When my friends ask me if I "have a job" with the family business, I tell them "no, I have work".
It's a difference I feel this article brings to light quite clearly. A job, which is what Mickey felt he had, is something imposed on you by a parent, an employer, or a government functionary. A sequence of chores that you did not ask for and did not want, which you try to avoid and minimize as much as possible.
Being an apprentice, by contrast, is work. The apprentice chooses to follow and learn from the master, with all the difficulties and capriciousness that may entail. Work, unlike a job, is something you give yourself. Automating this away means removing part of the reason you live.
I feel that this is a distinction lost on most today.
That's a great distinction. I think you've brought out a crucial distinction in the activity/passivity dimension of a given task. Forced receptivity feels like torture; volitional receptivity, even of something that isn't particularly enjoyable, can cross the line into vocation.
Thanks for this great piece. It’s so timely, as we just had a workshop yesterday about the state of AI tools in higher ed classrooms. I’m a skeptic and worse (big issues with plagiarism, privacy and theft of original art to feed into the maw of AI engines).
And there’s the dignity of meaningful work. Why would I ever want AI to replace the best kinds of work that I do? Or the struggles that lead to growth?
Our workshop facilitator yesterday suggested we think of AI as an electric bike. You’re still the one driving, while the AI can assist on hills. It’s not meant to replace us but to help.
I’m still not convinced it’ll be worth all the downside--and that’s based on what we can see already. Of unintended consequences we have yet to imagine.
Thank you, Julie, for taking the time to read it! It seems these conversations around technology are going to increase, if anything, as time continues. Many of the perceived positives don't take into consideration unforeseen negatives.
Comic Kevin Hart in his recent special has a great bit on height-increasing surgery. He's a short guy and his buddy sent him some info on the procedure. He runs through a laundry list of things people don't think about: okay, I'm 6" taller now, but my arms are still short so now I look like a T-Rex; I've gained half a foot but my feet are still small so now I lose my balance; etc., etc. Hilarious, but also exactly the kind of thing we tend to purposefully ignore because we're so enamored with the glow of possibility!
The best we can hope for (because misguided human reason, driven often by vice or some disordered desire) is not that the technology doesn't get made, but that we become the kind of people that can remain rightly related to it as it develops. I think that's what I was trying to get at when I said that we need a population of apprentices. Otherwise, we only expand the tyranny's reach.
Nate, this is a fantastic piece. Thoughtful, magical, and a return to youth. You might be interested in this article from this week's Washington Post. The link is below. I can also send you a PDF of it. What I call "AI Engineers". Human beings have been extraordinary "proficient" at dominating the world around them, especially when it comes to harnessing energy, whether in the form of a mammoth or turning oil into plastic. But I think we'll soon be away in over our heads to me. AI will be the one harvesting the energy in ways we can't foresee. On a more pleasant note, thanks for sharing Mickey with us today. I hadn't seen him in a long time.
Thank you, Ben, for sharing the post! I think you're spot on with harnessing energy that puts us way in over our heads. That seems to be part of the story: once the broom was enchanted, disenchanting it was impossible (for Mickey). It seems the genie is out of the bottle for us and there isn't much hope of rebottling it, but perhaps if we change our disposition toward our use of the technology that's currently available, we stand a chance of maintaining and cultivating our agency while simultaneously living WITH the technology we create instead of over/under it.
Wonderful post Nate! Sorcerer's slave indeed...can we be anything but slaves when we resort to sorcery? I think in our society's attempted avoidance of work, we miss great grace... Wasn't work a holy invitation in the beginning? To "tend and keep" the Garden is a high honor...an opportunity to join in the Master's work {and to be present with Him!}. Why do we try so hard to avoid what was given to us as a gift and a blessing? Maybe because we don't understand what work is really about?
It seems to me that the temptation of the serpent to our parents in the Garden was at least this: an opportunity to get exactly what God was already going to give them (to be like Him) without any of the work that's required to attain to that, indeed, by merely consuming. And isn't that precisely what our age exemplifies? Ease-seeking consumers? It's a bit anachronistic and I'm reading back our economic category of "consumer" back into their act, but I think it holds. God WAS going to make them like Him: through their patient labor, training them to desire the Good by cultivating the virtue of prudence, and, sealed by partaking of the no-longer-forbidden fruit, then leaving the training ground of Eden to...well, everywhere.
Truly, it was a holy invitation! To participate in God's right ordering of the world, to walk as He walked in His gracious dominion over all things, to take His project out of Eden to all of Nature until the whole Earth was Garden. Such a blessed thing, work. But we are still tempted just as our parents were, to ill-gotten ease and consumption.
Make him what he was before!” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” translated by Edgar Alfred Bowring (after which the Disney feature was created). Beware those who know enough to unleash power, but not enough to control it. Our own power makes us forgetful of the very “words of might” that would give us control - over ourselves, first, and then, if needed, over the magic.
Well done brother, thank you for this. Encouraged by your writing, I recommend The Blue Scholar to my readers now.
Some of this also reminds me of C.S. Lewis' work in That Hideous Strength with the N.I.C.E., where the scientists eventually fall into the occult. The Scientist-Magician. The Magician-Materialist. The line is thinner than we think there.
Man, that's so kind of you. I really appreciate that.
I haven't read much Lewis at all, tbh, but I feel like I'm finally becoming mature enough to do so. His writing never really gripped me when I was younger and I thought it was because he was an author for simpletons (among which I am not to be numbered, of course). I hope my growing interest in him is a sign of growing humility and increasing cooperation with God's grace.
That said, this is the second or third reference to That Hideous Strength that I've seen since Saturday, so I'll have to make sure to read it. Thanks for bringing it up to me!
I have found his fiction better than his nonfiction. That Hideous Strength would be up your alley I think. Like Tolkien, Lewis had a disdain for holier-than-thou types, especially the secular kind. His fiction is a great display of common-man morality, and the mighty things God can do with simple obedience of ordinary people.
“The simple obedience of ordinary people”. That is a holy truth. The church itself has become an unholy power. There is a reason that the temptations of Jesus were all about power! Not sex, not money, but raw power. While pastors are busy busting plastic Barbie dream houses, raging on women pastors, and selling their souls to a psychopath for power, the faithful obedience of millions still feed the poor, visit those in prison, help their neighbors, and follow the carpenter from Nazareth
Great article, @oblatenate. What person hasn't wished for a machine to do his work for him. Even as a farmer, I wished for a device to let the tractor drive itself, or a fully trained dog to bring the cattle to the pen. The best I got was a secondhand CASE Demonstrator, painted black, and an AM Radio.
I'm watching this AI advancement and wondering what we will do when the machines do it all. What will we do when the machines do our creating for us?
I love to write, and I don't like using AI for it. In fact, I barely accept any of the Grammarly tips it gives. I know that I can't draw to save my life, and do use Nightcafe SXDL to make the art for my short stories.
I'm sure a graphic artist would say the same about their work.
I just listened to a wonderful presentation by Andy Crouch that actually starts in the same place I did (with "Fantasia") and mentions the underlying desires that we miss when we only look at the technology by itself, unexamined. He brings up our modern word "bore/bored/boredom" and how it came from ~1850s, specifically from the high/leisure class. They had outsourced so much of the meaningful labor that satisfies the human desire for adventure, problem solving, a sense of agency, etc. that they now had to deal with boredom, and the effects this has had on us. Really a fascinating talk. I've linked it for you here.
When my friends ask me if I "have a job" with the family business, I tell them "no, I have work".
It's a difference I feel this article brings to light quite clearly. A job, which is what Mickey felt he had, is something imposed on you by a parent, an employer, or a government functionary. A sequence of chores that you did not ask for and did not want, which you try to avoid and minimize as much as possible.
Being an apprentice, by contrast, is work. The apprentice chooses to follow and learn from the master, with all the difficulties and capriciousness that may entail. Work, unlike a job, is something you give yourself. Automating this away means removing part of the reason you live.
I feel that this is a distinction lost on most today.
That's a great distinction. I think you've brought out a crucial distinction in the activity/passivity dimension of a given task. Forced receptivity feels like torture; volitional receptivity, even of something that isn't particularly enjoyable, can cross the line into vocation.
I mean, just look all the people who like spicy (toxic), pungent (also toxic), or fermented (rotten) food (like me).
We chose to suffer, and suffering itself is the reward.
Thanks for this great piece. It’s so timely, as we just had a workshop yesterday about the state of AI tools in higher ed classrooms. I’m a skeptic and worse (big issues with plagiarism, privacy and theft of original art to feed into the maw of AI engines).
And there’s the dignity of meaningful work. Why would I ever want AI to replace the best kinds of work that I do? Or the struggles that lead to growth?
Our workshop facilitator yesterday suggested we think of AI as an electric bike. You’re still the one driving, while the AI can assist on hills. It’s not meant to replace us but to help.
I’m still not convinced it’ll be worth all the downside--and that’s based on what we can see already. Of unintended consequences we have yet to imagine.
Thank you, Julie, for taking the time to read it! It seems these conversations around technology are going to increase, if anything, as time continues. Many of the perceived positives don't take into consideration unforeseen negatives.
Comic Kevin Hart in his recent special has a great bit on height-increasing surgery. He's a short guy and his buddy sent him some info on the procedure. He runs through a laundry list of things people don't think about: okay, I'm 6" taller now, but my arms are still short so now I look like a T-Rex; I've gained half a foot but my feet are still small so now I lose my balance; etc., etc. Hilarious, but also exactly the kind of thing we tend to purposefully ignore because we're so enamored with the glow of possibility!
The best we can hope for (because misguided human reason, driven often by vice or some disordered desire) is not that the technology doesn't get made, but that we become the kind of people that can remain rightly related to it as it develops. I think that's what I was trying to get at when I said that we need a population of apprentices. Otherwise, we only expand the tyranny's reach.
Well said.
Nate, this is a fantastic piece. Thoughtful, magical, and a return to youth. You might be interested in this article from this week's Washington Post. The link is below. I can also send you a PDF of it. What I call "AI Engineers". Human beings have been extraordinary "proficient" at dominating the world around them, especially when it comes to harnessing energy, whether in the form of a mammoth or turning oil into plastic. But I think we'll soon be away in over our heads to me. AI will be the one harvesting the energy in ways we can't foresee. On a more pleasant note, thanks for sharing Mickey with us today. I hadn't seen him in a long time.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/22/top-senator-calls-new-gi-bill-ai/
Thank you, Ben, for sharing the post! I think you're spot on with harnessing energy that puts us way in over our heads. That seems to be part of the story: once the broom was enchanted, disenchanting it was impossible (for Mickey). It seems the genie is out of the bottle for us and there isn't much hope of rebottling it, but perhaps if we change our disposition toward our use of the technology that's currently available, we stand a chance of maintaining and cultivating our agency while simultaneously living WITH the technology we create instead of over/under it.
You nailed it.
Wonderful post Nate! Sorcerer's slave indeed...can we be anything but slaves when we resort to sorcery? I think in our society's attempted avoidance of work, we miss great grace... Wasn't work a holy invitation in the beginning? To "tend and keep" the Garden is a high honor...an opportunity to join in the Master's work {and to be present with Him!}. Why do we try so hard to avoid what was given to us as a gift and a blessing? Maybe because we don't understand what work is really about?
It seems to me that the temptation of the serpent to our parents in the Garden was at least this: an opportunity to get exactly what God was already going to give them (to be like Him) without any of the work that's required to attain to that, indeed, by merely consuming. And isn't that precisely what our age exemplifies? Ease-seeking consumers? It's a bit anachronistic and I'm reading back our economic category of "consumer" back into their act, but I think it holds. God WAS going to make them like Him: through their patient labor, training them to desire the Good by cultivating the virtue of prudence, and, sealed by partaking of the no-longer-forbidden fruit, then leaving the training ground of Eden to...well, everywhere.
Truly, it was a holy invitation! To participate in God's right ordering of the world, to walk as He walked in His gracious dominion over all things, to take His project out of Eden to all of Nature until the whole Earth was Garden. Such a blessed thing, work. But we are still tempted just as our parents were, to ill-gotten ease and consumption.
“Stop, for, lo!
All the measure
Of thy treasure
Now is right!
Ah, I see it! Woe, oh woe!
I forget the word of might.
Ah, the word whose sound can straight
Make him what he was before!” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” translated by Edgar Alfred Bowring (after which the Disney feature was created). Beware those who know enough to unleash power, but not enough to control it. Our own power makes us forgetful of the very “words of might” that would give us control - over ourselves, first, and then, if needed, over the magic.
Such a prescient warning from von Goethe, and you've summed it up quite handily here. A timely message as ever, it seems!
Well done brother, thank you for this. Encouraged by your writing, I recommend The Blue Scholar to my readers now.
Some of this also reminds me of C.S. Lewis' work in That Hideous Strength with the N.I.C.E., where the scientists eventually fall into the occult. The Scientist-Magician. The Magician-Materialist. The line is thinner than we think there.
Man, that's so kind of you. I really appreciate that.
I haven't read much Lewis at all, tbh, but I feel like I'm finally becoming mature enough to do so. His writing never really gripped me when I was younger and I thought it was because he was an author for simpletons (among which I am not to be numbered, of course). I hope my growing interest in him is a sign of growing humility and increasing cooperation with God's grace.
That said, this is the second or third reference to That Hideous Strength that I've seen since Saturday, so I'll have to make sure to read it. Thanks for bringing it up to me!
I have found his fiction better than his nonfiction. That Hideous Strength would be up your alley I think. Like Tolkien, Lewis had a disdain for holier-than-thou types, especially the secular kind. His fiction is a great display of common-man morality, and the mighty things God can do with simple obedience of ordinary people.
His most complex work is probably Till We Have Faces, which I interacted with a bit today here: https://open.substack.com/pub/codyilardo/p/seeing-the-gods-face-to-face?r=1q8ur0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
“The simple obedience of ordinary people”. That is a holy truth. The church itself has become an unholy power. There is a reason that the temptations of Jesus were all about power! Not sex, not money, but raw power. While pastors are busy busting plastic Barbie dream houses, raging on women pastors, and selling their souls to a psychopath for power, the faithful obedience of millions still feed the poor, visit those in prison, help their neighbors, and follow the carpenter from Nazareth
Great article, @oblatenate. What person hasn't wished for a machine to do his work for him. Even as a farmer, I wished for a device to let the tractor drive itself, or a fully trained dog to bring the cattle to the pen. The best I got was a secondhand CASE Demonstrator, painted black, and an AM Radio.
I'm watching this AI advancement and wondering what we will do when the machines do it all. What will we do when the machines do our creating for us?
I love to write, and I don't like using AI for it. In fact, I barely accept any of the Grammarly tips it gives. I know that I can't draw to save my life, and do use Nightcafe SXDL to make the art for my short stories.
I'm sure a graphic artist would say the same about their work.
I just listened to a wonderful presentation by Andy Crouch that actually starts in the same place I did (with "Fantasia") and mentions the underlying desires that we miss when we only look at the technology by itself, unexamined. He brings up our modern word "bore/bored/boredom" and how it came from ~1850s, specifically from the high/leisure class. They had outsourced so much of the meaningful labor that satisfies the human desire for adventure, problem solving, a sense of agency, etc. that they now had to deal with boredom, and the effects this has had on us. Really a fascinating talk. I've linked it for you here.
https://podcasts.apple.com/jo/podcast/beyond-boring-robots-finding-the-path-to-flourishing/id1520424807?i=1000611338299