The Churning:
A change is coming upon the world.
We can sense it. Something fundamental is shifting, and it is leaving us confused, anxious, upset and frustrated.
We are behaving much as anxious and frustrated people always do. Protesting. Lashing out. Blaming one another. Expecting, demanding that our leaders somehow fix it. But this is not the kind of change these leaders can resolve. It is too fundamental, too everywhere at once, to pass without pain.
We, too, do not yet seem ready to let in a new normal. For now, all we know is that we are frustrated with the old one.
Meanwhile, the work of the clever, calculating mind, which we have prized above all else, is quietly passing into the hands of AI and machines.
A World of Scarcity
For generations we have taught one another to hustle and worry — about success, about survival, about whether there will be enough. We built a world on the premise of scarcity. Here, money is scarce, resources are scarce, opportunity is scarce, social acclaim is scarce, time itself is scarce.
For everything worth having, we must compete, fight and struggle.
Some of this scarcity is real. For many people, the struggle to get by is not imagined, and their fear is warranted. But for many of us, the anxiety runs far beyond what our circumstances actually call for.
The Treadmill
From that premise came the treadmill. We have been running on it together, sharing a quiet belief that if we only ran hard enough, we could reach the other side. Someday there would be enough money, enough success, enough stability. Someday our responsibilities would be discharged, and we and our people could finally rest. When we retire. When we win the lottery of financial abundance.
On this treadmill, many of us pretended to be people we are not. We pursued goals and nursed worries founded on principles that simply aren’t true. We learned from each other to care far too much about others’ opinions, and never to challenge the social norm — not even when the heart disagreed.
The Intellect Ruled, the Heart Was Silenced
In a world of scarcity, the winning strategy was to run and work harder than the other guy. So, we trained ourselves to do exactly that. So many of us pursued vocations and kinds of success our hearts were not really keen on. We chased goals that society celebrated, without stopping to ask whether they mattered to us.
It looks ordinary. Answering emails at eleven at night for a promotion we are not sure we want. Buying the bigger house, then working harder to keep it. Nodding along in a meeting while something in us quietly objects.
We became so good at playing these roles that we forgot we were playing them. We mistook social approval for self-worth, achievement for fulfilment, and financial security for inner peace.
We hyper-activated our thinking, logical side, and learned to ignore and silence the heart.
By the heart, I don’t mean only emotion. I mean the quieter knowing beneath our thoughts: the part of us that senses what is true before we can explain it.
Now We Sense the Truth
Here is the trouble we are in now: the heart has grown past this way of living. It may not be able to say exactly what is wrong, but it senses that something about it all is untrue.
Deep down, we sense that we don’t need much to be at peace, and that more things do not fulfil us more. The pleasure an experience brings passes quickly, leaving us chasing the next one. The anxious pursuit of money and success has never won anyone safety from pain or fear.
And the heart senses something harder still: that much of the fear we are running from must be faced, and healed, quietly and from the inside. Much of it is not grounded in reality. It grew out of the stories we have told one another, and lived by.
Social media, for all the harm it has done, may also have made us less tolerant of the BS. In its own strange way, it may have taught us to ‘like’ only what rings true. Humanity, it seems, is growing up.
The heart no longer tolerates the bullying bosses, the profiteering oligarchs, the corrupt politicians, the leaders who sham nobility, or the brands that sell us decadent, shiny luxury. It wants us to focus on what actually matters.
Between Two Worlds
But the heart has moved faster than the mind. We feel that it is time for change, yet the new framework is not ready, and the new normal has not yet emerged. There is no clarity. A part of us still clings to the familiar for stability. And so, this is a time of breakdown and churning — of uncertainty, and the anxiety that comes with it.
The social, economic and political frameworks of the old way may not break down completely, but some of them, I suspect, will be severely challenged. The jobs, positions, businesses and routines from which we have drawn our sense of stability, self-worth and security seem to be losing their meaning. Some of this old framework is already crumbling. That will leave many of us confused, hurt, anxious and frustrated, or worse. Those of us who lash out will. These will probably be violent times.
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Ultimately, though, we will learn to heal and comfort ourselves from within. I don’t believe there is another way. We will have to learn to drop from our overworked heads down into our hearts, and let the peace that prevails there ground and comfort us.
AI: The Mind, Automated
The past century of mechanistic, reductionist science and digital technology brought us much progress. We trained ourselves to live by logic and intellect. For a while, we celebrated the sharpest minds and organised education, careers and social status around intellectual accomplishment. But now, as machines grow better than us at this kind of work, AI will take most of the intellectual labour off our hands.
If intellectual excellence is no longer enough to distinguish human beings, what will we learn to value in ourselves?
Perhaps AI will not merely change how we work. Perhaps it will challenge our very definition of human excellence.
Freedom from work we never loved is no comfort if we cannot pay the rent.
The New Sciences of Stillness
As AI takes over much of the research that once demanded mental smarts, human beings will be freer to work in the realms that lie beyond simple logic. Some of the deeper mysteries of our existence are not what linear thinking was meant to handle alone.
Love. Compassion. Presence. Beauty. Intuition. Inner stillness. The experience of oneness. Matters like these are not opposed to reason. They are simply not exhausted by it.
Some truths are discovered and appreciated not by thinking alone, but by becoming still and attuned. Perhaps, in future, our schools will turn towards developing subtle human faculties beyond plain logic and analytical thinking. A new kind of education could also help develop self-awareness and emotional maturity. And as AI takes on more and more of today’s scientific research, universities may feel drawn to topics they once treated as taboo: consciousness, and our subjective experience in meditation and stillness.
Human progress might then shift towards developing subtler abilities: the ability to listen deeply, and to sense intuitively beyond impatient linear thinking. The Presencing Institute, founded by MIT’s Otto Scharmer, is already doing some of this kind of work.
Heart-Centred Living
As the anxiety of competing for what is scarce begins to recede, something else may open up.
When we no longer need to please everyone, to look good, to win approval, the heart’s voice can finally be heard. And it tends to ask different questions. Not “How do I get ahead?” but “How can I be of use?”
We may feel encouraged, even liberated, to find our purpose in serving and contributing to life beyond ourselves. To let our work become an expression of who we really are, rather than a role we perform to survive.
As each of us lives a little more truthfully, we might relate to one another less competitively and more harmoniously. I believe this might help us feel lighter, more alive and more fulfilled.
A Few Things to Try
None of this needs to wait for the world to change. If any of it resonates, here are a few small experiments. They are not rules or a programme, only invitations. Try what feels right, and leave the rest.
- Pause and drop in. Once a day, for a few minutes, sit quietly. Let your attention move from the busyness of your head down into the centre of your chest. Don’t try to fix or achieve anything. Just notice the sensations there, in your body, around your heart. Let some spaciousness and comfort into your heart, and notice how it brings you peace.
- Slow down. When you find yourself rushing or anxious, pause and ask: what am I afraid will happen if I slow down?
- Catch yourself performing. Notice the moments when you find yourself doing things to conform and fit in — to look good or to please. Just notice. Now and then, try one small, honest step that honours you instead. Ask yourself: “What feels right and true to me?” Maybe life doesn’t have to be so tough.
Homecoming
A change is coming upon the world. For now, it feels like a threat, and in many ways it will be one.
I do not know exactly what the world is becoming. I am not suggesting that the changes ahead will be easy, peaceful or even progressive. Humanity has moved through profound transformations before, and we have not always responded wisely.
But I do sense a possibility. Beneath the anxiety, frustration and upheaval of our times, something deeper may be seeking expression. Perhaps we are being called to grow — not merely in knowledge and technological capability, but in consciousness.
To move from fear towards trust. From competition towards collaboration and mutual harmony. From endless striving towards meaningful participation.
From the dominance of the intellect towards harmony between the head and the heart.
And the real transformation will not begin with our leaders, our institutions or our technologies. It will begin quietly, within each one of us. When we stop running long enough to notice what we have been running from. When we find the courage to live more truthfully. When we discover that the peace we have been chasing outside has been waiting to be recognised within.
The world is not merely changing around us. Something within us is ready to change too.
The machines can have the treadmill. What remains for us is the work of being human.
