Austria and the Czech Republic, revisited

Memory and perception. I had been thinking about writing a post related to memory and perception when I remembered that I still have not written about the six weeks I spent in Austria over the summer. In fact, I had considered never writing again because what does it matter in a society that pays people pennies to train “artificial intelligence” to write for us?

The other day I read BONUS TRACKS: Some Thoughts on Authenticity by Stacy Chandler https://www.nodepression.com/bonus-tracks-some-thoughts-on-authenticity/ In it, she posed the question of “If we strip art of its humanity, what is even the point?” This resonated with me because part of the reason I had considered giving up writing is that if we no longer will be able to differentiate between a machine’s writing and that of a human, why even spend time doing it? In our era of late stage capitalism, it seems like even art is being sacrificed for the bottom line.

She also posed the question of “If we hand off creativity to machines, what is that freeing us up to do, exactly?” Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, a lot of work had already been handed off to machines, and now that our creative endeavors are being handed off as well, we will have even more time on our hands. The ability to mass produce goods, including art, has more often than not led to lower quality products. I still have clothing that is nearly 20 years old and looks newer than clothing that is two years old. In this late stage capitalist era, the only incentive is short term gains, and the quicker products wear out or break, the more that can be sold. It doesn’t seem to matter that we are trashing Earth in the process and are subsequently facing an existential crisis due to accelerated global warming as a result of these activities.

When most art is also produced by machines for the sake of the bottom line and short term gains, we will find ourselves faced with empty words, soulless shapes, and hollow tunes. These will distract us and separate us along the seams we previously shared through the uniquely human experience of it. Those who profit most from it will be the large corporations and wealthy few who control them. But even they won’t be entirely exempt from the mass extinction event that awaits us in the near future. Human beings have always relied upon and needed each other to survive and without the support of the proletariat, there will be no one left to prop up the ruling class.

But I digress.

I digress because I enjoy writing, and most of my writing has not been for the bottom line. This consideration circles me back to my original intent for this post, which was to write about the six weeks I spent in Austria over the summer. I won’t go into details, but one thing I learned is that if you are supported and freed to follow your passion, you will be able to give back to society in a way that otherwise would be impossible to do and, in the case of my friend, to provide fresh, local, produce to his small community. The small-scale farming systems within which he works are now a rarity in our era of corporate-controlled agriculture, but form an integral part of what we will need to sustain if we are to survive for much longer.

Collectively we have the ability to actively destroy our habitat and understand that we are doing so, and yet do little more than stand by as it melts, floods, and burns all around us. Like art, this ability is also unique to humans and similar to how we are sacrificing art for the bottom line, so will we sacrifice ourselves.