I understand fractionally more about Artificial Intelligence than I did before thanks to an interview on BBC’s Radio 4 with Sir Tony Blair. In the interview Blair likened what is happening to our world with the discovery and development of A.I. to the Industrial Revolution.

This new revolution, I now understand, is happening and will happen. There will be positive results because of it and negative as well. It is not going to go away, it is affecting my life now and will continue to do so. It is not something I can ignore on the grounds that it will only matter to my children and grandchildren.

Last Sunday, Trinity Sunday, I preached a very short sermon at St Agnes. I needed to keep it short because the annual general meeting followed after the service. My theme was that we are made in the image of the One God who is a relationship of love – a Community of love in Unity.

I said, and believe, that it is in relationship that we find joy and fulfillment. True relationship is about reality not artifice of artificiality. In the midst of my short sermon I heard myself saying, ‘If losing your phone becomes more important than losing a friend then you’ve  lost your way.’

We will survive and benefit from A.I., I believe, as long as we differentiate between what is real and what is artificial and choose to live in the reality.

P.S. An apology. High Society is, of course, Cole Porter not Irving Berlin. I don’t know how Berlin’s ‘Having a Heatwave’ made its way in. The heatwave is over in London. It’s been cold and wet.  

‘We’re having a heatwave a tropical heatwave’ – and we certainly are in London.

Irving Berlin’s composition, which found its way into his ‘High Society,’ is currently on in the West End and winning huge applause.

It is hot. The sun shining and the temperature rising seems to give people permission to talk – not that I need much permission.

Walking through Kennington Park on my way to St Agnes a young park attendant greeted me warmly and asked, “Enjoying the heat?”

I said that for me it was really too hot to enjoy to which I received the cheerful riposte, “Oh come on, strip off and chill!”

When I laughed and suggested that would not be a pretty sight, he continued, “Don’t let that worry you. If you really want ‘not a pretty sight’, walk through the park!”

There people of all ages shapes and sizes do seem to take off most of their clothes and lie in the sun on days like these.

As he walked away, he called over his shoulder, “And some veeerry pretty sights too!”

Sadly no one Can-canned.

Red double-decker buses, with open platforms at the back so that one could get on and off when stopped at the traffic lights, remain a strong memory of the London I knew in the 1960s.

There was a conductor (usually good humoured and helpful)  from whom you bought your ticket.  We pulled a cord which rang a bell to let the driver know we wanted to get off at the next stop. The conductor then pulled it twice, ‘ting, ting’, to tell the driver he could safely drive on.

When, last Monday, a bus drew up at the stop in Kennington Park Road I registered the gulf between the pavement and the doors and wasn’t sure that I could make it on. If I stepped into the road I thought I wouldn’t manage the high step up into the bus. The driver must have noticed me, stick in hand, and my look of dismay.

To my amazement the wheels of the stationary bus turned and the bus moved sideways towards the pavement closing the gap. Then, with a deep sigh, the bus lowered to the height of the pavement. Only then did the doors open.

The driver looked at me with a broad smile. My look of dismay had changed to one of amazement. The driver said, “They’re quite something, aren’t they.”

I replied, “Yes, and so are you. Thank you.”

It made my day. The buses may have changed, even improved. More importantly, there are still drivers who are good humoured and helpful.

In all my musings about a possible universal morality, and knowing that I cannot argue a case from the particular to the general, I am nonetheless sure that there are bus drivers in Karachi, Nairobi, Sao Paulo, and Ulan Bator as good-humoured and helpful as Monday’s driver – even if not all buses will be red London buses which can move sideways, up and down.

I am glad I grew up in a culturally Christian society and was nurtured in an Anglican family. I would have found it very difficult to make my choices in a secular culture which left me to make every decision myself without some moral framework.

A heavily law-based religion and culture would have been a challenge as I rebel against rigid norms and expectations. I remember the house-matron at school saying:

“Why can’t you be more like your brothers! They were such nice boys.”

My brothers were older, more accepting of patterns and expectations, and were clearly thought nicer!

Yet while law-based religions demand too high a degree of ‘fitting in’ certain forms bestow some freedoms to mildly rebellious souls like mine.

There are problems for cultures in which everything seems to be ‘up for grabs’; in which the ‘I want doesn’t get’ of my childhood is replaced by ‘I want must have’; where the moral fashions of the day must always be accommodated.

Although not conformist I found great advantage in school uniforms and clerical dress. I did not to have to decide what to wear. Even now I have, by choice, a limited wardrobe. Some rules seem to free us.

To have no framework at all would make daily life and moral decisions fractured and exhausting. Too much uniformity is crushing. ‘Moderation in all things’. 

Perhaps, for the gently rebellious free-thinker Anglican, Christianity offers a welcome balance of obligation and ideal.

I have been pondering, for my own satisfaction, what, if anything, we human beings have in common. I doubt that there is a universal morality. Yet C S Lewis and others suggest that at no time and in no place has selfishness been admired. Surely no one has ever said,

“I really admire ‘N’ who is without question the most selfish person I have ever met.”

I suspect that we have come to forget, or at least downplay, the reality that we are animals. It is a long time since I heard an elderly relative say in hushed and disapproving tones, “He gave in to his animal instincts” –  And yet we still do because they are still there.

We are certainly able to reason and we are a species that can choose. However the idea that we are entirely rational beings does not seem to me to be born out by what we see and what we are. 

Rather than being rational beings who from time to time behave irrationally I suspect we may be animals with a rational ability.

This leaves me with a lot more thinking to do and that I must pause before I assume that others will be what I consider reasonable – or they me.