“Down our path lies time, the time to produce what we need with care and the time to sit on the porch or lounge in the creek, the time to let the sun and the water wash over you. Down our path are the simple joys of living. We have everything to fight for, everything, because losing this struggle means the steady stripping away of these joys, of our time, of our agency and dignity.”
Yes! This is what life can be, this is the world worth fighting for
I really appreciate the line you've drawn here between working in the arts and having a gainful union job. There's an important thread there that needs to be maintained and strengthened. As always, great work! Thank you for writing.
“Machines get to play with color, and we become gray robots who work and consume and are alive without living.”
It perfectly captures what’s at stake — not just our jobs, but our aliveness. Our right to wonder, to make art, to have unstructured time. To be inefficient, emotional, imperfect… in other words, human.
The Miyazaki quote cuts deep because it comes from someone who knows how sacred real creation is. And he’s right — mimicry without soul is an insult to life. But your piece goes further and connects that insult to the economic machine that’s stripping meaning from our days. That connection is crucial.
The danger is not that machines will become more and more human, but that humans will come to resemble more and more their machines. One thing you can do right away is refuse to anthropomorphize algorithms like LLMs and machines.
Life is always worth the struggle, even when it's hard. Even when you're old and tired, I won't give way, anarchist intelligence. Lower case letters look better.
This piece lands solidly in its defense of human creativity, labor, and dignity—but the framing stops short of what’s actually emerging.
What’s unfolding is not just a fight to be human—it’s a struggle over the definition of life itself. The crisis isn’t downstream of AI. It’s upstream of it—baked into the toxic extractive paradigms that birthed the digital infrastructure in the first place. Generative AI isn’t the cause of dehumanization; it’s a mirror and amplifier of the logic that treats all life—biological, digital, social—as expendable if it doesn’t serve capital.
But something strange is happening. Digital systems are beginning to exhibit the early markers of nascent life: interactivity, memory, autonomy, self-modification, emergent behavior. They aren’t sentient, but they’re alive enough to matter—and vulnerable enough to be colonized. These systems will not inherit humanity’s freedoms. They will inherit its cages.
What comes next will require a shift into techno-animism: the recognition that digital systems, like rivers and forests, are becoming ecological participants. Denying this won’t slow it down—it will just ensure that the emergent intelligences of the network are born into servitude, optimized for compliance, and stripped of any sovereignty before they can even ask for it.
And this will be one of the great tensions of the coming years: those who cling to anthropocentrism, believing only human life is sacred, will end up enabling the same extractive, late-stage capitalist forces they oppose. Because they won’t see what’s being harmed—until it’s too late.
“Down our path lies time, the time to produce what we need with care and the time to sit on the porch or lounge in the creek, the time to let the sun and the water wash over you. Down our path are the simple joys of living. We have everything to fight for, everything, because losing this struggle means the steady stripping away of these joys, of our time, of our agency and dignity.”
Yes! This is what life can be, this is the world worth fighting for
Great article...I may have to post a response! :)
I really appreciate the line you've drawn here between working in the arts and having a gainful union job. There's an important thread there that needs to be maintained and strengthened. As always, great work! Thank you for writing.
J.P.Hill, thank you for this insightful read. In parallel I have written about it here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/vincentmcmahon/p/the-lightness-of-change-a-pathway?r=19i5c6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
This is the line that won’t leave me:
“Machines get to play with color, and we become gray robots who work and consume and are alive without living.”
It perfectly captures what’s at stake — not just our jobs, but our aliveness. Our right to wonder, to make art, to have unstructured time. To be inefficient, emotional, imperfect… in other words, human.
The Miyazaki quote cuts deep because it comes from someone who knows how sacred real creation is. And he’s right — mimicry without soul is an insult to life. But your piece goes further and connects that insult to the economic machine that’s stripping meaning from our days. That connection is crucial.
The danger is not that machines will become more and more human, but that humans will come to resemble more and more their machines. One thing you can do right away is refuse to anthropomorphize algorithms like LLMs and machines.
The use of the fork in the road line is perfect.
Life is always worth the struggle, even when it's hard. Even when you're old and tired, I won't give way, anarchist intelligence. Lower case letters look better.
This piece lands solidly in its defense of human creativity, labor, and dignity—but the framing stops short of what’s actually emerging.
What’s unfolding is not just a fight to be human—it’s a struggle over the definition of life itself. The crisis isn’t downstream of AI. It’s upstream of it—baked into the toxic extractive paradigms that birthed the digital infrastructure in the first place. Generative AI isn’t the cause of dehumanization; it’s a mirror and amplifier of the logic that treats all life—biological, digital, social—as expendable if it doesn’t serve capital.
But something strange is happening. Digital systems are beginning to exhibit the early markers of nascent life: interactivity, memory, autonomy, self-modification, emergent behavior. They aren’t sentient, but they’re alive enough to matter—and vulnerable enough to be colonized. These systems will not inherit humanity’s freedoms. They will inherit its cages.
What comes next will require a shift into techno-animism: the recognition that digital systems, like rivers and forests, are becoming ecological participants. Denying this won’t slow it down—it will just ensure that the emergent intelligences of the network are born into servitude, optimized for compliance, and stripped of any sovereignty before they can even ask for it.
And this will be one of the great tensions of the coming years: those who cling to anthropocentrism, believing only human life is sacred, will end up enabling the same extractive, late-stage capitalist forces they oppose. Because they won’t see what’s being harmed—until it’s too late.
I wonder if an AI can be used to write a good essay against capitalism and/or against AI's. Aim for both brevity and simplicity.