A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original shape. 

Yep, there isn’t work anymore.

One of the biggest dreams of humanity is rapidly becoming reality: there is no work to be done. The artificial intelligence (AI) is doing more and more of what we hated to do. It is also doing our creative work, so we don’t need to bother to be imaginative: it helps us so much with creativity that it ends up doing things in our place. It writes texts, it creates images, it combines photos, it creates music and even movies. It writes articles for us, it publishes; it writes even books in less than a day.

An AI program is quietly lurking in the background and is modifying the text I’m writing right now by correcting my typos; it has mistaken “creates” for “created” 2 times in the above paragraph but – hey! – it learns. It learns my ways and learns my way of writing and, after so many years of writing articles, I am sure it can summarize my archives, write in my style and publish books in my name… books that I would find delightful… as if they would have been written by myself…

I went a couple of times online so as to ask the AI websites about information I was too lazy to gather myself. They gave me decent answers. I was pleased. It helped me save some time. And here comes the problem:

Time for what?

Perhaps you didn’t notice but we have increasingly more time to do nothing.

Perhaps you noticed that we have become lazier and less – not more – creative.

Perhaps you noticed a sense of inner void, some sort of restlessness, some sort of neurosis in and around us, as if we keep pedaling on a bicycle that hasn’t its chain connected and therefore doesn’t go anywhere.

And perhaps you noticed that the only things we can truly do online nowadays is gaming, watch short videos and perform cryptocurrency transactions.

Ah, yes, crypto… I must admit that I have no idea how you can make wealth out of thin air, consuming enormous amounts of energy while the global warming is literally “in your face” and you can see it everywhere. I was taught that you need to produce something that is valuable to others in a very direct, real, pragmatic way. The crypto is too sophisticated and I can’t seem to understand where its value lies.

I mean, all I have to do is to look at some graphics and play with some liquidity wallets which are better managed by – again – the AI and its automated bots that are doing the transactions at lightning-speed so as to get a profitable margin. How exhilarating!!! I feel aroused only by thinking!!!

Now, leaving the joke behind, it’s bad…

Just imagine a solar wind putting down the electric grid, the AI, the crypto, the internet and a huge chunk of our addictions… Sexual intercourse would become popular again… among those who haven’t completely lost their minds following the collapse of their online fame or online wealth…

I do not think I am ill-adapted to this new world that is dawning. I think that the AI and the crypto thing are a mistake. And I’m not saying this because I write here on this website which is notably against; I’m saying that it’s psychological unhealthy what we’re doing with our lives.

People need challenges in their lives. People need frustrations in their lives; they need hard things, complex things that trigger their intelligence and creativity. People need mountains to climb and difficulties and rivals to defeat. The AI is making everything too easy, so people will soon start to make their own lives a hell so as to fight against it and defeat it. They will try to self-stimulate themselves if they are no longer stimulated by ideals and accomplishments waiting for them in the future. If you have everything too easy, you get insane. You’re no longer having… life-goals.

People also need to leave an impact with their existence. I mean, c’mon, what impact can you leave with a fake text, fake music, a fake image or a fake video?! What do you accomplish after binge-watching videos for an hour? What impact can you leave when virtually-killing, alone or with your squad, other gamers or teams, in shooting missions happening on a remote server – missions that are restarted and restarted and restarted again?! Yes, you get great reflexes with your hand on your mouse and keyboard… but to what avail in what we used to call the “real life”? What is the impact of winning an online battle-royal… in your own, physical & very personal life?

For some time now – and for those who follow me – I’m posting the Uncensored series of photos. Why do you think I share photos from my “offline” world? It’s a grim and gray world. It’s also a decaying world. While people are “living” online, the world is falling apart around them… around us… That’s why I’m sharing those silent photos, with minimum editing. It’s a distress signal. We’re beginning to look more and more like in the Martrix or Idiocracy (the movies): piles of garbage, a nature that is hostile or outright unlivable, and a drug-addicted mob living on psychostimulants, more or less bathing in its own filth…

Now, I live in Central Europe. The AI and the crypto won’t come here too fast… but they will, eventually. We are more traditional than parts of the so-called civilized world, so we can absorb the shocks a bit better. We have seen authoritarians before, we are the “canaries in the coal mine” – so to speak. And we see that the AI, the crypto, the social media and all the money that comes with, are slowly converging in the hands of a couple of very rich guys who – important distinction – have several citizenships and do not really belong to any nation or tradition. You know them. How can we be sure that they are not utopian tyrants sliding silently into insanity? Can someone be 100% sure that power can’t corrupt oneself? In a community with relatively equally wealthy people, if someone goes crazy, he or she is either helped, reprimanded or excluded… but when you have a handful of insanely rich people, getting a God complex can be an understatement… and playing God could be a pastime…

Now, going back to the beginning: there is no work. Or, to be more exact, there aren’t any smart hobbies left, at least online. What are we doing?!

I keep writing, as you can see. Of course I can tell to the AI to write a text in my place, but I still do it because I still enjoy writing. Sometimes it’s garbage and that text goes unpublished; sometimes I feel a sense of achievement after 2 or more hours of writing. It is frustrating, it is not easy. But exactly because of this – because the AI does not interfere in my thinking, because my text is imperfect in many ways and definitely not a masterpiece – it is valuable for me personally and that’s all that matters. I know that nobody reads me (except for some bots that index me and some AIs doing their training) but it’s normal when the world has become horizontalized and it is virtually impossible to stand out from the crowd.

I still travel and I still enjoy a great skyscape or landscape from time to time, but it’s winter and everything’s grey. I can create photos with the AI but I prefer the real and imperfect (non-AI enhanced) photos I take with my mobile phone. I listen to online radios in the background during most of my leisure time. And I read books… currently 3 books simultaneously because I get bored with only one. I read in my psy professional field but I also enjoy philosophy; I know I could use online resources such as audio podcasts that can summarize a book in 20 minutes but what’s the point?! I want to read that book myself and get my own conclusions about it and not swallow what has been predigested by someone else, perhaps less intellectually-focused, less subtle or less symbolic than me…

I do watch videos and read the news – I’m not living in a cave or under a stone, I belong to the present time. But I defend every centimeter (or inch) of my mental sanity.

In the end, there is still work. But…

Someday I would have read most of the books I wanted to read and… there aren’t any new good books being written because people are no longer creative… Someday I will be done with travelling and photography… having photographed almost everything worthy to be immortalized… Someday I will be fed up with the same old music and new music has ceased to be beautiful for many years now… ‘cause, again, people aren’t creative anymore… And someday I will have nothing new to write because – truly – nothing new really happens…

And then… I do what?

And then… we do what?