AI Prompts or Squirrel Stew?

I had an offhanded mental riff and posted it on social media without giving it much thought:

“Figuring out which set of skills to improve is weird in late-stage capitalism.

Do we all get real good at AI prompts and buckle down in the matrix?

Or, do we memorize the best recipes for squirrel* and nettle stew, learn how to make knives out of obsidian, and form hunter-gatherer tribes at the outskirts of Houston or whatever?”

The response surprised me. Many people commented, saying that they’ve been having similar thoughts lately.

Clearly, I’m not the only one pondering what lies ahead and how to navigate it.

When the noise climbs to migraine level in society, our psyches go looking for peace and the best path forward. 

This often means that we are trying to make decisions while in a state of high anxiety. When we are anxious, we develop a sort of psychological tunnel vision; it’s difficult to even notice options other than what the loudest voices are screaming at us.

I intentionally framed the dilemma in my social post as a this-or-that, binary situation. We humans crave the certainty that comes with yes/no options: “This is good – safe, and familiar. That is bad – unsafe, and unfamiliar.”

If you hyperfixate on the problem, it’s common to miss any but two possible choices; the most obvious are often the most extreme:

“Do I surrender to the forces that seem intent on turning me into a humanoid slave to money and technology – or must I abandon all that in favor of eating roots and berries in the woods?

We really dislike ambiguity and often rush headlong into a sucker’s choice in which neither option is all that sane.

But the Tao te Ching teaches that there’s a third way, a middle path, that contains some of the other choices but allows us to walk in greater harmony as we make our way forward.

We are living in a time that requires the capacity to hold paradox — and the tension between seeming opposites becomes creative energy capable of helping us produce genuinely better, original solutions.

The tension is similar to what happens when you pull the string back on a bow and aim the arrow. Tension is required for the arrow to strike its target.

The strain is uncomfortable, and it’s tempting to relieve the tension by falling into an extreme on one side or the other.

But let’s return to the slightly ridiculous paradox with which we started.

Do we: 

• Turn off all our misgivings and critical thinking, and try to survive the tsunami of change while clinging to a life raft of conformity in hopes that we’ll maintain a lifestyle of consumption and ease? 

Or:

• Become off-grid hermits and find peace by surviving outside the system in a primitive fashion?

Movies, novels, and television shows are full of stories about people who were forced to leave everything behind as the world fell into chaos because of natural disasters, pandemics, or wars.

The key phrase in that is, “… were forced to leave everything behind.”

These stories attract us for many reasons; one of those reasons is our curiosity about how we would behave and survive in such conditions. Most reading this are not faced with a stark choice – not yet, and probably not in our lifetimes, truth be told.

But we process reality with brains that are wired for cognitive biases, and two of them are relevant to this topic:

1. Negativity Bias: a primitive, survival-coded tendency to be alert for risk, danger, disappointment, and other shitty stuff.
2. Confirmation Bias: we go looking for information that reinforces what we already believe or suspect to be true. This bias filters out ideas or information that would add context or valuable alternatives that are contrary to what we are convinced is true.

Succumbing to these biases in the original dilemma of this essay could easily lead us to believe that we must accept just one of two available options: capitulate to overwhelming technology in favor of comfort, or burn it all down and lead much more primitive lives to escape the stress and pressure.

These biases drive a sense of hopelessness and inevitability in both directions.

“Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come.”

― Haruki Murakami

There are significant sacrifices involved in each.

I can’t tell you exactly how to hold these paradoxes and find your middle way, but it’s probably unwise to choose either squirrel stew or becoming a mindless servant of tech overlords in favor of comfort.

You might find ways to adopt emerging technology without being consumed by it – and you can certainly begin to simplify your life so you enjoy greater inner peace and connection with the natural world.

Somewhere in the between of it all, a degree of peace and stability abides while we trek through a period of historic, tectonic change.

If we learn to hold ourselves and each other through this time, we have all of the creativity and resilience to create something more wonderful than before — something that doesn’t simply copy history’s mistakes over again.

* No squirrels were harmed in the writing of this essay, and I used my very own brain to assemble and toss the word salad you are now consuming.