To Fly Too Close to the Sun
As you may have seen in the latest post of The Broken Binnacle, we are establishing monthly themes for our articles. If you did not see James O’Reilly’s explanation of our new system and how we hope it will enhance the experience of our readers, I recommend taking a minute to read it here.
Our New Plan for 2024: Monthly Themes
The theme for February is mythology, the collection and study of the traditional stories told by different peoples throughout time. Myths are not just fairy tales - good myths impart enduring truths to us. They are stories that are so fundamental to the human experience and natural world that they span across peoples and times. Tolkien provides an encapsulation of the importance of myths:
We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour.
While we may not be “myth-making” in these next expositions on mythology, we certainly hope that we act as ferrymen to the true harbor.
I will be starting off the month with a classic and well-known myth, the story of Daedalus and Icarus, a myth from Greek antiquity that is most known from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The myth recounts the story of the inventor Daedalus who creates wings for himself and his son to escape from the island of Crete. Daedalus had come to the island after being exiled from Athens and had been brought into the service of the King Minos. Minos loved having the intellect of the inventor close to him and tasked him with many things, including trapping the Minotaur in the infamous Labyrinth. Eventually Daedalus wishes to leave the island but is forbidden from leaving and is imprisoned, along with his son Icarus, by Minos.
Here's where the aspect of the story that I wish to dive deeper into begins. Daedalus, knowing that he could not depart from the island by any traditional method, studies the birds to see if he could mimic their flight.
In tedious exile now too long detain'd,
Daedalus languish'd for his native land:
The sea foreclos'd his flight; yet thus he said:
Tho' Earth and water in subjection laid,
O cruel Minos, thy dominion be,
We'll go thro' air; for sure the air is free.
Then to new arts his cunning thought applies,
And to improve the work of Nature tries.
Daedalus slowly works to collect bird feathers and materials, crafting wings for Icarus and himself. After they were complete, he gives a stern warning to his son. Daedalus warns Icarus not to fly too low, as the waves crashing could splash water onto the wings and weigh them down, and not too high lest the sun melt the wax holding the wings together. Daedalus helps Icarus affix his wings and instructs his son to follow him. The poem then includes the viewpoint of the impartial observers.
These, as the angler at the silent brook,
Or mountain-shepherd leaning on his crook,
Or gaping plowman, from the vale descries,
They stare, and view 'em with religious eyes,
And strait conclude 'em Gods; since none, but they,
Thro' their own azure skies cou'd find a way.
To these humble bystanders, Daedalus and Icarus are like gods, defying all the rules of the natural world known to them. Yet even Daedalus’ invention could not overcome his son’s arrogance and disregard. Before long, Icarus flies too close to the sun and meets his fate.
What Icarus displays is hubris, defined as extreme or excessive pride or overconfidence and is accompanied by a striving for that which is beyond or not proper to one’s nature. Icarus’ flying higher and higher symbolizes a yearning for something that is an improper aspiration. His ambition drives him to desire something that he should not seek to attain. Despite his father’s stern warnings, Icarus flies higher towards the sun. On archetypal level, the sun is a higher source of life; the sun is lifegiving to earth’s ecosystem. The sun is also a source of knowledge, and it is a central point in the heavens where the gods reside. By flying too close to the sun, Icarus shows an inordinate ambition for knowledge and power that is not in his nature to attain.
I began by stating that myths convey enduring truths. The myth of Daedalus and Icarus provides a story of hubris - of “flying too close to the sun”- and it has direct application to one of man’s latest inventions. This invention, perhaps more advanced than Daedalus’ wax wings, is artificial intelligence.
Now, something about artificial intelligence alerts the developed conscience. Yet, it is hard to put a finger on. What is it about this invention that sits unwell with our moral compasses? The questionable morality is observed on several levels. At the lowest level, man has made artificial intelligence to be generative, or creative, on its own. But that alone is not sufficient to qualify as hubris, as other machinations create. On the next level, we cede our own creative powers, our role as sub-creators, as tenders and stewards of the created world, to technology. But again, we have already done this with other machines, and we do not seem to have the same moral uneasiness. I contend that the reason it sits unwell with our moral compasses is on the next level, where hubris enters. We ourselves fly too close to the sun by creating a machination that is not only generative, and to which we cede our creative powers, but more than that, we have created something self-generative that has an effect on the world in a colossal manner, outside of our direct guidance. This next level achieved by the invention of artificial intelligence is the ability of the machine to hold itself in existence and continue to not only act on the material presented to it, but to continue to self-generate and self-augment based on its progress.
Here we see man acting with hubris, seeking to attain a knowledge and influence so enormous that we cede our creative powers to a machination and allow it to sustain itself in its pursuit of more knowledge – self-curating, self-augmenting, self-learning – along its way. This desire for knowledge is improper to our nature. Our participation in creation, as sub-creators, was designed to be a humble act, creating in cooperation with God and out of that which he has already put into the world. Our unrelenting ambition for more knowledge, to the point of ceding our creativity to a machine and allowing it to undertake a perpetual quest for continual knowledge, is hubris. The meaning of the story of Daedalus and Icarus holds true in our time – to fly too close to the sun will surely lead to a fatal fall.
If we were to put ourselves in the shoes of the angler, shepherd, and plowman that looked up and saw Daedalus and Icarus as gods, and took a long look at our invention, would we not believe that we are trying to make ourselves like God and by doing so, recommitting the original sin?
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