The Road Technology Won’t Let You Take
“Technology can and is supposed to be attentive to what liberates the person toward taking care of the higher level of existence...since a thing devoid of the spiritual cannot help reach out to the spirit.”
—Malidoma Somé
I really love learning about mythology and different spiritual cosmologies. Aside from studying nature and yourself, I think they’re the best ways to understand universal intelligence and the timeless wisdom that humanity has lived by since the beginning. And while I appreciate the cultural-specificity and artistic flare—the dramatic details and characters and costumes—that makes each cosmology or mythological system unique, the real treat comes when you can look past the aesthetic distinctions. Because beneath those very real and undeniable differences, you’ll slowly start to realize that they’re all describing the same things.
For example: It took me a good lil minute to draw the connection between Thoth (Djehuty) in ancient Egyptian (Kemetic) cosmology, ➡️ Hermes in Greek mythology, ➡️ Mercurius in Roman mythology ➡️ and Gemini in modern astrology—because the journey I took to test that theory was so uncharted and un-rushed and not even clear at first, littered with who knows how many books and museum visits; deep dives and diversions and random conversations—but once I did?? Once that connection came together in my head?! I was so proud of myself. I felt like I really earned that insight and I treasured it immensely.
And I can’t tell you how it felt for me to type those names into Google and have an AI summary just…instantly spit out the answer.
I mean, I was pleased for having been right in my analysis, but also immensely…upset? Offended? Resentful? Enraged by the fact that a fucking AI could just casually come to a conclusion that I dedicated an immense amount of time, energy and attention to develop. Like I said, I was really out here discovering, deciphering and discerning! And it felt like this technology was trivializing one of the most ✨magical and precious✨ journeys of my life. It honestly, oddly, felt like something had been stolen from me. Or, like something had been stolen from humanity itself. And you know what made it even worse? That Google has the nerve to call their damned AI chatbot thingy GEMINI.
But as soon as my ego started huffing and puffing, something in my soul said, “relax.” 🧘🏾♀️ I was struck with a sort of spiritual clarity. Like, yes, humanity may now have the shortcut to whatever we seek, but babe—an instant answer ain’t got nothing on letting your intuition lead you down what turns out to be the learning experience of a lifetime. The endorphin hit my brain got from being affirmed by the computer was no match for the soul-level satisfaction I got from not having an immediate answer; for the treasures I found and the obstacles I overcame and the interesting people I encountered along the winding, dimly lit road. Something as seemingly simple as having to stop and look up some archaic word or arcane reference would easily lead to new levels of insight, expose me to some necessary piece of nuance or strengthen my theory in a significant way.
That whole process humbled and challenged me, insisting that I open new neural pathways within my consciousness, and in the collective consciousness as well. And, perhaps most meaningfully, it required me to be patient—sometimes to the point of just being still. The “journey” is a huge part of learning and what what makes life worth living in general, both on a practical and a philosophical level! Not only would I have missed out on all of these delightful and vivifying experiences by skipping straight to the answer, I also would have deprived myself of opportunities to build my confidence; to discover more about the world and the parts of it that resonate most with my being; to grow and strengthen my connection to Spirit; to learn more about my purpose and how I can join “those forces that are working in the present world for unification, not in the name of some ecclesiastical or political empire, but in the sense of human mutual understanding.” (Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces)
It’s terrifying to think of what we, as people, will miss out on in life by wantonly adopting a technology that’s more concerned with expediency than experience. Technology that filters out all the delightful surprises and serendipity and experiences we stand to gain, besides knowledge, while pursuing knowledge. Who do we, as humans, become when we aren’t intentional about teaching kids to value the search as much as, or more than, we value the answer?
It harkens back to what Malidoma Somé, an indigenous African teacher from the Dagara tribe in Burkina Faso, said about how the difference between the indigenous world and the industrial world is mostly a matter of speed. “The indigenous world, in trying to emulate nature, espouses a walk with life, a slow, quiet day-to-day kind of existence. The modern world, on the other hand, steams through life like a locomotive, controlled by a certain sense of careless waste and destruction,” he wrote. “Such life eats at the psyche and moves it victims faster and faster along, as they are progressively emptied out of their spiritual and psychic fuel.”
Such highly advanced tech may make life and, in this case, the pursuit of knowledge, seem easier, comfortable and more cozy, but not only does it fail to provide true, soul-level fulfillment, “these improvements have come at a price: humans have become indebted to their technology.” He likens the value of machine culture to the value of having an elephant in your home as a pet. “Would the energy spent to find 200 pounds of food every day compensate for what you get out of it? Anyone whose genius is wrapped up in this kind of effort must devote his life to it.”
But to get to the “why?” of it all, he says that the “hasty, grinding wheels of the machine culture” in Western society—where “blatant consumerism [has] spread even into the spiritual realm”—reveals “the attempt of a mechanized culture to protect itself from having to face even subtle duties toward its higher self.”
Because, yes, that is exactly it. The journey it took to see how all these different cultures were characterizing the same universal energy felt like service toward my higher self. And that odd feeling I felt? Like something had been stolen from me? Brother Elder Malidoma offered a more apt analysis, saying “to be in a machinelike culture is to have one’s soul constantly at risk of being sucked out.”
This realization about AI’s role in spiritual enlightenment left me more convinced than ever that Pluto in Aquarius is bringing us a profound opportunity to truly transform the way we engage with and develop technology, and even to shift our perspective on the purpose of technology and where and how it fits in the world. Best case scenario, Pluto in Aquarius sees us doing some type of Sankofa style process, where we go back and engage indigenous teachings and philosophies—not to copy and paste, but to inform technological innovation going forward.
Which is another thing I learned on my journey: Mercury doesn’t go retrograde for no reason. 😉
Be sure to check out the companion piece to this article: Is the Future of Technology Actually Ancient?