Believing In People

 I believe in people. 

People are amazingly strange creatures. They walk this ridge between depression and anxiety, and walk it with joy.

The world need to be stable enough that they can grow competence and skill. When it's too stable then they become bored and depressed, because it's all easily within their skillset and there is no growth or learning; they've been there and done that. When things are not stable enough that they can develop competence, that's chaos and anxiety. The stress of constant change burns them out; they will often just quit trying and then submit to boredom again.

In many people, chronic anxiety seems to me (a layman without special training) to be defined as being afraid that they might become afraid. It's weird how we can be like that - fearing fear so much. Of course, we tend to fear most overly-strong emotions, and I have to wonder how much other animals fear themselves.

When they do what they're good at, people are beautiful. Watch an expert at work, skilled and focused, all-in on their craft. It may be singing, acting, coding, pottery, plumbing, carpentry, drywall, or just about anything that they excel in. They take on a kind of "light" or "shine" they don't have in casual conversation or on the daily commute. 

People aren't made to park their lives repeating one little skill. They're made to progress in mastery and wisdom, but typically only in a few areas. Outside of their specialty in this complicated world, they are as ill-informed as anyone. Look at the absurd debates where a retired or disbarred chiropractor rants on the "risks" of 5G transmissions, the "deadly" vaccination needle, or the "emasculating effects" of soy products until they develop a new skill at convincingly arguing nonsense with made up statistics. 

Yes, people are a mess. I believe that, and have seen a lot of it. Certainly complimentary and compliant machines may seem more appealing sometimes. I definitely have been seduced by the reality of software where every effect has a reason and root causes can be corrected, only to find that the inner life of an individual is much more alien to me than a foreign culture or foreign language. Not all things are logical, but maybe things make a kind of chemical "sense" that my intuition is not tuned for or prepared for -- I don't want to be that hack, well outside my guardrails and well in front of my skis. 

But I believe in people. I believe the role of machines and even AI must be to augment and inform us, not merely to sway us (as hack conspiracy theorists and man political activists do). If we can use all the new (in eveolutionary terms) technologies of information, social media, always-on "news", LLMs, and dehumanizing theories of work, we will turn out just fine. 

Sure, it's taking us a while to get our "sea legs" but in a wider historical context of the human race, the internet happend 12 seconds ago, social media maybe 6 seconds ago, and AI is just happening now. 

We are humans. We need just enough stability to develop competence, and just enough change that we don't get bored or withdraw. We sail a course between the cliffs of anxiety and depression, and as long as we're sailiing between them, we sail in joy. 

I believe in people. We will work this out.