Meaning is never given

[#psychology #thoughts]

First of all I LOVE James Hollis’s ideas. I’ve even voiced the audiobook of his Under Saturn’s Shadow.

This short note is about AI and meaning (mainly driven by opinions I keep seeing in forums from people who are afraid of losing it).

The fear makes sense on the surface. If AI can write, create, and solve, what’s left for us? But I think this fear is pointing at the wrong thing. What AI threatens is the retail version of meaning. The borrowed kind. The kind we get from being busy, being useful, being the person who produces things.

Hollis calls the real source of meaning the “swamplands of the soul”. Grief, anxiety, the destabilizing passages of life that we’d rather skip. That’s where depth actually comes from. Not from tasks. Not from output.

So if AI strips away the surrogate meanings we’ve been hiding behind, maybe that’s not collapse. Maybe that’s finally the invitation to find the real thing? The kind that doesn’t break when a better tool comes along.