Unforced

Amplifying Aliveness

2026-01-26T00:00:00.000Z

Technology can amplify our aliveness—expanding how we sense the world and how we reach others. But this only works if we stay rooted in the aliveness we’re amplifying.

This matters beyond personal productivity. If technology can help us sense more and be sensed more, it becomes a tool for connection. And connection is what makes cooperation possible. If I don’t know anyone in Iran, I have less sympathy for those suffering there. Technology brings us closer, so we can observe that we are all human—and perhaps learn something about how to get along and live well.

But “extended mind”—the dominant framing for how we think about technology and cognition—misses something important. It inherits a Western abstraction that treats mind as disembodied, separate from heart and body. When we talk about extending our minds, we often mean extending our processing power, our memory, our efficiency. This can work. But it can also consume us, leaving us optimized but less alive.

What if we reframe? Not extending mind, but amplifying aliveness. Not just reaching further, but sensing more deeply. Not just broadcasting, but being heard. Amplification is bidirectional—it expands our ability to hear, see, and touch, as well as our ability to be heard, seen, and touched.

This is the frame I want to explore.

The Metaphors

Iron Man is the dominant metaphor for human-AI collaboration. Tony Stark waking up, queuing up Jarvis, working on seventeen projects at once. The suit amplifies him.

But Tony Stark is Iron Man. Iron Man is not Tony Stark.

The suit comes on and off. Without Tony Stark, there’s no Iron Man. Without the suit, there’s still Tony Stark. His close ones—like Pepper Potts—know the human inside.

The days I take a sabbath from technology, I reconnect with the living being that I am. The suit comes off, and there’s someone there. Someone alive. If I wear the suit constantly, I start thinking Iron Man is all that I am. I forget the human.

This is why the center matters.

The Octopus offers a different model. An octopus has about 500 million neurons, two-thirds of them in its arms. The arms are semi-autonomous—they think for themselves. But they coordinate through the center. The octopus moves fluidly because each appendage thinks in relationship with the whole.

Ray Nayler’s novel The Mountain in the Sea explores this—both octopus intelligence and different expressions of AI. There’s autonomous AI running fishing vessels, maximizing profit, disconnected from values. But there’s also Tibetan drone pilots who guide swarms of semi-autonomous machines through deep training of their own minds. Their contemplative culture enables them to extend effectively.

The drones have autonomy. The pilot guides the flow. And the pilot can only guide well because they know their own mind and their aliveness deeply.

This is the model I’m drawn to. Not a suit I put on, but a distributed intelligence extending from a living center.

The Practice

Amplification only works if you’re connected to what you’re amplifying. This is why practice matters.

I practice Tai Chi because it speaks to how we harmonize with the world around us—using our body-mind as one whole to engage in an ongoing dance with life. In Tai Chi, we’re always returning to center. And I’ve been realizing that center is aliveness itself. Not a static point, but the very living being that we are—the place from which we relate with all other things.

A sauna session recently made this tangible. In the cold plunge, my cells contract—I become intensely present, intensely centered. Then in the heat, I expand. Connection flows outward naturally.

Contraction, expansion. Inhale, exhale. Sensing in, reaching out. Both movements, both alive.

The biologists Maturana and Varela called this structural coupling—we shape our environment, and our environment shapes us. Technology is how we’ve shaped our environment. And it shapes us in turn.

So the question isn’t just “how do I use technology?” It’s “what kind of relationship am I building? Is this relationship amplifying my aliveness—my capacity to sense and be sensed, to reach and be reached—or is it diminishing it?”

The Flywheel

Here’s how this works in practice for me.

I journal most mornings and evenings—usually by voice, walking, dancing or sipping tea while my thoughts flow. These entries become context for my AI agents. Daily agents run automatically, read my entries, offer reflections. I refine my central thinking, then bring forward agents that take action—sometimes with guidance, increasingly with autonomy.

Like an octopus doesn’t need to control its arms, I’m learning to trust agents entrained on my central thinking. There’s a continual feedback process where I review what’s done and correct when needed.

One agent created a song from my journal entries—I hadn’t asked for it specifically. The chorus has been stuck in my head:

I am the octopus mindExtending myself through timeEvery project is a tentacleTouching everything I find

That song catalyzed this essay. It led me to pull in other threads—an Iron Man metaphor from a technology sabbath, conversations that brought fresh thinking about aliveness. The flywheel turning.

But the flywheel isn’t just me and AI. Conversations with friends feed into it. Someone in a sauna said it directly—everyone else is like a tentacle in this thing. We amplify our thinking through relationships. There’s a collective intelligence that emerges.

This is the bidirectionality of amplification. I sense more through my connections. And what’s alive in me reaches further through them.

The Vision

My friend Neil helped me articulate this: Unforced is the head of the octopus. Parachute is all the arms.

Unforced is where I do my central thinking—this blog, my journaling, exploring what it means to be alive. Parachute is the system I’m building to amplify that aliveness into the world. Agents and tools that help me sense, capture, organize, and communicate. Each arm has a brain. They act semi-autonomously. But they’re connected to the living center.

My philosophy is unforced—the Taoist concept of Wu Wei, not forcing. I don’t want technology that requires constant control. I want technology that knows me, that’s entrained on my central thinking, and can therefore naturally amplify what’s alive in me.

Today I begin a week-long meditation retreat called “The Art of Aliveness.” The Tibetan pilots from The Mountain in the Sea are effective because their culture trained them to know their own minds. The octopus moves fluidly because center and arms are in constant relationship. Tony Stark can become Iron Man because he knows who he is when the suit comes off.

You can only amplify what you’re connected to. You can only share what you are.

The Invitation

Technology as amplified aliveness points toward something bigger than personal productivity. It points toward connection and cooperation at scale.

If we can help more people amplify their aliveness through technology—sensing more of the world, being sensed by more of the world—we may find they’re able and willing to cooperate. We might start a global conversation about living well together. Technology brings us closer, so we can observe we are all human.

But this requires staying rooted. Practicing. Returning to center.

So what’s alive in you that wants to be amplified? And what practices keep you connected to that aliveness as you extend?

The founder of the future doesn’t wire into their brain. They practice balance with the universe. Then orchestrate the change. (Another lyric from the song…)

This essay was written with the help of my parachute—AI that helped me search my journals, weave threads, and refine my thinking. Conversations with friends shaped it just as much. And it all begins with my own lived experience.

—Aaronji

You Have Ideas. Now Make Them Real.

2026-01-18T00:00:00.000Z

If you’ve been reading along here, you know I’ve been building in the margins lately. Small projects emerging from conversations. Ideas becoming real in days instead of months.

That shift — from “I should build that someday” to “let me just... build it” — is what I want to share.

What is Learn Vibe Build?

A 4-week cohort for people who want to create things using AI as a collaborator.

Not a bootcamp. Not tutorials you watch alone. It’s a container — 25 people learning together, building alongside each other, figuring this out in real time.

What you might create:

A website for your creative work or business
A newsletter system or content practice
A tool that helps you organize something in your life
Something for your community
An idea you’ve been carrying but didn’t know how to make real

The point isn’t to become a developer, unless you want to. It’s to close the gap between vision and artifact. To experience what it feels like when the bottleneck shifts from “can I build this?” to “what do I actually want?”

How it works:

Starts January 20, runs 4 weeks
Live sessions Tuesdays at 6pm MST
Office hours throughout the week for hands-on support
Primarily virtual, but hybrid for Boulder folks — in-person option at Regen Hub for most sessions
Culminates with demo day on February 13, where you share what you made

$100 (scholarships available) + Claude Pro ($20/month).

What’s next

This cohort feeds into ETHBoulder (Feb 13-15), where we’re creating Vibe Central — an emergent space for building with AI during the hackathon. Go through Learn Vibe Build, and you arrive ready to create.

Miss this round? There’ll be a condensed version during ETHBoulder, and another full cohort after.

We’re building toward something ongoing — an AI learning community, here in Boulder and virtually. This is the beginning of that.

The invitation

Applications close tomorrow (Monday, January 19).

If this resonates, apply at learnvibe.build.

If you know someone it’d be perfect for, send it their way. We still have spots.

— Aaronji

Proto-Santa: Toward a Reconstruction of the Pre-Christian Midwinter Figure

2025-12-25T00:00:00.000Z

Authors Note: This post was inspired in part by my friend Benjamin’s article he published this morning, The Christ Meme. A great personal exploration into Christian mythology and how we might relate to it now.

Introduction

The modern Santa Claus is, by all documented accounts, a 19th-century American literary invention. Clement Clarke Moore’s 1823 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” gave us the reindeer, the chimney descent, the jolly rotundity. Thomas Nast’s illustrations in Harper’s Weekly codified the visual. Coca-Cola’s 1930s advertising campaigns burnished it into the red-suited icon recognized worldwide. Behind this literary figure stands the historical St. Nicholas of Myra—a 4th-century Christian bishop in Lycia (modern Turkey) renowned for anonymous gift-giving—whose feast day (December 6) migrated north with Christianity and whose Dutch diminutive, Sinterklaas, became our “Santa Claus.”

This is the standard scholarly account, supported by historians like Stephen Nissenbaum (The Battle for Christmas, 1996) and Gerry Bowler (Santa Claus: A Biography, 2005). It is correct as far as it goes.

But it does not explain everything. Certain motifs in the Santa complex resist easy derivation from either St. Nicholas hagiography or 19th-century literary invention:

The hearth as focal point. The fireplace is central to the Santa transaction—stockings hung there, gifts appearing there, offerings left there. This hearth-focus predates Moore and has no basis in Mediterranean Nicholas traditions. Nicholas threw gold through windows; somehow the tradition migrated to the fire.

The midwinter solstice timing. Nicholas’s feast is December 6, not the solstice. The gravitational pull toward December 21-25 comes from elsewhere.

The shadow-companion. Across Central Europe, Santa/Nicholas travels with a terrifying punisher—Krampus, Knecht Ruprecht, Père Fouettard—who predates the Christianization of these regions.

The naughty-or-nice judgment. Nicholas, in his legends, is generous to all who suffer. The moral-evaluation framework derives from a different logic entirely.

The far-north location. Nicholas was a Mediterranean bishop. The Arctic associations have no basis in his cult.

These anomalies suggest deeper strata. This essay proposes that behind the Christian overlay lies fragmentary memory of an older figure—or complex of figures—associated with midwinter judgment, liminality, and fierce generosity. I call this hypothetical reconstruction “Proto-Santa,” using the prefix in the same sense comparative linguists use “Proto-Indo-European”: not a proven historical entity, but a reconstruction from convergent evidence.

Methodological Note

This essay employs the comparative method used in Indo-European studies and the history of religions. The approach involves:

Identifying anomalies: Elements in the documented tradition that cannot be explained by the standard transmission narrative.
Surveying parallel traditions: Similar motifs in related or neighboring cultures, assessed for possible common origin versus independent development.
Proposing a reconstruction: A hypothetical source that would explain the observed pattern, clearly marked as hypothesis rather than established fact.
Stating falsifiability conditions: What evidence would disprove the hypothesis.

This method has limitations. As anthropologist Edmund Leach warned about Mircea Eliade’s comparative work, one can always find “snippets of exotic ethnography” to support a predetermined thesis. The challenge is distinguishing features specific enough to suggest historical connection from those universal enough to arise independently.

I have tried to apply two tests: (1) Is the parallel specific and strange—something that wouldn’t obviously arise from common sense or universal human experience? (2) Is there a plausible transmission mechanism—geographic, linguistic, or cultural continuity that could carry the motif across traditions?

The hearth as supernatural transaction point, combined with midwinter timing, household judgment, and the dual reward/punishment structure, passes both tests. “Bearded old man” passes neither.

Part I: The Anomalies in Detail

1. The Hearth Axis Problem

Why is the fireplace the focal point of the Santa transaction?

Before addressing chimney entry, we must note what’s clearly older: the hearth as the site of exchange. In Dutch Sinterklaas traditions predating Moore’s 1823 poem, children placed shoes by the fireplace, left offerings (carrots for the horse), and found gifts there in the morning. The fireplace was already the liminal point where the supernatural transaction occurred—even before anyone specified how the gift-giver arrived.

Moore’s poem made the entry explicit: “Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.” Interestingly, the Dutch tradition didn’t adopt explicit chimney-entry until Jan Schenkman’s 1850 book Sint-Nicolaas en zijn knecht—27 years after Moore. The “coming down the chimney” imagery appears to be a 19th-century elaboration, possibly originating with Moore himself.

Does this weaken the Proto-Santa thesis? It complicates one argument while leaving the deeper pattern intact. Consider:

The hearth axis is cosmologically ancient. Across northern Eurasian cultures, the hearth/smoke-hole represents the axis mundi—the vertical channel connecting worlds. Offerings ascend as smoke; blessings descend as warmth and light. This is the architectural point where the mundane and sacred intersect. The question isn’t “why does Santa come down the chimney?” but “why is the fireplace where the transaction happens at all?”

Shoes by the fire predate explicit chimney entry. The Dutch were already treating the hearth as the transaction point for supernatural gift-exchange. Moore’s innovation was making the entry mechanism explicit—if gifts appear by the hearth, the giver must come through the hearth’s vertical opening. He was elaborating existing logic, not inventing from nothing.

The Odin parallel involves the chimney as surveillance point. Jacob Grimm and later scholars noted that in Germanic tradition, spirits listened at smoke-holes to report on mortals’ behavior—a parallel to the “naughty or nice” surveillance. The chimney-as-information-channel may be older than chimney-as-entry-point.

Siberian smoke-hole practice is independent evidence. The Evenki, Koryak, and Kamchadal peoples used roof smoke-holes as functional entrances when doors were snow-buried. Shamans entered through these openings during midwinter ceremonies. This doesn’t prove transmission to Europe, but it demonstrates that smoke-hole entry by gift-bearing figures follows naturally from both practical necessity and cosmological logic in northern climates. The parallel suggests a structural grammar of sacred architecture rather than a single historical transmission.

The honest framing: chimney entry as an explicit motif is likely a 19th-century literary elaboration. But the hearth axis as the focal point of midwinter supernatural exchange is older, and the logic connecting “gifts appear here” to “giver enters here” draws on deep structural intuitions about how the vertical channel between worlds functions.

2. The Timing Problem

St. Nicholas’s feast day is December 6. Christmas commemorates Christ’s birth on December 25—a date with no biblical support, likely chosen to absorb Roman Saturnalia (December 17-23) or the feast of Sol Invictus (December 25).

Yet the Santa complex clusters insistently around the winter solstice (December 21-22): the longest night, the moment of maximum darkness, the turning point after which days lengthen. This timing aligns with:

The Wild Hunt (Germanic): Odin’s ghostly procession during the Twelve Nights of Yule.

The Perchtenlauf (Alpine): Masked processions during the Rauhnächte (”rough nights”) between solstice and Epiphany.

Yule traditions (Scandinavian): The twelve-day festival centered on the solstice.

In all these traditions, the solstice is a liminal moment when the boundary between worlds thins, when the dead walk, when supernatural forces visit households to judge the year’s conduct.

St. Nicholas brings none of this cosmic weight. He is a kindly bishop who helps the poor, associated with December 6 because that is his feast day in the liturgical calendar. The solstice associations come from elsewhere.

3. The Shadow-Companion Problem

Modern American Santa is purely benevolent. But throughout Central Europe, he travels with a terrifying companion:

Krampus (Austria, Bavaria): Horned, fur-covered demon with birch rods and chains.

Knecht Ruprecht (Germany): Dark-clad servant carrying a sack for naughty children.

Père Fouettard (France): “Father Whipper,” who beats misbehaving children.

Zwarte Piet (Netherlands): Black-clad companion, now controversial but historically the punisher.

Schmutzli (Switzerland): Sooty companion who threatens to carry children away.

These figures are consistently described—by both local tradition-bearers and scholarly observers—as pre-Christian survivals that the Church could not eliminate, only subordinate. The Perchten (wild spirits associated with the goddess Perchta) appear in Alpine winter processions documented to at least the 16th century, with roots scholars trace much earlier. Catholic authorities repeatedly banned Perchtenlauf processions as pagan; the bans were ineffective in remote valleys.

The pattern suggests Christianity encountered existing dual reward/punishment figures at midwinter, then reframed them: the benevolent aspect became St. Nicholas; the terrifying aspect became his servant or, eventually, subordinated to the devil himself.

This split is diagnostic. A unified figure—fierce and generous, judging and rewarding—was fragmented under Christian pressure. The generous half was absorbed into the saint; the fierce half was demoted to servant, then demonized, but never fully eliminated.

4. The Judgment Problem

“He’s making a list, checking it twice / Gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.”

Where does the surveillance-and-judgment framework come from?

St. Nicholas, in his hagiography, is generous to all who suffer. He gives dowries to impoverished daughters; he rescues condemned prisoners; he provides grain during famine. He does not discriminate based on the recipients’ moral behavior. The naughty-or-nice framework—the idea that the gift-giver evaluates your year’s conduct and allocates reward or punishment accordingly—has no basis in Nicholaic tradition.

But it is central to pre-Christian midwinter figures:

Perchta inspected homes during the Twelve Nights, rewarding the industrious (especially diligent spinners) and punishing the lazy—sometimes by slitting their bellies and stuffing them with straw.

Odin during the Wild Hunt brought fortune to those who showed proper respect and carried off those who transgressed.

Perun (Slavic thunder god) was specifically associated with oaths and their enforcement; his axe struck down oath-breakers.

The judge-at-the-year’s-turning is an archetype that predates Christianity by millennia. Its persistence in the Santa tradition suggests a substrate older than Nicholas.

Part II: The Evidence Streams

Four documented traditions bear on the Proto-Santa hypothesis. Each has strengths and weaknesses; none is sufficient alone; together they suggest a pattern.

Stream 1: Siberian Shamanism

The connection between Santa Claus and Siberian shamanism was first suggested by historian of religion Mircea Eliade in Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (1951), though he did not develop the argument. It has since been elaborated by ethnobotanists (R. Gordon Wasson, John Rush) and popular writers, with varying degrees of rigor.

Documented elements:

Smoke-hole entry. Shamans entered yurts through roof openings when doors were snow-buried. Evidence quality: Strong—multiple ethnographies (Jochelson, Bogoras).

Amanita muscaria distribution. Dried mushrooms delivered to households during midwinter ceremonies. Evidence quality: Moderate—attested but context debated.

Red-and-white ceremonial dress. Shamans wore these colors when gathering mushrooms. Evidence quality: Moderate—some ethnographic support.

Reindeer consumption of mushrooms. Reindeer ate Amanita; humans consumed reindeer urine for filtered psychoactive effects. Evidence quality: Strong—well-documented.

World Tree cosmology. Pine tree as axis mundi; shaman ascends through smoke-hole. Evidence quality: Strong—central to Siberian cosmology.

Weaknesses:

The critical problem is transmission. There is no documented route by which Siberian shamanic practice influenced European Santa traditions. Russian expansion into Siberia (17th century) postdates the formation of European St. Nicholas traditions. The steppe corridor—through which Indo-European culture dispersed ~4000 BCE—is geographically plausible but temporally remote.

Additionally, the ethnographic accounts of Siberian shamanism date from the 17th-19th centuries. We cannot be certain these practices are ancient rather than relatively recent developments.

The proper framing: The Siberian smoke-hole tradition is not the source of European chimney imagery, but rather an independent parallel demonstrating that smoke-hole entry by gift-bearing figures follows naturally from northern architectural and cosmological logic. It suggests convergent solutions to similar conditions—or, possibly, very ancient common roots now untraceable.

Stream 2: Proto-Indo-European *Perkwunos

Comparative linguists have reconstructed *Perkwunos as the Proto-Indo-European deity of thunder, storms, and (by extension) justice. The name derives from *perkwu-, “oak”—the tree most frequently struck by lightning. His weapon was an axe or hammer made of “thunderstone” (polished stone axes, believed to fall from the sky during storms).

Cognate deities:

Perun (Slavic): Axe-wielding; silver head, golden mustache; punishes oath-breakers.

Perkūnas (Baltic): Associated with oak, rain, cosmic order; sacred fires of oakwood.

Thor (Norse): Hammer-wielding; chariot pulled by goats; protector of humans.

Indra/Parjanya (Vedic): Dragon-slaying storm god; wielder of the vajra (thunderbolt).

Archaeological evidence:

Axe-shaped amulets from Slavic and Baltic sites (11th-12th centuries CE) are explicitly associated with Perun/Perkūnas in contemporary sources. Stone “thunderstones” (polished Neolithic axes) were curated for millennia as sacred objects associated with thunder gods. Anthropomorphic stelae from the Pontic steppe (4th millennium BCE) depict figures carrying axes, clubs, or hammers—possibly early representations of *Perkwunos.

Relevance to Proto-Santa:

*Perkwunos and his descendants are fierce judges who protect cosmic order through discerning violence. The axe is the tool of separation—cutting away what is rotten so what is sound may survive. This maps onto the Proto-Santa function of judging households at midwinter, allocating survival resources based on worthiness.

The weapon problem—which is actually evidence:

The modern Santa carries no weapon. But this is not a weakness in the thesis; it’s evidence for it.

The weapon was not lost but delegated. Krampus carries birch rods and chains; Knecht Ruprecht wields a stick; the Perchten brandish whips; Zwarte Piet traditionally carried a chimney sweep’s broom for punishment. The axe of discernment passed to the shadow-companion when Christianity split the unified fierce-generous figure, keeping the benevolent aspect for the saint and subordinating the punishing aspect to a servant.

We can watch the fragmentation happen across regions, with varying degrees of success at suppressing the shadow-companion. The weapon didn’t vanish—it was demoted.

A genuine weakness: *Perkwunos is primarily a sky/storm god, not specifically a midwinter figure. The seasonal association may come from a different strand of the tradition, or from the logical connection between the year’s darkest moment and the cosmic weighing of worth.

Stream 3: Alpine Perchten and Perchta

The Perchten are masked spirits appearing in winter processions throughout the Eastern Alps (Austria, Bavaria, South Tyrol, Slovenia). They are associated with the goddess Perchta (also Berchta), whose name derives from Old High German peraht, “bright” or “brilliant.”

Documented features:

Dual nature. Schönperchten (beautiful Perchten) bring blessings; Schiachperchten (ugly Perchten) drive away evil spirits.

Household inspection. Perchta visited homes during the Twelve Nights to inspect the year’s work—particularly spinning. Industrious households were rewarded; lazy ones punished.

Midwinter timing. Processions occur between the winter solstice and Epiphany (January 6).

Church opposition. Repeated ecclesiastical bans from the medieval period through the 18th century, largely ineffective in remote areas.

Persistence. UNESCO has recognized various Alpine winter customs (including Perchtenlauf) as intangible cultural heritage.

Historical attestation:

Perchta is mentioned in medieval German texts from the 13th century onward. Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg, in The Night Battles (1966), described Perchtenlauf as “undoubtedly a remnant of the ancient ritual battles.” However, some scholars debate how much of the “pagan goddess” interpretation is genuine tradition versus Romantic-era reconstruction.

Relevance to Proto-Santa:

The Perchten tradition provides the clearest documented case of Christianity absorbing a pre-existing midwinter figure. When St. Nicholas’s cult spread into Alpine regions, it encountered Perchta and the Perchten; the result was syncretism. The fierce aspects became Krampus (subordinated to the saint’s service); the gift-giving aspects merged with Nicholas himself.

Stream 4: Odin and the Wild Hunt

Odin (Wodan, Woden) bore the epithets Jólnir (”the Yule one”) and Jólfaðr (”Yule Father”). During the Twelve Nights of Yule, he led the Wild Hunt (Oskoreia): a ghostly procession of the dead thundering across the winter sky.

Documented parallels to Santa:

Long white beard. Odin: Yes (in later sources). Santa: Yes. Assessment: Common but notable.

Eight-legged steed (Sleipnir). Odin: Yes. Santa: Eight reindeer. Assessment: Intriguing but possibly coincidental.

Sky-travel at midwinter. Odin: Yes (Wild Hunt). Santa: Yes (Christmas Eve flight). Assessment: Strong parallel.

Gift-giving. Odin: Attested in later Scandinavian folklore. Santa: Central. Assessment: Unclear antiquity.

Far-north association. Odin: Yes (Scandinavia). Santa: Yes (North Pole). Assessment: Different origins—the North Pole is an 1860s invention by Thomas Nast.

Critical evaluation:

The Santa-Odin connection is popular in online discourse but contested by scholars. Historian Spencer Alexander McDaniel (”Tales of Times Forgotten”) argues persuasively that:

There is no medieval text explicitly describing Odin as a gift-giver in the Santa mode.
The eight-reindeer parallel to Sleipnir’s eight legs may be coincidental; the number varies across sources.
Santa’s development is fully explicable through documented Christian transmission.

This critique is serious and must be addressed. The strongest counter-argument is that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence—medieval texts may not record folk practices that nonetheless persisted. Additionally, the Wild Hunt’s midwinter timing and household-judgment function parallel Santa even if specific gift-giving imagery is later.

Part III: The Suppression Problem—Or, Why the Written Record Is Not Neutral

The strongest scholarly argument against any pre-Christian Proto-Santa is that the documented evidence fully explains Santa’s development without recourse to pagan substrates:

St. Nicholas’s hagiography includes secret gift-giving (the three daughters’ dowries).
His cult spread north through Christian missionary activity.
Dutch Sinterklaas traditions developed in the medieval period.
American writers (Irving, Moore, Nast) synthesized and elaborated these traditions.
Commercial interests (department stores, Coca-Cola) standardized the modern image.

This account is parsimonious. It does not require inferring unattested transmission routes from Siberian shamans or PIE storm gods.

But there is a problem with demanding written documentation: the institution that controlled literacy had every incentive to suppress, not record, the practices we’re looking for.

Consider the documentary evidence we do have. It is not evidence of pagan practices; it is evidence of attempts to eliminate them:

The Indiculus superstitionum et paganiarum (8th century) is a Latin capitulary listing thirty pagan practices to be condemned—sacrifices at wells, rituals for the dead, feasts in honor of pagan gods. Scholar Alain Dierkens argues it “evidences the ongoing practice of pre-Christian practices, including divination, the use of amulets, magic, and witchcraft, and suggests that the church allowed or transformed certain practices which it had been unable to extirpate.”

Burchard of Worms’ Corrector (c. 1000-1025) is a penitential manual—a list of questions priests should ask penitents to uncover sinful practices. It catalogs beliefs about nocturnal spirit processions, women riding with Diana, household inspections by supernatural beings. Scholars describe it as “one of the essential sources for the study of pagan survivals around the year 1000 A.D. in Germany.” The critical point: these questions were being asked six hundred years after Christianization. The practices had not disappeared.

The Perchtenlauf bans are documented repeatedly:

17th-18th century: Catholic Church bans on “heathenish Perchten customs”—described as having “little success”
The Krampus tradition was “banned during the time of the Inquisition” with the death penalty for dressing as a devilish figure
Austria’s UNESCO recognition (2011) notes the Gastein Perchten Run was “on several occasions the target of prohibitions by secular and church authorities”

One Austrian source states the pattern directly: “Since the missionaries couldn’t really ban the rituals, they implemented them into a Christian context. And there they remained, untouched, unrecognised for many centuries. In the 17th and 18th century, the church finally realised that these customs were of pagan origin and suddenly thought it would be worth abolishing them... They never succeeded.”

The bans are the evidence. You don’t ban something that doesn’t exist. The repeated failure of suppression, followed by absorption and reframing, is itself the documented pattern. The absence of clear written records of pre-Christian midwinter cult figures is not evidence they didn’t exist—it’s the predictable result of a millennium-long campaign to erase exactly what we’re looking for.

The folk practices that survived in Alpine valleys and Slavic villages did so despite literate culture, not because of it. The shadow-companions are the smoking gun—they’re the fierce aspect that couldn’t be fully suppressed, only subordinated.

My response to the skeptical position:

Parsimony is a virtue, but not at the cost of ignoring genuine anomalies. The standard Christian-transmission account does not explain:

Why the hearth/fireplace is the focal point of the Santa transaction when Nicholas’s gift-giving involved windows, not fires
Why the Santa complex gravitates toward the solstice when Nicholas’s feast is December 6
Why shadow-companions (Krampus, etc.) were already present when Christianity arrived in the Alps
Why the judgment framework (naughty/nice) has no basis in Nicholas’s hagiography
Why repeated Church bans failed to eliminate these “pagan” customs

These are not minor details. They are central features of the Santa tradition that the Christian-transmission narrative treats as incidental or ignores entirely.

I am not arguing that Santa “is” Odin or “is” a mushroom shaman. I am arguing that the figure we call Santa Claus accreted multiple layers, and that the Christian layer (St. Nicholas) is the most recent, not the deepest. The oral tradition preserved what the written record tried to destroy.

Part IV: Toward a Reconstruction

What would “Proto-Santa” look like, if we attempt a reconstruction from the convergent evidence?

Core features (attested across multiple streams):

Hearth/fire as the locus of supernatural transaction. Midwinter timing (solstice or immediately after). Household judgment (evaluating the year’s conduct). Dual nature (rewarding the worthy, punishing the unworthy)—later split into separate figures under Christian pressure. Association with the dead or ancestors. Bearded elder appearance. Connection to trees (World Tree, oak, pine).

Probable features (attested in some streams):

Weapon or tool of discernment (axe, hammer, rods)—delegated to shadow-companion in Christian adaptation. Sky-travel or storm association. Animal companions (reindeer, horses, goats). Red-and-white coloring (Siberian stream only).

Speculative features (inferred rather than attested):

A specific name (entirely lost). A unified cult (may never have existed—possibly always a regional complex). A historical individual behind the archetype (possible but unprovable).

Two interpretive frameworks:

Framework A: Common Origin

The Proto-Indo-Europeans, dispersing from the Pontic-Caspian steppe around 4000 BCE, carried a midwinter cult figure—possibly associated with *Perkwunos—westward into Europe and southward into Iran and India. This figure fragmented as groups separated: becoming Perun among Slavs, Perchta in the Alps, merging with Odin-imagery in Scandinavia. The Siberian shamanic complex may represent a parallel or ancestral tradition preserved in the circumpolar zone.

Framework B: Convergent Evolution

Harsh northern winters impose similar survival pressures across Eurasia. Communities that did not share resources died. The solstice marks maximum darkness—the cosmic pivot point. Independent cultures facing these conditions might naturally develop rituals centered on a judging/rewarding figure who visits at the year’s turning, allocating survival resources based on worthiness. The parallels reflect functional convergence, not historical connection.

These frameworks are not mutually exclusive. There may be both a deep common root and convergent pressures reinforcing similar forms.

Part V: Falsifiability

A hypothesis that cannot be disproven is not useful. What evidence would weaken or refute the Proto-Santa thesis?

Evidence that would weaken the hypothesis:

Demonstration that hearth-focused gift exchange is a late development. If evidence emerged that placing offerings by the fire and receiving gifts there was a post-medieval innovation (rather than an older practice that Moore elaborated), this would undermine the “hearth axis” argument.

Demonstration that Perchten traditions are post-Christian. If scholars established that Perchta/Perchten are medieval inventions (perhaps theatrical elaborations of Christian devil-imagery), rather than Christianized paganism, this would remove a major evidence stream.

Isolation of the Siberian complex. If the Siberian shamanic parallels could be shown to derive from Russian Orthodox influence (reverse transmission), rather than representing an independent or ancestral tradition, the circumpolar connection would collapse.

Full explanation of all anomalies through Christian transmission. If scholars could demonstrate that the solstice timing, the judgment framework, the shadow-companions, and the hearth-focus all derive from documented Christian sources, the need for a pre-Christian substrate would disappear.

Evidence that would strengthen the hypothesis:

Linguistic cognates. Discovery of related terms for the midwinter figure across Indo-European languages (beyond *Perkwunos, which is a storm god rather than specifically a gift-giver).

Archaeological finds. Material evidence of midwinter cult practices—offerings, imagery, ritual objects—along the steppe corridor or in pre-Christian northern Europe, depicting a figure with Proto-Santa features.

Earlier textual attestation. Pre-Christian or early-Christian texts describing hearth-focused supernatural exchange, household judgment, or dual reward/punishment figures in contexts independent of St. Nicholas.

Conclusion: Why This Matters

This essay has not proven that a single historical Proto-Santa existed. It has assembled convergent evidence from four documented traditions, identified anomalies that the standard Christian-transmission narrative does not explain, and proposed a reconstruction clearly marked as hypothesis.

Why does this matter?

The modern Santa Claus is entirely benevolent: a soft, safe grandfather figure who brings joy without judgment. This is a recent development—a domestication of something wilder.

The midwinter elder who emerges from the comparative evidence is not merely kind. He is fierce. He judges. He carries a weapon—an axe, a hammer, birch rods—capable of cutting away what is dead so what is sound may survive. (That weapon now rests in Krampus’s hands, delegated to the shadow-companion when Christianity split the unified figure. But it was once his own.)

His generosity is not indiscriminate. It flows to those who have proven worthy through the year’s work, who have honored their obligations, who have kept the fires burning through the long dark.

This figure visits at the darkest moment because that is when judgment matters most. When resources are scarce, when survival is uncertain, when the community must decide what to preserve and what to sacrifice—then the fierce-generous elder arrives. He sees who has been naughty and who has been nice. He rewards and punishes accordingly. And then he disappears back into the dark, leaving his gifts by the fire that connects this world to the worlds beyond.

If such a figure once walked among us—whether as a historical person, a shamanic role, or a ritual enactment—his memory deserves recovery. Not because the soft modern Santa is wrong, but because the fierce elder speaks to something our culture has forgotten: that generosity and judgment are not opposites, but complements. That true kindness sometimes requires the axe. That the gift of survival is worth more when it is earned.

The name is lost. But when we hang stockings by the fire, when we leave offerings for the reindeer, when we wonder whether we’ve been naughty or nice—perhaps we remember, dimly, the one who came bearing judgment and gifts at the year’s turning.

Sources and Further Reading

Primary Scholarship

David W. Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (2007). Essential for PIE dispersal and steppe corridor.

Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (1951/1964). Foundational comparative study; dated but still valuable.

Ronald Hutton, Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (1996). Rigorous treatment of British seasonal customs.

J.P. Mallory & D.Q. Adams, Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture (1997). Standard reference for PIE reconstruction.

M.L. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth (2007). Authoritative linguistic reconstruction.

On Church Suppression and Pagan Survivals

Alain Dierkens, “Superstitions, christianisme et paganisme à la fin de l’époque mérovingienne” (1984). Analysis of the Indiculus superstitionum.

Bernadette Filotas, Pagan Survivals, Superstitions and Popular Cultures in Early Medieval Pastoral Literature (2005). Comprehensive study of penitential evidence.

Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1966/1983). Groundbreaking work connecting Perchtenlauf to broader patterns.

Andrea Maraschi, “There is More than Meets the Eye: Undead, Ghosts and Spirits in the Decretum of Burchard of Worms” (2019). Analysis of 11th-century penitential evidence.

On Siberian Shamanism

Waldemar Bogoras, The Chukchee (1904-1909). Primary ethnography.

Ronald Hutton, Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination (2001). Critical assessment.

Waldemar Jochelson, The Koryak (1908). Primary ethnography.

Piers Vitebsky, The Shaman (1995). Accessible overview.

On Alpine Traditions

Walter Grasser, Perchten, Krampus & Co. (2022). German-language scholarly treatment.

Al Ridenour, The Krampus and the Old Dark Christmas: Roots of the Festive Wild Man (2016). Popular but well-researched.

On PIE Thunder God

M.L. West, “The Indo-European Thunder God” in Indo-European Poetry and Myth. Chapter on *Perkwunos and descendants.

Jaan Puhvel, Comparative Mythology (1987). Standard treatment.

On Santa’s Development

Gerry Bowler, Santa Claus: A Biography (2005). Comprehensive popular history.

Adam C. English, The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus (2012). Nicholas hagiography.

Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas (1996). Social history of American Christmas.

Critical Perspectives

Spencer Alexander McDaniel, “No, Santa Claus Is Not Inspired by Odin” (Tales of Times Forgotten, 2021). Important skeptical assessment.

Rebecca Watson, “No, Santa Wasn’t a Mushroom-Tripping Shaman” (Skepchick, 2022). Skeptical take on Siberian hypothesis.

Building in the Margins

2025-12-23T00:00:00.000Z

A few weeks ago, I hopped on a call with someone I’d just been introduced to. We quickly found a lot of overlap in how we were looking at things. He started describing a project he was working on — something that would pull together people’s astrology charts, Human Design profiles, and Gene Keys, then use all that data to calculate compatibility for collaboration.

I smiled. Once upon a time, I’d had a similar idea. I told him I’d actually started building something like this years ago but never followed through. “But now,” I said, “with AI being what it is, this whole thing could pretty much be a weekend project.”

He was surprised. So I walked him through how I’d prompt it — the vision, the architecture, the sequence. And then, while we were still on the call, I pulled the transcript from my AI notetaker, copied it, and pasted it directly into Claude.

A bit of back and forth that night and the next morning, and I had a working MVP. By the end of the weekend, I had NatalEngine.

The Itch

Here’s the funny thing: I’m less into these systems than I used to be. Astrology, Human Design, Gene Keys — I went through a phase where I was deep in all of it. These days, I’m more skeptical of their value, though I still find them interesting.

But a lot of my friends are still really into these systems. And if something is meaningful to people I care about, that’s reason enough to build.

There’s something clarifying about building for people you actually know. You’re not guessing at market fit or chasing some abstract user persona. You’re just making something useful for your friends and seeing what happens.

What I Built

NatalEngine is an open source JavaScript library that calculates birth charts for three systems: Western Astrology, Human Design, and Gene Keys. It returns clean, structured data — no interpretations, just the facts. The idea is that the interpretation layer can live somewhere else (like in a conversation with an AI that knows you).

Because it’s a library, other developers can easily incorporate these systems into their own apps. And because I built an MCP server for it, you can integrate it directly into Claude or other AI systems — just ask for your chart in conversation and it pulls the data. (And if “MCP server” is a foreign concept to you, keep an eye out for Parachute — I’m hoping to make a lot of these fancy AI things more simple and accessible.) There’s also a simple website where you can punch in your birth info and get your charts directly.

It’s all open source if you want to poke around: natalengine.com

The Paradigm

I keep coming back to what this means about how we build now.

A few months ago, I wrote about this shift in Building with Words — how the tools are changing, how articulation is becoming the core skill, how my dialogue-loving side and my builder side are finally merging. NatalEngine is another data point in that story.

This was an idea I’d carried for years. On a call with someone working on something similar, I realized the moment had arrived. I described how I’d build it, copied that description into my AI system, and by the end of the weekend I had a polished, working product.

Not working full-time on it, either. I was fitting it between other activities, even building it alongside other projects. The weekend wasn’t consumed by this — it just happened, almost as a side effect of having the right conversation at the right time.

That’s the shift. Ideas that once required months of focused effort can now be built in days, in the margins.

Software as Public Good

This changes what software can be.

If something can be built, it can be rebuilt. And if it can be rebuilt fast, there’s less reason for simple tools to cost money.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this. There are so many apps out there that cost $5 or show a bunch of ads — little utilities that do one thing reasonably well. I want to start rebuilding some of those. Free. Open source. No tracking, no subscription, no bullshit.

In fact, this same weekend, while building NatalEngine, I was also working on another project — a collection of simple phone utilities that you often have to sit through ads or pay money for. I’ll share more on that soon, but the point is: I was building multiple projects simultaneously, fitting them between other activities. That’s the shift.

And I was also building Parachute that same weekend — a personal knowledge management system I’ve been developing. The same patterns and components going into Parachute are what enabled me to move efficiently between these projects. I’ll share more about it soon.

In my ideal world, good simple tools are just accessible to people. Technology is a public good. I recognize this might bother some indie developers who rely on the $5 from that little app they made. But I think it’s more important to give people good tooling. And honestly, in a world where building is this fast, the defensibility of simple software was always going to erode. Better to lean into that and build for the commons.

NatalEngine is a small example of this. Most astrology, Human Design, and Gene Keys apps will give you the basic readings for free — but they want your email, and they’re trying to sell you something later. NatalEngine doesn’t want anything from you. It’s free, it’s open, and anyone can use it, fork it, or build on it.

Building for People You Know

The thing that excites me most about this project isn’t the tech. It’s that my friends will actually use it.

I’m orienting more and more around this. Building for people I know. People who will actually give me feedback. People I’m in relationship with. This creates a different kind of loop — not metrics and analytics, but conversations and trust.

I’ve already started setting up time with friends who are really into these systems. There’s a good chance NatalEngine will evolve significantly over the coming weeks just from those conversations — good feedback and ideas from the people I’m actually building for. And because of how fast building is now, I can incorporate that feedback directly into the app almost as quickly as I hear it.

When you build for your community, you start to become someone they see as able to meet their technology needs. That’s a role I want to grow into. Not as a service provider, but as a friend who builds things.

I’m curious what resonates here. Is this kind of tool useful to you? Are there other things you wish existed but don’t — or exist but feel extractive? I’m genuinely interested in what people need, especially people I actually know.

We’re entering an era where building is fast and cheap. I want to point that capacity toward things that matter.

If you want to try NatalEngine, the calculator is at natalengine.com and the code is on GitHub.

And yes, this article was written with AI. Here's an AI-generated song to go with it:

Practicing Unforced

2025-12-05T00:00:00.000Z

I am finally wrapping up my third semester out of four in my Creative Technology & Design master’s degree at CU Boulder. In many ways, this semester finishing up represents a major relaxation of structure. I tend to have some resistance towards structure, but also find a lot of value in it. Entering this program was a way of putting myself back inside of some structure because I knew it would support my growth as a technologist—and it has. Now I find myself ready to release some of that structure, fortunate because next semester is almost entirely self-directed.

The final days of the semester feel particularly structured. Lots of assignments with specific deadlines. Although it adds a beautiful generative pressure that I find incredibly motivating, especially given its temporal nature and the understanding that this time of pressure shall pass.

One of the last assignments I’m turning in is a practice journal for my Neurohacking class. The simple thing would be to make some basic notes about what my practice has been for the last month and turn it in. But I’ve felt compelled to interpret “practice journal” differently—to practice some deep reflection on my relationship to practice itself. This has synchronized well with a Taiji class I’m auditing at Naropa, where I was invited to write a paper on Taiji. And so here is both: my practice journal and my Taiji paper, meshed together in the form of a post on my blog.

So where shall we start?

—

The first time I took LSD, I was journaling a lot, so intrigued by what was occurring in my mind. I found myself messaging my dad Joe—who was a bit of a psychonaut himself back in the day—to share my journal entries and what I was experiencing. He was pleased and amused, but he also advised me not to miss out on experiencing the trip for want of recording it.

This was solid advice and it stays with me today as I reflect on what constitutes an effective practice of self-reflection. How much does jotting down notes about my Taiji practice every day help my Taiji practice, and how much does it actually distract me from the experience of the practice? I don’t think there’s an easy answer, because the truth is that it changes, and quite frequently. There are times where being more consistent and structured in my reflection is incredibly supportive, just as there are times where structure in my Taiji practice itself is supportive. But it’s not always the case.

Joe was a Taiji teacher, and this question of when structure supports versus when it constrains is one I’ve been living with my whole life—even before I had words for it.

—

I’ve been pretty consistent about doing Taiji every day; it’s rare that I don’t do it as one of the first things when I wake up. But my Taiji practice is not a static thing. I have two different forms that I practice, and sometimes one takes priority over the other. I’ve also been deepening into simple standing practice, which creates a nice foundation for everything else. And often I prefer to release the form entirely and find my own Taiji through dance. Taiji for me is such a dynamic practice that I’m always hesitant to trap it too much in a specific form. And yet, I can’t deny that form—even a very structured one like the Yang style 37 form as taught by Cheng Man-ch’ing—can be incredibly valuable.

Having recently taken a week or two of doing more standing and dancing, and then returning to the 37 form, I found the structure brought vital support to my system, reinvigorating a deep desire for discipline. But one of the reasons I’d stepped back from the form is that the discipline had begun to feel rigid.

This is where my two teachers offer different gifts.

The Yang 37 form I’m learning at Naropa is precise. This precision has advantages: when something is exact, it becomes easier to communicate about. Everyone is doing things approximately the same way, so specific refinements—where you place your weight, how you shift—can be explicitly transmitted. This is helpful for learning fundamentals.

But precision has limits. When we get too caught in form, we start to think Taiji is just that thing we do for ten minutes in the morning, forgetting that Taiji is every moment of our lives.

This is something I appreciate about the other form I practice, learned from Chungliang Al Huang. Chungliang has been my main Taiji teacher for the last three to four years, and my mother Laurie has practiced with him for about ten years. He studied with many masters, including Cheng Man-ch’ing, but he was also a dancer with a strong background in choreography. When he created the form he now teaches, it was for dancers—simpler, easier to follow. The form has adapted and changed many times over the years, much to the consternation of long-term students who might wish for more consistency. But Chungliang is always concerned about his students getting too lost in the form. We become obsessed with right and wrong ways, and we forget what the purpose of Taijiquan actually is.

—

Taijiquan—the slow rhythmic movements you might see practiced in a park—is a tool. The goal of Taijiquan is for us to understand Taiji. Taiji is often translated as “supreme ultimate,” though I prefer “great polarity.” Taiji is yin-yang: the interwoven dance of opposites. Inward and outward, full and empty, giving and receiving, whole and part. We flow through the sequences of Taijiquan to cultivate awareness of this inseparability, to grow attentive to the whole of life and our part in it.

The flowy way of doing Taijiquan and the more structured way are themselves a demonstration of Taiji—the dance of opposites, right there in how we practice. We have to find our own relationship to structure, and be mindful of stories that we should do it this way or that way. When we get caught in should, we’ve missed the point.

—

While I only received one official Taiji lesson from Joe before he passed, he was gently guiding me toward Taiji my whole life—with consistent reminders to connect with my breath, move from my core, check my posture. And those were just the spoken reminders, not to mention all the ways he communicated simply through his being.

At times I’ve wished I had learned more formal Taiji from him while he was still around. But I’ve grown to love that I didn’t. By not forcing Taiji onto me, he gave me the gift of finding my own Taiji and falling in love with it in my own time. Now my understanding is uniquely my own, even if Joe played a tremendous part in facilitating it.

Joe’s way of teaching me has shaped how I relate to practice now. I suspect I will always practice some blend of the forms I’ve learned, always make up my own forms as I go, and whenever possible, drop form altogether.

—

For me, the essence of Taiji comes down to listening, opening, and exploring. I listen—not just with my ears—to actually understand who I am in this moment. I open, with all of my being, as I connect with the world around me. And I explore with curiosity, in stillness and in motion, this unfolding relationship between myself and the world I find myself in.

This is my practice as I flow through the sequences of Taijiquan. This is my practice as I dance my own spontaneity. And this is my practice as I sit and be with what is.

Unforced.

Cognition, Computation, and Connection

2025-06-26T00:00:00.000Z

I'm working on a project, and I find myself taking notes in a document where I can really just be with myself and my thoughts. Then I paste these notes into a conversation with Claude to refine them and integrate different perspectives. Then I take some output from that conversation and paste it into my AI code editor to begin building. The issue is that all three of these are areas where I'm continuing to think, but each tool is inherently separate from the others. Copy-pasting my thoughts between these systems becomes tiresome, and this problem only amplifies as I work on different but related projects across these systems.

This might seem like a small inconvenience, but it points to something much deeper: the way we use technology is incredibly fragmented, and this fragmentation is shaping how we think.

The Fragmentation Problem

Think about how you remember things digitally. Your friend's phone number lives in your contacts app. That thing you wanted to tell them about sits in your notes app. Your coffee plans for tomorrow exist in your calendar. The photos from your last hike together, the journal entry about that day - all scattered across different apps, different systems, different corporate servers.

For those of us using AI heavily, this fragmentation is becoming even more apparent. I'll have a breakthrough conversation with Claude about a project architecture, then switch to Cursor to implement it, and Cursor has no idea what Claude and I just discussed. Later, I want to continue the conversation with Claude about what I've built, but I have to reconstruct all that context manually. Each tool is a silo, and I'm the only bridge between them.

This isn't just about convenience. As Jeremy Lent observes in The Patterning Instinct, there's a complex interdependency between our cognition and our culture - and our tools are a huge part of culture. We build fragmented technology systems because our psyches have become increasingly fragmented. But now our fragmented technology systems create increasing fragmentation in our psyches and in our society.

Why Current Solutions Fall Short

There are attempts to solve this, but most of them involve keeping you locked in a walled garden. Apple devices share context beautifully - as long as you stay inside the Apple ecosystem. Google is connecting Gemini with Gmail and Drive - as long as you use Google's tools. ChatGPT now has memory across conversations - as long as you use ChatGPT for everything.

Even more specialized tools like Tana, which bills itself as an "Everything OS," still create enclosed systems that work best when all your information lives inside them. And they all share a critical flaw: you don't have true agency and ownership over your information. You're trusting corporations with increasingly sensitive data as we seek to put more of our cognitive life into these systems.

The Vision: An Open Memory Layer

What we need is a new kind of memory system - one that's open and interoperable from its foundation. A system where your ChatGPT and your Claude can access the same context, where your Cursor knows what you've been thinking about, where your calendar and contacts and notes can all draw from a shared understanding.

But this can't just be about AI. It needs to be accessible in traditional ways too - through calendars, contact managers, note-taking apps. And if we're going to build something that holds this much of ourselves - who we relate with, how we're relating, what we're working on - then it has to be trustworthy. Which means you need to be able to self-host it, to have true autonomy over your data.

This isn't about creating a system that remembers everything automatically, like some are trying with smart glasses that note where you left your keys. It's about creating a system where we can intentionally log what matters to us and have that information be genuinely accessible across our digital lives.

Why This Matters

Frank Zappa said the mind is like a parachute - it doesn't work if it's not open. If an open mind is more effective, then our extended cognition needs to reflect this same openness. But openness works best with boundaries, with intentionality, with respect for human agency.

The potential I see is for our cognition to more accurately reflect our holistic interconnectivity as our tool usage becomes more interconnected. As we build tools that can bridge systems together, I can already feel my own thinking beginning to change. Imagine what becomes possible when that bridging isn't painful but fluid, when our tools support rather than fragment our natural ways of thinking.

This project is one I'm immensely interested in creating. I feel the struggle daily around how disconnected my systems feel and the strain it creates on my overall cognition. As someone immensely interested in living well and living as fully as I can, I want systems that support life feeling like an easeful and meaningful flow. And it's clear to me now that if I want that to exist, I have to work to create it.

If this resonates with you the way it does with me, let's be in touch. Transforming our technology is no small task, but it's one I know we're immensely capable of.

Finding balance with technology

2025-06-17T00:00:00.000Z

Since childhood, I’ve been captivated by computers. I studied computer science, and coding became my creative outlet, leading me from startups to Google and now to graduate studies in creative technology & design. Yet, at critical junctures, I’ve stepped away from technology. In 2016, while grieving my dad’s passing, I left my software engineer job at Framed Data and spent 4 years traveling, not writing much code. In 2019, I helped found a startup building a gratitude social network. In 2020, I left that and joined a graduate program in Ecopsychology. In 2021, as I was finishing my masters, I re-joined Google as a developer relations engineer, and in 2023 I was laid off with 12,000 other Googlers, and proceeded to become executive director of a non-profit and ran for city council in Boulder.

Through it all, I’ve oriented around a core value of balance. Our conditioning towards either-or thinking sees technology in a purely positive light, i.e. accelerate technology at all costs, or a purely negative light, i.e. don’t use any technology and return to a simpler time. A balanced view recognizes that technology can be useful, but that it’s important to be attentive to the distortions that come with it, and to use it intentionally.

As someone working in technology and interested in building and leveraging technology to enhance my writing, communication, and information organization, finding the right balance is essential. In the paragraphs to follow, I’ll discuss what balance means to me, the challenges I find with modern technology, and the tools I have started now using as I seek to find greater balance.

Walking & Writing

I’ll start this by sharing my love of walking through a few stories. I fell in love with walking during my first summer in San Francisco. During my internships there in 2013 and 2014, I would frequently go “splorin’”—picking a loose destination and wandering wherever inspiration led. I love knowing a city by foot, it’s a beautiful way to connect with a place. My adventures took me through parks and unexpected cafes for coffee or a meal, and once I sat somewhere, I’d pull out my laptop and write; journaling about my journey and riffing on whatever inspired thoughts arose from my walk. I remember sitting at a new coffeeshop during one walk and writing about an idea for a “splorin’” app.

Late last month, I visited Urbana, Illinois, for a Tai Chi seminar with Chungliang Huang. My stepmom Laurie and I have made it a yearly ritual, a great mother-son bonding opportunity and a chance to deepen our practice. Laurie’s been practicing much longer, originally learning from my dad, and I’m fortunate to have her support. She often reminds me to relax my shoulders and move from my center, like my dad did.

Visiting Urbana was also a gift for the ability to explore a new town I’m growing to love. I was born in Eugene, OR; grew up in Oxford, OH; and now live in Boulder, CO. It seems I have a fondness for college towns. While walking through Urbana, catalyzed by the spaciousness of a tai chi vacation, I started thinking about technology and balance, and began dictating this entry into my phone. It’s changed since then, and I refined it at a computer, but I find that most of my favorite writing comes from a long walk and using my voice, sometimes dictating into a phone and sometimes talking with a friend. My thoughts on technology now reflect my desire to be outside, in motion, and communicating more naturally.

Technology Traps

A challenge I have with modern digital tools, like phones, tablets, and computers, is how distracting they can be. I open my phone to take a note, and suddenly I’m scrolling the Google news feed or playing online chess; sometimes even while I walk. I sit down to write on my computer or tablet, and next thing I’m checking email, following a sequence of links, and spending 30 minutes exploring a new AI tool. While there’s nothing wrong with following these threads and getting distracted by my interests, it detracts from my original intention for using the technology, which was to focus on my writing and create more than I consume.

I frequently experience a major energy and well-being drain from typical tools. For example, with my eye health, I feel the strain from using my phone too long. Tablets and computers are better but still create strain. I’ve applied strategies, like switching my screens to gray scale, but that doesn’t change the fact that 2 million tiny light bulbs are flashing at my eyes 500 times a second.

I’ve been trying to escape these technology traps without falling into the polar trap of attempting to return to the Stone Age. A huge aspect is knowing my mind, being attentive to my intention, and sustaining focus. But when our hardware and software are designed to capture our attention and hijack our dopamine system, sometimes new technology is needed. It should honor our attention and use different screens that are easier on the eyes and less likely to hook us into a one-hour scroll fest.

New Tools for Balance

I recently switched to two new devices, the Minimal Phone and Daylight Computer, after waiting a year for them; the wait was worth it. The major difference is the e-ink or e-paper screens, viewable in sunlight and easier on the eyes. These devices run Android, so you can use all your normal apps, in contrast to previous minimal technology attempts like the Lightphone or Remarkable tablet. This allows a deeply integrated workflow with a more intentional relationship with these technologies.

The Minimal Phone can perform all necessary smartphone tasks - making calls, snapping photos, messaging friends, checking emails, browsing the web, scheduling events, and taking notes. But it does so with an e-ink screen, a minimal interface, and a physical keyboard. This device can feel clunky, as e-ink screens are good for reading but less great for typical smartphone tasks. But the clunkiness can at times feel an advantage, because it easily accomplishes all my key tasks, and entices me less to pick it up for a dopamine hit.

The Daylight Computer has been a real game changer, and this company could become one of the most revolutionary new hardware companies of this decade. It uses a different technology than e-ink, called e-paper or reflective LCD. It feels like paper on the eyes and is visible in direct sunlight, but it’s also 60 fps and feels smooth, unlike traditional e-ink devices. The smoothness and adaptability of this device have made it a go-to for creativity and consumption. I check email, read e-books and articles, send messages, and write on it. I’m using it now (with a Magic Keyboard/Fintie keyboard case). Given how generative AI is increasing the importance of articulation in creativity, this makes the device I write on more important than ever. Now my creativity can happen in my office, at my tea table, a park, or halfway up a mountain.

As I orient towards using technology more outdoors, another device worth mentioning alongside the Daylight is my recently upgraded MacBook with a nano-texture display, which has a softer screen (more matte) and is more visible in direct sunlight (Read reviews of this and the daylight by my friend Jon).

I’m exploring other form factors as well. I’ve appreciated smartwatches, but they feel intrusive and less appealing to wear all the time. I’ve pre-ordered a rePebble, a reboot of one of my favorite smartwatches, simpler than most modern ones. I’m also developing a simplified version of an open-source AI pendant, Omi, modifying it to be less of an always-on AI recorder/synthesizer, and more of a device for intentionally recording thoughts or conversations and making them accessible in my notes across devices; enabling me to express my creativity while enjoying the world. There will be more to share on all of these tools as they develop.

Towards balance and connection

Finding balance with technology in a world of imbalance is no easy thing. It requires our active participation and inquiry to cultivate a more mindful and intentional relationship. But finding balance is one of the most important things we can do. If we don’t find a way to harmonize with advancing technology, our effectiveness and influence will be diminished.

The essential component is understanding ourselves and our relationship with technology to find new ways forward. We can use technology differently, and as we enter this inquiry and connect with others seeking balance, we’ll find many solutions are already available.

In this post, I’ve focused on the hardware component of balanced technology, which I think is an essential foundation. But the software we use on these devices also matters immensely. In a future post, I plan to discuss the apps I’ve been using and exploring to support more balance, and where our current technological ecosystem falls short around integrated and interoperable solutions due to modern fragmentation.

I hope this has been useful, and if this journey towards greater balance and connection with each other and our digital technologies interests you, please reach out to discuss. We are in this together.

Don’t be a stranger,

-Aaron Gabriel

On the recent violence in Boulder

2025-06-03T00:00:00.000Z

My heart is tender and I know I am not alone in that. For those of us in Boulder, we have just been witness to a senseless act of violence that has deeply shaken our community (Context). I have found myself deeply saddened, angry and disgusted. Acts such as this do no good for any of us. Even for those of us who can empathize with the frustration that could lead to such an act, there can be no justification for violence such as this, which does nothing other than set us all back. The only glimmer of light I can ever find in an act such as this is in the possibility that it might disturb us enough to see clearly and cease this senseless violence. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case, as acts like this tend to only widen the ever-growing gap between us, as we continue to create further division.

While we may be able to find some unity in condemning this senseless act of violence, I think to truly come together around this must also involve recognizing what it is that we can learn from this. I have been thinking a lot about participation and about violence. What does it mean to be a part of a society that is built on violence? What does it mean to be part of so many communities that are actively perpetrating violence? And how are we ourselves violent in our daily living? And is there a way of recognizing and acknowledging this violence that we participate in, both individually and socially, that might somehow transform our relationship to the violence and perhaps lead in some way to a less violent world?

For as long as we have been walking on this earth we have been violent. In order to sustain our own existence, we have had to harm and even kill other beings, both human and non-human beings. This pattern lives so deeply in us that in many ways it has become who we are, to the point where we live in a society where it seems second nature to harm each other. And yet still, when harm at this level happens, we are shocked; we don't want to believe that we humans would cause so much harm to each other. And so what do we do? We put the violence outside of ourselves. We see other people as violent and other communities as violent, but not us, not our communities. Or if we are violent, it is justified, because of the violence of the other. We have been thinking this way for millenia on this earth, and I don't think it's really working out that well for us...

The only way I currently know how to meet such a disturbing event as this is to recognize myself in it, and to feel the deep grief that comes in that. To recognize that through my own actions, and particularly through my participation and my non-participation in so many communities here, I have contributed to violence. It is a bitter pill to swallow, to recognize the ways that I too am complicit in these horrendous acts, and yet I don't know of any way to move forward other than to recognize that. To continue to point the finger at the other, to make an enemy and to create more division, seems to only drive us further apart. Yes, we must continue to critique and to speak to the injustices we see in the world, but I don't know that we can truly do so as long as we relate to that which we are critiquing as something other than us, using the evil in the world to validate our own goodness.

The hope I feel that we can come through this and recognize our shared togetherness is deeply mixed with a great fear that we won't, that we will continue to fight with each other and slowly kill ourselves off this great earth that is our home. And there is deep grief for me in this. I pray that we can stop this senseless violence and begin to remember that whether we are in the middle east, in boulder, or anywhere in the world, we don't need to like our neighbors in order to love them.

I will close this with two quotes that have felt particularly salient for me recently.

Hate cannot drive out hate, only love does that - MLK Jr

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? - Jesus

Build for Here

2025-05-06T00:00:00.000Z

The last few years, I’ve felt a resurgence of my identity as a tech builder & entrepreneur. I've loved getting back into creating, envisioning what we can build with technology, and rediscovering the flow of just building shit. But the nature of building itself is changing rapidly. As I explored in a previous post, Building with Words, AI is fundamentally altering the process.

This last year at ATLAS gave me a fantastic opportunity to dive deep – into building, into a community of builders, and into this changing landscape. AI allows us to iterate at an incredible pace. We can prototype ideas in minutes compared to weeks, enabling a much more rapid and generative dialogue around understanding what it is we're actually trying to create. This shift lowers the barrier to entry and changes the dynamics of creation.

The biggest value is increasingly in understanding what needs to be built. Because prototypes are so easy to generate, development and design become much more interdependent. Developers can participate more directly in the design process, using words to explore visual ideas and rapidly refine concepts based on tangible outputs. Designers with a clear vision can leverage AI to bring it to life faster than ever. Whether we've focused on breadth or depth in our building skills, AI empowers us to be more effective.

Beyond Innovation for Innovators: What Are We Building For?

So, with these powerful new capabilities, what should we be building? And why?

It seems clear that a new wave of technology is needed – one that deeply prioritizes our agency and our connectedness. We need tools that bring our focus back to where we actually are, strengthening our immediate connections with family, neighborhoods and our local community, while also acknowledging our shared home on this earth. We need to support the unique tapestry of cultures while discovering the common threads that can sustain us all.

But does our existing technological infrastructure, with its massive platforms and entrenched protocols, effectively support this vision? Or is it, in some ways, holding us back? Why haven't we seen more innovation focused on these deeper human needs, despite the constant buzz around disruption?

I suspect part of the issue lies in the context from which much of today's dominant tech emerges. Innovation hubs like the San Francisco Bay Area, which understandably value innovation highly, often produce technology geared towards helping innovators innovate more effectively. While valuable, this "hyper-innovation" focus can sometimes overshadow the development of solutions for the everyday challenges faced by diverse communities. The result can be a technology landscape that excels at accelerating itself but is less adept at fostering widespread, grounded well-being.

Furthermore, there's a tendency in tech culture – prevalent far beyond SF – to drift from solving real problems towards building tech primarily to get rich. When control and profit become the main drivers, it shapes what gets built and how it's designed to scale, often favoring generalized, top-down solutions.

The Cosmo-Local Opportunity: Global Knowledge, Local Action

What if we could harness the new efficiencies of AI to pursue a different path? This is where the concept of Cosmo-Localism becomes incredibly relevant. As explored by thinkers like in his writing on the Cosmo-Local Plan, the idea is simple yet powerful: share knowledge, designs, and best practices globally ('cosmo'), but adapt and implement solutions tailored to the unique context and needs of local communities ('local').

Instead of trying to build one-size-fits-all platforms imposed from the top down, we empower change to emerge from the grassroots. We build technology that is local-first, designed for a specific community and adapted to their needs.

This approach, which might have seemed inefficient before, is now increasingly feasible. AI drastically reduces the effort needed to build and adapt software. Combined with composable software architectures – building specific tools from smaller, reusable, universal parts – we can create hyper-specific software without reinventing the wheel every time. We can finally move beyond overgeneralizing and build tools that truly serve specific groups of people effectively.

Ideas emerging from the Web3 space often echo this desire for user agency, ownership, and decentralized control. While the practical implementations have sometimes been fragmented, the underlying philosophy aligns well with empowering individuals and communities, suggesting a shared yearning for alternatives to centralized platforms.

Nurturing Local Innovation Ecosystems

The vision, then, is a network of cosmo-local innovation hubs. Imagine localities leveraging AI and composable tools to build solutions for their specific challenges – be it food security, civic engagement, local economies, or ecological regeneration. These hubs wouldn't operate in isolation. They'd be networked, sharing what works, what doesn't, and the underlying patterns and code, enabling each community to learn from others while building uniquely for themselves.

As we network, share, and discover common needs across localities, we can identify unifying patterns and develop shared protocols that enable interconnection at broader scales – but this emerges organically from the bottom up, rather than being imposed from the top down.

This is the work we're actively engaged in with Woven Web here in Boulder, as discussed in Growing Technology: Boulder and Beyond. We're nurturing a culture of inclusive, open-source innovation deeply rooted in tending to our local community's needs. We're building relationships regionally and globally with others doing similar work. Soon, I'll write more about Boulder.Builders, a community platform we're developing to support this local builder culture and bridge connections for collective problem-solving.

San Francisco and other established hubs have generated tremendous technological momentum. Much of this innovation can be immediately useful for emerging local hubs. By adopting and adapting these tools for locally-rooted purposes, new hubs can create feedback loops, demonstrating socially and ecologically regenerative applications of technology that can, in turn, enrich and potentially reorient the innovation culture in those original centers.

Let's Build Together

The most important direction technology can go is towards empowering users, enhancing agency, and strengthening local communities within a connected world. AI and composable design make this more possible than ever. We have the chance to move beyond simply building tech faster, and start building tech better – more aligned with genuine human and ecological thriving.

If you're in Boulder and want to be part of building this future here, let's connect. If you're elsewhere and inspired by the vision of a network of cosmo-local innovation hubs, please reach out. This is a collective endeavor, and we are truly in this together.

Building a Smarter Chess Clock

2025-05-02T00:00:00.000Z

For my Creative Technologies class – which delves into physical computing (like Arduinos and Raspberry Pis) and digital fabrication (laser cutting, 3D printing) – I decided to build a chess clock with an integrated camera.

This project also became a testing ground for applying Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Gemini more effectively in my workflow, a topic I touched on in my previous post, "Building with Words." I enjoy synthesizing ideas, so this chess clock project explored how AI could assist not just with software development, but with hardware design and component selection too.

In this post, I'll walk you through:

The Motivation & Vision: Why build this, and what's the ultimate goal?

What I Built & How: The current state, the process, and the role AI played.

What's Next: Future plans and improvements.

More Building in Public: Reflections on this approach.

Motivation & Vision: Bridging Physical and Digital Chess

I love playing chess. The competition sharpens my focus, the relational aspect of sharing a game with a friend is rewarding, and the strategic thinking involved pushes me to grow. Playing online offers convenience and powerful analysis tools, but nothing beats the embodied experience of playing over a physical board.

However, I often wish I could easily review my in-person games afterward, much like online platforms allow. This desire sparked the core idea: a standard chess clock, but with a camera that captures the board state after each move.

Imagine hitting your clock button, and snap – a photo is taken. After the game, you have a visual log of every position. With computer vision, these images can be translated into standard chess notation (like FEN), allowing for computer analysis or simply letting you and your friend easily revisit key moments. That's the vision: merging the tangible joy of physical chess with the analytical power of digital tools.

What I Built and How: Embracing the Hardware Challenge (with AI Help)

Hardware is where I'm still learning the ropes. My background is primarily in software, so wiring circuits, programming microcontrollers, and 3D printing enclosures are newer frontiers for me. This project was a great learning opportunity, increasingly supported by AI as a creative partner.

1. Hardware Hurdles & Iteration: My initial plan, guided by AI conversations, involved an ESP32-CAM for its built-in camera and connectivity, buttons for the players and reset, and an I2C LCD screen. Simple enough, right? Well, I soon discovered the ESP32-CAM's GPIO pins are largely dedicated to the camera, making it tricky to connect other components.

The workaround involved using two ESP32s: a standard ESP32 DevKit managing the buttons, LCD, and Bluetooth, communicating via serial with the ESP32-CAM, which solely handled image capture. The AI did hint at potential pin limitations, but sometimes you have to learn things the hard way! You can see the final pin connections in the Project Specifications (Section 3.2).

2. Refining the Software Workflow: Initially, I used the standard Arduino IDE. However, discovering the PlatformIO extension for VSCode was a game-changer. Since I already use Cursor (a VSCode fork with integrated AI), I could now prompt my AI assistant to directly edit the Arduino code. This eliminated the tedious copy-pasting between a chatbot and the IDE, streamlining debugging significantly.

3. Designing the Enclosure (The Next Frontier): I haven't yet 3D printed a case. Enclosure design is still an area I'm developing, and I wanted the internal electronics finalized first. This delay was probably for the best, given the hardware changes I'm planning.

My process for the enclosure involves using AI to generate initial design concepts based on the project requirements (see 3D Model Specs). I then use AI image generation to create visual mockups. The next step, which I haven't tackled yet, is using tools like Blender MCP (Model Context Protocol) to allow my AI coding assistant to interact directly with Blender for 3D modeling. It was a bit rudimentary last time I tried, but the technology is improving rapidly.

4. Building the Mobile App & Defining Protocols: Connecting the clock hardware to a mobile app via Bluetooth was one of the most satisfying parts. After drafting the Arduino code, I prompted Cursor to generate a Bluetooth communication specification (BLE_SPECS.md). This markdown file clearly defined how the Arduino and the Flutter app would talk to each other (UUIDs, data formats for game state and image transfer).

I then took a previous Flutter app (itself an AI-generated simplification of an earlier project) and asked the AI to adapt it using the new BLE specification. Defining these communication protocols loosely in markdown proved effective – easily understandable by both humans and AI. I continued refining the Flutter app to create a clean clock interface and display the stream of captured board images.

5. Integrating Computer Vision (Work in Progress): The final piece was adding the computer vision component to translate board images into FEN notation. More AI collaboration, including using tools like Perplexity via MCP for research, helped spin up a basic Python Flask server using OpenCV and a Keras/TensorFlow model. I got the Flutter app sending images to the server and receiving FEN strings back.

However, this part needs more refinement for reliable recognition. The current low-quality images from the ESP32-CAM are a bottleneck. I've considered using a cloud-based vision API as a simpler alternative, but improving the camera setup is the priority.

What's Coming Next?

The initial build highlighted some limitations, leading to the next steps:

Hardware Upgrade: The dual ESP32 setup works, but it's clunky. The camera quality and processing power are limiting factors for reliable vision and fast BLE transfer. I'm planning to switch to a Raspberry Pi Zero W paired with an ArduCam. This offers significantly more processing power and better camera options while still providing GPIO pins for buttons and an LCD.
3D Printed Enclosure: Once the new hardware is integrated, I'll focus on creating a proper 3D printed case based on the mockups and 3D Model Specs. This will involve either refining my AI-assisted Blender workflow or diving into some manual 3D modeling.
Software Polish: I'll refine the Flutter app and the vision server, perhaps adding features to track player identities for better game analysis. Making the project easy for others to replicate (better open-sourcing) is also a goal, hoping to build a small community around it. You can follow the overall technical direction in the main Project Specifications.

More Building in Public

This post is an experiment. I intend to document my projects and processes more openly moving forward. Partly, it's about sharing learnings and inviting collaboration. But it's also about accountability. Too often, projects reach the "mostly done" stage and stall. By writing about them, documenting the process, and outlining next steps, I hope to create the structure needed to push through to completion.

Thanks for following along on this journey! Let's see where it goes.

How to Build & Host Your Website for Free

2025-03-30T00:00:00.000Z

Lately, I’ve been helping friends get their websites online. While I’ve started offering this as a consulting service, I genuinely don’t want anyone to pay me if they’d rather do it themselves. So I’m laying out the exact process I use — step by step — so you can do this totally free, without needing to know how to code.

And if, after all this, you decide you’d rather pay someone to save yourself time and hassle? That’s an option too.

Step 1: Clarify Your Vision

Before you touch a single tool, get clear on what you’re building — and more importantly, why.

This isn’t just about picking pages and colors. It’s about getting to the heart of who you are, what you care about, and what you’re offering to the world.

When I help friends build websites, I ask them questions like:

What do you care about?
How do you want to help people?
Why this? Why now?
What part of your life journey led you here?
What exactly are you offering — and what are you inviting people into?

When those questions get answered honestly, the website starts to design itself.

Try This: Trade Interviews With a Friend

One of the best ways to clarify your vision is to talk it out — ideally with someone who knows you.

Ask a friend to spend 30 minutes interviewing you. Then flip it: you interview them for 30 minutes. That way, both of you get clarity — and a website out of it.

You can send them this blog post so they can follow along too.

Record the conversation using your phone’s voice recorder, then export the transcript (most apps have a "share" or "export transcript" button). Paste that into your AI agent of choice — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc.

You can also do this solo by having the AI interview you. But don’t underestimate the magic that comes from being seen and heard by someone you trust.

Step 2: Turn That Conversation into a Vision Document

Once you’ve got your transcript, paste it into your AI with a prompt like this:

“Using this conversation, generate a clear and cohesive vision document. It should articulate who this person is, what their project is, why it matters, and how they want to present it. Use direct quotes to preserve their voice and essence.”

This document becomes your foundation — not just for your website, but for bios, emails, speaker pages, offerings, and more.

Step 3: Generate a Website Design Document

With your vision clarified, it’s time to shape the website itself.

In the same AI chat window (or with the transcript and vision doc handy), use this prompt:

“Based on our previous conversation and this vision document, generate a detailed website design document. It should include:– The structure (pages and sections)– Style and vibe– Content for each section– Direct quotes or unique phrases that really capture their voiceDon’t include any features that can’t be hosted on a purely static site, such as database lookup or contact forms.”

This becomes your blueprint — ready to pass to a website builder.

Step 4: Build the Site with Lovable.dev

Lovable is one of the simplest, most powerful AI website builders I’ve found — especially for people who don’t want to mess with code. Here’s how to use it:

Go to lovable.dev and sign up.
Paste your full website design document into the prompt box.
Click “Build”.

Wait 5–10 minutes and you’ll get a fully generated website based on your vision.

Then — time to edit.

Lovable allows 5 prompts per day on the free tier, so make them count. You can batch feedback like this:

“Change the homepage headline to something shorter and more inviting, remove the testimonials section from the About page, and make the colors a little more earthy and natural.”

The more specific you are, the better the results.

You can also use the visual editor to manually adjust text and layout — super helpful for polishing up language or layout quirks.

Step 5: Host It on GitHub

Now let’s get your site hosted.

Create a free account at github.com.
In Lovable, click “GitHub” > “Transfer Project to GitHub.”
Connect your GitHub account and follow the prompts.

This will upload your website code into a GitHub repository. By default, it’s private — and you can keep it that way unless you want to open-source it.

Step 6: Deploy for Free with Netlify

Netlify makes it easy to put your site live on the web — for free.

Go to netlify.com and sign up.
Click “Add site” > “Import from Git.”
Connect your GitHub and select the repo you just created.
Name your site, leave defaults as-is, and click “Deploy.”

After a couple minutes, you’ll get a live site at a URL like yourproject.netlify.app.

Step 7: Add a Custom Domain (Optional)

Want your own domain? Netlify makes this simple too.

In your Netlify dashboard, go to “Domain Management.”
Add a domain you already own, or buy one right there (usually ~$10/year).
Follow the prompts, and click to enable SSL when available.

Give it a little time — DNS can take a few minutes or hours to fully connect.

You’re Live 🎉

You now have a real, functioning, custom website online — and you didn’t spend a dime.

To make updates, go back into Lovable and use your remaining daily prompts, or manually adjust via the visual editor. You can rebuild the whole site or just tweak small sections.

A Word About Tools

Lovable isn’t the only way to build websites with AI. There are lots of great tools out there — but Lovable stands out for how easy it is, especially if you’re not a developer.

It’s also capable of more than just static sites. You can build full-fledged React apps with databases, user authentication, and more. That might sound intimidating now, but once you get the hang of this process, it opens up entirely new possibilities for what you can create.

I’ll be writing more on that soon.

Need Help?

If this still feels like a lot, or you want support clarifying your vision or building your site, I offer affordable 1-on-1 sessions and full website builds. You can book with me at unforced.dev.

Whether you build it yourself or get some help — you deserve a beautiful, clear, living space on the web. One that reflects who you are and what you’re here to share.

Building with Words

2025-03-28T00:00:00.000Z

A New Frontier of Building

Imagine this: You sit down, a steaming cup of tea in hand, the faint clink of the spoon against porcelain as you stir. You lean toward your tablet and say, “Build me a chess clock with a camera that snaps a photo of the board after each move.” Steam curls up as the AI hums, already writing code for your device, sketching a circuit board, and modeling a sleek case to 3D print—all before your tea’s gone cold. This may seem like sci-fi, but this reality is closer than ever. New tech is driving it, sure, but the real magic grows from our ability to talk to these tools. We’re entering a new era of building that begins with simple language and a knack for saying it well. You don’t need four years of engineering or design school anymore—it’s open to anyone with an idea and the words to match. In this shifting time, there’s new weight on how we use language and how we connect with one another.

A Legacy of Building and Communication

My grandpa Don was more than a builder—he was a generous family man who shaped how things got made. Running Al Neyer Inc., he was an early pioneer of the design-build approach, pulling creativity and construction under one roof. He lived to serve, a Catholic heart always giving back to his community. My dad, Joe, carried that forward his own way, a carpenter with an artisan’s touch. He’d draft up home designs with a client, pencil flying, making it theirs as much as his. He not only communicated through his work, but he also was an author, writing about his own journey of living and dying in his book, Too Much Fun Dying to Stop Now. I’ve got sawdust in my blood from them both, finding my own path to building through my studies in computer science and creative technology and my work as a software engineer, and my own path to communication through ecopsychology and community work. Their legacy taught me creation and connection go hand in hand.

The Tools They Are a Changing

My dad leaned on his hammer, nails, and drafting pencil—tools not far from his dad’s. But Joe had access to power tools and equipment that my grandpa never dreamed of during his career. As a software builder, my tools are different, and even that’s flipped since I started 15 years ago. Back then, I’d be writing out Python and JavaScript, line by line, to make an app tick. Now? Last week I sat down with a friend who needed a website and within 15 minutes of interviewing and 10 minutes of prompting, we had a website put together that blew his mind. Tools keep shifting; a good builder learns them to shape what’s needed. Today, I don’t code as much—I articulate what the software should be, and the AI fills in the blanks. It’s a higher abstraction, a larger leap, but the game’s the same: say it clear and make it real.

Creation as Conversation

Around this time last year, some friends and I were back and forth dialoguing about an app to foster more spontaneous local connection. While the vision started coming in clearer, in our busy schedules it was hard to nail it down. A couple weeks ago, I picked it back up, spent an hour or two in a back and forth conversation with an AI to refine the vision, and then I passed it to my AI builder, and in less than 6 hours of work, I had an app built that would have taken me months to put together. My creative process feels less split-off now. I’ve always loved rich talks—philosophy, psychology, politics, whatever—separate from my tech side, which faded over time. But they’re merging. My knack for dialogue makes me a better builder in this digital world. And the best stuff? It comes from human-to-human talks—two views clashing gently, sparking clarity that, with these tools, turns into form fast.

Building a Connected Future

What are you building these days? Who’s it for? Who’s it with? As our tools speed us up, we can craft a world that works for everyone. To build something lasting, we need clear understanding—and that comes best together. Let’s step into an era where tech doesn’t replace relationships but grows from them, supporting how we connect. I’d love to know you—what you’re making, who you are. Much of my focus right now is building better tools for local communities to connect, surfacing what’s happening in an area and making it easier to connect with the people you actually care about—as well as putting these tools in the hands of people by supporting open-source and self-hostable software. If that’s something that interests you, I’d love to chat more. We are entering an era of collaboration, so let’s stay connected.

Happy Birthday Joe

2025-02-06T00:00:00.000Z

February 6th, 2025. 10 years ago from today we celebrated your last birthday here on Earth. You would be 59 today. You lived on this Earth for just under half a century but you left an imprint that will last for millennia. In your living and your dying, you touched us here who knew you, and inspired us to live well while we can and to die well when it is our time, and to recognize the inseparability of these movements of living and dying.

It feels like a lifetime since you’ve been gone, and at the same time, it feels like you’re only a heartbeat away. You were a builder of homes, building not only houses but also the families and communities who gathered there. You were a dancer and a teacher, with tai chi as your practice. You were a lover, a father, a brother, and a friend, and your generous heart was a gift to us all. Through all of your life and all of your creations was woven your unique artistry, and this art continues to dance and move, through the homes you built and through the relationships you tended to.

I feel myself to be an example of that. As I find my own unique artistry weaving through my life and my creations, I find it to be intimately interwoven with you, Joe. As I build, and dance, and share, and love, I find it near impossible to separate what is uniquely me from what is you, and I don’t know that I would want to. My life is not my life alone. My life is an extension of yours, and mom’s as well, two lives which by most reasonable assessments, ended far too short, but which nonetheless demonstrated a remarkable fullness in their brevity. Life is what happens, as you liked to say.

Unforced was your word and unforced was your way. As a student of tai chi and a student of nature, you discovered the effortless spontaneity of the natural world and of your own nature, and you continually lived into this, inspiring all of us to slow down and enjoy this life that we share. You loved learning and you deepened your understanding not only through your practice and your listening, but also through your study, and you found lessons in ancient religions, modern science, and even through fictional stories such as The Celestine Prophecy and Star Trek.

Live to Grow, Grow to Love. What a sweet reminder you have given us here. Life is to be lived, and we are always given opportunities to learn and grow. And what is the purpose of learning and growing, if not to deepen in our love of our fellow beings here, from the humans we share and communicate with every day, to the tender water lily that blooms in the pond, reminding us of the preciousness and impermanence of this moment and this life.

Thanks for gifting us all with your presence here for half a century Joe. And thanks for gifting me with your physical presence for the first 22 years of my life, and your lasting loving presence for all of the moments that I live.

Your son in blood and in love,

Aaron Gabriel

Growing Technology, Boulder and Beyond

2025-01-21T00:00:00.000Z

Technology is not what we think it is. It’s not this isolated entity that is inherently separate from us. Technology emerges from our human aliveness and relates with and influences our human aliveness. We can’t escape from technology anymore than we can escape from consciousness. If we isolate it and other it, demonizing it and idolizing it, then we fail to understand it and it may destroy us. But if we can truly embrace it and recognize it as part of who we are, it has the capacity to tremendously enrich our experience.

A more integral understanding of technology and our relationship to it is more vital now than ever, as technology changes and evolves at an increasingly accelerated pace. We also need new technology systems that reflect this understanding and that support our humanity and our aliveness. In order for this understanding to take root and these new tech solutions to emerge, a more integral technology ecosystem is needed, and we need hubs where that ecosystem can effectively thrive.

In this essay I will attempt to articulate elements that I think are necessary for a new vision of technology and for an ecosystem which can grow that vision. Further I will explore how Boulder can become a vital hub for this ecosystem, how this ecosystem is already growing and thriving here, and how we can effectively participate in its growth.

Finding myself in the web

Let me start by sharing a bit about myself.

I was born to hippie parents, Joe and Becky, who have both now passed on from cancer. My mom studied math in college and sometimes substitute taught math at school, and my dad was a carpenter, coming from a long line of builders. My love for math and logic, my love for computers and technology, and my love for building and creation, nurtured by my parents, all grew into me studying computer science at Case Western and starting my career off through interning at Google and then joining as an early engineer at a Y-Combinator startup, Framed Data.

My dad’s passing when I graduated college led to a fork in the road for me, and I left the tech world behind for a while and chose to travel for several years, getting to know the world, getting to know different communities and getting to know myself. I eventually found my way back into technology, building some software for a few startups, including leading development for a gratitude journal social network, and returning to Google for a time as a developer relations engineer.

Along the way, I returned to school and received an MA in Ecopsychology from Naropa University here in Boulder, with a focus on understanding how social systems can reorganize themselves through an understanding of what it means to be alive. In 2023, I made a foray into politics and made a run for city council in Boulder, with a focus on collaboration, regenerative systems, and fostering a culture of inclusion and innovation in Boulder.

At present, I am back in school again, studying for an MS in creative technology & design at the ATLAS Institute in CU Boulder. ATLAS is serving as an incredibly supportive context for growing as a builder again while also deepening my relationships with other tech builders in Boulder. I am also serving as Executive Director for Woven Web, an early-stage non-profit startup company, through which we are working on creating more connective tissue to support our technology and our society being more well connected to help networks thrive, here in Boulder and beyond.

Weaving in the elements

So what are the elements of a more integral vision for technology and a more integral ecosystem in which to grow this vision?

Technology is evolving and changing across many dimensions at the same time. Technology in this internet and information age has continually had an underlying theme of connectivity and networks, a biomimetic reflection of life and the universe, which we are increasingly understanding to be fundamentally rooted in relationships.

Quantum physics tells us that the universe is not made up of distinct blocks as much as it is an inter-woven fabric, with each bit intimately connected to every other bit. Living systems theory tells us that life is an interconnected web with each living system as both a whole thing and part of a greater whole. Cognitive science demonstrates to us that we think, know, and navigate the world in terms of relationships, associations, and connectivity. The movement in modern science is reflecting an ancient and fundamental understanding that we are truly all in this together and we are far more connected than we could have ever imagined.

Technology, as an application of science, is beginning to reflect this understanding as well. Quantum computing is creating a possibility to revolutionize the way we process and share information. The internet has enabled us to share information nearly instantaneously - to anywhere in the globe, enabling us to start thinking and communicating as one people in a way that wasn’t possible before. Artificial intelligence and technologies such as neural networks & large language models are helping us organize and access information in a radically new way. Meanwhile, distributed and decentralized technologies such as blockchains are opening the door for us to share information and resources in a way that can support individual agency and collective harmony.

Bringing forward a more integral technology ecosystem will involve deepening in our understanding of what it means to be alive, connecting together in community that is rooting deeply into our shared existence, and participating in the use and development of technology that reflects this understanding. Through rooting into a deep inquiry around understanding who and what we are, we can come to see how technology can best support our shared existence and we can learn to leverage technology to respond to our ever-emerging needs as a human society and as life on earth.

Rooting out the distortions

While there is this growing move towards connectivity pervading throughout our technology, it’s vital that we also understand the distortions which are entangled with the development of much modern technology. This is evidenced through the many examples of technology being used to destroy our environment and amplify our misunderstandings and divisions. The internet, the advent of social media, and recent advancements in artificial intelligence are all great examples of this. We are able to connect with other people and information at a rapidly growing rate, and at the same time, we seem to be using these technologies to spread false facts, isolate ourselves, and perpetuate divisive us vs them thinking.

Growing a more integral technological ecosystem and a more balanced relationship with technology will involve understanding these distortions and rooting them out of our thinking process. It’s vital that we understand our conditioned tendencies towards divisive and exploitive thinking. This way of thinking is rooted deeply in our psyches and has been reinforced by both religious and scientific thinking which has led us to believe that we as humans, and often as the specific group of humans we identify with, are superior to other life forms and are here to dominate the earth and reap its harvests.

If we are able to see clearly the distortions that this divisive thinking has created, and how it has pervaded the development and use of technology, then it will be far more possible for us to discover a new relationship to technology and in so doing, bring forward new technological systems that are rooted in balance and connection and which can truly help address the many issues we are facing on earth right now. Success in this will be largely dependent on having new hubs where a more connected way of thinking can integrate more fully with the advancement of technology.

New hubs for a thriving ecosystem

Most of the technological progress of the last 50 years has come from one singular tech hub; San Francisco and the larger Silicon Valley/Bay Area. This has been driven by research institutions such as Stanford and Berkeley, which have helped give birth to many major technology companies, bringing increasing funding and resources, and catalyzing a very powerful feedback loop. It is a pretty popular view these days that if you want to be at the leading edge of technology development, silicon valley is the place to be.

While silicon valley is an important hub, ecosystems thrive through diversity. The lack of other substantial hubs that can effectively challenge and dialogue with the bay area has led our conversation around tech to become limited. One of the distortions that is prevalent in our society right now is that bigger is always better, and that the ideal pattern for society is unrestrained growth. This way of thinking has become deeply embedded within the silicon valley tech culture and through that, has become the dominant way of thinking in tech in general; as demonstrated by the e/acc movement, which proposes that we should just focus on accelerating the development of technology so that technology can solve all of our problems. I find this way of thinking to often miss out on many unintended consequences that come through this unrestrained growth, as we’re seeing all around our planet as we continue to push beyond our planetary boundaries.

Bringing balance to the wider tech ecosystem will involve growing new technology hubs that can more effectively explore different ways of thinking about technology; to help contribute to the wider conversation. The goal is not to replace silicon valley, but rather to grow hubs that can relate with it, fostering a more diverse conversation around technology that can support the kind of understanding and development that will truly support our society and our planet. There are many new hubs growing which can play a role in this ecosystem. The Austin, Texas area is one that is worth noting, as it has a thriving creative culture and a growing community of technologists, with increasing amounts of money and energy flowing there, particularly in the light of Elon Musk’s recent moves. There is also another hub that I find to be less talked about, but which will play a growing role in the future of technology and society; and that is Boulder, Colorado and the larger front range region.

Inclusive Innovation in Boulder

What is it that makes Boulder so incredibly Boulder? What is it that could lead one to say that Boulder could become such an important technology hub in this next wave of technological advances?

Boulder has all of the components needed. We have a tremendous research university in CU Boulder which gives an amazing talent pool. We have a government aligned with innovation, particularly when we consider that the governor of Colorado Jared Polis founded TechStars in Boulder, which is now one of the leading startup accelerators in the world. There is funding, with a substantial base of venture capital and angel investors. We have a thriving startup ecosystem already, with companies leading the way in software, biotech, quantum computing, renewable energy and more. We are well connected, with the Denver airport becoming one of the largest airport in the nation. And there is a tremendous quality of life in Boulder, with access to nature and a city that is incredibly walkable and bike-able. When we look at the traditional requirements for a technology hub, Boulder meets them all.

But what makes Boulder uniquely poised to play a leading role in the conversation around technology goes beyond this. It goes towards having a culture in this city that is rooted deeply in nature, in community, in connection and creativity. I would credit a lot of this to some of Boulder’s early influences, including many alternative thinkers and spiritual leaders landing here in the 60s and 70s and with the presence of institutions such as Naropa, which has continued fostering a culture of thinking differently and valuing relationships and connectivity.

This new era of technology is rooted deeply in understanding and participating in our interconnectivity. Community is essential. Meetups such as Boulder AI Builders and Rocky Mountain AI Interest Group are meeting monthly and bringing hundreds of people together who are stoked to learn and build together. EthDenver is bringing over 10,000 people together in the blockchain space every year, with community gatherings meeting throughout the Denver and Boulder area. Multiple quantum computing labs have launched in the area with a tremendous amount of funding pouring in. All the pieces are here.

The potential is more present than ever for Boulder to become one of the leading technology hubs of the 21st century; to lead the way in bringing a level of coherence to our technology and understand how all of these new pieces can come together to truly benefit this interconnected world we live in. If we can look to include and we can look to innovate, then we can play a meaningful role in whatever is emerging. As technology grows and changes, the barriers to entry are becoming smaller, so that each of us, whether we have a degree in engineering or not, can play a part.

Join and help

If you call Boulder home and you consider yourself a technologist in some form of the other, I implore you to hear this call. Join a movement towards a more balanced and connected world and help bring about the technology that can support that. Dive deep into what your relationship with technology is and start dialogues with your friends. If you’re a builder, enter conversations and start collaborating. Move beyond just what you are building and look into what we all might be creating together. Balancing agency with collaboration is essential.

If you don’t live in Boulder, but you are interested in these ideas, I encourage you to consider whether Boulder might be a place you want to move to; or whether you might have a calling to foster this kind of technology hub and conversation where you are. It’s vital to look at where we can be to make the most meaningful impact but it’s also vital to understand how we can make an impact where we are. This movement is both local and universal.

Whoever you are and wherever you are, I encourage you to be in dialogue, to look to understand what it means to be alive, to get curious about our relationships with each other and with our technology, and to discover for yourself what it means for you to meaningfully participate in the continued unfolding of community, technology, humanity and of life on this planet.

Reach out, connect and let’s continue the conversation. I look forward to knowing you.

Weaving Wu-Wei

2024-11-11T00:00:00.000Z

The world is in a tender place right now. We face an increasing number of inter-related crises and we are consistently challenged in being able to address them, often distracting ourselves with our need to dominate others and be right. If we are to solve the problems we face in the world today, we have to start by understanding what it means to be alive through exploring our connections to the world we find ourselves in; and through that understanding, further the process of bringing everyone together.

Weaving

Fostering connectivity starts with participation and inclusion. We are so conditioned towards either/or thinking, which works in the narrow context of navigation, but also leads us to pit ourselves against each other, rather than see the ways we might complement each other. This type of Us vs Them, a typical example of either/or thinking, happens at many levels. Currently we are seeing it very blatantly in federal politics; we also see it happening at the local level, in community groups such as non-profits. These groups have group ideals, but either/or thinking often leads to a focus on competing for things like grant funding, instead of on sharing pertinent information by making honest connections. Finding common ground is essential here. While we will always have differences in our approaches and our views, that doesn’t mean we need to fight each other. We can learn to disagree respectfully while still being able to move forward together to support our mutual interests. We all want the same basic things: to live comfortably, support our families, to see peace in the world instead of war, etc. By focusing on our relationships we can make progress together with less conflict.

In 2022 I finished my Ecopsychology master’s degree at Naropa with my thesis Radical Reorganization, exploring how we can participate in a shift in our social systems towards a more regenerative and relational paradigm. In 2023 I ran for city council in Boulder on a platform of regeneration and collaboration, and focused on building meaningful relationships while also cultivating a deeper understanding of where we still get caught up creating unnecessary divisions in politics, which I explored in my essay Schismogenesis in Local Politics. In 2024, I’ve been focusing on building up the Woven Web non-profit where we’ve been working to cultivate greater coherence and foster more collaboration within our local community here in Boulder; highlighted by helping steward a 10 day event called [CO]here that engaged over 10 organizational partners and over 200 participants interested in weaving a more resilient community here in Boulder.

What I’ve learned from all of this is that as human beings, we have a natural inclination to help and to cooperate. But we also have a deeply conditioned urge to divide ourselves and create an external other to be in conflict with, driven by a very basic survival instinct that has evolved over centuries of needing to have a group we can be part of to keep us safe and fed. If we are going to survive and thrive, not just within our smaller groups but as a whole, we have to include. As humans we are a whole thing and also a part of something else; a part of humanity as a whole, a part of life on Earth, and a part of the Universe. This may seem complex, and in some ways it is, but it is also fairly simple if we look to understand what it means to be alive. In this essay I am going to discuss this, starting with some concepts that come from the East.

Wu Wei

“Wu-wei is thus the life-style of one who follows the Tao, and must be understood primarily as a form of intelligence – that is, of knowing the principles, structures, and trends of human and natural affairs so well that one uses the least amount of energy in dealing with them.”

In Tao: The Watercourse Way (1975), from which the above quote is excerpted, Alan Watts explores this concept of wu-wei, translating it as “not forcing”. While wu-wei is often translated as not doing, this can be easily misunderstood, because wu-wei is not about passivity, it is about understanding. Through understanding ourselves and the web that we find ourselves in, we are able to act and move in the world without exerting unnecessary effort. My dad Joe introduced me to this idea of “unforced” which he undoubtedly discovered through his studies of taoist philosophy, his training in the practice of tai chi chuan, and his deep study of himself and the world around him.

Tai chi is one practice that incorporates a wu-wei philosophy; it is a method of movement that emphasizes following natural patterns of movement, maintaining relaxation as one whole body-mind organism, and drawing power from chi (life force, breath, energy) as well as gravity. Another practice is aikido which is a martial art focused on self-defense that involves circular, flowing motions and blending with an attacker’s energy to redirect force rather than opposing it directly. Wu-wei practices are found not only in martial and movement arts however. Hakomi is a somatic psychotherapy modality that emphasizes working gently with a client without forcing change, centering around the principles of mindfulness, nonviolence, mind-body holism, organicity and unity. A Hakomi trainer, Mukara Meredith, has even applied these same principles to facilitating communication in groups through her MatrixWorks method.

Wu-wei is a concept that is not limited to any one particular domain. It can involve how we move our bodies, how we meet physical conflict, how we support one another and so much more. Fundamentally, wu-wei is about how we relate within this world we find ourselves in. And as such, it becomes a very intriguing philosophy for those of us who are interested in supporting the emergence of a more connected worldview.

Weaving Wu-Wei

So what is involved in applying wu-wei and these other similar concepts to our daily living, so that we can make more connections and address the crisis being created by these divisive tendencies? The world is complex, and this crisis is complex, but our approach to solving it doesn’t have to be. It involves looking to understand others rather than opposing them, and continually inquiring whether we are forcing what we think is right, or looking to restore the natural flow through bringing people together in an understanding of our shared belonging.

There is a crisis in the world regarding this need for connection. If we continue dividing as a way of creating our culture, we will keep heading towards more and more conflicts, which will inevitably hurt us and the world, potentially leading us to extinction. We can start doing something about this crisis by looking to understand ourselves more honestly. We can start asking honest questions like ‘why do I need to believe this?’ and ‘am i making these decisions honestly or am i just playing out the conditioning that has been passed down to me?’. If we can start to understand the distortions in ourselves, we will be able to resolve these distortions in our communities. From here we can address the greater communities of nations and the world as a whole with a better understanding of how we are in this together.

While it is tempting to isolate in order to focus on understanding, it is more likely to happen (and sooner) if we participate in what is, which is the greater world around us. We can’t hope to change society by sitting alone on a mountain top. We can roll up our sleeves and get involved in the world we want to change.

The concept of wu-wei is a tremendously effective way to remain involved and live well. It is action without force, and this is the most effective way to live within the flow of the entire web of life of which we are a vital part. Weaving wu-wei into our daily living will allow us to work together for a better world by fitting into the Nature that we are a part of.

Can Google be a “Good Corporation”?

2024-01-20T00:00:00.000Z

One year ago, myself along with 12000 other Googlers, awoke to a startling email in the morning informing us that our time as employees of Google had ended. We were given a generous severance package, but we were not given support to say farewell to our colleagues, to wrap up projects, or to continue interacting as part of the organization. We were explicitly told we were not welcome at the campus, not even as a guest of another. This was, I think, the largest hit to Google's company culture it has ever seen, although perhaps this was a long time coming, as many folks inside and outside of Google have pointed to a continual degradation of the once great Google culture, a culture that prided itself on being innovative, inclusive and non-conventional; a culture that despite valiant efforts, has struggled to scale effectively with the organization.

One of the defining characteristics of corporations in this day and age is a fiduciary duty to its shareholders that creates a forcing function to pressure all corporations, especially those traded on wall street, to play into the game of capitalism in our world, as it is currently defined. And capitalism, as it is currently defined, has largely failed to adapt to the kind of 21st century economic thinking that Kate Raworth describes in her book "Doughnut Economics". Rather, modern capitalism continues to operate from out-dated assumptions that the market is a self-contained entity rather than embedded within and dependent on a larger ecology; and also that humans are rational economic agents rather than socially adaptable beings. Anyone with eyes to see can recognize the fallacy in this dated economic thinking, and yet these views continue to be a primary driver in our economy today.

Google, at its foundation, had strong intentions to be a good company, to do good in the world. Google’s motto from around 2000 to 2015 was “Don’t be evil”, and then in 2015 with the introduction of the parent company Alphabet, the motto became “Do the right thing”, while “Don’t be evil” was still retained within the code of conduct. There’s a whole conversation to be had about intention vs impact, but it seems clear to me that Google intended to be a good company.. But here comes an issue, Google is a company, a corporation to be specific, and a corporation that is embedded within this present economy with all of its distortions. In its founding letter in 2004, Sergiy Brin and Larry Page articulated that “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one”. I think it’s worth examining whether, 20 years later, Google is still walking this talk. If these recent actions are any indication, it seems Google has become quite conventional, and with that, I think it’s becoming rather clear the challenge that is presented in being a conventional company within this modern economy while also seeking to be good. Because the conditions of this modern economy seem to, in many ways, enact the opposite of what is good, contradicting the very motto that Google has held at its core for so long.

The issue with the current economic structure is that we are distorting our sense of value. By having an economy built on corporations with a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, we incentivize companies to prioritize an abstract value defined by the “market” rather than prioritizing the well-being of human beings and the planet we inhabit, and all the other living beings we co-inhabit it with. Furthermore, by creating a structure in which a company is owned by investors who are so distant from the actuality of what is happening within an organization, we forget where the actual value in an organization is, which is in the people who make it up. There are those who are attempting to address these issues, defining businesses, ownership, and responsibility differently. B-corps, social enterprises, and ESOPs are some examples of these. I wouldn’t say that simply transitioning to one of these fixes all the problems of corporations but they do represent a move in the right direction.

I suspect that many of the top leaders at Google recognize that these actions are problematic in the context of the vision “Don’t be evil”, but they rationalize it by suggesting that it is for the greater good; that if they are to succeed in their mission of goodness, these sacrifices are necessary. The fact that a decision is made to make those sacrifices by terminating the employment of many hard-working people who are committed to the Google community, for no reason other than the rationalization that their roles were unnecessary, with no consideration of whether this rationalization is true, and without cutting the excessive salaries of the executives responsible for making the decision, is quite telling. It points to the classic way that people are seen, as rational economic agents or cogs in a machine, rather than as socially adaptable, living beings. When we recognize the humanity of employees rather than objectifying them as assets to the corporation, we will change the way we view them and the way we treat them in regards to the profits being sought. As humans and members of the corporate community, they are more important to the success of the business than the profits; this is contrary to classical capitalism, and this is where the need for change in our perceptions of value is most needed. This means changing the way we assess value to be inclusive rather than exclusive, which is the goal, it seems to me, of a goal such as “don’t be evil” or even “do the right thing”.

Google has demonstrated a company culture that values innovation, trust, transparency, creating and sustaining community, with a goal to do good in the world. It’s this culture that has made so many brilliant people want to come to work at Google and want to stay there. Several aspects of this recent layoff violate these values and so concern me as indicating that being a good corporation is not so easy, and requires continual self-examination and participation by the entire community, to prevent falling into the old ways of corporate business, putting profits before people, which negates all of the ideals set forth from the beginning by Google and its founders. The question for Google leadership right now is this: Is it possible to succeed as a corporation and be good?

Schismogenesis in Local Politics

2023-11-05T00:00:00.000Z

It’s election time all around the country and here in Boulder, we have 10 candidates running for 4 open city council positions and 4 candidates running to be Boulder’s first directly elected mayor. I am one of those candidates running for city council which has enabled me an on-the-ground view of how we’re doing politics in Boulder. From my view, there’s a lot we’re doing right here, but also a lot of room for growth. And one of these areas where I think growth is needed is around having nuanced conversations that enable voters and candidates to get to know each other and to foster relationships that will enable effective collaboration going forward.

It’s useful to start this conversation with an exploration of what gets in the way of us working together. This is not an issue unique to Boulder, not even unique to America. Human beings historically have been challenged in effectively cooperating with each other. That’s not true at all levels of course, we’re inherently cooperative beings and in order to survive we’ve had to work together. But we are rarely inclusive in looking to collaborate. Typically, we define “our” group and work with them, but we refuse to work with groups we label as the “other” and more often than not, actively work against “them”. Why is that?

Let’s take a look at a term coined by anthropologist Gregory Bateson in the 1930s: schismogenesis. This term translates to “creation of division” and was originally used to describe how neighboring groups would tend toward opposite behaviors and beliefs in developing their cultural structures. In this modern age of connectivity, geography is not always the primary factor in this process, since ideological differences are more dangerous and prevalent today as a threat to world stability. The process itself is natural; we can't navigate the world we find ourselves in without distinguishing ourselves from the objects and creatures around us. Where the problems start is when this process is taken to the extreme, as with beliefs, where exclusion occurs and beliefs justify violence against those labeled as 'different'. Schismogenesis in larger groups, such as nations, leads to conflict which, in this modern age, could end life as we know it. This is a serious distortion of a process that is beneficial when applied in the appropriate contexts.

Moving Beyond Polarity

If we want to foster a culture in Boulder and beyond that actually addresses the issues affecting us all, it’s vital we learn to work together, and that means being careful not to fall into this pattern of creating division. This has to start in our political environment. In most of the country, the divide is between democrat and republican, while in Boulder, we have our own form of division. Boulder politics is strongly influenced by groups such as “PLAN Boulder” and “Boulder Elevated” and other groups such as “Better Boulder” and “Boulder Progressives”. These groups typically define their divisions around differences in approaches to growth and to homelessness, among other issues. While each of these groups works to contribute to our city in meaningful ways and fosters engagement in the political process, it’s important that we be careful of the traps of thought here. We have to be careful not to fall into patterns of thinking and behavior where our differences become excuses to create conflict rather than progress. We also have to be mindful that we don’t use the information shared from these groups as an excuse to stop thinking and investigating the issues as individuals. Getting to know the candidates as individuals, as well as the issues, will create an intelligent and informed voting body, which can lead to actual change for the better in our city.

It’s worth looking a bit deeper at how we come to make decisions. We rarely question our own biases, and we assume the correctness of our own viewpoint without understanding where it comes from. Without understanding this trap of thought, we will typically look for what validates our view point, which leads us to seek agreement more than understanding. We can see this demonstrated in many of the candidate forums, where most of the questions seek less to assess a candidate's capacity to think critically, to navigate conflict, and to hold meaningful values; important qualifications for any public representative; but rather these questions seek to reduce values down to view points to seek candidates who agree with us. The frequent bouts of yes and no questions at these forums, that don’t allow for a nuanced answer of extremely complex questions, are a clear indicator of this tendency.

We all have to be mindful of this tendency. One of the hot issues this year is ballot measure 302, Safe Zones 4 Kids. This issue is one that tends to draw clear lines between these two camps in Boulder politics, the “progressives” and “conservatives”. For much of this election, being more in the “progressive” camp and mostly only hearing those viewpoints, I had been opposing 302, but I hadn’t really taken the time to get to know it, to understand the specific language and to hear the arguments for supporting it. Once I took the time to have deeper conversations with fellow candidates who supported it and looked to understand it for myself, I came to a place of almost abstaining before finally deciding to still vote no, but it was a “No” with much greater nuance that could more clearly recognize the important values being expressed by those who opposed it. Another of my candidate friends is voting yes, but has also taken the time to hear many perspectives and while our votes are different, we seem to be holding very similar views and values within this. And that’s something we wouldn’t discover if we weren’t willing to see beyond the polarities and look together.

Starting Near, Starting Here

If we wish to address these problems, and foster a culture that is able to look inclusively and to hold the necessary complexity, we have to start by looking to understand ourselves. It’s vital that we cultivate within us the capacity to recognize our own biases and the biases of our culture. Honest and open inquiry is essential if we want to facilitate the kind of understanding that will truly move us forward. Understanding ourselves requires moving beyond just what we want to be, our own personal ideals and dogmas, and relating directly with what is. If we can’t see how connected we all are, we will continue to focus on our differences and our very survival on this planet will continue to be in threat.

These problems are visible at a local level but it shouldn’t be hard to see the ways we create this division throughout our human society. These days, so many of us are feeling the pain of the conflict in the middle east in which so many fellow humans are suffering, and also likely feeling the frustration at our inability to actually move towards peace. While the conflict in the middle east is on a level of magnitude that is far greater than what we are experiencing here, I think a common root can be found as we look to explore the nature of conflict and our human tendency to drive ourselves further and further apart from each other, tending towards extremes while being ignorant to what we share in common. I don’t have any answers to how we solve what is happening in the middle east, but I think if we’re genuinely interested in finding peace, we have to start by creating it where we are.

Let’s come together and see about actually addressing these problems. It’s up to each of us to look to understand ourselves and question our own biases. We can all do more to keep an open mind to differing viewpoints and actively work to build relationships beyond our usual spheres of agreements. We share so much in common, and here in Boulder, the truth of that is so evident to me. Through this election I have come to know a great many people, from councilors to candidates to every-day community members who care greatly about what is happening in our city and want to help it to thrive. None of us are perfect and none of us have the right view or the right approach all the time, but that’s why it’s so necessary for us to come together. Through leaning into the difficult conversations, and actively supporting each other as well as challenging each other, we can all grow together and effectively collaborate to build a city and society that works for all.

Reflections on the Revolution

2023-05-25T00:00:00.000Z

How to change our mind

In 2018, Michael Pollan published "How to Change Your Mind," a book exploring psychedelic substances like LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, and mescaline, and their potential for transforming consciousness and healing. By 2022, Pollan had even starred in a Netflix series on the same topic. While I personally find psychedelics fascinating and believe in their potential to facilitate transformative shifts, this article will focus on broader ways to change our minds and participate in a "radical revolution of consciousness," a concept my late father Joe often spoke about.

Joe passed away eight years ago shortly after completing his personal memoir, Too Much Fun Dying to Stop Now. During one conversation that Joe and I shared – a year or so before he passed – we discussed Ancient Egypt and their sudden surge in innovative technology, including the construction of the pyramids. Joe theorized that the Egyptians experienced something he called a "radical revolution of consciousness" that led to a fundamental shift in their worldview, sparking rapid development throughout their society. He also suggested we may be approaching a similar phase of accelerated development.

Since Joe's passing, I've become increasingly interested in this topic and devoted myself to studying what it might take to shift paradigms throughout our society. I graduated last year with an Ecopsychology degree from Naropa University and wrote a thesis titled Radical Reorganization, which explores this paradigm shift throughout our society, with a strong emphasis on economies and organizations. Recently, I've been working to put my studies into action, and finding more meaningful ways to participate. In this article I will dive into a few events I’ve attended recently that explore this theme, and then I will summarize my view on what I think is vital for each of us as we explore what part we might play in this shift.

Bioneers

Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature recently held its 34th annual conference in Berkeley, California. Billing themselves as a “fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges”, the conference was a must-attend for me after hearing so much about it during my Naropa education. Keynote speaker Joanna Macy, a luminous figure in the field of Ecopsychology, coined the term “Great Turning” to describe the necessary evolution from an industrial growth society to a sustainable civilization. Her keynote set the tone for the conference; an all-encompassing symposium that delivered informative and inspiring talks by dozens of speakers.

Leah Stokes, Danny Kennedy, and Ilana Cohen pitched the importance of electrification, “The Charging 20’s”, and amplifying fossil-free research. Amara Ifeji, John A. Powell, and Rebecca Solnit talked about how stories shape society and how we can change those narratives. Erin Matariki Carr, Yuria Celidwin, and Jade Begay emphasized how indigenous wisdom and leadership should integrate into society. The conference’s depth and responsiveness towards society’s pressing issues was impressive and something to cherish.

Laura Flanders’ talk about worker-owned cooperatives and community wealth building stuck with me due to her insightful commentary on cities that are aiming to bring wealth and business back into local communities. These are critical moves that counterbalance the dehumanizing and globalizing effects of corporate capitalism. Another talk that resonated with me was by Saru Jayaraman, the founder of the One Fair Wage organization. Her deep insights on the continuing inequality present in the US left me with much to ponder. It’s sobering to note that origins of this inequality are deeply rooted in perpetuating cultures of slavery long after its abolishment. One of her goals is to ensure that restaurant servers are not forced to please diners in order to cover basic expenses.

Laura and Saru’s inspiring words centered on the fact that everyday people form the nucleus of this country. If we are concerned about the health of the world, then addressing the “big” issues like climate change that impact us all is necessary. We should not, however, disregard the “small” issues; mothers struggling to feed their kids, locally-owned businesses versus WalMart, or servers having to disguise themselves to achieve an income that meets basic expenses. Creating a populace that is engaged and empowered necessitates supporting all people in our society, especially those who’ve been traditionally marginalized.

The Bioneers conference provided much inspiration. I left feeling deeply motivated and ever-connected with those who attended. Joanna Macy’s conclusion summed up the entire spirit of the conference: “I’m going to suggest what you can do to save the world: Be glad you’re alive.” If we want to help revolutionize the consciousness of humanity, it has to start with looking at how we’re relating within our own lives. If we start to understand and accept the beauty of the life we are blessed with, then true change is probable.

Revolution Roll Call

Two weeks ago, I joined the Revolution Roll Call event in my hometown of Boulder, hosted by my close friends at The Mystery Works Collective. Unlike the bustling Bioneers conference, only about 50 of us gathered at a nearby regenerative farm known as Yellow Barn Farm. The event's primary focus was on building local connections, an activity that resonated deeply with everyone in attendance. We all shared a common interest in the kind of revolution that starts small, in our own lives and communities.

One of the most memorable aspects of the event was the opportunity for emergent conversations and meaningful dialogue. I was particularly inspired by a group of about 15 individuals discussing the concepts of communal parenting, polyamory, and the "it takes a village" approach to raising children. From this conversation, new relationships formed with the intention of supporting one another more directly and developing solutions that could benefit our local context.

Another emotional moment of the event was bearing witness to the slaughtering of a lamb. This experience brought to the forefront the reality of the process which provides us with meat. As a society, we tend to overlook this process, but this experience gave us the opportunity to pause and appreciate where our food comes from. This has given me and others a newfound respect whenever we consume meat or any other foods.

The theme of this Revolution Roll Call was water, and it was a recurring topic throughout the event. From discussing the lessons we can learn from water as humans to exploring local solutions to support our water resources, we shared tears of grief and joy as we explored this important topic. As we look ahead to future events, we plan to honor and understand other elements, like earth, fire, and air.

Overall, the Revolution Roll Call was a meaningful and practical demonstration of how we can create a greater sense of connection to the web of life and to each other in a community. By exploring ritual and connection in a community context, we can affect not only how we are living our own lives, but also potentially affect changes throughout our society.

Consciousness Hacking

Last week, we held a Consciousness Hacking mixer, and the topic of discussion was paradigm shift. Our small but engaged group came together to tackle some big questions, starting with what is a paradigm, and how does it shift? Honest, open and curious discussions like these are invaluable for sparking thought-provoking revelations and helping to effect real change. One thing I love about open dialogue is that it can surprise you. My intention was to talk about paradigm shift but with many newcomers to this mixer, a lot of the conversation flowed around “What is consciousness hacking and what does that term mean?”, and as we explored that together as a group, it actually became clearer how consciousness hacking and paradigm shift tie together. I’ll go into that a bit in the next paragraphs.

Consciousness Hacking (CoHack) was founded in the San Francisco bay area in December 2013, with a focus on creating a community of makers who build new technologies that promote human flourishing. The Colorado chapter was formed in 2015, bringing together individuals from Boulder and Denver for regular meetups. In 2020, we registered as a non-profit, and in 2022, were granted 501c3 status. I joined the team last year and am now proud to serve as Executive Director. Our organization is at an exciting stage of discovery, looking at how we can foster a more connected and conscious human society.

Consciousness hacking is a fascinating term. Let’s break it down: Hacking has many definitions, but one of my favorites is creatively overcoming software and hardware limitations to achieve novel and clever outcomes, it also often applies a hands on and exploratory approach to understanding and building systems. Consciousness has long eluded precise definition, but is rapidly becoming more clearly understood through the lens of cognitive science. According to Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi in their book Systems View of Life, consciousness is a unique form of cognitive process that emerges when cognition reaches a certain level of complexity. It involves self-awareness and an awareness of one's environment, and there is a fundamental link between consciousness and social phenomena. I would say that consciousness hacking is about taking a hands on approach to our own cognition, understanding what it is to be alive and the limitations inherent, so that we can live more full lives.

Consciousness Hacking Colorado is a technology-inclusive and systems-oriented movement toward unraveling personal and societal transformation, starting right here in Boulder. We aim to facilitate holistic communication and connection to support the building of effective relationships that will enable all of us to thrive. Being situated in Boulder offers a unique opportunity to build relationships with many who are building technology and with many who are interested in a more holistic and integral way of living; and events such as this are a great example of what’s possible when we come together and openly dialogue.

Reaching a tipping point

As I reflect on facilitating a radical revolutionary in consciousness, Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell always comes to mind. With an exploration of social epidemics, Gladwell demonstrates how small changes have a significant impact on social events. His book adeptly illustrates that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. It leads me to ask; What will it take for us to reach a tipping point for this revolution of consciousness, to shift paradigms in humanity?

Gladwell offers three key principles for achieving a tipping point. The first is the Law of the Few: To move a trend from one person to many, you must identify and target those special few—the people who have influence. The second principle is Stickiness Factor: Make sure your message has "stickiness," so it sticks with individuals after they've heard it. The third principle is the Power of Context: Be aware of the environment and how it affects people's behavior.

Gladwell's advice on effecting a tipping point is a valuable tool as we look to facilitate a revolution of consciousness. A simple and relatable message is essential for it to stick and spread. Understanding where social web influence is located is also key- we must harness it to effectively facilitate the spread. By tying the worldview change together with a change in systems throughout society, we can create an environment that aligns with a holistic outlook. This will significantly improve people’s comprehension of the message.

To bring about real change on our planet, it's crucial to foster local relationships which enable us to act locally, while also building ties with a global community that will facilitate widespread participation. Adopting an approach that's grounded in nature while still being systematic, we can greatly increase our effectiveness. By working harmoniously with the Earth's natural systems, we have the potential to transform our world for the better. The best place to start is close to home, by identifying where we have influence and can make a real impact. This may often be in our own neighborhoods and communities. Through starting small yet thinking big, we can participate in a change that extends well beyond any of us as individuals. While the timing and nature of this change is beyond our control, how we participate is up to us. My invitation is to find what you can do and do it well.

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Welcome to Unforced!

2023-03-30T00:00:00.000Z

Be warned as you enter here, those who may feel reactive towards certain emergent technologies. The photo above, and the haiku were both generated by AI. The words written here are by me, although AI may have suggested a few writing improvements along the way. I start with this because I think this haiku and this image do a decent job of what I’m looking to convey here. An introduction to myself and to this blog. I’m a dude that likes hanging out in the natural world, typing away and sharing what he sees, and not shying away from technology in the process. I’m glad to be here with you.

Recently, I've been struggling to find my voice on this platform. In the past, Facebook was my primary blog where I would share my thoughts, both long and short. Facebook is an interesting context because I typically share with people I know and who know me, so there's a certain level of casual conversation even when I express something that requires careful articulation. On this blog, I'd like to keep things casual, but also invite a bit more formality in some of my writing. I want much of what I write here to contribute towards more complex forms of writing, such as a book in the next few years, and at the same time, the primary purpose of this writing is not to be in any way perfect, but to be an active exploration of how my voice expresses through this medium.

In this post, I am looking to express three things. First, I'd like to introduce myself to those who don't know me well yet. Second, I’d like to share an update of what’s going on in my life. I plan to do this at least twice a year, around my birthday (9/6) and around my half-birthday (3/6). I think these are good times to reflect and share what's happening in my life. I’m about a month late on this but so it goes. And third, I’d like to express more clearly what this blog is and what kind of content you can expect here. With that said, let’s continue.

Who am I?

My name is Aaron Gabriel. Most people call me Aaron or AG. I am a builder. It is in my name and in my blood. My dad was a builder, as were his fathers before him, many generations back. And while they built with metal and wood, I build with networks and code. What we all share in common is great care and attention to detail in the building process, a knowledge of how to use the right tool for the job, and a recognition that whatever we build, we have to start with building relationships. Beyond being a builder, I’m also a connector, a communicator, a community organizer, a dancer, a lover, a friend, and so much more. Most of all, I’m an earthling, specifically of the human variety.

My dad, besides being a carpenter, was also a tai chi teacher. My mom taught math and was also an herbalist. These are of course quite limited descriptions, only touching on a small part of who they were, but it will have to do for now. You might notice the past tense there. My mom, Becky, died of breast cancer when I was 10 years old, and my dad, Joe, died of brain cancer when I was 22 years old. Both the love and the loss that I have experienced with them is a huge part of who I am, and plays deeply into the compassion and the passion with which I approach life. As I grow and mature, my sense of self increasingly includes them and I often feel that I am sharing for all 3 of us, and not just myself.

Who I am is someone that cares deeply about humanity and life. I am an alumni of Case Western where I studied computer science and of Naropa where I studied ecopsychology. I am a passionate participant in what Joe (my dad) liked to call a radical revolution of consciousness; actively exploring what might enable us to turn towards life not just as individuals but as the whole of society, such that we might know ourselves to be truly and wholly living in a way that is beneficial to life, rather than destructive to it. And also, who I am is happy to be here with you, exploring this great mystery of what it is to be alive, together.

What’s been happening in my life?

Now that I’ve given a brief birds eye view of who I am, I want to share a bit about what has been happening in my life lately. Turning 30 seven months ago has spurred me into a new phase of personal reflection and development. I've taken a deeper look at how I want to live my life and how I want to show up in the world as a mature adult.

Based on a friend’s recommendation, with a slight modification to make it my own, I’ve outlined five major goals or pathways in life and examined where I want to be with each of them in the coming years. I've been looking at how I am growing into partnership and parenthood, into my writing and speaking, into my embodied artistry (dance and movement), into my community leadership, and into a builder and leader in the technology space.

I'm seeing a lot of growth in each of those areas. Spending time this winter with my dear friends Michael and Alison and their new baby Ember in Hawaii has definitely lit up inside of me the desire to move closer to the journey of fatherhood. It has also awakened in me a deeper desire to show up in a supportive way for all of my best friends who are now parents. Though there is no baby on the way yet, the connections that are showing up in my life now seem to be of a much more mature variety than I had experienced in my 20s, and I feel the movement towards something more solid in that relationship space.

My writing and speaking are in a very active space of growth for me right now. This blog is an actualization of that, and I am actively working to level up my scaling across all different social media spaces. I'm having a fun time using my tools well, such as Notion and Generative AI, to support that sharing. This feels to be in early blossoming form, but I'm seeing a lot more growth over the next few months.

Embodied artistry is a broad catch-all for how I am growing into more physical embodiment, getting in shape, dancing more, expressing my embodiment through sound and play, and all things. I'm currently enjoying some good growth in that as I re-deepen into training in Qigong and tai chi and also commit more fully to attending a movement gym here in Boulder called ApeCo. This also seems to be growing as I deepen in relationship with others who are also committed to this kind of growth.

Community leadership has been one of the more exciting aspects of my growth lately. I recently stepped into the role of executive director for Consciousness Hacking Colorado (cohackco.org), and I'm actively working on expanding what we do as a community, facilitating meaningful intersectional dialogue, and working to be a force for more convergence around people who are exploring consciousness and consciously building technology. I've also been stepping up in terms of other events I host outside of CoHack, and it's a very engaged interest for me right now, how we create more coherence in our local community here in Boulder.

The final piece is one of the more interesting ones. At the time of writing my goals, most of my focus was around my career development inside of Google, but two months ago, I was laid off from Google, which has spurred a radical new phase in my life and career. After two years at Google, I've been enjoying being in the space of not having to contort myself into a M-F 9-5 structure, letting myself travel and flow freely, and letting my creativity move in a more natural and unforced way. For a while, it was looking likely I'd be joining a startup, but it didn’t quite line up, and now, I am actively working on building something new and exciting of my own, which I will share a lot more about in a future post. I'm also just really enjoying being in the spirit of building, and I am looking forward to collaborating with many others and helping to build whatever feels fun and beneficial.

So what's happening in my life right now is just being excited about growing, building, and connecting. My builder spirit is moving stronger than ever, and I love playing around with what's emerging in technology right now. I'm having a lot of fun building self-organizing systems within Notion, enjoying getting back into app development and playing with Flutter and FlutterFlow, and having so much fun playing with all the emerging AI technologies these days. My relationships feel really rich right now, and I'm delighting in the connections that are showing up and the way that growth is emerging through them. All in all, I just feel really glad to be alive and really stoked on life.

What is this blog?

I would like to close this off with a little bit on what this blog might be. Hopefully, through this blog post, you’ve gotten to know a bit more about me and what’s currently happening in my life, and maybe through that, gotten a sense for how I am already sharing. My intention is not to try to shape this blog too much, but rather to let it emerge, unforced. This word unforced was brought to me by my dad, Joe. Before he passed, Joe wrote a book about his life and his journey with cancer, Too Much Fun Dying to Stop Now. One of his favorite concepts was “unforced”, a reflection of the natural patterns he saw in nature, which he looked to embody in his own life. unforced.org was originally his domain and I am inspired now to pick it up and create from this space as a tribute to his legacy.

I don’t honestly know what will emerge in this space. As I'm in a building spirit, I intend to regularly build technology, with an emphasis on what I highlighted above. As I build, I'll likely share it here, inviting people into both the fruits of the creative process and the creative process itself. Now more than ever, I think it's important to explore our relationship with technology, so we don't fall into the age-old traps of making technology a god or a devil. Technology is a tool, and if we understand how these tools are built, we can have a healthier relationship with them. We can utilize these tools well in proper context, while also understanding their limitations. I'll be discussing the building of technology quite a bit in this blog, and probably even creating tutorials to support people building interesting things. Additionally, I'll actively explore the technology that excites me most in the world, and articulate how we might use it for the benefit of life and self-actualization.

For those who are not as into technology, don't worry! This blog will explore deeply from the perspective of a nature-oriented philosophy. As a reflection of my studies in Ecopsychology, I will be regularly writing on what I see about humanities’ relationship with itself and the natural world; with a strong emphasis on how a reorientation towards nature might emerge within the individual and society.

I've linked my master's thesis, titled "Radical Reorganization," which explores how we can change our social systems, especially our businesses, from the inside out by changing the way we participate. This is in line with my last blog post, which examined how we relate to growth in the economy. It's particularly relevant to me because I believe much of what was discussed there has been demonstrated in many recent layoffs. You can expect more of this kind of writing from me as I actively explore what it will look like to radically reorganize our society from the inside out.

I look forward to continuing to connect with all of you through this blog. My hope is for this to be a two-way street, where what is written here becomes a way of participating in a larger conversation in which we are all learning together.

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A blog of the self, Uncovering life's mysteries, Building and growing.

A fresh look: Growth in our economy

2023-01-31T00:00:00.000Z

Introduction

It seems to me that in our world right now, we’ve adopted a very distorted view of what growth is. More specifically, we’ve placed our sense of value on markets and goods, and focused on growing these numbers in an isolated context; typically to the detriment of genuine growth and well-being for the living systems of this planet on the whole. It is more crucial than ever that we resolve this distortion to prevent the continued destruction of life on this planet.

What is this distortion and how did it come about? The best way I can point to it is that we’ve created an erroneous association where we think the market is the world. I doubt we often do this consciously, but I think if we look honestly, we will see that it is what we are doing. We are so obsessed with market conditions, in an economy emphasizing isolation and division rather than connectivity and interaction, that we have become blind to what is actually happening on our planet and in our own lives.

This distortion, perpetuating disconnection over connection, is impacting every level of our society; nations, states, communities, families; and is also causing tremendous damage to the health of the whole biosphere of the planet. Once we see this, it should be obvious the necessity of clearing up this distortion, for each of us as individuals and for our society at large. I propose that doing so will require us to look honestly, within our own lives and relationships, at what it is to be alive within this interconnected web of life, and begin to re-orient ourselves towards a way of growing that is in harmony with life rather than in conflict with it.

Distortion

So, how can we recognize this distortion and how it has influenced our economy? I think we might start by looking at the effect this distortion has on our decision making. In her book “Doughnut Economics”, Kate Raworth describes many of the issues with present economic thinking and presents a new model for how we can think about the market. In pointing to some of the issues, she describes a conference of world leaders in which “the summit’s Australian host, then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott, had been determined to stop the meeting’s agenda from being ‘cluttered’ by climate change and other issues that could distract from his top priority of economic growth, otherwise known as GDP growth”. Examples such as this are not hard to find, in which issues facing the health of the planet as a whole are considered unimportant compared to the state of the market.

To bring forward another clear example of this distortion, we might look at two different metrics for the health and growth of a system. Ecologists have come up with a measurement called the Living Planet Index (LPI) which measures wildlife populations and global biodiversity. Most people are also familiar with GDP (Gross Domestic Product) which is the common measurement for the scale of an economy, measuring how much it produces. Over the last 50 years, global GDP has increased by 3100%, and if you ask many people in this technological society, they will say that humanity continues to grow, and metrics such as this will be an example. However, in those same last 50 years, LPI has dropped by 69%, demonstrating a drastic loss to the health of our biosphere as a whole.

The major issue I see with this distortion is that it is self-validating and self-reinforcing. In this industrial growth society, the quickest way to profit has been to extract and destroy. This is evident by looking at the mass profits gained by cutting down old growth forests for timber, extracting oil from the ground for fuel, and destroying large swaths of natural growth to raise cattle for meat. With GDP as our primary metric for success, and money as our primary metric for value, we have been incentivizing a worldview that sees ourselves as isolated from our environment, and this worldview has led to a continual increase in GDP, continual destruction of the environment, and a further reinforcement of this distortion.

Destruction

As we’ve demonstrated with the increasing GDP and decreasing LPI, this distortion has continued to cause tremendous damage to the living systems of the planet. However, the damage is not limited to the health of the biosphere alone. This distortion in our worldview is affecting every aspect of our lives and society. When we are incentivizing disconnection and isolation, we are becoming more and more disconnected from ourselves, from our families, from our communities, and from our society as a whole.

What does associating growth with profit, extraction, and isolation do to ourselves as humans? How does it move us to participate in our lives, in our work, and in our relationships? It seems that if we have been conditioned to value isolation and division, then we will tend towards living our lives in isolated and divided ways, missing out on the intimacy and connection that is all around us. Not only does this leave our own lives lacking in quality, but it causes us to miss out on caring for one another, and now more than ever, we need each other. Not only are we seeing suffering from the multitude of wildlife on the planet, we as humanity are experiencing tremendous suffering. Inequality is rampant, and billions of humans around this world are lacking in having basic food, water, and shelter. Even in so-called developed countries such as America, we still see so many struggling not just with basic needs, but also with feeling a sense of connection and belonging.

The destruction of life, directly threatening the well-being of the biosphere and the well-being of its inhabitants, continues to be perpetuated by the distortion that we are separate and isolated from the world around us. If we are to heal, as people, and as a planet, we have to re-orient ourselves to a genuine understanding of what it is to be alive within this interconnected world. We have to look honestly at what kind of growth we want to participate in, and we have to choose to grow in a way that is not contradictory to the growth of life on the whole, but rather intimately and integrally interconnected with it. So… how do we do that?

Discernment

It seems to me that our task now is one of discernment. We need to be able to recognize the distortion for what it is, and also to be able to recognize the natural processes of life and evolution that are all around us. We are surrounded with examples of growth as it actually is. An old growth forest, a mycelial network, even our house plants are examples of growth. Perhaps we see our pet cat or dog growing, not just in size but in personality and maturity. And I can think of no greater gift than being a parent or an aunt or uncle and getting to watch a little one grow into who they are. Growth is abundant all around us. But when it comes to relationships and society, we are often starved of good examples. Our task then is to lean into what nature is revealing to us, and to begin to understand these same patterns as they play out in our relationships, in our communities, and in our workplaces.

Let’s look specifically at a business organization, as it is not only a context that almost all of us experience on a very regular basis, it is also directly connected to the economic context that is the source of our discussion. Within a business how does the distortion play itself out? It seems that in many businesses, we see a person as a cog in a machine, and we are more concerned about their performance than we are their well-being. When the business structures relate to us this way, we may be likely to believe it about ourselves, and consequently we deprioritize our well-being and we prioritize our performance. If we can see this, not only can we begin to correct our priorities, but as leaders in an organization, we can help support others in doing the same. To extend this metaphor further, we might also recognize that with the incentivization of isolation and division leads our business to operate in increasing silos, with different parts of the business competing for resources and not being in clear communication with other parts of the business. Seeing this, and understanding that living systems in nature thrive through connection, we can look to foster more collaboration and communication throughout the organization, supporting not just the individual parts thriving, but the organization as a whole.

Growth is a natural emergent property of any healthy living system. As we come to understand this, we might recognize that we don’t need to force ourselves to grow, but rather we can look to cultivate a healthy and well-connected organization, from which growth can naturally emerge. Doing so will require us to recognize the distortions that are present in how we view the world, and adjust our approach accordingly, modeling ourselves on the natural systems of life that are present all around us.

Conclusion

The predominant worldview of humanity has become increasingly distorted, amplified by an industrial growth society spread through global networks of capitalism. This distortion has led to an increasing disconnect between the metrics of growth popularized by the global economy, and the health and well-being of the planet and its inhabitants. Our values have become misaligned with life as a whole as we continue to incentivize a worldview of isolation and division, focusing on profit and extraction while excluding genuine connection.

This distortion in our worldview has led to a misunderstanding of what growth actually means, which has in turn created a self-reinforcing feedback cycle, perpetuating the distortion while causing increasing damage to the living systems of the earth. One living system that has been increasingly affected is the living system of humanity, as we have become increasingly disconnected from ourselves and our relationships.

Addressing this damage will require an attentive look at the distortion as it presents itself throughout society. We have to look to re-orient ourselves towards natural ways of growing and being alive and we have to bring this understanding into our communities and into our workplaces. This shift is not only necessary if we are to avert further global destruction, but it also contains within the potential to radically transform our society and the way we live. It’s now our task to go forth into the world, to reorient our own lives in the direction of life as it is, and to do what we can to help society around us do the same.