The Point of Writing

The art form we all engage with most often and in the least artful way is doubtlessly the written word. I am constantly writing and collecting passages of text that bring my life meaning even as they languish without place or cause. Many of these scraps need are not so weighty that they justify subjecting the world to them, but I would be chagrined if they moldered in my personal files without any chance to be considered by others. Here on my blog page, you can find some of my written works.

With the advent of large language models, writing may quickly be heading toward a similar fate as math; doomed to be bemoaned by students in classrooms wondering when and why they would ever need any of this knowledge when calculators (or in this case chatGPT) are readily available. While I might raise all manner of argument against the idea that AI truly could or morally should replace the human voice, as a tool it is expedient under the pressures of the market and thus moving apace to invade every aspect of life which it may.

Regardless, the point of writing, or art more broadly, much like mathematics, is not actually to produce a given result. As I write these words now, an appealing little blue sparkle beckons me to generate content with AI. I could fill the space on this page with whatever is deemed most statistically likely. It would save me time and probably be read by just as many people one way or the other. But the purpose of writing this or anything else, for me at least, is not to fulfill a function. No one could fairly accuse me of being a technical writer (my command of participles, articles, parts of speech and lord only knows what else has never been my strength). The point is to exercise a part of my brain and, more poetically engage my mind, in ordered and considered motion. The arts and grade school math are not so dissimilar in that they occupy a place in our desacralizing and profiteering world they serve very little purpose to anyone other than those who wish to live a fuller and more engaged spiritual life.

My petty grandiosity is earnest if nothing else. I hope that if you bothered to read all this that you take some time today to make something for yourself for no reason other than that only you could have made it. Art is the highest human activity. Don't deny it to yourself for the sake of practicality.