AI Can't Enjoy Cigars

We went to the park in Kensington Market that contained the right amount of sketchiness to make me feel uncomfortable. In these moments, my disposition is simple: settle my body until it’s internally still, then silently pray for everyone who walks by. A much better approach than nervously making darting eye contact with the most unsavory-looking character.

My friend, a colourful Israeli who voices controversial opinions wherever I bring him, brought us cigars. I gladly accepted as I was going to smoke one before we met but didn’t have the time. Sitting on a bench with the Star of David on top of a synagogue looming in front of us, we lit our cigars and talked at the pace that cigar conversations allow: slow, interpenetrated with silence, and sprinkled with quotable non sequiturs.

“AI can’t enjoy cigars,” I said while catching myself enjoying the moment, “that’s my argument.”

He laughed, and asked an argument for what exactly. I didn’t really know, we weren’t even talking about AI, but it’s the thing intellectually-minded people talk about, and it’s probably related to why I’m not writing anymore.

Anyone who postures their speech with too much confidence about what an AI future looks like is to be immediately distrusted, as they are projecting their inner strategy to deal with their own dread. It’s really the unknownness itself that keeps the low-grade, and increasing mid-grade, anxiety rippling through the bodies around me.

At the core, the uncertainty of tomorrow makes people question the worth they earned through years of developing skills that make them useful or interesting to others.

What’s the point of writing, for example, when I can get AI to write for me? Why do what I love doing when I can simply upload my 600+ entries in my Substack archive, and ask it to write an article in my voice, and it probably will, and fool enough people to maintain an audience.

Fully automated Limberger, no reality referent needed, just invest in more data centres so my synthetic authenticity can overtake the internet, please.

I never wrote to feed AI more data, or to climb a best-seller list, or to get caught in the vainglorious trap that comes from getting validating attention from others. Those are secondary things, parasitic aftereffects, self-worth-generators when one loses the peace that reminds them they are worthy as is.

Why even write anymore? I don’t know, but when my body is settled, I can recall why I started…

The joy of the careful attunement when word meets spirit, that feels like an innocent adventure, and when done right, results in emotional alchemy. It’s an act of re-membering, regardless of how brief. Inquiry-as-prayer, selfish in the way that becomes selfless.

Some talkative younger guys sat in the bench beside us and started to unsettle my state. The smoke from my cigar was going into their faces as if an act of revenge, but they didn’t seem to care, so I chose not to as well.

I am learning the importance of maintaining peace regardless of what life presents.

Besides, I have a new argument now: AI can’t enjoy cigars. Sure, it can now describe the experience of smoking one better than I can, but it cannot experience it itself. It cannot tap into this stillness, the primordial peace, and the love that flowers throughout it.

That belongs to us.