Last night was supposed to be Episode Two. I had the topic ready, the direction was there, and I was prepared to spend some time talking about AI—not the fear-factor bullshit, not the breathless promises, not the endless “this changes everything” noise, but the actual human reality of living through a technological shift that is very clearly not going away.

Then the weather decided otherwise.

The power went out, the normal broadcast window disappeared, and what was supposed to be Episode Two became something else entirely. That happens. Especially when you are doing this live and building the thing in real time. I could simply pick up tonight where I intended to leave off yesterday and return to the AI conversation exactly as planned.

I’m not going to.

I woke up with a better question.

Maybe the real war for society is Cyborgs vs. Zombies.

Yeah. Sit with that one for a minute.

When I look at society through one admittedly narrow lens, I can see two very different forces pulling at modern humanity. The Zombies came first. For decades we have medicated damn near every discomfort, imbalance, pain, mood, behavior and condition we can name. Some of that medicine is absolutely necessary. Some of it saves lives. Some of it helps people function in ways they otherwise could not. I am not telling anybody to throw away a prescription or pretend doctors do not know anything.

That is not the point.

What interests me is the larger cultural habit of smoothing over every rough edge of the human experience. Somewhere along the way, we got very comfortable with the idea that if a person feels wrong, hurts, struggles, grieves, worries, panics, gets restless, cannot sleep, cannot focus or cannot cope, there ought to be something that can be prescribed to make that feeling go away.

I have personally seen what can happen when somebody abruptly stops taking a medication like Zoloft. In that particular case, it was terrifying. Anger. Instability. Behavior that looked nothing like the person I knew. That experience stuck with me, not because I think that one situation proves something universal, but because it made me wonder how much of modern life has quietly become about keeping the human machine operating instead of asking why the machine is struggling in the first place.

That is my Zombie side of the metaphor.

Then we have the Cyborgs.

Technology.

Holy shit, what a ride that has been.

I showed up on this planet in December of 1973. For the first twenty years or so, technological change felt almost polite. It moved, but you could keep up with it. Then somewhere around the turn of the century somebody apparently hit the turbo button.

Vinyl records became eight-tracks, cassettes, CDs, MP3s and streaming. Film became VHS, DVD, digital video, YouTube and streaming services. Letters became phones attached to walls, then email, text messaging, social media and smartphones. Cameras became something everybody carries in a pocket. Television studios became something one person can assemble on a desk. And now we have AI systems that can sit across from you, so to speak, and participate in an actual working conversation.

That is not science fiction anymore. That is Tuesday.

And the boundary between human capability and machine capability is getting harder to see by the month.

Some people are terrified by that. Some people want to strap themselves directly to the rocket. I am somewhere in the middle, because I do not particularly want to become a Zombie, but I am not convinced I want to become a Cyborg either.

Which brings me to the question I actually want to explore tonight.

Is there a third option?

Maybe the answer is not rejecting technology. Maybe it is not rejecting medicine. Maybe it is not retreating into religion, politics, spirituality, science or any other institution and handing over the keys to your brain.

Maybe the challenge is learning how to remain fundamentally human while using the tools available to us.

Mind. Body. Soul.

Those three words keep coming back to me.

Maybe that is the measuring stick.

Does this technology serve the mind, or replace it? Does this medicine serve the body, or merely silence what the body is trying to tell us? Does this belief strengthen the soul, or surrender it to somebody else?

I do not know yet.

That is the point.

I am still working out my own pie chart. Technology gets a slice. Medicine and science get a slice. Spirituality gets a slice. Experience gets a slice. Skepticism gets a slice. Hell, humor probably deserves a slice just so we do not all lose our damn minds trying to figure any of this out.

The danger comes when one slice swallows the entire pie.

That is when we stop examining things. We stop questioning. We stop thinking. We start joining teams.

Cyborg. Zombie. Left. Right. Believer. Nonbeliever. Pro-this. Anti-that.

Pick your jersey and start yelling.

I am increasingly uninterested in jerseys.

What I am interested in are two ridiculously simple three-letter questions that have become a pretty damn useful personal barometer for me.

Why?

And how?

Why is this happening? Why do I believe this? Why does this bother me? Why am I doing this?

Then comes the question that actually moves something.

How can I understand it? How can I use it? How can I make this useful? How can I take what I am seeing and turn it into something constructive instead of simply adding another complaint to the pile?

Those two questions are becoming a pretty good compass.

So tonight, Episode Two begins there.

Not with an answer.

With a question.

Are we becoming Cyborgs? Are we becoming Zombies? Or is there still another path available to people stubborn enough to remain human?

I have some thoughts.

And I have a feeling the rabbit hole gets considerably stranger from there.

Now, Go Play.

jim
08/07/2026