Charles van Heck's Woodhull Journal

Early one morning, I took a virtual stroll (more accurately, scroll) through the village of Richburg, New York. An article in The Wellsville Sun about a house on the market precipitated my walk. I decided to stop by the cemetery to pay my respects to family buried there.

A virtual stroll. While clicking the arrows, moving from image to image along the street, then searching among the graves, I paused to look around my study. Every day I read and work at an old desk, in an old chair, my feet resting on a faded footstool. During the summer months, a fan hums, occasionally flapping the pages of an open book or scattering sheets of notes across the floor. One wall is framed by a sliding door that leads to the back porch, offering a view of the yard and back pasture. A few days ago, the soy was harvested. I watch birds around the feeder, squirrels. The other walls are lined with photographs and heavily laden bookshelves. The truth is, I enjoy this room on weekdays, but prefer to avoid it on weekends, my days off.

While my attention drifted from the computer screen to the outside world, a question about reality formed. What is real? How do we perceive and distinguish between what is real and unreal? Which provides greater satisfaction?

My friend Matilda told me about the AI generated actress Tilly Norwood. Curiosity got the better of me. AI Commissioner | Comedy Sketch | Particle6  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sVO_j4czYs

I suspect someone is writing a backstory for Tilly, while an agent is already pondering how to market her (can we apply gender terms to an AI generated character?) to studios and ad agencies. But, as AI characters become more common, are they essential? For whom are they necessary? What makes them indispensable to our lives? What, or who, gives them integrity? Do these characters hurt human beings?

Traditionally, we distinguish between two types of reality: physical reality, governed by physics and physical laws, and metaphysics, which encompasses immaterial laws. As human beings, we attempt to understand ourselves, our physical environment, the world, and the universe. We raise questions and gather facts. We use mathematics and scientific methods. Metaphysics, philosophy is a contemplative activity. Philosophers, theologians, mystics, and others are probing the unfathomable depths to find a deeper meaning― the nature of knowledge, human dignity, and questions of ethics and morality. The science of physical laws and metaphysics overlap in that both are incomplete searches that require faith.

But what happens to human beings when we distort reality with artificial intelligence? There are those working in the AI field who will argue that they are neither misrepresenting nor dissimulating reality. This begs the question, “What exactly are you doing then?”

Artificial Intelligence is a valuable tool in education, medicine, labor-intensive aspects of clinical practice, manufacturing, and communication, among other areas. Yet, we need to be cautious of biased algorithms, context-free responses that are factually inaccurate or biased, the unfounded claims about human-machine equivalence, and the unforeseen abuses of AI to manipulate, control, and abuse people psychologically.

What is the psychology behind AI technologies? What are the ethics of AI technology developers? What are our ethics in their applications?

Carolyn Karoll, a Licensed Certified Social Worker-Clinical, observes, “Cognitive psychology has inspired core AI concepts, including reasoning, memory, and problem-solving. Even neural networks were modeled after the human brain.”

I spent seventeen weeks lecturing on Jewish mysticism. One day, as I was preparing for a talk, a man sat next to me. “Do you know that the study and immersion in the Kabbalah can lead to insanity?” he asked. In the Merkabah tradition, a preform of Kabbalah Jewish mysticism, the theme of this practice is ma’asah merkahab, which translates as “the mechanics of the vision,” or “the labor of the vision.” The Merkabah mystics stood, through ecstatic means, at the nexus of the mundane and the transcendent in the sunlight of the created world and in the shadow of God. They desired to recreate Ezekiel’s vision of the heavenly chariot to explore and recreate the prophet’s vision.

Humanity is at a nexus of the natural world and a “magically” created world. What is the full meaning and implications of the virtual, artificial world we are creating? What is the “labor of the vision” bringing us to?

And finally, why do many of these CEOs and developers leveraging AI need “magic mushrooms” and other drugs to optimize their ecstatic visions of a world they want humanity to live in?

Photograph: Rolling Homeward © 2025 Charles van Heck