An unanticipated consequence of modernity is the redundancy of humanity. Humans increasingly resemble the pampered rich who have everything done for them so they never learn how to sew a button or boil an egg. Superfluity stubbles the spirit. Being needed gladdens, disregard rankles. This is why rich people tend to appear less happy than poorer folk. Stroll down Madison Avenue to test this thesis: the pricier the get-up, the tenser the lips and eyes (a tension often intensified by cosmetic surgery). Might wealth and gladness be inversely correlated? Maybe God has a sense of humor after all.

A challenge for contemporary humans is to make ourselves feel needed when we aren’t. In olden times, survival kept everybody too busy to ponder their utility. It took work to eat. Babies died. Sickness stalked. No time for shrinks.

Ease, paradoxically, stirs unease, which extends into disease. I’ve all the time in the world to wonder why in the world I am. The answer isn’t obvious. The more one asks, the closer one tiptoes toward the conclusion that, uh-oh, we just are – so now what? Creating meaning is an imaginary exercise critical to our mental health. These missives are existential push-ups: I write, you read, therefore I matter: an improbable placebo, true – also an elixir.

Artificial Intelligence compounds this crisis of insignificance. Brains used to make humans smug. Cogito, ergo sum – go, Renee! – I think therefore I am. Mightn’t AI claim more? Cogito melius ergo melius sum – I think better, therefore am better! Can’t you hear AI’s algorithms crowing from rooftops?

Love makes folks feel needed, which explains its ongoing demand. The idler we are, the more love-inclined, because love takes time. Starving, love’s beside the point. From adolescence on everyone wants love, but not everyone finds it. Dogs and cats come in handy here. I’m lucky in marital, filial, canine, and reader love, but then I’m a love-sponge, never enough.

Activity compensates for uselessness. My itinerary commands, gotta scoot! Celebrity-worship, too, makes folks feel embraced. Also religion – and membership in harebrained political cults. We’ve got all sorts of tricks to disguise our insignificance, but still there are times time hangs heavy, we’re sick of TV, life feels blah.

In the twentieth century, intellectuals cheered the machine. Electronics, jets, medicines, machine guns, computers were a wow. Better things for better living! Hemingway and his ilk honed prose into a locomotive – whoosh! – no fancy stuff, cloying clauses, polysyllables – subject, verb, object – no waste – watch the clock!

Initially machines enlarged mankind by enhancing our power. These days they shrink, replace, outpace, out-think us. We use them – constantly – I’m using several now to sidle into your silence – but shudder to resemble them.

Do machines infantilize? Leaning on the Web as mnemonic prosthesis weakens memory, some claim. That’s likely true. I use more words and cite more sages than my brain stores. So what? The glory of prostheses is the extension of useful life: a fake hip, a purloined quip, Wiki my walking stick. Readers, like eaters, don’t fret ingredients, only whether a preparation pleases.

The best writing defies machines with its music. Shakespeare’s, for example. His music shows off but cautiously, not garishly. So do thrilling ladies dress “to the nines” but not the tens. The best writers write not just to persuade but to persist in memory, so their music reinforces the sentiments expressed. They write, first, to convey sense, then to be reread for the pleasure of the sound.

The way to resist dehumanization by machines is to become more human. AI can think like nobody’s business but can it sing?