The View from the Sun

“There’s nothing new under the Sun,” so says Ecclesiastes 1:9. And when most people hear these words, they take them as a simple and harmless truism.

Even people with the vaguest sense of history understand that their ancestors were just human like them. They had identical hopes, aspirations, fears, and hatreds. They talked about their day with family around the dinner table, scribbled in the margins of books, and left graffiti where they could.

But knowing something is much different than knowing something (i.e., a deeper understanding that reveals new truths and implications previously unconsidered). For example, if people truly believed that there was nothing new under the Sun, that if all life’s successes, despairs, joys, and romances were merely rehashed plots, you’d figure fewer of us would attempt to live life to the fullest.

And, unfortunately, the internet is making this proposition more and more of a possibility.

There’s something about living in the age of the mature internet, one that can provide answers and entertainment but, now through advances in AI, create just about anything in a few seconds. There are also millions upon millions of people putting their creations online daily, along with the twenty-plus-year backlog of drawings, paintings, scripts, short stories, and entire novels. Oh, and let’s not forget the digitization of billions upon billions of historical artworks, poems, plays, etc.

We find ourselves perched at the Sun’s vantage point, seeing all the light touches. Everything, absolutely everything - what was, what is, and (for the first time in human history) what could be - is laid bare.

Consider what this means.

In immediate terms, the modern artist is out of work because of AI, and we should feel bad for her plight. Yet, we should also weep for the child who rationalizes not creating art because anything she wants is only a few keystrokes away. Why ever pick up a pencil or brush? 

And let’s say that someone wants to write a story. But then she goes online and does some research and, oh well, the idea’s already been done. Been done to death, even, to the point where editors say they absolutely do not want certain plotlines. To add insult to injury, ChatGPT can write the same kind of story in ten seconds. Watching a passable narrative form on the screen is a dagger blow to the creative spirit, even if the ‘creator’ is a predictive algorithm illegally scraping content from innumerable sources.  

An artist or writer in any earlier era, especially those first putting pen or brush to paper, thrived from the blissfully ignorant belief that their creation was unique and would leave a small mark upon the world. Coming across similar works was a gradual process, one facilitated by teachers, mentors, and research driven by a passion for improving their craft.

But with the internet, nothing is gradual. And it seems, at the uneducated first glance, that all that can happen has already happened.

So, what’s to be done in a world where content oversaturation and AI may impede the desire to create art? There’s no getting rid of the internet and AI, and for many obvious reasons, it’d be terrible to do so. That leaves the artist with a daunting task – create art anyway, even if it’s just out of spite against the forces that would extinguish the creative spirit for mere profit.

But maybe, just maybe, there is a more positive take on all of this. If we truly have everything at our disposal, we should treat it as a godlike power, one that can make a profound impact on the nature of artistic creation. Artists and writers now have the ultimate vantage point to consider their craft and can use their reactions to influence what comes next.

I invite all the world’s creators, no matter their medium or background, to take in the view from the Sun, the technological mountaintop, or whatever you want to call it. See what’s been done by others in the past/present and what AI can do today….

And continue, please continue trying to enrich the human spirit, if only your own.