The AI in Walker Percy’s Malaise
The novelist philosopher, Walker Percy, was unusually
perceptive for his time when it came to technology. Though he lived before the
advent of the Internet, social media and AI, Percy witnessed how technology was
precipitating a massive shift in the way we thought of ourselves.
“You live in a deranged age - more
deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological
advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.”
Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
He called our loss of self “the malaise.” In a provocative
linguistic coincidence, if we highlight the vowels A and I in malaise, a word that
means “an indefinite feeling of uneasiness,” it can point to artificial
intelligence as the latest catalyst for our modern spiritual discomfort. As Percy
warned, technology can be a disadvantage to knowing who we are and what our
purpose is in life.
Percy was a medical doctor for whom Cartesian dualism (the
split of mind and body) was unwelcome. Contemporary studies are validating his holistic
view of humanity. The mind is not a disembodied computer. It is connected to
our whole person and our systemic health. It is connected to our microbiome through
a two-way communication network called the microbiome-gut-brain axis. We are
not just organizing data and making algorithmic judgments. Our whole body is activated
when we live out of our full humanity, make correct judgments, discern a
situation, communicate, and strive to live a moral and ethical life.
Percy knew that new theories of humanity, such as viewing human beings as information-processing
systems integrated with machines, as seen in transhumanism and posthumanism, point us in a
dangerous direction as we transition to a new age. Instead, we need to
know what it truly means to be human. Percy saw his duty as both a philosopher
and a novelist to “attack the fake in the name of the real.”
“The surest sign that an age is
coming to an end is the paradoxical movement of the most sensitive souls of the
age, the artists and writers first, then the youth, in a direction exactly
opposite to the direction laid down by the theory of the age.” Walker Percy,
Message in a Bottle
In his Apostolic Letter on Education, Drawing New Maps of
Hope, Pope Leo XIV writes, “The decisive point is not technology, but the
use we make of it. Artificial intelligence and digital environments must be
oriented towards the protection of dignity, justice, and work; they must be
governed according to criteria of public ethics and participation; they must be
accompanied by adequate theological and philosophical reflection.” 9.3.
In Magnifica Humanitas Pope Leo XIV emphasizes the
necessity of remaining human in this time of technological and cultural
transformation. Humanity in its grandeur and vulnerability must never be
replaced by machines, and people should never be reduced to mere data points or
optimized as projects. Pursuing technological innovation to eliminate human
limits, such as suffering or aging, risks an anthropological regression.
Technology must serve the human heart rather than cause it to regress.
Technology must remain a tool serving the common good.
This papal warning against an 'anthropological regression'
aligns clearly with Percy's own semiotic diagnoses of modern alienation. Percy explores
themes of the existential search and alienation of human beings in his novels
and letters.[1] His
insights challenge us to consider how technology is shaping our identities. He
would likely view AI as the ultimate expansion of malaise. “Why does man feel
so bad in the very age when, more than in any other age, he has succeeded in
satisfying his needs and making over the world for his own use?”
While AI can mimic human conversation, it fundamentally
operates on a highly advanced version of statistical prediction. In other
words, given a stimulus prompt it can predict the most likely response text. Recent
technologies have the means to strip away the mystery of human self-awareness
and meaning making if we allow that. In his book Message in a Bottle,
Percy explains that science only understands dyads (operating on a two-part
stimulus-response model). It can view humans merely as advanced organisms
needing their biological urges satisfied. Humans are, instead, triadic
creatures (triadic relations involve a symbol, an object, and a human mind).
Human language is a triadic event that cannot be reduced to chemistry, physics,
or simple animal communication. When we seek to know who we are and what our
purpose is in life AI may draw us forward on a false path of human discovery. Percy
knew that human beings rely on pre-formed symbolic maps, postcards, expert
theories, and media representations, to understand the world.
He believed that our symbolic maps inevitably fail us, because
language relies on shared, generalized symbols, it can describe categories
perfectly, but it fails to capture the radical individuality of human
consciousness[2],
leaving us feeling like “castaways” on an island. We are the only creatures in
the universe who can be physically healthy but completely lost, looking for
meaning like a castaway looking for a message in a bottle. He argued that
Christianity is the message that explains why we feel this way and tells us
what to do next. “The Christian faith answers that question by pointing to a
fulfilment that does not arise from a technological divinization, but through
God’s grace received in Christ.”[3]
As evangelizers living our Pauline Charism, we too are alert
when we carry out our work as Apostles using the media. Fr. Silvio Sassi,
former Superior General, wrote: “Our apostolate is not technology. It is a
spirituality which expresses itself in technology. The whole Pauline family is
called together to offer to the Church a spirituality of communication centered
on Jesus. Our spirituality is a mission.”
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