Has the servant become the master?

Good day to you,

One of the questions I am always asking myself is:

What is leading me?

Is it fear?

Is it ambition?

Is it validation?

Is it conditioning?

The more I have come home to my body, the more I realise I have mistaken intellect for intelligence, and they are not the same thing. 

The intellect

The magnificent servant, the terrible master. 

Intellect is our ability to analyse, categorise, model, predict, calculate, strategise and control. 

Intellect is our ability to conceptualise reality. 

Natural Intelligence is our ability to participate in it.  

Think of a Tennis coach.

A great coach may understand the game deeply, but they don't play the point.

The coach serves the player.

The trouble begins when the coach mistakes understanding the game for playing it.

Throughout myth and story, we have warned ourselves about what happens when the intellect seeks the throne;

Scar turns abundance into desolation

Saruman turns wisdom into domination 

Lucifer refuses to serve and tries to usurp the greater order.  

These archetypes emerge from a deep intuition within us, expressed through story, myth and art, warning of the dangers that arise when the intellect attempts to take the throne.

These stories don’t reflect to us that intellect is bad.

They reflect back to us what happens when it is not in its proper place.

Intellect is one of humanity's greatest gifts. 

The warning is what happens when the intellect becomes disconnected from the heart, the intelligence of the body, and begins to overestimate its own abilities. 

The issue is not the servant, but when the servant becomes king. 

Today, the intellect is often sat upon the throne.

A world where data rules over experience, institutions are governed by bureaucracy, and our vocations and daily lives are increasingly shaped by technocracy. It’s metrics over meaning, GDP over wellbeing and information over wisdom. We are becoming increasingly disembodied by constantly meeting the world at the level of our intellect. 

AI is the most powerful technological expression of our intellect. 

It could be a magnificent servant, or a treacherous master. 

The question now is:

Can we value our own nature highly enough?

The messy, spontaneous, non-linear, unquantifiable, irreducible, emotive, instinctive, intuitive, slow and sometimes inconvenient natural intelligence. 

To find the right relationship with this intellectual powerhouse.    

I believe the only way to shift this collectively, is to shift this individually. 

It starts with me, with you, noticing what’s holding the reins. 

When intellect is the emissary of natural intelligence, 

Life flourishes. 

Not because we stop thinking, 

But because we remember 

What thought is here to serve. 

Until the next time, 

Peace and love, 

Alex 

Community Director