Of Strife and Striving
Finding Meaning & Direction in an Age of Technology
Over the past few months, I have written a lot about the many possible futures that may await us as artificial intelligence becomes a more profound presence in our daily lives. Many of these explorations have been filled with a sense of tension, even unease, as I wrestle with the ways technology may reshape not just our habits, but our very sense of what it means to be human. I know that at times, these reflections may come across as heavy, touched by doom or shadowed by the unavoidable strife that seems to accompany rapid change and societal disruption. So today, I want to offer something a little different. I want to offer a measure of hope — and more than that, maybe a sense of guidance. Despite all the uncertainties, we are not powerless. We still have choices about what guides us forward. We still have agency, and if we use it wisely, we can begin to cultivate a vision for ourselves that is not merely reactive or fearful, but purposeful and clear-eyed. A vision that draws upon our innate talents, our capacity for creative discernment, and our belief that even in times of strife, there is an essential goodness in humankind and an enduring promise for a better future – even in spite of living in a time of nearly universal strife.
There is something raw and deeply human in the experience of strife. Strife is the act or state of fighting or arguing aggressively. That may be physical or it may be inside the confines of our minds. Today, it seems to be all around us and it quietly preys upon us, whether we like it to or not. There is almost an institutional animus being cultivated in our world right now. A pervasive mood of distrust, suspicion, and low-simmering hostility runs through many of our social systems and our individual conversations. You can feel it in the churn of media cycles, in the brittle polarization of political life, in the subtle but steady erosion of shared goodwill across communities — even within families. It’s as though the very structures that once bound us together; governance, education, public discourse, commerce; now carry within them the seeds of a cold, adversarial spirit. This animus does not always roar, it often hums quietly beneath the surface, shaping assumptions, breeding cynicism, and narrowing the imaginative space where cooperation and trust once flourished. What makes this mood so dangerous is not just its presence, but its pervasiveness. It becomes easy, almost natural, to assume bad faith in others, to see every institutional action as self-serving or corrupt, to meet every collective decision with suspicion. Over time, this animus bleeds into how we see one another, and how we frame the idea of society itself. Perhaps most concerning, it begins to reshape how we understand the future — not as a shared space we can build together, but as a battleground of competing interests, each fighting to extract what they can before it all falls apart.
In this atmosphere, the role of strife takes on a sharpened edge. Strife is no longer simply the tension of challenge or the friction of growth; it becomes the water we swim in, the default condition of public life. Strife seems pervasive, doesn’t it? But if we allow institutional animus to set the terms of our striving, we risk allowing external bitterness to colonize our internal worlds. We risk letting suspicion define the boundaries of our imagination, letting conflict erode the possibility of purpose, letting hostility cloud the discipline of discernment.
Strife, as a concept, reminds us that life is rarely smooth, and that we are not only defined by what we achieve, but by what we endure, what we confront, what we wrestle through. Striving, on the other hand, is not just about ambition or forward motion — it is about the daily act of holding steady against the pressures that challenge us. Where strife brings tension, striving shapes how we meet it. Together, they form the core of how human beings navigate a world that is always testing our resilience. Yet in the modern age, our relationship with strife and striving is shifting. The world presents no shortage of external pressures — political, environmental, social — but alongside them, technology has begun to absorb many of the personal, everyday struggles that once defined our routines. We no longer wrestle with remembering phone numbers or planning routes or holding facts in our heads. We have offloaded much of that friction to machines. On the surface, this seems like relief. But beneath it lies a question: when we remove the small daily strife, what happens to the muscles of effort, reflection, and growth that those struggles once built?
This is where artificial intelligence takes on a paradoxical role. On one hand, AI can be a salve smoothing the landscape of daily life, helping us avoid needless friction. On the other hand, it can quietly erode the very capacities that help us navigate meaningful strife — creative discernment, adaptability, resilience. It’s not that we need hardship for its own sake, but it is generally understood, that human beings grow by grappling with resistance. Without tension/friction, there can be no transformation. Without strife, there is no striving. Here, purpose becomes essential. Without a sense of why we are striving, what we are striving toward, the effort can dissolve into noise or distraction. Creative discernment — the ability to tell which tensions are worth engaging, which battles are important, which goals align with what is meaningful to us — becomes the compass that keeps us from becoming lost in a maze of surface-level existance or artificial ease. AI can help us notice patterns, clear distractions, and reflect on our use of time and energy, but it cannot decide for us which forms of strife are worthy, or which ones we are called to meet with open hands and clear hearts.
This is where religion, belief systems, and philosophical traditions offer something enduring and irreplaceable. They are historical systems that have been formed of the millions upon millions of men and women who have shared experiences like our own. War, pain, suffering, doubt, love, evil, hate, and strife have over time, built a library of remedies. A Biblical example: “By insolence comes nothing but strife, but with those who take advice is wisdom”, Proverbs 13:10. They give us a context for strife, a way of interpreting the struggles we face - not as meaningless burdens, but as opportunities for growth, moral clarity, and connection to something larger than ourselves. Whether through spiritual practices, ethical frameworks, or cultural wisdom, these systems help us chart the difference between suffering that wounds and struggle that transforms. They remind us that strife, when engaged with purpose, can deepen our humanity rather than diminish it. Very soon, machines will carry even more of the burdens we always bore ourselves. They will handle our daily chores, drive our cars, anticipate our appointments, even shape the rhythm of our days. In that impending future, we will face a profound question: will we allow ourselves to become passive recipients of ease, or will we remain active participants in the strife that shapes character, insight, and meaning? Will we surrender our engagement, or will we use the new space that technology creates to focus on the struggles that machines cannot resolve — the struggles of love, creativity, justice, and human connection? We stand at the edge of a time when our tools are becoming not just instruments, but companions and collaborators in the unfolding story of human effort. If we learn to use them wisely, we may discover that strife, far from being a source of fear or burden, is a vital source of depth — an essential tension that keeps us awake to what really matters. Not the endless friction of busyness or competition, but the chosen, purposeful struggle toward a life of meaning. Not the absence of hardship, but the presence of a clear, human vision about where to invest our energy and striving while alive.
We are not defined by whether we face strife — we are defined by how we meet it, by the posture we take in its presence, by the stories we tell ourselves about what it means, and by what we allow it to awaken in us. Strife alone is not the measure of a life — everyone encounters friction, setbacks, conflict, and loss. But it is in the meeting of strife that character is shaped. It is in those moments when we are pressed, pulled and tested that we uncover parts of ourselves we did not know were there. Courage, resilience, creativity, compassion — these do not appear when life is easy; they emerge when we are stretched beyond our comfort, when we must decide whether to retreat or to dig deeper. Now, as we enter a moment when machines are ready to carry much of our labor, our memory, our planning, even our learning, we are being handed a rare and potent choice. The choice is not whether to use the tools — they are here and they will only grow more powerful. The choice is what kind of human presence we will bring into this new world. Will we use the easing of burdens as an excuse to drift into passivity and laziness and to let the soft automation of daily life make us dull and distracted? Or will we use it as an opportunity to focus more fiercely on the parts of life that cannot be automated — the questions of meaning, love, justice, art, healing, and hope? Strife will not disappear simply because machines carry more of the weight. If anything, the strife that remains will become even more important, even more defining. We will be called to face the tensions that matter: how to live with integrity, how to stand for what we believe, how to bring creativity and kindness into a world awash with hyper-efficiency. These remaining struggles no system can solve for us. They are ours, and they always will be — and they are the ground where human freedom and dignity take root. This is where the personal becomes profoundly political, and the philosophical becomes urgently practical. To cultivate a vision for our lives — one shaped by creative striving rather than reactive strife — is not merely a private project. It is an act of resistance against the spread of institutional animus. It is a refusal to let our aspirations be hijacked by systems that thrive on division and cynicism. It is a commitment to building something more human, more hopeful, more generous — even, and especially, in a time when the story line seems determined to pull us into distrust and discord.
So, we should meet this moment not with fear, but with clarity. We must remember that we still hold the most important choice: to shape our striving, our struggles, and our lives with intention, with discernment, and with the stubborn, hopeful belief that what we do with our freedom still matters. This is not about rejecting the future or clinging to some nostalgic vision of the past. It is about stepping into the future with our eyes open, with our hearts engaged, and with the deep, quiet understanding that even as the world transforms, the human task remains the same: to care, to choose, to reach — and to become the best we can be.
