The World Is Too Much With Us

This is a poem from a Romantic poet that says he prefers a simpler life, that the world is too complex. It's an overwhelming feeling we all experience at times.

The key is to see this as a natural counter balance for our rational mind, which we need to focus on progress — which should prevail in the end.

In our AI world, the world does feel more overwhelming than ever, but as Wordsworth reminds us, this is hardly a new feeling — we will certainly have other future technological, scientific or societal advances that will make the AI leap feel irrelevant, and that World too will be Too Much With Us:

The World Is Too Much With Us

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.