It isn’t only what you do that matters, it’s how you do it. Humanity has fine objectives but has slipped into an unacceptable mode of behaviour. The American President is an example of this. Many of the things he wants to achieve are desirable. His chaotic methods of achieving them are unacceptable. In the process people’s lives are disrupted with pain, anxiety and discomfort at levels that are not compatible with a civilised society.
The ends do not justify the means.
Take the Trump Tariff Trauma. The President was correct in thinking that the United States has been expected or obliged or conned into excessively supporting other countries of the world. It doesn’t matter if you think it wasn’t excessive or if you imagine America got good reciprocal benefits. An adjustment was clearly called for. Sensible discussion leading to phased, moderate changes would have been the right way to achieve it. It’s being done wrong.
Take the launch of Artificial Intelligence. If AI had been some new species of rabbit every country in the world would have introduced rigid restrictions on its import. New Zealand would never have allowed it in at all. AI is infinitely more threatening to human survival than taxonomic revision of a mammalian. And yet it is free-ranging, completely out of control. It will create a new species of human. Where is the plan for that?
You and I have an ability to think. Using it developed a civilisation. Not, you may think, an overwhelmingly decent one but one that allowed the possibility of productive, useful lives for the only journey we are certain we will make. As we watch it on our screens we see it being torn apart, gutted into trashy processes, mangled as if a rainforest, desolate as Gaza. We watch this as we employ the technology to create a new creature. And we are creating one.
Five years ago, partly as a result of the pressure of a common enemy, Covid, the world began a tentative and nervous tip-toe towards greater cooperation. The medium was, sensibly, trade. We could see that our rapid advance in communications was not only a benefit but also a threat if we remained divided. Contrasting cultures had to learn to live together to jointly handle climate disruption and to cope with universal access to knowledge.
We have abandoned cooperation in favour of massively armed blocks of nations vying for what seems to be ‘Supreme Control’. A moment’s thought makes it obvious that universal knowledge and communications renders the concept idiotic. There can be few places more controlled than North Korea and even there the single candidate voters are restless.
We have developed an intelligence that is equal to, and rapidly becoming superior to, our human best. Unless we are willing for it to control us we must have a standard that because of its technical limitations AI cannot match. Traditionally we have been taught that compromise of morality was fatally immoral and that of emotional maturity was weak.
In Part 2 of this Daily Paradox I shall explain how such compromise will look.
And what we must do to create it.
Good morning
John Bittleston
Always happy to have your views. As far as this subject is concerned may I suggest that they follow Part 2? This is just the hors d’oeuvres. The next part is the tenderloin.
10 September 2025
