We were not made for this. As sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson wrote, we evolved as a community-based species with a primary attachment to our local tribe and a secondary attachment to our nuclear family. The life of the community was our major focus.

If we feel safe in our community, we are able to go deeper in life. The ego’s concerns are simple – power and safety. If the ego has enough power to feel safe, we are able to move beneath the ego to the realm of the soul, which is actually more in touch with reality than the ego. It is the soul that invites us to explore our shadows, the parts of ourselves that have remained unexplored. It is also the soul that allows us to identify and humbly accept our dark sides, painfully learning to minimize their impact where possible.

From Greek mythology to twentieth century poetry, we have centuries of literature that speak to the depth of human experience. In a world in which illness was rampant, death always just around the corner, and democracy barely understood, our grounding in community still somehow gave us a kind of stability that enabled us to look inward.

I am not glossing over injustices like slavery, servitude, the cruelty of monarchs, or the devastation of pandemics. I am saying it was a simpler time in which we were not bombarded with reams of information the human brain was not designed to process with the rapidity with which it arrives.

The White House releases a daily barrage of garbage, designed to overwhelm us into a numb acquiescence. The left-brain heavy, right-brain deficient scions who rule Silicon Valley, and increasingly our planet, are clueless about the AI forces they are unleashing, forces about which they understand alarmingly little.

We live in an economy addicted to speed. No publishing company gives a new author a three book deal. If the first book doesn’t sell, you’re done. In today’s postliberal economy, if it cannot be measured quarter to quarter, it will not be funded. In fact, if it cannot be measured quantitatively, it does not exist. Love becomes a meaningless term. Hope, trust, desire, and sadness cannot be measured, so they are given little attention. Notions like acedia (spiritual torpor) are no longer even in our lexicon.

Even baseball, the national pastime, has succumbed to sabermetrics. General managers are obsessed with data, while almost no one looks at team chemistry. The two teams in this year’s World Series are remnants that show us the importance of team spirit. I’m grateful for that little gift to my favorite spectator sport.

Ironically, as we have made ourselves more godlike, our humanity has been greatly diminished. In a recent column in the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman identifies several ways in which we have become gods. First, with the arrival of the artificial brain, with godlike arrogance we have disconnected intelligence from the human body.

Second, via the new galaxy of cyberspace, the internet and social media have developed an omniscience that tells us everything, all the time. Even our television sets know our preferences and share them with the gods. Third, we’ve split the atom, creating our own potential Noah-like flood that can wipe the earth free of humans.

Fourth, through the deep learning of artificial intelligence, we are apprehending mysteries previously the sole purview of the Creator. The world of mathematics has been upended by the ability of artificial intelligence to solve problems the greatest minds on earth have been struggling with for centuries.

Fifth, along with nuclear war and AI, through climate change we have given ourselves a third way to end the earth as we know it. Friedman says that through quantum computing and fusion energy, artificial intelligence will eventually enable us to develop anything from the molecular level up.

I have a mason jar I picked up at a little shop in Hanalei, Hawaii that is imprinted with the words, Slow Yourself Down. Cathy picked up a sweatshirt with the same slogan. She wears it all the time. If we are to survive, let alone thrive in this information-saturated world, we must slow ourselves down and take charge of what we are taking into our being.

I memorize a few poems each year. This year I’ve memorized two that speak to our current circumstances. The first is from the late Wendell Berry, and the second is from David Whyte’s book of poetry, River Flow.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be

I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things, who do not tax their life with forethought of grief.

I come into the presence of still water, and I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Self-Portrait

It does not interest me if there is one god or many gods. I only want to know if you belong, or feel abandoned, if you know despair, or can see it in others.

I want to know if you know how to live in this world with its harsh need to change you. If you can look back with firm eyes saying, this is where I stand.

I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living, falling toward the center of your longing.

I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequences of love, and the bitter unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have been told in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God.