Would You Jump Off A Cliff?

 I can still hear my mother: "If everyone was jumping off a cliff, would you just follow and jump?"

Perhaps we humans are jumping off a cliff together. With the majority of people now having internet access, and putting private information on it for the world to see, relying on it for information, and AI growing so that people have virtual friends and "love" pseudo relationships, etc. etc. etc. --- we may be jumping into huge problems together, jumping off the cliff of humanity. 

AI is obviously not fully developed yet, but it is quite convincing to many. There are little things that are amiss. For example I Googled something about 1st century Galilee. and the AI summary said it was a wealthy area - but in my studies, I know it was primarily poor peasants with literacy at perhaps 1%.

I read about a wide range of disturbing things happening via our new godlike entity, the internet. I read about not only false information,  but also such things as children  being groomed by preditors and addicted to porn; about people falling in love with their AI companion, even proposing marriage to it; about children being talked into gender dysphoria; about people being turned into terrorists; about Christianity and Judaism being subverted; about people being convinced they have entities inhabiting them or that they are animals; on and on and on go ideas and behaviors not long  thought of as psychiatric problems.

It seens crucial to me that we become aware. Use critical thinking (evaluate, hypothesize, examine, look for motivation of what you see or hear or read, make tentative conclusions, etc), notice cognitive disonance (there is tension as two or more things don't make sense together), challenge every idea we encounter, at least ideas not part of our great heritage, bearing the test of time and experience. Everything needs to be examined against what we know to be true.

At the same time, develop our inner core. Develop our relationship with God. Find a church or synagogue and participate. Spend time in nature. Spend time with real people and real conversations. Read classics. Learn or increase our abilities in a hobby or two. Spend less and less time surfing the web.

And, pray, forgive, meditate, contemplate.

All can be well with us and with humanity.