Are We Human or Computer-Generated?

The Importance of Empathy

Rejections update for 2025: I received nine rejections in January, and one for February so far!

And in the last two days, I’ve newly submitted six stories to journals, giving me a total of 18 stories out for submission right now, so more rejections should be rolling in soon!

Some R & R (and a Bit of Argh)

A selfie from 2-3-25, upon my arrival to the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow.

This week I’m at a writing residency at the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where, so far, I’ve thrown myself into—you guessed it—writing (which is why I’ve been able to get six stories submitted this week)! It’s a wonderful feeling to wake up and know that the only thing I need to do today is write. No stress, no worries.

Okay, the last part isn’t completely true, as I’m not fully removed from what’s happening politically. But there’s a definite peacefulness to being, if only for a week, in a town full or artists, where signs (both literally and figuratively) of inclusivity are prominent. In fact, according to this iloveureka.com post about being a “blue dot in a red sea,” Eureka Springs “has long attracted a mix of artists, free thinkers, and individuals who value inclusivity.”

Not only that, but it’s a unique and picturesque mountain town—an all-around pleasant place to be!

I want to talk about writing, not politics, but the two things are not mutually exclusive. Art, many say, is always political. According to this post about Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, “The personal is political because we all live in a society where power circulates and impacts on each of us in different ways. The subject matter of the art does not have to be overtly political.”

What that means to me is that we are all affected by politics—some much more negatively than others—even if we don’t realize it; the art we produce will reflect, in some way, the point in time in which we live (as well as the way we live). For this reason, it will always make some kind of social statement.

The Personal Is Political: A Very Brief Look at Czech Literature

I’ve studied Czech literature to some extent, even teaching a half-semester class on the subject back in 2018. A few years before I taught the class, I had somehow stumbled across novels by Josef Skvorecky (1924-2012), one of the few Czech authors whose books were widely available in English.

My interest in Skvorecky grew when I discovered that he had interviewed my great-grandmother and great-uncle in the 1980s for his novel Dvorak in Love, which takes place (in small part) in my dad’s hometown of Spillville, Iowa, where the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak spent time during the summer of 1893. My great-grandmother was around 11 or 12 at the time and had (allegedly) played with Dvorak’s children.

Though he hadn’t yet been born when Dvorak was in Spillville, my great-uncle, Cyril Klimesh, was our family historian and wrote the book They Came to This Place: A History of Spillville, Iowa, and Its Czech Settlers (1983), which detailed not just the Klimeshes’ immigration to Iowa from Bohemia in the mid-1800s, but other Czechs’ as well. (“They came to this place” is a reference to a quote made by Dvorak.)

Skvorecky actually used many of the details from Cyril’s book, fictionalizing them for his novel. There is even a character named “Klimesh” (no first name) in Dvorak in Love, whom I believe is loosely modeled after my great-great-grandfather.

Skvorecky’s writing challenged the Communist regime of Czechoslovakia, and many of his books from the 1950s were banned or censored by Communist authorities. Still, his democratic ideals helped nurture the Prague Spring movement; his writing made a notable difference! (That’s presumably why his books were banned/censored.)

In 1968, Skvorecky fled Czechoslovakia for Canada when Communist rule was restored after the end of Prague Spring. In Canada, Skvorecky founded a publishing house with the goal of publishing banned Czech authors; among the authors he published were Milan Kundera and Vaclav Havel. I think most people are familiar with Kundera’s work (or have at least heard of him), and, of course, Havel was the first democratically elected president of Czechoslovakia (and, subsequently, the Czech Republic). He was also a well-known playwright.

To be clear, I am not comparing the Communist regime of the former Czechoslovakia to the nightmare currently happening in the US. My point, though, is that words are powerful and necessary and that, as artists and thinking people, it is impossible to bury our heads in the sand in times of upheaval, even if we want to.

The personal will always be political.

(To keep up with the current hellscape of US politics, I highly recommend following Heather Cox Richardson.)

The Role of Empathy in Humanity

I saw a quote (in a meme) the other day that said something about evil being the absence of empathy. The quote was obviously directed at the current administration, and while there is certainly some truth to it in regards to the current administration (which I certainly consider evil, immoral, and devoid of empathy), a lack of empathy does not inherently make one evil. One becomes evil due to their actions (as well as their inactions).

In a collage workshop I attended a couple of months ago, I made this collage:

“looking to cultivate poetry, music art & scholarship— / the source of healing / to make textured thoughts / are we human. or computer-generated”

Though the collage’s wording was somewhat accidental—I was not trying to write any specific message—I’ve found myself asking this question a lot, and maybe even more so since January 20: Are we human or computer-generated?

One of the purposes of writing—of all art, I believe—is communication of some kind. There are certainly other reasons to create, but I find that, at its heart, art is about a message of some sort, even if what is being communicated is not clear (even to the artist), even if it’s open to interpretation. As creators, we often let our subconscious do the heavy lifting, so what comes out on the page is often surprising (to us), but it’s generally reflective of something inside of us, sometimes something so deep inside of us that we don’t even know where it came from.

My undergrad degree is in communication, and I remember thinking in an interpersonal communication class that I took that so much of the information was common sense. Some of it is, but there are also a lot of complexities to communicating. Perhaps my all-time favorite class as an undergrad was an advanced rhetoric class. Simplistically, rhetoric is really about learning to think critically. It’s about discernment, expanding your perspective on things, on life. Looking beyond simple platitudes.

Computers, i.e., artificial intelligence, cannot do this. AI does not have—and can never have—the capability for empathy and critical thinking/human discernment. It is empathy and our own unique views of the world (based on our lived experiences) that make us not just thoughtful human beings, but also thoughtful writers (and artists). AI cannot replicate our own experiences and thoughts and emotions. It cannot get to those hidden metaphors that surprise us in our writing. It doesn’t know what is personal to us. Thoughtfulness—empathy—cannot be replaced by a machine.

The current (felonious) administration does not want people to think critically or to have empathy. It’s only about power; it’s only ever been about power for them. And they like people they can control. That’s why they target people they perceive as weak; it’s how they manipulate people.

In school, I was always taught to ignore bullies. To be the bigger person. Just ignore them. Probably a lot of us were taught this.

But we can’t ignore what’s happening. We have to protect our neighbors, near and far—friends, loved ones, and strangers alike.

Caring is part of the human experience.

Are we human or computer-generated?

Writing-Related News

• In March, I’m excited to be offering a literary journal submissions workshop aimed at helping writers navigate and understand the submissions process, including how to create/maintain a submissions routine. For more info or to register, click here. (Save $25 if you sign up by Feb. 19.)

• I had two new stories published on February 1: “Transformation,” published in South Florida Poetry Journal (SoFloPoJo), and “Holes,” published in Ghost Parachute. I hope you’ll check them out!

• And, in case you missed it, I recently had a writing tip published in Cleaver: “Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket: The Benefits of Multitasking as a Writer.”

• Lastly, I’m excited to share that two of my stories were recently nominated for the Best Small Fictions anthology: “The Tooth Fairy Is Flat Broke,” originally published in Flash Boulevard, and “The Body Shop,” originally published in Cleaver.