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Where Are my Feelings Located?

Where are my feelings located? When I was little, we lived in Omsk, Russia, next to a large industrial plant where most of my family worked. My sister and I walked past it every day on our way to school, often wondering why the building was so depressing.

Decades later, while reading Owen Barfield, I realized that our childhood perspective was actually a remnant of an older way of seeing the world — which is still so common in children. Back then, I said, ‘The plant is depressing,’ rather than, “I feel depressed when I look at it.”

Barfield points out that a hallmark of modern consciousness is the internalization of feelings; today, when we see the morning sun, we say, “I am happy,” or “It makes me happy” instead of, “The sun is happy.” Even when we say: “The building is depressing” we mean to say: “I feel depressed when I look at it.”

What happened? Are my feelings mine, locked inside my scull or chest? Or are they somehow present in the outside world too?

The child does not yet sharply separate himself from the world — much like the ancients did not. For the child, thunder itself is menacing, the lake itself is calm, and darkness itself is terrifying. These qualities are not “inside” him; they belong to the world as he experiences it. Modern consciousness, however, draws a firm line between inner and outer.

“When we reflect on the history of such notions as humour, influence, melancholy, temper… it seems for the moment as though some invisible sorcerer had been conjuring them all inside ourselves — sucking them away from the planets, away from the outside world, away from our own warm flesh and blood, down into the shadowy realm of thoughts and feelings. There they still repose.” — Owen Barfield, History in English Words

We say, “Lake Tahoe affects me in such a way that I feel calm.” But the very word affect implies a radical separation between myself and Lake Tahoe. For something to affect me, it must stand apart from me as an external force acting upon a passive interior.

But what if affect is the wrong word?

If I say, “The morning sun affects me so that I feel happy,” am I not attributing to particles of gas more than meets the eye — almost a magical power to rearrange my emotional state? Can the happiness I feel before the rising sun be reduced to observable properties in burning hydrogen?

It seems not. Something “else” is taking place.

There must be a connection between myself and the sun — a relation that lies beyond the merely visible and measurable. The sun does not affect me as if from the outside; it is in me. My “self” is part of the world — yet not of the world.

Silence can be healing — not because the absence of sound waves contains detectable medicinal properties. Silence is healing because the outside world is a mirror of what is inside a person. Silence “affects” me because it resonates with my inner silence.

Sunshine makes me happy because it resonates with the sunshine within me. “Deep calls unto deep.” When something resonates, invisible strings outside me align with invisible strings within me.

And when I stand in a concrete jungle and feel heaviness, it is not because concrete possesses measurable depression-inducing particles. We feel depressed because nothing in us resonates. There is misalignment — dissonance rather than resonance.

Feelings are not merely inside; they are an echo of something in the “outside” world. They are a reply to what we perceive as “outside.” What happens when we perceive the world as singing — and ourselves as “singing along”? Something in us shifts.

We come alive and suddenly realize with Maria von Trapp that “the hills are alive with the sound of music.”

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Does AI Make Us More Human? Hans Christian Andersen on the Machine’s Triumph and Collapse

Does AI make us more human? In her recent video, Julia McCoy, one of the early pioneers in AI content marketing, says that she and her family made a conscious choice to move away from technology — to rural Tennessee, to a real flesh-and-blood community, to forests, to soil-grown food, to a church, to the mountains.

In her video, titled Mountains Over Microchips, she reflects on an uncanny trend produced by the rise of AI: the more advanced AI becomes, the more we humans begin to reflect on what it means to be human.

What is it about me that’s irreplaceable?

According to Julia, people are awakening to the unbridgeable gap between the real and the artificial and are making a conscious choice to move closer to the real. The more the artificial is forced upon us, the more we realize how deeply we desire what is real.

Large AI companies push the narrative: “Upgrade or die” — suggesting that if you do not jump on the AI wagon, you will become obsolete. And yet, Elon Musk was reportedly surprised not to see a flood of volunteers to test his new Neuralink brain chip — an interface between machine and human.

The human mind can be muddled by slogans; the human heart cannot. The heart senses a difference the mind struggles to articulate. As Julia observes, in 2025–26 more and more people have chosen to become homesteaders.

The “whole foods” movement continues to spread across the globe. The price of young hens is rising — people want real eggs and real meat. The rise of the artificial awakens us to what the real feels like. The artificial may fool our eyes — but not our hearts.

In our heart of hearts, we know that real art feels different from AI-generated one. We know that real bread tastes different from synthetic substitutes. We know that real, eye-to-eye conversations with flesh-and-blood people are vastly different from Zoom calls. We know that people in person feel different from the same people on a screen.

Screens are better than nothing, but worse than everything. And we, as humans, need everything.

Perhaps the simplest way to capture what is happening to humanity is through Hans Christian Andersen’s absolute metaphor in The Nightingale.

An Emperor in China hears about a humble nightingale whose song is so beautiful that it moves listeners to tears. He summons the bird to the palace, and its song brings him joy every day.

But one day, the Emperor receives a gift — a jeweled mechanical nightingale. It is dazzling and predictable, singing on command whenever the Emperor desires. The living nightingale is gradually forgotten and eventually flies away.

In time, the mechanical bird breaks. The Emperor falls gravely ill. As Death approaches, the real nightingale returns and sings beside his bed. Its living song restores his strength, and Death itself flees.

“And the Nightingale sang so sweetly that the blood coursed quicker and quicker through the Emperor’s weak limbs, and even Death listened and said, ‘Go on, little Nightingale, go on!’”

Death then returns all the treasures it had taken:

And Death gave back each of these treasures for a song, and the Nightingale went on singing. And he sang of the quiet churchyard, where the white roses grow, where the elder trees blossom, and where the fresh grass is watered by the tears of the living.

Then Death felt a longing for his garden, and like a cold white mist he floated out of the window.”

The Nightingale is the undying symbol of the real. When we hear, see, and touch the real, we come alive. Death itself longs to hear the real and will surrender its treasures for a song — the Song.

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How Did Aristotle View Matter? The Forest Beneath All Forms

How did Aristotle view matter? Aristotle’s main Greek word for matter is ὕλη (hýlē). Interestingly, hýlē originally meant wood, timber, or forest — the raw stuff one builds with. Why would Aristotle choose such a word to name the underlying constituent of all things?

What does wood have to do with matter?

For Aristotle, hýlē represented the potential — not actuality.

“Matter (hýlē) exists potentially, while form (eidos) exists in actuality.” — Metaphysics

In other words, hýlē is matter as potential — something not yet formed. This may well be the reason why the word was later translated into Latin as materia, derived from mater (“mother”). Originally, however, materia also referred to wood or building material, especially timber taken from a tree.

The proximity of materia to mater (“mother”) is not accidental: both hýlē and mater point to that which gives birth, nourishes, and brings forth. For Aristotle, wood is the most fitting metaphor for potentiality.

Just as a mother brings a person from potentiality into actuality — not by imposing a shape from without, but by allowing form to emerge from within — so wood (hýlē) represents something waiting to be shaped. Matter is not dead or mechanical, not a mere standing reserve.

It is something living that grows and reveals its potential in various forms. The ancients saw matter not as something we shape but as something that shapes us. Wood is not something we grow; it is something that grows us. That is why the first thing God did after creating Adam and Eve was to plant a garden in the East.

God knew that humans could realize their potential only among living things. It was the Garden that shaped Adam, not vice versa. The Garden was the womb that would shape Adam into the person he was made to be. As Adam tended the Garden, the Garden tended Adam. Adam grew the Garden, and the Garden grew Adam.

Humans grow only in the garden — that’s why we have kindergartens. We must have “adult-gardens” as well. That is what Elder Amphilochios (Makris) of Patmos must have felt when he told people, after receiving their confession, that their penance was to plant a tree.

Curiously, older descriptions of Patmos note that the island historically had very few trees. Today, there are areas of pine, tamarisk, cypress, mastic, and other trees growing naturally and in groves. The island is turning into a garden.

If you want to grow, you must grow something. Resilience to evil comes to those who, like hobbits, “love all things that grow.” The only way to overcome evil is to be rooted in the soil of the earth — which is “deeper magic.”

As St. Amphilochios used to say to his many disciples:

“Do you know that God gave us one more commandment, which is not recorded in Scripture? It is the commandment “love the trees.” When you plant a tree, you plant hope.”

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What is the Hidden Message of Groundhog Day?

What is the hidden message of Groundhog Day? I would never have thought there was something in Groundhog Day that I didn’t know. I thought I knew the movie by heart. Apparently, I didn’t. To memorize something means to commit it to memory; to learn something by heart means to commit it to the heart.

As my wife and I watched the first few minutes of the movie last night, she suddenly asked, “Why is the groundhog’s name Phil — just like Phil Connors?” Her question sent me reeling. How could I have missed it? Yes! Phil Connors is Punxsutawney Phil. He is the groundhog of the story.

According to Pennsylvania Dutch legend, if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on February 2 and sees its shadow, it retreats into its den and winter lasts six more weeks. If it does not see its shadow, spring arrives early.

Phil Connors is a weatherman—but he is under the weather. He’s fed up with people. He is under his own shadow, though he is unaware of it. His skies are overcast 24/7. Rita and Larry try to pull him out of his shadow, but he always retreats into his den. People drive him nuts — and into his “den.”

When you are under the weather, people always drive you nuts. You want to retreat, withdraw, and languish quietly under the weather of your own exclusivity. Your shadow grows large and frightening. You want to hide. Everyone with a big shadow has a den to hide in — from himself and from others. The shadow is a scary thing.

How do you get out of it?

Spiritually speaking, my shadow is always there until I become aware of it. It remains until I realize its presence. The moment I see it, it is gone. When I become aware of my own shadow, I look behind me and do not see it. My spring has come.”

Phil’s shadow is enormous. He hates his job, he hates his circumstances, he hates people. And like Punxsutawney Phil, he retreats into his “den” to get away from it all. He is not yet aware of his own shadow even though he lives under it 24/7.

So he hides from himself and from others. His “den” is his Groundhog Day. He is trapped in his den — in his own shadow — locked in a vicious circle. How do you escape your own shadow?

All vicious circles are broken the moment we die. All shadows are trampled down by death to self. The Paschal hymn —“Christ trampled down death by His own death”—carries profound spiritual wisdom. It foreshadows the death of the shadow.

Phil remains stuck in his “den” — February 2 — until he becomes aware of his shadow and agrees to die to himself. He passes through the vicious cycles of his own Inferno and Purgatory until, One Day, he finally lets go. The next morning he wakes up — and there is no shadow. It is gone! His spring has come.

Phil Connors is a “weatherman under the weather” who is unaware of his own shadow. That shadow binds him in a vicious cycle of misery until he recognizes it and… releases it.

The moment we die to ourselves, we are freed from the shadow. A new day dawns. And it is February 3. Spring is coming.

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What is the Origin of the Word Data?

What is the origin of the word data? What is data? Here’s a definition I found online:

“Data is raw, unorganized facts, figures, symbols, or observations that represent details about events, objects, or phenomena. As the basic, unprocessed units of information, data can be numerical (quantitative) or descriptive (qualitative). Once collected, structured, and interpreted, data is transformed into valuable insights used for decision-making.”

However, if you look up the etymology of the word data, you will see that it means “something given” — a gift. It comes from the Proto-Indo-European root do-, “to give,” and belongs to a whole family of words related to giving, such as donation, dowry, Pandora, Theodore, and even дар (gift) in Russian.

The difference between the modern understanding of data and its original meaning is subtle but telling. In our time, data is all about collecting information, as if it were simply there for the taking. In the past, however, data meant a gift — and gifts must be recognized.

For example, when I look at my legs, I can collect all sorts of data about them, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I have recognized them as a gift. Recognizing a gift is always a matter of awareness, not calculation.

Even if I collect all the “data” about my legs — length, weight, width, and so on — I still don’t truly know what they are. I only know what they are when I become aware that they have been given.

“When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?” — G.K. Chesterton

My legs are a given — datum. But my knowing what they are is not a given — not datum. Properly speaking, data is a gift recognized. All measurements and calculations made prior to this recognition diminish knowledge rather than increase it.

True knowledge is born from the awareness of a gift. The modern approach to data leads to the diminishment of true knowledge because it is not rooted in wonder — the awareness that we possess nothing yet have been given everything. Without awe and wonder, data becomes anti-knowledge.

What is anti-knowledge? It is a husk of knowledge, devoid of substance. Unless I recognize the gift of legs in my stockings, I live under the illusion of knowing. To know my legs is to experience the awe of having them. That is true knowledge — true data.

True data grants joy, not control or power. When I become aware of the gift of legs, I am struck by the joy of walking on them. If I believe I possess them by right, I will feel no joy. Joy is the overflow of awareness that I dwell within a gift.

Data is a given, but we cannot take it for granted. If we do, we fail to understand that it has been granted. Awareness of a gift is the only antidote to taking things for granted.

We speak of “harvesting” data, “processing” data, “owning” data. The language reveals the posture: reality is no longer a gift but a standing resource. And once reality becomes a resource, wonder goes. What remains is manipulation.

But gifts cannot be manipulated without ceasing to be gifts. To know the meaning of data we must turn and become like little children. A child knows their legs not by measurements in inches, but by the measure of delight in using them.

A knower is a lover, not a consumer. A lover doesn’t stand outside and analyze; he stands within and is astonished.

Recovery of true knowledge begins with a conversion of attention — a return to wonder. It’s all about learning to master thinking through thanking.

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What is the True Significance of Pilgrimage?

What is the true significance of pilgrimage? “Where are we really going? Always home.” — Novalis

The history of mankind is the history of leaving and returning. We always go there and back again. Never only there — always there and back again.

Somehow, we all know that if we stay at home, without The Adventure, we will never become who we are. We need the Road, the Way. We must find the “golden child” within — using Jung’s archetype. The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began, and it is a road “there and back to yourself.”

Any road can become a way back to yourself — if you recognize it as The Way, the Tao. People step out the door because of an inexplicable yearning, an inner urge. Whether I go to Tahiti, Yellowstone, or a park across town, I don’t really go to a place — I go to a person: back to myself.

Hermann Hesse wrote in The Journey to the East:

“Each man had only one genuine vocation — to find the way to himself.”

In the wake of World War I, Hesse became keenly aware of pilgrimage as the only way a person can remain sane in an insane world. We are all pilgrims, following yonder star. We caught a glimpse of it amid the fray, chaos, confusion, and disillusionment of our hope-shattering times.

It calls us by its otherworldly light to go and look for the Child. But how do you tell of such a journey? Hesse’s allegory The Journey to the East captures his uncanny experience of pilgrimage to the “Land of the Morning Star” — his quest to remain spiritually alive in a world gone mad.

What do we need in order not to go mad with the world, which Jung described as undergoing a “collective psychosis”?

According to Hesse, we need to remember. To recall the star we once saw and set out on pilgrimage. The way to the star is The Way. There, on the boundless stretches of time and space, we will encounter the real and the mythical alike. We will meet Melchior, Balthasar, and Caspar — the Magi — who saw the star too and embarked on the same journey.

“For our goal was not only the East, or rather the East was not only a country and something geographical, but it was the home and youth of the soul, it was everywhere and nowhere, it was the union of all times.” — Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

The Pilgrimage is something we yearn for and yet fear the most.

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” — Bilbo Baggins

Bilbo secretly longed for The Journey. Gandalf’s nudge out the door was not an act of forcing — it was the awakening of Bilbo’s own dreams: the desire to go there and back again. Bilbo had glimpsed “the star” before. He remembered its mysterious call — and he hated himself for not following it.

Deep down, he knew that the worst tragedy under the sun is not to go on a journey.

Hesse writes:

“Once in their youth the light shone for them; they saw the light and followed the star, but then came reason and the mockery of the world; then came faint-heartedness and apparent failure; then came weariness and disillusionment, and so they lost their way again, they became blind again. Some of them have spent the rest of their lives looking for us again, but could not find us. They have then told the world that our League is only a pretty legend and people should not be misled by it.”

To see the Star is a dangerous thing — it calls us back to ourselves. The world tells us it is “a pretty legend,” nothing more, but the heart tells a different story. The heart yearns for nothing less than to become a Pilgrim and join the League.

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What is the Significance of the Wave-Particle Duality?

What is the significance of the wave-particle duality? Wave-particle duality is truly fascinating. It’s where physics becomes poetry.

When we don’t observe an electron, it behaves like a wave; when we do, it behaves like a particle. Whatever we zero in on becomes discrete — turns into bits and pieces. Whatever we don’t observe behaves like a wave — Music. Why? Physics doesn’t answer that question. Poetry does.

Everything we zero in on becomes fragmented. The fallen mind perceives the world in bits and pieces. It wants to control by analyzing and manipulating. It believes that the whole equals the sum of its parts. It wants to understand the bits and pieces to control the whole. It fails. The Whole is always larger than the sum of its parts.

When we are focused on the parts, reality appears as discrete. It doesn’t yet show us what it is. When we stop zeroing in on its parts, it suddenly changes its behavior and becomes… Music. The Wave. It waves at us so we wake up from the illusion of control and attune to the Music of the Whole.

Is the world a particle or a wave? A particle when we observe it with a view to seeing its parts. And a wave when we stop looking for parts and look for participation. We no longer look at it but through it. The world becomes transparent. We see through it. It is no longer an idol. It is an Icon that reveals to us the mystery of the Whole.

The world is Music from the invisible realm incarnated in its many parts. When we stop looking for parts we begin participating in the Whole. We become artists. When an artist creates art, they may be looking at individual parts of the picture, but they must hear the Music of the Whole at all times — otherwise, no part will come out right.

All artists know that. You must hear the Music first, and then every stroke of your paintbrush will fall in its place. The Whole reveals to us the meaning of each part. We no longer zero in on the part itself to understand the Whole. We focus on the Whole to understand its parts.

When we start with participation, we understand every part. When we start with observing parts, we don’t understand even the parts. When we look AT the world, it is an idol. When we look THROUGH the world, it is an icon. We become perceptive of the Music from beyond the visible realm which gives meaning to each individual part. We realize the world is a huge Parable that opens up to us when we grok the Whole.

Werner Heisenberg said:

“Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables.”

And Albert Einstein:

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”

Our gaze is magical. If we look to see parts, we will find them. Our gaze will create them. If we look to catch the Wave, we will. When we catch it and ride it, we will participate in the Great Music, and everything around us will become a Parable.

“Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?” Jesus in Mark 4:13

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How Do You Conquer the Ego? Dante, Lacan, and the Power of Being Seen

How do you conquer the ego? The French philosopher Jacques Lacan says,

“What determines me, at the most profound level, in the visible, is the gaze that is outside.”

According to Lacan, it is highly curious that human behavior and self-perception drastically change the moment we become aware of being looked at. An outside gaze, when caught, changes us profoundly. No one remains the same when they know they are being seen.

Why?

Because we are revealed as human beings only when we are seen. The Gaze is the ultimate revelatory act. Dante says of Beatrice’s eyes in Vita Nuova:

“Whenever and wherever she appeared, by virtue of my hope in her marvelous greeting [gaze], no one could be my enemy; on the contrary, I became possessed by a flame of charity that made me forgive whoever had hurt me, and were someone to ask me any question at that moment, my response would have been, simply, “Love,” my expression clothed in humility.”

Dante had many enemies and yet, the moment he caught her gaze, no one in the world could remain his enemy. Suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, all inner struggle subsided, and humility arose — without struggle, as a response to the gaze. What Dante saw in that gaze was different than what Petrarch encountered in Laura.

For Petrarch — and many others — their earthly love was a distraction from God. Petrarch’s inner struggle was precisely that Laura competed with God for his heart. For Dante, Beatrice was not a distraction from God but theophany. There was no competition. Through her eyes, God revealed His own gaze.

What happened in that gaze? Suddenly, unexpectedly, Dante felt exalted and humbled at the same time. True humility always arises as an inner response to being seen. False humility is an attempt to bring oneself down without the awareness of being seen.

Such attempts are never successful. In fact, they only inflate the ego further.

True humility is a profound paradox: we feel most humble when we feel most exalted — in the Divine Gaze. When we catch that Gaze, we know we are singled out, made precious, chosen. That Gaze lifts us to the seventh heaven.

At that moment, the ego dies a quiet and happy death. We no longer need to establish or exalt ourselves. We already feel exalted to the highest heights. Unless we are exalted by the Other, we will inevitably attempt to exalt ourselves. The moment we become aware of how we are being looked at, the ego falls silent.

The Gaze humbles us by revealing who we truly are. This is the most humbling experience of all: to discover who we are in the eyes of the Lover. The Gaze humbles by extolling.

C.S. Lewis said:

True humility is not thinking less of yourself: it’s thinking of yourself less.

But it is impossible to think of yourself less without first being exalted by the Gaze. The Gaze lifts us to such heights that all our attempts at self-exaltation suddenly appear absurd. We give them up instinctively. It simply makes no sense to think much of oneself once we become aware of how we are being seen.

The paradox of humility is that it’s the flip side of being exalted — by the loving gaze. People think much of themselves only because they are unaware of being seen. The ego exalts itself precisely when it does not know how greatly it has already been exalted.

It puffs itself up and seeks to grow ever larger until one day — somewhere in the middle of the Ponte Vecchio — it lifts its eyes and is suddenly smitten by how it is being looked at. In that instant, it begins to laugh at its own efforts at self-exaltation.

All human attempts at self-exaltation are ridiculous, because if only we knew how greatly we have already been exalted, we would exclaim with Dante: “I am possessed by a flame of charity,” and we would answer every question with a single word:

Love.

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What is the Difference Between Facts and History

What is the difference between facts and history? When I read my history textbook back in school, I often thought: Gosh, there are so many facts about this or that person or event, but so little story. Isn’t history supposed to be a story?

For some reason, I felt that facts ought to cohere into a story. They didn’t.

The same thing happened just yesterday after I read Pavel Florensky’s biography on Wikipedia. The article lists many “historical” facts about his life, yet somehow misses the point of who he was entirely. Speaking of his last years before his execution in 1937, it states:

“On November 15, 1934, he began working at the Solovetsky camp iodine production plant, where he focused on the extraction of iodine and agar-agar from seaweed and patented four scientific innovations.”

The passage almost sounds as if he was simply assigned this work by the authorities. He wasn’t. It was his conscious choice.

Researching and extracting iodine from seaweed allowed Florensky to remain spiritually alive and sane in a death camp. He knew perfectly well that Solovki would most likely become his grave, and so he chose to pursue something that filled him with life. And he succeeded. Everyone who met him there was astonished by how much life this man radiated in the face of death.

Wikipedia missed the most essential thing — the Wonder he perceived, embodied, and sought in all things.

Four months into his term, he wrote to his son about the mysterious beauty of permafrost:

“What resulted were fairytale-like caves made of the purest crystal ice — radiant ice, fibrous ice, white ice, and at the bottom, reddish-brown, yet completely transparent… I don’t have the ability to describe how beautiful it is, nor can I draw it. One day, you’ll see a series of sketches of the columns and other details, but even those sketches don’t come close to conveying the beauty of these caves. I doubt that any artist could truly capture it — it’s too difficult a task. It’s better to read fairy tales.”

This passage tells us more about Florensky than all the facts combined. Why?

Because history does not consist of facts. The word history comes from the Ancient Greek ἵστωρ (hístōr), meaning a wise man or a witness. History is the story of a witness.

To know history, you must have seen something — physically or spiritually (or both). History is not so much the retelling of past events as it is the testimony about something seen. The “history” in my school textbook was not history in this proper sense. It did not consist of stories told by witnesses. It was a compilation of facts: who did what, when, how, and why.

Facts without vision do not make history. Witness does.

What was Pavel Florensky like? Reading Wikipedia is not enough. In fact, it leads one astray. To know him, I must become a witness to his life — by reading his own books or the accounts of those who truly witnessed him.

A hístōr is someone who sees. I must see Pavel Florensky inwardly while reading his words. Only then will I know true history. Facts are part of history, but they do not constitute it. The most important moments of history rarely make it to the official record. Wonder cannot be archived.

Florensky did not remain spiritually alive in Solovki by accident, nor did he “labor” there in the usual sense of the word. He bore witness — to beauty in permafrost, to meaning in degradation, to life where death expected to reign alone.

That is history indeed.

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Why Doesn’t AI Understand Context? An Insight from The New York Times

Why doesn’t AI understand context? Martin Heidegger famously argued:

“The essence of technology is nothing technological.” — The Question Concerning Technology

What, then, is its essence? Its essence is “enframing”— a way of giving us a particular lens through which to view the world. Modern technology is Gestell: a mode of disclosing reality, not a tool. It reveals reality as “standing-reserve.”

But is this true?

The New York Times recently published an article titled “Companies Are Pouring Billions into A.I. It Has Yet To Pay Off.” And Forbes echoed it with an article: “Companies Are Pouring Billions into A.I. Here’s Why They’re Not Seeing Returns.” Why is this happening?

The New York Times emphasizes the human side: employees resist tools they do not trust. Forbes zeroes in on technical issues: AI still fails to understand the context of work. Surprisingly, the solution proposed in both cases is itself technical in nature —training AI to “understand” context.

But can AI understand context? Context is what surrounds the text — the background that allows us to understand the true meaning of words, events, or ideas. How do you train AI to understand context? Companies tend to propose only one solution: feed it more data.

Yet, reducing context to data is precisely what Heidegger calls enframing. Context is not data; it appears as data when we look at it through a technical lens. But what is context proper? The word context comes from the Latin con (“with, together”) and texere (“to weave”). Literally, context means “a weaving together.”

To understand context, we must be weavers. It’s more art than science. To truly understand my friend’s words, I must artfully weave the individual threads of what I know about them into a single, meaningful picture. A weaver doesn’t simply assemble the picture from bits and pieces — they weave a tapestry from disparate threads based on the vision of the Whole.

A weaver cannot produce a coherent Whole unless they have first seen the Whole. True art is recreating on earth what we saw in heaven. We can only weave what we have seen — the Heavenly Pattern. AI cannot see the Heavenly Pattern. And because it cannot see, it cannot truly weave. That is why it cannot genuinely understand context.

All humans are Platonists by nature — we instinctively grasp the Idea behind every thing. AI cannot see Platonic Ideas, and therefore it cannot weave. Reality is not data; it is textile — fabric. It is not assembled from bits and pieces but woven from Logos-colored threads, revealing something that comes from beyond this world.

The employees in those companies are human, and they instinctively sense what AI cannot. That is why they distrust it. Will this ever change? To be able to weave — to grasp context — you must be able to see the invisible.

Reality is not data. It is fabric. It is a tapestry — a visible image of what cannot be seen by the physical eyes. To dwell in the world contextually means to artfully weave on earth what has been revealed in Heaven.