If you ask a group of people, what would they do if the American dream came to them overnight? They won a 1,000,000,000, a 1,000,000,000,000,000, a $1,000,000,000,000,000, a $1,000,000,000,000, whatever. What would they do? And a certain amount of people in the audience would say, for sure, I quit everything. School?
For sure. A job? Absolutely. Then what would you do? And you are met with stunned silence.
What do you mean? I’d be rich. Great. Then what? So we come back to this old question, don’t we?
What is a life well lived? How do I endure this aspect of life to be able to succeed? Whatever that means to me. So this week, I’ve noticed in particular the AI craze because it’s a little bit like the American dream, I think. The great advertisement that comes on my phone every morning for whatever reason is you can write your own book.
Leave it to AI. If you have an idea, just tell AI how many chapters you want and let AI do the work. And then, this one woman was claiming within 2 minutes, it will generate an AI book that you can then take, probably send to Amazon though they don’t say this, but you can self publish it in that sense at some publisher. Certain amount of money involved, of course, but not a lot. And then you will very quickly be making money.
So making money with no effort at all. There you are. You’ve succeeded. But of course, this is 100% nonsense and it’s offensive. Why is it offensive?
Because if you really want to live a life well lived, if you will, then it requires work in my estimation. You have to believe that you are just like a raw diamond and you need to be polished. You need to be polished with an education and you need to be polished with experience and you need to be polished of course with loss and with pain and with suffering and with heartache and overcome adversity. That’s how you grow. But somehow, we’ve stumbled into an era that wants to make us believe that success is easy.
We constantly hear stories about individuals who are wealthy. Great success on their hands. The lives they’re leading. But these are the tiny exception in a system of capitalism. Most people economically will not be free by any stretch of the imagination by the time they end their lives.
And those that are free will also suffer to a certain extent because money, of course, is not free. It requires risk and a lot of effort. So for this AI nonsense to come along and claim that suddenly we’re gonna be able to write a book and the book is going to be able to make us rich, etcetera, etcetera is really nonsensical. I’ve written 2 books, so I have a really strong idea about how much effort is required to write 2 books, how much money is involved in publishing the books, and how much money you can make back. And let me tell you from some experience, if you want to be rich, don’t write a book.
Don’t write a book. Rob a bank would be virtually better than writing a book because there is no return. There is psychological return in the sense that you may think that you’re doing something good for the society. You’re trying to promote, perhaps in our case, critical thinking in time. That’s a good thing.
But just the easy way out is not real. Like winning all this money. You win all this money and here in lies the problem. You win all this money and then suddenly you are free economically but you have no taste. You don’t know how to dress.
You don’t know how to act. You haven’t finished your school many times. So you have no idea about the culture, how to comment on certain things. So you’re a fool with money. And the history has a lot of people like this.
People that suddenly had a piece of land and they sold it and now they’re wealthy. But the most interesting one to me actually was in Canada. About 10 years ago, there was a man who won a tremendous amount of money and the farmers, you know, primitive people, basically. And they went and bought 3 of these enormous buses, and they drove to Las Vegas for, I think, 2 weeks. They had an enormous party.
Maybe they even had chauffeurs. And then they drove home and they parked the buses at the farm and that was the end of it. That was the extent of their great time, their good time. And I think it goes to show you that sophistication takes time. Every human being is an absolute gift, I believe.
But the nurturing of that human being requires a tremendous amount of effort, right, to develop into something more than you are. So when you think of things like AI or you’re gonna fake your essay, I have quite a number of students that use AI to write me fake reports. And I say, is this AI? Oh, no, teacher. This is not AI generated.
But of course, you know that it is. Because the AI pattern is rather similar in most circumstances. So what do we have to do with our young charges, or what do we have to do with ourself? Well, we have to learn a modicum of discipline because we’re all gifted people like I said earlier. So if you learn this discipline and then you realize that these tools are to a certain extent can be helpful, of course.
They’re useful, of course. But they’re not gonna supplant the effort that I have to put in into the development of my own life. Are they? And you think to yourself, if you had only one life, which you probably do in this reality, and you wanna make that life fantastic, you’re gonna really pour your heart and soul into developing you, aren’t you? I mean, seriously, you’re gonna look for the best in me and the best actions, and you’re gonna try to meet the best people, and you’re gonna try to have the best travel experiences, and try to have the best friends, and and the best love affairs, and I it goes on.
Right? You’re gonna want something superlative, always excellence. Why not? You’re not gonna want mediocrity. Good enough.
But we do live in a world that mediocrity is omnipresent. It’s everywhere, and it pulls you down because you get tired of always striving to do your best. And if everyone around you is good enough, you quickly become good enough as as well. And in a sense, this is the American society, isn’t it? Because the American society really does lodge you if you do well.
I mean, there is no question that America from a physical standpoint, wealth standpoint, gotta be the best place on earth. The best food, the best housing, the best clothing, etcetera. The best houses, everything is beautiful. But if you’re not a striver and many people in that culture are not strivers because they’re beaten down from a very early age, you’re at the bottom. I mean, a society that’s the wealthiest on earth and still having around 2,000,000 people that are homeless and semi homeless says a lot, doesn’t it?
And the many millions of people in prison also suggest that not everybody is a winner in this society. So what do I do as an individual? Well, once again, I learned to trust in me. I learned to answer the 3 questions that I always talk about. Why am I here?
What’s my mission? And what happens when I leave here? And then I get to work on me, given what I possess as a being. This body, this race, this intelligence, etcetera, and go forth. And I can do it.
I can do it. I know I can do it. I gotta believe in me because it’s all possible with my efforts. Or at the very least, I will end this life trying to succeed at the very least. And you know what they say.
You know what they say. Wherever you go in life, don’t go fake. We don’t like fake watches. We don’t like fake clothing. We don’t like fake people. And in this aspect, critical thinking is excellent because it will help us determine what pure and what truthful is, and critical thinking is great, truly great. You take care. Bye bye.