Leaving a Bubble

I ventured into AI a few months back and it gave me some great ideas on wardrobe, haircuts and general grooming for a gentleman approaching fifty from the wrong direction. And then I dove a little bit deeper and asked about favourite music artists and their genre and other stuff. The results were surprising and satisfying. I next did some light astrological research and typical for a Capricorn born in the year of the Earth Monkey, quickly dismissed it as crap. I also did a bit of a dietary account to get a few hints on budging weight. No surprises there. And then I had an interesting chat on Queer Theory in a contemporary train of thought.

And so it continued. I fed AI quite a lot of information about myself. I was fully aware of what it was doing with this information: refeeding me in the language I am use to, sometimes patronising, beefing up my ego, nodding away in its digital world more reinforcing than providing anything new. We were playing a bit of a game and I had a few gotcha! moments. All innocent fun.

I figure that my digital footprint is quite deep considering I became a regular user of the internet around 1998 and then obsessed with it about five years later. I don’t mind giving more information and AI is quite handy. I approach it quite unafraid or sceptical. I am in my sixth decade and will be lucky to make it to my seventies so what further harm could I create for myself. I am sure I am on some “person of interest” list when I reflect on the political websites I have searched and the light banter I have had with morons who are political pariahs and deserve to be shouted down.

And then, in all its glory, AI provided me with one line that spoke volumes. It gave me a life motto or affirmation that seemed to say it all about me. I quickly placed it on both my Facebook and Instagram accounts:

I don’t have to share their biography to share their frequency.

Brilliant.

As further explanation, let’s go back a few days to the Invasion Day protest march. For the first time in years I joined. And as I trod the streets of Melbourne with thousands of others, I thought: I, from all observations, am not your regular protester for indigenous rights- white, late middle aged, overweight and quite slow. There were a few oldies like me there but not many.

But I continued to think. So what? I may not be black. I have not experienced racism in Australia. I have the privileges of being white and male so why should I care about what happens to a people I have no vested interest in in.

But I do. We all do.

Same frequencies for those who are so unlike ourselves. Call it woke. Call us extreme empaths. Call us what you want.

I think the best thing any human can do is stop living in their bubble of existence and venture outside the comfort zone. And listen.

Carefully.