Simple Stuff And A Simple Song: ChatGPT

You know who can't be Bob? ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot created by OpenAI. It was trained on a massive dataset of text to generate human-like responses to prompts, and was released in November 2022.

Curious about all the fanfare surrounding this new technology, I visited the website and asked the thing, 

"What are the essential material possessions for a simple life."

It answered,

As an AI language model, I do not have personal beliefs or values.

 

However, based on cultural and social norms, some of the essential material possessions for a simple life can include:

Shelter (a comfortable and functional home)

Basic furniture (bed, table, chairs, etc)

Minimal clothing (quality and durable instead of quantity)

Basic kitchen utensils (a few pots, pans and utensils)

Household items (cleaning supplies, toiletries, etc)

Means of transportation (a reliable bike or car)

Necessary technology (phone, computer, etc)

Books or other sources of entertainment or enrichment

Personal mementos or sentimental items 

Basic outdoor gear (for hikes, camping, or other active pursuits)

However, what constitutes "essential" and "simple" can vary depending on a person's lifestyle, priorities, and values.

Hmm, not too bad on that one, so I asked it to do something else for me.

"Write", I prompted, "a song about simple living in the style of Bob Dylan." 

A few seconds later it printed out this little ditty:

Verse 1:

I wake up every morning to the sounds of the birds

And I feel so lucky to be alive

I don't need no fancy cars or gold-plated words

Just the simple life is what I thrive

 

Chorus:

Living simple, it's the way to be

Less is more, let your soul run free

There's no need for excess, don't you see

Living simple, it's the way for me

 

Verse 2:

I don't need no mansion or a diamond ring

Just a cozy cabin and a guitar to sing

I don't need no suits or a fancy career

Just my guitar and my voice to steer

 

Chorus:

Living simple, it's the way to be

Less is more, let your soul run free

There's no need for excess, don't you see

Living simple, it's the way for me

 

Verse 3:

Life is too short to be chasing wealth

I'd rather feel the grass between my toes

I'll take my time and enjoy my health

That's the kind of life that everyone knows

 

Chorus:

Living simple, it's the way to be

Less is more, let your soul run free

There's no need for excess, don't you see

Living simple, it's the way for me

 

Outro:

So if you're feeling lost in this world of greed

Just remember simple is the key

Live with love, kindness and generosity

Living simple, it's the way to be.

 

Ironic to be asking a super complex artificial intelligence to answer queries about simplicity, but what ChatGPT came up with was definitely interesting and somewhat entertaining.

But is it job threatening?

One expert believes that "up to 300 million jobs could be replaced" by AI technology, "with two thirds of all occupations being at least partially automated by AI.” 

Maybe human bloggers will go extinct. 

Songwriters, too?

I'm not so sure. 

I feel that Bob's Nobel prize for Literature is safe, and that ChatGPT can not approach Henry David Thoreau's beautiful writings on the simple life. 

It definitely can't plant beans, let alone 7 miles of them. 

"What shall I learn of beans or beans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day's work." 

- Henry David Thoreau

We will have to wait and see what happens now that the Pandora's box of AI has been opened.

It is probably a good idea to plant a bunch of beans, either way.

Not Extinct Yet

Elation. 

That is what I felt when I heard the distinctive call of a common nighthawk overhead. 

"Peent."

I looked up, and there it was, catching insects as it flew above me. 

It looked lonely, perhaps only because I know that the species has been in decline for decades.

A few days later in the same place I saw three nighthawks hunting and buzz diving together. 

Elation times three.

"Not extinct yet," I thought with a smile.

Numbers of common nighthawk over southern Canada have fallen about 70% since 1970.

This could be why.  

The insect apocalypse: ‘Our world will grind to a halt without them’

 

"Few people seem to realise how devastating this is, not only for human wellbeing – we need insects to pollinate our crops, recycle dung, leaves and corpses, keep the soil healthy, control pests, and much more – but for larger animals, such as birds, fish and frogs, which rely on insects for food. Wildflowers rely on them for pollination. As insects become more scarce, our world will slowly grind to a halt, for it cannot function without them."

No insects, no things that need insects to survive.

If the bottom of the food chain breaks down, eventually everything above that critical foundation will also fall.

All the way up to us.

And yet, there are the nighthawks, calling and soaring and insect-eating right above me.

It is possible, like the common nighthawks, that humanity might hold strong against current tendencies toward extinction, and survive until conditions on Earth improve for all life.

It may be unlikely, but it is one possibility.

The birds overhead give me hope that we will find our wings soon, and as a species take flight toward the better world we know is possible.

One that has room for nighthawks.

Status of the Common Nighthawk 

Status history: Designated Threatened in April 2007. Status re-examined and designated Special Concern in April 2018.

The species is ranked as Not at Risk globally (G5), Apparently Secure (N4B) in Canada and Secure (N5B) in the United States. However, it is considered as Critically Imperilled (S1), Imperilled (S2), or Vulnerable (S3) in 14 of 48 states and nine of 13 provinces and territories in which it occurs. In the remaining provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario) it is ranked Apparently Secure (S4) or Secure (S5).

Threats and Limiting Factors

Widespread threats that may have an important impact include reduced abundance of aerial insects due to effects of agricultural and other pesticides, changes in precipitation and hydrological regimes, changes in temperature regimes, and increasing frequency of severe or extreme weather events. Several other threats have been proposed, but appear to be less severe or affect only a small proportion of the population.

Hard, Inconvenient, And Expensive

It shouldn't be so easy to trash a whole planet.

All the things that humans do that result in excessive harm to people or the planet should be hard to do, inconvenient, and very expensive.

That's redundant because whatever harms the planet is also harmful to people, but I digress.

Right now we are enabled, encouraged even, to do as much harm as we want. Not to worry, no one is responsible. 

The buck increasingly stops in some billionaire's pocket, and they are so far removed from their evil deeds that they seriously think their hands are untarnished.

That is planet-destroying denial.

Did we really think that a system based on individual greed and profit would somehow end up doing good things?

If we were serious about cleaning things up, all the really harmful stuff would be hard to do or get, completely inconvenient, and very expensive.

Flying, for example, should be hard, inconvenient and expensive. 

Taking a train, on the other hand, should be easy, ultra-convenient, and cheap.

If actions like that didn't stop the madness, then harmful things should be made outright illegal.

That may sound drastic, but I think that ecocide should be illegal, and not just immoral.

Thou shalt not kill... the planet.

Extinction Acceptance

Did you know there is a group dedicated to an organized voluntary human extinction? 

They see humanity as so toxic that the Earth, or any other planet, would be better off without us. I am inclined to agree.

At first it seems outrageous, to voluntarily go extinct. But aren't we doing that indirectly right now?

Voluntary extinction is what I call having scientists warn us for decades of the dangers of things like overconsumption, biocides, fossil fuels, metabolic syndrome, and a sedentary lifestyle, and have us do essentially nothing in response.

Lately one has to wonder if the human race is knowingly committing suicide. 

It's not so much as Extinction Rebellion as it is Extinction Acceptance. 

We need to find out why the human race is so hellbent on this slow burn self-immolation.

I won't be around long enough to find out our eventual fate (I hope), but while I am here, I would like to see humanity embrace the reality facing us, and admit our multiple and grievous shortcomings.

The next step would be doing something about them, and finding out if we can live harmoniously with the other life on this planet, or if it would be better off without us.

See more from The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

"Phasing out the human species by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth’s biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense."

 

The Extinction of Experience

Civilization may be old, but the word itself has not gathered as much dust of time.

Adam Ferguson, in his 1767 Essay on the History of Civil Society, is the first to use the English word 'civilization'. 

In his essay he wrote, 

"Not only the individual advances from infancy to adulthood, but the species itself from rudeness to civilization." 

Civilization has been happening, but the rudeness doesn't seem to have diminished. 

One of the rudest things to have happened to what we call civilized peoples is our loss of connection to the natural world.

A lack of connection to Nature is not natural. Break that connection and you break everything.

Civilization, by definition, not only separates us from the natural world, but aims to dominate it, bending it to humanity's will. 

That, along with social stratification, as well as culturally programmed narratives of progress and supremacism, and my favourite, a ruling elite to boss everyone around, is what has made civilization great since it blew into the wilderness in the first Agricultural Revolution.

Since then we have been seeing the extinction of experience, a phrase coined decades ago, to describe our species growing disconnect from its relationship with the natural world. 

“As cities and metastasizing suburbs forsake their natural diversity, and their citizens grow more removed from personal contact with nature, awareness and appreciation retreat. 

This breeds apathy toward environmental concerns and, inevitably, further degradation of the common habitat. 

So it goes, on and on, the extinction of experience sucking the life from the land, the intimacy from our connections. 

People who don’t know don’t care. 

What is the extinction of the condor to a child who has never known a wren?”

- Robert Pyle

This broken trust has had lasting negative effects on both the Earth, and on humanity. If left unchecked, the condition will be fatal for both.

The human family badly needs a new model. It will look a lot like the old model, when humans still lived intimately with Nature in a mutually beneficial relationship. 

The first step is exposing one's self to natural environments as much as possible, whether in the yard, the park, the garden, or the wilderness. 

Photographs, videos, and windows that look out on a natural landscapes, can all help the brain receive many of the benefits of physically being in nature.

We ARE nature and we need to experience it at regular intervals, and redevelop that relationship, if we are to maintain the health of our species.

Otherwise the extinction of experience will be the extinction of our race.

The Wonders of Crapitalism

Crapitalism is rapidly destroying the planet. Of this there is no question. 

In a crapitalist system nothing can be left alone. 

Anything 'undeveloped' must be 'developed'. Forests must be cut down and replaced by row upon row of ugly buildings. 

Crapitalism never stops. 

Once considered limitless, the mighty Amazon rainforest has been utterly wiped out by greedy interests looking for a quick buck, with the blessing of their captain of crapitalism as the head of state. 

It is the same everywhere.

Where there were once massive old growth forests across N. America, there are now only scattered 'tree museums'. It will cost you a dollar just to seem them.

Only a few hundred years running, and crapitalists have destroyed nearly everything in the name of profit. 

Crapitalism not only consumes natural resources, it also consumes people. 

Your employer is your master in crapitalism. They are your god and you serve them. Any excess profit you make all goes to them, not you. 

If you look at them the wrong way, or ask questions, you are tossed out. 

Slavery has been replaced by wage slavery. Most of the wage slave's earnings goes back to the landlords, bankers, bosses and other parasites. 

What a miserable system. 

None of this could exist if it were not for spending trillions of dollars on advertising/marketing/propaganda campaigns to brainwash the masses into compliance.

If that doesn't work, and it usually does, there is always the state's monopoly on violence, which it will not hesitate to use in support of the crapitalist project.

There are alternatives, and we better start trying some of them before the crapitalists kill everything and everyone.

Extinction Events

Will the plastic straw go extinct in 2020?

It's more than plastic straws. All kinds of things made a disappearing act in 2019. This trend is likely to continue at a rapid rate in 2020 as the battles of capitalism vs environmental limits, and the 99% vs the 1%, rages on.

A few things that have gone the way of the Dodo, or continue to go that way, or have begun to go that way in 2019 include:



- Plastic straws. It is largely symbolic, but will give a boost to the end of not only single use plastic, but single use anything. The beginning of the end of the throw away society.

- Single use plastic bags. See above. Many cities are banning single use plastic bags. Next to disappear will be all the blighted garbage bag trees. After a few decades, trees will just have leaves on them.

- Jobs in extractive industries. Automation, efficiencies, and reduced demand will ensure that these jobs continue to go 'poof'. Change can be harsh when it is your job that is vanishing in the haze.

- Physical retail outlets. On line shopping is taking over (overall spending was up 3.4 %, while online spending was up 19% this shopping season). Consumers are voting with their computers and devices. It is the "Retail Apocalypse", and it is changing the landscape of shopping and communities.

- Meat based diets. Even meat eaters are eating less meat. Health, ethical, and environmental issues are all contributing to the rise of plant based diets. Remember "Revenge of the Nerds"? This is "Revenge of the Vegans".

- Car ownership. Globally car sales are down. Millennials and Get Zers prefer car sharing services to the hassle of ownership, and what these two generations want will change things for decades to come. 

- Truth. First the thrill was gone. Now the truth is gone, too. They say we are living in a post-truth world. Doesn't that mean we are post-lie as well? 

- Bunker fuel in ships, fossil fuels generally. The new year promises a cleaner atmosphere. As of January 1st, oceangoing vessels will no longer be able to use the cheapest, dirtiest fuel available. The switch to low-sulphur fuels (0.5% instead of 3.5%) will be the biggest maritime transportation energy shift since moving from dirty coal to dirty bunker fuel in the early 1900s.

- Anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 species go extinct every year. The loss is so vast that it is hard to keep track. It happened this year, and it will happen again in 2020.

- Vinyl. Just kidding. Far from disappearing, as the nerds predicted when recordings went digital, low tech vinyl recordings are making a comeback. People in the know say the quality of vinyl can not be beat. 


I wonder what other ideas will make a comeback next year? We have tossed many good ones down the memory hole in our rush toward a techno utopia, and no doubt some of them will return. 

I also wonder what else will disappear as things continue to change in new and unexpected ways. 

My hope is for war and violence to vanish from the face of the Earth. And lying. Imagine how that would change things, since they seem to go together.

Live Simply, So The Birds Can Simply Live

- photo credit Brian Sullivan

I wait for the return of the swallows every spring. For me, they rival the robin for the position of Official Harbinger of the season. 

On the west coast we lived close to a vehicle bridge under which many swallows nested in their little mud homes built on the girders. Now on the east coast, we live on an old farm that has old, open outbuildings, including a small barn, that provide perfect nesting sites for swallows. 

Over the years the wait for the swallows in spring has become troubling.

In Nova Scotia (like most of North America), swallow numbers are down dramatically since the 1980s. It is hardly an isolated case in the bird universe. These ancient descendants of dinosaurs are finally being done in by the new kid on the block, Homo consumericus. 

There are so many threats to the ecosystem that it is difficult to finger any one cause for the decline of birds. More than likely, these threats operate synergistically and therefore become a greater threat together than any one individually.

"The main causes of the recent decline in Barn Swallow populations are thought to be:

 

1) loss of nesting and foraging habitats due to conversion from conventional to modern farming techniques;

 

2) large-scale declines (or other perturbations) in insect populations; and

 

3) direct and indirect mortality due to an increase in climate perturbations on the breeding grounds."

- Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada 

And I would add: 

4) high consumption lifestyles.

Because of the above, each spring when I spot the first barn swallow of the year, my heart skips a beat. Each returning individual is cause for celebration.  

Before long, small groups of swallows are squeaking and hunting acrobatically around our house, in the yard, and over the fields. When successful breeding takes place, the numbers increase in a most joyous way.

Each barn swallow can eat up to 1000 insects every day. They are perfectly designed to inhabit a specialized niche, which happens to encompass the human world (they like us!), and they do so with balance and efficiency. 

Something else I appreciate is how they demonstrate fearlessness and confidence in their flying skills as they zoom through the air, seemingly recklessly, but in full control.

If only I could live as simply and efficiently as these wonderful birds, without doing any harm, being supremely good at what I do, while adding beauty and a useful service to the circle of life. 

I live simply, so the barn swallows, and other birds, can simply live. When it comes down to choosing between a high consumption lifestyle and the birds, I choose birds.

It would truly be a "silent spring" if the swallows and other birds continued their current vanishing act right into extinction. I would miss them dearly.

There Will Come Soft Rains

Sara Teasdale won the earliest Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1918, the year she wrote "There Will Come Soft Rains", a piece of writing that imagines the world without us. 

In the poem, Teasdale describes nature reclaiming a battlefield after war. She also writes about the extinction of humanity, far before the threats of nuclear winter, or weapons grade consumerism became a reality. 

Her poetry is known for its "simplicity and quiet intensity", and this poem is certainly all of that.



There Will Come Soft Rains


There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone.


— Sara Teasdale [1884 - 1933]



Our war on nature is one that we will most certainly lose. We have treated the planet, and all life on it, so harshly, that it would surprise me if any wild creatures would miss us if we manage to do ourselves in. 

Would they celebrate our demise? I wouldn't blame them if they did.

Mary Oliver is another Pulitzer Prize winning poet, and she says, "Maybe the world, without us, is the real poem."

It doesn't have to be that way. We used to be a harmonious part of nature, and if we ever learn to adopt a global philosophy of simplicity, we will be again.

There will come soft rains, with us, or without us. The choice is ours.

Buying Nothing

This is not a gift for Mother Earth.

This is definitely not what I mean when I say, "buy nothing". 

As a matter of fact, this particular item (found in a dollar store, I think) highlights everything that is wrong with buying stuff just for the sake of buying stuff.

- it's certifiable crap 

- it contains pernicious plastic packaging 

- it takes advantage of people that think they HAVE TO buy people things, even when the recipient has already expressed a lack of desire for anything 

- it might be "fun", but the not-so-fun impact of purchase will extend far past the point of use (which will be measured in seconds, minutes, or at the most until the recipient gets close to the garbage/recycling at home

- it co-opts anti-consumer language for it's own use. If "Less is More", than not buying this gag gift would be even less, which would be even more, which is better. 

Buying nothing means buying nothing. No product, no service, and sorry, no self-gratifying shopping experience that makes the giver feel like they are doing something good. In this case, like so many others, they are not.

Only in a consumer society would it make sense to buy someone you care about a package of waste, pollution, environmental degradation, and a bit of very expensive air.

Is the air inside even clean?

If someone says they want nothing, do them a solid and buy them nothing.

Nothing. No thing. 

Give them a hug. No, don't buy them a huggy body sized pillow. Just give a hug. 

All you need are arms. 

Now you are buying nothing, and it will feel good for both of you.

An All-Too Convenient Truth

Humans are killing the planet, and we seem unable to stop. But hey, nobody's perfect.

A recent report shows that since the 1970s our actions have caused the deaths of 60% of invertebrates. And the news is not good for insects, either. 

Humanity is facing the most extreme challenges in 200,000 years, and no one seems worried enough to take any kind of meaningful and collective evasive action. 

“We have known for many, many years that we are driving the planet to the very brink. This is not a doom and gloom story; it is reality. 

Our day-to-day life, health and livelihoods depend on a healthy planet. There cannot be a healthy, happy and prosperous future for people on a planet with a destabilized climate, depleted oceans and rivers, degraded land and empty forests, all stripped of biodiversity, the web of life.” 

- Marco Lambertini, director general of the WWF

The majority reaction is that "nobody's perfect", and that we will just have to ride this thing out and see what happens. Too bad about all the extinctions.

That is the all-too convenient truth, and it overrides all the inconvenient truths confronting us.

We are far from perfect, but approaching perfection is a goal we should continually strive toward. If we did, we could tackle all our challenges with creative, life-enhancing solutions. For a dumb species, we can be pretty smart when we want to, or when faced with imminent death.

We CAN do better, and we will have to. If we fail to act, and soon, before long it will be human populations crashing. 

There is nothing convenient about that.

Concerned

I'm not worried. I am concerned.