I’ve been exploring the intersection of tech and wisdom for the better part of a decade. Building humane technology, advocating for ethical entrepreneurship education, making personal pilgrimages to places like India, Peru, and the holy land. Some people call me a reformed tech bro.

One recurring theme has been about shifting from the idea of abstract to embodied ethics. From merely thinking and talking about it, to practicing what I preach. In other words: it’s important to intellectually understand the need for how we might innovate in ways that are in right relationship with the web of life. But it’s mastery to practice those ways such that they are known deep within the bones, integrated into thoughts, speech, and action in both our personal and professional lives. A long road for those of us who learned in engineering or business school to quickly start the next big thing.

My exploration into this tension led to working on education efforts with Tristan Harris at The Center for Humane Technology, where I kept my antennae up for fresh ideas and voices that might support our efforts to transform a culture that optimizes parts at the expense of the whole. While AI was blowing up in the news cycle with the launch of Chat GPT-3, I found myself binging on Josh Schrei’s podcast The Emerald. A balm for the left-hemisphere dominant worldview the tech-for-good space operates from. Upon reaching out to Josh for guidance on how to navigate the moment, his gears started turning to craft a special podcast episode that would cut to the heart of the issue.

A balm for the left-hemisphere dominant worldview the tech-for-good space operates from.

So You Want To Be A Sorcerer in the Age of Mythic Powers (The AI Episode) launched a few months later, filling a major mythopoetic void in mainstream discourse around the rise of artificial intelligence and how to respond to it. Josh wove provocative storytelling, original soundscapes, and striking anthropological references to show how far away modern tech culture is from how traditional cultures have navigated great power. The episode goes on to explain that in order to adequately prepare technologists to wield their power responsibly, we need something akin to the rigorous rites of passage of ancient magic and mystery schools. Many teammates, funders and founders described it as the best podcast they had ever heard.

In response to the overwhelmingly positive response to the episode, Josh and I decided to create a course for those who wanted to go deeper into the conversation around initiation, accountability, and embodied ethics. For five weeks alongside co-hosts and emerging thought leaders Michael Garfield, Elena Lake Polozova and Yatharth Agarwal, we convened 130 people across the planet, from the heart of the major companies like OpenAI, Meta, Apple and Google; to the far edges of culture where wisdom lies. A rich convergence of tech executives and responsible AI professionals, and those who coach them. Startup founders and engineers, and those who heal their bodies. Alternative educators, artists, ethics consultants and youth leaders.

Provocative storytelling, original soundscapes, and striking anthropological references show how far away modern tech culture is from how traditional cultures have navigated great power.

We explored topics ranging from how traditionally ethics is embodied, to who and what we are ultimately accountable to. We discussed the difference between a custodial vision of technology - how can I keep things in good ongoing relation?, and a salvific one - how can this save us from some undesirable state?. We slowed down to give thanks to the relationships that sustain us, and we felt into the difference between something forged in the spirit of agitation, versus the energy of an organic pace and setting an intention to make something beautiful that lasts. Without fail, I teared up at least once in each session, upon hearing truth spoken so elegantly on a subject that I’ve dedicated much of my adult life to advancing.

Special guests included Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp, who shared inspiring ways his team is integrating ritual and long term thinking into a new venture. Eco-theologist Rev Sara Jolena Wolcott illuminated the mindsets and worldviews that led to our current dis-eased paradigm, and how we might begin to shift out of it by aligning with natural cycles. And wise innovation leader Turquoise Sound led us through exercises to connect with the wisdom of our senses.

In a mid-course twist, fellow co-conspirators Mara Zepeda and Amelia Rose Barlow invited three extraordinary indigenous grandmothers: Chief Beverly Kiohawiton Cook, Katsi Cook and Loretta Afraid of Bear Cook to speak about how power is earned in their communities and how they balance ancient and modern tools. It was a real privilege to experience the presence of true elders and oral tradition, while learning about the relational and spiritual technologies that have long nourished their communities. By invitation from Loretta, several of us were then able to support one of their sacred ceremonies in-person, where the course lessons around responsibility and slowness came to life hard and fast.

If I'm coming from a place of having established a certain relationality, there's a greater chance that the decisions that I make, and the things that I put forward on this day, are going to be more deeply connected to larger considerations of each other and ecology, time and mystery. –Josh Schrei

The work continued with our Embodied Ethics Retreat and I’m feeling grateful that these kinds of educational experiences are becoming more sought after and valued. That an ecosystem is growing not only to provide such experiences to next generation and maturing technologists, but also those of us on a path who need more practice and regular reminders. That to understand and care for the web of life, we must be in relationship with it. And to cultivate right relationship with it, we must regularly enact rituals with our bodies that reify the connection. So we remember it, so we instinctively make wise choices for the whole in moments that matter. So we may live as humble stewards and role models for the next generation.