Before I wrote these words, I asked AI what subject I should choose for the first essay to appear publicly on my personal website. ChatGPT, now updated to 5.5, has been, for the past two years, one of my most perceptive and candid companions. It offered me a set of themes that seemed to understand, with some precision, what I hoped this site might become. I read them with inward agreement, almost ready to begin along one of those lines. Yet as I put on my headphones and let my thoughts settle into the music of Ólafur Arnalds, another question rose with the weight of history. It was not a passing inspiration, but more like the heavy strike of a piano key in the lower register: sounding again and again in the mind, and falling, each time, into the heart.
What, after all, do words mean?
What does one’s writing truly wish to convey? For whom does one write? What motive does the writer carry into the act? All this is rather like a motif in music: once the first figure has appeared, the whole movement begins to unfold from it. A narrow motive may turn even elegant writing into a polished form of self-interest. A motive of attention alone makes writing a zero-sum contest for the public gaze, from which profit is then drawn. And a motive formed merely by the fear of reproach may produce something mild and inoffensive, yet useless: a residue of information that harms no one, but offers no one anything of substance.
One answer commanded my full assent: Doris, you write for humankind — for the common good of humankind. If a person is willing to carry the whole of humankind upon her shoulders, she will also, in some sense, be granted the strength of humankind. If a soul can take upon itself all visible and invisible souls, holding within its responsibility the suffering, bewilderment, hope and dignity of sentient beings, then the breadth of that heart approaches, in some measure, the supreme awakened one, the Buddha. This is not self-elevation. It is discipline. It reminds me that once words are written in public, they can no longer serve only private expression, reputation, visibility or short-term gain.
The universe may be imagined as a vast and intricate field of information. Every human thought is like a trace recorded somewhere; still more so the words written by a writer’s own hand, words that may be examined, recovered, searched and quoted. What is missing from AI-generated writing, or from writing produced by human beings with the help of AI but without sufficient reflection, is not necessarily serious knowledge, rigorous logic, or fluent and graceful language. These things are becoming abundant. What is missing is responsibility towards humankind. History will not judge AI as it judges a human being. Even if, centuries from now, people look back upon this age, the source of error will remain human; history will return, finally, to the individual soul.
To be responsible for humankind means that the mission of words should not end with expression. Words ought to bring benefit to humankind as a whole, and offer spiritual illumination. Humankind here does not mean only those who live beside us now. It includes our ancestors and our descendants. The words we write do not truly disappear. They remain inside time: preserved by history, regarded by the future, and watched by sentient beings across the distances of time and space.
The most moving words arise from the character of the writer. A noble character, together with the responsibility that accompanies it, gives rise to a good motive; and through words, that motive may pass benefit to the reader. Goethe once held that the writer’s personality may affect an audience more deeply than his talent as an artist. I believe this. The principle matters even more in our own age. When everyone may become a creator and reach innumerable audiences, the influence of writing, short videos, films and every other form of content can be amplified with startling force. For a creator, technique itself will no longer be the true bottleneck. The real difference will lie in character, cultivation, and the judgement that grows from them: those less material, less measurable qualities that become, in the end, the deepest distinction.
This is why popularity alone is unworthy of worship. In the late Roman Republic, public life already contained a suspicion of popularity. Populares did not mean merely “popular men”; it referred to a political tendency that sought support through the people, often in tension with the older senatorial order. Those who gained prestige through that route, and who depended too heavily upon public applause in order to obtain position, could be regarded by the traditional order as dangerous and frivolous. To a certain extent, I share that suspicion, because popularity itself does not mean goodness or correctness, and still less does it mean nobility. A politician, a magistrate, or a creator may please the crowd through performance, stimulation, gladiatorial spectacle or contests of strength. Their fame may arrive quickly; yet it may be built upon the spiritual descent of others. Every creator today faces the same division: is one writing to provoke a reaction, or to leave behind value? Is one treating the reader as an object to be stimulated, or as a soul to be respected?
To write for the public good may not bring immediate visibility, nor immediate reward. Yet over time it may gather something else: shared recognition, trust, and kindred minds whose values answer one’s own. Such relations are not loud, yet they may leave a deep imprint over time. They are not a victory in the language of traffic, but an alliance in the life of the spirit.
The highest praise available to the writer of these words would be that a reader had truly benefited from them. Even if one day the words themselves are forgotten, but someone who once read them carries a little more clarity, happiness and serenity into life, then for the writer that would be the highest reward.
Doris