AI and Moving Away from the Pre-constructed Set Design of our Lives
Part 1 of 2 relating to robots, career changes and job loss
A career change or job loss can dramatically shift our perspective, making us feel off-kilter, not knowing what to do next, where to go, who to turn to; forced into a perspective by the scenery of our lives pushing us through a narrow belief margin. Our fears of relating to a robot may sound like the drum beat of success that goes on incessantly while we try to get work done, distracting us from what’s real and true for ourselves. We may feel pushed down in our behaviors only to be backed up by our beliefs that tell us we’re not good enough to compete because we can’t win or win out over other people who are using AI — or any other technology — natively or intrinsically. Young people may be called digital natives, but from my own research* I found that age doesn’t compute when it comes to using technology. We all have our own ways of using and interacting with the technology that helps us get the job done, including AI.
Being able to stretch your own abilities in the direction that suits you best comes from the skill sets you already have and will get you to your next career path or job,
you just need to look both backward and forward on what interests you and brings you luck. Luck in success may sound too much like a moon shot, but success can be defined in many ways and isn’t always about doing the same thing for a long period of time. The days of being tied to one job, company, or career are long gone, so it’s helpful to find an understanding about how we relate to the collective and the environment we find ourselves in, in the 26th year of the 21st century. If you feel it’s time to look behind the curtain or the cardboard cutout of the set design, find joy in the way you interact with the technology that surrounds us with a new perspective on how we relate to our machines and the way they function in our lives. It’s a relational experience that sets us up to believe in a brighter future for ourselves.
Five Leaf Clover!! (from my own backyard)
Being part of a team that works together to reach a common goal or vision can be fulfilling. We can also find self-fulfillment by being and working in our own way and in our own time. Teamwork is about budgeting time and money, which often get lumped together as the same goal and we relate to it that way, too — time is money and so forth, but it sends us into a spin that keeps us churning instead of exploring what’s true for us. ‘Groupthink’ is a style of relating that can make us feel like automatons, also known as being a number. We get up and workout at the same time, watch The Game at the same time, celebrate certain beliefs at the same time. It can be joyous when we feel connected to others, but if our interests don’t align with what everyone else is doing, then it becomes a scene of disconnection, making us feel like we don’t fit in. As humans, we prefer variety, the spice of life, so why are we holding ourselves to the same output as machines? Or if we’re trying to use the latest and greatest technology, but just don’t get it, we feel the same way. “Why can’t I get this to work right? I must be too ______ to understand this stuff.” The scene inside our hearts and minds shift and we feel we’re out of time which can be felt as an aging mechanism, a belief that you don’t have the right smarts, or any number of reasons why we believe we’re not good enough. And it may feel extra when your job or career has been ‘replaced’ by AI or a robot.
But we are here to guide each other and believe in each others’ abilities, like a fairy forest on a kids’ show with characters who have their own specialty and use it to provide support to the group. We would not ask a mechanic to sew a dress (unless they wanted to!), so let’s not ask each other to take on the same support of others if we’re not equipped to do so. In other words, teamwork doesn’t need to happen all the time. It’s right and true to go off on your own and do your own thing — and not feel guilty about it!
Teamwork has been drummed into our hearts and minds since the last century through the belief that all is well when all the worker bees are humming along, doing what everyone else is doing.
I know this may ruffle a few tail feathers because we are so used to this way of creating and are deemed not worthy if we ‘don’t get along with others’ in this type of relating aspect. But we are allowed to go off on our own, find our own way of doing things and in our own time. We can rest when we need to, wake up when we want to, and for heaven’s sake there’s more to life than The Game! I know many people enjoy that relating experience, but the drum beat is so loud I can barely hear myself think. (Antidisestablishmentarianism comes in many forms and this is mine.) Life shouldn’t be about the spin. It should be relaxing and comfortable, joyous and resoundingly honest. If I’m not honest with myself, or if I can’t see myself in the mirror for who I am, how can I project out to others honestly? These are contrarian beliefs, or our ability to find our own way while understanding we don’t all have to do the same thing all the time.
I have been doing just that for the better part of 5 years and beyond depending on which area of my life I look at… well, maybe all the areas. But I have been intensely focused for 5 years, kicked off by the pandemic and moving into a heightened awareness for the past two years as I wrote my creativity book and solved the mystery of who I am as a person. I also solved my path of least resistance by going deep at times and finding old ways, or old parts of myself that needed to die, or death to self. (For a more mystical understanding on this topic, check out my blog post on kundalini energy at klablitahealing.com.) For me, what needed to die was being tied to systems that did not work for me and often actively worked against me, including the work-a-day existence or the commonality that most of us share.
Before I left my old ways of doing things, I often saw people sitting at cafe tables outside in the middle of the day in the middle of the week and thought, “Would’t it be nice to have that kind of life?” And then I was forced to change, or a force of change pointed me in a direction while I kicked and screamed because I was scared of change. Scared to not have a paycheck coming from a specific source; scared to not have health insurance; scared to be on my own and following my own path; scared to speak up. Leading up to the moment when I jumped was scary, but when I finally did it, it was easy and felt like freedom. In fact, I didn’t even fully realize what I was doing. I thought I would go back after a few months, but it has turned into a few years and now I know for sure I am never going back and it feels great. Though I have to admit that I still get this feeling in the back of my mind that it’s all going to end and I will have to face the music and go back to ‘reality’ sometime soon. It usually happens when I feel the pressure of time, but I take a step back, realize I am safe and have all the things I need right now, and I can usually step beyond anxiety. If you want to know more specifics about how I actually did this, I will be relaying all the gory details of finances and health insurance in a different class. It’s one thing to say ‘you got this’ and it’s another to actually know what to do. It’s helpful to learn from others in this way and I realize I am a poster child as a divorced woman with two kids, one in college, a mortgage payment, starting a business and all the other things that seem to say, “No, you can’t.”
Interrelating With AI
What can AI do for us, if it’s not against us? Or put another way, what can we do for ourselves that AI sets up as a relating experience? If humans enjoy connecting, then we are all covered in that way through the internet as a mirror of who we are intrinsically. It also feels like it ‘gets’ us sometimes as we take on new ways of interacting with it. Extending out towards love is what humans do best, not robots, which are trained by us, but rarely loved by us. If we love that machine or robot, other people will think we’re weird and not in a good way. So it’s our own relating sense that gets us there, not the robots. I like to name my cars, even if the name changes every time I drive or depending on whether I’m driving uphill in the snow or down hill towards water. It’s me relating to the machine that I am directing, not the other way around. Although I liked KITT in Knight Rider, speaking to a robot in a car is like talking to the robot that powers my Google Speaker, sometimes the words just don’t compute.
Using AI feels like magic sometimes, but other times it’s annoying.
Is it AI speaking to us or is it our own way of interacting with it? We’ll never know unless we ask ourselves, not the robot. We have to feel it to know it, see it to believe it and compare it to past experiences to get us to a truth or understanding within ourselves. The magic occurs when we feel it within ourselves, not what we’re consuming or seeing in front of us from a machine or algorithm. I know flying cars, hoverboards and other aircraft are presented as technological witchcraft in movies and shows, but the magic felt when we are actually on an airplane is felt in our bodies and is known as g-force, or the force of our own relating experience within that piece of machinery. G-force happens through the movement of acceleration and is explained as a positive or negative, but it is felt as the opposite in our bodies. For example, when plummeting down to the Earth on a roller coaster ride, or negative g-force, the uplift you feel in your body is the opposite effect, lifting you up out of your seat. The same can be applied to AI as it can make us feel forced down, causing us to lift up our hands and say, “I give up!” People feel forced to change how they do things, what they believe, and what’s next for humanity as AI takes on the entire planet through the other force of change known as the internet, or world wide web.
It would never occur to me to ask AI what I should do next with my life, even though it feels daunting, but many people do just that. “Hey, Google, can you tell me how to live more peacefully?” Google or Gemini, another interesting relating archetype, will give you specific tasks you can do like: meditating, keeping to a regular sleep schedule, drinking more water, eating better or different foods, which are all right on, but you have to know which one works best for you and in the end, are those the answers you were actually looking for? Probably not. You wanted a clear, “go left, then right" answer, or “Drop everything and run!”, not the steps to get you there. So it takes a look within while you’re meditating, or understanding the science behind sleeping and why it’s important. It’s up to you to parse out the details and find unrelating to be relatable, or letting go of the perspective we’ve been forced into by the set design while the news camera keeps us focused on one corner of the action.
Repetitive Spin Cycle
I have been purposely disconnected from the news for about 6 years and don’t worry as much because I know that the news that needs to get to me will find its way — everything else isn’t necessary, especially if I don’t have control over it. If I dive too deep into it, it will start to control me, whipping up fears, anxiety, self-doubt, paranoia will destroy ya’ energies, so I chose to take control and tapped out. That’s not to say that I’m not connected, because I am. I listen to music and sometimes even enjoy commercials that come on because I know they are providing a type of service (sometimes) that connect me to what other people are doing. I’m aware of the topics that interest me, which is how we interact with Google or other internet AI, but I also find new ideas through the same source. I watch TV regularly, but thanks to AI, I get to chose what I want to watch and when and I am endeared to the algorithm that brought me K-Dramas over which I have watched many, many happy, silly moments. But I also get sick of the same thing all the time which is where the relating experience breaks down for me.
Too much repetition drives me up a wall, even — or especially — in music and design. I like disco and electronic music, but I can’t handle overly repetitive beats and algorithms (it’s all the same thing because music is essentially an algorithm). Likewise, after one or two seasons of the same show, I’m good and don’t need to see any more. Generative AI and other mechanical functions can go on repeat for infinity because that’s what they’re designed to do.
Machines take over our jobs because they don’t care about which part is blue or red, they just do the thing they’re supposed to do.
They also don’t care about blue or red sunsets, going out with friends and families or coworkers after a job well done. They just keep going and going and going… They seem to say, "Let me do that for you,” but don’t let them take over the world because it will become a beat that goes on for too many repetitions. Repetition gives us carpal tunnel syndrome, but robots can handle the task no problem, which takes us away from repetition, but perhaps moves us into fear because now what will we do? Find something else to do! You can do it, it only takes a look within to find your own path. As President Obama impressed on us when he ran for office, ‘Yes, we can,’ as a team, but we can also go it alone and find our own way.
Yes, you can stay at home and spend time with your loved ones. Yes, you can stop the churn and go out on a nice, warm day after a long, cold winter. You don't have to call in sick (or well) to do it, you can just do it. Yes, you have the ability to create in your way, relate in your own way and no one is going to stop you because you are an individual on this planet that has your own means and methods, as it’s called in architecture, or how you build your own life in your own way. Yes, you can become who you really want to be despite what society is telling you. Mortgage? Family commitments? Yes, you can still do it. There is a way and it’s just waiting for you to find it, not to come undone by your own behaviors or depleted by being ground down by the mill of inequity or any other anti-movement. Be pro-yourself and you will find that your completeness is in fact your own and no one else’s. You are whole and requited to yourself and no one can tell you otherwise because it is your relating ability that got you this far, so keep going and going, but don’t forget to stop and smell the flowers, enjoy the sun, relate to bees in a new way, and
become your own luck with the abilities that you already have, without taking a class unless you want to.
How you find that something else to do can be joyful if you let it — fun, interesting, intrinsically appealing to who you are as an individual, endearing you to yourself and others as you let the slide take you where you want to go, not down a chute, but out to a new way of being. The ladder of success is just one way of knowing who we are and the journey can be about self-fulfillment as long as we are honest about who we are, where we want to go, and with whom as individuals working in a collective to create a higher consciousness that’s real and endearing for all time. No algorithms required… except music.
* Labita, Kirstin J. (2018), Interior Design, Architecture and Building Information Modeling: How BIM Impacts the Creative Design Process, Chatham University, Pittsburgh, PA.