Ancestral Honor > Ancestral Trauma

For Q2 '23, it's a typical meandering tongue-in-cheek tour...plus a more sincere exploration of how we can equip ourselves to become more hopeful, generous and resilient in the face of our impending un-reality, and deeply trying, AI generated times.

Oh, and before getting into the wordy weeds, I want to open the doors to serendipity and ask if anyone on this list is interested in an intimate, and somewhat spontaneous bareboat sailing excursion off the western coast of Greece (Ionian Isles) with my wife and I and a few friends... long shot but we have a sailboat, skipper, and room for a few more to join.

• When: 17-24 June (yikes, that's in a few weeks). 

• How: Nikiana Marina via Aktion Airport (PVK) or route of your choice

• Why: Why not?

Just reach out if interested and I can share details. Ok, off we go...

Beware of Self-help Circles 

I recently took a trip down a rather odd rabbit hole of un-reality poignantly exemplified by new age yoga speak, utterly unapologetic materialism, and SNLs Big Dumb Hats... and it all delivered exactly as you'd expect. I've hit on the male version of this in the past, so I wanted to make it clear that narcissism and nonsense show no gender preference. 

No daughters guiding us into intergenerational community. No grandmothers to ground us in the full range of the female experience. Just "Soul Sisters"—a certain demographic of 30 and 40 something suburbanites still mistaking their latest "medicine journey" for abiding wisdom. New-age-cults led by a new breed of queen bee, blithely sharing her next paranormal acquisition target: which often comes in the form of a private jet to go along with her new super-yacht.

And unlike televangelists, who at least attempt to justify their "Gulfstream fundraiser" with the thought that, "God will surely hear my prayers if I'm surfing in style that much closer to heaven", the queen bee doesn't even feel the need to explain. Private jets are awesome. She wants one. Therefore, she deserves one. Much like narcissism, entitlement knows no bounds.

That's because, you see, she has transcended any limiting beliefs about her worthiness (think Elizabeth Holmes but "enlightened"). She's realized that she's the divine queen, and she's calling in abundance from her spirit guides! Never mind the poor huddled masses yearning to find true connection and breathe free (they chose the density of their incarnations, after all). 

Prosperity Gospel FTW! 

These people are here, now. For proof, just follow the hype and buzz around Austin, TX these days. It's the "keep self-help circles weird" plus a blossoming comedy scene, deer hunting on mushrooms and ketamine, and overpriced float tanks (thanks, Joe Rogan!). 

Austin has become a magnet for digital media carpetbaggers who've already consumed Boulder, Encinitas, and Williamsburg, and need somewhere to congregate before the seasons of SXSW, Ibiza, Tulum, and Burning Man come around.

It's a plague of woke locusts. A gaggle of greedy ghosts. Everyone looking over everyone else's shoulder to spot Elon or the next libertarian crypto-bro on Peter Thiel’s payroll. Never mind what it looks like on the 'gram...the real-fake-real of our descending un-reality.

It's a queen bee nourishment circle following a script that could've been written for the Righteous Gemstones (an HBO evangelical preacher parody worth watching). Know it or not, you've likely glimpsed similarly whacked out versions yourself. Don't wait y'all, pledge your support today for a chance at salvation!

Unearthing Our Philosophical Roots 

And as easy as it is to roll our eyes and dismiss these parodies as signs of our current rootlessness, their philosophical stems go back centuries...and from my view, we're long past due digging them up. Sometimes we're not standing on the shoulders of giants (I'll save the controversial origins of that aphorism for another day); sometimes we're mud wrestling with midgets.

Tim Wu, the Columbia law professor who coined the term "net neutrality" and the Master Switch is one of the more prescient writers on our current digital age and his framing of this dynamic makes for some essential reading. In The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads , Wu tells the story of the advent of modern marketing. In this era of social media, it's metastasized into a ubiquitous part of our lives and identities.

At this point, our attention, and our deepest desires are all fundamentally programmed (not a value judgement...it just is), and if we don't recognize how it happened, we'll never be able to unwind it (especially now that we've introduced fiendishly clever AI trained on our collective hopes and fears). If you haven't already, please hit pause and go watch the A.I. Dilemma.

But here's the kicker from Wu's book: before Madison Ave Mad Men, the three founders of modern marketing were literally, (dis)honest to god, former snake oil salesman and failed evangelical preachers! Not metaphorical snake oil, actual snake oil remedies and patent medicines. Not just men with a preacherly gift for gab. Actual men of the cloth!

And what were they selling? Divinity, redemption, salvation of course! 

New and improved, with a secret (now only $19.95 a month) [ChatGPT-powered] recipe!!!

*This, by the way, is the exact same script that the biohacking movement copied, lock stock and barrel. If you've been snookered (as I have) to put MCT oil in your coffee, consume Reishi mushrooms and super antioxidant bioflavonoids, or any one of a hundred "magic" ingredients to cure what ails you and "level-up your life", you've been flipped by the exact same script. It's not even remotely original—just updated for the age of high-tech AI and Amazon-fueled DTC. 

Have you ever heard the phrase, "Always the bridesmaid, never the bride"?
If so, you already know the marketing work of these OGs. 

Turns out, that's not just a timeless saying about the girl whose friends all get hitched before she does. It was a 1925 ad for Listerine, a general purpose 19th century antiseptic that was getting freshly marketed as a mouthwash. And that poor perpetual bridesmaid? Her name was Eleanor, and she had "chronic halitosis" (aka bad breath—a newly invented term and condition). Maps fairly well to the lack of marriage proposals I'd say. 

But you know what? In the spirit of salvation, all Eleanor had to do was gargle some Listerine and Prince Charming was on his way to ensure they live the American Dream happily ever after.

Integrate the Script or Repeat Our Sins 

It was early last year that Zak Stein convinced me that we live in a time between worlds, but we didn't start there. We're all the bastard love-children of Protestant Calvinism and Free Market Capitalism. And if we don't seek formal emancipation from our unreliable parents, we're doomed to repeat their sins. In fact, we already have in many cases.

So why take the time to lay all of this out? 

Because I'm convinced that everything we're sorting through these days, especially in the new-age/self-help-circle/psychedelic renaissance scene, but more broadly across Western democratic cultures, has been captured by the stochastic currents of modern un-reality warfare.

If we don't understand and integrate the scripts we're running, we have little chance of rewriting them.

We've been driven, relentlessly and intentionally, into a culture of algorithmic hyper-individualism. We've been conditioned to soothe and sell ourselves for the acquisition of soulless stuff and selfishness. And we confer on all of this useless stuff the redemptive qualities we were promised they hold. TAG Heuer watches, red-souled shoes, blue check marks, and yes, Big Dumb Ass Hats. All to make us look and feel smarter, sexier, more respected or more "spiritual". 

The hypnotic influence is upon us in the HERE and NOW. Later doesn't cut it. Our collective itch demands to be scratched. Delayed gratification is for the losers... or the damned and unfaithful. America flunks the marshmallow test every damn time. God bless us!

And for a while—say from the end of WWII through the Mad Men era—all the way up to almost now, that script worked out reasonably well for most of us. Eric Weinstein (rightfully imo) refers to this era as The Great Nap. Waking up, if we choose to, is gonna be a bitch!

It was an Amazing (rat)Race, to be sure, chasing the dream through all of its prosperous twists and turns with enough prizes and surprises around each carefully contrived corner that none of us considered pulling the ripcord (or looking behind the curtain, as it were). 

We ran (and innovated) faster and worked harder to get what we felt was deserved and coming to us. I was as guilty as anyone through the early ico crypto craze. 

But it sure feels like the party is coming to an end.

Social security is running out (~2037). FAANG or maybe MAMAA (and now Bard, OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.) have put away the bean bags, scooters and ping pong tables and required everyone to show up to work again (or sent the rest packing with pink slips). Inflation's up. Savings are down. Doom-scrolling and suicide is through the roof... says science (if you believe in that sort of thing). 

For the first time since WWII, the belief that "I will live a life more prosperous and successful than my parents" has slipped. 

In Fear and Loathing, Hunter S. Thompson wrote a famous line about watching the wave of 60's counterculture, "…you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

I don't know about you, but to me, it feels a lot like this century long wave of consumptive, redemptive capitalism too has crested (Polycrisis might be the word). You could pin it on the Great Recession of '08, or the UK/US elections of '16, or the UN climate reports of '18, or the pandemic of '20, or the FTX meltdown of late '22, but really, does it matter? 

Events with this much momentum take a while to unspool, but once they start, they become unstoppable. Those who have experienced an avalanche or mudslide firsthand will understand. As Hemingway wrote about going bankrupt (and more recently Parker Lewis about Bitcoin), these things tend to happen slowly, and then suddenly.

We're not built for this shit, and the danger is becoming clear and present. 

Are We Just Potted Plants? 

One way to think of this past century of consumptive conditioning is to consider ourselves as little plants, all lined up side by side in plastic pots. The pots representing our individualism, isolation, and the artificiality of what contains us. Few of us live in our hometowns (I'm almost an exception), or in multi-generational households these days. Our "friends" online vastly outnumber our IRL companions.

We have parasocial relations with podcasters and celebrities who don't even know us (again, I'm guilty here). Even love and intimacy has been reduced to swiping and sniping at our facetuned digital twins. Be your #bestself

No humans have ever lived this way. Ever!

Raised under these conditions since we were little saplings, what did we think would happen to us? Since we're kept inside most of the time, we're now utterly dependent on artificial light...and watering...and nutrients. Susceptible to all sorts of diseases we'd never encounter in the wild. 

Deprived of anywhere to grow, our root balls curl in on themselves. When the wind blows, it knocks us (and our institutions) over because we've been reinforcing woke-ass #safespaces, utterly sheltered from natural stressors. More rigid oaks than willows.

And as for our friends and neighbors? Wrapped in plastic and isolated in rows and rows of look-alike clones, we barely notice them. And even if we did, we'd have no way to break through the plastic filter bubble, to reach out and connect.

Sad when put this way, but I don't think it's too far off as an analogy. 

Be Better, Be a Mushroom 

Perhaps I've seen too much of The Last of Us (or Ze Frank's True Facts... which is still the most underrated show on YouTube), but let's consider a utopian antithesis to these troubling portrayals of fungi gone awry. Us, born natural and free among a network of hopeful and connected humans. Born in the forest. Roots reaching into the earth. Extending up towards the light. We grow strong in the wind and storms and learn to bend without breaking. We know where our food, water and sunshine come from. We observe the seasons. We come to know our place as individuals and as parts of a deeply interconnected whole.

We are not alone.

We're in a community of grandparents, parents, cousins and children....and now all of them at once via hopeful and benevolent AI.

Like redwood groves who shunt water uphill from the creekbeds to the thirsty trees on the ridgeline, or share antibodies to ward off the disease afflicting a neighbor, or the magic of photosynthesis to regenerate and support an otherwise crippled relatives, we are unquestionably stronger and more resilient together.

We take our singular stand in a collective stand of relations.

And it doesn't end there, as anyone who has watched Lou Schwartzberg's Fantastic Fungi has learned, the mycelial networks knit the forest together further still, connecting root systems and sharing information and nutrition. At our healthiest and strongest, we are an intergenerational, interspecies collective. Producing poisonous yet practical defense systems AND portals into the infinite of our collective consciousness. 

Smarter, stronger, more generous and more resilient than any of us could or would be isolated in our little plastic pots, wearing our big dumb hats.

So all of this is to say and remind us, we're not built for this shit!

Our isolated potted plants are no match for the storms; the ones here now and surely the ones yet to come.

The chronic anxieties, climate despair, narcissism, addiction and depression that are overwhelming our psyches and ravaging our communities are logical and inevitable symptoms of being shrink wrapped and packaged for far too long. Idiocracy more prescient with each passing season.

Our roots—curled up and clumped, are unable to find food or anchor us to the ground.
Our shoots—forced to grow under false light and synthetic nourishment.

We've been cultivated and conditioned to believe that our own satisfaction is all that matters and our wildest desires must be met right away. (no money down, easy monthly payments, if you act TODAY!).

That's what those snake-oil preachers and Law of Attraction shills figured out.

I. Me. Mine. Now.

Four of the most powerful words we'll ever hear. And we've been listening to them for so long, we’ve mistaken them for the authentic stirrings of our own hearts.

Tough Tradeoffs Ahead 

But here's the thing... As we enter what might be several decades of serious belt tightening, and mandatory delays of gratification...never mind trying to hold out for that second marshmallow. S’mores may very well be off the menu for the foreseeable future.

As we manage populations, transition energy supplies, and repair ecological, political, and education systems, there's almost certain to be some tough tradeoffs. If it's done nothing else, my work on building a literal Learning Economy has taught me about the wild truths of tradeoffs and incentives.

What if we don't get what we've been conditioned to believe we have coming to us? Our moment in the sun? Our one shot at redemption?

Not now. Not even soon. Maybe never (or at least, not in our lifetimes).

If we're trying to process that as isolated plants in pots, it's going to break us. No single one of us can hold all that stochastic weight of uncertainty. It seems far better to think like the mushroom—weaving the forest together. Dying, sporing, expanding, collapsing, connecting. Across time and space ad infinitum. 

Composting what came before, growing from what's available now, and contributing to what's yet to come.

Doesn't that seem a little deeper? A little richer? And a lot more human?

Ancestral Honor Over Ancestral Trauma 

So while the queen bees and crypto bros are sure to persist, I've been in pursuit of those who are down to share from the heart, talk about the sacred, and possibly even dip their toes into the ancestral infinite (mushrooms help here too). Except, as with all things in our potted plant culture, looking back also needs to be a means of leaning forward. If we're talking about our ancestors (as every civilization from the Greeks to Romans, Aztecs to Incas, Japanese to Koreans all have), it seems we're going about it slightly backwards. If you hear the word "Ancestral" these days, it's typically followed by one of two words—grains or trauma.

Leaving booze and cereals aside for the moment, just think about that second usage for a minute.

Other cultures engage in Ancestor worship religiously. Elders, grandparents, and the mythic leaders of their clans loom large in daily decisions. The example they set and the codes and scriptures they adhere to become the yardsticks by which we measure our lives.

Our incarnations are but one brief spin of the wheel in the context of a much longer story. We should do our best not to fuck up an otherwise fairly rich and rewarding track record.
Unfortunately, we seem to have chosen a path of fetishizing, as opposed to honoring, our Ancestral trauma.

It's, "why do I feel so sad for all that I didn't get, and how can I possibly ever forgive them?" as opposed to, "how can I live up to the noble and courageous example of my forebearers, and honor their sacrifices!" We've made THEM, all about US.

And with the recent explosion of AI and epigenetics, that trend has gone exponential. 

From the children of Civil War POWs to the grandchildren of starving Danish farmers, to the descendants of the Holocaust, studies are showing that physiological and psychological hardship can be passed down (often even making us stronger). It's profound and fascinating work, but the greedy ghosts (i.e. The New Normal Left)  have already captured it for their own purposes.

"Wait, you mean to tell me that on top of binge watching Gabor Mate there's now a near bottomless well of intergenerational trauma that I also get to tap into? EPIC!!! I never need to sack the fuck up and stop ruminating on my own wounds, or be grateful for being born into unprecedented peace and prosperity. I can elevate my own narcissism by loudly proclaiming to anyone within earshot that I am not only "doing my work." I'm actually doing THE Work? ALL OF IT? Sign. Me. Up!"

It's an endless mud-wallow. Not once do we stop to thank our forebearers for dying honorably such that we could actually live.

Serve Like an Ancestor 

The option was always open to us, right? We always could, like the mycelial networks, like the stands of old growth trees, reconnect ourselves, our lives and our families

Past. Present. Future.

We could realize that, despite a century of indoctrination to the contrary, we can't always get what we want. Sometimes our parents and grandparents aren't just foils for our own personal journeys of healing. Sometimes they sucked it up and did hard, scary, noble things on behalf of children they never got to see enjoy the rewards.

They carried loads, without complaint, that would buckle our strawberry knees. They endured scarcity and uncertainty that no amount of Fentanyl, Klonopin or Ambien could quell.

Once in a while, they might even still have something to teach us. And what's so damn cool about what our ancestors have to teach, is that they show us how to become honorable ancestors ourselves when the time comes. After all, when those ancient redwoods fall, they crash to the forest floor, opening up new patches of sunshine and blue sky in the canopy above. As they rot, mushrooms spring up from their wise mulchy trunks. They recede into the earth, but not before honoring and giving life to what's next.

It's like Moses wandering for 40 fucking years through the hot and dusty desert in service of the Israelites, only to get the shaft on the verge of the Promised Land.

He never got to taste the milk and honey he had coming to him, but it didn't matter. He was playing his part. He found the will to keep going, not because he was going to get his, but because his grandchildren might get theirs. I have no idea how, but we've got to reclaim that attitude.

Because while there's absolutely no way of telling what the coming century (much less decade) is gonna bring, there's a solid chance it's going to be less secure, less stable, and much more mobile than the Pax Americana most of us grew up in. That All-American peace and prosperity, cheap gas, cheaper delivery, on-demand everything, and statistically improbable stability allowed us to develop some bad habits that never got corrected.

We've become convinced that the whole story is supposed to unfold for us, in our own lifetimes, all at once. But it’s past time to break out of our plastic straight jackets, and set aside those artificial nutrients and pretty lights. We're going to have to grow up, and move from the unsustainable cravings of I.. Me.. Mine.. Now to fighting for We.. Us.. Ours.. Forever.

Infinite over finite games till death do us part.

Now that’s something worth manifesting. Hyperstition FTW!

Remember What We've Forgotten 

So whether at peace or still potted, can we all just pause for a minute and remember each other? Remember that around the world, and across the ages, we've all been united in a singular goal: To live in peace, laugh out loud, watch children grow, and to die in our sleep surrounded by those we love. It's always been this way.

We are hardwired to care for each other.  

And when we gather together to share deeply about our lives and our burdens, when we can hug, discuss, dance, drum, and sing... we come back to ourselves.

It's a game changing realization that we aren't that far apart. That our shame and our burdens are more common and evenly distributed than we'd ever dare guess. That our yearning for joy is shared and amplified by the gifts and talents of others. It really is the simple things.

So as countries around the world enter pivotal elections in the next few years, and as we watch our brothers and sisters around the world struggle through crises and conflicts, let's remember that we have the power to pull a better future back into the present... together.

We can digest our grief, we can feed the Holy, and we can, even if just for a moment, remember what we've forgotten.

Ok, on to the good stuff...

Taykentots I'm currently snacking on:

• Reads: Time is an Object (Aeon)

• Politics(ish): The New Normal Left (CJ Hopkins)

• AI Launchpad: Generative AI & Its Impact (MarioV., Readocracy)

• MusiTunes: Way Out Beyond (Layup)

I love hearing back and always reply, so don't hesitate.