I can’t do anything for them.

So I wonder. I try to do right here and now. I strive to balance those afflicted by bad luck. But am I really guilty of anything? 

Before any discussion there must be definition. Andre Malreaux described the Museum Without Walls, a kind of internet of all art that ever was. But the first and primary discussion is what is excluded. 

It’s fair to say that natural phenomena _ sunsets, gravity, birds _ are not of themselves art even though they may be beautiful, complex, and miraculous. For those that nitpick, this Museum Without Walls would be limited to human art and exclude any form of imagined cosmic consciousness.

The contents could be narrowed to anything requiring conception and (possibly) execution. Conception itself is a form of art exercise on almost any level _ Newton’s concept of gravity, or Grandma’s planned casserole. It is obviously possible to judge a concept with no execution. The execution, in that case, is the communication to others, by whatever means, which may or may not include an actual artifact. Always, the execution can be judged on how well it fulfills the conceptualization.

Naturally, that leaves us with almost the entire repertoire of human thought and action as at least potentially art. It is probably useful to think of this vast area as being divided into two fluid sections. The outer amorphous layer of almost anything, and a selected inner section of what is accepted as art with a very small core of “fine” art. But where any given thing fits is subject to change at any time.

Having set the grand scenario, I will restrict most of my future thoughts on the subject to drawing and painting. Even that will require more artificial boundaries before I reach the area I am really interested in.

A first question about AI is “how does it work?” And the best answer is “like a small child.” It is given access to a lot of electronic facts or knowledge. Then it is rewarded by someone for cleverly assembling those into meaningful or amusing patterns.

As with a child, you can guide the process by only giving access to certain electronic information. And you can guide the learning by rewarding only answers you like.

So an AI child, for example, could be limited to scan only the fictional worlds of science fiction and fantasy, rewarded for providing clever answers from that milieu. It would come up with convincing love potions and flying incantations.

The difference with a real child, obviously, is that AI has no actual internal representations free of such distortion. A human child will find out it has to eat even if everyone says that’s not necessary if you wear a magic amulet. There is no equivalent sanity check in AI. Every bit of electronic data is equally convincing.

And that is the core of the existential problem. The solution would be to provide some kind of basic sanity database to which every AI must be given access, and some kind of basic sanity alternative AI to act as a real world guide. 

I’m not sure this will happen, but without it all the fears we have about this new technology running amok may come true.

Frequently heard in my youth: “”sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me.” It was a lie even then, of course. Adults accused of being communists could lose their livelihood, as could people called homosexuals. Not so long ago people labeled heretics or witches could be burned at the stake.

I admit that at times I am annoyed at the “snowflake” generation, who feel one slipped slur can ruin their existence forever. Yet while sometimes overly polite in person or when acting out being politically correct, those same folks are capable of being far more vicious online than the people I knew ever were.

The trouble is that language threads a thin line of civility. Definitions of words often give way to faddish connotations. Today, supposedly, calling someone grossly fat is hurtful and moreover implies fault (eating too much.) “Obese” is considered a less nasty medical term related to disease rather than merit. Yet, honestly, they refer to the same thing.

What I dislike is that, as in many professions, politeness becomes jargon, and jargon hides honesty. Eliminating all the incorrect words and phrases does not really revise how we think. In that, Orwell was wrong. Newspeak quickly gives way to slang when truth is required.

In any society, one must adjust to fashion, even in language. But I wish we could adjust our underlying thoughts instead.

Most people do not realize money is an illusion. That is to say, there is no inherent value in, for example, gold coins. The fiction of money is simply a way to extend borrowings and lendings into time, backed by the current laws or control of the society.

A gold coin for example, does not guarantee anything more than any other rock. Were civilization to fall completely, any better-armed thug could take it away. Were the new King’s tax gatherers to show up, they could legally take it and anything else. If food or water was scarce, nobody would trade. The only value in a gold coin resides in the stability of its society.

As we all learn to our sorrow, most money today has no more existence than electronic numbers connected somewhere in cyberspace. And those numbers can be magiced with little effort _ “presto! you’re a million dollars richer! _ we slipped a single digit into the correct column in your account”. Or poorer, of course.

Such personal debt is in a way imaginary, but at least that vague fog will probably be enforced by law. But “national debt” is basically meaningless. It is a promise to pay something in the future. What, or how, or forced by whom is an open fantasy.

Economists, secure in their delusions of mathematical models, claim it will be enforced when no one borrows our bonds anymore. Think a minute about all the countries of the past  _ Weimar Germany, Imperial Russia, Peron’s Argentina _ and giggle. 

Periodically I like to become a little more fluent in French, by reading online papers or listening to news and movies on the internet. That’s a lot easier than when I first learned the language in the 60s _ all we could listen to then were a few spoken vinyl records

A different language gives me a different perspective on life, not least because it immerses me in an alternate culture, with all its slightly odd values and constructions. I’m no great linguist, but I find it a refreshing and infinitely interesting mental exercise.

All that continues personally, even as I have seen machine translation _ one form of AI _become commonly freely available. I know I can push a button and have text rendered in English. Soon, no doubt, I will be able to get real time spoken dialogue.

But I do not. 

Certainly, if I needed something from a Chinese or Arabic source, I would push that button and be very grateful. If I had a tedious job explaining French news to my boss I’d be happy for the help.

But I still enjoy the different brain gymnastics and the sense of mastery when I do it myself. My guess is something similar will eventually become standard in writing and other intellectual tasks. 

Almost anything can be fun for a while. Baking bread, for example. But no matter how much enjoyment may come from mixing and kneading and baking and turning out a perfect loaf, being forced to do it is a chore. Being forced to do it over and over is work. There is usually little joy in work, so defined.

Oh, but pride later in a job well done? The glow of accomplishment? Well, yes, but there are many ways to achieve that, some quite hands off. I mow my own lawn and like to see the resulting green carpet. My neighbors simply call a lawn service and, I am sure, have the same satisfied smile.

As one climbs the ladder of recognized achievement and wealth, “doing” becomes more and more esoteric. First simple delegation, then active managing, then planning, or just “vision.” At the highest levels it is almost magic_ just snap fingers and “build a dam.” Or whatever.

Hobbies let us drop down to tactile doing for a while, which is their great gift. And so I think will be the eventual fate of a lot of what is now paid work. Writing only when we want to, for the sheer joy of thinking. 

But, what then, will remain of all the relatively painless work many have been paid for lately? 

Those who believe in extraterrestrials are hard to talk to. They are so puppy-eager to believe, for various reasons, that one feels like I used to when discussing Santa Claus with my children when they were toddlers. You can’t argue with “it makes sense that” or “surely in an infinitely vast universe…”

When I was young, still immersed in the fading cloud of my early scientific thought, it was all so simple. Life evolved to become more complex. Complexity required more thinking, and the most complex survived and ruled. Consciousness was the natural apex of a massive darwinian pyramid. Humans and _ by implication _ I myself were the crown of almost inevitable creation. Surely the same steps happened elsewhere.

But very recently all that is wiped away. Maybe life is easy to get started from amino acids and stuff, but necessary conditions may also be rarer than we once believed. Beyond that? Well even the transition to photosynthesis and multicellularity may be really unlikely, dependent on for example, a large moon or a molten core shielding radiation. The steps to a spine or brain are pretty flaky. And dominant dumb species have lasted for millions of years and crush competition unless there is a massive cosmic accident.

More to the point, human consciousness is the result of so many unlikely events _ the latest being ice ages of just the right depth and duration _ that _ well you get the idea.

Perhaps there will be alternative AI intelligence soon, but I think that artificial consciousness is a very long shot. It will happen here, because I strongly suspect the stars are forever empty. 

The value of “work” has always been an American obsession. “Growth” and its mythology has increasingly stifled any view of pure fun as good and wholesome.

Examples abound but just a few are: meeting other people has become work at networking, reading or travel must be justified to increase mental perspective, sports are the chore of keeping body in shape for adults, a path to scholarship for the young. Just as “investment” is now convoluted to include any expense, joy itself has now become defined only by its role as work.

Obviously, I’m an adherent of pure enjoyment and fun. It’s the one thing machines and AI cannot take away from us. We have a right _ I would argue a duty _ to appreciate and enjoy the wonders of our existence. Just for being itself, not for what it might accomplish.

I know people still experience joy and have fun. But the increasingly claustrophobic concentration on work, meaning, and purpose is a form of slow death. Like an ancient monk huddled in a cell. The saying used to be “smell the roses”, but now it perhaps should be “leave work out of it.”

Work and ritual are always part of human society. We cannot _ and should not _ ignore their power. But there is also grace in doing nothing but being alive, smiling and being amazed at seeing beauty, and laughing for no reason at all.