ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Is the Tail Wagging the Dog?
Oct 23, 2026
As humans, we all look for ways to do things in the simplest and easiest ways possible. To this end we have endless tools to measure, cut, drill, pound and manipulate tangible worldly things into a shape or position to work for us. As we have become more dependent on automation, especially with the advent of A.I., we have to ask ourselves, is there a limit to where we should give up the decision-making process that asserts our autonomy of spirit in maintaining and directing control of our own being? Where do we draw the line between controlling our fate and allowing ourselves to be controlled?
Currently, there is a nationwide debate about the advances of A.I. But the debate does not center around the loss of personal autonomy but the threat of nefarious use by unsavory characters and corporations. This struggle is more about who will control the progress rather than the overall effect it will have on the people who use it.
To this point, we as a culture have fallen for the ease of availability for acquiring information but, more importantly, we have allowed the “creativity” of A.I. to usurp the use of our own mind and experience in coming up with alternate ways of solving the puzzles and problems that thwart or hinder the control we want to have over our worldly circumstances. In essence, we have allowed a “sophisticated” system of rapid regurgitation that has made us dependent on its “thinking” and accumulation of “ideas” rather than using our own intuition and creativity to manifest what we desire or want to avoid. As humans, we have become more and more inert relative to our own creative expression. It began when the older generations invented machines and appliances that relieved us of the attention and effort needed to complete everyday tasks and problems giving us more “free time” for pleasurable activities and culturally artistic pursuits.
After World War II, the television was introduced. The appliance generation readily swallowed it whole and quickly adapted their leisure time to the passive entertainment that its arrival provided. Shortly after, the “Me Generation” was born. They began their lives a step ahead of the “Great Generation” by learning, by example, to live passively and vicariously through the “personalities” portrayed on the television screen. The only place they were left with to conjure and express their creativity was music. Through their music they also rebelled against any discipline that prevented their leisure time in “finding themselves.” In living through others, they were already feeling the emptiness that occurs when there is a lack of personal activity and experience leading to meaning and purpose. Drugs also very quickly became an avenue for “freedom from the establishment” in “finding themselves.”
As the “Me Generation” had children, the separation from real personal experience metastasized as computers arrived on the scene and “screen time” was added on top of television time. As if that wasn’t enough separation from reality and interpersonal experience “screen time” quadrupled with the advent of the cell phone. Now, the “Me Generation” and their children were pulled away from the last drops of their own inner creativity into the social indoctrination that came from cyber space.
With each generation we’ve been getting pulled further and further away from personal experience and our use of it as our basis for making decisions and judging reality. A.I. has compounded that separation by teaching us to also ignore our own counsel and experience in favor of the “experts” and their opinions on how to live our lives. Now, our goals have become completely dependent on what the external world “suggests” for us to be and do.
We can see evidence of our missing and abdicated personal creativity, especially, in our youths who now use ChatGPT and many other programs to “write” resumes, plagiarize “original” papers, “write” their master’s thesis and for falsifying documents to qualify for their doctorates. The merit inherent in our own efforts and initiative has all but evaporated in our willingness to acquiesce to the world’s determination of our direction. We have, essentially, become programs ourselves.
So, what are ChatGPT, Grok, Seri, Alexa, Waymo, GPS, Gemini, Meta, Claude and many more “personalities” in A.I? They are simply conglomerates of past knowledge as their “creativity” only lies in their facility for rearranging, in different combinations, what has come before. One difference from our thinking is the speed with which it can regurgitate. Can it help us with some of the problems we have created? Sure. Can it do it faster than we are capable of? Definitely. But does it have awareness? Only what we give it. Let that sink in for a moment…
A.I. is a function of computers and computers are inert. That means that they need energy to process and input to choose direction. We, as humans, can channel our energy to process and we don’t need input. Yet, we have been programmed to believe that we need input from others and the “experts.” How is it that the programmers need programming? We have been derailed from our humanity and because we have been trained not to trust ourselves, we fell for it.
If we allow the world to keep programming us, we will only amount to the dog chasing its tail. In watching the dog, we know that it never catches it. Yet, we keep doing it. Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. How can this behavior ever be fulfilling to us? Why do we do it?
The inertia of the world is a very tempting path to follow. It promises us acceptance, recognition, belonging, approval, peace and love but not without tremendous sacrifice on our part. It leads us to believe that we will be provided for if we meet its needs in lieu of our own. How has that worked out for us so far?
It has been drummed into our psyche that sacrifice is our best path to salvation. Yet, who is benefiting from this? Easy. Those who demand the sacrifice. What do they demand? Our acquiescence to their whims and preferences. Why? Because they believe that the only way that they can get what they want and need is to manipulate us under the threat of our pain, punishment and a future in hell. They’ve been trained as we have but they’re just cleverer on using their training and are more aggressive than we are in applying it. So, who is being “salvaged?” Only them. They also use A.I. to the same end. But I digress.
We must learn to recognize A.I. only as a tool to be used by us and not the “end all” to all our problems that it has been professed to be. Our spiritual autonomy and personal creativity have been banished and in our own pursuit of avoiding the work necessary to sustain ourselves, we have given up the autonomy of our spirit to the people who use us and to A.I. What we are left with is having become robots and computers ourselves. Is it really any wonder that so many of us feel angry, empty and unfulfilled?
Fulfillment comes from putting our spirit into action and feeling the success that comes from engaging with life and its challenges. But that requires intention, effort and risk. The body does not want any risk or any changes to its comfort or stasis. Its sole objective is to come to rest in some type of stasis. The spirit is very different. It is eminently subtle and susceptible to being silenced by anything in the world that offers freedom from the need to change or move.
Concurrently with this, the body is easily encouraged by others in the world toward laziness and relaxation. For many of us totally immersed in the material world, it feels like the pairing of humans and A.I., automated intelligence, is a match made in heaven. Yet, if we look at our longevity, who of us are the first to pass? Those who are sedentary. Those who are couch potatoes. Those who don’t do simple math in their heads. Those who don’t exercise and do all those needed body activities that A.I. makes it easy for us to avoid.
When we don’t move and act, our body and mind deteriorate. Our arteries clog up and we have heart attacks. Our joints stiffen and we can no longer move properly. When we don’t think for ourselves, our reasoning power and memory fades. Overall, our whole system atrophies and the tool our body could and should be ceases to function.
A.I. can and should be used to give us more leisure time to be active, creative and fluid in our physical world. Our spirit is the boss and it can only thrive in a strong and active body. Yet, we allow the outside world to muffle it with tangible pleasures, passive entertainment and static postures that allow our body to petrify and die off through inactivity. The Chinese say, ”The stiffest tree is the readiest for the ax.” So are we.
A.I. definitely has its good points. It can put the world and its information at our fingertips. But like our body, it is still just a tool. Letting it determine who we are and what we should be will become a sabotage to our spirit and its expression if we let it. We must learn to put our will and spirit back in charge as it was before we acquired our body. A.I. and the body are only the tail of the dog. We shouldn’t let them run the show as our animal nature has allowed thus far…
