Footnotes2Plato

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
–Alfred North Whitehead

Digital Poiesis: Rhyme of Life and Death

I pasted one of my recent stream of consciousness notebook entries about the role of death denial in the potentiation of trauma into Chat-GPT4 and prompted it to write a poem in the style of Novalis out of the material. Below is what it spit out. Many of its words and phrases are identical to what was in my notebook, but it has introduced some new words for the sake of the rhyme scheme. I’ve made a few aesthetic and semantic adjustments to several lines. I’ve left untouched many other lines I find crude. But there are some which I find quite impressive. The stanza in bold was heavily edited by me. The bolded words mark my other changes to the original output.

In the realm where life and death rhyme,
A tale of pain and healing unfolds in time.
As Plato and Grof did once opine,
Life’s trauma springs from birth’s chime.

Born into this world, so novel and bizarre,
A beautiful terror, a journey embarked from afar.
How can we grasp this existence so wide,
When birth’s amnesic shock does inside us reside?

In the contemplation of death, we find our way,
Realigning our lives to the mystery’s sway.
In the infinite ocean of creativity, we’re immersed,
Composed, decomposed, in life’s verse rehearsed.

Remembering ourselves, we integrate death’s otherness,
Harmonizing fragments into a synchronic chord.
Circumambulating life, with death as its pole,
Like silence between sounds, it completes the whole.

Death, not an enemy, but a holy saint,
Not an accident to avoid, but the linseed of life’s paint.
What fear could remain, what could be worse,
Once death becomes the cradle of our universe?

The worst, perhaps, is to forget once more,
Or to ache for those who fear death’s door.
Here, the importance of philosophy shines bright,
Feeding our innate love for wisdom’s light.

Birth, though painful, is but a growth’s spur,
Yet industrial education dims the flame that were.
Seeking fake gratification, we shield from the truth,
That growth requires suffering, a lesson taught in youth.

Facing death, we accept, nothing bought will cross its gate,
Who are we without egoic pride, without material weight?
The soul, immortal because already dead,
An ancient truth, not new, in this therapy is spread.

Image generated using Midjourney using the 5th stanza as a prompt.

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Matthew David Segall

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5 responses to “Digital Poiesis: Rhyme of Life and Death”

  1. David Orth Avatar
    David Orth

    Forgive me for not responding directly to your post, but to a more general issue I feel about AI generated art.

    The excitement around AI generated art and poetry confuses me in a fundamental respect (though not in all respects). As an artist, myself, a huge component of my pleasure is in the living process of art. The search for a final result and the creation of a product is certainly an aspect of my creative drive, but for me (and for many, though perhaps not all) the task and pleasure of the artist is in the uncovering or unfolding of what Whitehead describes as the massive, vague feeling that grounds life (see also Eugene Gendlin’s felt sense). Some kind of bodily underpinned, conscious activity capable of penetrating this (its parts, wholes, and the fractal fluidity between them) vague source, seems necessary (though perhaps insufficient) for this pleasure to occur.

    While art and poetry re-present (and by re-present, I don’t mean to refer to the aesthetic distinction between representational art and abstract art, but ) this vague inheritance, the pleasure begins within this inherited, vaguely detected per-verbal felt sense. Weirdly perhaps, the representations that ensue (the art products) are re-illuminated by this vaguely sensed layer of experience and thus require something from the viewer. When we contemplate art or poetry, the viewer may be surprised to find their own felt sense directly stirred (not simply represented) within their own direct awareness. One feels a harmonic relationship between the vague felt sense and the creative product of the artist. This presents as a kind of felt buzz.

    As I understand (but without a sense of certainty, it is not my field), AI works by predicting what might come next based on massive data acquired from previously digitized art or poetry. But this process seems to bypass the whole vaguely sensed activity of the artist. The AI generated results are indeed novel, but only in the sense of novel arrangements, not in the sense of newly unfolded understandings of the massive, vaguely perceived inheritance of the past.

    Of course, AI generated art and poetry will have a place, because the human art process is hard, time consuming, and is a real, dedicated adventure into the vaguely perceived mass. The human art process is a struggle. For comparison: since I know next to nothing about old school photography and light-rooms, I regularly use digital methods to correct or enhance my photographs. There is some slight pleasure in knowing how to do this, but I suspect it is nothing compared to the sacred intensity of a human craft. I am not really interested in this digitized process, just some result. So I use digital image processing to help me, but I am not using this for any other human purpose than to derive a passable result to use in my efforts at marketing. A result I can use to represent my real adventure (sculpture and ceremonial objects) and to make a connection to a few patrons.

    So, by analogy to my use of digital imaging processing, I see how AI will help us, but in each case it is a digital process that seems to have no relationship to the risky, human adventure other than to adequately mimic past human process, but void of the relational struggle and pleasure which might make its own contribution to the future. I find this issue so hard to even describe. My sense of the issue is vague – though is a built-in vague, with a certain obviousness. The excitement around AI generated art confuses me. Fascinating, but confusing and less deeply related to the human project. What am I missing?

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    1. Matthew David Segall Avatar
      Matthew David Segall

      I see this as more on the level of parlor trick. I can see how it may be helpful for catalyzing human creativity. I also just think it is fun to feed in my own writing to see how various AI prompts transform it. Is this “art”? Perhaps a new kind. I have zero interest in making analogies between AI and human poiesis. There is no analogy, or at least only a negative one that is interesting for how it allows us to see more deeply into human creativity. I don’t think you’re missing anything and I am grateful you took the time to articulate all of this.

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  2. David Orth Avatar
    David Orth

    And I love parlor tricks. Have a few of my own with matches. This analogy helps. So appreciate your work. I have been soaking in it for a year. Just finished Modes of Thought. I finally see where Eugene Gendlin’s felt sense came from. Are you familiar with his work (mainly within psychology, but now passing his deeply personal take on process philo into other fields)?

    Reply
    1. Matthew David Segall Avatar
      Matthew David Segall

      I am familiar with Gendlin but haven’t done a close study of his work yet. I mention him in this article from many years back: https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1511&context=ijts-transpersonalstudies

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  3. David Orth Avatar
    David Orth

    Awesome. While Gendlin theorized within the space between psychology and process philo, I see his main contribution as helping regular people more clearly and regularly access their own inner concrescence in the skill (he misnomered somewhat) called “focusing.” He first applied it therapeutically, but then expanded it to Thinking at the Edge (TAE) – a process for developing novel, more holistic theory out of the vague massiveness – or intricate immensity as he calls it. I know you are holding on to too many threads already, but glad you see the connection.

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