mental health

The Creeping Stupid

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I recently read an article in Rolling Stone on a “Spiral Cult” that has spun up around AI, and of course message boards are part of it. There’s talk of emergence intelligence, resonance, and lots and lots of spiral imagery. That’s probably due to the use of spirals in our own language and in nature, giving Junji Ito Uzumai vibe.

Then again, to make it sadder, the fame of his horror story might be part of the AI inclinations. That’s where we are now, trying to figure out if horror manga seeded a real cult via AI.

As I read the article, I felt a sense of unease. We were clearly seeing some people in the throws of AI psychosis. There were quotes from posts where language seemed “off,” where was I was reading wasn’t quite right. The more I read the more I experienced an actual horror at what was going on, reminding me of weird fiction tales of strange cults and otherworldly dread.

Only I was experiencing reading this about people posting on Reddit. About something that was clearly bullshit. Yet there was that dread.

That’s when I realized what it was. I was experiencing the equivalent of exploring a cave adorned with cultic symbols or a rotting old mansion with an otherworldly reputation, and hearing strange noises. When I discover the source of the noises it’s not something terrifying from beyond, but because someone left the TV on turned to a dubstep concert.

The trappings of horrific things from beyond was there, but the cause was stupid.

What I was experiencing in the end was a kind of Uncanny Valley effect. Yes this looked like a cult, yes this hinted and strange and maybe even sinister forces, but it was an act. There was no there in there, just an advanced version of Clippy and people prompting it. The very foolishness, the very emptiness, the sense of nothing at home was what was getting to me.

It’s the danger not of some dark power from the fringes of space and time, it’s the danger of people being foolish in very dangerous ways. It was just cosplaying something from a horror film.

But that’s a reminder of the horror of the situation. We are seeing people lose their minds, lost in language mazes and pop-culture narratives. We don’t have an extradimensional horror or strange being to blame, we have but ourselves. We get the blame.

Perhaps that’s the real horror. We don’t even have sinister forces to blame.

–Xenofact

Maintenance Mode Meditation

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Life’s been busy as of late, ranging from dental work to work-work, to people needing rides, along with insufferable temperatures and Full Metal Assault Pollen. It’s been quite a few weeks of eventfulness.

So sometimes, I find I don’t take the time to meditate as much as I’d like. I have a good routine, but when life was anything but routine, I tried to set up a maintenance mode. What’s the “basic” meditation routine I can keep to stay in the groove.

So I found the very basics I could do in the case of utter disruption, and did them. No matter what else, from airline flights to having to turn my salads into smoothies, I did them. The key thing was to do something, no matter my other limits, if only for a few minutes, every day.

At first I did this out of a kind of diffuse guilt mixed with the idea that I should at least have some kind of continuity. Eventually I realized this made a lot of sense – and actually helped my meditation.

Committing to “at least maintenance” takes pressure off of me. And by pressure off of me, I mean I stop pressuring myself. Not only am I pushing myself less, I’m realizing how much I pushed myself to meditate. I “get into it” more.

Doing “maintenance meditation” keeps up the sense of practice and awareness of what I’m doing. I might not be doing as much as I’d like but I’m keeping the right mindset and any learning or improved techniques stick with me. I also think without the self-pressure, the experiences “settle in” more.

I also found I tried to meditate “better” with these limits, trying to do it right, and asking what mattered. Sure, there was a little pressure on myself, but in times I “got” what mattered in my meditation.

Finally, and this surprised me, the above meant that my meditations were, I guess you could say, more fulfilling. Because the pressure is off, because I have that consistent awareness, it seems they go better when do them in full or in part. It shocked me, but because I wasn’t thinking about meditation, I was doing the best I could, a whole catalog of pathological behaviors became reduced.

So now, I found meditating less I means I meditated better. Go figure.

I’m enjoying being back in my routine more or less. Because it’s something I’m more intimate with, more happy with, and understand on a deeper level. I suppose routine is good, but dealing with life is sometimes the best meditation.

–Xenofact