Joseph Campbell Quotes

How terrifying and glorious the role of man if, indeed, without guidance and without consolation he must create from his own vitals the meaning for his existence and write the rules whereby he lives.

But man is freer than all the animals, on account of his free-will, with which he is endowed above all other animals.

What we can do should never by itself determine what we choose to do, yet this is the way technology tends to work.

Man must shape his tools lest they shape him.

So one begins to wonder what is going to happen to the human race. Technology keeps on advancing with greater and greater power, either for good or for destruction.

I make short films, little documentaries, about the co-evolution of humans and technology.

Technology is not destiny.

It seems like everything that we see perceived in the brain before we actually use our own eyes, that everything we see is coming through computers or machines and then is being input in our brain cells. So that really worries me.

All our inventions have endowed material forces with intellectual life, and degraded human life into a material force.

Increasingly, our decisions will be made by the algorithms that surround us. Whenever there is a big dilemma, you just ask Google what to do. And what kind of life is that?

Despite the relentless hype, I think AI overall is underhyped. The long-term effects of AI will affect our society to a greater degree than electricity and fire, but its full effects will take centuries to play out. That means that we’ll be arguing, discussing, and wrangling with the changes brought about by AI for the next 10 decades. Because AI operates so close to our own inner self and identity, we are headed into a century-long identity crisis.

[Humans'] capacity to intervene, to compare, to judge, to decide, to choose, to desist makes them capable of acts of greatness, of dignity, and, at the same time, of the unthinkable in terms of indignity.

If I am a pure product of genetic, cultural, or class determination, I have no responsibility for my action in the world and, therefore, it is not possible for me to speak of ethics. Of course, this assumption of responsibility does not mean that we are not conditioned genetically, culturally, and socially. It means that we know ourselves to be conditioned but not determined.

I don't mean you disregard every rule of your community. I don't go around naked, for example. I don't run through red lights. The little things, I can obey. But the big things- how we think, what we value- those you must choose yourself. You can't let anyone-or any society- determine those for you. ' -Morrie Schwartz

Although technology is proceeding at a dizzying pace, I believe that the human mind will always have control of itself. And since the human mind has a degree of infinity and imagination unlikely to be matched by a machine for a very, very long time, I don't think that we will become the machines of the machines.

Life is a problem; mortal man was made to solve the solemn problem right or wrong.

Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.

I am all for your using machines, but do not let them use you.

Philosophy is fundamentally about how you come to terms with living your life and trying to do it in a wise manner, and, for me, that means decently and compassionately and courageously and so forth.

The mechanical mind has a passion for control - of everything except itself. Beyond the control it has won over the forces of nature it would now win control over the forces of society of stating the problem and producing the solution, with social machinery to correspond.

Sometimes you might think the machines we worship make all the chief appointments, promoting the human beings who seem closest to them.

The machine does not control the mind of man, though it affects the mind of man; it is the mind of man that can and should control the machine.

Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.

I've always believed free will is a birthright. God even allows us to choose whether to be led by the divine order

I believe more than ever, machines will put new challenges, and that means we'll have to be more creative and more human, because that's the way to make the difference.