Bob Schwartz

What’s all the fuss about AI?

I’ve used it for years. Above is a picture of my robot at the keyboard. It/he/she has written so many pieces. Like this one. Maybe.

© 2023 by Bob Schwartz & ?

Literary people associate the title “The Bonfire of the Vanities” with a 1987 bestselling novel by Tom Wolfe, as movie mavens associate it with the 1990 box office bomb based on the book.

Michael Dirda wrote in the Washington Post about Savanarola and the original bonfire in 1497:

For approximately four years, from 1494 to 1498, a Dominican monk and preacher was first the conscience, then the virtual king of Florence. His admirers, indeed followers, included the Neoplatonic philosopher Pico della Mirandola, the young Machiavelli and the painter Botticelli. His two greatest enemies were just as eminent: Piero de’ Medici, that feckless son of Lorenzo the Magnificent and heir to his father’s dictatorship of the city, and that charming arch-sensualist Pope Alexander VI, among the most notorious of the notorious Borgias. The simple monk himself would pass into legend as the scourge of the rich and corrupt, a fanatical moralist, an accused heretic and, finally, a martyr.

Nowadays, though, people tend to recognize the name Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) chiefly because he instituted the original “bonfire of the vanities.” In 1497, this crusading prior of San Marco (blessed with paintings by Fra Angelico) berated the Florentines over the fripperies they wore, the salacious books they read, the provocative paintings they hung on their walls, the gold and silver jewelry that flashed even in the half-light of the sacred cathedral, all the gaudiness, luxury and lasciviousness of their sinful lives. Away with these snares of the devil! And so, rather than celebrate the last day before Lent with a lewd carnival, Savonarola called for the faithful to cast their “vanities” onto a great pyramid of holy fire. And they did.

I am looking at my bookshelves, thinking of the books and other media I have collected, read, watched, listened to, studied, and I am considering (safely) torching them. I don’t earnestly mean that. But maybe I do.

The Book of Ecclesiastes (aka Kohelet) is a favorite of mine in the Hebrew Bible, up there with Genesis and Job. In Hebrew it begins:

Hevel, hevel, amar kohelet, hacol havelim.

The famous King James translation:

Vanity, vanity, says the preacher, all is vanity.

But the Hebrew hevel is a mystery and challenge to translators, who have tried a number of English words, including:

Absurdity
Utter futility
Senselessness
Meaninglessness
Breath
Vapor

So what exactly would a bonfire of the vain, absurd, futile, senseless, meaningless look like for me?

If Savanarola reminds you of some of the current high-profile figures trying to claw us back to a less enlightened time, you’ve got that right. With some appropriate conditions, people as a whole should be able to share in whatever is on offer. (Did Boticelli really not want us to see The Birth of Venus more than five hundred years later?)

But as individuals, even the best of it may not be the best for us at any given time. I don’t have to actually set fire to these books as long as I watch my use of and attachment to them. Discern.

© 2023 by Bob Schwartz