How A.I. Might Adversely Affect Genius

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Now that we’re seeing the advances of the digital world, particularly that of A.I. move increasingly into not just our personal lives, but likewise into the artistic and scientific worlds, it seems fair to ask how artificial intelligence might actually affect those unique paths of discovery which great artists and scientists such as Einstein, Picasso, Virginia Woolf, or Niels Bohr employed to create their visionary art and science. That is, would A.I., if it had existed during the time in which they were alive, have somehow stifled or impeded their brilliant creations and/or discoveries in any way?

If Picasso had fed information into an artificial intelligence system in order to create his startling, multi-dimensional paintings and drawings, he might have produced art that was even more visionary and radical than what it became, but at the same time, his creations wouldn’t have come as fully from inside him. That is, the emotive, mental, and tactile parts of his persona, all working together, wouldn’t have been able to explore the potentially malleable fabric of space in which his art existed in the very same, open-ended way.

Likewise, if Einstein had used the technology of artificial intelligence to explore space and time in the manner in which he did in both his Special and General Theories of Relativity, the latter leading toward his iconic theory of gravitation, he might have been able to do so more expeditiously. Yet the beauty of the trial and error process of the scientific method, which he used as creatively as any other scientist has ever done so, might have been significantly swallowed by the more predictable, rigid nature of artificial intelligence.

In similar fashion, if Virginia Woolf had used artificial intelligence to create story lines for her brilliant stream of consciousness novels, with A.I. providing her with ways to most effectively weave the personas and storylines of her different characters into one another, this might have potentially allowed her to make those things more intriguing. Yet, at the same time, she wouldn’t have been able to use to the same degree her incredible vision of how separate lives intermingle with one another, one derived from her own intense struggles with her sanity, to meld her own unique psyche with the words she put on the page.

Also, Niels Bohr almost certainly could have used A.I. to determine how specifically electrons orbit the atomic nucleus in a way that prevents an atom from collapsing in upon itself, perhaps even more effectively than he actually did. Yet the extreme satisfaction he must have experienced when he fully realized that his lifelong struggles with the vagaries of his rational mind had led directly toward his revolutionary scientific discovery would have almost certainly been denied him in the bargain.

When iconic artists, writers and scientists such as these probed a certain part of their world using their own thought processes and/or emotive reactions to pursue their investigations, they were using paths of discovery which took place entirely within their own inner lives. On the other hand, if they had used the tools provided them by artificial intelligence, they might well have been creating paths of discovery which existed significantly outside their own psyches. That is, within the digital pathways which would have existed within whatever A.I. tools they would have been using. So, it would seem that within our current Internet age a choice has to be made between the easiest way to produce valid external results or the maintenance of the richest inner life possible.

An Antidote to Authoritarianism is Democratic Learning Environments

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As of late, a number of people have become justifiably worried that our one- time democratic society is inevitably headed toward a state of genuine authoritarianism where all power in our government is coalescing within the Presidency; from specific progressive policies which a President doesn’t like because they threaten his particular value system; or those upon whom he wants to seek  retribution because he feels they have somehow done him wrong in the past; or simply because a sitting President might have an intense need to be in control of everything which he might influence. And so the reach of such a potential power grab seems to be frightening many people these days.

However, perhaps the larger question that needs to be asked in all this, beyond just stop-gap measures on how to limit the sort of unchecked power of an executive who might in some way threaten our democracy might appear to lay in seeking how to insure that our democratic principles don’t become actually threatened, as many people fear that they are now. That is, what are the root causes of people in a society either ignoring or actually turning away from a truly democratic society? Surprisingly, one of the significant answers to this quandary may not lie so much in amending the levers of power in order to maintain our democracy, but how children are being educated in our schools.

In the past, several important writers on education reform, from John Dewey to George Dennison to Ivan Illich have proposed the idea of truly democratic learning environments in which all of the participants in a particular environment or school, both students and teachers, share with each other both equal rights and equal responsibilities. I myself ran an attempt at such a school recently for twelve years for children six to fourteen, in which I endeavored, as much as possible, to base the entire learning environment on such an equilibrium, from discussions with individual students about what their rights and responsibilities were in any given situation relative to those of the teachers, to a weekly democratic meeting in which students were allowed to discuss and then vote on a number of rules which governed the school.

Within such an environment, as difficult as it may be to implement at times, young people can learn the crucial importance of establishing a democracy based on shared equal rights and equal responsibilities. Otherwise, if the adults in the particular environment are making most or all of the decisions in order to control the nature of the learning environment, they may be unwittingly training people who later in life will have little interest in shared rights and responsibilities in any particular situation in which they might find themselves.

A number of people may remember from several years ago how the economist John Nash, whose life and ideas were depicted in the popular movie A Beautiful Mind, developed his revolutionary equilibrium theory which stated that within a particular group the people involved should work toward developing a solution to any problem in which everyone determines what is the best possible outcome for himself and likewise for the group as a whole. In fact, as much as we could, although we were certainly not always successful, we attempted at our school to employ John Nash’s novel theory in discussing and likewise coming up with problems which had presented themselves involving student rights and responsibilities.

Many people tend to believe that a true democratic society is necessarily one in which a certain group of people maintain their right to assert themselves in a given situation in opposition to those groups of people who oppose them with different values; and may the best person win, so to speak. Yes, of course that sounds like the essence of a democracy, but ultimately it generally leads toward one side grabbing as much power for itself as it can get. A true democracy is based on establishing an equilibrium in which everyone involved agrees to a solution to any given problem in which everyone has both equal rights and equal responsibilities. And that’s something worth exposing young people to in our schools for the sake of our democracy.

Moving Back to Move Forward in the Digital Age

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It’s been said many that time moves in a circle, taking us to points where we’ve already been so that we can move forward; something suggested by no less than the great mathematician Kurt Godel while exploring the possibility of time travel. Yet the idea can likewise be applied to societal movements and tendencies; this notion that we may have to move back into the past in order to move forward in the present; or so it would seem in the case of certain Luddite students at Temple University in Philadelphia who are according to them, “promoting conscious consumption of technology” by significantly walking away from what they consider to be the destructive parts of it.

Members of the Luddite Club sketch and paint while sitting side by side rather than surfing the web or checking their phones for text messages. They sit together and read quietly, favoring writers like Dostoevsky. Kerouac, and Vonnegut. They sit on logs in the outdoors and complain about how TikTok is dumbing down their generation while their flip phones (yes, flip phones) are decorated with stickers and nail polish; with those from different parts of the world who have become aware of what they are doing responding by the hundreds, including famous activists like Ralph Nader, who wrote in a recent essay that their rebellion needs support and diffusion.

Furthermore, two years after their club began, according to reporter Alex Vadukul of the New York Times who was the person who originally wrote about them, these Luddites still have disdain for social media platforms and how they use impressionable young people, causing them to create picture-perfect false identities online which have little to do with who they really are. Possibly most heartening of all, they still rely on flip phones and laptops rather than succumbing to the enticing addiction of smart phones, and they have even drafted a mission statement aimed at connecting young people in various communities who share their antipathy to digital addiction.

Furthermore, the activities of so-called Luddite organizations like this one might seem to beg the question of what real progress is.  Is it something like increasing the capacity of artificial intelligence sites like ChatGPT to not just provide information but to actually give prescriptive advice? Is it a production of a new smart phone which everyone can wear on their eyeglasses or carry in their wallet or purse? Or is it an approach to digital technology by which we can reclaim access to our short and long term memories, our capacity to attend, or the depth of our impressions and emotive lives that many of have seemed to have lost in this radical new digital age?

Those scientists who study the dynamics of our universe, and who have in the past speculated that time may indeed be circular, and so we need to occasionally delve into the past in order to progress in the future may indeed be worth listening to now; which of course means that we may need to revise our ideas concerning what forward progress really means, particularly in this new Internet age. In other words, what me may need is a much broader discussion concerning what moving forward really means simply because the idea may not be as simple as we previously considered it to be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Fractured Consciousness and The Possibility of Change

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In 1981, Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist and biochemist from Cambridge University and Harvard introduced his concept of Morphic resonance to the world; an idea which states that different species inherently possess what he calls morphic fields, those which allow different organisms to stay in touch with one another through a distance. For example, there is good evidence that many species of animals may be telepathic, and that if certain members of a species learn a new skill in one part of the world, other members of that same species in other parts of the world will soon show that same proclivity.

This of course might lead one to beg the question that if this dynamic is true of members of the animal kingdom, might it be possible for human beings to have a similar unitary consciousness in which we all may be similarly mentally united with one other, even from a distance. This of course suggests that if there is in fact some type of unitary consciousness of which we are all a part, that if even one person is able to fundamentally and radically change his or her consciousness, then this will somehow have an effect on all of us, even as we might not realize that this particular dynamic is in fact occurring.

Taking this particular argument further, as strange as it may seem to some, this is not so much some sort of mental telepathy as it is an acknowledgement that we all may be part of the same conscious field in which we are endlessly interconnected, without even realizing that such a reality exists. This then would seem to suggest that if one is desirous of change for the better in the world, then the best way to accomplish this may not be through political or social action, but rather through a fundamental change in one’s own consciousness in which others may be affected at a distance by this sort of change even as they’re not able to recognize it occurring in themselves.

Unfortunately, often when people draw up sides, so to speak, to affect some type of change, there may well be an inevitable fracturing of that common consciousness that we all share with one another. Even in those cases where people are fighting against the evil of others in attempting to make the world a better place, just the fact that there is an inevitable fracturing of human consciousness in the process is something which, as much as anything, may tend to produce the sort of internal violence in people which leads toward violent conflicts on a larger scale. Thus, many of the armed conflicts and terrorist activities which we see in the world today.

Speaking at an anti-war rally at Berkeley during the period of the 1960s, the writer Ken Kesey told the crowd that had gathered, all amped up before their march on an army induction center during the time of the Vietnam War, that often the best thing one can do when they see something that is fundamentally wrong is to simply turn their back on it and just say “fuck it.” Otherwise, according to him, you’re essentially playing the same game as the evildoers. Although he may have been right from the standpoint of what tactics are most effective against those same evildoers, he may also have been right as far as not engendering the sort of fractured consciousness which eventually leads to so much violence in the world.

What Might the Term Soul Mate Really Mean?

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It’s been ten years now since the film Her appeared in which Jaquim Phoenix, a lonely man, fell in love with the operating system inside his computer, in particular with the voice of Scarlett Johansson which embodied it. Since that time, according to a recent article in the New York Times, it has been reported that more and more people are likewise attempting to have some sort of close personal relationships with the personification inherent in digital technologies, even replacing what might be close relationships with others in the real world with less perilous digital ones. Obviously, with the recent growth of artificial intelligence in our society, it would appear that this trend is almost sure to continue and even  grow.

However, as predictable as this development in our current digital age is, even as it might be seen by many as being strange and potentially even pathological, at the same time it does appear that it does in fact beg the question of what a close personal relationship, particularly a love relationship, actually means. To this end, there is of course the full spectrum of close personal, love relationships between two people, all the way from the most casual to the most intense and meaningful. Yet, at the same time, there is one term in particular, one that may in fact be in danger of being significantly misused, that has been employed to identify the most intense and meaningful of close personal relationships, which is that of soul mate.

Soul Mate has been used in the past to define all manner of close personal relationships, particularly romantic ones; from an intense sexual relationship; to a best friend for whom one has intense feelings of caring; to one with whom has a certain sympatico which one doesn’t have with anyone else; to even a close personal friend for whom one has special feelings and with whom one occasionally has physical relations. At the same time, however, it seems possible that none of these close relationships when applied to the term soul mate goes far enough in getting at the potentially mystical nature of being in love.

That is, might it be possible that two people who are soul mates, so to speak, both inhabit together some otherworldly place that neither is fully aware of, yet at the same time, they still experience the intensity of that reality during their life in this world? That of course puts the term in an infinitely broader context, one which might seem to have few boundaries. It also takes the love of another person to whom one feels that he or she is vitally connected in this way into a whole mystical area where the experience of love for someone else and the search for a larger, more expansive consciousness conceivably become one and the same.

The 2006 film Pan’s Labyrinth told the story of a young girl who, during the time of fascist Spain which she was caught up in, experienced a number of mystical, otherworldly encounters which came to influence her behavior in this world, those being directed from the mystical, otherworldly kingdom which she inhabited before her earthly life began, and to which she was destined to return. Therefore, relative to the idea of two people who love each other actually being soul mates, one might begin to wonder, even as far-fetched and unreal as the idea might seem, if such a thing is actually possible. That two people might indeed be connected in some otherworldly place which, even though they might not be aware that this is occurring, this connection still affects their lives in this world.

Of course, in this new age world in which we now live, there are all kinds of supposedly mystical dynamics that take place in the world of astrology, fortune telling, and the like. Yet still it seems that it might be possible for two people to be connected inside some otherworldly consciousness which has nothing to do with the hocus pocus world of all these new age pursuits, which makes the entire dynamic much more real and much more meaningful; simply because it might in fact be a genuine part of human consciousness. Now that, it seems, would be exciting.

L.A. Fires and the Fear of Uncertainty

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Having moved from Chicago to Ojai, California some four years ago, this was my first experience with the powerful Santa Ana winds, and with the sort of devastating fires that are now consuming major parts of Los Angeles. The winds, it seems have a pernicious, almost mystical quality to them; something about which the late, great Joan Didion wrote for years, noting how the winds have the power to somehow adversely affect people’s mental and emotional stability by causing some to fret, sulk, be unwilling to come out of their house for days, or in one well known case in San Bernardino, apparently hatch a plan to kill their spouse.

Having lived in the Chicago area most of my life, I endured any number of periods of intense, bold-chilling cold or else several feet of snow. Having relatives living in Florida, I listened to their stories of dealing with powerful hurricanes by barricading themselves in certain rooms of their home. Yet as difficult as those events are to endure, it seems that there is a certain predictability to them which tends to make them somehow bearable. That is, by knowing just how cold the temperature will become, as is often the case, one can prepare in advance how to hunker down inside one’s home or apartment. And in the case of hurricanes, the weather service can often correctly predict the approximate path of the storm, in doing so, often giving people time for how to deal with it.

Yet with events like the Santa Ana winds, wildfires, or the 5.2 earthquake which hit Ojai last year, that sort of predictability, it seems, is no longer really afforded one. Earthquakes are entirely unpredictable. They can strike at any time despite the best efforts of geologists to tie their possible appearance to the state of a certain fault line. Nor can the exact speed and power of the Santa Ana winds which might be blow down from out of the mountains be known in advance. And of course the start of wildfires, like the one currently decimating Los Angeles, can’t possibly be known in advance.

California has always had an element of uncertainty to it. As one drives along Highway 101, one is able to behold the powerful beauty of the Pacific Ocean. Yet at the same time, it might occur to one that this is the end of the continent, and that if he or she wants to indulge their pioneer spirit and move onward, there is only the possibility of going back, of returning to where one has already been. This may not necessarily be a constant conscious thought, but nevertheless it is a reality which tends to remain with one, at least at an unconscious level. Of course, during a tragedy such as the recent wildfires that have occurred in L.A., people may be thinking about packing up and leaving. Yet one imagines a certain pioneer spirit, even one that is only unconscious, may stop a number of them in their tracks.

To live at the end of a continent, where forward movement is not an option, and which provides one with a measure of inevitable uncertainty concerning potentially catastrophic events, can feel at times like living on the edge, so to speak. Yet at the same time, this is also part of the fascination which many people have with California; that there is a certain sense, albeit one that is unconscious, that one has chosen to live at the edge, so to speak; an inheritance of a certain pioneer spirit that lives within us, whether we recognize its presence or not.

A.I. and Spirituality

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To date, artificial intelligence seems to have found its way into just about every corner of our society, from science to art to literature to politics. Yet, all the recent discussions of how A.I. might actually possess consciousness notwithstanding, there doesn’t seem to have been many attempts to relate A.I. and the virtual world to the activities having to do with some larger spiritual dimension, such as might be found in such things as yoga practices, various forms of meditation, or even mindfulness programs and activities. That is, could it be possible that the virtual paths inherent in A.I. could lead one toward some larger, spiritually based consciousness if used properly?

If one looks at how great artists, scientists, or thinkers such as Einstein, Picasso, Krishnamurti or Beethoven pursued the type of art or thought which in fact did lead toward a larger consciousness, what seems strikingly apparent is that they did so by weaving important aspects of their personal lives into their search. That is, their important creations, investigations, and discoveries invariably emanated from thoughts and emotions which were quite obviously highly unique to each of them. And in many cases, it was even those thoughts and feelings which troubled them most which led directly toward great art, science, or thought.

For example, there is certainly a direct link between the troublesome states of mind which plagued Virginia Woolf during one of her depressive illnesses, during which she would often lose control of the pattern of her thoughts, and the brilliant stream of consciousness writing which would appear in her novels. That is, as painful as it was for her at times, the first often led inexorably toward the second. In similar fashion, the terrible burden which Beethoven experienced as he realized that he was growing deaf led to his heroic defiance of fate which can be heard so clearly in his iconic Fifth Symphony. Once again, his eventual triumphant state which can be heard in that brilliant piece of music most likely couldn’t exist without the dark night of the soul which Bethoven first went through.

When viewed through a larger lens, these are in fact important spiritual developments in the lives of these two great artists. That is to say, the personal difficulties and suffering they endured led directly toward the sort of larger consciousness which was part of their brilliant creations. Virginia Woolf’s stream of consciousness writing pointed inevitably toward a limitless awareness that exists beyond words, thoughts, and past knowledge; while the music of Beethoven, particularly that which can be heard in his latter string quartets, points toward a sublime acceptance of all which life may have to offer, a state of being which then points inevitably toward something larger.

In other words, when searching for a larger consciousness, through one’s art, scientific investigations, or through other means, it is impossible to separate what might be difficult aspects of one’s personal life from one’s larger spiritual development, that is if one wants to use that term. Therefore, this is something that artificial intelligence will never be able to accomplish; taking into account how one’s personal development, as difficult as it may be at times, can never be separated from the search for a potential spiritual core to life, arrived at through a larger, more expansive consciousness. Let us hope we all can soon realize this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Autism and Excessive Screen Use

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Lately, with the rise in autism in children in our society, all manner of reasons have been given as to why this is occurring, from the use of vaccines, pollution, toxic chemicals, and viral infections that occur during pregnancy. or even children being born to parents who are older. Of course, with the nomination of known anti-vaxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the new head of Health and Human Services, the possible relationship between the vaccinations of young children and the potential development of autism in them has once again being given what would appear to be an inordinate amount of attention, although to date there has been no well-known scientific evidence linking those two things.

Autistic children invariably often have trouble taking in and understanding social or verbal cues coming from others, or generally speaking, in adapting to the specifics of the particular social environment which they share with other children. In particular, they have difficulty reading non-verbal cues from others, and so often tend to remain isolated within themselves. Therefore, because these are all significant developmental issues related to one’s ability to attend, it seems possible that autism might in fact be a potential developmental malady related to a unique form of attention deficit disorder.

In addition, it seems to be more than a little possible that autistic children might be prone to developing this type of attention disorder simply because we now live in a culture in which a potentially distracted awareness is being engendered in many of us by our compulsive use of digital devices. Therefore, it likewise seems possible that within such a culture, because the autistic child is endeavoring to relate to others whose capacity to attend is already significantly compromised, his own ability to relate to the social or verbal cues he receives from them might also become compromised. Therefore, this might then become a pattern which engenders an inability to relate.

It has now become a well-known fact, if not an absolute truism that has become part of our cultural landscape, that the amount of time which people spend with their digital devices, and the Internet itself, have engendered what can only be described as a permanent state of distracted awareness in many of us as we jump relentlessly between websites, text messages, and e-mails, with it even being articulated by any number of cognitive theorists and psychologists that our current Internet addiction has even released certain chemicals into our brains, such as dopamine, which threaten to make our addiction not just psychological, but even physical.

Therefore, it would appear that, relative to the recent growth of autism among children in our current age. the question which might need to be asked is what part a distracted awareness engendered by people’s use of digital tools might play in creating conditions in the lives of young children which might actually be responsible for engendering an autistic mind-set and autistic behavior, particularly in terms of a child’s interactions with those whom he or she relates closely who spend a great deal of time in the digital world? In other words, this might in fact be a different type of developmental issue which needs to be studied relative to childhood autism.

To this date, autism in children has been looked at almost entirely in terms of medical issues such as viral infections during pregnancy, environmental issues such as exposure to toxic chemicals, or genetic issues such as aging parents who have children. Yet it might appear to be entirely possible that autism is in part a result of developmental issues such as the nature of a child’s personal interactions and the potential effect of those on the type of distracted awareness which is unique to autism. In a digital age in which the possible effects on all of us which our use of digital devices and the Internet may be engendering in us, this might be something which might require a certain degree of our attention.

The Spiritual Side of DNA

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Recently, it was revealed that scientists are studying the possibility of what they describe as a mirror cell which could be used to create a microbe that could duplicate the properties of DNA, only as a left-handed structure which is the reverse of the right-handed molecules and the left-handed proteins which are inevitably part of DNA’s basic structure and function; meaning, it would appear, that an alternative, reverse form of DNA and the proteins it uses to engender various life forms might actually be created in a laboratory somewhere.

This of course would mean that a whole other form of evolution might proceed from the creation of a mirror cell; one in which the inevitable evolutionary processes of DNA might be able to systematically proceed as an alternative Tree of Life, so to speak; something which a number of scientists, particularly synthetic biologists, find exciting because of the possibilities inherent in such an occurrence, such as the creation of bigger, more powerful proteins which might become extremely valuable to medical science and its procedures.

However, there are concerns among biologists who have studied the risks inherent in mirror cells, such as what would happen if a mirror cell escaped containment, and in doing so caused a world-wide catastrophe, such as a pandemic which couldn’t be stopped simply because either our bodies couldn’t build up the proper immunity to this strange pathogen, or else the biotechnology which exists at the time couldn’t put an end to it once it began, or if a mirror cell escaped from a lab or else was set free to attack people as a new biological weapon.

Yet, at the same time, there may be something even larger and more profound to consider, which is that DNA is the polestar of a process of evolution which is deeply spiritual in nature. That is, there is an intrinsic, one might even say otherworldly intelligence for how this incredible molecule evolved over time into a species (i.e. we humans) who have now developed both the intelligence and the technology to actually decode it at the smallest possible level; with the human species evolving, along with those of plants and other animals, at the exact moments in time in which planet earth had itself evolved to the point where those species were able to flourish.

If there is an incredible intelligence at work in the universe (not something religious directed by some imagined deity, but an intrinsic intelligence inside of things), one that we ourselves as humans are a part of, it seems hard to visualize a better example of this intrinsic intelligence than the evolutionary process itself. Therefore, because DNA is at the very essence of this process, there is indeed something which might be called spiritual (not religious but spiritual) about the molecule itself; one which because of its intrinsic, one might even say otherworldly nature we should probably not be trying to alter or change in any way.

There are indeed some things on our planet, in our universe, and inside ourselves which should be left alone simply because they likewise may be part of an intrinsic intelligence. To try to change these elemental processes in any way might indeed disturb a universal order which may be part of such a larger intelligence. That is, there may be occasions where the metaphysical is even more important than scientific discovery and progress. This may be one of those times.

 

The Death of Irony in the Digital Age

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It was in 1964 that Susan Sontag wrote her notorious essay Notes on Camp, something which along with her provocative piece Against Interpretation rocketed her into the center of American society in a manner which effectively fused the worlds of high-brow literary culture with the sparks of streetwise ethos which at the time had begun to smolder in Andy Warhol’s legendary Silver Factory.

The description of camp provided by Sontag in Notes on Camp was essentially a list of the elements of a culture in reaction to typical bourgeois society, something in which Sontag herself was in rebellion at the time. Only the descriptions provided were deeply ironical in the sense that they were to be taken as satirical representations of various elements of American society rather than as things in and of themselves.

Camp was a means of embracing certain things while at the same time keeping a comfortably ironical distance from them. For instance, so-called “bad movies” such as Schoedsack’s King Kong, which the world of high culture viewed as being insignificant due to their lack of serious qualities, could now be seen as being not only enjoyable, but also having merit precisely because they were seen by most practitioners of high culture as being bad. In other words, what mattered was the irony of looking at something not only in terms of how good or how important it was, but in juxtaposition to a world that practitioners of camp sensibility saw as being overly serious.

Because there were unseen quotation marks around most aspects of camp culture, those which took the place of more serious literal discussions,  camp irony soon became a powerful new form of communication among its practitioners. And because that type of intelligent humor is always an inside joke, understood only by those who get it, it soon came to exemplify for those who were in on the joke, a higher form of social intelligence.

Of course, this is also very much the function of irony in terms of intelligent communication with others, that the joke alluded to is always an inside one. That is, it is a means of putting others on who aren’t in on it. In so doing, pointing out how one’s position on certain ideas or issues is inherently understood by those who are in on the joke as being superior to other positions.

It is likewise a form of intelligence that is communicated primarily non-verbally through inflections in one’s voice, speech patterns that are tongue-in-cheek, or through such nonverbal dynamics as the twinkle in one’s eye; which means that the irony is never a means of communication with others that can be understood literally. Rather, it needs to be experienced, like camp humor in a manner that is both offhanded and offbeat; an indirect form of communication in which the way the message is delivered becomes just as important as the message itself; meant only for those who are aware enough to understand it.

When the knight in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail who has both his arms sliced off announces to everyone that, “It’s only a flesh wound,” the aware viewer immediately understands that what he is doing is casting an ironical eye toward all those battle or crime movies in which the violence is both very real and very literal. That is, the filmmaker is putting on all those who favor violent movies with an indirect comment about them without ever alluding to them directly.

If irony is something that needs to be experienced primarily physically through voice inflections or facial mannerisms, the question of course becomes one of asking what effect our current digital age, when people are communicating with each other primarily by typing words out of necessity into a keyboard, has had on ironical expression. Obviously, when communication is that which removes physical expression from the equation, it becomes much more difficult to express oneself ironically.

One prime example of how entirely literal expression has out of necessity replaced ironical humor and intelligence is the current Internet acronym LOL, which as everyone knows stands for laughing out loud; an abbreviated reference which seemingly makes it veritably impossible to wink indirectly and ironically at one thing while actually referring to another simply because it is out of necessity so inherently literal.

Of course, the next obvious question to be considered, it would seem, is that of asking what effect this incapacity to express oneself ironically when confined to the parameters of a keyboard has had on our social and persona communication with each other? And furthermore, is irony itself a necessary ingredient for intelligent communication within wider social parameters? That is, what might be missing when we are deprived of it in  significant ways?