Don't Be Robot Go in Nature
The robots are coming here to steal your job. There's only one way to save yourself from them: be more human.
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Last week I shared a piece I wrote about staying active during the lockdown, though it will hopefully prove to be evergreen as I think it just as much applies to how one should stay active throughout any winter in Ireland. One of the points I was making was not to despair if your activity routines have been thrown up into the air because of the lockdown or the weather.
Routines have been thrown off and with less hours in the day it’s not always possible to even get anything done. Most likely, many days you won’t be arsed either. But don’t despair that all your hard work from the rest of the year is being wasted, or that your hard-fought gains will evaporate from your guns as you hibernate for the winter. It is normal and natural to want to do less in the winter. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t – just listen to your body and what it needs. The human body is meant to be healthy, but it is not necessarily meant to be optimised.
We are in the 21st century now, and optimisation is for robots. The only thing that will keep you alive and keep you in a job going forward is by making yourself more human. The only advantage you have over them now is that you have blood and sweat and tears, and you have a heart and a soul, you make mistakes, and you are most definitely not optimised. Face it, robot brains are far smarter than all of us put together, and to try to outsmart a robot or a computer will just make you look as stupid as you are. You might even lose your job over it.
So instead, capitalise on your own value, by being more human. Part of achieving this is to train yourself, not to be more efficient, but to be more human. You know who can’t go outside in the rain? Robots. And computers. You might get cold or feel some temporary discomfort from getting caught up town in the rain – with or without appropriate clothing – but it would be catastrophic for a robot, and he or she would most likely die. And so if you want to show off your own talents and superiority over our new robot friends (and – let’s face it – some of them are foes), don’t be afraid to go outside in the rain or the wind or a bit of snow. You can always warm yourself by exerting a bit of effort at something. And you can always change your socks when you get home. A computer can only warm itself up by doing a few sums. And if you get a bit shivery all the better – congratulations, you are alive. You have not only displayed and demonstrated your aliveness – to your employer if that’s what you need – by jumping up and down in a puddle, you have also strengthened and grown your vitality in the process.
You have an advantage over the robot and the computer: You can think without your brain. And you actually run far better when you are not struggling to optimise every last thing you do. A computer algorithm would run the data and tell you not to go outside if the weather is too bad, taking some data points on air temperature, precipitation levels and wind speed and running them through the computer to print out the result: don’t go outside, you won’t like it. You are smarter than this particular robot: you know that when you get back from a walk on the beach with the dog in the pissing rain, you both feel far better and happier for it. Even if both you and the dog smell like, well, a pair of wet dogs. Human 1 – 0 Robot. (Dog 1 also).
If a robot is not optimised for his purpose (and his sole purpose in life is his job, tragically), he will lose his job to a better robot. Or he will have his identity erased and replaced with a more optimised identity. If a robot computer goes to sleep too often during work hours (any number more than once I would say), he will be fired, or depending on the mood of his colleagues, might even be tossed out a fourth floor window, or dumped in a skip out the back.
You, however, learn when you take a break from your creative work, including when you sleep. This includes your body’s learning, such as repairing and growing muscle. (The science says that as much as a third of muscle growth and learning and memory retention happens during sleep. If you’re a human that is, not a robot). Taking breaks is for humans, and is necessary for both physical and mental growth. It is incredible the depth of learning that people do every day of their lives without realising it. All of the information of the world bounces off you and is recorded whether you realise it or not. Almost everything you know is simply from being alive, not from checking the data on your phone.
Counting steps and tracking workouts and meditations on apps is good practice – if you really hate doing those things. Routines are good for building habits, but once you’ve instilled the habit, you should be enjoying them, and you shouldn’t have to rely on a robot telling you to do them. If you’re not enjoying them, maybe they’re not for you. The app won’t tell you that. They will simply renew your subscription and charge you another €5.99 to be miserable for another month. And you will pay it – if you’re a robot.
Things like cleaning up the house or brushing your teeth are good to have on auto-pilot. But more purposeful activities of life – which includes meals, physical activity, recreational activities, and social interactions – shouldn’t have to be scheduled in the diary. Once they are learned, you can just listen to yourself. Robots are better at fulfilling careful schedules than you anyway. Remember: your job is at stake here.
In the absence of a computer telling you you’ve done enough walking for the day, you’re free to go home whenever you want. Or even better: you’re free to go even further than the robot says you have to. You’re even free to go too far, further than your body can handle, and have to trudge home with sore legs and feet and a wet head. Good. You’ll know better for next time. But at least you’ll know.
When you’re not listening to the robot, you could even hop over a fence and run through a field. You could even stop running and climb a tree. Or take a break from your workout to talk to someone. No app will tell you to do that. These are the things that are actually most beneficial to your health. Not the optimisation of muscle growth or cardiovascular fitness through exercise. Having positive social interactions with friends and strangers while you’re doing healthy things is the original placebo effect. To optimise your whole life for efficiency is to diminish some of the only quality that is keeping you alive: you are human.
It is entirely possible to traverse cities by the quickest route possible without ever engaging the brain or learning where you’re going; it’s possible to step foot in a foreign country and never have travelled or understand where you have been. Those GPS direction robots make us all dumber. You optimise your travel time but your brain turns to mush and your soul degenerates. More often than not, you end up physically and spiritually lost – you don’t know where you are and you don’t even know what you are.
The latest one is the reversing camera on a car. Lord above! Useful at times, but do make a point of not using it for everything. I estimate it takes about three weeks of constant use of that thing before it atrophies your brain’s perfectly good spatial awareness faculties into nothing – and it might be harder to relearn that skill than you think. And you might use that part of your brain for way more things than just reversing a car.
A hike on a blustery day is better for your overall health than a 5km run. A quick dip in the sea will be better for your immune system than a trip to the gym. And running after your dog on the beach is better for your soul than a highly efficient HIIT workout. These things will keep you alive far longer than an optimised routine or efficient schedule ever will.
You don’t need an app to track your progress, your body records these things anyway – as long as you don’t outsource the work. And there’s something else that records these things, if you stop measuring them on a spreadsheet. We all know that spreadsheet work destroys your soul. Well, it might also then hold that if you delete the spreadsheet and start learning things for yourself again, you might get a bit of it back.
In this blog we are optimising for peace of mind and full awareness of the wonders of the world around us, and that comes from listening to our own bodies and minds – not by optimising our schedules and our lives for maximum efficiency. We will leave that to the robots. Maybe then they can get on with their work and we can get on with ours. Remember, the robot can do its job a lot better than you can. If you let him steal all your jobs: staying active, navigating journeys, finding the best restaurant to eat in, meeting people – then it is inevitable that eventually, some day, he will steal your actual job. And he might even steal your soul.
So don’t be a robot – go and play outside.
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Great stuff, Gavin. Feeling very aligned with what you've written here.