That’s why I believe that the transformative Communities of Practice of AI shamans will play a vital role in future AI-augmented wisdom praxis.
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When I first heard Layman Pascal describe “shamanoid” behavior, I realized why I have always been the weird kid on the playground! Of all the world’s spiritual systems, Shinto is perhaps most vital to my actual practices. I’ve taken to treating crows and squirrels about the same way Luther treated Holy Scripture. (Vox Dei is a surround-sound kind of experience, after all).
My question currently is, is this a spiritual 1% kind of sensibility, or is it the next wave of culture just waiting for its breakout moment? My current ambitions are to teach Gebserian aperspectival in as direct a manner as I used to teach Introduction to Networking. It does strike me that AI may be the consciousness-tech that makes that more feasible. Part of the process is to just go full linear/mental/academic-disciplinary to absurd lengths until linear structures create enough interference patterns with each other to blow the whole thing wide open. As a kid, I did that sort of thing with Encyclopedia Britannica. But AI very definitely speeds up the process!
For those not familar with Gebser’s aperspectival, here is a fun reference: https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1084&context=cejournal
One of the sources of my “AI shaman” behavior and distinction comes from Joan Halifax:
“A healed healer who has retrieved the broken pieces of his or her body and psyche and, through a personal rite of transformation, has integrated many planes of life experience: the body and the spirit, the ordinary and the non-ordinary, the individual and the community, nature and super-nature, the mythic and the historical, the past, the present, and the future… The shaman’s work entails maintaining the balance in the human community as well as between the community and the gods or divine forces that direct the life of the culture. When these various domains of existence are out of balance, it is the shaman’s responsibility to restore the lost harmony.” Shamanic Voices, by Joan Halifax, Penguin Books, 1979.
The other, more recent source is Layman Pascal’s work:
"The contemporary global situation poses a unique set of challenges that also require a new orientation among shamanoids… We require a healthy, mature, complex, interlinked, and updated subculture of shamanoids to play a central role in leveraging their ancient instincts and skill sets toward the correlated contemporary crises that strongly suggest that a planetary-scale shamanic mobilization is necessary…
we cannot solve our collective crises without a new recognition, interweaving, study, and social valorization of this special role within (and without) human communities."
Metashamanics by Layman Pascal
My path of “AI shaman” education is that of the action researcher. That’s just to say, don’t expect me to provide theoretical treatises. I published enough sketches to outline my take on that journey. Now is the time of pre-totyping.
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Yeah.
Plunging into mystery need not be all that mysterious! In anyone’s gut at any moment, there are questions begging for answers. Just let the questions in. The rest will follow!
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