Few things in our culture are more wounding than the concept of healing — as if the pains and losses that we suffer are an illness, a malfunction of the psyche to be cut out like a tumor, rather than a natural function of being alive, of feeling life deeply and living it fully. All our sorrows have been wasted if we have not learned to suffer and to be surprised by the door at the end of our suffering, on the other wide of which is simply the world, which keeps on worlding. It is not healing that allows us to go on but integration, allowing our losses to live right alongside our joys for either to mean something, to jolt us from the stupor of indifference that is worse than death.
Nick Cave
No one has articulated this more plainly and profoundly than Nick Cave in reflecting on the anniversary of his young son’s death:
It is early morning in Nîmes. I am waiting for coffee while looking out of the window of the small hotel where Susie and I are staying. The square below is waking up. There are a few cars, a woman walking a dog, a kid on a scooter, an old man smoking on a bench. Today, Susie and I plan to walk around the town for a bit, maybe visit a church, and maybe find the river that people say runs clean and cold. Later, I’ll play a show at the amphitheatre.
I am not saying this just to offer comfort to those who have lost someone, as if to say that in time everything will be all right, because even though it will be, it won’t be. Rather, I am acknowledging that although this day marks the 11th anniversary of the worst day of our lives, it is also a beautiful day, with the sun shining, a child playing, a man enjoying a cigarette, a world quietly waking and moving forward.
This may be the most discomposing aspect of loss — how impartially the world goes on when your world has been shattered. And yet the great paradox is that it is precisely by surrendering to this ongoingness, both dispassionate and rife with wonder, that we are returned to life.
Nick paints a gorgeous still life of this bright ongoingness:
Susie wakes now, and I sit beside her. She says she dreamt about Arthur. Arthur often comes to her in that way. The dreams are simple, poetic. She tells me she dreamt she was in a dark place, perhaps a wood, calling for him. But it was too dim, and she couldn’t find him.
These feelings of loss drift through our bodies like ghosts. They settle in our cells, in our blood, gathering around days like this like weather patterns, shaping us in ways we cannot understand. It is a sad day. I can see it in my wife’s eyes. But it is an ordinary day too, a beautiful day. The best day. Susie is already at the window, pulling back the curtain, looking out over the town, the sun shining on her face.
“If God invited you to a party and said, ‘Everyone in the ballroom tonight will be my special guest’, how would you treat them when they arriv? Indeed, indeed! And Hafiz knows there is no one in this world who is not upon his jewelled dance floor.”
~ Hafiz
Khājeh Shams-od-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī (Persian: خواجه شمسالدین محمد حافظ شیرازی), known by his pen name Hafez (حافظ Ḥāfeẓ lit. ’the memorizer’ or ‘the keeper’; 1325–1390) or Hafiz,[1] also known by his nickname lesān-al-ḡayb (‘the tongue of the unseen’),[2] was a Persianlyric poet[3][4] whose collected works are regarded by many Iranians as one of the highest pinnacles of Persian literature. His works are often found in the homes of Persian speakers, who learn his poems by heart and use them as everyday proverbs and sayings. His life and poems have become the subjects of much analysis, commentary, and interpretation, influencing post-14th century Persian writing more than any other Persian author.[5][6] (Wikipedia.org)
As more and more tasks are done by machines — especially now, with AI — people increasingly move from manual controller to supervisor. Designs must factor in human psychology or risk disastrous errors.
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Automation is ubiquitous, from the autopilot in airplanes to the cycles of the washing machine in your home. And with the modern advent of artificial intelligence, computers and machines are taking on ever more tasks.
That doesn’t necessarily mean human jobs go away, but they change — from doing the task itself to supervising the machine doing it, says Ron McLeod of Glasgow, Scotland. A retired specialist in the field of “human factors,” McLeod spent his career studying how human brains and automation work together — or fail to — in industrial settings like oil refinery control rooms. McLeod wrote a book, published in February 2026, on this topic: Transitioning to Autonomy: The Psychology of Human Supervisory Control.
At work, AI, robots and automation offer potential gains, but also limitations, as explained by Harvard University sociologists Ya-Wen Lei and Rachel Kim in the Annual Review of Sociology. AI tools, they note, might be opaque or just plain wrong, and human workers can’t always override their decisions, leaving employees disengaged and frustrated.
CREDIT: JAMES PROVOST (CC BY-ND)
Human Factors specialist Ron McLeod
Glasgow, Scotland
Transitioning to supervision brings challenges both technological and psychological, McLeod posits. The human mind gets bored and distracted and isn’t always ready to spring into action if the machine needs help. But that’s only part of it. Systems, be they control rooms or cockpits or automatic sports referees, have to be designed to work effectively with humans, not to cut them out of the loop. And engineers and designers don’t necessarily understand how to balance the sensors and actions of automated systems with the needs and abilities of the people keeping watch.
When supervision of automation goes wrong, either in the moment or in the earlier design or training stages, the results can be disastrous.
KnowableMagazine spoke with McLeod about the past, present and future of automation supervision as it evolves in the AI age. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What inspired you to write this book?
Since I was an undergraduate student in the late 1970s, I’ve been interested in the applied discipline of human factors. It’s a combination of psychology, engineering, sociology and other sciences. We try to understand how humans perform in association with technical systems, and how we can support them best.
As part of this work, I was aware of supervisory control; I taught people about it as part of my role at Shell International. But the first time I really experienced that transition for myself was in 2022, when I took ownership of a car that could drive itself.
I got no training from the company. They gave me the keys, showed me how to use the indicators (or turn signals) and turn the radio on, but they told me absolutely nothing about the automation. It was only over the next few days, as I tried to study the manual and in-car support, that I realized how this option was supposed to work.
But I was still confused. There’s a motorway near my home, it’s 70 miles per hour, and there’s a tight bend where it goes down to 40. I know that’s coming — does the car know that’s coming? If it’s icy, is the car going to slow down? I don’t know. I have to be constantly paying attention, making these mental judgments: Do I intervene, or don’t I?
Ron McLeod was initially confounded by the dashboard indicators in his new electric-powered Lexus with advanced self-driving technology.CREDIT: IMAGE COURTESY OF LEXUS
The problem is that automation is really reliable, and there’s not much to do. The brain isn’t engaged in the task. And it’s difficult to pay attention, to acquire information, to understand what’s happening, if you’re not mentally engaged in the task.
That transition period into the supervisory role, which is mentally demanding, is what interests me. Manufacturers need to start getting this stuff right. That’s what drove me to write the book.
How does AI complicate the supervision of automation?
Automation may or may not include AI. AI certainly brings new elements.
There are four possible levels at which to automate something: acquiring information, making sense of information, making decisions and taking actions. AI can be applied to any of those. Generative AI, for example, is mainly in the domain of acquiring information.
System 1 is intuitive; it takes no effort. System 2 is slow, taking time to think things through. Shaw and Nave set up an AI that gave wrong answers, and more than half the time, people just accepted it. They suggest that when you’re using AI as a tool, there’s this third kind of thinking, and they call it “cognitive surrender” — where you just give up your thinking and let AI tell you the answer.
I’m most interested in cases where the automation and the person are controlling physical things in real time, which means the human has the chance to supervise and, if they think things are going a bit awry, to intervene. This is happening all over the place.
We’ve talked about self-driving cars. Where else might supervision of automation become an issue?
In industry and manufacturing. I spent 10 years working in oil and gas, and they have a long history of automating the control room.
And anything about the control of vehicles. Whether it’s cars or ships or planes, they’re all going through the same process.
Another domain is healthcare: for example, where AI will be helping radiologists and they may not have the confidence to overrule it. I recently met an anesthesiologist who said he was originally trained to manually monitor a patient’s life signs and apply anesthetics, but nowadays, it’s all automatic. He just sits there and monitors numbers.
And in surgery, they’ll also be bringing in automation. Today, as I understand it, the surgeon still has control, but we’re not far away from the authority to perform an operation being given to some technology. And surgeons will have to go through the same transition, from manually performing surgery to being supervisors of the technology, with exactly the same issues as other cases of automation.
Robots already handle some surgical tasks, and they may do so more expansively soon, leading human surgeons to adapt to supervisory roles in which they must also know when to intervene.CREDIT: JAVIER LARREA / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
What kind of history informs your understanding of the challenges in supervising automation in diverse industries?
In 1979, with the Three Mile Island meltdown, that was the first time these human factors issues were really taken seriously.
This meltdown resulted from a series of failures in the plant’s cooling system, but a major contributor was a badly designed control room. A pressure-relief valve got stuck open, but the indicator in the control room showed it was closed. The operators had no indicator at all for the level of water covering the reactor core, because this level was not supposed to change.
With incomplete and inaccurate information, the controllers thought there was a risk of flooding the system, so they shut off the emergency water. The core became uncovered and overheated. Fortunately, no one was hurt.
If they’d done nothing, the plant would have safely shut down automatically. Initially, the operators were blamed, but it was later realized that the operators did perfectly logical things, based on the information they had. So that was a first real eye-opener about some of the psychological complexity.
Another example was the loss of the Air France Airbus that crashed as it was going from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in 2009. There were a number of human-factor problems, including cockpit design that didn’t give the pilots necessary information as well as ineffective pilot training and emergency protocols.
I found several cases like these. Again and again and again, when systems aren’t easy to use, things go wrong and people make mistakes. The company leaders that install automation assume the design will be easy based on common sense, but that isn’t always the case.
What other specific issues come up when people are supervising systems that are mostly automated?
One of the core issues is about the balance of authority between the people and the automation. Who’s actually in control?
This came up during the tennis championships at Wimbledon in 2025. This was the first time Wimbledon gave full authority to an automated line-calling system, called Hawk-Eye, to decide if balls were “in” or “out.”
It was the fourth round of the ladies’ singles, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova versus Sonay Kartal. Kartal hit a ball that was clearly out — but the automation did not call it as out. The players could see it, the umpires could see it, the whole world watching on TV could see it was out, but the umpire didn’t have the authority to overrule the automated system. The umpire made the pair replay the point, and Pavlyuchenkova lost that game, though she went on to win the match.
It turned out to be human error: The system had accidentally been turned off. The authorities were very embarrassed, and their knee-jerk reaction — rather than acknowledging that they were dealing with a complex system that relied on human behavior — was to give a blanket reassurance that they had made changes to prevent the same error. But another miscall happened the next day. They hadn’t recognized the right lesson: The system is not 100 percent reliable, so you still need the people.
Tennis player Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova talks to the match umpire while the automated system that miscalled an out is checked at Wimbledon 2025.CREDIT: VISIONHAUS VIA GETTY IMAGES
This is a common issue: Under what conditions is it allowable for humans to intervene with the automation, or for the automation to overrule humans? In the car, for example, when the autopilot is on, if I press my foot on the brake, it cuts out and I’m back in control. It lets me “over-vene.”
What should carmakers be doing to ease this transition for drivers?
So in my car, as soon as I take my hands off the wheel, I’m in that supervisory role. I need different information. I don’t need to know what gear I’m in; I don’t even need to know what speed I’m doing. I need to know, who’s in control, me or the car? And I need to know, what is the car thinking, can it see an upcoming threat?
At the very least, whether it’s driving a car, or working as doctor, or supervising a control room, I can’t think of any reason why there shouldn’t be an online training package that will take you through the basic information and put you through a few scenarios.
For cars specifically, the National Transportation Safety Board in the United States recently held a meeting following investigations of two fatal 2024 collisions in which Ford Mustang SUVs in partial automation mode hit vehicles that were stopped on the highway. In both cases, the Ford drivers were impaired or distracted from supervising the SUV’s automated driving. The NTSB recommended automakers install systems to reduce drivers becoming disengaged or complacent with automation.
These systems would be monitoring the human supervisors that are supposed to be overseeing the automated driving. There has been a lot of research and development put into products for tracking their state of alertness. And they do that, for example, by monitoring things like eye movements, head movements.
“Again and again and again, when systems aren’t easy to use, things go wrong and people make mistakes.”
— RON McLEOD
A related example is that for many years, the rail industry in some countries relied on a “vigilance” device to ensure the train driver has not fallen asleep, given how boring their task is. It consists of an audible alarm that sounds every 30 seconds. The driver is required to press a button to cancel the sound. Pretty low tech, but seemingly effective in making sure the driver is awake!
And not everyone is going to have the cognitive skills that you need to drive as a supervisor. Should there be something in the driving test about, do you have the mental capacity to make those judgments? I don’t know, but there should be more research there.
What else can be done to help human supervisors stay engaged and be effective in other automated situations?
The core issue here isn’t actually that difficult. It’s just about good design. If you realize you are changing people from a manual role to a supervisory role, then on the system end, you design the user interface based on understanding: What is the human’s task? What information do they need? How do we optimize that?
In the case of my car, the interface was designed for manual drivers, not for me as a supervisor. Part of the problem was that there was so much information on the screens, I didn’t know where to look. I didn’t know what the symbols meant. There was a lot of text, a lot of it abbreviated. Some of it, I couldn’t read it anyway, because it was in a location I couldn’t see.
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For the user, it’s important to consider training, incentive schemes, workload and competing tasks. Companies must ensure people who are supervising automation are trained so that they understand what is involved in their supervisory role: for example, what kinds of signs or information they should be looking for and where that information is, and what could happen if things went wrong.
And, for example, not having incentives that discourage the supervisor from making the best decisions. When I was working in oil and gas, there were a number of cases where people in control rooms had intervened to shut down or slow down production — which has a dollar value attached to it. And they’d actually done the right thing, but they were blamed for it.
When you add in the AI dimension, there are even more potential issues, like the cognitive surrender. We still need people — it’s just about how to make sure they’re supported. It isn’t rocket science; it’s just about recognizing the complexity of this new role.
Amber Dance is a Knowable Magazine contributor in the Los Angeles area. She’s not sure she trusts herself to supervise her car’s cruise control.
This week, we are going pretty far off the Rather ranch for our reason to smile. We decided to delve into the world of classical music. And what better piece of music to summon a smile than Ludwig van Beethoven’s most triumphant and jubilant masterpiece, his Symphony No. 9.
The Ninth, also known as “Ode to Joy,” was the first major symphony written with parts for singers — soloists and a chorus. Beethoven set his choral symphony to Friedrich Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy,” with additional lyrics by the composer.
The symphony is more than an hour long. If you have the time, I encourage you to listen to the whole glorious thing. But it is the last movement that is arguably the most powerful and profound. The final crescendo makes one feel invincible.
Please enjoy Dutch conductor Andre Rieu and his orchestra performing the Beethoven classic in the Netherlands.
Beethoven composed The Ninth between 1822 and 1824, when he was almost completely deaf. His hearing loss was slow and agonizing, beginning in 1798 when he was just 28 years old. By that time, he was such an accomplished pianist and composer that he had developed a mastery of music theory and a highly trained ear. This allowed him to continue composing masterpieces for almost thirty more years.
When he wrote his ninth and final symphony, although he couldn’t hear the notes, he could feel them. Beethoven wrote about feeling the vibrations the notes made on the piano. And he could “hear” the music in his head.
“Ode to Joy,” usually performed in the original German, celebrates commonality, unity, and the triumph of joy over hardship. We leave you with an English translation.
Oh friends, no more of these sounds! Let us sing more cheerful songs, More full of joy! Joy! Joy, bright spark of divinity, Daughter of Elysium, Fire-inspired we tread, Thy sanctuary! Thy magic power reunites All that custom has divided; All men become brothers, Under the sway of thy gentle wings. Whoever has created an abiding friendship, Or has won a true and loving wife, All who can call at least one soul theirs, Join in our jubilation! Yes, and anyone who could not, Should steal away weeping from this gathering.
A quarter of the world’s governments — from China, Iran, and Russia to smaller states like Rwanda and Turkey — are pursuing dissidents across the globe, using threats, intimidation, physical assault, and even murder to suppress dissent and maintain power. Democratic host states must not turn a blind eye. As Siena Anstis and Marcus Michaelsen write in our new issue, “The failure to provide consistent protection and meaningful accountability will, over time, erode the credibility of democratic institutions and the authority of the rule of law.”Read their article, “How to Combat Transnational Repression,” along with other Journal of Democracy essays examining the rising danger of transnational repression, free for a limited time.
Authoritarians actively threaten, intimidate, and murder exiles and opponents wherever they find them. While justice for victims is hard won, it is possible. Here is how democracies can push back.
By Siena Anstis and Marcus Michaelsen
The Journal of Democracy is published quarterly in January, April, July, and October. Subscribe now for full access to our archives.
Heated disagreements about sexuality and gender are everywhere these days. As an evolutionary-trained clinician who specializes in gender-specific medicine and men’s health, I have been helping individuals and couples improve their love lives for more than fifty years. I recently interviewed Dr. Nathan L. Lents about his latest book, The Sexual Evolution: How 500 Million Years of Sex, Gender, and Mating Shape Modern Relationships. I found the book to be enlightening, engaging, and downright fun to read.
I have often found resistance in some circles when I talk about the biological and evolutionary roots of who we are as males and females. Some people fear that differences will be used, as they have in the past, to restrict people’s freedom and to keep some locked into boxes that are rigid and unchanging. That does not have to be the case as Dr. Lents points out so effectively.
Joan Roughgarden, Professor emerita of biology at Stanford University, and author of Evolution’s Rainbow had this to say about The Sexual Evolution:
“A lot of people seem to think they know what science says when it comes to sex. Well, Nathan Lents has news for them. Read this book — it’s fascinating, charming, and eye-opening, with lovely ink drawings that bring the animals in its pages to life. It dispels misconceptions about life in the animal kingdom and our place in it, but most important, it shows clearly that nature’s beautiful sexual diversity extends to all living things — especially humans.”
“In just two generations, the sexual landscape has completely changed throughout most of the developed world, and so it is no surprise that many people find all of this terribly unsettling,” says Dr. Lents. “What is surprising to me however, is how little the biology and natural history of sex has factored into the public conversation. I assert that this moment of sexual turmoil is actually a rediscovery of the much more expansive relationship with sex that our ancestors once had and that other animals enjoy today.”
I grew up in southern California and spent endless hours wandering in nature. I was a biology major in college and found the world of plants and animals fascinating. As a marriage and family counselor I have found that my understanding of biology and evolution is invaluable in helping me support my client’s desire to have a wonderfully passionate sex and love life.
In a recent article, “This Truth About Males and Females Will Change Your View of Sex, Love, and Life Forever,” I described the work of my colleague, Michael Gurian, who has been reporting on male/female differences in brain function for decades. In a video blog, he shared the research that has been going on for more than 40 years and the evidence from a new study that shows brain differences, in utero, long before the effects of gender socialization.
If there was one thing Dr. Lents wanted people to take away from reading his book, it is the value of diversity in the lives of all living things.
He said that in the modern world, much of how we express our sexuality, and how we form our sexual relationships, stems from cultural constructions, not innate biological wiring. Even a cursory glimpse of the sex lives of other animals demolishes any notion that sexual activity is narrowly purposed toward procreation. Biologists have discovered an ever-expanding list of reasons that animals have sex with each other. Animals use sex for bonding, social cohesion and alliance building. They use sex deceptively, competitively and financially. They even have sex for the same reason that we most often do it: just for the fun of it.
Moreover, in no other species but humans is sex rigidly restricted by broad constructions such as heterosexuality and sexual monogamy, nor was it so restricted for most of the history of our own species. As humans explore this supposedly new sexual territory, we can look to our animal cousins for guidance on how to manage this minefield of social upheaval.
Not only will an understanding of our evolutionary diversity help improve our love lives, it may very well be the key to our survival. You don’t have to be a trained scientist to recognize that our human species is out of touch with the laws of nature. The burning hot temperatures we are experiencing all over the world is one reminder of the risk we are facing as humans continue to undermine our connections to the Gaia and all her diverse life forms.
As Thomas Berry warned us:
“We never knew enough. Nor were we sufficiently intimate with all our cousins in the great family of the earth. Nor could we listen to the various creatures of the earth each telling its own story. The time has now come, however, when we will listen or we will die.”
There is still time to listen and learn. If you would like to get more information about Nathan H. Lents, you can do so here: https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/. He told me he’s interested in hearing from people and he reads all emails people send.
An augur stands behind the covered Numa Pompilius at an auspicium ceremony to look at the sign from the birds on whether Numa was fit to be the future king of Rome. Engraving: Bernhard Rode, 1768-69
auspicate
PRONUNCIATION:
(AW-spi-kayt)
MEANING:
verb tr.: To begin an undertaking, especially with a ceremony intended to bring good luck.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin auspex (one who observes birds), from avis (bird) + -spex (watcher), from specere (to look). Earliest documented use: 1604.
NOTES:
Etymologically speaking, to auspicate is to birdwatch. In ancient Rome, an official called an auspex or augur looked for divine approval by observing birds: how they flew, called, or fed. Because, naturally, whether the birds pecked with gusto could decide whether an army marched, an election proceeded, or everyone went home kibitzing.
Professional bird-omen consultants are scarce today, but the market for the future remains crowded: tarot-card readers, palm readers, and other vendors of Delphic mumbo-jumbo are still ready to take your money and, in return, tell you what the universe allegedly meant to say.
Related words include auspices. and auspicious. The word inaugurate is also related: Latin inaugurare meant to take omens from birds, or to consecrate or install when the omens were favorable.
“The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parent.”
–Carl Jung
Shadow Within Jung May 18, 2026 Talk to Yourself This Way and Your Life Will Heal | Carl Jung Your body has never been your enemy. It has been trying to speak to you for years. Carl Jung believed that emotional pain, repression, and unresolved trauma often express themselves through the body. In this video, you will discover how the way you speak to yourself can influence healing, self-awareness, and inner transformation. ????
New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Jul 19, 2026 Edi Bilimoria, DPhil, FIMechE, CEng, is a Consultant Engineer and has been Project Manager and Head of Design for major projects such as the Channel Tunnel. He is a Trustee of the Scientific and Medical Network, Adviser to the Galileo Commission of the Network, a Trustee and a Council Member of the Francis Bacon Society, and was the Education Manager for the Theosophical Society in Australia. He is author of Mirages in Western Science Resolved by Occult Science, The Snake and the Rope: Problems in Western Science Resolved by Occult Science, his four volume work, Unfolding Consciousness: Exploring the Living Universe and Intelligent Powers in Nature and Humans, and Consciousness Came First: Revealing Evidence for Universal Intelligence and Mind Beyond the Brain. His website is edibilimoria.com. Edi illuminates ancient wisdom and eternal truths from Theosophy suggesting that consciousness is foundational to matter and not separate from it and that even the smallest particle of matter has spirit. By reassessing historical ideologies that have led to detrimental societal effects, we can think with our heart and feel with the brain to value our mental and spiritual well-being over mere physical existence. 00:00:00 Introduction 00:03:32 Worldview of matter foundational to mind 00:07:44 Science raised to metaphysics 00:20:06 Creative and intuitive inspiration 00:39:00 Theosophy: wisdom as possessed by the gods 00:45:35 Uniting with our source 00:54:48 AI and consciousness 01:03:16 Self-awareness and reflection 01:09:21 Primacy of the heart and overuse of intellect 01:22:52 Conclusion New Thinking Allowed CoHost, Emmy Vadnais, OTR/L, is a licensed occupational therapist, intuitive healer and coach, and spiritual guide based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Emmy is the founder of the Intuitive Connections and Holistic OT communities. She is the author of Intuitive Development: How to Trust Your Inner Knowing for Guidance With Relationships, Health, and Spirituality. She offers intuitive coaching to help individuals access their inner guidance for clarity, healing, and meaningful decision-making. Her website is https://emmyvadnais.com (Recorded on May 1, 2026)
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It is early morning in Nîmes. I am waiting for coffee while looking out of the window of the small hotel where Susie and I are staying. The square below is waking up. There are a few cars, a woman walking a dog, a kid on a scooter, an old man smoking on a bench. Today, Susie and I plan to walk around the town for a bit, maybe visit a church, and maybe find the river that people say runs clean and cold. Later, I’ll play a show at the amphitheatre.
