The world will become ever more electrified in the future ... more media, more screens, more wires and wireless, more data, our bodies often wired themselves (e.g, with enhanced vision and expanded senses, artificial limbs and other extensions, fully immersive virtual experiences and more)...
Zen's values of minimalism, nature, simplicity, times of silence shall be ever more crucial then.
My book recommends:
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Let us create a world in which we unplug much of the time. Do things the old-fashioned ways, the slow ways, just because they are beautiful ways. We should shut off the playtendos, cut the power, live without most technology, at least for meaningful spans of time. Even if we become half-human/half-machine, there will still be wisdom in partially unplugging ourselves sometimes, turning off our digital parts, going analog as much as we can. Shut down the simulators, put down the screens, go outside and take a breath of ordinary, unfiltered, clean air.
Let us be wise enough to turn on the raw computing power and factory-grade efficiency when we need the needed things, then to turn ‘em off, going back to the simple charms of being a bit stupid, sentimental, childlike, poor, bored, inefficient and unhurried. No matter how fast and artfully our AI chef can prepare a perfect and delicious meal, we should not forget the joy of cooking by hand, dealing with fire and imperfection, the surprise of good and bad outcomes, and the experience of slow eating with family and friends. No matter how fantastic the art or novel that a program can create, we should never lose the reward of creating our own creations.
We are on the verge of experiencing perfect virtual reality worlds in which, at the flip of a switch, after choosing from a list of available pre-packaged “lives,” we can be conveyed to the grand binary sunsets of a distant imagined planet, have sex with any partners of our dreams, fly a magic carpet (or have sex upon a flying carpet in a distant planetary sunset.) The more spiritually minded will meet the Buddha in person as if traveling back in time, all as we now turn on a game, download a book or select a film. It will be so much fun, so thrilling, so beautiful, that our regular lives and daily scenes will surely appear humdrum in comparison. Why actually climb Mount Everest when the experience and memory of having done so can be implanted and assured as the perfect trip? What need for our own spouse or lover when we can mate and reside with anyone we select, someone who will be dedicated to serving and satisfying our needs alone?
And that is the danger: We easily will become addicted, robbed of the ability to deal with analog life and other people.
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This is why we must be very careful in our overreliance on new-fangled gadgets and gizmos. Everything in moderation, everything in balance, and a time to disconnect too. Disconnecting from the machines will be reconnecting with life.
Zen folks of old intentionally left returned to a simple life in contact with nature, and developed the habit of appreciating the ordinary things around them. The universe is found in a simple cup of tea in a roughly hewn bowl, in a room without many furnishings, decorated with a single flower of the season, a calligraphed scroll. In such a space, words are few, and the sounds of nature can be heard in the trees outside, as dim light pours into the room through a sliding door. We will always need to cultivate long stretches of time—hours each day, days each week, weeks each year or longer—in which we unload, empty our minds, and simplify. Society will need to cope with its dopamine dependency and the damage that it is causing to our minds. We should all head to monasteries for revitalizing stretches. We should choose to be machine minimalists and techno-hermits, at least some of the time. In fact, there is already a need today for hopeless addicts of the electronic, for whom the fantasies of the mind are as narcotic as heroin and cocaine, to get unhooked by unhooking. Doctors will more and more treat digital addictions along with alcohol, drug and gambling addictions. “Detox” will require days off the grid.
Balance is vital. Can we skillfully blend the human-made and nature-made, the artificial and functional also turned work of art, ensconcing machinery amid greenery tastefully, with architecture indistinguishable from horticulture, verdant rolling hills above hidden roadways, our settlements flowing into beautiful scenery, with plentiful wild spaces left pristine? The dream is a biological union of forest and city, tall trees and tall buildings in complement. After all, Buddhist temples rise gracefully from the mountains they occupy, their halls and pagodas at home in their place, and many of our great designers have sought harmony of the urban and organic. The “Indigenous AI” movement speaks of technology which honors ancient traditions, respects the land, incorporates diverse cultures, is fair and just in access and effect, beautiful to the eye, allowing people to share the world with our fellow flora and fauna. Zen poets of old composed tanka and haiku in which they seamlessly referenced many of humanities’ trinkets, our bells and small boats, lanterns, grass huts and stone bridges, as one with the landscape. Might we come to design our future things with such sense and charm that future Zen poets will manage the same:
an iron bridge,
elysian silicon valleys;
BIOS and biologic,
kernels, grains, random seeds,
trees, TWIG and rooting.
windy, wireless, winding, WAVE,
data streams, liquid rivers,
carry our thoughts
downstream, flowing
in endless loops, syncs and eddies.
elysian silicon valleys;
BIOS and biologic,
kernels, grains, random seeds,
trees, TWIG and rooting.
windy, wireless, winding, WAVE,
data streams, liquid rivers,
carry our thoughts
downstream, flowing
in endless loops, syncs and eddies.
Gassho, J
stlah
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