In the summer months, bears waltz into my village and roam freely from dusk until dawn. They’re insatiable. Some of them are surprisingly large and determined.
You may have heard that black bears are timid, wary, and not all that big compared to a grizzly. Still, a mature male black bear is like a twice-sized Brock Lesnar running by his own rules, pooping all over your property. When he shrugs off your hazing, turns, and steps toward you… you’ll feel it in your belly. A quick step toward cover will feel like the perfect thing to do.
A Sign That Someone Screwed Up
Each time a bear shows up and sticks around, it’s a sign that someone screwed up. One of us forgot to rinse a can of catfood. One of us got a little lazy with our food-scraps bin. Perhaps the plums are ripe. Like magic, a bear appears and the culprit among us wakes up to a cleanup-of-shame.
When one of our in-town bears becomes suicidal (a tad too brazen), a conservation officer carrying a .308 caliber rifle appears to help him get where he’s going. Our three cafes and two Facebook groups blow up whenever this happens. We pleaded to the bear that he should dial down his rapacity, but he did not listen.
Overall though, we’re fine with the bears. They’re only as big a deal as our own choices make them.
Healthy Distance
Besides, there are benefits. The presence of large, powerful, and willful wild animals helps keep us grounded to the fact that there’s many ways to live on this Earth that work just fine. Each of us is capable of doing more, or doing less, or doing just plain differently.
Our bears also remind us of the mountain lions lurking in the shadows and of the wolves in the hills. Last year, a young grizzly created a buzz when he crossed the hills to nose around our highschool. Surprises can still happen.
Each time we brush against the primal world, we reconnect with our deepest instincts and basic behaviors. We also gain a topic of conversation beyond television programming and celebrity antics.
As a rare bonus, our experience with the bears may occasionally occur to us: it’s we humans and our behaviors—often unthinking—that is the source of all threats to flourishing, whether of ourselves or of the bears, or even of the grizzlies on the dry side of the hills.
The Bear Box
I think of it as a box. In the corner of my village-life, there’s a box that contains “bears.”
Depending on my own behaviors and the behaviors of my neighbors, that box may grow or shrink.
If we got all militant, we could eliminate the box entirely. So far we haven’t felt the need to do that. Instead, we’ve settled on a moderate vigilance that has proven sufficient to keep that box tiny.
We don’t aggress against the bears.
Nor do we obsess about bear defense.
We understand that our own behavior determines how big or small the box with the bears becomes.
Our daily choices are only a tiny bit about the bears. Mostly our behavior is about everything else nearby. Ideally, our behavior is almost entirely about the people and places near us.
The AI Box
My life has bears in it, but it is not about bears.
My life also has AI in it, but it is not about AI.
I believe it would be good for humanity if some of us acted as if AI was exactly like this: something that exists, that we need to account for, but that stays in its own small box in the corner of our lives.
AI gets its own box. But is the AI box small and down in the corner—or is the AI box large and in the center, growing and gradually squeezing out everything else?
Either way, it’s always our own behavior that determines the size and placement of that box.
It’s our responsibility to assess our feelings about our black bear experiences and adjust accordingly.
AI is vastly more powerful than bears, obviously. But the basic situation is the same. Our pattern of handling it is the same. Keep it boxed. Keep it small. Keep it in the corner. Keep living.