I am showing you, above, a picture of "Jared." He is a fitness guru, and I pulled the photo from a New York Times story by Kevin Roose. The hardcopy version of the story comes to the reader with the following title: "These Are My Friends. I Made Them."
If The Times' paywall permits you to read it, I think the story is worthwhile. The photo above is only slightly different from the photo I saw when I read the story in the hardcopy version of the newspaper, or the story as you will see it if you read it online (paywall permitting, of course).
To be frank, I was a little intimidated by "Jared," given his chisled body and rather serious demeanor. "Ariana," however, pictured below, and another one of Roose's friends, comes across as really approachable - at least, that is how she comes across to me. In the original version, "Jared's" photo had a short advisory in the upper lefthand corner, "Generated By A.I." "Ariana," who "specializes in giving career advice," is pictured with the disclaimer intact:
If you have been reading my blog postings on a regular basis (and I do encourage you to subscribe, so you can do that), you will remember that I have been urging readers to "Find Some Friends."
"Finding" some friends is totally, wholly, and completely different from "making" some friends, if by that "making friends" phrase we include "making them up," using so-called "Artificial Intelligence" software programs.
The "real world," which is often represented online by a shorthand expression, IRL ("in real life"), is a world fundamentally different from the world we are creating in cyberspace. In a past blog posting entitled, "Let Me Explain The Modern World," I sought to make clear to readers that we are - whether we fully realize it or not (and I think most of us don't realize this) - moving our lives increasingly into an online world that is ever more detached from the world in which we ultimately live (the world IRL).
My "Two Worlds Hypothesis," also frequently mentioned in my blog postings, is intended to help us not only understand our "limits," but to remind us, perhaps first and foremost, of our almost unlimited possibilities.
We do live, most immediately, in a world that we create ourselves, and the "Human World" that we create is, essentially, limited only by what we can think, because what we can "think," in general, is the only limit on what we can "do." Caution, however; both dreams and nightmares can come true!
All the social, political, and economic realities that define the world in which we most immediately live are the result of our own decisions and actions. And, for that matter, many of the "physical" realities we encounter are the product of human ideas and actions, as well. From freeways, to skyscrapers, to electron microscopes, to the Nazi Death Camps, the physical realities we encounter, most immediately, are the results of our own actions, based on what we have envisioned, and thought, and thereafter conjured into "reality."
However, consistent with the concept that we live in TWO worlds, simultaneously, there ARE some limits on the world that we create for ourselves. While we live most immediately in a "Human World," we ultimately live in the "World of Nature," a world that we did not create. Nothing we can do in "our" world can contradict the laws that apply in the "World of Nature." Check out a recent blog posting on what global warming is doing, to get the idea.
This fact, that we are ultimately dependent on the "World of Nature," is something that runs contrary to our own sense that we should be "in charge" of everything. Theologically speaking, the limitations that demonstrably apply to our human life tend to "bug" us. You might cross reference "Death" at this point!
I sometimes call the world in which we ultimately live "The World That God Created." Trying to come to terms with this understanding about our true position in the universe - whether we use that "God" word, or prefer a more "scientific" vocabulary - is what "theology" is all about. While I am speaking, of course, from the foundation of a mere one year sojourn at Union Theological Seminary, in New York City, I do think I have the basics down!
Ultimately, we are born and die in a world that is most definitely not the result of human thoughts, decisions, and actions. How we conduct our life in the world, now that we are here, is up to us. Again, I think that my "Two Worlds Hypothesis" provides a good framework for us, as we try to come up with some satisfactory answers about what we should do.
Let's go back to "Making Friends." If we think we can "make friends" the way Kevin Roose has made his online companions, by the use of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), we are sadly deluded. Those "friends" are not "real." WE are real, but the "reality" of who we are is founded in the "World of Nature," or the "World That God Created." Trying to "make friends," who are not independent of us, but who are the product of human technology, is an example of our efforts to pretend that we don't have to live in the "real world," a world that is ultimately ruled by laws that we can't change (though we can change, or ignore, any law that we make up within our "Human World").
The "real world," inevitably reflecting its two-fold nature, will simply not let us eliminate the constraints and limits that "bug" us, as we seek to assert total dominion over everything. Forget about "making" computer-based "friends." They are not the kind of friends we need.
When I say, "Find Some Friends," as I do, I mean find some real friends - friends who, like each one of us, have been so mysteriously born into this glorious world that we call home. We need some real friends. We need the company!
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