The value of an idea

 

What is the value of an idea? I am not sure we know the answer to that yet. Up until the past few years we never really dealt much with raw ideas. What we dealt with were ideas that had been realized to some extent, given a form that we could appreciate. The process of giving form to ideas weeding out many, and refined the rest. It took time, skills, and if you lacked either outside involvement. All three of those worked upon the idea itself to forge into something stronger than it was initially.

Now we have generative AI, I have an idea, and I jot it down, and a few moments later it is finished. There hasn’t been enough time for me to think about it, it is ready to go now. What is the value of that? Before I had to invest in time, energy, expertise, capitol, something! Now the investment is a few keystrokes, and a minute or two waiting at most. The rest of the process belongs to a machine that knows nothing of investment, or of value. The machine is mindless thinker carrying out orders without question or concern.

An entire economy could collapse as a host of professionals are replaced by a machine, and by a artist whose only contribution, qualification, and virtue is that they had an idea. Most everyone I know has ideas, and can write a decent description of them. Are they good? I am afraid very shortly no one will know anymore.

I have an idea! The value was never in the initial option, but in the ability to realize it by one’s own capacities. The idea cost nothing, and so was worth nothing. The idea existed immaterially and so had no real material worth. There might be a lot of good ideas that were never worth anything because they could not be realized. Now there be a lot of good ideas buried under bad ideas that were realized because the realization cost little more than the idea itself. I think we losing value, not gaining it.

Dogwood drive

 

            For a brief time, I had the pleasure of residing in the commonwealth of Kentucky, and travelling up and down interstate 65 several times a year. My mother was from Kentucky, near the place where the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers near each other in the southwestern part of the commonwealth. I felt some affinity for the for the place outside the decay urban center where I happened to be studying.

            The affinity I felt for the real place drew me to a work of art. That work of art resonated deeply with inner world of thoughts and imagination. As studied things too great for me, and tried to help a few souls, I also studied this artistic narrative intently.

            It was game, but it was different in its presentation. You never really had control, only agency to interpret and respond to the event presented. The story could only play out one way, and I never actually played it at all. I watched it being played. I never felt the need to play it myself, I was happy just to watch. The scenes were atmospheric, the music ethereal yet familiar. The characters were people I knew in real life. The secret underground highway, robots, and glowing orange skeletons were perfect representation of the things that happened everyday made more real by a magical interpretation.

            The great debate was all about the meaning of the piece, the message it was meant to convey. I do not believe there has ever been a definitive answer, and that is probably best for the longevity of the work. A mystery solved is not nearly as compelling as a mystery which remains mysterious. It leaves room for each new player, or viewer to explore the possibilities. Yet, there must be some ultimate meaning, some true interpretation in the mind of the creator. I wouldn’t claim to have any insight into that, but I do have my own pet interpretation.

            The first character we meet is an aging man who has a rough life. The bottle kept him down, and it is only with help from friends that he has scraped by. Now, those friends are passing on, and he is facing his last delivery job before he is sat adrift. He hasn’t really got anything beyond that last delivery that we known of.

            Then he meets a girl chasing the ghost of a cousin with a future. A little boy and his brother looking for parents who disappeared suddenly. And two performers determined to live free. All of these people take up the cause of the old man. They join his mission, because they feel they are directed, or it is something to do, or they owe it to the others.

            The old man doesn’t make, his age finally catches up with him, and his leg is badly hurt. He gets help, but the cost undoes him. He turns back to the bottle to cope, and that finishes him. He comes to owe a debt to a company that reaches nearly everywhere in the world of the story. No one can save the old man. All that can be done is to finish what he started.

            In making the delivery everyone else finds a place to live. The purpose of their elder delivered them. There is something here, a passing of a torch from a generation that knew how to work for living to a generation who knows that living is more than work. Each one lacks something, and while it is too late for the old man to learn and gain, it is not to late for the others.

            Some say the story is really about death, and think that is half-right. I think it is about dying while you still live. Dying through addiction, dying through aimlessness, or through recklessness, or through looking backwards, or through feeling sorry for yourself.

            If just a few lines were altered there might be a virtue at the end, a true lesson for living; but that isn’t the way it goes. At the end is just a bunch of theories. Maybe the real lesson is that there are a lot of people out there feeling lost in the night, and looking for a little magic in the mundane to make life feel worth living again.

            Christianity has magic for the mundane, in the most wholesome and wonderful sense. We have a direction through the darkness. We have answers to the problems, real answers. What we seem to lack is the ability to reach the resonate level of people’s day-to-day struggles in a compelling way, and guide from that place we all start somewhere in the night to the place we belong in the light of a new day.

Slow down

 

With the release of Hal Linsey’s “The Late, Great Planet Earth,” and the “Left Behind” series by Jerry B. Jenkins end times prophesy went mainstream in ways seldom before seen in Church history. While some of the fervor has died down, the subject remains widely popular within conservative evangelical circles. Indeed, there is a whole subculture surrounding the relatively new doctrine of dispensational eschatology as espoused by Linsey and Jenkins. Through books, conferences, podcasts, and radio and television programming a dedicate cadre of teachers inform many thousands of believers of what is soon to come. They are very focused on putting together a definitive timeline, and forecast precise event. They call for preparation, and that call has a decided bent towards acceleration.

            From time to time there have been fringe elements in or near Christiandom which have felt they could bring about the second coming through some action or other. Much as some philosopher believe they can hasten the collapse of civilization in order to rebuild it better than it is, so these theologians believe they can bring on the second coming. Some focus on zealous prayer, others on cultural conquest, and others on destruction. All of them believe they are doing something good, even if their acts have little or no biblical justification.

               While the original thread of Chrisitan accelerationism was formed around a dispensational, pre-tribulation, pre-mil framework the impulse is now most widespread through the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) with its notion of conquering the major mounts of human culture which will usher in the millennium. The triumphalist perspective sharply contrasts with the grim prospects put forward by the dispensationalists. The NAR borrowing somewhat such men as Bill Gothard put victory within the grasp of mere mortal, which is very appealing to mortal pride. The theology is obviously lacking, as the focus is way off center more on man than God. Nevertheless, the ideas have reached far into evangelicalism through the music of Hillsong, and Bethel: with Elevation beginning to make headway as well.

            This is concerning, but more concerning still is the rise of post-mil accelerationism within the most conservative of theological circles. A small, but growing group of staunchly reformed, zealous teachers have begun to push the vision of a triumphant Church through rigorous theological teaching. They see the coming of a great theocracy through simple and direct ministry defying the worldly powers, and the culture. It is an appealing vision because it biblically grounded, but it is quite focused on results. Achieving those results might become an overriding priority, and there are some signs it is already happening.

            There are many theological routes which lead to Chrisitan accelerationism. None of them are correct, nor is the idea of speeding up God’s plan. It is of course impossible to do, but acknowledging that as truth does not prevent us from trying to do it anyway. We simply say that God’s timing is evidently our timing and go right along. We lose sight of God, and once that has happened there is no end to the evil that might befall.