I-m-Relevant

In a flash ( while recovering from a bruise on my head in a bathtub – like Archimedes), I recalled incidents of picking up scattered pieces of broken plates – often in the midst of my parents’ fights-and thoughts that went through my head (without the help of any bio-metric devices) that I shouldn’t have been born (those fights often ran: “why didn’t you help your son with homework, as opposed to the other woman’s girl..).

Those buried thoughts ( per Jung) combined to make me who I am and how I often “eject” myself from group conflicts, take myself out of the equation, numb myself as an observer rather than a participant for fear of meddling with an already muddled situation (or refuse to let myself be the topic of discussion).

Fast track to today, the approaching age of Algorithm and AI, with the help of bio-metrics and info tech. Will we remain relevant? Has it been a privilege for you and I to exercise volunteering withdrawal from any conflicts (warfare, finance and health care). Doctors, generals and bankers make decisions ( or advise us to make them) based on Data generated by AI. Even the music, chess and arts ( 21 lessons….) Since when do we reach to the dashboard to change the channel while driving?

BTW, the “cave” I hid wasn’t at the bottom of the staircase as in “Taken I, II and III”. The “cave” I was under happened to be at the shadow of the Cross, of faith in family and other support systems. These “caves” are paved with thorns, hence, ain’t no resting places. Caves that send you back out, stronger and re-newed, to be relevant and of values to others (hence, somehow, putting my personal problems in perspectives having self-inflicted with suffering not of my own, or having taken a more cosmic view).

For instance, in any given night, there are 36,000 homeless folks roaming the streets of LA, waiting for the sun to come up in Santa Monica Boulevard.

Now, that’s warm LA. In the Combat Zone of Boston, homeless folks suffered from freezing cold temperatures on top of hunger and delusion (what time is it? where am I? (it was dark all the time in the tunnel). I went every Fri night for two years to bring out hot soup and sandwiches to those folks.

So, no matter what circumstances you may have found yourself (under the dinner table picking up the pieces – or discharged from an emergency room or a refugee camp here in the US – you were not a curse the day you were born. To exist is a blessing in itself. You exist to bear witness to the consistency of nature (4 seasons), to the beauty of many sunsets (or even sunrises on Santa Monica Boulevard) and the decay of old age ( autumn leaves after on the ground can still have one last say when a car drives by – in their tossing and tumbling then falling again, their brief beginning – even for a few seconds, like the falling man of 9/11).

Life is relevant. Very relevant. And because you are, it is.

You and life are one and the same. Just as my life and I cannot be separated. When I cease to exist, to me, life ceases to exist.

Hence, I-m-relevant, even in the year of 2050, purportedly, when AI and Algorithms start rendering people ( you and I) irrelevant by the billions.

Of course, today’s Big Data is Orwell’s Big Brother (let’s see how hard Google’s hands get slapped for being a monopoly on page-ranking). And whether human instinct to “hunt and gather” can out-survive the speed of search.

It’s so ironic that Data give (detect and prevent early onset of disease) and Data take away ( our rights to make wrong decisions due to information mismatch).

We are all Luddites and we are all Googlers . No way around the tendency to peek (into the future) and the counter-tendency (to withdraw into our cocooning past).

What matters is to stay relevant and engaged to the here-and-now.

I-m-relevant to me, to my kids, to my families and to my fellow human family. When they are homeless, we are all homeless. In Vietnamese, “Du-Ma” means cursing. In French, Dumas happened to be its national treasure, contributing to its heritage such volumes as Monte Cristo, Three Musketeers … It could have been our loss had Dumas listened to others’ “Du-Ma’s” and willed himself to die early, to render himself useless, unknown and irrelevant. Hence, fear comes in two forms: real and imagined.

The latter, I fear, is more threatening to our well-being than the former. Let’s face both, to eliminate half of the load. We-r-relevant and we will get past one or both of those fears. “Du-ma” fear. We are Dumas’ Musketeers, not Mummies.