#32: AI, Stress & Music

My friend JD wrote me about a question he posed to an AI program about how to "fix" America. (Not his word). And the AI wrote a reasonable and progressive answer about wealth inequality, voter suppression, corporate capture of government, and what was needed was civic awakening, empowering technology, a new movement, public financing of elections, universal education, etc.


He asked me what I thought about this and also the rational fears of AI. This was my response, and I want to share it with you.


JD,
I love that you're embracing new technologies. Those are the tools by which we will be able to lead, participate in and effectuate any changes we want to make in society.


But for me, when I sing my Beatles songs at Strawberry Fields, I tell people, as we sing Imagine together, that it starts with us putting that positivity and love from the music into our hearts -- then spreading that love and good vibrations to everyone around us. It's the one thing I can do -- that I feel is my primary mission in life.


What I caution everyone -- you included -- to remember that it is self-destructive and self-defeating to allow the ills of the world to become tangible stress on and in your body. The things I cannot change -- Trump ain't calling me for my advice -- must remain in their proper place, below the things I can do.


Worry is not action. It can lead to action, but stress defeats our bodies and our minds. I should not stress over that which I have no control.


I always tell the story about the moment, after I came back to life in August 1996, when I was still in the glow of rebirth, I suddenly had this tangible worry about the national debt. Like a bird had flown into the room and dropped this on me. And I thought, why am I suddenly worried about the national debt? What can I do, standing here vacuuming, about the national debt and then I had a realization, "Oh, is this what it was like before? And what other stresses am I carrying that I'm not even consciously aware of?"



Up until a few weeks previous, while we were doing our first workshop of The Last Session, I was expecting to die. I had a new drug, but there were no guarantees. It was unknown. Experimental.


As we reflected in the character of Gideon in the musical, "knowing" I was going to die had completely freed me. I realized I had no control over it so I just allowed myself to surrender (while still fighting) to the acceptance that my time was coming soon.


It was so freeing, I was powerfully engaged in just trying to eke out every last bit of LIFE.


I was still in that glow when that thought, that absurd thought, about the national debt dropped into my head, spoiling the party.

But the point was that it was nothing more than a thought.


That thought changed my body chemistry. It twisted up my stomach ever so slightly. It gave my brain something to fry in. I've spent all these years since reminding people that everything in our body can change with a single thought. We don't have to live in stress.


So, yes, embrace the tools. Don't be fooled, however, into thinking there is a "person" doing any "thinking" in that computer program. It's a word prediction algorithm. Perhaps, in the larger media, the good news is these principles about how to make change are so pervasive, that the AI reaches for them first after someone asks it these questions. It could just as easily have spit out Fox News propaganda.


It's a confusing world, but what you and I can do is put out music, love, positivity, energy, inspiration and the knowledge that you are not alone.


But I will be using every tool I can find to do it.