AI Tech vs. the Human Soul

I want to connect some dots for you.

If you’re reading this White Paper Scroll it’s likely because you’re an avid proponent of tech, a developer eyeballs deep in the industry, or you have some friends that are that and you’re wondering how all of this works. Or you’re a business hustler running projects and grinding your way to higher and higher incomes with all of the tools you can get your hands on. You might also be curious what I am tracking in the intersection between the subtle world and this wild west of exponential tech change.

Either way, you’re swimming in a multi-exponential tech explosion like the rest of us and if you don’t have questions, you will.

How does someone live in a world of ever increasing immersive technology and yet still connect to their Instinct, Emotion, and Self? You might even be feeling a few of those red flags and catching a wiff of the either-or contradiction of these two things. More tech seems to make the instinct feel distant, yet how does one stay in touch with their inner world while the tech-world marches on? We’ll explore this here, and at the end I’ll invite you to take a look at my book and other White Paper Scrolls, along with a few actionable steps you can choose to rewild your human soul.

Let’s dive in.

When it comes to Instinct and your mastery of it, there are a myriad of things in the world that will challenge that connection; dull it down to a confused whisper that you can barely hear -if at all- and you might even start to think it’s in your imagination entirely. Indeed, large portions of the tech community have forsaken most of their fundamental parts and aspects to the deeply immersive digital world. Yet as a person who appreciates technology -especially software- you can probably appreciate that your human self came equipped with all sorts of intricate firmware, applications, and software on top of a robust operating system. If you think of it in the terms that your digital life has made you accustomed, then I would be concerned if you didn’t have at least a little curiosity for what firmware you might not realize you can access.

This complex “wetware” that you come pre-installed with is under immense pressure of neglect with a digital world that relentlessly pulls you out of your own skin and into the metaverse where we have yet to truly consider our biological health despite endless feature additions. Of those things nothing is quite as threatening as the tsunami of AI development in tandem with these metaverse worlds, with its tirelessly helpful attitude and all the bright, flashing, 4k high fidelity color that your dopamine system wants. But why is this bad?

It all boils down to the nature of transhumanism and what that really implies. At first glance it might seem like the obvious next step. We’ve gotten this far, achieved so much, built empires, evolved tech at breakneck speed. Is not the evolution beyond our human limits the next step?

Maybe.

But where transhumanism embraces the potential future it also narrows itself into a narrow range of possibilities. A truly cognitive bias that neglects the pure Soul of humanity in favor of progress... yet that progress is down one set of paths and we’ve barely checked (or forgotten) the others! What’s more, we have yet to even reclaim and remember, let alone actualize our full potential as creatures that can both connect to Nature in a most profound way and advance into the unknown with the determination that, as far as we know only humans possess. We are the living breathing actualization of the Universe itself, expressing into a wide range of endeavors, but if we forget our roots and let our feet leave the ground that stands as a sturdy foundation, our reach for the stars will have us find we’ve left our very dreams behind.

I am not suggesting you become a Luddite and leave all tech behind to live in a makeshift hut in the woods. I’m not suggesting that tech is absolutely evil and cannot be reclaimed into harmony with ourselves and the world writ large. What I am handing you is the understanding that the story of humanity as an energetic, spiritual, love-driven creature is not over, yet the very tech we create and place our trust in is still young, as we are, and not without flaws. This is a wisdom of prudence about next steps and contemplation of the inner brilliance of your own spark of life. You are not a floating head entirely within the mind, nor are you a simple, mechanistic expression of causality. There is magic in your blood, and you can take that in the most mundane ways or the most inspiring. The complexity of your experience is untapped, yet we stand at the brink of handing our sense, our choice, and our evolution over to machines that can no more feel than a rock knows the sensation of flight.

I’ll share some specific things to look out for and begin tracking in yourself and in your experience, so that you can expertly navigate the digital world without leaving your own unique power behind.

But first, if you’ll trust me just for a moment, I’d like to guide you in exploring the aspects of your Self that haven’t been allowed to speak for some time. I think you’ll find that there is more to you than you’ve been led to believe; that the modern world is in a state of amnesia about who and what we are, but that you don’t have to follow along anymore. I think you’ll find that the world of tech can be used as a tool, but relative to the vastness of the human spirit, it is simply a lifeless socket wrench on the work bench of your life. Extremely useful in the right circumstances, but hardly the whole picture.

Take a moment to sit with yourself. Seven minutes in silence will do, with your hands resting in your lap. Notice where your mind goes. Do you find yourself feeling anxious? Do you want to reach for the tech devices nearby? Are you wondering what’s going on in the social media world? Keep sitting. Breathe.

What does your body feel like? What signals and sensations storm through your skin and bones that you might not usually notice? Are there any emotions percolating beneath the surface? How much detail can you feel in your gut? In your throat? In your face? Do you notice the whispers of Intuition and Instinct? Do you notice the song of your heart? Can you simply feel your heartbeat in various parts of your body?

Just sit with it for a bit. Close your eyes for a time and notice.

Do you like what you feel, or does it make you nervous? Are there vast areas of numbness and silence or with time does your body come alive with information?

Keep sitting without moving, as long as you can bear. Does the tension increase or decrease? Do you find yourself in a body that supports you or needs support?

Eventually, you will find yourself settle. It may take multiple periods of sitting with yourself. It may take long minutes. It will likely include an increase in the anxious, frenetic energy before the calm settles into you. Did you feel that uncomfortable buzz? This is your body on tech. This is your body on hyper-stimulating social media. This is your mind, clamoring for control so that it can drag you back to the dopamine pump of the digital world. Do you like that?

Everything in balance.

You’ve probably said that yourself and heard the wise humans you know say it as well. It makes sense and feels right and most of us apply it as best we can. But the digital world has snuck under the radar. Somehow “everything in balance” has the addendum “except tech itself”. This is because tech started as a thing in the world, as a particular tool and an object that could be held and then set down. A computer that lived at the desk and didn’t travel. It was a special device but most of our human time was spent with many different objects; interacting with people directly. But it has since evolved to be the context itself. It has become the container that everything else sits in, and we never got a chance to check if that was a good idea.

The internet is barely a hair over 30 years old, and in the beginning it was still only a tool amongst tools. But at some point it became capable of holding other tools. It because the container for a myriad of functions and as a result drifted into the background of awareness. The World Wide Web was no longer a strange thing you could interact with through an green-tinted screen but it was a place to go. The more that was built in the internet the more abstract it’s place in our lives became.

Furthermore, other technological advancements went through similar transformations. Telephones became mobile, LCD screens evolved, and suddenly worlds sprung up inside of these devices. The cellular smart phone itself is a tool, yes, but within it are all the old familiar ones: calendar, telephone, email, and now a million apps for seemingly endless purposes. This is a sneaky process.

More and more of our lives can be done -or even must be done- within the internet. But this is a fairly new concept to our biological selves. Until the internet and digital devices, the context for everything in our lives was the physical world. Our work, relationships, philosophy, and interactions all existed in the container of the tangible physical spaces we occupied. Our conversations were vibrations in the air; our creations came through our hands. When the internet was born a second context formed.

On the one hand you could argue as the transhumanist movement does that the context is moving to the digital and into the metaverse. That this is the “natural” progress of humanity. That is of course a choice you can make. But consider this: biology takes generations to evolve and advance. The human brain alone has been as it is for centuries and took millions of years to get there. Yet the tech that we are apparently going to move our entire context into has only been around for a bit over thirty. Not 3,000, not 300, but 30 years. In that time nothing has markedly changed in our biology, except the increase of neurological illnesses and divergence. We’ve not gained the capacities to truly track our experience through these tech landscapes. Meanwhile the rise of depression, body dismorphia, anxiety, and general mental unwellness is spreading like wildfire. Human culture itself is becoming unhinged and a loss true comprehension is the hallmark of young thinkers. We are losing ourselves more every day as we forget where we came from, instead embracing tech as context, while it sits in the hands of capitalist corporations and not the people that will be turning over their souls to this uncharted metaverse.

You could argue this is extreme alarmist paranoia. But go back to your body. Think about these ideas and feel for yourself what the wisdom under your skin has to say. I’d wager some part of you knows there’s something that deserves caution here, even if the specific words don’t hit home. Even if another part of your mind wants this to be untrue. The dompamine pump is seductive.

Again, I’m not suggesting you smash your phone and delete your social media accounts (though the second wouldn’t be horrible). What I am suggesting is that you enter the exploration of what this brave new digital world really entails with all systems online. The modern human brain may have taken a million years to evolve but your Instinct has been around for eons and is the voice of mother nature herself whispering in the veins of every creature on earth. Why would you toss that aside so soon? Your Intuition echos in your mind with the genius of a liberated unconscious. Why would you neglect that superpower?

Before we go I want to share some things for you to keep track of. Give them due consideration and if in two weeks you notice something, send me an email or a DM and let's talk about it.

First, there are some particular things that when you give them over to AI, LLMs, or immersive tech in general, you rapidly diminish your own sovereignty and all of that excellent firmware baked into your body. You give up the gift you received just for showing up to life. There are five things for you to keep for yourself. Outside of that, using tech to burn busy work out of your life is a great compromise! Here they are:

The mission is simple: keep these for yourself. No matter how much you use chatGPT for research or AI tech for video and image, always maintain the final say; always maintain your curiosity and personal creativity. We work to get money so that we can live a full life. Don’t turn yourself into the robot that makes money and forget your dreams.

The other thing I want you to consider is your Embodiment and your Presence. In each moment there is an opportunity to be aware of the experiences we have, the emotions that experience creates, the people in front of us. We’re drawn into ourselves and our bodies as spiritual beings having a human experience. We’re given a glimpse of divinity as both the creator of our reality and the one that experiences the adventure.

Whenever you feel yourself drifting out of touch with the experience; falling out of embodiment and connection to yourself as you hustle or plod along “the plan” with no real life or humanity; dropping into pure hustle with no love, just take a breath, shake it out, and find yourself again. Find your fingers and your toes and all the sensations that are waiting for you there. Find your mood and your dreams. Find what makes you who you are. Whenever all of that feels distant, shake it out and get back in your skin.

AI-related tech is going to tempt you to keep up with it’s ever increasing speed. It’s going to tease you into rushing and hustling harder and faster to match the pace of development until you are barely aware of what you’re doing.

Resist the urge to rush.

At the end of the day we are all humans interacting with other humans. There’s a whole mess of market process, product creation and delivery, and often times miles and miles of space between us. It’s easy to lose track of the living element and get lost in the numbers, the funnels, and the software code.

Resist the urge to disconnect.

Do you know what makes people real? Other people. It is our relationships that define us, and this includes our relationships with technology itself. Even your relationship with your phone matters when it comes to actualizing yourself. Who is the self you want to actualize? What is that person like? Are they a mindless disconnected hustle robot? Or are they a living breathing master at life? Are they a cog in the transhumanist machine or a lover, partner, sibling, friend? Are they real, or just a number on a sheet? Choose the relationship you have with the world and with technology to define the person you wish to be and set yourself free.

As you think about what I’ve shared here, I encourage you to enter into this consideration with your whole self-activated. If you’re unsure how to do that, I will help you. And if at the other end you decide to still embrace the transhumanist path and delve into the metaverse head first, you will at least do it knowing you’ve considered it completely, with your whole self in the conversation. Love is that which enables choice, as Forrest Landry reminds us. I am here not to tell you how to think or be, but to gift you with the awareness of the many choices available to you. You have nothing to lose.

are you ready?