Left: Snapshot from the 1940's Disney animated feature, Fantasia, The Sorcerer's Apparentice. Right: Illustration inspired by Goethe Poem from around 1882 by F. Barth
SORCERER’S APPRENTICE ARCHETYPE
In this 1940s animated feature, Mickey Mouse, playing the role of an apprentice, puts on his master sorcerer's hat while the latter is asleep. He then casts a spell on a broom to do his chores for him, but soon loses control of it. Finally, his master wakes up and undoes all the spells.
This tale was inspired by a poem written by Goethe in 1797, entitled "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." Similar to Fantasia, at the end of the story, after the Old Sorcerer broke all the spells cast by his silly apprentice, he said,
"Only a master should invoke powerful spirits."
The Sorcerer's Apprentice has since become an archetype of its own and can be related to the 21st-century zeitgeist, which revolves around nuclear energy, genetic engineering, cloning, virtual reality, and the latest craze, artificial intelligence.
BREAKING THE ‘SPELL’
In one of his recent lectures, Professor Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli medievalist, military historian, public intellectual, and popular science writer, drew parallels between the rushed development and adaptation of artificial intelligence and our current civilization. He said,
"If you think about it like a car, when they taught me how to drive, the first thing was to learn how to use the brakes. It is a bad idea to teach you to go faster and then, when you are too fast, only then tell you how to stop."
He added, "This is what we are doing with AI. You have this chorus of people in places like Silicon Valley saying, 'Let's go as fast as we can. If there is a problem down the road, we will figure out how to stop.' This is very dangerous."
I have personally witnessed the sheer arrogance of this so-called FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) crowd, who warned those deciding to be observers first before adapting AI with the 'adapt or die' statement.
I have even asked them, "What's this rush in adapting AI?" to which no one has had an answer. I do. For profit. It is an old saying that you should not do things for monetary reasons, or you shall see the decline of things. But hey, it is how the world revolves now, unfortunately.
These things that have been rushed into our lives by these high-tech billionaires for profit are akin to the earlier example of going faster first without learning how to stop.
Akin to the old tale of the race between the hare and the tortoise, it is the arrogance of the hare that made him lose the race by taking a nap midway, while the slow-moving yet consistent tortoise won.
THE SPELL OF ‘SOCIAL MEDIA’
Without realizing it, we have a clear example today with the social media platform. Its adaptation into our lives through the use of the internet by these so-called Silicon Valley geniuses was clearly done without considering how to stop it when they lost control, which is what governments are trying to figure out today, as we speak. None of its "founding fathers" considered its effect on the younger generation, how it would affect family relations, and ultimately, the larger society. Only now are they trying to figure out how to apply the "brakes."
As the Old Sorcerer's character in Goethe's poem said, "Only a master should invoke powerful spirits." Apparently, none of these "geniuses" have considered the meanings from the literature of old, which contain lessons, hidden narratives, and subtle warnings. Learning from the past is something one should do in order to move forward. The failure to do so is one of the reasons why civilizations fall.
The pool where Narcissus admires his reflection (left) and the Evil Queen's Magic Mirror (right) is both an embodiment of a device which feeds on the narcissistic nature of human
THE SCREEN AND THE GRADUAL NORMALIZATION OF NARCISSISM
There is another saying that states that if you want to introduce and implement something upon a man, do it slowly. Do it hastily, and there will be resistance.
Back then, during the early 1900s, the act of murder carried a notion of total negativity and horror. Then, with the invention of film media, its projection on the big screen may have been horrific to watch at first. However, as decades passed, humanity has even laughed at it through the adaptation of comedy, satire, and parody of the subject. To the point now, the tools are available to commit it (through virtual reality and gaming) and laugh after doing so. Going back to the early 1900s, to laugh at the act of murder might have been reserved for psychopaths or bloodthirsty war generals. Now, the current display of genocide projected from the same screen is met with a desensitized and numbed reception due to normalization.
It is the same way that narcissism has been normalized within humanity. The term "narcissism" is derived from an old Greek myth about a character named Narcissus who falls in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. It is ultimately a cautionary tale about the dangers of excessive self-love and the negative consequences of being self-centered, which resulted in a personality disorder characterized by extreme self-obsession and a lack of empathy.
Now, all of us are living embodiments of the Evil Queen in Snow White, who looks at the magic mirror on the wall (our smartphones) and compares ourselves to others, with capitalists profiting from this weaponization of basic human desires, which are constantly fed into internet algorithms to further maximize their reach.
Thus, came upon us the term "Facebook." But no one figured its narcissistic meaning back then, right? And also, consider the symbolism of the Apple logo, which suggests that humanity has eaten the forbidden fruit and is now paying the price.
In "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" written by Philip K. Dick, real animals have become exceedingly rare, and owning a living animal is a rarity and signifies a higher status symbol and novelty. Perhaps soon, it will be the same for being a (real) human.
Learn how to stop before learning how to move fast. Also, remember:
"Only a master should invoke powerful spirits."
Perhaps, (specifically in Malaysia), we should stop sending lower-grade students into literature classes (kelas sastera) and higher-grade ones to the science stream. Apparently, both are interconnected to understand things as a whole, like in the extinct archetype of the old Alchemist.
Snapshot from Fantasia 1940. The apprentice learning how to stop the spell but it is a little too late