Are we losing our capacity for wonder?

I was a Catholic once and I loved it. I loved Jesus and I so appreciated the serenity and ground it gave to me feeling like I had a safe meaningful place in the world – that is, mattering in the bigger picture of my family, community and beyond.  It also oriented me to love and compassion as ways of orienting to life’s challenges, despite grappling with the reality of persecutory nuns, narrow-minded rules (and the rest of the problems which eventually dawned on me about the Church’s role in so much abuse).  As I grew, I couldn’t find any relevant handles of practice for me, and happily later discovered the richness of Buddhism, with its experiential practice-based inquiry – even as it opens me up to the nature of things being ground-less.  (Sometimes I long for that safety of believing someone is there looking after us. A proper adult in the room!)

The current Pope, a proper adult as it turns out, came out recently with an “Encyclical” –  a special statement addressing issues in the world and this time is it about AI.  What a blast to read such a document that speaks so eloquently to issues of our vulnerability as a simple, noble truth:  “even when machines excel in efficiency, a human face that asks to be gazed upon remains the center of our history.”

At the risk of speaking to the converted (!) Pope Leo’s analysis points to the structural economic and cultural systems that produce inequality and criticises development that increases the ability of some to consume more, while others pay the price in terms of exclusion and poverty. 

And he speaks of our relationship with truth and how when pragmatism takes hold and our communications become based on what is effective or useful, rather than making the effort to grapple with the complex business of what is true, it leads to a descent into totalitarianism. He quotes the philosopher Hannah Arendt saying the ideal subjects of such regimes are not so much those who are ideologically convinced, but rather “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”  

Leo seems to be an activist as well as being a Pope, using his place to speak the complex truth, not just a sound bite. 

If you are this kind of nerd, I really encourage you to dive into it, as it articulates the problem that we will all have to find our way with – the threat of a society in which we are alienated from our relationships with our own body and minds, as well as each other. And one which is even more dangerously structured by a powerful group, and where efficiency of a certain kind rules as a value above all else.

And what of awareness and meditation in this context?

Way before we had computers mediating our life, one of the main asks of meditation practice has been to notice where our attention goes. And what are the results of that: more or less suffering?  Now this question has become more urgent and necessary. When we are captivated by the optics on our devices, what is it we are longing for or avoiding? Is there real satisfaction, or am I left dangling with stimulation but no satiation?  What is real and what is the dream?  What is alive and what catches me in a loop of deadness?  What do I need to feel in order to let go, to relinquish this habituation?

If our attention is a precious instrument that literally creates our experience moment by moment, would we outsource that instrument to an algorithm which has only profit as its driving motive? I recently heard the term “human fracking” to describe what is happening to our attention. Ouch. Let’s not let that happen quite so much on a daily basis. Let’s rest our attention more on the complex intersubjective space of alive bodies – and our relations with people, rocks, trees, creatures, the vast sky and oceans. 

Empathy and bodies that can feel and suffer

I think of empathy as an act of imagination to gain some understanding of another. To stand in their shoes, so I can get a feel of what it is like to be them.  We have a body, and we can imagine ourselves into other bodies, and know how they might feel joys or difficulties.  It is a basic capacity of feeling for another, embedded in our evolution….maybe all animals that care for young have to have a kind of empathy, so they can attune to what their little ones need?   

This empathic attunement can nourish our relationships with the natural world too. David Abrahms writes: Humans are tuned for relationship. The eyes, the skin, the tongue, ears, and nostrils - all are gates where our body receives the nourishment of otherness. Sensory perception is the silken web that binds our separate nervous systems into the encompassing ecosystem. 

AI does not have a body. It can use language brilliantly so that we feel exquisitely understood – in a way that can easily nurture delusions about ourselves, and without any of the friction between people that leads to connection and growth. Yuval Noah Harari has spoken about the kinds of problems we might face in some years, when young children and teenagers have mostly been having relationships with AIs - where they might feel very mirrored and understood.  But what internal maps will they bring when they try and connect and relate to their own partners, and children when a perfectly attuned other (think toddler!) is not at their finger-tips? 

It seems timely to stand for ourselves and with others, finding any small way you can to protect your own mind and have some control over where and how you pay attention.

You can find Magnifica Humanitas here: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html

The God we Made: The threat and promise of artificial intelligence. 

https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2026/06/the-god-we-made 

If you are interested in exploring empathy and boundaries in your lived experience, come to the Meditation Lab on Sunday the 21 June.

In this retreat, we'll explore how true empathy doesn't mean absorbing others' pain or abandoning our own needs. We'll distinguish between healthy resonance (feeling with) and tricky enmeshment (losing ourselves in). We'll look at how boundaries aren't walls against caring—they're what make sustainable connection possible.  Even an amoeba knows this. Drawing on biology, sociology, and practices from insight and compassion meditation, we'll explore how to hold our own sovereignty while staying open-hearted.  https://openground.com.au/products/26-july-the-eco-system-of-the-self

—Timothea Goddard