The World Is Not a Prompt

Your creative work is not content; it is a connection to a higher state of being.

Photo by Cash Macanaya on Unsplash

The more we integrate with technology, sliding further into the 21st century, the more it changes our brains and the way we view the world. This can seem harmless at first. It can seem like what we’re watching, reading online, listening to, or playing is entertaining or exciting. But then we start to realize that it’s made us more anxious, depressed, angry or less focused. It’s created a bigger distance between people while simultaneously connecting us closer than ever before. It’s made us both more aware and less present. We are always, always elsewhere because of technology.

It’s time to start realizing that the world technology is creating for us isn’t one that we can truly enjoy without repercussions, because it is not based on fundamental truths. It is based on hallucinations. These hallucinations prevent us from being free.

A few weeks ago, I was doing the dishes while watching YouTube on our TV (not YouTube TV). The algorithm somehow landed on a Microsoft launch for one of their latest products that completely incorporated AI into the entirety of the computer system. The title of their presentation was THE WORLD AS A PROMPT.

While wiping off the evening’s meal from the plates in front of me, I immediately rejected this idea. “How fucking stupid,” I said to myself. If this world is a prompt, I should be able to free myself from the necessary housework that eats into my evenings and weekends. The time when I do not have to report to work and its responsibilities for a paycheck. But I also think perhaps giving up these things is a trap as well.

On notes, there was a screenshot circulating of a writer who was also claiming the same regarding AI’s role in taking over our writing duties. We don’t want to give up writing to AI. I would argue we probably shouldn’t give up the dishes or other housework we need to do to AI either, unless we have disabilities that make it difficult to complete.

I know wholeheartedly that the world isn’t a prompt. It’s far more complex and much more interesting than what our tech overlords and elites believe it to be. Big Tech does not understand the world at all. Instead it has roped in the boundaries of the world into this smaller and smaller space of perception. Cordoning everything off and gamifying anything that can be gamified. And there are many people willing to go along with a false view of reality in which their parcel of land gets tinier and tinier, all so that they can enjoy their hallucinations.

But there are many others who recognize this as nonsense. In fact, I suspect that we may be at the beginning of a turning point against all of the technology that we’ve been inundated with over the past 15-20 years. It will take artists, writers, poets, and anyone else who is connected to a deep spiritual sense of beauty and the natural world to overcome this nightmarish milieu.

I am not against technology, but I am against hubris. And boy do the Tech people have hubris. Remember, one of their main slogans has been “move fast and break things,” including, but not limited to, society. If anything, the 21st century and many of its woes have arisen partially through Silicon Valley.

I know that is an opinion. I recognize that there are other concerns beyond technology that have created some of the issues we are facing (Big Oil, Big Pharma, the Military Industrial Complex, the Deep State’s arrogant political maneuvering). These are just to name a few.

A huge issue looming for society is that our elites and gatekeeping class no longer understand the purpose of art. I blame Big Tech, though Slavoj Zizek argues that all of the issues are due to a society that is stuck because of the liberal democratic welfare state’s failures. He even finds the perfect Antonio Gramsci quote that hits precisely on our zeitgeist: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”[i] The complete delegitimization of the arts in all their forms is one of those morbid symptoms.

This is where I begin to piece some things together and try to understand why this is happening. The arts and entertainment have often moved our society forward, while also providing us with something we can, across all our differences, connect to and understand ourselves through together. But we are now so fractured and siloed in our microcultures, that we often don’t have much we can connect with in common.

For much of the 20th century and early 21st century, movies still had an incredible power. But now many people aren’t going to see movies in the theaters anymore. Many of them don’t even bother watching them on the streamers. My suspicion is that it’s not only because there are so many options and most people do not have the attention to watch movies. It is because the movies being produced and distributed no longer have any larger cultural meaning. It is because the audience won’t be able to say, “I saw this movie and it meant so much to me, you should see this movie too and we can feel something that bridges the distance between us.” We used to do this with music too. When is the last time you felt this way about anything?

Maybe movies are becoming antiquated. People no longer trust public spaces. Yet, many people showed up to watch Top Gun: Maverick, Oppenheimer, and Barbie. So they do show up sometimes. But they aren’t showing up enough. Why?

For the same reason that the traditional literary publishing industry is seeking emerging novelists to already have amassed a fanbase through online content. In order to even get your foot in the door, you have to already be completely plugged in and feeding the algorithms content to prove to these gatekeepers (in both the publishing industry and Hollywood) that you aren’t a financial risk.

A well published author turned book coach basically told me recently on her Substack that if I don’t engage on BookTok and build a large following there, I should just consider writing as a hobby. Because the only options for us in this system are toiling away in obscurity vs. slaving away to produce content upon content upon content for TikTok or Instagram or even Substack. Again, the fences that encroach on our creative freedom have been erected by Tech and reinforced now by the traditional media class.

The majority of work being produced isn’t cutting edge or exciting. Some of it does get through, but only a small amount. Most of the “content” being pushed out doesn’t speak to the 21st century audience living right now. Because they believe that the world is a prompt and that they can revise reality through content.

Filmmakers and screenwriters are creating interesting concepts, but these original works are likely being rejected. The risk is too much to take on moving the needle forward. So, unless you have 2 million followers on TikTok, you aren’t going to have an easy time getting your work accepted by people who believe that your work is too risky (even if it really isn’t), or likely won’t find an audience. Most people do not have the time, energy or money to amass 2 million followers online and also write novels, or make films, or art or music.

Fear and stasis dominate traditional media. There isn’t any room for original work that reinvigorates and remakes our society, moving us forward out of this place in which we are stuck. There is plenty of talent, but most people are being completely shut out. Ted Gioia writes about this phenomenon much more succinctly than I can. He believes the industry leaders are the ones at war with artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, etc. They distrust artists and writers. They only see us as content creators and our jobs is to feed the Big Tech beasts.

There is a real disconnect when our leaders truly believe that the world is indeed a prompt and our creativity is only content for this reality they’ve created. I would call it a form of insanity. The world is very real. Our creative work isn’t content. It is an expression of ourselves in an attempt to connect to a higher purpose / state of being. It is freedom. It is the sublime. The divine. Eternal love. Whatever you wish to call it.

We need a new romanticism. A movement away from virtual realities and 24/7 online addictive platforms and to embrace a slower, more contemplative life. One where we have more time and space between thoughts and feelings, between ourselves and the rest of the world. We don’t have to go back to the 1780s, but maybe we should think about returning to a slower pace more aligned with the 1980s (or even 1990s). Hell, even the early 2000s could work.

This all may seem old fashioned in its rejection of what is being promoted as progress. I think this rejection though is the only way forward for our sanity. But it will take many people collectively to rupture and rebuild because there is no way forward in a system that no longer comprehends reality, and no longer allows its artists the ability to guide it towards the truth.

---

[i] Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, London: Lawrence & Wishart 1971, p. 276.