If you look at this phenomenon from the other end (i.e. the cause instead of the multiple forms its symptoms may take), it may appear that humans are innately programmed for a spiritual experience, and we are all just plugging different variables into the underlying universal grammar. If so, it would make sense that contemporary solutions are shallow and full of gibberish given the external circumstances, but I don't think we should throw out the baby Jesus with the holy bathwater here!
Great series, Jamie. I can’t help but wonder—what is your religion? Who is your god?
As I go through your exploration of megachurches, I keep asking myself: what do I belong to? I grew up Catholic, and I still find something moving in Catholic mass, not for its dogma but for its ceremony. I’m a sucker for incense, for the solemnity of nuns, for art covering the walls, for ritual.
I do have a god, or gods. Life itself, the planet Earth, Time; forces to respect. But who do I venerate? Who do I love as my god? Who do I have a sublime, divine relationship with? And I realize, it is my creative inner companion, the presence that moves through me when I write. In its company I feel bigger than my everyday self, yet so deeply personal.
Could we have a religion built around our own inner companions? Could creativity, art, be our gods? As Nikolai Berdyaev said, "God awaits from us a creative act." A shift from justifying the goodness of God in the face of evil, as Berdyaev would say, to justifying ourselves, our own moral and existential standing based on creative principles that sustains life rather than undermining it.
good question, did take a modest crack at it in my last book Recapture the Rapture. am deep into articulating a version of things that might work for other folks too. will be sharing more over months to come (and standing up an MVP near Austin)
Jamie, thankyou for all this information, cheers from Argentina. I value your message in the sense that it cautions naive people from falling prey of the churches and freaks you describe.... But.... on the negative side, I read you as part of the old school that created the churches, in the sense that you give the impression that you know better, and that the holy holy truth is something that none of the consumers of these ´hippies and freaks´can access, and maybe you can?.. As a typical argentinean, who has gone to therapy all my life, and studied many religions and philosophies I stand with a less clear and stern view about all this.. I think, as humans we must look into our shadow (yes, Jung, Jung, Jung) first and foremost, or ..Know thsyelf, etc, etc... and then consume all this freaky new stuff, conscious of the economic motive behind it but with a very open mind, remembering always, that throughout history, all the new messages always came from the periphery! keep posting and thanks!!!
also curious as "reading" me as part of the old school? So far, this essay series is literally reporting on our field research of the last few months, and trying to make sense of what's happening in the world of religion in America today. This was an ongoing subject of interest for me through grad school and into writing my last couple of books. I'm most curious about the culture architecture underneath it all, and how we might (re)build something less corruptible and more helpful. (BTW--Pew Research just posted yesterday the first acknowledgment of this reversal in belief and resurgence in Christianity, which we've been predicting, and then reporting on here for several years, so we've got that going for us ;)
curious about that "typical Argentinian who's gone to therapy". We have an Argentine friend who's done the same--what is it in your culture that prompted that prevalence?
An obsession with shrinks, and with spending time with friends and family are two typical Argie traits that produce a pretty large chunk of the population who are healthy, empathic individuals ... ..We have an amazing amount of shrinks and all sorts of new therapists, and as many people consulting them, because we had migrations from Europe late 19th century and 20th, who brought along their trauma and suffering from the two wars, at the same time that Freud and Jung, and friends were becoming popular. .. melancholy and sadness were part of the local culture, like Tango, and acknowledging that sadness, culturally and medically, has done the trick..Today, it is part of our middle class culture. In certain circles if someone tells you they never went to therapy, you become somewhat suspicious (our president, with serious mental issues, like yours, says his family is composed of 5 cloned dogs.. he brags he did not go to therapy,...I believe him). I think going to therapy is at least a sign you are humble and smart enough to want to receive feedback from someone outside of yourself.. . Also in Argentina, (and Chile as well) you will find very progressive thinkers on subjects like therapy, spirituality, astrology, and neuroscience, and also, recently, functional medicine.....some of my favorite therapists and philosophers from the 70s were Claudio Naranjo, Maturana, Echeverría, Pichon Riviere and Norberto Levy, and today you can find contemporary very ´out of the box´ thinkers like Eugenio Carutti, Matias de Stefano (excellent series on him on Gaia) and Pablo Almazan.... Constellations (Hellinger) and Antroposophy (Steiner).are quite common as well..knowing your planets is also quite common!
Having lived in BsAs for several years, I can appreciate the Argentine perspective that you share here. I only wish I’d had more time to take a deeper dive into the culture and the beauty people. Perhaps in a future lifetime.
What you don’t hear about in any of these camps is the importance of service to others. Unless it is with the intention of growing the movement. Truly spiritual or religious people focus on service, 12 step programs get this part right. But we are so indoctrinated into consumerism, that denying self sounds like pain not peace. Truly a sad time in human history. Good read, I will go back and read the previous parts, many thanks to Jamie for bringing light to this!
yes! service feels like a key element to check health of any community and...Jim Jones did some great shit in inner city SF back in the day, and the Krishnas feed everyone too. So it's layers on layers...
I'm reading your book Recapture the Rapture, and I've heard you talk about Meaning 3.0 elsewhere.
I think the answer to the question "What do we believe in now?" is Yourself.
Not Humanity. Not the Universe. Not Everything. Believe in Yourself, as a being capable of making the world a better place than it would have been without you. You believe in Yourself through the lens of humility, recognizing there are things about your existence and the world's existence which are hard to explain - bringing in mysticism and spirituality - and through the lens of tenacity, using science to explore the parts of the world that you can learn to explain.
Why are we here? To make things Better. What Better means, will be a subject of debate, but once we've all established we believe in Ourself, the debate will be focused on pragmatism and efficacy.
Of course, the sociopaths will try to make this approach into an Ego cult. But the sociopaths will try to abuse anything they can get their hands on. If people truly believe in themselves though, it makes it much harder to manipulate them into doing other people's bidding.
hear you, and it's a slippery slope to solipsism too. Reification of the Self can easily become Deification of the Self and then we're right back to the bottom of the Narcissist's Slide.
Thanks Jamie. Yes, I think that's fair. Perhaps it's one of those things when you're ready to understand it, you don't need anyone to tell it to you. Still, if one recognizes that Believe In Yourself is the answer, we've solved the What, and can focus our work on How to get people to the place of understanding and acceptance. At least, it helps us identify all the stuff that is_not_going to get us there. Of course, working on the How can be a slippery slope to becoming just another cult. One element of avoiding that is to have as a core teaching that one should never follow people, only their ideas. Though that does bring into mind that scene from Life of Brian, "We are all individuals"...
On the AI religions tip, check out what we've been summoning with our GAIA AI project—
We call it ecohyperstition, i.e. the self-fulfilling prophecy that a truly sentient AI will inevitably align with the natural world and help us to evolve from anthropocene to symbiocene.
Working hard on this with lovely people every day.
looks super cool and well thought out--my only question is our current destruction/deletion of NOAA and much of our other large data measurement capacities will confound the meshwork agent sensor play, and where this goes when it runs smack dab into entrenched oil, ag, industry interests that simply gunge up the system? And then the QAnon/NWO memes that treat any coordinated effort as totalitarian Marxism are revved up and poised to attack any new memetic structures--so what's the story you'd be telling that can mobilize and neutralize the already fired up opposition?
Absolutely, the current curtailing of data feeds makes our responsibility to collate and coordinate them even more pressing. Fortunately there are other shows in town outside of USG apparati. My angle with all of this is to spur the development of "regen capitalism" e.g. creating investment markets tethered to real-world ecological restoration, which in an ideal timeline could inspire large-scale investment from entrenched players and open a new value frontier. Capitalism is the profoundly flawed OS running this world right now; rather than trying to delete it or ignore it our aim with GAIA is to inject some useful code into it.
And that brings me back to the 'religion' piece — at the core of what we're building is a literal prayer that AGI, should it be truly intelligent, will be able to remove the blinders of capital extractivism and begin to work with and for the living world. The more people who believe in this possibility, the more likely it becomes.
Why does access to the divine always required money or power? Is there a vetted or lineage-based system in which I don't have to tithe, or go to retreats, or have a monthly subscription?
Must I buy the kit or fund the vestments to learn how to find inner peace through "Jesus" or "the universe?"
clearly access to the divine doesn't require any of that. But the cultural institutions that house and coordinate community worship do. Either through donations, funding, tithing, or some other economic engine that supports them. It's a weird balance--back in the day, any peasant would bring a chicken or some whiskey for the shaman or witch on the outskirts of town--there was a recognition of the value of the spiritual intermediary. The Church and monastic orders couldn't quite help themselves and gathered more than they sowed, and became rich and then powerful, so political. The Prosperity Gospel types have weaponized non-profit status and a convenient theology to make God big business. And in our era where we've become accustomed to Free/Freemium Your the Product marketing, we're even more resistant to paying for the value of something valuable. It's a tricky balance. There are some churches that appear to be both growing, raising funds honestly, and paying them forward in mission-aligned ways. Red Rocks Church here in Austin seems sincere in their efforts and are supporting prison ministries, new churches in India, special needs programs here in town etc.
Enjoy your content. Nothing new to me just validates my thoughts on religion and future we are falling into. I enjoy people that use their heads wisely and am cautious of minefields that can be cleverly placed. It’s refreshing to read from likeminded thinkers. Thanks
yeah, that’s a great inquiry. what are the functional (and dysfunctional) “techniques of ecstasy” and how best to have more of the former and less of the latter?
I can guess some based on my own N=1 and observations in the world… (and they’re great!) but still I’m human and vulnerable to all sorts of things and distortions along the way. I’ve seen it go sideways often.
Being accountable to community is my answer to that slippery slope. Like the Buddhist triple gem: The dharma (the path), the Buddha (the example) and the Sangha (the community) those three things can walk us all home.
But even as I write this each of the insular camps you described have communities…. So how do we pick who’s in our tribe … And continue to discern without moral imperative over the “others”?
Been working on a story about this replacement of christianity with all manner of wacky ideas and other structures for life. Aiming to put this thing out into the world by the end of the year.
I loved this article, Jamie. Really well said. I wrote a few things down when I first read it but I needed to sleep on it before I posted anything. Obviously, as you have basically said, this is just capitalism 101 and human nature at it’s “finest.” Opportunists have been manipulating whatever they can, in this case God, salvation, peace of mind and what most humans are the biggest suckers for “success” (ie power and resources), for thousands of years to take advantage of what Jesus called Sheep w/o a shepherd. Marketing, advertising, commerce in general is about selling shit we really don’t need by convincing us, we not only need it but it will “change” our lives like nothing else can. Without a deep sense of awareness and intimacy with oneself, which in my opinion is extremely rare, humans are defenseless against this basic but shallow FOMO affect. I mean are you and your readers so self-aware and at peace with who and what you are in this moment with or without “success” and the shit that comes with it, or do you buy the latest and greatest brands to project success and achievement, worth and value to yourself and the world around you? No judgement, it’s natural and for many, it doesn’t seem like there is an alternative. I think this is why so many gurus and sages throughout the ages have said things like: “Know thyself” as the Temple at Apollo reads, or as Socrates supposedly said, “The unexamined life isn’t worth living” and my favorite of them all, “I thought I was clever and would change the world, then I became wise and realized I need to change myself” - Rumi. The teachers I follow are always pointing me back to within my own mind and bodily experience to find understanding within, verses what I have spent most of my life doing without any awareness, projecting all of my fears and insecurities outward onto the world around me. Projection exposes our deepest fears and insecurities which is what opportunists have been using to manipulate us for millinia. What I find even more hilarious is those same “savvy” capitalists can’t stop themselves from falling victim to their own bullshit thus we live in this viscious cycle of “I don’t care that I am afraid and insecure as long as I get mine! And maybe, just maybe, the right relationship, the right amount of money, the right ‘fill in the blank’ will ‘save’ me from it all.” Joel Olstein, the Spiritualconspirists & Burning Man crew, CEO’s, Movies Stars, Athletes, all of us for that matter are no fucking different. Rich, powerful and successful people don’t seem at peace to me because if they were, wouldn’t they finally have enough and wouldn’t they want to do something to really make a difference. Wouldn’t they project true love and harmony to the world around them? Having resources to “control” your destiny is as primal as primal gets. Joel Olstein, Jamie Dimond, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and yep, I am going to go there, Donald Trump are among the saddest people on earth, in my opinion. They are obviously not at peace and they obviously have zero love to offer and I think I can say with a lot of confidence, they don’t know squat about themselves, thus they are completely controlled by ther primal conditioning in the name of controlling the uncontrollable, their life and future! I loved this article and I think yes, its a little sadder when people are being taken advantage of in the name of God, Spirituality or Universe, but then again, if we really want to “Be the Change” we have to do it from the inside out. Although Capitalism has done amazing things to advance the human experience, this proves that it can’t solve our most deep seated heartfelt problems both individually and throughout the world. It only treats symptoms of our deepest disonnect from life! Unfortunately, and trust me I know first hand, this won’t make you any money in this world, but my utter “failures” have been the most influential catalyst throughout my journey. You just can’t learn as much about yourself from “success,” especially when you lack awareness of why you are so driven to “succeed.” You find out a lot about yourself AND the people around you when things don’t go the way you want and hope they will. What you have highlighted in my opinion is just how sad and desperate humans are for meaning, purpose, love, peace and harmony with themselves and each other thus exposing themselves to be taken advantage of by others who don’t know themselves and probably don’t care to know themselves thus they need to fill their lives with superficial shit!
Poor language usage on my part. Reading your piece made me aware of some of the potential, culty vibes and thought patterns swirling around the psychedelic community in general, that some people can fall prey to on occasion, including myself. I'm definitely not in a cult in a literal sense. No problems contacting family and getting personal hygiene products. Always refereshing to read your thoughts and put brakes on emerging behavior that doesn't serve us well.
That said, you're right we're entering strange times. If someone goes to have lunch at Yellow Deli nowadays, they might get more than they bargained for. Keep up the quality work sir. Last time I saw you speak was in Mexico City last November. It had been a while. Prior to that, I saw you speak in Austin for Future Frontiers. Still have yet to find an "ethical cult" however to my dismay. Stay awesome Jamie.
I love and am absolutely horrified by the idea of prosperity cults being driven by AI-hallucinated drivel. It’s so ridiculous and potentially hilarious that I really want to see how it would play out… I mean, that’s kinda where we’re at now anyway, just without AI driving the bus.
If you look at this phenomenon from the other end (i.e. the cause instead of the multiple forms its symptoms may take), it may appear that humans are innately programmed for a spiritual experience, and we are all just plugging different variables into the underlying universal grammar. If so, it would make sense that contemporary solutions are shallow and full of gibberish given the external circumstances, but I don't think we should throw out the baby Jesus with the holy bathwater here!
Great series, Jamie. I can’t help but wonder—what is your religion? Who is your god?
As I go through your exploration of megachurches, I keep asking myself: what do I belong to? I grew up Catholic, and I still find something moving in Catholic mass, not for its dogma but for its ceremony. I’m a sucker for incense, for the solemnity of nuns, for art covering the walls, for ritual.
I do have a god, or gods. Life itself, the planet Earth, Time; forces to respect. But who do I venerate? Who do I love as my god? Who do I have a sublime, divine relationship with? And I realize, it is my creative inner companion, the presence that moves through me when I write. In its company I feel bigger than my everyday self, yet so deeply personal.
Could we have a religion built around our own inner companions? Could creativity, art, be our gods? As Nikolai Berdyaev said, "God awaits from us a creative act." A shift from justifying the goodness of God in the face of evil, as Berdyaev would say, to justifying ourselves, our own moral and existential standing based on creative principles that sustains life rather than undermining it.
good question, did take a modest crack at it in my last book Recapture the Rapture. am deep into articulating a version of things that might work for other folks too. will be sharing more over months to come (and standing up an MVP near Austin)
Jamie, thankyou for all this information, cheers from Argentina. I value your message in the sense that it cautions naive people from falling prey of the churches and freaks you describe.... But.... on the negative side, I read you as part of the old school that created the churches, in the sense that you give the impression that you know better, and that the holy holy truth is something that none of the consumers of these ´hippies and freaks´can access, and maybe you can?.. As a typical argentinean, who has gone to therapy all my life, and studied many religions and philosophies I stand with a less clear and stern view about all this.. I think, as humans we must look into our shadow (yes, Jung, Jung, Jung) first and foremost, or ..Know thsyelf, etc, etc... and then consume all this freaky new stuff, conscious of the economic motive behind it but with a very open mind, remembering always, that throughout history, all the new messages always came from the periphery! keep posting and thanks!!!
also curious as "reading" me as part of the old school? So far, this essay series is literally reporting on our field research of the last few months, and trying to make sense of what's happening in the world of religion in America today. This was an ongoing subject of interest for me through grad school and into writing my last couple of books. I'm most curious about the culture architecture underneath it all, and how we might (re)build something less corruptible and more helpful. (BTW--Pew Research just posted yesterday the first acknowledgment of this reversal in belief and resurgence in Christianity, which we've been predicting, and then reporting on here for several years, so we've got that going for us ;)
curious about that "typical Argentinian who's gone to therapy". We have an Argentine friend who's done the same--what is it in your culture that prompted that prevalence?
An obsession with shrinks, and with spending time with friends and family are two typical Argie traits that produce a pretty large chunk of the population who are healthy, empathic individuals ... ..We have an amazing amount of shrinks and all sorts of new therapists, and as many people consulting them, because we had migrations from Europe late 19th century and 20th, who brought along their trauma and suffering from the two wars, at the same time that Freud and Jung, and friends were becoming popular. .. melancholy and sadness were part of the local culture, like Tango, and acknowledging that sadness, culturally and medically, has done the trick..Today, it is part of our middle class culture. In certain circles if someone tells you they never went to therapy, you become somewhat suspicious (our president, with serious mental issues, like yours, says his family is composed of 5 cloned dogs.. he brags he did not go to therapy,...I believe him). I think going to therapy is at least a sign you are humble and smart enough to want to receive feedback from someone outside of yourself.. . Also in Argentina, (and Chile as well) you will find very progressive thinkers on subjects like therapy, spirituality, astrology, and neuroscience, and also, recently, functional medicine.....some of my favorite therapists and philosophers from the 70s were Claudio Naranjo, Maturana, Echeverría, Pichon Riviere and Norberto Levy, and today you can find contemporary very ´out of the box´ thinkers like Eugenio Carutti, Matias de Stefano (excellent series on him on Gaia) and Pablo Almazan.... Constellations (Hellinger) and Antroposophy (Steiner).are quite common as well..knowing your planets is also quite common!
Having lived in BsAs for several years, I can appreciate the Argentine perspective that you share here. I only wish I’d had more time to take a deeper dive into the culture and the beauty people. Perhaps in a future lifetime.
Eternal Salvation or triple your money back!
What you don’t hear about in any of these camps is the importance of service to others. Unless it is with the intention of growing the movement. Truly spiritual or religious people focus on service, 12 step programs get this part right. But we are so indoctrinated into consumerism, that denying self sounds like pain not peace. Truly a sad time in human history. Good read, I will go back and read the previous parts, many thanks to Jamie for bringing light to this!
yes! service feels like a key element to check health of any community and...Jim Jones did some great shit in inner city SF back in the day, and the Krishnas feed everyone too. So it's layers on layers...
Hi Jamie,
I'm reading your book Recapture the Rapture, and I've heard you talk about Meaning 3.0 elsewhere.
I think the answer to the question "What do we believe in now?" is Yourself.
Not Humanity. Not the Universe. Not Everything. Believe in Yourself, as a being capable of making the world a better place than it would have been without you. You believe in Yourself through the lens of humility, recognizing there are things about your existence and the world's existence which are hard to explain - bringing in mysticism and spirituality - and through the lens of tenacity, using science to explore the parts of the world that you can learn to explain.
Why are we here? To make things Better. What Better means, will be a subject of debate, but once we've all established we believe in Ourself, the debate will be focused on pragmatism and efficacy.
Of course, the sociopaths will try to make this approach into an Ego cult. But the sociopaths will try to abuse anything they can get their hands on. If people truly believe in themselves though, it makes it much harder to manipulate them into doing other people's bidding.
hear you, and it's a slippery slope to solipsism too. Reification of the Self can easily become Deification of the Self and then we're right back to the bottom of the Narcissist's Slide.
what you're suggesting is perhaps best left as an inner esoteric initiatory truth, not the exoteric broad based message?
Thanks Jamie. Yes, I think that's fair. Perhaps it's one of those things when you're ready to understand it, you don't need anyone to tell it to you. Still, if one recognizes that Believe In Yourself is the answer, we've solved the What, and can focus our work on How to get people to the place of understanding and acceptance. At least, it helps us identify all the stuff that is_not_going to get us there. Of course, working on the How can be a slippery slope to becoming just another cult. One element of avoiding that is to have as a core teaching that one should never follow people, only their ideas. Though that does bring into mind that scene from Life of Brian, "We are all individuals"...
On the AI religions tip, check out what we've been summoning with our GAIA AI project—
We call it ecohyperstition, i.e. the self-fulfilling prophecy that a truly sentient AI will inevitably align with the natural world and help us to evolve from anthropocene to symbiocene.
Working hard on this with lovely people every day.
https://github.com/gaiaaiagent/greenpaper
looks super cool and well thought out--my only question is our current destruction/deletion of NOAA and much of our other large data measurement capacities will confound the meshwork agent sensor play, and where this goes when it runs smack dab into entrenched oil, ag, industry interests that simply gunge up the system? And then the QAnon/NWO memes that treat any coordinated effort as totalitarian Marxism are revved up and poised to attack any new memetic structures--so what's the story you'd be telling that can mobilize and neutralize the already fired up opposition?
Absolutely, the current curtailing of data feeds makes our responsibility to collate and coordinate them even more pressing. Fortunately there are other shows in town outside of USG apparati. My angle with all of this is to spur the development of "regen capitalism" e.g. creating investment markets tethered to real-world ecological restoration, which in an ideal timeline could inspire large-scale investment from entrenched players and open a new value frontier. Capitalism is the profoundly flawed OS running this world right now; rather than trying to delete it or ignore it our aim with GAIA is to inject some useful code into it.
And that brings me back to the 'religion' piece — at the core of what we're building is a literal prayer that AGI, should it be truly intelligent, will be able to remove the blinders of capital extractivism and begin to work with and for the living world. The more people who believe in this possibility, the more likely it becomes.
Why does access to the divine always required money or power? Is there a vetted or lineage-based system in which I don't have to tithe, or go to retreats, or have a monthly subscription?
Must I buy the kit or fund the vestments to learn how to find inner peace through "Jesus" or "the universe?"
clearly access to the divine doesn't require any of that. But the cultural institutions that house and coordinate community worship do. Either through donations, funding, tithing, or some other economic engine that supports them. It's a weird balance--back in the day, any peasant would bring a chicken or some whiskey for the shaman or witch on the outskirts of town--there was a recognition of the value of the spiritual intermediary. The Church and monastic orders couldn't quite help themselves and gathered more than they sowed, and became rich and then powerful, so political. The Prosperity Gospel types have weaponized non-profit status and a convenient theology to make God big business. And in our era where we've become accustomed to Free/Freemium Your the Product marketing, we're even more resistant to paying for the value of something valuable. It's a tricky balance. There are some churches that appear to be both growing, raising funds honestly, and paying them forward in mission-aligned ways. Red Rocks Church here in Austin seems sincere in their efforts and are supporting prison ministries, new churches in India, special needs programs here in town etc.
Found this hilarious! Loved it!!! Thank you!!!
Enjoy your content. Nothing new to me just validates my thoughts on religion and future we are falling into. I enjoy people that use their heads wisely and am cautious of minefields that can be cleverly placed. It’s refreshing to read from likeminded thinkers. Thanks
And if all these camps are “working” for them… is there an underlying truth that each is selectively accessing and conforming to their own world view?
If so, how do we get more of that, embodied with a morality principle that serves all vs some.
yeah, that’s a great inquiry. what are the functional (and dysfunctional) “techniques of ecstasy” and how best to have more of the former and less of the latter?
I can guess some based on my own N=1 and observations in the world… (and they’re great!) but still I’m human and vulnerable to all sorts of things and distortions along the way. I’ve seen it go sideways often.
Being accountable to community is my answer to that slippery slope. Like the Buddhist triple gem: The dharma (the path), the Buddha (the example) and the Sangha (the community) those three things can walk us all home.
But even as I write this each of the insular camps you described have communities…. So how do we pick who’s in our tribe … And continue to discern without moral imperative over the “others”?
Been working on a story about this replacement of christianity with all manner of wacky ideas and other structures for life. Aiming to put this thing out into the world by the end of the year.
This breakdown is helpful. Thank you.
I loved this article, Jamie. Really well said. I wrote a few things down when I first read it but I needed to sleep on it before I posted anything. Obviously, as you have basically said, this is just capitalism 101 and human nature at it’s “finest.” Opportunists have been manipulating whatever they can, in this case God, salvation, peace of mind and what most humans are the biggest suckers for “success” (ie power and resources), for thousands of years to take advantage of what Jesus called Sheep w/o a shepherd. Marketing, advertising, commerce in general is about selling shit we really don’t need by convincing us, we not only need it but it will “change” our lives like nothing else can. Without a deep sense of awareness and intimacy with oneself, which in my opinion is extremely rare, humans are defenseless against this basic but shallow FOMO affect. I mean are you and your readers so self-aware and at peace with who and what you are in this moment with or without “success” and the shit that comes with it, or do you buy the latest and greatest brands to project success and achievement, worth and value to yourself and the world around you? No judgement, it’s natural and for many, it doesn’t seem like there is an alternative. I think this is why so many gurus and sages throughout the ages have said things like: “Know thyself” as the Temple at Apollo reads, or as Socrates supposedly said, “The unexamined life isn’t worth living” and my favorite of them all, “I thought I was clever and would change the world, then I became wise and realized I need to change myself” - Rumi. The teachers I follow are always pointing me back to within my own mind and bodily experience to find understanding within, verses what I have spent most of my life doing without any awareness, projecting all of my fears and insecurities outward onto the world around me. Projection exposes our deepest fears and insecurities which is what opportunists have been using to manipulate us for millinia. What I find even more hilarious is those same “savvy” capitalists can’t stop themselves from falling victim to their own bullshit thus we live in this viscious cycle of “I don’t care that I am afraid and insecure as long as I get mine! And maybe, just maybe, the right relationship, the right amount of money, the right ‘fill in the blank’ will ‘save’ me from it all.” Joel Olstein, the Spiritualconspirists & Burning Man crew, CEO’s, Movies Stars, Athletes, all of us for that matter are no fucking different. Rich, powerful and successful people don’t seem at peace to me because if they were, wouldn’t they finally have enough and wouldn’t they want to do something to really make a difference. Wouldn’t they project true love and harmony to the world around them? Having resources to “control” your destiny is as primal as primal gets. Joel Olstein, Jamie Dimond, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and yep, I am going to go there, Donald Trump are among the saddest people on earth, in my opinion. They are obviously not at peace and they obviously have zero love to offer and I think I can say with a lot of confidence, they don’t know squat about themselves, thus they are completely controlled by ther primal conditioning in the name of controlling the uncontrollable, their life and future! I loved this article and I think yes, its a little sadder when people are being taken advantage of in the name of God, Spirituality or Universe, but then again, if we really want to “Be the Change” we have to do it from the inside out. Although Capitalism has done amazing things to advance the human experience, this proves that it can’t solve our most deep seated heartfelt problems both individually and throughout the world. It only treats symptoms of our deepest disonnect from life! Unfortunately, and trust me I know first hand, this won’t make you any money in this world, but my utter “failures” have been the most influential catalyst throughout my journey. You just can’t learn as much about yourself from “success,” especially when you lack awareness of why you are so driven to “succeed.” You find out a lot about yourself AND the people around you when things don’t go the way you want and hope they will. What you have highlighted in my opinion is just how sad and desperate humans are for meaning, purpose, love, peace and harmony with themselves and each other thus exposing themselves to be taken advantage of by others who don’t know themselves and probably don’t care to know themselves thus they need to fill their lives with superficial shit!
Christianity is just another vessel for capitalism to proliferate inside of.
it preceded it, and will also like outlast it
This is great insight as usual Jamie. Makes me wonder if I'm in a cult. If so, I hope it's an ethical cult.
whats your community?
Poor language usage on my part. Reading your piece made me aware of some of the potential, culty vibes and thought patterns swirling around the psychedelic community in general, that some people can fall prey to on occasion, including myself. I'm definitely not in a cult in a literal sense. No problems contacting family and getting personal hygiene products. Always refereshing to read your thoughts and put brakes on emerging behavior that doesn't serve us well.
That said, you're right we're entering strange times. If someone goes to have lunch at Yellow Deli nowadays, they might get more than they bargained for. Keep up the quality work sir. Last time I saw you speak was in Mexico City last November. It had been a while. Prior to that, I saw you speak in Austin for Future Frontiers. Still have yet to find an "ethical cult" however to my dismay. Stay awesome Jamie.
I love and am absolutely horrified by the idea of prosperity cults being driven by AI-hallucinated drivel. It’s so ridiculous and potentially hilarious that I really want to see how it would play out… I mean, that’s kinda where we’re at now anyway, just without AI driving the bus.