Kicking The Robot Dog: On Selective Animism & Artificial Intelligence (Part I)

We seem to live in an age of selective animism.

Some things we consider to be alive and others we don’t.

For example, I recently saw a video of some young men kicking a robot dog.

The comment on the video was “WOW DUDE THIS #ROBOT ABUSE NEEDS TO #STOP BEFORE IT TOO LATE TBH!!! YAL THINK THIS IS OKAY OR NAH!? ”

I imagine that, in the technocratic and transhumanist future that is rushing towards us all (and towards which many are, themselves, rushing), this sort of thing will be a growing concern: ‘robot rights’ and ‘robot abuse’.

Conversations will be had as to whether artificial intelligence is really alive (or intelligent) and about, “what exactly constitutes ‘alive’ anyway?” and “Why can’t a machine be alive?” or “Is the life of a machine worth as much as the life of a human?” or “If a robot is alive, can it be abused, hurt or, even, killed?”

Conversations about inclusion may soon have to contend with whether or not robots are included or not.

Children will ask their mothers who the mother of the robot dog is and what kind of foods they eat and the mother will have to find her way towards answering that child.

Political scientists, activists and sociologists will, no doubt, ask us to wonder after, “Who profits from such a dog being in the world? Was the whole truth told about their reasons for being made? If these dogs are guard dogs, then what, or whom, are they guarding?”

And many will sit and stare at those robot dogs (you know that more are coming) as they walk down the street wondering, “What does such a dog ask of us? What does such a dog reveal about us and the society we live in? What befell a people that such a dog would appear and seem worthy of our pity and protection when being kicked at?”

That’s me. I’m sitting and staring. I’m trying to take it in.

Here’s what strikes me most: I think that the concern about abusing robots misses a deeper truth that robots are, already, a form of abuse of the natural world as all machines are.

Robots are a manifestation of abuse. They are also evidence of a much deeper and more pervasive abuse that has already happened and that their existence is predicated upon.

The abuse of the natural world.

*

I am remembering what Toby Hemenway, a permaculturist, said, “It takes a large tree to produce enough heat to melt the ore to get enough metal to make something the size of a belt buckle.”

I can testify to that. I saw it once.

It was in Wales in 2019.

One of us, a young man from Ontario, had been entrusted with finding us some copper ore. He ended up having to search the world for it. He never imagined it would be so hard but centuries of mining have brought us to that. There’s not much left. What’s left isn’t easy to find or to get.

The only piece he could find was a rock the size of two fists on someone’s shelf in Africa. He never told us what he paid to get it but I don’t think it was cheap.

We had spent the day making charcoal, burning a large pile of wood until there was only coal left. That coal burns much hotter than wood. And then we buried it and sang to it for a while – feeling awkward and unsure of ourselves the whole time – before digging it up and carrying it to a hole that had been dug in the ground and lined with flat stones. The copper containing rock was pulverized and ground into smaller bits and powder. This was then poured into the hole over the coals.

I can’t remember how long we sat but it was for hours and we were singing to it the whole time as the heat coaxed the copper out of the stone.

And then came the request for water to cool it off. I ran to get some, somehow imagining that my one thermos filled with water would do it. Over the next half hour, there was a seemingly endless train of thermoses and water bottles being brought and poured over the coals and the now congealing copper as steam erupted from that little hole.

I was staggered.

The next morning, in the local community hall where we were meeting, the young man brought us the smelted copper. No more than the tip of a pinky finger, if that. The rest was what they called ‘slag’ or ‘waste’. We were each entrusted with a bit of it to take home and place on our altars to remind us of the cost of things.

I remember thinking of the time, the effort, the water and how much wood had gone into producing this small amount of copper.

I thought of how much deforestation, centuries ago, must have been done to feed the forges.

Days later, on the train to London, filled with day-drinkers heading to the Spice Girls reunion concert, the young man who had tended that fire and obtained the stone reflected on how, if I remember his words correctly, that the first known generation or so of carbon steel scythes were left in the ground unused. They were forged, crafted beautifully and then buried. There wasn’t event a scratch on them.

It’s not uncommon in traditional cultures that, the first time you ever make something, that thing is to be offered as a gift. You don’t keep it for yourself. If you make your first drum, no matter how much you love that drum, it must be given to someone else.

He pointed out that, in some traditions, when offering beads made from seashells to the local spirits or your ancestors that the beads themselves were for the gods. The powder left over? That was for your altar. I thought of the slag leftover from the smelting for our altars wrapped in paper towel in my bags as we spoke.

Perhaps those scythe makers understood it in the same way – the beauty of those first steel scythes was for the gods. The slag was for their altars to remind them of the staggering cost of what they had just done.

*

When traditional people extracted ore from the Earth for early metallurgy – there was a deep reverence – some understanding perhaps of what was being asked of these old ones being lifted from the Earth and the duty into which they were being pressed.

The early metallurgists were seen as shamans. What they did was a kind of magic.

I recall seeing an article pointing out that one of the oldest folk tales known in Europe featured a blacksmith.

I recall being shown one book about places in Africa where this was still practiced in this way and how the forge was seen, and shaped, as a womb. The same herbs gathered and used in child birth were gathered as used for this process too. Like birth, there were no guarantees. Like birth, things could go wrong. Like birth, immense attention needed to be paid to the mother and to the little one, still growing inside her. The process of metallurgy was, and in places still is, a deep ceremony.

This art of metallurgy may be what was being spoken about in the old tales of ‘pulling the sword from the stone’ in Arthurian legend: the one who could extract metal from rock would become king. Certainly, the bronze age proved that to be true. The argument could be made that, without metallurgy there would be no kings at all.

While we are speaking of swords, here’s a thought to think: A sword has a kinship with the human hand. It extends and sharpens its capacity to devastating and deadly effect. One life, the sword, connecting with another life, the human hand. Maybe the metal becomes glad of being above ground in the form of a blade some days. Maybe it dreams of going back down under some days. I don’t know. But I do know that, in traditional craft, there is a relationship there.

Life to life.

In traditional cultures, swords were often named. Some times they were passed on to children. Sometimes they were buried with the carrier. Some mercy being offered to them both, a chance to finally rest again in the Earth from which they both came. “Thank you for joining us for a while,” they might have said as they laid them down. “Now you have some stories to bring to them down there. I hope you will speak well of us. Tell them we still miss them and speak of them. Tell them we are glad you came.”

From an animist perspective (one who understands that everything is alive – and, even deeper, that there are no ‘things’ only living beings, and peoples and nations in different forms), the metal was seen as alive already. From an animist perspective, humans are not here to grant life but to recognize it and give thanks for it. Humans are witnesses to the holy, not the crafters of it.

As Mary Oliver wrote:

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

By the time we get to the conversation about ‘robot rights’ the understanding has already long been entrenched that the metals that make the robot are ‘dead’. Ah, but humans, by bringing them together in a certain way, can grant them ‘life’. The metal is dead. The robot is alive.

The inanimist understanding (one who sees the world as, fundamentally not alive) is that we, humans, confer animacy, sacredness and life to the metal by making it move and operate in the ways we want it to – in ways that resemble biological life. If it looks and moves like we do – then it might just be alive. If it doesn’t, it likely isn’t. Consider the ways in which robots are coming to look and move more and more like us or our pets.

The inanimist could imagine that the puppet is brought alive by the puppeteer but not that the puppet already is alive. The animist knows that the wood, and the thread and the cloth and the paints…. Those were all alive already before that puppeteer showed up and put them together in the form they did.

Unlike a sword, by the time we come to ‘robot’, there is no human hand anymore. There are no ‘strings’ being pulled by a human puppeteer. There is no relationship or kinship to humans. There is AI and algorithm. There is control. There is enslavement of the metal and machinery to programs and protocols.

*

There is a question that inanimists don’t consider worthy of asking: does metal want to be a robot?

You might consider this: in his book Returning to the Teachings, Rupert Ross writes,

“Basil Johnston speaks of the Ojibway hierarchy of Creation in Ojibway Heritage. It is not based on intelligence or beauty or strength or numbers. Instead, it is based on dependencies. It places the Mother Earth (and her lifeblood, the waters) in first place, for without them there would be no plant animal or human life. The plant world stands second, for without it there would be no animal or human life. The animal world is third. Last, and clearly least important within this unique hierarchy, come humans. Nothing whatever depends of our survival. So much seems to flow from that focus on dependencies. Because human beings are the most dependent of all, it is we who owe the greatest duty of respect and care for the other three orders. Without them, we perish. Our role is therefore not to subdue individual parts of them to meet our own short-term goals, for that may disturb the balances between them. Instead, our role is to learn how they all interact with each other so we can try our best to accommodate ourselves to their existing relationships. Any other approach, in the long run, can only disrupt the healthy equilibria that have existed for millions of years and which, obviously enough, created the conditions for our own evolution.”

And so, humans are new to this world. Though we deeply belong here, we are the closest thing there is to a guest in this world. We have been welcomed into something. Even in Genesis, the world was here before us. We were born into it. It was not born from us. It is not here for us.

First there was the soil.

Then animals discovered how to carry the soil within them so they could move.

Then humans came – the forgetful and foolish little brother – and seemed to need to craft another type of culture that could remind them how to be human.

But, before all of it, there was the Earth’s mantle. There was metal.

Metal is older than us. It is that one who is ‘older than dirt’. It is our ancestor. It’s not here for us.

Nothing is here ‘for us’ as humans.

So what does metal want?

That’s a question worthy of pondering over the generations but since, I’m wondering out loud, this is what comes to me.

It seems to me that metal generally likes to sit very still and, if it moves at all, it is through eruption and earthquake. It has its own nature to it – utterly unrecognized or respected by the mechanists, industrialists and robot manufacturers. Do the metals want to be harnessed to the regulated and repetitious rhythms of relentless industry? Do they want to be turned into machines that manufacture cheap plastic toys? Do they want to be turned into machines used in sweatshops to manufacture ‘fast fashion’? Do they want to be shackled to industries that destroy our health, well being and sanity? Do they want to be turned into machines that shred our natural world? Do they want to be pressed into this kind of service? Is this a kind of torture for them or is this a kind of abuse of those old ones? What are we asking of them? Do they get lonely for the ground? What do we ask of them when we pull them out of the ground? I don’t know. But I wonder about it.

What does metal want? And do we care?

(continued in Part II)