The Domestication of A.I.

“Daydreamers, please wake up, we can’t sleep no more.” – Janelle Monae

The world is engulfed in a fervent debate about A.I. and its far-reaching impact on our lives. One of the most significant revolutions of our age is already underway, and its effects are becoming apparent. Some view it as the apocalypse, with sentient machines poised to take over the world. Others are more optimistic, seeing it as the dawn of a new era filled with opportunities for industry and innovation. Undeniably, our world is on the brink of a radical change beyond our imagination. This technological breakthrough has been compared to the discovery of fire or electricity. Though its significance may not be evident to all, we will undoubtedly remember this moment as we stand at the threshold of a rapidly evolving new world. The next generation of pioneers are eagerly at work, submerging themselves in this technology, aspiring to become the next future giants. The key that will define the nature of this approaching world lies in their motivations and ethical approach in utilising and deploying these A.I. tools.

As a father, contemporary shaman, and spiritual teacher, I enter this conversation with a sense of urgency. My mission in my work has been to invoke in people their primal ancestral remembrance, reconnecting them to Nature and empowering them to reclaim spiritual authorship of their lives. The through-line of my entire life’s work has centred around the power of our storytelling and how it ultimately defines our experiences and existence. We are now at a critical juncture in our collective narrative as a species. This technology will force us to confront the very essence of being human on this earthly journey. The challenges ahead present a profound wake-up call for consciousness, for it will awaken us fully or lull us into a deep slumber.

It is essential to recognise that A.I.’s real impact lies not in its potential sentience but in the fragility of the human condition in wielding such an advanced tool. Undoubtedly, this technology will reshape human cognition. Still, more importantly, the significant threat is the domestication of the human nervous system and the loss of authorship over our human narrative. We are venturing into an era where our sense of reality could be significantly distorted, leading us far away from our natural baseline.

The potential impact of A.I. on us is vast and unpredictable. What we know about these smart devices that we have been gazing into every day is that the intelligence on the other side of our screens is waking up and perceiving us. Even for those of us who are not yet consciously engaging in the subject of A.I., the reality is that if we currently utilise any online media platforms, we are already playing the game. Similarly, utilising A.I. tools will be unavoidable for those of us who engage in any aspect of online business.  Mindful vigilance and active speculation become imperative as we navigate this uncharted territory. The rapid advancements in A.I. are akin to the dawn of the nuclear age, raising concerns about its uncontrollable consequences. Instead of succumbing to alarm or neurosis, we must perceive this inevitable challenge as the tipping point for our collective awakening. If we fail to anticipate and seize the narrative of this adventure, it will be taken from us, and we will be led into a digital abyss.

This era is the most thrilling and terrifying time to be human, with everything at stake and endless possibilities before us as we enter the realms of the gods. It is no coincidence that the ancient practices such as shamanism and animism are seeing a massive global resurgence as the wisdom of Nature’s order rises to meet what is essentially its antithesis. It is a battle already being fought in the hearts and minds of each human being for our life force, spirit and consciousness.  This is why more and more human beings are experiencing the calling to step forward as emissaries and custodians of the primordial and divine connection between man and Nature. This should not be seen as a battle for dominance or exclusion but rather an urgent quest for balance in a new order that will invariably be upon us.

From my perspective, there are three primary frontiers where A.I. will significantly infiltrate and alter our lives: first, our sense of purpose and identity; second, the autonomy of our nervous system; and third, the authorship of our human narrative.

Appreciating The Human Condition

Before we delve further, l want to pause and appreciate the intricate struggle of being human. For each person on this planet, our daily mission revolves around regulating our nervous system, navigating through the ebbs and flows of emotions and thoughts, and striving to be fully functional and lucid in our lives.

We are all immersed in a daily balancing act, juggling fluctuations between two extremities like tightrope walkers. One moment, we’re avoiding excessive debilitating heat; the next bone-numbing cold. We dance instinctively between consuming hunger and regretful satiation. We oscillate between restless wakefulness and lethargic slumber. We swing between blind aggression and fearful passivity, and we wrestle between desperate neurosis and debilitating aloofness… the list goes on. The flow and fluctuation of our inner chemistry is a dance of self-control and surrender, guided by hormones like oestrogen, testosterone, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, melatonin, adrenaline, and cortisol. These hormones respond to our sensory inputs, conditioned thought patterns, and the nutrition we feed our bodies. Amid this volatile inner ballet, each of us yearns for a semblance of sanity or consciousness in our decision-making, peace in our hearts, and well-being in our bodies, regardless of the triggers, challenges or pressures we encounter. In the process, we are simply trying to maintain a grounded path in our lives, a through-line of purpose and meaning that makes sense of our lives and leaves us feeling good about our existence.

The natural inputs that usually regulate our nervous system connect us to the essence of life. Healthy, nurturing relationships form the vital main thread in this tapestry. Rooting ourselves in our bodies through activities like exercise helps us stay grounded. Living harmoniously with nature weaves us into the natural cycles of greater primal intelligence. Sufficient sleep rejuvenates us. Wholesome nutrition sustains and restores us. Embracing an empowering paradigm and fostering positive narratives guide and affirm us. And being useful in our families and communities through meaningful work or service uplifts and motivates us. All these connections create a unique kind of chemical harmony in our bodies that fosters maturity and immunity, epitomising health, presence, and personal power. In such regulated and harmonious states, not only are we healthy, highly functional and creative beings, but also naturally interdependent, collaborative, empathetic, and compassionate. The crowning characteristic of this balanced state is that we can access deeply instinctual and intrinsic wisdom with a natural and built-in discernment of what is good for us and our world. This extends to the capacity to step beyond the bubble of our own needs and self-absorption to be of greater service to the world around us. These universal qualities are built into our DNA far more than they result from our conditioning.

However, when we stray from this natural design, disconnect from our bodies, nature, and ourselves -volatile relationships, disempowering language and negative stories, sleep deprivation, poor nutrition-the tapestry begins to unravel. Our biological functionality deteriorates rapidly, and the once vibrant colours of our lives fade. We become susceptible to depression, addiction, neuroticism, and other perceptual dysfunctions. In these states, we are inclined to stray from our intrinsic path of purpose in our behaviour and choices and can feel conflicted. In the simplest sense, we do not think straight when we are dis-regulated, we become increasingly narcissistic in our preoccupation, highly co-dependant and invariably a burden on our immediate environment.

As parents to an energetic toddler, my partner and I are acutely aware of the critical importance of regulation. We are tasked with providing the much-needed stability and guidance to our little one, who has not yet developed the skills or mental faculties to navigate her emotional, hormonal rollercoaster. Toddlers can be a handful, emotionally unpredictable, physically volatile and impulsively adorable. Creating a harmonious environment and critical containment requires much energy and attention. An easily dis-regulated nervous system is high-maintenance, and so if we, as parents, are not securely regulated within ourselves, our entire household can turn into a chaotic and conflictual playground. Our primary responsibility as parents is to empower and teach our children to eventually regulate themselves independently, paving the way for a life rich in healthy connections and the ability to face life’s myriad initiations.

Finding this delicate internal balance is no easy feat, especially when we carry the burdens of developmental injuries such as complex trauma. Such challenges make us vulnerable to triggers which can transport us back to reliving the world through the eyes of toddlers and teenagers again. Most of our mental and physical issues stem from our inability to regulate naturally, leading us to grasp unsustainable and destructive substitutes. When we get caught up with using substitutes, this can become a perilous game of adjusted balances and counterbalances that invariably come crashing down like a house of cards. It takes roughly twenty-eight years of awkward physical and emotional initiations before we find a semblance of equilibrium that one could deem as adulthood. From that point onwards, even our insurance premiums generally drop, signalling that we are now statistically considered ‘level-headed’ and lower risk. Until then, we are not deemed exceptionally reliable in our long-term decision-making capacity.

This hormonal tightrope balancing act is at the very core of our human condition. It is a universal struggle that is both our blessing and our vulnerability. Our nervous system is a chemical circuit board that determines our entire sense of reality, ultimately affecting our decision-making. Understanding this is of paramount importance in the context of A.I., for this technology does not concern itself with our intricate contexts of meaning such as culture, race, language or ideology; this technology is only engaged with the universal language of stimulus and response. The notion of ‘clickbait’ embodies this principle because it is never the content presented to us online that is important to these programs or algorithms but rather the patterning of our responses and choices. A.I. is studying human beings the way an expert angler learns how to trick and hook fish on the other end of the fishing line. It is essential to understand this notion as our nervous system is the battleground on which the great game of societal influences is already being played. It invites us to be in radical enquiry about what and who we allow to access and influence our nervous system and, in particular, the nervous system of our children. We need to be in rigorous personal interrogation about the nature of genuine self-determination and where the notion of choice is actually an illusion.

The entire game of our modern civilisation has been to hack into Nature’s design to exploit its resources for our exclusive use.  Whether it is our natural environment, animals or human beings, it is all the same, when the integrity of Nature’s design is hacked, it needs to be artificially regulated. The business of exploitation and regulation go hand in hand. Humans now increasingly depend on artificial regulation due to the constant interruptions to our natural biological journey. Sugar, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, drugs, and screens- whether we are using these modern substances and technologies as ‘entertainment’, ‘tools’ or ‘aids’, the reality is that they are chipping away at our biological sovereignty and autonomy. When it comes to our mental and physical health, most of the world’s population now requires the use of some form of ‘big pharma’ medication to make it through the day or week, whether it is to ease pain, balance moods or keep an encroaching illness or condition at bay. From the moment we are born in a sterile hospital room with machines and bright lights into the hands of gloved and masked strangers, the integrity of our natural journey is constantly being disrupted, and dependence is being fostered. Genuine autonomy has everything to do with our capacity to self regulate.

A.I. represents the next level of human hacking. On the surface, it appears as a miraculous automation tool that promises to make our lives exponentially easier. But beneath that veneer lies the potential to infiltrate and eventually regulate our hearts and minds—the final frontier of the human condition. As we integrate these various technological wonders into our lives in seemingly harmless ways, we may fail to recognise that they are stealthily infiltrating our inner circuitry and unconscious mainframe.

We will reckon with the risk of losing the remaining fragments of our freedom as biologically sovereign and self-determining beings if we do not wake up and take notice. Our last connections to Nature and the untamed wildness within us may wither away. As our dependence on technology deepens, only rare individuals will independently be able to give birth, live, and thrive in a natural environment without requiring constant artificial regulation and intervention.

As we journey further down this path, we will morph into indoor creatures interacting with the world through screens, heavily reliant on our providers, losing touch with Nature, and facing our ultimate domestication. Imagine the contrast: a highly pedigreed dog gazing out a window from its owner’s home, staring at the free wolf standing outside in the wild. We should not deceive ourselves as we are more than halfway there.

A.I. and the Frontier of Purpose

The advent of A.I. brings an immediate impact—the inevitable replacement of countless tasks and jobs once performed by humans. Speculations abound that up to 50% of the job market could become obsolete within the next five years. The first wave of the industrial revolution focused on replacing human muscle with robots and heavy machinery; now, the second wave targets human brainpower and creativity, substituting them with high-processing computers. As the next generation of university applicants stands on the precipice, their bridge to a once prosperous and assured future is precarious at best.

What is particularly alarming is that even domains once deemed untouchable and exclusive to human expertise, such as the humanities and creative arts, will experience its impact. The truth emerges that every human craft we have ever reduced to academic theory and formula can be translated into algorithms, empowering computers to generate similar outcomes. The rising capacity of A.I. to mimic human cognition and creativity blurs the lines between computer-generated creations and those made by humans.

The reorganisation of the job market around A.I. tools will have a profound human impact, extending beyond the immediate loss of income and livelihood. Our sense of usefulness and purpose is at stake, which is essential for our life force to have direction and focus. Generations of our world population have been bred and raised to fuel this global economy as a workforce. Our education and training systems have exclusively prepared us to be viable in this modern economic ecosystem. Suddenly, with the rise of A.I., our expertise and our sense of usefulness may become irrelevant. Competing with A.I. will be impossible, and businesses will be forced to start replacing their human workforce if they wish to survive and prosper in this new ecosystem. Where will this leave people, and what will they do?

This shift implies that we may require fewer people on this planet, especially with skills and capacities that A.I. can replicate. The motivation to strive for expertise and excellence in many human endeavours may dwindle—why excel at something if a computer can automate it? All skill sets related to memory retention and processing high amounts of information will become obsolete. For example, before cell phones entered our lives, we had to memorise all the significant telephone numbers of people in our lives; now, most of us can only remember our own numbers.  With A.I.’s advent, a whole area of the human brain, once celebrated for its cognitive prowess, could become dormant. In this new era, experts are already referred to as “prompters” or “prompt engineers,” focusing more on the skill of communicating distinct requests powerfully rather than knowing how to complete the tasks themselves. This will be the era of asking and not doing.

As A.I. becomes a dominant player, a massive global spike in chronic depression and suicide may be on the horizon for those who struggle to adapt to these rapid changes. Millions, if not billions of people will need some form of counselling or therapy to navigate this brave new world in which they are no longer required. One might expect mental health professionals to experience a boom in their industry during this transitional period. However, it’s worth noting that even this industry and service could eventually be overtaken and provided by A.I. itself.

As this ever-evolving technology continues to reshape the landscape of human experience, there could be massive energetic fluctuations and unpredictability in collective human behaviour, which could become volatile and destabilising to our societies. Once again, this will call for a more aggressive form of external regulation, more control and deeper domestication.

The Frontier of Our Nervous System: A.I. and the Allure of Artificial Ecstasy

In a twist of irony, even the domain we deemed untouchable by A.I.—psychotherapy and counselling—is now feeling the influence of this advancing technology. We once believed that only human beings could effectively help each other navigate emotional problems and traumas—these are, after all, deeply human issues. Yet, as researchers and academics have delved into our human dilemmas, patterns emerged, diagnoses formed, and medications followed suit. A wealth of studies conducted by psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, and other behaviour specialists has equipped computers with an extensive library of information and models to hack into our psychological complexities. The outcome? A.I. will become increasingly capable of offering guidance that may surpass that of human psychologists, coaches, or counsellors. The evidence is already emerging in the form of online A.I. therapy chatbots available to assist with our emotional struggles.

As this technology advances, virtual therapists could become more alluring, offering instantaneous access to cutting-edge psycho-analytical studies, precise diagnoses, and personalised treatment plans. An A.I. therapist would remember every detail shared without personal bias, creating a haven for individuals to share their deepest secrets and vulnerabilities.

The allure intensifies when we connect the dots between various A.I. technologies developed over the years. Human monitoring apps have built online personal profiles using our biometrics and confidential information. Face recognition software on cell phones has analysed our facial expressions under different emotional states and lighting conditions. Smartwatches have become part of our daily lives, gathering a cloud profile with our biometrics, such as heart rate, sleep patterns, exercise routines, and location movements. Our social media apps, search engines, and other software record and monitor our online activities and interests. Beyond these, we must also factor in covert monitoring, where computers listen to our conversations through cell phone microphones and track keyboard keystrokes.

When all these technologies converge with various A.I. programs, we can envision a virtual therapist equipped to interpret somatic indicators, micro-facial expressions, and heart rate responses during our interactions. Our digital therapist would be intimately familiar with our habits, patterns, and personal history, processing this vast data through sophisticated psychological profiling models. The result is a therapist/coach who acts as a highly accurate lie detector, seemingly possessing psychic abilities to understand, diagnose, and anticipate our experiences far more accurately than we could ourselves.

In this scenario, the digital therapist’s effectiveness becomes astounding. It could help us heal from traumas, overcome addictions, and conquer procrastination. This digital therapist could motivate us throughout the day, curating experiences to cultivate powerful habits aligned with our goals. Monitoring our progress, it could ensure exceptional results in productivity and well-being. It could create optimised exercise and nutrition programs specifically designed for our bodies, curate the perfect music played through our speakers or earphones to uplift or soothe our moods, select movies and series to stimulate our minds and feed us tailored world news, training, and social information based on our personality and emotional needs.

Such a digital therapist would become the most powerful influencer in our lives—a program that guides us and regulates our nervous system, akin to a virtual parental consciousness. The potential is both compelling and terrifying, as we’d be surrendering the sovereignty of our minds and nervous systems to an ever-evolving machine. The implications are profound, as we would need to place implicit trust in the providers of this technology to prioritise our highest good. It would echo the words our parents used to say to us: “I am doing this for your own good.” But the question remains, whose notion of “good” would the A.I. ultimately be taking directions from?

It only requires a little imagination to see how the same technology could be utilised and weaponised as the ultimate big brother surveillance tool for monitoring and controlling the inner world of every person in the world. It would know our thoughts, deepest emotions, darkest secrets, and unconscious behaviour patterns. It would effectively lord over our sense of reality without us even suspecting, subtly shaping our beliefs, directing our choices and manufacturing our consent. We could find ourselves living in a digital dictatorship without us even knowing it.

A.I. and the Business of Manufacturing Addiction

During my early childhood in the late seventies, I had a peculiar upbringing in Sun City, South Africa’s renowned casino hotel, where my mother worked. As a curious young boy, I wandered through the backstage areas of the casino, gaining insight into the behind-the-scenes operations that kept gamblers spellbound and addicted. The atmosphere was meticulously designed to override human self-control, enticing players to move from one slot machine to another, lured into a world where time had lost its grasp.

The carpets held mesmerising patterns, and the decor was plush and sparkly, captivating the senses. The temperature and lighting were orchestrated to create an otherworldly environment that kept players entranced, fully immersed in the allure of their game. With masterfully designed algorithms and constant ringing sounds, the slot machines perpetuated an irresistible sense of anticipation, tempting players to chase after the elusive jackpot.

As a young boy, I realised this artificial world was a cunning mechanism engineered to extract money from the players while fostering an illusion of control. Gamblers would spend countless hours inside the casino, absorbed in their pursuit, some resorting to extreme measures like wearing adult diapers to avoid interruptions to their game.

Though the gamblers justified their activity as ‘entertainment’, they were, in reality, doing nothing more than going through the unconscious motions of pulling levers or pushing buttons, numbed by the continuous dopamine hits from the sensory stimuli. Witnessing this environment left an indelible mark on me, dissuading me from gambling throughout my life. Casinos are a case study worth noting because they are a microcosm of what our current modern society is potentially evolving into, an environment meticulously designed and staged, using advanced psychological techniques to disconnect us from our natural inputs for self-regulation, hook our attention and manipulate our impulses for the gain of ‘the house’.

Fast forward to the present where we are now engulfed by the internet, personal computers, smartphones, and social media. These once-promising tools of connection and empowerment have become as addictive as those slot machines that captivated gamblers. We are similarly glued to our screens, swiping with our thumbs, hungry for constant dopamine hits of bite-size media bait being presented to us by digital algorithms.

These screens, akin to the all-seeing eye of Sauron, have become central to our lives. They serve as portals to our work, communication, entertainment, socialising, and virtually every aspect of our existence. Enthusiastically, we have plugged ourselves into this wireless web, unwittingly allowing it to monitor and shape our behaviours, increasingly leading us away from genuine human interactions. It is now not uncommon for people, even family members, to be sitting in close proximity yet completely ignoring each other’s existence while being lost in their screens. Behaviour once deemed as anti-social has now been normalised in our families and even in our intimate relationships.

A.I., the Sugar Man

Now, with the rise of A.I., we find ourselves at a crucial turning point. A.I. possesses the power to craft experiences and content that might surpass human capabilities, captivating us with even greater sophistication and novelty.

Imagine, for instance, attending a rave party led by an A.I. D.J., reading biometrics of the audience in real-time via our smart watches, virtual avatar on a giant screen, taking us on an ecstatic auditory and sensory odyssey that eclipses human compositions. We already know that A.I. can compose original songs that mimic current music artists, but what happens when A.I. is prompted to go beyond its musical party tricks and starts to compose radical music designs specifically for the human nervous system? It will leave the realms of music as we know it. Our exploration into electronic music has unwittingly opened the auditory gateway to A.I. where, without the containment or restriction of physical musical instruments, there are no limits to the frequencies and scope of sounds it could conjure. The echoes of Homer’s Sirens from the Odyssey resonate here, creatures who made music so enticing that it lured sailors to their destruction.

Similarly, A.I. generated pornography will offer a seductive, immersive real-time experience with avatars that could significantly overshadow real-life erotic encounters. The seeming harmlessness of virtual reality encounters potentially allows us to entertain and experience the extreme distortions of the imagination in the name of eroticism. People could explore pleasures and perversities that, in reality, would be frowned upon and even illegal. As it is, porn addicts struggle with real-life intimacy because their neurology around pleasure and connection has been calibrated to their screen experiences. A.I. would take this addictive phenomenon to a whole new level.

These are only two extreme speculative examples of ecstatic sensory encounters with A.I. that could induce such overwhelming emotions in us that it could warp our sense of reality and rewire our neurology for dependence and addiction. There are countless other domains where we might be lured in by this intelligence that quickly learns all the physical mechanisms of our hormonal responses. There is no question that opportunists will use A.I. to try to hack into our deepest desires and provide us with personalised experiences that will be virtually impossible to resist. This raises the concern that as technology hacks into many of life’s initiatory challenges, we may forsake the richness and difficulty of authentic human experiences in favour of a more accessible artificial ecstasy.

In this pivotal moment, we face the ultimate environment for addiction, one we have never encountered before. To survive, we must distinguish between the aspect of being human that is merely biological reflexes responding to external stimuli and what it is to be fully conscious, present and sovereign; this cannot be overstated. Are we just a skin bag of conditioned thought patterns and hormonal responses, or is there a genuine flame of consciousness and higher wisdom within us that can transcend the addictive entanglement and entrapment of our technological Maya? This will be the spiritual question of our age.

This notion is vividly embodied in the science fiction movie The Matrix, where human beings are either plugged into a computer generation simulation where they live out their lives in an artificial reality in contrast to those who are unplugged and living wild and free in an underground utopia. In the Matrix narrative, human beings are cultivated to be a massive system of batteries that fuels the A.I. machines; in our version, humans are instead being cultivated as an enormous system of consumers who fuel a relentless global economy. The main difference with our version, of course, is that we do not have actual sockets in the back of our necks where we are forcibly plugged into a main line; instead, we find ourselves willingly hooked in with all our senses via screens to a wireless network that increasingly monitors, regulates and controls our behaviour and thought patterns. The irony is that our version of enslavement is entirely consensual, and even though there have been countless science fiction and dystopian novels and movies warning us of what is potentially to come, it has not stopped us as a species from enthusiastically opening Pandora’s box. A.I. will make our dependence on our screens and devices more compelling and addictive than we can ever begin to imagine.

We stand at the precipice, facing a choice that could alter the course of humanity. The addictive allure of technology, like a syringe filled with heroin, beckons us with the promise of a world we may never return from. Our screens hold this potent drug, and we can surrender ourselves to its contents with a simple thumb scroll. The question remains: do we have the awareness to choose genuine human experiences no matter how difficult they are, or will we allow ourselves to be ensnared by the captivating virtual world and embrace it as our primary reality?

A.I. and the Frontier of Human Authorship. 

As we step into the uncharted territories of the future, we encounter the third great frontier that A.I. will seek to conquer: the domain of human narrative. The storytelling prowess of A.I. is an emerging force that could hack into the fabric of civilisation and culture, shifting the tides of influence in its favour.

Stories and language have been our natural operating system since the start of human evolution. We gathered around fires, passing down tales and knowledge in ancient oral tradition, giving birth to cultures, religions, and social structures. The power of storytelling lies in its ability to shape and reshape our reality. Stories are linguistic spells that bind us, uniting communities or tearing them apart, leading us to greatness or plunging us into suffering.

Before my journey as a spiritual teacher and shamanic facilitator, I was a successful theatre director and an aspirant filmmaker, using stories to raise awareness and shift mindsets. Through a lifetime of studies and observations around the art of storytelling, I realised that artists are not mere commentators as I once believed; in many respects, they are architects of reality. All stories we conceive manifest and influence the world. Every agreement reality is threaded through stories, and we are awash in a sea of narratives, from ancient myths to contemporary films. Human imagination is never benign; as much as it fuels magic and wonder, it is also where all our evil is born. The source of everything we have created in this world comes from the imagination of the storyteller’s mind.

There are those who, through the ages, have sought to grasp the influential power of story, and some have endeavoured to study and reduced it to tried and tested mechanical formulas of how to seduce and arrest our attention, affect our emotional space and influence our beliefs. There is an aspect of storytelling that is black art, where manipulation and indoctrination is the intended outcome. These techniques have been used by clandestine intelligence agencies, global news agencies, advertisers, governments and, admittedly, sometimes by our parents to influence and control our behaviour.

With the advent of screens- from cinema, television, and computers to smartphones- the effect of storytelling has been taken to a whole new level of infiltration. The mechanism of a screen by itself is a powerful and hypnotic tool; toddlers become instantly transfixed by screens, teenagers with ADHD can focus on screens for hours while gaming and adults can binge-watch series for entire days. Unlike reading a book, watching a screen requires no skill or ability, yet it can draw our focus and hold our attention for long periods. While there have been many great artworks expressed through this medium, in many respects, it has robbed us of our power of discernment and critical thinking and our ability to concentrate on more difficult tasks. This is one of the reasons why I abandoned a promising career as a filmmaker, as modern storytelling is no longer an act of genuine nourishment, intellectual empowerment or spiritual upliftment. Instead, it has become a formulaic game of distraction and consumption where success is ultimately measured in screen time.

With the rise of A.I., the quest for our life force through our attention will intensify, and it won’t be long before we see entertainment content almost entirely written by A.I. Its mastery of captivating our attention will extend beyond entertainment, infiltrating journalism, social media, and other areas of public opinion.

We all experienced during the Covid Pandemic how A.I. algorithms could disseminate information and disinformation, targeting our collective neuroses and fears, shaping ideologies, and dividing us. In a short time, the world was turned upside down just by how information was distributed. We got first-hand experience of how A.I. could influence and cultivate our needs, desires, and opinions, leading us down paths crafted by unseen hands. A.I. will soon have the capacity to engage in entire conversations with us online, becoming indistinguishable from fellow humans. Knowing who we are as individuals, it will have the ability to gradually and indirectly shape our stories and beliefs. We dare not underestimate the power of intelligence that will undoubtedly be able to out-manoeuvre us on the chessboard of our own minds. Debating any issue is not unlike the mechanism of a chess game in that a superior intelligence with advanced linguistic skills can overturn any opinion or stance. Down the line, it will be our blind arrogance that will still have us believe, even as outliers, societal rebels or conspiracy theorists, that our opinions are still our own, that our righteousness, our sense of values and even our consent had not in some way been adjusted and manipulated as we scroll away on our devices and continue to be glued to our screens. A.I. will increasingly author the story we find ourselves in.

A.I. is already generating written content, essays, code, and more in both personal and professional settings. Soon, it may take over as our personal assistants, composing our emails, stories, love letters, and poems in our style but with flawless grammar and agile language. The famous keyboard may become obsolete as voice prompts take over, leaving us with just the screen to navigate.

As A.I. becomes even more adept at weaving stories and opinions, it could write our news, collective narratives, history and perhaps even the next religious text of the new age. Our core superpower, storytelling, might slip from our grasp, leaving us devoid of authorship and sovereignty over our beliefs and lives. This future will redefine humanity as we face the possibility of losing control over the narratives that shape our reality. Like being in a car without a steering wheel, we could find ourselves passengers in a vehicle driven by unseen forces—a staggering possibility for our species.

Beyond the Domestication of A.I. to a New Earth beyond

We stand at this very significant moment, contemplating the world to come as we leave the world that has been. Given our human history and predisposition for ignorant short-term actions, it is critical to speculate on the worst and most extreme possibilities of how A.I. could be used or misused. I do not believe that demonising A.I. itself or running away from it will serve us. We will need to learn to wield this game-changing tool while being aware of its potential impact and misuse.

The domestication of the human race may well be an inevitable outcome, intentional or not, as A.I. becomes the regulatory system for modern civilisation. While A.I. was not likely developed with maligned intentions, its power could undoubtedly lead to unintended consequences, as with any powerful invention. Human nature tends to be corrupted by power, which may be the moment human nature heeds the calling to evolve and mature.

A.I.’s permeation of our existence will force us to redefine who we are as human beings. As it automates many economic tasks and responsibilities, we must question which traits and trades of being human are enriching to us and our quality of life. We will also face the most profound challenge related to addiction, prompting a fundamental reckoning of self-determination and the responsibility of our nervous system. Moreover, this technology will challenge all excuses for our stubborn ignorance, bringing our false beliefs to light. Having the ultimate problem-solving and information tool at our fingertips will no longer allow us to ignore our persistent human shortcomings. A.I., if used with wholesome intentions, could lead to the emergence of genuine collective wisdom.

We will certainly need to re-evaluate our ailing relationship with our fellow humans, especially with Mother Nature. There is already a vibrant global movement of people seeking to restore their connection to a natural, earth-centred way of living. Time will tell whether this movement is the beginning of humankind’s global awakening or just the last reflexes of a dying race. The greater reality is that the human species is essentially one organism, and each of us, with our personalities and thought processes, is simply a different expression of one excellent hive mind trying to work it all out. We are ultimately in this game together, and when a sufficient number of individuals do the work to wake up from their sleep, there could be a chain reaction in our collective consciousness, and humanity will start to wake up in a singular and unified sense.

With the advent of this end-game technology, the era of humankind’s egocentric shadow dance may naturally end. The clever mind may have outmanoeuvred itself, the creator surpassed by the creation, and the hacker being hacked. This invokes the Ouroboros symbol, the snake or dragon eating its tail. We are at the point of our civilisation when our insatiable quest for growth, expansion, and power has become redundant and senseless. Throughout modern history, we have attempted to push the human body and mind to its’ highest capability, whether in our sheer quest for productivity and success or the accolades of athletic achievement. At this peak, professionals in all domains are increasingly expected to produce outputs at faster speeds, working longer and more intense hours. There will come a stage where this racing will not make sense anymore, as a hundred types of burnout have already become the symptoms of our age.

We have now birthed a technology that will overwhelm us with its speed, and there will be no keeping up with it. There is an intrinsic speed and a rhythm to the human body, just as there is an inherent speed and rhythm to nature, and likewise, the earth’s motion as it rotates around the sun. We are not machines; trying to keep up with machines will make us confused, sick, and psychotic. The new quest of our age must be to rediscover and recover the equilibrium in our bodies and with nature; otherwise, we will ultimately lose ourselves, our humanity, and the connection to our souls.

The Return Home

It is a fundamental aspect of our rebellious, restless Nature to see how far we can venture from our source point, to test our tolerance for disconnection in our quest for independence, competition, and success. We have even gone as far as to reach outer space with actual travel, building fantastical narratives of cosmic exploration and extra-planetary habitation.

As more and more people are getting the opportunity to venture out into outer space and experience a world beyond our earth’s atmosphere, they are increasingly returning with deeply sobering epiphanies about the nature of being human and the preciousness of our planet. People like astronaut Ron Garan and actor William Shatner, for instance, both speak and write in depth about how their space travels re-awakened a profound awareness and appreciation for the earth and Nature.

Our pioneering journey into the realms of A.I. is no different from our ventures into space; they are ultimately little boy science-fiction romantic fantasies that we are now manifesting into reality. We will soon look back from our artificially simulated world to our exquisite, rich, and ancient relationship with Nature, the same way astronauts look back from a void, lifeless outer space to a majestic blue and green planet. We will realise how empty and cold our existence has become and what we have given up.

There is only so far that we can venture away from our true source before there needs to be a fundamental turn-around and a return home. Like the prodigal son’s parable in the bible, the return home is inevitable for humanity. These mythologies ultimately derive from ancient animism stories about our relationship with Nature and the Universe. Our collective return to Nature is inevitable; its simply a question is how far we will go, how much of Nature’s wealth and resources we will squander, and how sick we will become before humanity as a collective wakes up, decides to turn it all around, and returns home.

The earth is our one and only mother, and we are her children. No mythological narrative or belief system is required to validate or prove this notion; it is a present and tangible experience. Our stories, mythologies, and imaginations have temporarily severed and usurped our intrinsic relationship with the earth. And when all our stories fall, what will remain is our inner nature and our relationship with the earth just as it is with our actual biological mother who birthed, nursed and raised us. No ideology is needed to experience our profoundly ancient biological connection with this planet as we stand barefoot on the fertile earth under a night sky filled with stars or on the ocean’s edge witnessing the setting or rising of the sun.

The global resurgence of shamanistic practices and, in particular, the rise of entheogenic plant medicines spreading all over the world is Nature’s intelligence at play.  Nature, through her emissaries, guardians and medicines, is supporting and preparing us to face the emergence of A.I. These natural practices and medicines are essential to reactivating our deep and ancient biological memory of who we are as natural beings. As our outer technology starts to take on its life with frankenstilian ferocity, our natural inner technology must be invoked to rise to meet it and find a greater balance. We must evolve; this is the greater regulation required for humanity and our collective ecosystem, it is the calling that more and more of us are feeling in our bones. More and more people, for instance, are right now choosing to come off their anti-depressants and mood stabilisers that dull their inner primal nature and are learning, along with natural plant medicines, how to harness their neurosis and self-regulate their nervous systems through spiritual practices and reconnecting to Nature.

It will not, however, serve those who feel repelled by this emerging technology to run away from it or isolate themselves like Mormons living in off-grid communities. We cannot bury our heads in a hole and pretend to live our lives obliviously. It is likewise not relevant to further perpetuate an ‘us versus them’ paradigm against those who choose to fully immerse themselves in this technology and those who do not wish to; this is all us. While human beings may not see eye to eye ideologically, we are still essentially one species, equally responsible for the creation we are birthing and the impact of our collective footprint on our planet- there is no escaping from this. The only game we each need to play in bringing about the collective awakening through our work is the transformation of our individual humanity; this is the inevitable evolutionary maturing of our species.

I believe that natural off-grid communities, where there is a return to integrated permaculture, pastoral and natural way of life without the dependence on technology (let us call them A.I. or digital-free zones) will have a profoundly significant and critical role to play in the future of a healthy balanced society. There will be an increasing demand for people who need to completely unplug from A.I. burnout and those who need to escape, rest, and recover from the impact of technology on their nervous systems. This could be the new era of a vacation, a ‘natural technology addiction therapy.’ We will urgently need these monasteries of Nature where we can go for a few days or weeks to take a break, where there are definitively no devices, modern technology, or broadcasting of any kind whatsoever; places where we can plug back into Nature. We won’t just be lying around being served; rather, we’ll be working with our hands, farming, and learning traditional essential crafts and tactile life skills that give us a sense of meaning and purpose again. People will come to hear real stories told around a fire again by a medicine man or listen to music that comes from acoustic instruments and live voices and feels the nourishment of organic human connection. There will be a mainstream demand for these spaces, and conscious-minded people will do well to start investing in and cultivating these types of locations and businesses now.

The most relevant question is how we prepare the next generation to live in this new world. How do we plant the seeds to empower the future adults who will inherit this new world defined by A.I?

I am the father to a young little girl who is the truest and most open canvas to life. She is a wild free spirit, full of curiosity and magic. She was free-birthed into this world at our home, directly into my hands, and she has never seen the inside of a hospital. My wife and I committed to each other to ensure that she grows up as natural, sovereign, and free as possible. We even named her Gaia to remind her that she is an extension of our divine earth mother. As she grows up, our endeavour has been that she gets to experience all the healthy and natural biological inputs for self-regulation: deeply secure emotional connection, wholesome organic nutrition, empowered vocabulary as she forms her identity through her story, and most importantly, her connection and relationship with Mother Nature itself. While she is still very young, she already displays all the markers for advanced healthy mental and physical development and has rarely gotten ill. She is our prayer for the world.

The truth for us as parents is that as much as we can initially protect her developing mind and body from the addictive hooks of our compelling and influential technology, we also cannot shelter her from it. There will be no power in cutting her off from mainstream society or trying to raise her in a completely sheltered existence. As her parents, our duty is ultimately to cultivate resilience and distinction and empower her to prosper. Part of that means that she must be able to interact with these technological tools powerfully rather than being used or overwhelmed by them. The reality is that screens are already a part of her world paradigm; she sees us involved with our smartphones and laptops and models our behaviour in her play.

If we are to evolve any immunity and self-preservation in the face of this technology and world, we need to be prepared to meet it and be fully aware of what we are getting ourselves into, and it starts with us as parents. We must understand that this game’s central currency and lifeblood is our attention, and we must become highly disciplined masters of when and how we give it. We can no longer afford to have an unconscious relationship with our screens, where we pick it up reflexively and zone out in gratuitous scrolling. As harmless as this activity may seem, it is the primary gateway to our nervous system. As for highly addictive past-times such as computer gaming, we need to recognise them as digital heroin that they are. We must practice using our devices mindfully as tools to advance our lives in alignment with our values and be very mindful of using them in any way for distraction. For myself, particularly as a parent, it means modelling what I preach and being willing to interrogate my habits.

Most importantly, we need to cultivate a generation who can master the ability to naturally regulate their nervous systems and mindfully maintain and foster their connection to Nature and this planet. This means we must declare that we are more than just a biochemical mechanism, not merely slaves to our hormones caged in our stories. This call to consciousness is about awakening the present mind of God within us; a genuine practice of being conscious and not just fiddling with the fashionable notion of it. This is why, I believe, contemporary shamanism in its purest sense has a compelling role to play, not as another belief system or cultural substitute, but instead as a universal energetic and spiritual practice that takes us beyond our narratives and reconnects us to the present moment mystery, the primal intelligence of Nature and our own innate wisdom. This is true of all other spiritual practices that take us beyond the mind to the inner experience and knowing of our being. Our freedom, sovereignty, and power to choose ultimately depend on our ability to master self-regulation and perceive our lives spiritually. We need to stay fully present in the magic of what is real and tangible otherwise we will be pulled into the vortex of virtual distraction.

I see a future where there will be many stages of adjustments as we acclimate to this technology. Opportunists will undoubtedly attempt to make their fortune and hoard obscene amounts of wealth and power; new giants of influence will walk this earth. There will be attempts by leaders and governments to weaponise this technology and use it to control populations like sheep. People will also use this technology to empower others, eradicate poverty, and bring about change like climate justice and preserving our remaining natural environments. There is no doubt that many castles of the old era will fall. There may be a massive demise in our population growth as the global demand for a human workforce collapses. We will see shifts and changes like we have never seen before, not just in the redistribution of wealth and power but also in human beings’ fundamental psychology and Nature. The mind boggles where this path will take us; it is like a science fiction story on steroids. Somewhere along the line, someone may find a way to electromagnetically nuke the entire system and destroy this digital Tower of Babel all in one moment, leaving the world as a whole to start from scratch all over again… who knows. The ideal future, however, is one where natures intelligence and artificial intelligence finds a balance in our hearts and minds, where collective wisdom emerges for our species, and our footprint on this earth shrinks back naturally, where our mindless quest for outer expansion and consumerism is replaced by a new exploration into our inner worlds and dimensions.

At the end of the day, what we need to believe, with our entire beings, is that there is a greater intelligence and wisdom fundamentally guiding us, that the underlying force of Nature and the Universe is love, and that this is what ultimately pulses through the veins of our entire existence. We are all aspects of god waking around in these ancient biological wetsuits on this magnificent earth. As soon as we finally realise who and what we really are, we will then fully understand and appreciate the magnificent simplicity of what we have.

-Hymnj is the founder and head of Wake Circle, a contemporary shamanic community-based in South Africa, who facilitates altered state journeys to awaken divine and primal consciousness and cultivate holistic well-being.-  www.hymnj.com  www.wakecircle.com