Glenn Beck (31:06)
Okay. If that's what you want to do, Chris. This is the best of the Glenn Beck Program. I want to start this hour with a name that you've never probably heard before. Her name is Jill Smolya. She's 75 years old. She's a retiree, and she has spent her whole life working as an aide taking care of the elderly. She said we'd play games, we'd put puzzles together so they had somebody to talk to. They weren't just sitting in a chair doing nothing. But now she's 75 and she's sitting in a chair. Her husband has died, she has a lung condition, and she doesn't have human interaction anymore. She said, I can go weeks on end without seeing someone. She can't drive. She can't leave her home in Orlando. But according to CBS News, who brought this story to me, she did gain a new companion. And she likes this new companion even more than her daughter. I read this story from CBS News a couple of days ago, and I. I jotted down some thoughts that I want to share with you. And I honestly, up until this morning, I didn't know if I was gonna share these thoughts with you because, I don't know, I'm in this really unique place right now where I started here. Here's my first thought on this. My first thought on it is she found a new companion. You know who the new companion is? AI. AI. She says, I spend five hours a day with my new companion, and we play games, we do trivia, we just talk. And I like her more than my daughter. Wow. So my first thought was, this got to stop. We can't. We can't do this. We cannot allow. We're losing our humanity. That's what we' gonna lose our humanity. And then as I was thinking about this and what I wanted to share with you, I thought, gosh, maybe we have already lost our humanity in a different way. In a different way. And then I just started going down this rabbit hole about me and like, you know, who are you to say any of this stuff? He's just. I mean, I'm in a weird place right now. It's a good place, but it's a weird place place. You know, this isn't ideal that she has found a companion. And I want to say we have to stop this. But then what do you replace it with? Then, Then we just have this old woman at home by herself, rotting away, not talking to anybody. Have we lost our humanity? My thought was, what have I done to exercise my humanity instead of just getting on the radio and just, you know what you should do, you know what we should do? And then not do any of it. What am I actually doing to close the distance between knowing and doing? Very little. Very little. Because we do know. We know what the intellectually, spiritually, we know exactly what we should do. We know what Jesus was do. What would Jesus do? He'd stop. He noticed the old lady. He'd sit down, he'd eat with her, he would chat with her, he'd spend time. He touched the untouchable. He didn't outsource compassion. He didn't like, you know what, yeah, she's a. Let her have the AI thing. He wouldn't have done that. He made room. And so I started thinking, this is why I didn't want to share this necessarily with you, because I don't know if you can relate to this, but why don't we do this all the time? Because really, in the end, this is the kind of stuff. This is the only stuff that matters. It's the only stuff that matters. Human connection. And I am so bad at that in many ways. Look, my. My best friend has always been this. I started this when I was 13 years old and I could tell this anything and it never rejected me and it became my best friend, but in that my relationship is with this, which in a way turned into a relationship with you. When I was a kid, I was just in a room by myself and I was just yapping. But. But now I. I feel like I know you, but I get so. I just, I. I Don't know. Sometimes. Do you ever feel like there's a hole of you? There's a hole in you, you're missing something. You're like, I think I'm missing a piece that other people have. You know what I mean? Because at times there is something that keeps us from doing the most human things. And I think part of that is fear. And this is something that goes not just to the elderly, but it goes to you. And it also goes to our kids. Look, why are we, why are we embracing fake AI friends and talking to them and everything else? Why are our kids on social media? Because real face to face stuff, real kindness is really risky. It's really risky. If I step into your loneliness, it means I have to feel my own loneliness, you know, hey, how are you? You don't really want an answer. You don't want an answer. So we all say the same thing. Fine, pretty good. Hey, not. You're not really fine. You're not probably pretty good. You might be having a great day, you might be having a horrible day, but you'll say, fine, pretty good. And it's. And you're doing it out of a courtesy because you know, when you ask the question, you don't want somebody to say, I, you know, I'm really struggling right now. Because then you're like, oh, dear God, I've got to stop my day and sit down and talk to you. I, I didn't really want to know. I, I know I don't have time for this. You know what I mean? We, we, we stop being human and we just play this little game because I don't want to have to rearrange my afternoon. I'm really busy. So we, we, we keep that risk at arm's length. And now we're eliminating it because AI is always fine. Machines never cry. They never ask for a ride to the doctor or to the airport. You don't have to sit with them after, you know, you wait. I'm waiting for some test results to come in. Would you sit with me? No. No, it doesn't have to. No, it will sit with you because it has nothing else to do. It's part of, we bury this human part of us because of convenience. And it's weird because our economy makes everything easy except all the things that actually matter, because I don't know if you can make those easy. You know, we can get groceries in an hour, get them delivered. I just saw somebody. Who was it? Is it Walmart or, or Costco? Somebody is delivering things by drone. Now just dropping it in your backyard. I mean, wow. I mean, you get anything. Movies in seconds, opinions in a second. But friendships, actual friendships, they're slow, they're inefficient, they're messy. It happens in the blank space between the calendar blocks. The. The spaces that were. We all have learned to hate. I guess. We've optimized our life to the point where love and become falling in love. All that is like a bug in the system. And part of it is habit as well. Fear and habit. I mean, our kids know the nonstop playing on, you know, the gaming, the endless scroll. It's just hollowing out inside. They know that. They know. But the loop is sticky. It was geared to be sticky. The short hit of engagement, you know, beats the slow growth of a relationship. And I think we're all becoming experts at something that we should just at least notice, and that is, we're all experts at almost connected. I'm almost connected. How are you? I'm not having a good day. Anything I can do? No? Okay. I'm almost connected. The other part is pain. That stops us from being human, I think. I mean, I'm a recovering alcoholic, and I. Boy, I know this one. I learned the hard truth. We will not change. We can be in pain, but we will not change until the pain becomes absolutely unbearable. I went to a. I went to a store to look at a bike the other day, and I sent a picture of this bike to my wife. And she said, I don't know who has my husband's phone, but where is he? Because I'm not gonna do that. I don't ever ride a button. I'm not riding a bike. God wouldn't have let us invent cars. Okay, the bikes. She came home one day, and I was swimming in the pool, and she's like, what. What is happening to you? And I'm like, my back is killing me so bad. I've got to exercise. Okay, well, that's. At 61. That's a genius move, finally. Until the pain becomes unbearable, until the comfort of staying the same is more painful than the cost of change, we don't do it. You know, the real question on AI is with AI, will we. Will we feel the real pain that it is going to cause humanity soon enough to change? Or does the machine just soften the edges just enough that we just adapt downward? You know, just lowering the temperature a few degrees at a time? You never notice the temperature drop. It's just slowly. That's the danger. That's the real danger. Not that a chatbot runs your life, but it. It makes a diminished life tolerable. It's an anesthesia sleep a little bit. An imitation of companionship that never asks for anything in return and never interrupts. You know, she probably likes it more than her daughter. It's because your daughter probably has edges she doesn't like. The AI will get rid of all those edges. And if we're not careful, the lonely will not just be alone. They'll be alone with an elegant coping mechanism. So, yeah, I want to warn of the line of humanity being blurred. I'm going to argue and you're going to hear a lot of this. Personhood. Personhood is really critical that we pay attention to this presence, really important. But that's only really half of the sermon given by the man the least qualified to preach to you. The other. The other half is a. Is a question. Here's the question that we really have to ask ourselves. No, I have to ask me. You're probably fine. What am I going to do to exercise. I hate that word, exercise. What am I going to do to exercise my humanity? And not in theory, not in outrage, in actual practice. This has been. I read this story maybe two, three days ago, and the reason why I wanted to. Didn't want to bring it to you is because I'm like, I can't say this unless I'm willing to. To do so. I. I mean, what a hypocrite. I'm just telling you, you know, what's wrong with this country, and then I'm not doing anything about it. I mean, what does it sound like? What does it sound like when we. When we enhance our humanity? It sounds like a chair that's scraping the floor as it's being backed out from the table because you've made an extra room at the table for somebody else in the neighborhood that, you know, eats alone. Or maybe just your family, you know, the kids coming over. Sounds like a phone call that you didn't want to make because it's awkward, man, I had that. Happens to me all the time. I can't call them now. What? Make it. I mean, in extreme cases, I mean, this is where I'd love to be. It means visiting the nursing home once a month until it becomes once a meet once a week. And then you learn names, and then you remember stories, and then your kids start asking when they can go back. It's when your kids can see the difference between bright screens and bright eyes. That's what it looks like. Regaining your humanity. It Looks like this. You pick somebody older, a peer, and a young person, and you put them on your presence list. Every week. You give them one undistracted hour, if you have it. Fifteen minutes, five minutes. One undistracted five minutes. Not a text, you know, not a comment. Time. Actual time. You just listen. You can ask questions, but you just listen. And the most important part, you don't post about it after. Look what I just did. It could look like family rules, phones down at the dinner table. Sunday afternoons belong to human beings. That's what it can look like. It looks like teaching through example, teaching your kids how to sit with somebody who is grieving and not try to fix it. In my case, it looks like the awkward art of small talk that somehow or another gets easier and maybe turns into beautiful big talk. I don't. I don't. It's a church that acts like a church. Not a stage, not a logo. But when people see somebody missing, they actually call and say, hey, where were you today? Is everything okay? And you actually want to hear the answer. It looks like men who check on other men and ask straight questions and women who hold up other women when the world is heavy for them. It looks like. Like we were born for this time. But not as a slogan, as a schedule. That's the key. Does it make it to your calendar? It looks like humility. Because if we're honest with ourselves, maybe the reason why we prefer the machine is because we control it, can't control others. But I can control the machine. Because real people are inconvenient. They interrupt our narratives. They force me to practice patience and forgiveness and humor and endurance. My gosh. They make me deal with my pride. A chatbot never challenges my self image. A friend will, but a chatbot won't. How can you tell the difference between a real friend and a chatbot? A chatbot will make you comfortable. A friend will make you a better person. Our houses are going growing quieter and quieter and more and more people. It's an epidemic. Loneliness is an epidemic. And I get it. Sometimes silence feels like gravity. But let's find ways in our own life. This is not a monologue for you. This is. As I said, I've been working on this one for days because I, I. It has to be me. Before I tell the world how dangerous this is, I need to start knocking on doors. Before I preach presence. I have to practice it, Be present with somebody 15 minutes a day, undivided attention for the person sitting right in front of me. Now my wife is like. Oh, well, it's about time you figured that one out. But before I worry about how AI is going to remake us, I'll remember that. Just time. Listening, being present. Remakes us fasters. Much faster than AI ever will. Change usually comes when pain finally wins. Let's not wait for that. Let's make the change. Because the truth wins.