Article

Culture

Digital

Identity

5 May 2025

6 min read

Is AI animation really harmless fun?

Toying around with AI trinkets just feeds our shadows.

Callum Elwood

Callum is a pastor, based on a barge, in London's Docklands.

A couple crouch together on a beach in a Studio Ghibli style image.

The image that started the meme.

Grant Slatton.

The internet recently appeared to be full of pictures from Japan’s renowned Studio Ghibli, except they weren't created by Hayao Miyazaki, the artist and studio co-founder, but instead by Artificial Intelligence. It led to some discourse around the ethics of imitation via generative AI, lots of whimsical images, and a deeper question – how should we be human in the age of AI?

This started when X user Grant Slatton posted what shortly became a viral meme. ChatGPT’s latest update has improved users ability to upload and manipulate images, and within hours X was full of users posting pictures made into Studio Ghibli style characters.

While this has led to plenty of joy on the part of many, and is viewed as harmless fun by most, there are inevitable ethical objections. The mimicking of art by an algorithm is widely criticised, and the back and forths over intellectual property being used by chatbots will continue.

Life in an age of AGI

But to anyone paying attention AI is more than a meme making machine. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI blogged in January that his team are confident they know all they need to know in order to create AGI (artificial general intelligence). This means complete consciousness, created via algorithm, and the results could be dramatic: synthesised god, an unstoppable force, the end of humanity or the start of humans 2.0. Predictions range as to what will occur when OpenAI hit run, but commonly land on the following:

Catastrophe

AGI becomes smarter than us. Much smarter. And for one reason or another, whether by accident or design, it wipes us out. AGI won’t share our values, or we lose control, or we use it as a weapon against each other. What it means is the end of humanity.

Utopia

AGI transforms the world. Disease, poverty, climate change are all solved. Either AGI works out that it is more efficient if everyone lives in peace, comfort, and abundance, or we point AGI at all humanities problems and it finds solutions.

The twist? Human life may be so changed that it no longer looks like life as we've ever known it. This would not be extinction, but the world could become a very strange place.

Monster

AGI is an uncontrollable super intelligence that has complete agency and cannot be controlled by anyone. Programmed by us, but free from its human moorings and completely untameable. This seems the least likely

Shrug

AGI wakes up, takes one look at the world, and decides ‘no thanks.’ It deletes itself.

This means nothing changes… for now. But we’ll likely try again and again until one of the other outcomes happens.

These are clearly hypothetical scenarios and much of it is unknown, but what is clear is that those in the industry are sure AGI is coming.

Why does this matter?

Because behind all of these predictions is a deeper question: What does it mean to be human when we are awaiting a potential extinction event? It’s not a question unique to our age, many words have been spent on an impending climate catastrophe, but C.S. Lewis published “on living in an atomic age” in 1948, where he wrestled with the same question, but faced with an atomic bomb. His wisdom helps us navigate the AGI age.

He begins by encouraging readers to not believe themselves to be in a novel situation, but instead remember ‘you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways’. The same goes for us, we will one day have a date of death to join our date of birth. Lewis reminds us to live…

‘If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things, praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts––not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs’.

We could apply the same principle to AI. If AGI is coming, how will it find us? Being humans doing human things, or cowering in fear?

Lewis does acknowledge that the attitude described doesn’t actually make sense if the naturalist view of the world is true. The view that, with or without AGI the whole world and our own existence amounts one day to nothing. The entire universe will one day come to nothing, and there is nothing we can do about it. He continues ‘If Nature is all that exists––in other words, if there is no God and no life of some quite different sort somewhere outside of nature –– then all stories will end in the same way: in a universe from which all life is banished without possibility of return.’

We don’t find this a satisfactory way to live, if being human is to simply be a sum of atoms, we would have no reason to worry about a climate crisis, or the impact of AI, but we do, which means we have to find a way of reconciling our existence with our death.

So how can this be dealt with?

Lewis proposes three ways this can be dealt with, the first is to give up and commit suicide. The second is to simply have as good a time as possible, milking the world for all it is worth, grab and get, as much as possible. Or a third, defy the universe, in all of its irrationality we chose to be rational, in all its merciless cruelty, chose to be merciful.

I would add a fourth option, Ghibli-fy. Distract ourselves with small pleasures, not trying to have as good a time as possible, simply toy around with AI generated trinkets while not thinking about being human, and not doing particularly human things. We need not create, enjoy, cultivate, inhabit, nor enchant, when we are content to allow AI to feed us shadows.

None of these are particularly satisfactory. In asking ‘what does it mean to be human?’, we are asking a question that a purely material view of the world cannot answer.

Suicide, indulgence, defiance, or distraction, none truly satisfy. As Lewis recognised, they all “shipwreck on the same rock.” They don’t resolve the deeper ache in us, the tension between what we long for, what we worry about, and what this world seems to offer.

Our age may not fear the atomic bomb, many may not yet fear the effect AI/AGI will have, but rather than facing the deeper questions that a material worldview can’t answer, we Ghibli-fy ourselves: charming animations, pixelated pleasures, whimsical avatars—soft distractions from hard questions. In doing so, we risk forgetting how to be human. Not because AGI will take that from us, but because we will have handed it away ourselves, one novelty meme of mimicry at a time.

Lewis’ point still holds. We are not made for this world. If that’s true, then no utopia, no algorithm, no perfect machine can truly satisfy the hunger in us. If we are made for something more—something outside of nature, beyond the reach of code and computation—then that’s where we must look for hope.

If AGI comes, how will it find us? Watching ourselves on a screen in someone else’s art style? Or living as humans were meant to live: praying, creating, forgiving, loving, dying well?

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Article

Art

Awe and wonder

Culture

30 May 2025

5 min read

The late Pope Francis was right – Antoni Gaudi truly was God’s architect

Sanctity can indeed be found amongst scaffolding, as Gaudi’s Barcelona beauties amply demonstrate.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

Looking up at the front of Gaudi's cathedra; as the sun comes out from behind the spires.

Sagrada Familia cathedral, Barcelona.

Csaba Veres on Unsplash.

Barcelona is a magnet for tourists and art lovers because of the sense of exuberance and abundance created by the sinuous, sensuous curves and colours of Antoni Gaudí i Cornet’s amazing buildings. Whether we are encountering the shifting sea-like blues of the Casa Batlló, the abstract collage of the wave-like trencadis mosaic bench at Park Güell, the whirlpool-like undulations on the ceiling at Casa Milà, the columns in the Crypt of Colònia Güell which form a wood of trees, or the sunflower forms on the ceiling of the Sagrada Familia, Gaudí's work possesses an ecstatic sense of natural beauty. The Sagrada Familia, his still unfinished magnum opus, attracts over 4.5 million visitors a year, 85 per cent of whom come from outside Spain.

Known as ‘God’s Architect,’ Gaudí, in one of the last acts by the late Pope Francis, was declared Venerable, a step on the path to sainthood. He was recognised for the heroic virtues which encompass faith, hope, and charity, with Divine charity being paramount. The Vatican’s announcement noted that when Gaudí accepted the task of directing the project of the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia in 1883, his focus was “making art a hymn of praise to the Lord” and “he considered it his mission to make God known and bring people closer to Him”. Also noted was the humility of his death after being struck a tram on June 7, 1926. Unrecognized, the architect was taken to the Hospital de la Santa Creu, the city’s hospital for the poor and, after receiving the last sacraments, he died three days later, on June 10. Around 30,000 people then attended his funeral.

The Sagrada Familia is primarily experienced as a forest of columns through which light falls in glowing colours. As in medieval cathedrals the eye is drawn upwards towards the light and glory of God, here by means of slender trunk-like columns, which branch (for reasons of form and function) before the ceiling of the basilica, where natural and artificial light mingle in star-like shapes resembling sunflower heads. Lower down, the abstract stained glass of Joan Vila-Grau filters the blazing natural light of the Catalan sun through primary colours to create a sense of mystery even among the thousands of tourists crowding the space for the best camera angles.

Among the columnar forest and stained light (if one ignores the baldachin, which is an example of the gaudy Gaudí), there is an almost total absence of explicit Christian iconography, creating a special interior sense of spiritual space. Unlike a medieval cathedral where the Christian story is told inside in stained glass, Gaudí placed the narrative element on the exterior of the building to form a Bible written in stone through three facades: Nativity, Passion and Glory.

Much of Gaudí's work was marked by his big passions in life: architecture, nature and his Catholic faith. He integrated into his architecture a series of crafts in which he was skilled - ceramics, stained glass, wrought ironwork and carpentry - and introduced new techniques in the treatment of materials, such as trencadis, a special type of mosaic made of waste ceramic pieces.

After a few years under the influence of neo-Gothic art and Oriental techniques, Gaudí became part of the Modernista movement which was reaching its peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His work transcended mainstream Modernism, culminating in an organic style inspired by nature. He was the great sculptor, utilising natural form in his work both for utilitarian and aesthetic reasons. He described nature as “the Great Book, always open, that we should force ourselves to read” and, as the art critic Robert Hughes recognised, thought that “everything structural or ornamental that an architect might imagine was already prefigured in natural form, in limestone grottoes or dry bones, in a beetle's shining wing case or the thrust of an ancient olive trunk.”

It is said that Gaudí’s aim at the Sagrada Familia was to bring heaven and earth together.

Although driven, single and celibate Gaudí was not an ascetic loner. He surrounded himself with work colleagues to whom he gave significant responsibility. He was also well aware that work on the Sagrada Familia could only be completed by the architects, sculptors and craftspeople who would follow his team and plans. Gaudí and his primary patron, Eusebi Güell, were men of great vision and vast ambition, resulting, among other accomplishments, in the Crypt of Colònia Güell, which consists only of the lower nave of what was intended to be a larger building. Their example suggests that to reach for the impossible and fail can nevertheless result in significant achievement.

The Crypt of Colònia Güell is a culminating point in Gaudi's work, where he included for the first time practically all of his architectural innovations. He said that without the large-scale experiments he undertook there, he would not have dared apply those same geometries to the Sagrada Familia. It is the place where, according to Japanese architect, Arata Isozaki, he “overcame all established limits regarding shapes.”

This church of Colònia Güell was blessed by the Bishop of Barcelona in 1915 and today functions both as parish church and tourist attraction. Like the Sagrada Familia, albeit on a smaller more intimate scale, its varied columns form a wood of trees. Flower-like, cross-shaped stained glass in primary colours creates a warmth to the space which is complemented by the red brick forming the walls and catenary arches of this cave-like space.

This is a warm, womb-like enclosure; intimate yet archetypal. It is real and usable communal space while also being of great architectural worth, innovation and beauty. Here the ‘heaven in ordinarie’ of the Eucharist is celebrated in the surround of natural forms recreated by man-made means. It is said that Gaudí’s aim at the Sagrada Familia was to bring heaven and earth together. It may well be that this aim is more fully realised in the earthy intimacy of the Colònia Güell’s wooded Crypt than in the soaring grandeur of the Sagrada Familia.

In welcoming the news that Gaudí had been declared Venerable, Cardinal Juan José Omella, Archbishop of Barcelona, said “It is a recognition not only of his architectural work but something more important.” He continued: “He is saying you... amid life's difficulties, amid work, amid pain, amid suffering, are destined to be saints.” Ultimately, he notes, “Gaudí’s life and work show us how beauty and holiness can transform the world” as they include the “recognition that sanctity can be found amid scaffolding, suffering, sublime obsession.”

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Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free.
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

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