My eldest daughter, who has just finished her freshman year of high school, said, "Oh great, now we have to listen to AI music too?"

That comment got me thinking about what modern times must be like for her. I'm well aware that my kids are more plugged in to our digital reality than I am. Is it possible they've already developed some internal AI detector?

I was concerned as much as I was relieved. AI has become so ubiquitous that we can assume it has already begun to pollute our subconscious minds. I shudder to think that the unfathomable depths that give birth to our dreams might have already been tainted.

Gone are the days when a developing artist could sit in a local cafe and play for tips. When you think about it, what better occupation could there be for a budding poet?

It provides a little bit of cash plus the opportunity to workshop ideas. That's everything any artist wants. Now, virtually everything we interact with is prerecorded. The distance between the observer and the creator is growing all the time.

We don't know the artists anymore.

Our film and art only speak to an increasingly narrow cross-section of the population. We've lost our awareness that there are whole communities that live outside your perceived reality. Our curiosity has been replaced with conformity. All of our literature is tailored to the same people who pay attention to the televised advertisements for luxury cars.

I barely even hear those advertisements because I know I'm not the intended demographic. I get my cars used from various online marketplaces. There are enormous swaths of media messaging that simply do not apply to me.

There are an infinite number of human experiences, but we only focus on a few to the detriment of all.

The problem with AI rendering is that it is all based on the glass house mentality. AI doesn't know the experiences of people who can get a quality car for under $1,000. AI doesn't know that because we don't share those stories.

There's a unique form of creativity that comes from learning how to live inexpensively. There's even a delight in figuring out how to survive when your back is against the wall. You can buy your vehicle from your neighbor to avoid the extra costs a dealership tacks on. But a society that's been indoctrinated with the prosperity gospel doesn't want to recognize the existence of hardship.

People live organic lives. Their houses are filled with clutter rather than the perfect, shining surfaces you see in hotel rooms, magazines, and movies. The recorded images of a life are always artificial. People are always smiling in photos.

The media AI uses to render its judgment on the human race is truncated. Artificial creations that are based on limited human experience do not reflect what it means to be human. People are left out.

Our media exists to sell things. It's not meant to show the truth. Privileged lifestyles are over-represented because the majority of people are living a lie.

I think we know this, and there's a deep longing to get beyond the veneer. I think we're tired of perfection. Instead, we want crayon artwork on the wall, toys on the floor, and magnets in the shape of letters on the fridge.

"Do you like my picture mommy?"

As AI becomes more prevalent, I expect it will only emphasize the misery we feel over our collective life of denial. When we see fake images every time we turn on a screen, or hear fake sounds whenever we turn on a radio, perhaps we'll be compelled to escape into nature.

We want to know about struggling human beings because life is struggle. What tactics have others used to survive? How can we help ourselves with their knowledge? What truth have they uncovered which might make this brief life easier to bear?

"Here's a picture of a beach made out of guitar strings beneath a neon sun!"

"No!"

We want truth, not sales pitches. We want freedom, not yet another contract designed to rip our soul from our body.

I had a dream with images that reminded me of a computerized rendering. It was a bunch of concentric circles marching and whirling like gears.

This bothered me because it's not representative of where my imagination usually goes. Growing up, I didn't spend nearly as much time in front of screens. In fact, when kids of my generation watched television, our parents told us it would, "Rot our brains."

"Go outside!"

Today, screens are more accepted. They're normalized. They're tolerated. Nobody ever mentions that our brains are rotting. But in my youth, I would go out into the woods and indulge in fantastic flights of the imagination.

I'd look at leaves and try to understand the pattern of the branches. At first glance, it appeared chaotic. But the longer you looked, the more it seemed as if there must be some sort of fantastic equation driving the growth.

You'd look at it all day. You'd watch the sun shine through the leaves. You'd observe an infinite variation in something as simple as the color green. Then you'd shrug and go home and not think about it. Nevertheless, I think those were the types of visions that would linger in our subconscious minds. I think seeking patterns in the afterimages of your memories is the basis of your creativity.

The light of the sun is exponentially superior to the light of a screen. Sunlight is natural light. It's a magical light that has flown through space after emerging from the heart of a distant star.

When digital music first arrived, people complained that it represented a sample of the wave rather than the wave itself. There was a fear that something was lost even though we were told the bits that were absent were smaller than the human ear can detect.

But maybe we listen with more than the ear? Maybe we listen with the soul. Perhaps live music is the only music that's true.

Today, we interact too much with incomplete digital representations. Inevitably, art of human origin will be influenced by AI renderings. We'll come to accept AI offerings as true not because of their quality, but because they have become so normalized. Artists are already creating offerings that are not immediately recognizable as human.

We're witnessing the erosion of imagination. That, in turn, will lead to the erosion of the human soul. We'll become increasingly blind to narratives we do not wish to recognize. We'll become even less capable of acknowledging the suffering that remains in the world.

Is there already music on the radio that wasn't created by a human being? At some point we might need to stop for a reality check. We might need to remember that human beings are authentic. Our intelligence isn't artificial, it's real.

It's time to create deliberately.

We should be mindful of the raw materials that are pumped into our idea generator. Instead of looking at a screen, take a walk. Consider the light of the sun as it passes through the branches of an ancient tree.

Spend your time writing not with a keyboard but with a pen and paper. Get the stain of ink on your hand. Seek out the pattern in the chaos. Then, perhaps when you dream, the images will be driven by the boundless reality of nature rather than the truncated lie we force ourselves to believe.

Our objective is to uncover gems that might be of some use to future populations. It's only by facing the hard parts that don't seem so beautiful that you can ever have any hope of discovering something meaningful.