LOVE WHAT'S REAL

In the last two weeks I have watched the artificial intelligence Sora and what it can now do in terms of AI generated video and just today I watched Apple’s film on the capabilities of their new Apple Vision Pro.

If I said that I didn’t feel a pit in my stomach kind of fear I’d be lying.

As I watched the Vision Pro demo, I thought to myself, “oh no, the future I feared is here, much sooner than I expected, and I’m not nearly ready for it!”

This Wise Letter won’t be all doom and gloom, but I have a message for us all;

WE NEED TO FALL IN LOVE WITH WHAT’S REAL AND WE NEED TO DO IT NOW!

It’s time to tear ourselves away and tear down our cultural idols of the perfect body, the perfect life, the perfect home…

Perfect is coming much sooner than we knew, but it’s not real, it’s not true, and it won’t all be good.

Are you ready for it? Am I?

Don’t get me wrong, there will be helpful and fun features that come from these tools.

Jobs will be lost, but new ones will be created.

Old monopolies will fall and new ones will arise.

But my present and primary concern now, has to do with how it will change our appetites as humans.

What man or woman can compete with a perfectly curated digital partner, at least when it comes to appearance? There isn’t enough makeup or fitness classes to get close.

What home can be as perfectly curated as the one in your own AI generated world?

Hear me out, I don’t think AI is going to necessarily make humans love each other less, I just worry it will make us all less human.

Put another way, humans will still want humans around. I don’t think robots are going to be our only companions, but I suspect that the interference of this digital realm will augment our cravings, desires, and expectations of other people and the “real world” in general. And I suspect this will happen more and more rapidly.

IT’S NOT TOO LATE.

We don’t have to go down this road of artificial sweetener for our lives. We can choose to fall in love with what’s real.

We can choose to cultivate within our hearts an appreciation for the authentic.

An acceptance of the imperfect.

A value for the organic, un-curated, un-augmented reality of life.

We can love a real rose more because it will die and not less because it won’t stay in bloom forever.

We can share our world, because well, we already do. We’re living under the same sun, breathing the same air.

When has artificial ever come without a cost?

If we knew, I mean really knew, I don’t think it’s one any of us would really want to pay.

So here’s to us, this small but growing community of people who love life and are working to fall in love with what’s real and true, and good.

Let’s keep traveling together here with this newsletter, as well as on the podcast twice a month.

Let’s use digital platforms as a tool, not an ideal, to connect and cultivate an appreciation for each other and this real, imperfect, but amazing world we get to live in.

Once again…

Let’s fall in love with what’s real.

Geno Schmelzer,