Current Events – sethlewis.ie

The Other Side Of Human Rights

Some of the most common language in cultural and political debate these days (besides comparing people to Nazis) is the language of rights. In the Enlightenment era, philosophers began to lay a particular emphasis on the idea that humans have natural rights, and this concept has driven social change ever since. The idea was not invented by the philosophers, it was only rediscovered. It was already built in to the Christian foundations of their civilisation. As the U.S. Declaration Of Independence put it, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”.

Our ancestors’ emphasis on rights was a new and necessary correction to a social order that was terribly out of balance. Their culture needed to remember that every human is valuable beyond calculating because every human is made in the image of God himself, and because of this, every human has a right to be treated with respect and fairness by their fellow humans. We, the children of our enlightened forebearers, no longer find concepts like equality and fairness difficult to accept. These values are no longer revolutionary. They are the basic assumptions we grow up with. But I’m afraid our emphasis on rights has led us to a different kind of imbalance.

Why I Will Never Use AI For Writing

You will never read an AI generated word on this blog or in anything I write. Not in a sermon. Not in a book. Not even in an email. I claim each and every word and sentence, every comma and dash—I am fond of dashes—and every careless error as entirely my own. I know AI is becoming a popular tool for writers. I know AI can do in a heartbeat what can sometimes take me hours of work (although I comfort myself that at least I have a heart to beat in those hours). I’ll take the time. There are more important things than efficiency, and the brain is a muscle. The labour of collecting thoughts, choosing words, and cementing them into sentences keeps my mind strong, engaged, and growing. I dare not relinquish it. I know that AI is good, and getting better every day, at mimicking human logic, emotion, and eloquence. I understand fully that it is progressing far more quickly than I am. It could easily outpace me, and in some ways I’m sure it already has, at being interesting, informed, persuasive, and inspiring—but it can never outpace me at being me.

Life Is Not For The Faint Of Heart (But God Is)

I feel the sunlight streaming through the windows onto my skin, yet somehow the world still seems dark and cold. The headlines this week have fallen on me like long shadows, cast by the unrelenting clouds of hatred, violence, death, and evil, and in this chilly climate my heart responds with dismay. We like to think we’ve progressed beyond our ancestors, but when I see ordinary people dancing and celebrating the death of someone they merely disagreed with, I despair. How can we ever move forward like this? When the answer to open debate is a bullet, we’re all finished. Meanwhile, wars, atrocities, and injustices continue unchecked around the world, many of which we barely hear about. Even if we did, we wouldn’t have the capacity to track them all. There are too many.

In The Internet, But Not Of It

We went on a foreign holiday this summer and amidst all the uniqueness and differences, I noticed one thing that was all too familiar: we still had to dodge people who were too busy looking at their phones to notice where they were walking. I rolled my eyes at them, but then I remembered that one of the first things I looked for in our airbnb was the wifi password. Like it or not, the internet is ubiquitous, and even when we’re not using it our minds can easily turn to the things we’ve seen there, or the things we might post later. This is the way our world works now. But that doesn’t mean we should simply accept the internet’s new role in our lives without thought, or blindly take it on its own terms. There are still decisions to be made, and they are not insignificant. One of the biggest choices is where we will build our lives.

Means With No Ends

I’ve only reached middle age, but I’ve already lived to see the world remade by the introduction of personal computers and then remade again as we brought the power of the internet into our pockets with smartphones. It’s now obvious that another transformation is underway in the development of AI. As it was in the early days of other technologies, no one knows exactly what AI will mean for us long-term, but no one can deny that our world and our lives are changing fast. Humanity is always grasping for more power and control over everything we see and touch, developing new and better tools for ourselves, and we’ve been quite successful: no generation has ever had tools as powerful as the ones we wield today. This sounds like it ought to be good news, but most of us aren’t so sure. Humanity doesn’t have a great track record in using our tools well. I came across an observation recently that cuts through our progress to one of our biggest underlying problems:

“The first great fact which emerges from our civilisation is that today everything has become “means.” There is no longer an “end”; we do not know wither we are going. We have forgotten our collective ends, and we possess great means: we set huge machines in motion in order to arrive nowhere.” – Jacue Sellul

Realism And Resurrection

Perhaps it’s a product of growing up, but I do feel that the passing years have tarnished the old optimism I remember from the world of my childhood. There were always deep problems in the world—even I knew this growing up—but there was also a general sense of progress in the air, at least as I remember it. There was a hopeful feeling back then that our problems were not insurmountable, and better days were ahead. Science was supposed to solve some of our challenges, politics would solve others, and culture and civilisation would inevitably advance, even if the process was slow and bumpy. Those were the days when the unified, peaceful vision of a harmonious humanity depicted in shows like Star Trek felt like it could be a real possibility someday—minus the teleporters, of course.

Now we’re not so sure. The world feels different. Maybe our new technologies haven’t been all that we hoped they would be. Maybe our political leaders have burned us too many times and left us disillusioned with the system. Wars have continued relentlessly, as have human trafficking and slavery and corruption. Selfishness, injustice, and cruelty still plague our cultures and institutions, and they can pop up unexpectedly in our own hearts, too. Things are still moving quickly, but it’s become clear that movement isn’t necessarily progress. The old optimism of my memory has given way to a tired realism that doesn’t expect as much, hope as much, or feel as disappointed when everything goes sideways—isn’t the whole world constantly spinning sideways anyway?

C.S. Lewis On The Danger Of Getting Too Much News

I recently came across this excerpt from a letter C.S. Lewis wrote to a friend. He wrote it in 1946, before the internet was invented, before the dawn of push notifications and instant news updates without pause every moment of every day, and yet the wisdom in these few sentences only grows more important the more our technologies and access to information increases. We’ve reached the stage now where we can hear of every new battle, every devastating famine, every natural disaster and celebrity scandal on the other side of the globe more quickly and easily than we can hear what is happening with our own neighbours in our own community. Here’s what C.S. Lewis said about it:

I’m Dated (and you are, too)

New Year’s Day, 2025. The day we all start having to pause to remember what year to write on forms and checks and such, or when we start writing it wrong and having to scribble it out and start again. What will this New Year bring? No one really knows. Looking back is easier—we know what the past is. For good or bad, it’s done. Before long, this past year that was so current, so vital and cutting-edge yesterday will start to feel stale and dated. Old. Has been. Whether we look back on it as the good old days or some kind of personal dark age doesn’t change the fact that we will look back on it. There was a New Year’s Day last year, too. Do you remember it? Or ten years ago, or twenty? Last Halloween I saw that they were selling ’90’s costumes, as if the ’90’s weren’t just last week. But they did look a bit funny.

Assisted Suicide And The Meaning Of Life

Our representatives in Dublin are voting this evening on whether to approve recommendations for assisted suicide in Ireland. This is only an indicative vote, a first step towards changing our laws, but it is a step that will pave the way for official legislation to be brought forward in the future. The argument in favour of this change is usually framed in the language of compassion and choice—that those who are suffering greatly should be able to end their suffering—and their lives—on their own terms. There are, however, many significant concerns raised in the debate as well. For example, there is the unspoken (or perhaps spoken) pressure to die that allowing this option places on good-hearted people who hate to be a burden on others. Is that really a free choice? Or consider the obvious cost-cutting incentive that assisted suicide gives the health service to end lives rather than provide expensive palliative care. Does that really promote compassion? These concerns are reason enough to oppose assisted suicide, especially in light of the heartbreaking evidence from countries who have already started down this road. But I have another more fundamental objection. I know that the one great benefit and argument for assisted suicide is that it ends suffering. This is true enough. The trouble is that it ends suffering not by treating or managing it, but rather by ending the sufferer. In doing so, assisted suicide creates a new category for our culture—a category of human life that society agrees is simply not worth living.

Independent Power

Election seasons are always a rollercoaster, but being in America this summer during this particular presidential cycle has set a new record in my personal experience of political drama. The stakes are high, and the surprise plot-twists have been coming thick and fast. The news stories and ensuing commentary are non-stop, a constant reminder of how much raw global power is wielded by the American president. Whoever wins this election will command the world’s most powerful economy, military, and government. Their power will be massive, by virtue of the structures they oversee. It is a power granted by the people of America through democratic mandate, and executed through millions upon millions of civil-service employees, soldiers, and law-enforcement officers. In other words, it is a power that is dependent on others, contingent on the collective power of the people supporting them. This is how power works. The most powerful among us are those who are able to channel and control the collected power of others most effectively. On our own, we are small. We are created, finite beings, with limited strength. No matter how strong an individual may be, the collective force of millions working together will always be stronger. With one notable exception.