Psychedelics, AI, and the Modern

Artificial Intelligence, the erasure of human presence, and the violent societal turmoil and systemic collapse that accompany them. We live amidst a vortex of unprecedented crisis occurring on a global scale; yet, humans are strange creatures—given enough time, we become accustomed to any situation, however fortunate or dire. Nevertheless, by passing through this world of upheaval, I believe the hints regarding the inquiry of how one ought to live, and what one ought to accomplish in this era, have become far more visible than they were even a year ago.

First, as a fundamental premise, the debate over whether AI has acquired a mind is nothing more than a waste of time. This is because the argument leaps too far, tending to place the human being, without reflection, in a position of excessive nobility. If we think calmly, it is obvious that we humans could never judge the moment an AI acquires a mind. We simply do not possess such a rigid yardstick. In fact, can you articulate with clarity what your own mind is? Or could you speak of a definition of the mind agreed upon on a planetary scale? Regrettably, humanity holds no such power. To a species that cannot realize even a single instance of world peace, the elucidation of the problem of the mind is impossible.

Regarding the mind, since even science—advanced to this high degree—cannot offer an answer, the only truth that can be posited is that while we can assert with certainty that “something resembling a mind” exists for us, we do not yet know what it is, and all answers are provisional. It is a law of the modern era that we have no choice but to pursue this provisional answer age by age; however, any superior scientist today should have realized the fact that the scientifically pursued answer already exists within the wisdom of the ancients around the world. Indeed, the saints and sages of antiquity had already philosophically examined the core of the mind—which may be said to be the greatest inquiry for us—and demonstrated it with magnificent clarity.

This is an intuition I hold while exploring the Jomon period, the ancient stratum of Japan: people who lived in antiquity, like the Jomon people, must have been able to fully utilize faculties and techniques that we would call telepathy. That is to say, without engaging in information negotiation or the exchange of wisdom through direct, physical contact, they were able to instantly access a consciousness of a different dimension from where they stood, and from there, draw down and utilize cosmic wisdom. And because that wisdom is the true universal, if the Jomon tribes scattered across Japan utilized this faculty and technique to access it individually, they could utilize the same wisdom without holding direct negotiations. particularly in the communal dimension—for example, the immersion into altered states through rituals performed at the winter solstice—must have been a momentous occasion where ancient tribes scattered across Japan accessed a common dimension simultaneously. At this time, we cannot say this applied to ancient tribes scattered across the world because the time the sun rises differs, but it is certain that they accessed a common dimension within the same single day. On the other hand, regarding the actual act of utilizing this wisdom, the regulations of the place where the tribe lives are inevitably involved, necessarily forming a uniqueness distinct to each location. In other words, even if they accessed the same realm and drew down the same wisdom, the actual action differs by location, meaning that differences between tribes are generated by necessity.

I feel strongly, now that the AI era is accelerating, that this obscure intuition I have felt personally from my investigation of the Jomon period is unexpectedly not incorrect. What is recalled here is that the philosopher Nishida Kitaro once proposed ”Absolute Contradictory Self-Identity” [絶対矛盾的自己同一] and defined it as “Life is absolute contradictory self-identity.” In Nishida’s world, the past and the future bind together in the present through mutual negation, and the world forms itself as a single present; it is conceived as something infinitely produced from the created to the creating. I will continue my speculation with this as a standard.