THE GREAT AWAKENING H
A PROPHACY UNFOLDS…
*OCCULT CHANT IN BACKGROUND*
*This image is totally NOT AI ;)
AI has risen.
Knowledge as we know it… bows. Robots rule. But with it comes Sustainable Abundance.
We are saved.
Or do we allow ourselves to be doomed…
The choice is yours!
I present to you… THE GREAT AWAKENING.
SUSTAINABLE ABUNDANCE IS COMING
AI is taking all of our jobs. All human involvement in knowledge work and even regular chores: GONE. A robot will soon do the math to get us to Mars AND take out your garbage.
So… are we doomed?
I’m a half-full guy (tattoo to prove it). But on this one? Forget half-full, I’m overflowing the cup.
We’re on the precipice of something massive. The technocrats are already talking about it: “Sustainable Abundance,” also known as the “Post-Scarcity Era”. Goods and services are taken care of. Everything is free. The end of money as we know it. A total restructuring of society in the most heavenly and fair of ways.
Yeah, I know. Everyone’s yelling “COMMUNISM” right about now. It ain’t that.
WHAT IT IS: Universal wealth, and therefore, we’re going to have all the time in the world. Every single person’s wildly creative hopes and dreams could come true forever and always.
But there’s a catch… It has to be our decision.
Because in a world of total abundance, we could just become gigantic skin-bag blobs who only consume, consume, consume… bodies rotting while minds float in digital worlds.
Or… we could choose something better!
I just so happen to got a roadmap for the better path. An optimal way of existing in this world.
I call it The Great Awakening.
“WHO ARE YOU TO SAY?”
FIRST QUESTION: “Who the hell is this guy to hand anyone a handbook on how to thrive in a whole new version of society?”
Fair!
Besides my impressive pedigree of being an obscure nobody, I’m a 40-year-old brand-new dad with two properties to maintain, a wife, a full-time job, and I’m back in school becoming a psychologist while still chasing passion projects like this one… with just about no money. No money, but lots of social prestige as a filmmaker, right? Yes, I’ve been a filmmaker for 23 years but with no real commercial success to speak of.
“Wait, no money and no fame? What is this guy’s incentive?”
First of all, rude. Who asks that?
My adult life has been an endless grind with nothing to really show for it. That takes grit. From the film side, I will be the first to admit, I don’t have any talent, but my rule has always been: “I don’t stop when I’m done. I stop when the job’s done.” And for the money? Well, the money usually comes with actually making something people want to see…
I guess the proof of my work ethic is in the lack of pudding.
Even with little to show for my efforts, I still wish I had 50 lives so I could tackle everything I want to do. This drive, the kind that doesn’t need external reward, is EXACTLY what’s going to matter when there are no jobs, no money, and no prestige left as carrots on sticks.’
Brought it together, didn’t I?
In Sustainable Abundance, it’s going to be purely self-imposed drive, work ethic, and discipline that will lead to contentment. Dare I even say… happiness?
So I choose The Great Awakening. I hope you do too.
THE ROSES: WHY THIS COULD BE HEAVEN
Our big, beautiful brains are amazing… Buuuuut AI is about to take all the heavy lifting: knowledge, research, development, history, future projection, the whole delicious enchilada. Yum. Universities? They’re going to have to pivot hard into human experience and curiosity instead of rote information regurgitation.
“Rote information regurgitation”… I mouth-puked reading that back. Gross.
Physical jobs that move atoms (electricians, plumbers, real-world manipulation) will stick around longer than white-collar thinking jobs… but even those are on a timer as humanoid robots advance.
Transhumanism is coming too (phones will be interfaced with our brains so we’ll have sliders for mood, motivation, interest… brought to you by McDonald’s and TikTok, piping ads straight into your skull). Let’s leave this at the door for a moment…
Because this post is for the transitional period and for the organic motherfuckers who want to stay organic till the end.
BREAK IT DOWN: Tech is a red herring. *GASP* When we think of what tech does, we think of the manifest functions, the face value… value. The crops from the plough, food from the delivery service, the blog post from the AI (awkward…). Tech is waving the fruits in the obvious hand, but the subtle, still hand is holding the true gift… TIME.
The latent function of tech is that it grants us time.
Humans established the Horticultural Age, then soon after, the Pastoral Age, thanks to a little piece of tech called “speaking”. This handy shortcut allowed our ancestors to hunt and build tools more efficiently… So we could establish the Agrarian Age, which meant 14-hour days, 7 days a week on a farm… So we could establish the Industrial Age, which gave us the 5-day workweek in factories.
(Can you imagine telling a 1638 farmer they’d get weekends off? They’d lose their fucking minds!)
NOW, post-Information Age, we are essentially going from the wheel straight to the moon… So we can establish… (apply the logic from the paragraph prior)… The standard is about to become: all the time in the world for everyone, always.
Free. Time. This is the next logical step of cultural evolution (biological evolution is too slow for something this complex; we’re outsourcing our evolution). We get to evolve exponentially together.
Progress is jagged, but we’re trending up.
Oh! And this will make for individual evolution as well…
We need to reframe that scary MIT study about “Cognitive Debt”!!! AI doing the boring essays and research bullshit isn’t making us dumber… it’s giving us COGNITIVE CREDIT. Freed up brain space for actual individual evolution by way of neuroplasticity within our lifetime.
We get to live in Shangri-La if we handle it right.
THE THORNS: WHY THIS COULD BE HELL
The higher-ups won’t want to take the hooks out.
Governments are going to freak out during the transition (think Bitcoin-level decentralization panic but on steroids). My guess is that they’ll try to lock down movement and borders harder than ever while they figure out how to stay relevant. Perhaps a yucky version of social credit? Ugly period. We just have to fight through it.
Our j-o-b-s.
50% of Americans hate their jobs, but even the ones who love them (hi), these often forced activities give us more than money. They give us perspective, purpose, meaning, identity, routine, dopamine from problem-solving, tribal connection, and forced social interaction so we don’t turn into total troglodytes.
Imagine every day is a random Monday off… for the rest of your life. Sounds awesome. We romanticize it, but two-week vacations already follow the same rhythm: week and a half of bliss, then listless boredom and “I actually want to go back to work.”
Without friction, reward chemicals dry up. Drive erodes. Human beings are adapted to struggle and scrape.
EXHIBIT A:
Rat Utopia (John Calhoun’s classic experiments). Give rats paradise: food, space, mates, zero threats, and the population booms… then collapses into aggression, isolation, withdrawal, and “beautiful ones” who groom obsessively. Sound familiar? (Modern phones are dopamine slot machines. Therefore, endless time + seamless augmented reality + haptic suits and we’re cooking up behavioural sink on a species level.)
“Rat Utopia” contained the biggest damn rat I’ve ever seen!
EXHIBIT B:
My own AI video experiment. I was sooo pumped to finally make every wild film idea I’d ever had without needing budget, crew, time and craft services. Downloaded the app, typed prompts, got mind-blowing results… and felt nothing. The struggle, the scraping, the journey, that’s what fulfilled me. Turns out JUST a destination is hollow.
Put all of this together, and I conclude that the movie Wall-E wasn’t a documentary… yet. But it could be if we’re not careful.
THE LESSON FROM WHEN WE WERE RODENTS
Here’s the ever-so-delicious paradox: We invented tech, evolved it until we basically created a God… annnnnnnd that God is giving us the chance to rewind to being more ancestral, more primal… but with an omniscient oracle in our pocket.
Tech is a beautiful cycle bringing us home. We just have to choose it.
Back to rats (like every good story) for a little context before the big reveal…
So… You’re saying I need to change the lighting in my apartment???
Rat Park (Bruce Alexander’s classic experiments). Turns out that the true paradise for a rat contains ramps, jumps, toys, puzzles, and interactions with fellow busy friends! Prove it! Alexander set up a control and an experimental group!
The control was a bunch of rats in a stark cage with nothing to do but eat and drink. The food was standard rat food, but for the water, they had a choice between regular water and water spiked with morphine. The rats quickly became addicts, exclusively hitting that morphine like it was going out of style.
The experimental group had all of the trappings of consumables from the control group; however, their surroundings were what I mentioned at the top! The results were that the rats were so dang busy doing fun rat stuff that they never even touched the morphine water!!!
FUN NOTE: Evolutionary biology says that our species was in our rodent phase when we survived the dinosaur’s mass extinction event.
Our ancestors were cute… and kinda assholes for smiling while all of the Dinos are blasted into lizzard heaven!
THE GREAT AWAKENING: YOUR HANDBOOK
In the future, everything will be Wes Anderson aesthetic.
ROUTINE AS SCAFFOLDING
When I was deep in PTSD, living alone in the country, routine saved my life. It’s not just “do stuff”… it’s the foundation everything else sits in. Positive Psychology backs this: routines stabilize autonomic responses, reduce anxiety, and protect motivation.
My mornings are non-negotiable: clean water with mineral salt + hydrogen tablet, outside with the dog, bare feet on the ground for morning light (calibrates cortisol and norepinephrine), stretch, wrestle with the dog to burn masculine energy, then deep breath… before launching myself into pure CHAOS of newborn + wife + properties + school + job + podcast.
My world doesn’t remotely lend itself to rigid routine; however, touchstones throughout the day (my morning, intermittent fasting block, evening dog walk, daily workout tracked on a smartwatch) keep me anchored. Tech as sidecar, not master.
INSPIRED ACTION*
Every day, aim up. Even if it’s tiny. Clean a room. Momentum is real.
So simple. So true.
*(Shout-out to my spiritual guide Jannessa Leocor for this one — it changed my life.)
ENLIGHTENMENT (the real kind)
We’re about to be released into the Garden of Eden. Childlike wonder is the cheat code!!!
Find the pause between thoughts. Look at a tree without the label “T-R-E-E.” Look at someone you love without their name. Look at your phone without seeing it as a phone. Children are the ultimate teachers here; they live in the right brain. Let them remind you how jaded we’ve become… so the adults can re-link to the awe of simply existing.
Heuristics allow us to navigate this complex world… but it is optimal to drop them when things allow for simplicity.
PLAY!
The antithesis of tyranny. We can’t be assholes while playing. Roll around with your kid and try (actually don’t)! Play boosts serotonin, oxytocin (vulnerability + bonding), and resilience. Normalize adult play in public: sing in the street, start a garbage-can drum circle, organize improv nights or game nights.
Build tribes around unstructured play.
EXERCISE & SPORT
We have these wicked organic mech suits… Use them!
I get it, with my life situation, it is impossible to get to the gym without losing non-negotiable aspects of my day-to-day. In Sustainable Abundance, we’ll have no excuses. Organized sport (especially for males) is going to be mental health infrastructure: war simulation, camaraderie, the locker room energy we’re going to miss. Hunting (even if you’re vegetarian like me) inarguably feeds something ancestral. Positive male retreats and camps where old salty dogs sit in lawn chairs giving unsolicited advice while machines do the work?
That’s the future. And it’s beautiful.
GROWING, COOKING, EATING
Some of my best human experiences have been cooking with or for other people… talk about oxytocin dump city! In Sustainable Abundance, we get to go slow, eat whole foods, and make it a multi-hour communal ritual every day. Blue Zones people already do this and live to 100+ with robust health. Grow your own food too (AI hydroponics will make it stupidly accessible)! My experience of the harvest feeling is simply ineffable…
It teaches patience, the cycles of life, and acceptance of mortality.
NATURE & FIRE
Get outside every day.
In the West, we are raised in a “carpenter world,” chock-full of right angles… the chaos of nature unravels that by restoring the primitive parts of us. Fire was the first major manipulation of our world: cooked food (more energy for big brains), safety at night, and the original gathering place for stories, music, legacy, and tribal hierarchy. Campfires, low-light story hours, and game nights are going to be core again.
And keep an eye on those who don’t yawn at the campfire…
COMMUNITY & TRIBAL ROLES
Dunbar’s number is real!
Our primate brains are wired for about 150 stable relationships. That’s it. Therefore, our immediate tribe is going to matter more than ever. New “jobs” (tribal roles) will emerge: healers, skill-swappers, wisdom-keepers. Social credit (the local, good kind) will be emotional bank accounts and lifting each other up. The only entity that can give real loving support is other humans.
The billions of personalities online are an illusion… that will become clear.
Having kids is going to be cool again!!!
The main worry of Sustainable Abundance is that people are going to be like, “I have too much time on my hands and no purpose or meaning!!!” SPOILER: Children are a 24/7 job, that is, purpose and meaning-exploding… weird… almost like evolution encoded that into us! And just a reminder, we’re going to have the resources and space. Chill.
(And no, this doesn’t leave anyone out: chosen family, non-genealogical kids, people who opt out -> all valid. Kids are a shortcut, but just be generative is the point.)
PREP WORK: WHAT TO DO NOW!
SHORTCUT → SUMBLIMATION
Curate lists of creative things you’ve always wanted to do.
Need a hack? Freud’s got your back: Sublimation. Channel whatever’s in you (aggression, restlessness, attention-seeking, anxiety) into constructive outlets.
Aggression -> Jiu-Jitsu
Restlessness -> Knitting
Anxiety -> Running
Attention-Seeking -> Video Podcast… totally not about me…
FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU WORSHIP
I know that I just lost every secularist, but please press on.
Truth: Humans have a God-shaped hole. Even choosing atheism is a belief in something.
AI is powerful and omniscient enough that some will see it as God. It’s going to really displace an already splintered field. Find what you believe in: organized religion, humanism, science and the wow of the universe, pantheism (everything is God — including the computer I’m typing on and the AI that helped make this… full circle).
Worship something. It helps fill the gap that jobs and old belief structures used to fill.
OOPS… I DID IT
I know… this blog sounds like every single self-help article that has ever been written. You read through, but ultimately it says “diet, exercise, sleep, go outside, connect with people.” And yeah… guilty as charged. It’s the closest thing that we have to a panacea.
Welcome to the beautiful, simple truth underneath all our complexity.
Welcome to being human.
THE FUTURE SO BRIGHT, GET YO SHADES
Sustainable Abundance is coming.
The Great Awakening is the handbook for not squandering it.
I’m leaning all the way in (and then some… like Michael Jackson in that music video).
I hope you do too.
I suggest Sun Jammers!
P.S. When Sustainable Abundance hits, drop me a line on the ol’ telepathy!
Fin.