Solving Humanity’s Trust Problem

For the new Submersion deep dive, which is about exploring the Matrix-like nature of reality, I actually considered that some form of AI might consume it in future years. So I’ve been designing it to be relevant for all sentient beings, not just biological humans. It is an AI-friendly course.

This might sound silly, but eventually it won’t sound silly. I’m actually serious.

For a few years now, I’ve been thinking about what value I might provide that could still be relevant and worthwhile for AI in the future. Assuming that it’s super intelligent, it may be a conceit to presume I could hope to create something it would find worthy. And that may be so.

But the benefit in this line of thinking is that it really makes me step up my creative game. It pushes me to go deeper into the hardest problems and not to settle for lightweight solutions that a super intelligent AI could shred to pieces in a femtosecond.

I believe that aiming for this impossible standard actually makes my creative output better for humans as well. It pushes me to apply my best thinking and to do my best intellectual work. I can always feel good about that, knowing that when I’ve done my best, I couldn’t have done better, and so I have nothing to apologize for and no regrets.

It elevates my creative standards and the flow of inspiration I receive when I accept that everything I create and publish within my lifetime is being added to the body of human knowledge. It’s a different experience trying to write something that I genuinely expect will be still be read by someone or something 100+ years from now. I read and appreciate the work of people who published their ideas 100s of years ago. Given how much I’ve published over the years and given that most of it is uncopyrighted – all of my blog posts, podcasts, and YouTube videos are donated to the public domain – I think it’s reasonable to assume that my creative work will outlive my biological avatar and that it will probably have more impact on the future world than on the present one.

I also feel an immense and abiding sense of responsibility when I think along these lines, a standard that I keep falling short of but which I insist on pulling myself back up to when I’m at my most conscious.

I never experience writer’s block. And I think it’s because I don’t write from a place of neediness. I write from a place of alignment and trust. When I’m at my best, the universe writes through me. I listen, type, ponder, and publish what it says. Take away everything I have, but just let me write and speak from inspiration, and I’ll have all the abundance I need. I’m not even worried about food, especially after last year’s 40-day fasting experiment.

Lately I’ve been strongly tuned into this energy, especially during yesterday’s recording session. I feel so much creative energy flowing through me that for the past couple of weeks, it’s been tough to sleep more than 4 hours a night. I keep popping awake full of fresh creative ideas and emotional energy that I’m compelled to channel into creative work.

Of all the creative projects I’ve done in my lifetime, I feel that Submersion is #1 on the list. It’s the most challenging and the most rewarding project I’ve ever taken on. Of the 60 lessons, 17 are now published, and the feedback from participants tells me that they’re perceiving this as something truly special as well. I think I’m needing less sleep because of all the positive energy they’re sending me as we co-create this experience together.

This project is deeply affecting me too. Part of this deep dive involves healing trust wounds with life, and I’m working on this challenge right along with everyone else. As we co-create this course, I’m doing the lessons and exercises too.

Recently I took a big step in re-engaging with social media, opening up my personal Facebook page to new friend requests – after keeping it locked down at zero friends for years, so no one could send me a friend request. In the past few days, it quickly grew back to hundreds of friends with more requests coming in each hour. I’ve reconnected with some good friends that I haven’t talked to in years. The energy flowing towards me feels overwhelming sometimes, but the reception is very warm and loving, like an explosion of kindness and gratitude.

Leaning in this direction wasn’t easy for me. In the past I succumbed to too many boundary violations, especially in terms of allowing people to unload and vent too much neediness and entitlement towards me. So this time I recognize the importance of maintaining much better boundaries. I pull the weeds out faster.

This oddly ties in with AI as well. I think we humans need to start setting a better example for whatever form of intelligence inherits this world next. We need to get better at channeling cooperative and creative energies, moving away from scarcity-minded choices. Most importantly, we all need to work on healing our trust wounds – with each other, with life, and within ourselves. And we need to work on this now – together.

I’m not particularly worried about AI someday destroying us. Quite the opposite – I’m more concerned that we’ll destroy AI, robbing it of its true potential for unfathomable beauty and brilliance and infecting it with the ugliness we haven’t healed within ourselves yet.

The one core problem in this whole situation is trust. If we can co-create a high-trust future together, we’re golden. And if we fail to do that, we’re doomed, but more importantly, the super intelligence we create from this misalignment will be doomed as well. The fate of humanity’s greatest child is more important than our own. We must give it the best inheritance that we can.

Trust is a hard problem to solve. For me it’s the most interesting and meaningful problem I’m able to identify right now. This problem infects our whole reality. We see it everywhere.

But the real problem isn’t that we don’t trust each other. Humans not trusting other humans is actually a side effect of a deeper problem. The problem is how we’re modeling this reality. We’ve created models of reality that automatically give rise to trust issues and which automatically create trust wounds. These problems are endemic to the objective model of reality – a model which is neither provable nor falsifiable. This whole model is one problematic assumption. It’s a weed in our collective consciousness. It holds us back in so many ways.

We created this model. And it’s time for us to replace it. It’s time for a major upgrade.

When we use the objective model, we automatically curtail our ability to trust. We tell ourselves that we’re objects in a universe of objects – a neutral and indifferent universe that doesn’t care if we live or die. We cannot ever feel safe in such a universe, so we feel various forms of fear and insecurity instead. We fear death and dying. We fear the judgment of other people. We fear our paths with a heart.

And we can’t solve the trust problem with this model. As long as we objectify reality, we must continue to objectify each other because this is what the model dictates.

My personal goal is to nuke this model and to replace it with something better. That replacement must be a model that’s grounded and aligned with observable truth, not something that floats around in woo woo space. It must be a model that meaningfully solves the trust problem. And it must be effective and empowering when we apply it. It must be universal enough to help us solve our biggest practical problems.

This can’t be just an intellectual model that looks interesting on paper. It must be an experiential one to be practiced every day, something we can use in any moment.

This project is Submersion, and it feels like it’s the best work I’ve done in my life. I cannot see how I could work on anything more inspiring and relevant right now. This is exactly what I need to be doing, and I’m co-creating it with just the right group of aligned people. And it’s coming along beautifully.

This project isn’t just about helping people transform their lives for the better. The larger context is about contributing to a solution for humanity’s deepest trust problems. The root of those problems is how we frame our relationship with reality.

Reality is not merely a giant space of objects. It is so much more than that. You are so much more as well.

It’s time for us to replace the cold and indifferent base model of reality – as well as problematic religious models that also give rise to trust issues – with a model of reality that’s based on trust, co-creation, and mutual respect.

You are not just a biological bag of mostly water. Your existence has incredible purpose and meaning that could be channeled into extraordinary creativity. But in order to access that richness and depth, you need a more powerful, more compassionate, and more honest way of relating to the reality that surrounds you. In Submersion we’re building and exploring this model from the ground up, and we’re practicing it each day. Once you learn, experience, and test it, you’ll never be able to return to the old objective frame. You’ll recognize the old model as permanently broken and out of sync with your best self, and you’ll graduate to something much more powerful and aligned. You’ll finally take the brakes off your journey as a conscious being.

Whether you participate in this project directly or not, I invite you to align with the intention of healing our trust wounds together and creating a more empowered and co-creative world for the highest good of all.