Elif Shafak's Age of 3 A's: Anger, Anxiety & AI

The first thing I noticed was her soft voice, her delicate choice of words, and her strong presence - attentive, kind, and humble toward everyone around her. In the shadows of the backstage area as much as on stage in our “cosy little living room”.

Elif Shafak is one of the world’s leading novelists, helping us make sense of a changing world through stories - across 21 books translated into 58 languages.

Throughout her career, she has often heard people say: “The world is burning. We don’t have time for fiction.” Her argument against this is compelling and one that resonates strongly with my own conviction. Stories help us move beyond understanding the world through the numbers and figures we so often focus on, and rebuild crucial connections that are getting lost.

The connection to our own emotions: “There is no one who can afford to not connect to their emotions. (…) Everybody right now is quite anxious - the only difference is some people hide their emotions more than others.”

The connection to each other: “The human mind is not wired to process suffering through numbers - we do not truly process it nor register a difference when reading that 500 or 5,000 people died in a conflict. But knowing the stories of people affected by a conflict shows they are not that different from me.”

The connection to our world: “We are not the one clever species. We’re only a tiny part of a very delicate ecosystem.”

Elif's stories help us reconnect on all three levels. And, in doing so, help us navigate what she calls the “age of the 3 A’s: anxiety, anger and AI” - or, as she added, the increasingly threatening fourth A: apathy.

AI can feed us more information than we ever thought possible. But it doesn’t necessarily make us any wiser. And in the end, it is wisdom that helps us navigate anxiety, anger and apathy. There is so much wisdom in the art of storytelling worth turning towards, especially as the world is burning! Thank you so much for sharing yours with us, Elif!

It's not often that a stage interview leaves me with that warming feeling, like a deep conversation with a newfound friend - but in our case, it did.

Once more, I say the only Turkish words I know, and hold on to the tiny story that helps me remember them - just as you reminded us that all good stories do: “teşekkür ederim”, or “tea, sugar and a dream”.

Photocredits: InfosysEurope & Anna Moffat.