If you like this piece, feel free to 💬,❤️ or 🔄 on Substack so more people can find it!
Happy Tuesday. Each week I share some thought-provoking insights of my own, along with wisdom from the great thinkers I’ve encountered through books, other media, and my network.
Top of Mind: AI and Intuition
I’ve been thinking a lot about answer platforms. With LLMs and AI, we have more answers than ever. But does it really solve anything?
I think about a high school student analyzing their college or life design decisions. No doubt, AI will be able to provide answers, but without discernment, one might forget to question whether the machine is offering a useful answer.
AI often reverts to the mean. It’s good at making things rational and average.
Psychiatrist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist talks about left brain dominant cultures, and how they lead to hyper-rationalism and reductionism. He goes on to say that “mentally ill individuals attempt to reduce areas where a normal person would rely on intuition, feeling, and instinct to a graph or equation.”
Across human history and the great myths across civilizations, there are stories that celebrate intuition: someone, perhaps a hero, acting without complete information and trusting their gut.
As we outsource more of our thinking and decisions to LLMs, will we lose the muscle memory around intuition, and what is the impact at a generational level?
Big Idea: The Meaning of Life
I have spent a disproportionate amount of time exploring meaning. As part of that, I have asked many mentors about what they think about the meaning and purpose of life. Here are a few examples I’ve heard:
The purpose of life is to go through it.
The purpose of life is to learn the soul lessons that cross your path.
The purpose of life is to work to bridge the world as it is with the world as it should be.
I think all of these are fair. When I think about the meaning and purpose of life through the lens of a human, it’s important to remember that humans have a unique ability to wonder. A good friend of mine often talks about the model that suggests our brain evolved this way. The reptilian brain is wired to survive, the mammalian brain is driven to love, and the human brain (i.e. the higher self) is driven to wonder.
So when I think about the meaning of life, the best definition I’ve come up with to date is:
To dream the perfect dream, and work to make it a reality…
With a few caveats:
First, everyone’s dream will be different.
Second, to truly be meaningful, the dream should be big enough to serve a larger population than just the self or a person’s ego.
Third, the original definition of perfect did not mean free of all defects. It meant complete, mature, whole, or in the Hebrew sense of the word shalom, the root of which points to the world “as it should be”.
In my current definition, I believe we need to revert to the original definition of perfect, because the wisdom to recognize that there are some things in life that we won’t understand, and the acceptance of the surprising, the unknown, and the beauty that comes from knowing the world is complete and perfect as it is, and has the ability to continue to evolve and grow, are primary ingredients of meaning and purpose.
Borrowed Wisdom: The Change Formula
So much of life is a process of enacting change, whether in our personal lives, relationships or careers. I was recently reflecting on my conversation with Diana Chapman, co-founder of the Conscious Leadership Group and co-author of The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership.
One of the concepts in her book is the “change formula”, originally developed by Beckhard and Harris:
(Vision x Dissatisfaction) + First Steps > Resistance = Change
During our conversation, I asked Diana whether people are more motivated by a compelling vision or from dissatisfaction. Diana confirmed that more often people are driven by dissatisfaction, akin to the idea of being “sick and tired of being sick and tired”.
The concept of resistance makes sense. Whenever we aim to change, there will be inertia, and our efforts must be greater than that resistance (for more on resistance, see the episode we did with the legendary author Steven Pressfield).
To me, what stands out is dissatisfaction. Especially in our culture that promotes acceptance and gratitude, both of which are incredibly important to a fulfilling life, I think we can underappreciate how adverse feelings like dissatisfaction serve a purpose, and can drive change in specific arenas or seasons of our lives.
Reading, Watching, Listening:
Instructions Before Visiting Earth by James McCrae - When I read this poem, I think about the idea of being “in this world, but not of it”, or a concept that my mentor calls “the ocean and the wave”. This is one of the best poems I’ve found to capture the strange and profound nature of the human experience, and what may be really going on at a deeper and spiritual level.
Let me know if anything stands out. Hope you have a great week.
Adam
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.