There is a saying that says, "Empty your mind, pick up a pencil and draw" and the purpose of this is tactical in nature in the sense that one must focus on the task at hand and to remove as best one can, of all outside distractions (there are many). This also applies to anything a person does that involves their intentional focus, not just drawing, although it is a principle I teach art students.
Like I said, this rule applies to many things but the spirit behind it involves activity, not passive mindlessness.
- Watching TV
- Doom-scrolling
- Social media
- Gossiping
- excessive phone use
I was listening to an interview about how devices and A.I. are doing things for us that we used to have to do for ourselves and the interviewee thought how great it is to have it because it gives him less to think about but immediately after he said it, I recognized that something in that remark didn't quite jibe well with me.
"It Gives Me Less to Think About"
Isn't thinking what sets humans apart from animals? The greatest works of humankind begins by thinking to solve problems or to be creative.
- The polio vaccine
- the four minute mile
- The abolition of slavery
- Landing on the moon
- The Sistine Chapel
- The horseless carriage
- Notre Dame Cathedral
- Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3
All originated in the human mind as an independent, free thought, an idea originating in the gray matter of the human mind and not in an electronic device.
The goals of the forces of evil is to get people to empty their minds so the void can be filled with less than valuable things.
"Let the robot do it"
That's why, knowing full well A.I. can do my work for me and probably make it way better, aesthetically speaking, than I will ever be able to do, I will only do it myself. Most of the time I won't even check it using A.I. and it's not because I'm a stubborn, crotchety old man who doesn't like new-fangled gadgets. It's because I like the way I do it, mistakes and all. How much value would Leonardo's Mona Lisa possess if it was done by Grok?
I've drawn some things and someone would say to me "Let's see what A.I. can do with it!" My immediate response is a decisive "no". Why would I want to see what a robot can do to my creation?
Along those same lines, there is an argument about the ethics of using things like the self-checkout lanes at the grocery stores and most of the people that vow they will never use them, because they want to "support the employees", are the same people who gladly use ATM machines to do bank transactions instead of going inside the bank to let a person do it. These are also the same people who would let Chat GPT create an illustration for them instead of employing a person to do it. Better still, these people will let A.I. write a book, illustrate it and design the cover and then they say, "I wrote this book".
