Transcription
What is going to happen? I believe we're not going to get rid of the technology. It serves a function. It's embedded in our daily lives.
But a point is going to be reached where young people, because it has to come from young people. It can't come from people in my generation. We're too old. We're too rigid. Young people are going to grow up in a world, they're 18, they're 19, they're going to be disgusted by all of this. Their bodies are so full of energy, they want to have things that are more physical, that are more sensual, and they rebel. And there will be a the equivalent of the 1960s or like a hippie-like rebellion of going back to things that were more real to them.
I use my smartphone. I use technology in my research and it's embedded in our daily life. So, it would be ridiculous for me to to pretend that I'm somehow cut off from that or that I'm really somehow different, superior to everyone else. I know the addiction. I know what it does to people. I feel it in my body and in my mind. I just think that it's gone too far and we're losing a sense of what it means to be a human being and what it means to feel connected to the world around us. I don't just mean to like God or anything. I just mean to be connected to your environment to go around and feel like you're actually looking at the world and not inside your own thoughts.
I I do um a lot of deep meditation every morning, 40 minutes every morning. And it's a form of meditation where you're trying to stop thinking, stop all the thinking going on. And then when you do that, everything looks differently. And so the other day I was on um a bike ride. I have a special bike that I use for my broken body when I go up into Griffith Park and I'm like I'm cutting off my thinking and I'm for just a few minutes everything looks differently. Like I'm looking at the trees and the vegetation. I'm not looking at them as if they their words tree and vegetation. I'm looking at them the sun shining on the leaves. It's like they're new. They're fresh. This is how a child must have seen it, right? And so that's something we've lost. We don't look at the world. We're disconnected from things. We're sleepwalking. And I don't mean it in in a in a superior sense. I feel it, too. We need to ground oursel in something more like that. You could call it whatever you want. You could call it we need to become more spiritual. However it is. I'm not going to put the word on it. But we need to feel more connected to our environment, to our world, our senses. are becoming dulled because we're so virtual, right? In the virtual world, there's nothing that's there's no smell. Smell has a very important part to play for the human being. So that's what a lot of drugs do to you. You're like suddenly your senses just open up, right? You know that comes from that poem of William Blake. If the doors of perception could be cleansed, we would all perceive eternity. It's the doors of perception, our senses that have been closed. So it's not just spirituality, it's getting more in touch with our bodies and our senses that is wrong. That has kind of gone off track in our culture and that I'm critical of and that I think is very dangerous.
How do you suggest people balance the need to kind of be on technology, use it uh because it's a necessary part of their daily lives, their work um and maintaining also that curiosity, that sense of searching for sublime, you know, experiences, looking at the world in that way.
Well, the main thing will be reading my book when I finally finish the damn thing because I'm every chapter has exercises in there for how to make the book practical, how to make the ideas practical, how to go about your everyday life and be experiencing this. I don't want it to be just this intellectual book that you read. I want it to change how you look at things. But you have to you can't give up the technology. I've not been able to. I'm obviously u use it as much as anybody. But you have to carve out other moments in your life. Right? So for me it's the meditation in the morning. No, I am such a fascist. Nobody can interrupt me. No sounds, you know. My wife has to go in the other room. The cat has to go in the other room by myself. Get out of me. No more no world anywhere. Right. Then um when I take of my bike ride, I used to take walks. I don't have my headphones. I don't have my phone with me. I'm out in the world. You have to cut yourself off from it at certain moments of the day. You have to give yourself an hour or two hours a day where you're not you're not interacting with this [ __ ] You're on your own, right? And I like to think of it as a ritual. So, because I have my background in ancient religions, I'm someone who really kind of thinks rituals are sort of a very pleasant thing to have in your life. So my meditation is a ritual. Going out in nature in some form is a ritual. So you're taking these say 2 hours a day, no phone. And you know I go up into the mountains here in Griffith Park on my on my silly little bicycle. It's a trike. It's a recumbent bike, right? But it insane exercise, I can tell you. Anyway, there are people way up in the hills, no cars or anything. And they're still got their [ __ ] phone and they're like in there like walking like this in the middle of nature and I want to slap them in the face and look at the way you're not looking at anything. So put your goddamn phone away, take a walk, you know. I used I used to swim every day before my stroke. There would be people who had headphones when they were swimming, you know. Come on people.
I don't know that it's going to get much better though. I mean, I look at the emerging technology that's coming and I think that I mean the the most intense of it being like Neurolink, right? Eventually having computers that are integrained with your brain. Oh god, can I'm glad I'm going to die before all that happens. Well, on the one side, you could look at that and say, well, technology like that will, you know, give someone who's had a stroke the ability to have full function in their legs back. True. And then on the other hand, it's okay, well, now this person is never disconnected. If ever they want music, they just think of it and it turns on. And um yeah, that's bad. So yeah, I suppose that that might be bad, but um I don't know. I suppose what could possibly be good at that. You see, the more powerful technology becomes, the weaker we become, the weaker our willpower becomes, right? you used to. So, when I was a kid growing up, I know I'm sounding like one of those grandfathers in in in in you know, TV shows, but I didn't have any technology. I had no nothing. I had to invent the games to play for. And so, I invented all kinds of in really weird games. A lot of having to do with sports and warfare, which was sort of my passions when I was when I was a kid. But your imagination takes up. Your willpower gets engaged when you have nothing to entertain you. Right? So in the 19th century, you had no television, you had no recordings, you had nothing. You know, you didn't have radio, you didn't have a telephone. I'm talking about early 19th century. So, but you know, you you'd be bored. So, what did you do? You would go out and you would socialize. You'd go to salons. You'd meet people. You learned how to play musical instruments because that's the only way you could hear music. Your your willpower became engaged and you became more of a human being. You created things. Our technology is going to get so strong that people won't have the willpower, the strength to create anything. If chat GPT or whatever the thing it's called can suddenly create an image for you, why bother to learn how to paint, right? If you can compose a piece of music by going, why learn how to compose? And when in the process you're losing something very very valuable and very human.
But do you not see it as a normal part of evolution of technology? Like you know all of a sudden now we know how to when we're able to type then it's less important to be able to write in cursive, right? And that's just a it's a shift and an improvement which raises the bar of the quality of output almost. If anyone can generate an image now and the quality of that image better be really great when you're trying to sell it for art.
I don't well I'm sorry Milan I don't really agree because um you know our literature hasn't gotten better because people know how to type on a computer because you can like virtually do something really quick and write a novel in a month doesn't mean you're better than Charles Dickens or Theodor Dostki. I don't think so. Or Vladimir Nabokov, one of my favorite writers. Because of my stroke, I can't type. I was a pretty damn fast typist before that. I have to handw write everything, right? And I used to handw write a lot. But what I've discovered was, first of all, I developed a fetish for fountain pens. And I got fountain pens with all different colored inks. And I'm writing on a pad of paper and I'm scratching with my hand. It's this kind of sensual thing with the writing. and I have all different colors going on. It's kind of very pleasurable. Now, I'm not saying that everybody should go back to that at all, but I argue with I debate with you this idea that it makes people better or smarter at it. I don't think because your AI generated painting has to be really good to Southern Art Gallery. I think it's going to make you better than Da Vinci. I don't think it's going to make you better than Pablo Picasso to argue with you. So it's not making us better just because of the technology.
And what is going to happen I believe or my hope or my faith is we're not going to get rid of the technology. It serves a function. It's embedded in our daily lives. But a point is going to be reached where young people because it has to come from young people. It can't come from people in my generation. We're too old. We're too rigid. Young people are going to grow up in a world they're 18. They're 19. They're going to be disgusted by all of this. They want their their bodies are so full of energy. They want to have things that are more physical, that are more sensual, and they rebel. And there will be a the equivalent of the 1960s or like a hippie-like rebellion of going back to things that were more kind of real to them. And it'll happen and it'll incorporate technology, but it'll be on a higher level where it's more human, it's more sensual, it's more involved with our senses, it's more involved with our bodies. It's got that kind of ancient feel to it because I don't think we can go on this long eventually where where people are going to feel it's already happening where people are feeling so alienated from their from themselves that they're craving something else. A generation will emerge where that will become a revolution. I'll be dead, but I'll be I'll be celebrating it from my grave.