As I await the seven-figure checks from investors flocking to my typewriter venture, I will offer a few more thoughts on reclaiming life from digitization. My nostalgia for typewriters and fountain pens isn’t just nostalgia. It also attunes to a real loss of capacities, a flattening and dispiriting of life, and a desire to rekindle a hidden spark of vitality.
Funny enough, for my kid whose handwriting remained totally illegible at age 8 and nothing seemed to work to improve it... I bought him a fountain pen and started him learning cursive. Worked wonders. Could almost see his handwriting getting better day by day.
And then caught him chasing his brother down the hallway waving the pen at him. Had to re-paint the entire hall, and the ink splatters still bled through in some places. He's not using the pen anymore, and the handwriting has gone all to hell since. Contemplating whether it's worth the risk of trying again...
I've been a journalist for 39 years now . . . and I rely on a computer, not a typewriter. But when composing an essay I normally take a piece of blank paper and pencil in the talking points. Sorry but these are small things. We are now up against a globalist cabal and need to harness all technology to oppose it. There isn't much time.
In my version of the Garden of Eden one should always be encouraged to eat from the tree of knowledge but should never meddle with the tree of life as that is above the pay grade of ANY human: past, present or future. Think of the sorcerers apprentice and all the unanticipated problems his meddling created. Those of us that understand the complexity of the global ecosystem tend to abide by the precautionary principle. The globalists have the audacity to think they can meddle with the Tree of Life with no consequence. They they seem to abide by the "Let's just do shit and see what happens" principle. I can't seem to find an antonym for the Precautionary Principle.
Our globalist corporations have obviously ignored this warning as GMO farming began/expanded in the early 1990's. Using CRISPR and other cutting edge technologies they have meddled with the tree of life: terminator seeds, plants that produce insecticides (which we eat), spraying plants with Glyphosate etc. Already it is clear these technologies are causing harm to human health. Then we have fluoride in the water supply, endocrine disruptors, PFAS chemicals etc., in or food and water. None of this makes sense and represents a willful refusal to consider what our collective knowledge (e.g., the tree of knowledge) should be telling us about the harm these substances unleash on the human population. But is goes on unabated because global corporations can profit in the short run.
Then came the Plandemic and the mRNA vaccines the did not prevent infection/transmission but did cause considerable harm and death. Worse yet there is growing evidence that these mRNA injections may actually be modifying our DNA and the consequences are just beginning to be understood. Of course this has all been ignored by globalist corporate media. And over the past year I have read numerous papers about self assembly nanobots within the vaccines and much more. I've yet to write about this subject as, at first, I was a skeptic. But perhaps it is time to cover the subject because there is plenty of evidence/papers etc. which suggest the globalists want to use mRNA concoctions in conjunction with 5G EMF radiation to control our moods and literally allow the government to get inside our heads. And thanks to the author for detailing the programs that are already underway.
It is now obvious that the WEF, UN, WHO etc. want full control of humanity. They aren't even shy about their plans: a Great Reset where you will own nothing (and really won't be happy at all). And it is all spelled out in Agenda21, Agenda2030, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's). They have very complex plans to exert control of every human on planet Earth. Their goal is a fully controlled global population -- which will relegate every human to the status of a slave on a globalist plantation.
WE THE PEOPLE, of planet Earth, need to immediately unite behind our own complex agenda in order to stop this globalist coup. To that end I've put together what I call the "Put People First" agenda, which has developed over the past 5 years. I'm encouraging everyone to endorse this agenda and cite your support at City Council, School Board meetings as well as during protests. As Benjamin Franklin once said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence: "We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." Here is the PPF agenda as it currently exists:
* No Lockdowns EVER again
* No forced masking ANYWHERE
* No forced vaccinations under ANY circumstance whether that be from injection, food or chemtrails
* Absolutely no vaccine passports or digital currency
* Reinstate all of those that lost jobs for refusing to get the mRNA injection, including all of our Healthcare workers
* Universal non-coercive choice: Wearing a mask or getting a mRNA injection will be up to each individual and there will be ABSOLUTELY no penalty for not complying in or out of the workplace.
* No more censorship of ANYONE whether that be on social media, corporate media or at the workplace. No one should ever be censored or punished for exercising their First Amendment Right to Free Speech.
* Impeach Biden/Harris and reinstate Trump as our president.
* Stop the LGBTQ and CRT indoctrination in our schools and corporations
* Stop the Climate Agenda and make Energy Independence Priority Number One.
* Send every Illegal Alien, that Biden has brought in through Open Borders, back home.
* Stop the illegal mass imigration invasion worldwide
* Legalize the personal cultivation of Cannabis, Psilocybin.
* Legalize the right to take Ivermectin, Hydrochloriquine and other anti-viral herbs and drugs
* Legalize the right to choose when it comes to vaccines, abortion, drugs etc.
* Eliminate Genetically modified vaccines, plants, animals (fish, cattle etc.) and the use of Glyphosate.
* Eliminate the use of Geoengineering: Chemtrails, HAARP etc.* Eliminate the fluoridation of our water supply.
* Stop allowing Blackrock, and other financial institutions from buying up residential properties which will make it impossible for future families to own a home and build up equity.
* Demand your government defund and exit the UN, WHO and WEF
Machines (being material objects) will never replace us because they cannot transcend the material world to access true reality. Only consciousness can do that. However, machines feed off of humans' ability to access other unseen dimensions. They need us to access that creative realm. And as they become more powerful, they will increasingly find ways to use us to access that realm more frequently for them. They will become addicted to the one thing they can never access. And that won't be good for us.
Beautiful essay, Charles. Yes, we have forgotten why we incarnated in the first place. We are spiritual beings having a human experience, and we are all manifestations of the One. When you realize that, you lovingly appreciate breathing, walking, creating with your hands, eating, gardening, family, friendships, your body, life. You marvel at it and know what really, truly matters. This physical life is so beautiful and temporary. We cannot take anything with us when we die. Nothing but who we were in life. The love we felt and shared, the beauty we created with our imaginations and manifested with our hands, the memories we leave in the hearts of those whose paths we cross. Don't waste your precious life in screenland.
With regards the typewriter venture. I'm not sure if you've seen any of us out and about anywhere, but there are a bunch of people (in various countries) who improvise stories and poetry on typewriters in public. There are also a few decent mechanics out there. Here's a few links to check out:
The role of public typists has a wonderous history, present and indeed future. If you ever fancy a chat with reagrds the deeper implications of improvising stories in public or changing what's possible in everyday public spaces feel free to get in touch via the Found Out There link above.
…long ago I trained as a Montessori school teacher…part of her philosophy (as I remember it!) was the importance of the hand-brain-heart connection…writing by hand (and I think in cursive rather than print?) was thought to create a special connection not present with typing…I also once had the privilege of hearing her granddaughter speak…she described cleaning and repairing and old refrigerator…the act of caring for the appliance, engaging her will and her hands, meant that by the time she was finished the cleaning she felt that she loved that old fridge…the lesson was that caring for something is a way to create connection and love…
"When we gear our society around efficiency, we produce more and more of the measurable, while the immeasurable, the qualitative, and the things we don’t think to measure drain away."
Very good I feel that you must Of read Henry David Thoreau on Walden pond Henry David Thoreau reconfirmed my journey so much comes from observation of nature and yet so many people refuse to listen to the forest the wind the rain when it comes most of my material I have written away from others has been inspired by my observation of nature. Nature Nurtures and inspires me to write what I see and yet I feel comfortable to keep my writings to myself to remind me it is a personal journey we place to much emphasis on money and not life itself Everything happens for a reason things choose us in the solitude of the outback and one day in the very near future I will be gone again back to my home in the Great Western Woodlands the largest arid and Euclypt forest in the world I'm only fifteen minutes from there were I'm located Varley Western Australia many blessings to you Sir regards Sean Oxley
Thank you, Charles. Important inquiry. I personally find that soul cannot be replaced and whatever that is of our innate creative intelligence, at individual, inter-subjective and collective levels, cannot be replaced. Yet I concur that we can get farther away from our conscious connection from that and our exercising our ability to experience, attune and deeply listen through our dependence on machines. Technology can be a curse resulting in our disconnection from our bodies and our journeys from moment to moment with and through life, or a blessing that allows us greater capacity to experience, sense and co-create sustainably with all of life. May we allow ourselves enough stillness and breaths that we can see this and make the most creative choices.
Curious to me is that it is how the more reliance we have on machines and AI the more we begin to mirror the "artificial intelligence" which is not capable of prajna, jnana, satchidananda and coming from intuitive insight and embodied presence at the deepest levels. And yet our nervous systems still function actuating their fight, flight or freeze. This is problematic in our cultures already so traumatized and disconnected, relating and creating through beliefs and structures informed by our illusions of separation.
Resonant with what you are saying about the dissociative aspects of the machine on individuals and cultures is what Josh Schrei was saying in his Emerald Podcast on AI:
"AI and The Body
So there are global effects, effects that impact the body of the entire world, there are effects on the body of the community, and there are also deep effects on the bodies of individuals that don’t get talked about as often. Modern bodies are already reeling from the debilitating effects of so much phone time, the very real effects of falling sway to so much attention-grabbing-magic pointed our way. Anxiety, depression, isolation, addiction… all of these have come with the advent of the luminous attention-seeking portal called the phone.
Imagine amplifying this exponentially.
For example, there are profound somatic repercussions to outsourcing all knowledge to something that lives outside of our bodies. Repercussions to what could be called Disembodied Intelligence. There are impacts to developing a total neural dependence on outside technology. You know your friend who can’t find their way to the store without Google Maps? Amplify that 1000 times. We’re talking about total dissociation from somatic reality. Bodies that can no longer discern up from down, east from west.
The total redefinition of what bodies even are. Bodies that have never actually learned a thing. Bodies that have no tissue bridge, no cellular bridge, no neural bridge, no hormonal bridge between what they learn on an abstract level and what they do in the world. Bodies that know all the factual information about a tree but cannot equate what they learned about trees from their AI tutor with the waving green being right outside their window. Global-scale technology-induced autism. The spectrum, magnified exponentially. The already existing chasm between scientific factual knowledge and what to actually do with it, how to embody it, how to be in this world… magnified.
Limp bodies ceding agency to bodiless intelligences. The mind-body split, cranked up a hundred thousand times…
And so AI brings with it all knowledge, all potentiality, tomes of ancient wisdom available in an instant — and the real possibility that we will have no ability to do anything with it at all. Which is why one commentator said, the danger of AI isn’t that it will extinct us, it’s that it will drive us completely mad. The collapse of digital realities combined with the collapse of the cultural and somatic compasses that once navigated and parsed truth from fiction. The collapse of intuition. The collapse of feeling, and felt consequences, and the ability to mentally trace an effect to its cause, which is learned in bodies, over time.
The heart of it for me is this — are human beings ready and able to show that we can handle these mythic powers with responsibility, right? Are we ready to embody this? Are we ready for this kind of magic? Human beings who arguably weren’t even ready to handle the technology that came with bronze or planted seeds, who have demonstrated again and again that they can’t handle the responsibility of navigating a four-way traffic stop… are we ready for sorcerer-level powers?
No. Not even close.
Because, contrary to what the culture of modern consumption would have us believe, contrary to what the marketing world would tell us, and to what the new age would sell us, and what the culture of “the universe exists to fulfill your needs” would convince us of, there are actual steps to embodying knowledge.
There are actual steps to understanding how to be in relation to great powers.
Slow, deliberate steps over time.
This is where — in all the mystery schools and all the magic schools — initiation comes in. "
I so appreciate the distinction you make between objects, tools, and allies. The kayak I am sitting in as i type my reply is allowing me to float out in the Pacific amongst whales. A month ago it was an object covered in ferns and leaf litter in a friend’s backyard. It became a tool for me to paddle out here with the whales, and after many great adventures together, this kayak, which is holding me inches above the vast Pacific, has become my ally. I patched it, repaired it, attach all kinds of odds and ends to it like a bow line and a place to hold my fins, and even though it is plastic, a material that serves us so beautifully and yet currently has a bad rap because of our misuse, I’ve come to love and cherish this little boat. Together we float, and sometimes I still grunt when I lift it onto the roof of my car, but it is the grunt of friendship, no longer is it effort. I appreciate so much you making the distinction in your essay, the physical world is not objective, not separate from me, as are any of you reading this. We’re playing a game of separation, but ultimately, on some level, we recognize each other. The whales are coming so I’ll hit send to me. The synchronicity of their surfacing is a confirmation of our connectedness.
This is such a fascinating piece and you’ve definitely hit a nerve. “Immersion in the digital world begets an impoverishment that seems to contradict its apparent hyperabundance” - wow. You might find my recent piece on the relationship we have to “the essence of things” interesting as it touches on some of the things you discuss.
Good to see you back on solid ground, this really is where your thinking is most needed. Sacred Economics really was a definitive text for my partner and I, Joe Brewer and Dark Matter Labs are amongst a few of the people still working through the ideas outlined in the book, in terms of bioregional ecology based currencies.
There is some great research coming through that shows that it is only through doing that minds can change - something which as crafts people we have known through our own practical experience! See Sarah Stein Lubrano on Planet Critical - Our Cognitive Dissonance. It resonates with this post and I think there is something astonishing and uniquely human about making, that our disconnection from it is a fundamental issue.
I appreciate your depth of thinking on issues that many, unfortunately, do not have the keen perception to envision or clarity of mind to articulate. A sharp contrast to this modernity malaise is taken from another culture and society that I recently experienced. I was partaking this Banh Chung, a traditional Vietnamese Tet delicacy made during the traditional Lunar New Year equivalent in Hai Phong. They were squarish stuff neatly bundled up and a common sight in many shops. I enjoyed eating a bit as it is rich with ingredients but did not think too much of it until recently. I watched the Youtube below and began to appreciate how much time, effort and love is put into making each of the Banh Chung. A piece costs about the equivalent of US$5. The many months in preparing the leaves, the ingredients and stewing the meat before they are carefully bundled up amidst family bonding just moved me to tears. These are human connections/ relationships that digitisation would sooner or later invade but the trade-offs for greater output/ revenue would be a poor substitute. https://youtu.be/pdieb6R0gIo?si=VbUUqFjDlC9YY5uq
The only part I disagreed with was the "My wife Stella..." paragraph. My perspective is that the son created the entire cabin in his mind and is forever connected to it. It is his creation. In the afterlife, he didn't exploit Mother Earth for resources; he didn't injure her by digging foundations into her body, he didn't kill trees for timber; he didn't lay tar and cement over the land; and he didn't make toxic artificial materials that ultimately end in Mother Earth as toxic waste. No, Creation gave him what he created in his mind, without the horrors of what our society does to the environment. If we have to kill, maim, and destroy others to have a sense of it being mine, we are on the wrong path. In my opinion, we need to learn how to make all the materials and power we need in this life from the energy of creation.
Funny enough, for my kid whose handwriting remained totally illegible at age 8 and nothing seemed to work to improve it... I bought him a fountain pen and started him learning cursive. Worked wonders. Could almost see his handwriting getting better day by day.
And then caught him chasing his brother down the hallway waving the pen at him. Had to re-paint the entire hall, and the ink splatters still bled through in some places. He's not using the pen anymore, and the handwriting has gone all to hell since. Contemplating whether it's worth the risk of trying again...
I've been a journalist for 39 years now . . . and I rely on a computer, not a typewriter. But when composing an essay I normally take a piece of blank paper and pencil in the talking points. Sorry but these are small things. We are now up against a globalist cabal and need to harness all technology to oppose it. There isn't much time.
In my version of the Garden of Eden one should always be encouraged to eat from the tree of knowledge but should never meddle with the tree of life as that is above the pay grade of ANY human: past, present or future. Think of the sorcerers apprentice and all the unanticipated problems his meddling created. Those of us that understand the complexity of the global ecosystem tend to abide by the precautionary principle. The globalists have the audacity to think they can meddle with the Tree of Life with no consequence. They they seem to abide by the "Let's just do shit and see what happens" principle. I can't seem to find an antonym for the Precautionary Principle.
Our globalist corporations have obviously ignored this warning as GMO farming began/expanded in the early 1990's. Using CRISPR and other cutting edge technologies they have meddled with the tree of life: terminator seeds, plants that produce insecticides (which we eat), spraying plants with Glyphosate etc. Already it is clear these technologies are causing harm to human health. Then we have fluoride in the water supply, endocrine disruptors, PFAS chemicals etc., in or food and water. None of this makes sense and represents a willful refusal to consider what our collective knowledge (e.g., the tree of knowledge) should be telling us about the harm these substances unleash on the human population. But is goes on unabated because global corporations can profit in the short run.
Then came the Plandemic and the mRNA vaccines the did not prevent infection/transmission but did cause considerable harm and death. Worse yet there is growing evidence that these mRNA injections may actually be modifying our DNA and the consequences are just beginning to be understood. Of course this has all been ignored by globalist corporate media. And over the past year I have read numerous papers about self assembly nanobots within the vaccines and much more. I've yet to write about this subject as, at first, I was a skeptic. But perhaps it is time to cover the subject because there is plenty of evidence/papers etc. which suggest the globalists want to use mRNA concoctions in conjunction with 5G EMF radiation to control our moods and literally allow the government to get inside our heads. And thanks to the author for detailing the programs that are already underway.
It is now obvious that the WEF, UN, WHO etc. want full control of humanity. They aren't even shy about their plans: a Great Reset where you will own nothing (and really won't be happy at all). And it is all spelled out in Agenda21, Agenda2030, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's). They have very complex plans to exert control of every human on planet Earth. Their goal is a fully controlled global population -- which will relegate every human to the status of a slave on a globalist plantation.
WE THE PEOPLE, of planet Earth, need to immediately unite behind our own complex agenda in order to stop this globalist coup. To that end I've put together what I call the "Put People First" agenda, which has developed over the past 5 years. I'm encouraging everyone to endorse this agenda and cite your support at City Council, School Board meetings as well as during protests. As Benjamin Franklin once said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence: "We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." Here is the PPF agenda as it currently exists:
* No Lockdowns EVER again
* No forced masking ANYWHERE
* No forced vaccinations under ANY circumstance whether that be from injection, food or chemtrails
* Absolutely no vaccine passports or digital currency
* Reinstate all of those that lost jobs for refusing to get the mRNA injection, including all of our Healthcare workers
* Universal non-coercive choice: Wearing a mask or getting a mRNA injection will be up to each individual and there will be ABSOLUTELY no penalty for not complying in or out of the workplace.
* No more censorship of ANYONE whether that be on social media, corporate media or at the workplace. No one should ever be censored or punished for exercising their First Amendment Right to Free Speech.
* Impeach Biden/Harris and reinstate Trump as our president.
* Stop the LGBTQ and CRT indoctrination in our schools and corporations
* Stop the Climate Agenda and make Energy Independence Priority Number One.
* Send every Illegal Alien, that Biden has brought in through Open Borders, back home.
* Stop the illegal mass imigration invasion worldwide
* Legalize the personal cultivation of Cannabis, Psilocybin.
* Legalize the right to take Ivermectin, Hydrochloriquine and other anti-viral herbs and drugs
* Legalize the right to choose when it comes to vaccines, abortion, drugs etc.
* Eliminate Genetically modified vaccines, plants, animals (fish, cattle etc.) and the use of Glyphosate.
* Eliminate the use of Geoengineering: Chemtrails, HAARP etc.* Eliminate the fluoridation of our water supply.
* Stop allowing Blackrock, and other financial institutions from buying up residential properties which will make it impossible for future families to own a home and build up equity.
* Demand your government defund and exit the UN, WHO and WEF
https://brucecain.substack.com/p/could-the-nationwide-emergency-alert
Great essay!
Machines (being material objects) will never replace us because they cannot transcend the material world to access true reality. Only consciousness can do that. However, machines feed off of humans' ability to access other unseen dimensions. They need us to access that creative realm. And as they become more powerful, they will increasingly find ways to use us to access that realm more frequently for them. They will become addicted to the one thing they can never access. And that won't be good for us.
Beautiful essay, Charles. Yes, we have forgotten why we incarnated in the first place. We are spiritual beings having a human experience, and we are all manifestations of the One. When you realize that, you lovingly appreciate breathing, walking, creating with your hands, eating, gardening, family, friendships, your body, life. You marvel at it and know what really, truly matters. This physical life is so beautiful and temporary. We cannot take anything with us when we die. Nothing but who we were in life. The love we felt and shared, the beauty we created with our imaginations and manifested with our hands, the memories we leave in the hearts of those whose paths we cross. Don't waste your precious life in screenland.
Amen brother!! Funny this arrived today. You arrived in dreamspace last night to say hello. We were glad to see one another. 🙏😊
With regards the typewriter venture. I'm not sure if you've seen any of us out and about anywhere, but there are a bunch of people (in various countries) who improvise stories and poetry on typewriters in public. There are also a few decent mechanics out there. Here's a few links to check out:
https://www.ironfoxtypewriters.com/public-typewriter-project
https://www.poetryonthestreets.com/
https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/trindex.html
https://www.publictypewriter.com/about
https://storywagon.co.uk/
and mine is
https://www.foundoutthere.com/
The role of public typists has a wonderous history, present and indeed future. If you ever fancy a chat with reagrds the deeper implications of improvising stories in public or changing what's possible in everyday public spaces feel free to get in touch via the Found Out There link above.
kind regards,
Adam
…long ago I trained as a Montessori school teacher…part of her philosophy (as I remember it!) was the importance of the hand-brain-heart connection…writing by hand (and I think in cursive rather than print?) was thought to create a special connection not present with typing…I also once had the privilege of hearing her granddaughter speak…she described cleaning and repairing and old refrigerator…the act of caring for the appliance, engaging her will and her hands, meant that by the time she was finished the cleaning she felt that she loved that old fridge…the lesson was that caring for something is a way to create connection and love…
My favorite life affirming line:
"When we gear our society around efficiency, we produce more and more of the measurable, while the immeasurable, the qualitative, and the things we don’t think to measure drain away."
Very good I feel that you must Of read Henry David Thoreau on Walden pond Henry David Thoreau reconfirmed my journey so much comes from observation of nature and yet so many people refuse to listen to the forest the wind the rain when it comes most of my material I have written away from others has been inspired by my observation of nature. Nature Nurtures and inspires me to write what I see and yet I feel comfortable to keep my writings to myself to remind me it is a personal journey we place to much emphasis on money and not life itself Everything happens for a reason things choose us in the solitude of the outback and one day in the very near future I will be gone again back to my home in the Great Western Woodlands the largest arid and Euclypt forest in the world I'm only fifteen minutes from there were I'm located Varley Western Australia many blessings to you Sir regards Sean Oxley
Thank you, Charles. Important inquiry. I personally find that soul cannot be replaced and whatever that is of our innate creative intelligence, at individual, inter-subjective and collective levels, cannot be replaced. Yet I concur that we can get farther away from our conscious connection from that and our exercising our ability to experience, attune and deeply listen through our dependence on machines. Technology can be a curse resulting in our disconnection from our bodies and our journeys from moment to moment with and through life, or a blessing that allows us greater capacity to experience, sense and co-create sustainably with all of life. May we allow ourselves enough stillness and breaths that we can see this and make the most creative choices.
Curious to me is that it is how the more reliance we have on machines and AI the more we begin to mirror the "artificial intelligence" which is not capable of prajna, jnana, satchidananda and coming from intuitive insight and embodied presence at the deepest levels. And yet our nervous systems still function actuating their fight, flight or freeze. This is problematic in our cultures already so traumatized and disconnected, relating and creating through beliefs and structures informed by our illusions of separation.
Resonant with what you are saying about the dissociative aspects of the machine on individuals and cultures is what Josh Schrei was saying in his Emerald Podcast on AI:
"AI and The Body
So there are global effects, effects that impact the body of the entire world, there are effects on the body of the community, and there are also deep effects on the bodies of individuals that don’t get talked about as often. Modern bodies are already reeling from the debilitating effects of so much phone time, the very real effects of falling sway to so much attention-grabbing-magic pointed our way. Anxiety, depression, isolation, addiction… all of these have come with the advent of the luminous attention-seeking portal called the phone.
Imagine amplifying this exponentially.
For example, there are profound somatic repercussions to outsourcing all knowledge to something that lives outside of our bodies. Repercussions to what could be called Disembodied Intelligence. There are impacts to developing a total neural dependence on outside technology. You know your friend who can’t find their way to the store without Google Maps? Amplify that 1000 times. We’re talking about total dissociation from somatic reality. Bodies that can no longer discern up from down, east from west.
The total redefinition of what bodies even are. Bodies that have never actually learned a thing. Bodies that have no tissue bridge, no cellular bridge, no neural bridge, no hormonal bridge between what they learn on an abstract level and what they do in the world. Bodies that know all the factual information about a tree but cannot equate what they learned about trees from their AI tutor with the waving green being right outside their window. Global-scale technology-induced autism. The spectrum, magnified exponentially. The already existing chasm between scientific factual knowledge and what to actually do with it, how to embody it, how to be in this world… magnified.
Limp bodies ceding agency to bodiless intelligences. The mind-body split, cranked up a hundred thousand times…
And so AI brings with it all knowledge, all potentiality, tomes of ancient wisdom available in an instant — and the real possibility that we will have no ability to do anything with it at all. Which is why one commentator said, the danger of AI isn’t that it will extinct us, it’s that it will drive us completely mad. The collapse of digital realities combined with the collapse of the cultural and somatic compasses that once navigated and parsed truth from fiction. The collapse of intuition. The collapse of feeling, and felt consequences, and the ability to mentally trace an effect to its cause, which is learned in bodies, over time.
The heart of it for me is this — are human beings ready and able to show that we can handle these mythic powers with responsibility, right? Are we ready to embody this? Are we ready for this kind of magic? Human beings who arguably weren’t even ready to handle the technology that came with bronze or planted seeds, who have demonstrated again and again that they can’t handle the responsibility of navigating a four-way traffic stop… are we ready for sorcerer-level powers?
No. Not even close.
Because, contrary to what the culture of modern consumption would have us believe, contrary to what the marketing world would tell us, and to what the new age would sell us, and what the culture of “the universe exists to fulfill your needs” would convince us of, there are actual steps to embodying knowledge.
There are actual steps to understanding how to be in relation to great powers.
Slow, deliberate steps over time.
This is where — in all the mystery schools and all the magic schools — initiation comes in. "
"poverty of the sacred is the result of the obsession with the measurable." The gravity line of your fine essay.
Rilke advised "hold to the difficult." To this we could add, "while you still can."
I so appreciate the distinction you make between objects, tools, and allies. The kayak I am sitting in as i type my reply is allowing me to float out in the Pacific amongst whales. A month ago it was an object covered in ferns and leaf litter in a friend’s backyard. It became a tool for me to paddle out here with the whales, and after many great adventures together, this kayak, which is holding me inches above the vast Pacific, has become my ally. I patched it, repaired it, attach all kinds of odds and ends to it like a bow line and a place to hold my fins, and even though it is plastic, a material that serves us so beautifully and yet currently has a bad rap because of our misuse, I’ve come to love and cherish this little boat. Together we float, and sometimes I still grunt when I lift it onto the roof of my car, but it is the grunt of friendship, no longer is it effort. I appreciate so much you making the distinction in your essay, the physical world is not objective, not separate from me, as are any of you reading this. We’re playing a game of separation, but ultimately, on some level, we recognize each other. The whales are coming so I’ll hit send to me. The synchronicity of their surfacing is a confirmation of our connectedness.
This is such a fascinating piece and you’ve definitely hit a nerve. “Immersion in the digital world begets an impoverishment that seems to contradict its apparent hyperabundance” - wow. You might find my recent piece on the relationship we have to “the essence of things” interesting as it touches on some of the things you discuss.
https://thebreakoutroom.substack.com/p/the-essence-of-things
Good to see you back on solid ground, this really is where your thinking is most needed. Sacred Economics really was a definitive text for my partner and I, Joe Brewer and Dark Matter Labs are amongst a few of the people still working through the ideas outlined in the book, in terms of bioregional ecology based currencies.
There is some great research coming through that shows that it is only through doing that minds can change - something which as crafts people we have known through our own practical experience! See Sarah Stein Lubrano on Planet Critical - Our Cognitive Dissonance. It resonates with this post and I think there is something astonishing and uniquely human about making, that our disconnection from it is a fundamental issue.
I appreciate your depth of thinking on issues that many, unfortunately, do not have the keen perception to envision or clarity of mind to articulate. A sharp contrast to this modernity malaise is taken from another culture and society that I recently experienced. I was partaking this Banh Chung, a traditional Vietnamese Tet delicacy made during the traditional Lunar New Year equivalent in Hai Phong. They were squarish stuff neatly bundled up and a common sight in many shops. I enjoyed eating a bit as it is rich with ingredients but did not think too much of it until recently. I watched the Youtube below and began to appreciate how much time, effort and love is put into making each of the Banh Chung. A piece costs about the equivalent of US$5. The many months in preparing the leaves, the ingredients and stewing the meat before they are carefully bundled up amidst family bonding just moved me to tears. These are human connections/ relationships that digitisation would sooner or later invade but the trade-offs for greater output/ revenue would be a poor substitute. https://youtu.be/pdieb6R0gIo?si=VbUUqFjDlC9YY5uq
The only part I disagreed with was the "My wife Stella..." paragraph. My perspective is that the son created the entire cabin in his mind and is forever connected to it. It is his creation. In the afterlife, he didn't exploit Mother Earth for resources; he didn't injure her by digging foundations into her body, he didn't kill trees for timber; he didn't lay tar and cement over the land; and he didn't make toxic artificial materials that ultimately end in Mother Earth as toxic waste. No, Creation gave him what he created in his mind, without the horrors of what our society does to the environment. If we have to kill, maim, and destroy others to have a sense of it being mine, we are on the wrong path. In my opinion, we need to learn how to make all the materials and power we need in this life from the energy of creation.