In an age where AI can generate an infinite amount of stuff, what matters? Some of the most interesting writing I’ve read on this comes from Will Manidis, who makes it biblical and says that Craft is the Antidote to Slop:
From Genesis, man enters not a paradise without labor but a world of intentional creation. The LORD God places man in the Garden of Eden “to dress it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15) establishing labor not as punishment but as sacred vocation. This original calling invites us to co-create the Kingdom, tending and developing the world with intention and care. Our fundamental purpose is not consumption but participation in the ongoing work of creation.
The serpent’s temptation represents the first shortcut in human history.”Ye shall be as gods” (Genesis 3:5) was not an invitation to deeper engagement with creation, but a way to get out of the work required to tend to it. The consequence wasn’t the introduction of work itself, but its corruption into burdensome toil: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread” (Genesis 3:19). Humanity’s first sin was, in part, choosing the easy shortcut over the meaningful process – preferring effortless gain to the demanding but fulfilling work of tending the garden.
You can read the rest as screenshots on X or on his Substack, but I hope he gets a real website soon. This also makes me think you should watch the We Are As Gods documentary on Stewart Brand, supported by the amazing folks at Stripe Press.
Insightful post, Matt, the analogy of craft as an antidote to ‘slop’ really resonates in today’s AI-driven world. It reminds us that the value of creation lies not just in output, but in intention, care, and participation. Automation can produce endlessly, but it cannot replace the human commitment to meaning and stewardship. This makes me wonder: in a world of infinite generative AI content, will ‘craft’ become the ultimate differentiator for human work and creativity?
AI is really pushing us to consider first principles, isn’t it?
If I’m using AI to write a piece based on a bullet list, and the reader is using the same AI to convert the piece into a bullet list for better understanding, what did we learn? In this case, the particulars are what matter. Maybe, in these cases, we should think about simplifying language so we get to the point.
The beauty is that there are still poems, articles, and novels that readers won’t use AI to convert to a bullet list, because the point of reading them is to be taken on a journey as conceived by the author. And it is this slice of creation that will always exist. AI may help us find the best novel to read based on our reading history, but we’ll still want to be fully taken in by it, and that requires us to interact with true human output.
Photography disrupted the painting industry, but we still want paintings. We still want to see the brushstrokes, the composition; we still want to try to comprehend what the artist tried to convey with their piece. We want the human output, because we are also human… and outputting.
screenshots on X are quite charming.
a monk on a big sur mountain convinced me that good work gives us and others meaning.
work like Whole Earth Catalogue and WordPress are certainly good for that reason, but one man’s “slop” is another man’s treasure.
i remember miners i met in the philippines very proud to find specs of gold in literal slop from a long an abandoned mine.
I like Will’s reading — it also reminds me how the first two chapters of Genesis contain two different versions of the creation story. Joseph Soloveitchik famously interpreted them as having two different protagonists:
Adam I “majestic man” who conquers the universe like a god but has little capacity for relationship.
Adam II is “the lonely man of faith” who has to live in relation to others, under God and the law, obliged to tend the garden and make good on his duties. He gains companionship by losing a piece of himself.
Both Adams represent aspects of our lives with their own costs and benefits — maybe two tendencies always in play that can’t be reconciled. The impact of the serpent in chapter 3 seems mostly disruptive to the relationships Adam II is capable of — it gets Adam and Even to distrust each other, distrust God, distrust their understanding of their roles and obligations (“Did he really say…”), and from there all relationships and cooperation are impaired — but this also opens up the possibility of the most meaningful work of repairing the world.
I love Brand’s long essay / book in progress on maintenance versus neglect in the first non-stop, solo, round-the-world yacht race in 1968. It strikes me as being about the Adam II tendency that counterbalances the Adam I creator and destroyer of worlds tendency.