The holidays burn bright and burn a lot of people out. This year rolled through with many punches, so the goal is to make the holidays a little more human. But how?

PEOPLE DIE, and we still haven’t figured out how to replace them with a newer model when they’re gone.

The dopamine from new iPhones only lasts a little while. And the competition for best photo on the feed is the cocaine of tech. Little bumps are all you get. Carousels the neat lines on our glass screens that we take straight into the system.

Yeah, of course, this is the biggest Christmas cliche of all: to try to make the holidays more human.

The truth really is we should consider trying to enjoy our and our family’s own humanity before all we have are the ‘bots.

And now we wax philosophical: why?

Tech is hurtling us into the abyss

Heraclitus said, “No man stands in the same river twice.” Life, like a river, flows constantly evolving and changing every moment.

Heraclitus would have jumped right out of his toga if he was standing in filthy rivers of the 21st century.

We stand in a particularly rapid metaphorical river this year. It rushes with the break-neck speed of updates about our chaotic world. These advancements are our addictions. And there’s plenty of opportunity to get a fix.

The girls aren’t gossiping over laundry wires or tightly coiled phone lines. Being chronically online gets a constant download of chisme with a finger flourish.

Is this magic? Did we all actually get the Hogwarts letters we would have turned to the dark lord for?

And how much technology we’re creating on the daily is the hottest tea of all!!!

Tech is a staple topic across news genres.

It’s our daily accessory that we feel lost without.

It’s shooting toward the stars and exploding in “only 8 minutes this time”. Last time it exploded in 4.

Modern humans, we revere technological advancements with religious-adjacent devotion. Do you pray to Apple or Android?

All this e-waste will be a reminder of these gone-too-far holiday traditions of new phones.

Traditionally, phones were banned from the table. When did we stop doing that?

Why not make it a drinking game to try to leave your Phone Alone. 😱

Pregame the unplug by making something to bring

AI is expected to contribute $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. I know that because I asked Google’s early AI–Bard– and it told me that, along with several other bulleted points, within seconds.

$15.7 TRILLION.

Typing in a short question can unveil to you the world. So what if, for a day we decided to just not…

AI may be here to make our lives easier. In many ways it does. Like a new and improved SparkNotes, high-schoolers love ChatGPT.

But it still can’t prepare a homemade pie for you… yet.

TABLE TIP: Spend your phone time looking up holiday recipes that you can bring to the table. Tell everyone all about the recipe (since there’s always a story).

Frankenstein is ever-relevant

In Mary Shelley’s original story, humanity shows an ugliness in being cruel to an outsider. In building the “creature,” Dr. Frankenstein destined it to a life of isolation. His unchecked scientific ambitions created a literal monster.

Two hundred years later, man’s creations have evolved. Our connection to tech advancements awes us and doesn’t strike fear in us.

But does getting closer to our machines inherently make us farther away from each other? From our own humanity?

In the year 2023, engineers are already developing methods to allow machines to accurately generate human language. Bard told me that, too. These “natural language processing” (NLP) models help our robotic creations get closer to us. Cozier.

But are these advanced algorithms at the expense of human emotions?

Remember what not to talk about at the table

A little birdie let me listen in on a conversation in California:

Two wars, millions of deaths –
Overheard in LA memes about
the rising value of bitcoin.

“Who’s side are you on?” The upper west sider asks the yuppie.
“I’m not on social media,” she replies. 

The river of life has been flowing for millennia. The human race still needs constant reminders to love one another. The dinner table is not the place.

What is the success rate, anyway, for people effectively altering someone’s political or religious views over dinner? Is that what the goal is? Seems more like people just like to be heard.

We need other things to be passionate about.

TABLE TIP: There’s little need to debate foreign wars at your holiday tables. Read up on the culture of the people instead, or bring some of your favorite travel tales into conversation.

Create memorable family moments

Martin Scorsese famously makes movies about the horrors committed by men. He also infamously criticizes Hollywood’s superhero phase.

KING.

He questions how stories saturated with CGI could possibly have such a hold on the collective intrigue.

Let’s talk about A.I./
robot got more heart than I/
Robot got future, I don’t/
Robot get sleep, but I don’t power down.
SZA

Maybe this new world is looking for faith in something big. Something to root for, someone to believe will come to the rescue. Even if it’s only reliable for 182 minutes.

The world has evolved to give us hope and thrills while also allowing us shelter in place. The internet was a gift, keeping us all connected when the world shut down. It’s also a curse, an intoxicant.

It becomes even more dangerous when it comes to world events.

World events are just gossip. The quick fix that has intoxicated all of us who worship the new gods.

Looking to the past is a different sort of cerebral adventure. It’s more psychedelic to read history–arts! culture!–with its intrigue and puzzles.

This year brought a lot of desperation to our screens. A trip to the bottom of the ocean gone wrong. “Two wars, millions of deaths.“

But there’s people at our own tables and we’re becoming more estranged by the day.

The pendulum will swing.

We should all be showing a little more humanity every day. Start with the holidays.

But we know already–humanity forgets. History repeats. This is our curse. People need reminders.

Here’s yours:

You never sit at the same table.

You never stand in the same river, and it’s rushing.