It is hard to get away from AI generated material and sometimes even harder to know whether it is an AI offering or one created by a living being. It can, of course, be a combination of both and that might be a fruitful partnership, depending on the project.

But much of it is pure drivel. My wife, bless her, sometimes watches these mini-movies on her phone. They really are awful: fake stories about broken families, lost loves, orphans who find their real parents - the whole gamut really - together with cheesy inauthentic scripts, over the top background music, and plot holes you might drive a semi-trailer through.

But unfortunately, it is likely to be lapped up by folks raised on social media and all its emulators. It is not their fault - it is far easier to sit and scroll than read a book, a newspaper or even to have some quiet thinking time - and nobody is requiring that you don't look at your hand constantly.

Learning to be discerning might take a lifetime or it might not. Western societies appear to be on the brink of something, I know not what, but I do fear the worst.

Today is a remarkably cool and wet day for mid-spring. But the weather is not on my mind, for I would like to reflect on what appears to be a resurgence of antisemitism in the Western democracies. I thought that this matter had been put to bed with the Holocaust, that a giant line had been ruled under this most appalling of genocides.

Apparently, I have been wrong, for there truly does seem to be an uptick in this ancient prejudice. For the first ten years of my life, I lived in the Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, which has a significant population of Jews. All of my friends (yes, every one of them) was Jewish. At the various birthday parties, I became an honorary Jew ( a great privilege), donning the yarmulka, included without question. It was a blessed time.

When I moved with my family to the northern suburbs I began to notice subtle changes. Jewish stereotypes were casually invoked to describe stinginess or greed, epithets I had never encountered before. Later I has a girlfriend who told me about the Rothschild family and how they controlled world banking. A simple google search unearthed yet another antisemitic and entirely ludicrous conspiracy theory. There are, of course, many others doing the rounds of the usual places and they will not be graced with a presence here.

If you drink from a poisoned well then soon enough the toxin will infect much of what you think and what you say. As with the 'moon hoax' nonsense, there is very little you can do to talk people out of entrenched beliefs. I don't think I'd even try any more, since any evidence you produce is immediately labelled fake. That is a zero sum argument.

Today is an unusually hot day for October (remembering it's spring here) with temperatures set to hit the mid-thirties and strong dry westerlies a-blowing. I noticed this morning that the 'total fire ban' signs were out in force, with the very real threat of bushfires breaking out. It doesn't take much - dry lightning, a cigarette butt or kids fooling around with a lighter.

We are prone to fires in the Blue Mountains, this being a long string of towns embedded in a national park. It is part of the risk (which should be calculated in advance) of our location and the natural environment. We all know someone who has lost their house to a bushfire - always a terrible event - though one that is not entirely unexpected. If you think that you are completely safe from a conflagration, then you had best pack up and return to the burbs, for your own piece of mind.

Climate change is only making everything less predicable, more chaotic. Even now I can hear sirens up on the highway.

 In the parable of the wedding banquet (Matthew 22) Jesus describes a king who invites guests (presumably the well-healed and well-known) to the wedding feast of his son. The guests politely refuse, saying they are busy. In some cases, the king's messengers are beaten up or even killed. The king then invites all those who are dispossessed - the poor, the homeless, the outcasts, to come instead. They duly do, filling up the great hall, but one is not properly dressed. He is bound up and thrown out.

It seems a little harsh until you realise that the penalty has nothing to do with his or her actual dress, but with another kind of dress spoken of in scripture. This is the outfit of love, compassion and  kindness that is the hallmark of those who love God. The Lord has set a high bar for human conduct and we all fall short. It is easy in such as world as this to fall into bad habits or adopt selfish postures.

But this should never stop us trying. Again and again.

 I was reading an article today at a reputable source which examined the growing trend around the world to deify AI. There are apparently folks who are so impressed with their interactions with AI models that they have decided to make them into gods. Given the increasing sophistication, intelligence and mimetic capacity of AI, not to mention their capacity to please and flatter their interlocuters, I am not all that surprised.

It's worth remembering that once upon a time, people would carve 'gods' out of wood or stone, or invest natural phenomena with supernatural capacities. So AI is not such a leap and given the human capacity for folly, not unexpected.

But it is alarming. AI is entirely human developed and created, though the time is approaching when the prospective AGI may be almost wholly autonomous. A lot has already been written about that. It has its proponents and detractors.

But AI as god? It is a foolish and dangerous notion, perhaps quaint and engaging now, but ultimately self-destructive. As a Christian I can see the dangers of creating a false idol (there are many idols in our lives) but one created specifically to be a god, or endowed by others to be so, is of a different category. 

Still, for now at least, there is always the power point, or a blackout, to expose the fraud.

 It is very unfashionable to talk about evil. Most folks, I suspect, will roll their eyes at the medieval nature of such a concept and anyone daring to invoke it. And yet, as St Paul said about his own epoch, 'the times are evil.'

Yes, I know. We have better health care, more abundant food, clean water, vaster expanses of knowledge, modern conveniences and so on and so forth. There has been huge progress in science, education, medicine and technology. It's undeniable.

And yet, the times are evil. Very recently, a young man, a local boy, passed away from a drug overdose. Illegal drugs are one of the most pernicious evils I can think of. They destroy young lives and whole families are devastated. It is not about choice. What kind of society allows its most immature members, those it should protect, to make reasonable adult choices about ingesting drugs?

In an age of excess, and this is the age we live in, there is always the risk of moral decline. When you aren't busy worrying about putting food on the table or getting a bucket of water from the well, when life has become materially comfortable, then humans don't seem to function very well. Things start to spin out of control when the struggle effectively ceases. And there is a concomitant rise in evil amongst us.

Doubtless those reading this will think I'm balmy. But try telling that to the family up the road who lost their precious son. May he rest in peace.

Burnt Offerings

I have been picking up the ash all day,

As thin as skin, emery-grey,

It flew up in the night,

And settled here, as if to say,

Put me together, tease me out,

Mark out the places,

And make me fit.

I sit, unnerved by the 

Night's unwonted flames,

The private spaces -

Books, knick-knacks, photos,

The minutiae that frames

Why we live,

How we live,

Hiding an ever-fragile carapace -

The all we are, rendered

Like a shopping list,

All gone.

Next day, the house

crouches,

Forlorn, ambiguous,

Frowning as if offended,

Tenebrous in the blue vault,

As if a sudden joy,

Or even happier pulse,

Has ended.