What are we supposed to do when we receive an e-mail from someone whose name we don’t know, who shares their appreciation for something we have created, which the people we know and move among hardly ever mention?
I’m talking about a response to a book I have written; but I expect people who don’t write also encounter feedback from strangers, or from AI algorithms, that tell them what they want to hear.
A month or two ago, I was ready to pay someone to promote my most recent book after their e-mail communications captured—not only the plot and values expressed in that book—but presented this understanding from the perspective that the author (you, the one who spent a couple of years writing it) had hoped was present in your book. In that case, this connection fell apart after the mechanism for paying didn’t have the same name and just seemed fishy.
Now that I have received another e-mail that expresses the caring, the values, and recognition for something I have created, what do I do? Do I say, “No thanks. I’ve already gone down that rabbit hole and I don’t need to do it again.”?
Or do I take a tentative step forward, remembering my previous disappointment, but not closing my mind and heart, just in case I have been contacted by a human being who is the person they claim to be?
I always hope that when I post something that shares my dilemmas and thoughts (about finding myself in the strange situations that life in this society regularly immerses us in), I am not just dwelling on concerns that have nothing to do with the dilemmas and thoughts others experience.
So, how might my experience correspond with something more global than my personal fixations and projects? I’m not thinking of the AI bots that are now answering the phones and fielding our on-line searches for information—although the suddenness of that transformation is pretty shocking. I’m not thinking of the lonely people who are finding their best friend in chats whose voice seems to understand and appreciate them better than any living person in their lives—although I see that loneliness sweeping across our land.
I’m thinking of the choice that our society is now forcing us to make: between giving up on our capacity to trust that we can know what is in another’s heart; and remaining open to a stranger who stumbles into our world with a message we have left outside in the winds howling across a landscape we no longer dare to visit.