“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.”
Pablo Picasso
“We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.”
Self-Expression and Synthetic Intelligence
Self-expression and creativity can only thrive in a society that protects individual freedom. Even more, they can only thrive inside an individual that values his or her own inner freedom and exploration. But being self-expressed and creative is generally allowed only if that creativity doesn’t trespass upon which is seen to be acceptable to others; others being family, friends, or society at large.
Social conditioning is always a challenge to creativity and the creative person. That is why most of us play it safe, and work with skills, forms, and ingredients that are community-approved, or are known to already exist. This hasn’t changed much in two-thousand years. Socrates was sentence to banishment or death, simply for expressing the divine in a way that was not sanctioned by the Athenian government. The story of Jesus is the story of a man who had a very different and unique connection to God that ran counter to what both the Jews and the Romans had in mind when it came to the divine. The history of human civilization is riddled with the desire to control not only what we know about the divine, but to repress and remove those who see and experience things differently.
The primary means of control over the creative urge, is to abuse what I call synthetic intelligence (SI). Our intelligence is synthetic. It is a learned intelligence, due to upbringing, society, schools, and media. Everything SI learns is mapped from something it already knows. It cannot accept the existence of anything outside of what it already knows. To SI, everything that it doesn’t know is either a fabrication, a delusion, or something completely non-existent. That’s why putting Socrates to death was a non-issue: he didn’t exist in the world according to the Athenian demagogues. This is why murdering millions of Jews didn’t seem like a big loss to those who watched it happen. SI, when operating outside the guidance of the human heart, is no different from an unfeeling robot or machine.
It is important to remember that SI is not evil, anymore than a knife is the cause of pain. SI is available to us as a tool that helps us not only operate in this world, but to create inside of it. If we use it with heart and in concert with our nature, we can live in harmony with it. SI helps us to navigate our world by providing an intellectual map, filled with identifies, locations, and pathways between them. SI is here for us to master. It’s a tool for reaching the truth, and helps us to connect seemingly disparate things together. With it, we can record and understand our history. All knowledge is possible to due to AI. Whether you have seen a typical Google Map or a network diagram, you notice that it clarifies a physical system in the world, for the sake of clarity and precision. It is tool for expressing something like the truth, the truth being the actual terrain that the map represents, or the actual computer network. SI allows us to see things in a way that would be impossible otherwise. The caveat is that it isn’t the truth itself. It is not the life itself. Synthetic intelligence and the objects it creates are simply representations of physical reality.
But in today’s world, we are largely unaware of the nature of this intelligence, that we are Synthetic intelligence, and that objects are what SI tells us they are. The main reason for this is we are not aware of SI as a tool, or anything at all. It’s like looking at map, and pointing to Rome, thinking that the map’s representation of Rome is precisely Rome. An even better analogy would be that we are fish in the sea of SI, but we have no idea what the sea because we are deeply immersed in it, and because we cannot distinguish it from anything else. When we are living in our synthetic mind, we are completely immersed in our artificial world.
Our immersion inside SI causes deep blockages to self-expression, creativity, and ultimately peace. The reason is that when we immerse ourselves in SI, instead of just using SI as a tool, we becoming disconnected with our true self, the natural planet, the natural oracular body. Many people seek out psychology or spiritualism to help them uncover their true nature or essence. However, the problem with many of these forms of healing is that the techniques are derived from with then AI system, either our current more modern one, or one that existed thousands of years ago, through ancestral lineage, or heritage.
There is no system or method that will take you to your true creative self or power. They only to your true creative self or power is to release all methods, which means to release your addiction and attachment to SI by mastering it. Mastering it is not demolishing it or not using it. It is simply coming to the actual and grounded realization that you are not your Synthetic intelligence, but that you are something that can be empowered by synthetic intelligence.
In this article I will use SI to define two types of creativity. Then, I will discuss some of the challenges creative beings face in a world that is deeply attached to SI.
Two Types of Creativity
Technical Creativity
The first, which Plato called called techne, is something that is common to every human being: the ability to create things out of pre-existing things. An example of technical creativity is cooking, sewing, crafting. It can also involve creating music or poetry or writing, by implementing different genres or forms in new and creative ways. It really is something we all use every day, whether we are organizing or decorating our home, choosing an outfit to put together, or training our dog some tricks. Technical creativity requires the practice of a skill and a certain amount of knowledge of the ingredients required to use that skill. The great thing about technical skill is that, while mastery will make more powerful in that skill, it is not required. Anyone can begin to cook, or organize their house.
Technical creativity utilizes synthetic intelligences. Synthetic means “put together”. When we create we mix things together to create new forms of art, or objects of utility. Technology is another form of this, except that technology, at its core, utilizes electricity and and radio frequency waves to create computer programs, games, and virtual realities.
Genius Creativity
The second type of creativity includes technical creativity, but goes beyond the forms that are readily available. This type of creativity is what Plato called poesis. The word poesis is where we get our word, poetry, so I won’t use that translation for this type of creativity. Instead, I’ll call it, simply, genius creativity. The word, genius, is derived from the Greek word, genesis, which means birth or, more literally, coming into being. It is the ability to create not only out of pre-existing elements, but to add an even more mysterious element, that doesn’t yet exist.
When these new forms come into existence, they are usually incomprehensible to the system in which they appear. For example, Plato’s dialogues. There has never been anything like the before, and there has never been anything like the since. However, interpreters insist of explaining parts of them based on pre-existing forms. In the Renaissance, Plato was seen as a mystic. In the Middle Ages, he was a Christian. In many philosophy departments, he is seen to be outdated or even incomprehensible. Yet, Plato’s works survive. Their mystery still eludes us, and the power of his dialogues cannot be ignored. The main reason why his work is so misunderstood is because SI attempts to categorize it in some particular form or other. SI can in no way understand the creative energetic form, which Plato called the whole, or the true self.
Genius creativity shows up from within the true self. It is the essence of genius creativity to use recognizable forms – otherwise it would be incomprehensible. However, it doesn’t rely on them. It uses them for something else. This is where the rules are to be broken, not to cause shock and awe, but to illustrate that aren’t isn’t about the means of expression, but about the one who is expressing. The unique mystery of genius is that the genius knows that what it is creating is not the goal. The goal, is what Plato called the “in itself”. Sometimes he would call this god, the highest good, or the hidden realm, or the true nature of humanity, the thing of which Socrates says he knows nothing.
So, unlike technical creativity, which can describe what it is, what it is for, and what it wants to achieve, the creative genius simply must create and doesn’t really think much about utility or purpose. The genius within us is on a completely different mission, then the practical, self-effacing aspect of our lives.
The challenge for modern genius creatives – and I believe there are many of them, is that they can get trapped into what amounts to self-doubt, depression, anxiety, and a whole host of problems. In a society that demands that everything we do should have PR push behind it, and financial goal, or an opportunity for fame and stardom, creative genius can feel lost and depleted. This is because the creative genius is more interested in self-expression from a place of truth, and is less interested in how the rest of society might use it.
Truth be told, I write in order to reach the creative genius in all of us. All of us carry the spark of genius, which can flower in whatever form it was designed to. But to reach this spark and to express this energy, one needs to release oneself from the bondage of what Synthetic AI calls “society” or what Heidegger called the “other”.
Creativity is the Energy of Self
Everyone is the other and no one is himself.
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time
When we speak about “everyone” or “other”, we are always speaking through AI. Consider: what exactly is “other” in reality? Do you know “everyone” at all? These are constructs, similar to programmatic concepts. They have no grounding in reality. As such, these are not grounded in the natural physical system. The natural physical system always is self-expressive. The flower flowers. The ocean oceans. The earth earths.
Human beings? We are supposed to become who we truly are. We are supposed to seek out our self expression. What stands in the way? The dominance of SI and our sacrifice to it for fame, money, popularity, so-called love, and being liked and accepted.
Human beings suppress their creative urges due to these abstractions. In fact, most people are addicted to getting the approval of others, either through direct assent and agreement, or through likes on on social media. Social media is an extraordinarily powerful way to get people addicted to the approval of others. The interesting thing is that when you gain their approval, they in turn want your approval for your approval. The “your” and the “other” submerge into one artificial construct. Fame is a synthetic form of mutual bondage – to something that has no grounded existence. This is the reason why fame is never satisfying . Instead it is an energetic trap that is designed to deprive you of your own creative energy.
Fame, the desire for fame and the worship of fame, is a method of harnessing your creative energy into an artificial and ultimately depleting system. It will make you miserable as a human being, but it will fuel the so-called public’s desire for entertainment and superficial love. If you can avoid this form of bondage, you will be able to harness your own creative energy in the way you were designed to do so. The problem is with the ethos of today is that most people are always chasing instant fame. As soon as they feel a bit of creative juice, they want to make it relevant, or financially viable. This is called, “selling your soul”.
In order to set the creative genius within free from this form of bondage, you must be willing to release the bondage that currently holds you, and you must be willing to find ways to express yourself in your own terms.
Creativity as Catharsis (Clearing)
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
Pablo Picasso
Genius creativity is an act of catharsis or clearing. As I said above, the genius within you will use old forms in order to express itself. In doing this, it gives the old forms new life. However, when the old forms gain new life, they do not return in the same form they were previously in. For example, when Nietzsche said “God is dead”, he didn’t mean that the essence of God were dead. Nietzsche enterprise was always to resuscitate God. In order to do that, he needed to remove what was simply part of the collective Synthetic Intelligence. The concepts and knowledge that humanity had collected about God was something, he felt, that blocked our access to the living breathing nature of God in connection with who we are.
In this sense, refutation, the deconstruction and release of misappropriated synthetic intelligence is very much like allowing the leaves to fall of the trees in winter. Can such a thing even be said to be allowed or disallowed? This is what our own individual genius is for: it is for clearing away and burying the dead, and birthing and creating new, living, living breathing organic life, in concert with our own particular natural destinies. Creativity is dying and living at the same time.
Without this sacred clearing art, human beings would become buried in old now synthetic ideas, superstitious beliefs, fears, and all sorts of antiquated maps that have long lost their relevance. We would be buried in unconscious beliefs that no longer even have any relevance to the current season. We would be like disembodied minds, disconnected from the natural planet. We would live inside a synthetic world, without escape, a transhumanistic hell that we once thought would be a pleasure dome.
Soul in the machine 