Rage Against the Dying of the Light

There’s a new very aggravating feature in Google Drive that is called Gemini and it’s some AI let-me-help-you-write “add-on” that I did not ask for and actively do not want. It showed up a few weeks ago? Maybe a month ago, I don’t know. I can’t keep track of that kind of thing these days.

I had a Gemini pop-up message when I signed on today, warning me that I was going to lose my access to the auto-generated trial they’ve imposed on me, and I clicked the OPT OUT NOW button because I actually enjoy writing, even when it’s hard. Even when I have to stop and stare into the distance and think about exactly what word it is I’m not remembering, that would better convey the thing I’m trying to say.

It’s intrusive to have a message emerge onscreen as I’m writing. This is a one-person undertaking, I don’t want to be interrupted. I turn my phone off when I write, and I flip it over. Having some machine in the computer sitting here with me as I’m working out what I want to say to you - sensing when my fingertips are hovering over the keyboard - is as unpleasant/infuriating/violating/annoying as it would be if there were a person sitting next to me, watching me work, asking if I wanted input every time I paused.

If I hit “return” for a new paragraph and wait for too long, I get a message that says “Help me write” with a prompt telling me to press +W, and I guess if I did that it would generate some soulless robotic crap for you - I wouldn’t know. I’m trying to figure out how to opt out of this entire mess, I’ll probably have to ask one of my teenagers. I’ve never used ChatGPT, my biggest foray into AI is Siri, and I don’t even like her very much. I don’t like any of these automated voice-activated systems they want us to use these days.

I think I am a very patient person as people go, but nothing pisses me off faster than having to yell REPRESENTATIVE into my phone. None of these tools can handle silence. They don’t hear you properly, they cut you off and ask you what you said - or if you want something you didn’t ask for if you don’t answer quickly enough. If you don’t return to the Main Menu in time, they just hang up on you, leaving you to start the whole process over again, or give up. I don’t have to tell you this.

Maybe that’s what happened, though. Maybe as attention spans have grown shorter and the desire for instant gratification has increased, people have become so intolerant of pausing and not knowing - even for a second - they want some machine to tell them what to say, how to feel or what to think.

Maybe someday there will be AI you can have implanted, and if you don’t know what to say in a conversation, some voice in your head that is not your own will make suggestions. Siri will detect the pause in conversation and you’ll hear:

Try asking about a time when she felt scared, but did it, anyway.

Maybe we’ll be able to personalize our implanted AI and program it for different events.

If we have social anxiety, we’ll be able to ask for real-time prompts during first dates or parties or job interviews. Maybe someday people won’t be able to tell the difference between the AI voice inside their head and their own inner voice, and that will be the end of humanity.

Is it that we can’t tolerate discomfort anymore? Loneliness, rejection, fear, envy, uncertainty? I’m starting to wonder if so many of us are struggling because we’re having all the very human emotions right now, in a world that keeps asking us to be robotic. To keep getting up and making the coffee and going to work and buying the groceries even while the world seems bent on reckless apathy, violence and inhumanity. Those of us who are working so hard to do the things that used to be easy are just not built for this.

I’m not certain of much these days, but I am pretty sure the most intrinsic quality of being alive is not knowing, and a machine will never be able to tell you that. The ability to sit with some uncertainty without freaking out or distracting yourself is a skill you need if you want to find any peace in this world - even if it is in short supply these days.

A friend asked me how I was over text this morning, and I could have responded quickly and said “fine” but I paused to really think about it. The day had barely begun. I used to love my morning ritual, I’d get up and talk to my sleepy teenager, the one who still lives under the same roof. My sleepy dog would amble behind me to the kitchen. I’d make coffee and curl up in the den while my daughter got ready, talking if she wanted to, just being there if she was still waking up, or having a quieter morning. My dog would settle himself pretty much on top of my feet after going out to the front yard to do his morning constitutions.

My daughter and I still move around each other in the morning, sometimes there’s laughing, sometimes it’s quiet, there’s always a hug on the way out the door - but our dog isn’t here anymore. The coffee doesn’t taste quite as good, somehow, the den feels empty without him snoring by my feet, and my feet are always cold these days.

I texted back: [shrug emoji] just kind of doing what needs to be done and trying to finish my book while my agent still likes me. But also having an existential crisis and constantly worrying about this country and the world and wtf is happening. And making coffee.You?

I would have said “fine” to some people, but not to this friend. There are people who really do want to know how we are, and sometimes the only way to know is to pause and tune in. Sometimes the answer is surprising or unsettling.

I was thinking about what I wanted to write this week, and how I really could not bring myself to do any kind of round-up of all the current horrors, even if I tried to do it in a way that was somehow moving, or tied to something personal. I feel like we are all tapped out and what we need is hope, and a reason to believe it’s going to get better. Someone to say hey, hang in there, it’s going to be okay. It would be good to laugh - but I wasn’t feeling the gallows humor or the sarcasm, either. So I was sitting in the not knowing of what I could say that might be helpful.

I was thinking how funny/insane it would be if I busted out with some pseudo-spiritual 2006-era “The Secret” take for my essay this week. Like, hey everyone, you know what I was thinking? Our thoughts create our reality, and we just need to have much better thoughts! We need to manifest a whole different timeline, because something has gone seriously awry!

There do seem to be people who are opting for that approach. Kind of like, welp, this whole politics thing is a real bummer and I can’t do anything about it, so I’m just going to focus on my life, and try to have fun. Of course, those are always the people who don’t have fundamental rights on the line, or financial worries.

Awry is a good word, isn’t it? I bet a machine wouldn’t pick that fuckin’ word.

I don’t really know what to say about the people who think they don’t have skin in the game. I’ve already said it all, so I think time will have to do the rest. I did see a woman who was trying to reach evangelical Christians over social media this week, though. I love when I see people who are still trying, I appreciate their tenacity and perseverance. She was reading passages from the Bible, ones where God - capital G - is saying every time you help the poorest, every time you clothe and feed them, give them somewhere to sleep and extend compassion, you do that for me. And every time you shun them, you do that to me.

Basically, I, God, am every immigrant who is being deported without due process, every person sleeping on the street, every queer neighbor you’ve decided you don’t care about. And uh, God help you shunners because you will not be making it through the Pearly Gates.

As you can imagine, the shunners did not like that at all. They were all up in her comments saying she should not twist the Bible and make it political which is hahahahaha, so ironic. I guess you can only do that if you are voting for cruelty. One of the shunners said this woman was practicing “toxic empathy” which -

A) is not a thing, and 2) if it were possible to be too empathetic - if toxic empathy existed in this timeline (or any timeline) - we should spread it everywhere and also put it in the water and the air and in all the raw milk and supplements.

Also, news flash, these folks who believe in Jesus but somehow miss that the Bible they love describes him as the most liberal, woke (Brown) dude ever to walk the planet are kind of funny. These are the things I think about when I give myself a little time to ponder.

There were only women in my yoga class on Sunday. That doesn’t happen often, it’s usually a pretty mixed crowd, so when it does happen, it changes the dynamic. The energy in the room feels different, it’s just how it is, same as it would be if the room was full of only men. When you’ve been teaching as long as I have, you work with what’s in front of you. These shifts occur in the space between what you think is going to happen, and what is actually happening when you walk in the door. A machine can’t tell you how to handle that, it’s something you have to feel.

When I was a younger teacher (by younger I mean newer and less experienced, and also younger), I’d come to class with a plan. I’d have a sequence in my head and a theme, and that’s what I’d teach. So if my plan was for a sweaty, challenging, hip-opening flow and the theme was about discipline and showing up for yourself - and then I got there and the room was full of people who looked like they needed something slow and stretchy and restorative - well, sorry folks, time to dig deep - because I wasn’t experienced or confident enough to change it up on the fly.

Thirty-four years later, changing it up on the fly is not a problem. I can even change it up halfway through practice if I feel like it isn’t working. I’ve had so many weird things happen in class nothing phases me anymore. Someone ordered Chinese food to the studio once, and it arrived while we were doing boat pose. Knock, knock, knock. Delivery! A man waltzed in with a boombox blaring Sweet Home Alabama in the middle of Sun Salutes one day.

One night I came in to teach and there was a dude who’d wandered in after having too many shots with his buddies. He was curled up on a mat in the back of the room, in his suit, snoring. I had a very pregnant woman tell me she was pregnant at the beginning of class, and then tell me she wasn’t because she wanted to do wheel pose on her belly like everyone else. I had a fire alarm go off once, and it was so loud I’m sure I must have hearing damage, but no one wanted to leave, so I kept teaching. I taught during a blackout.

I taught the night Obama was elected, and got to announce to a roomful of people that we finally had our first Black president. I thought we were heading in a better direction.

After practice this Sunday, I was talking to one of the women in that all-women class. She’s an artist. She told me a friend of hers said something that made her feel a little better. Her friend had said, the world is not going to heal in your lifetime. Her eyes welled up when she said that to me. My eyes welled up when she said that to me. I don’t want that to be true. “I’m older than you,” she said in an effort to comfort me, “it actually made me feel some kind of space around it all. I want it to be better next month, next year at the latest. But it’s probably going to take longer than that.”

During class, I’d talked about what a revolutionary act it is as a woman to love your body in this culture. How we’re taught to step outside ourselves, to look in the mirror and scrunch up our noses and feel dissatisfied and not good enough. But not good enough for whom, and for what? Who is setting the standard, and how sad is it to be taught to step outside your own home and decide it isn’t measuring up? To kick dirt at your own door, because that’s what you’ve been indoctrinated to do.

If we can’t feel at ease inside our own home, where can we find ease? When my kids were little and I’d take them out to eat, I can’t tell you how many times I had this experience - the server would come over after dinner, and if my kids had cleaned their plates, a comment would be passed to my daughter, something along the lines of - Oh, someone was hungry! - but not my son. My daughter, who was all elbows and knees and could have been knocked over by a strong breeze.

Here’s a question that deserves a pause - are we not allowed to enjoy our food if we’re girls or women? Are we not allowed to be hungry, ravenous, full human beings? We’re supposed to be grateful we get to take up space in a world where no one would exist if we didn’t spend 40 weeks incubating them, only to push their craniums and every other body part out of a very small opening. And we don’t even get to have control over when, how, or if we do that.

Sometimes the servers making these comments would be women. It’s in the water, and we’re all swimming in it. It gets really old after a while, I have to tell you.

The world is already encroaching on girls and women all the time, that’s what I’m saying. We’re being told how to feel and what to think about our own bodies, about our place in the world, about our value, and the amount of power we have over what happens to us - not much - from the time we’re little. We don’t need machines and robots interrupting us while we write, asking if we want fucking help. Fuck off.

If you want to help, vote like it, act like it, talk like it, and don’t offer me “your wisdom” unless I ask for it.

I have things happen every week, I’m sure you do, too. Moments when there’s an interaction with someone that feels strange or off. Sometimes someone will offer unsolicited advice, or say something inappropriate, or ask for something I don’t want to give. Sometimes people will do things that are thoughtless or unkind. It took me a long time to realize I don’t have to answer right away.

I came back from New York, and my neighbor did some kind of pruning, and there is literally a whole tree sitting on top of my studio. There’s no way they don’t know. I have to walk around to their house and ask them to have it removed, which feels like a crazy thing for me to have to do. But life is strange right now for everyone, and taking a minute or a day or three to pause and consider what other people might be dealing with is good. It can only help.

There’s a quote that is usually attributed to Viktor Frankl, from his stunning book, Man’s Search for Meaning. You probably know the quote:

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.”

It turns out it was not Viktor Frankl who said this, but it is very much in line with his thinking and his work. Things happen in the world, some of them are devastating. Sometimes things happen to us. Maybe someone says something hurtful during an argument - I’ve had people in my life who would say the worst things imaginable when they were angry, and maybe you have, too. Depending on your personality, you might strike back, and say the most horrible thing you can think of, or you might collapse, freeze, flee, fawn. I was always one to freeze.

Ideally, when terrible things are happening, we have some space to process. Safe space would be the best-case scenario, whether we’re talking about our own homes, or the home we’re always residing in, our bodies. No one can make thoughtful decisions in the middle of a fight-or-flight response. That’s a state of reactivity that puts us in our animal brains. You might have noticed animals who feel threatened are generally not animals you want to approach.

When you’re in a state of reactivity, it’s very common to be bringing a lot of the past into the present. Something about whatever is happening now is reminding you of something that happened some other time that did not turn out well for you. For those of us who grew up with chaos, waking up in this country is familiar, but not in a good way.

For example, my dad was a yeller - he’d go from 0 to 85 decibels in a second, and he was a tall guy, and it scared me as a kid. It enraged me as a woman. It sounded like it was coming from the depths of his soul. It did not seem like the kind of thing I should have to deal with from a man who sobbed in my arms much of the time, but as a child, I didn’t have the words to say that. So I dealt with the fear and anger on my own, by learning how to make myself small.

My mother was one to go for the jugular. Sometimes she would say things so cruel they would knock the wind out of me. Things I’d confided in her in a vulnerable moment - so I’d be dealing with shame, shock over her betrayal, and rage at my own stupidity for trusting her. But the best response with her was to freeze.

That’s the energy of the people running the show in this country. I’m a grown woman now, not a child, and I have some agency, though not as much as I’d like. Pausing, breathing, being quiet, allowing myself to feel my way into the day - are all ways I try to have a little compassion for the state of my inner world. It takes me a little while to find peace and ease, some days longer than others.

The space and the pause - the quiet and the uncertainty - the moments when you are feeling your way through all the things you need to feel so you know how you are when someone asks, and so you know how you are…that is necessary space. It might not be comfortable or easy to reside there all the time, but the world is not comfortable or easy right now, so that makes sense.

This need to disrupt the quiet, to permeate the silence, to distract ourselves from despair, is a thing to fight against. Feeling sadness or confusion or longing is the thing that makes you want to take action to change things and make them better. Having machines programmed in our devices to disrupt the space and keep us distracted is not a coincidence or an accident. It’s alarming and terrifying and not okay.

We’ve been through terrible times before. In “normal” times, the pendulum swings back and forth between liberalism and conservatism. Historically, when we head into authoritarian waters, what happens after is a fucking renaissance. People rebel against this shit because it’s awful, no one wants this. No sane person, anyway.

The people who still support this administration are on the wrong side of history. “We’re all going to die” is a true statement, but it’s heartless coming from your elected representative when she’s trying to justify $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid to fund tax breaks for the already unconscionably wealthy. The most vulnerable people will pay the price, and that isn’t right or okay. Ripping mothers from their children isn’t okay. Letting children die isn’t okay. Letting machines take over the world isn’t okay. We know this, we don’t need a robot to tell us.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Rage against the dying of the light, even if you do it quietly, with tears in your eyes - and know that you are not alone. Put your phone down sometimes, and get outside. Be kind to your neighbors, call your friends, try to see some in person. Hug harder and longer. When you laugh, try to do it from your belly. Make some plans that give you joy. Opt out of AI wherever you can.

The light might not be dying as much as you think.

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