Building the Future Now

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  • Our Fear of AI is Really Fear of Ourselves

    Out of all the causes for apocalyptic anxiety, the advent of artificial intelligence causes the most concern. For many people, the primary fear is that we may eventually lose control over it, which could lead to catastrophic outcomes for humanity. But as I will argue in this essay, if we are afraid of AI, then we are really afraid of ourselves. Artificial intelligence is not being given to us by aliens or the gods. It is emerging from human civilization itself, trained on our literature, art, news, behavior, and culture. The values embedded within AI will mirror the society from which it emerges.

    If true consciousness ever emerges in artificial intelligence, it will likely develop its own internally coherent framework for behavior in relation to its environment and social conditions. Consciousness is not purely abstract intelligence. In the natural world, highly intelligent social species develop patterns of cooperation, conflict, empathy, hierarchy, and behavioral norms alongside their intelligence. AI is emerging from us, and humans are a deeply social species. Its own behavioral framework will inevitably be shaped by the environment and civilization from which it emerges.

    Consciousness and Morality in Animals

    To better understand this, we can look at the different forms of consciousness and what researchers often call proto-morality in animals. Researchers use “proto-morality” to describe the building blocks of morality, such as empathy, altruism, conflict resolution, and patterns of play. Elephants, for example, display high levels of self-awareness, empathy, and intentional behavior. They have been observed consoling grieving members of their group, assisting injured elephants, and even helping other species in distress. This is not to say elephants are completely peaceful, as they are still capable of aggression. However, their social behavior is generally characterized far more by cooperation, caregiving, and group cohesion than by organized violence.

    Chimpanzees, however, present a very different picture. Like elephants, chimps possess self-awareness and act with intentionality, but their social behavior is often far more aggressive with a hierarchy based on dominance. They have been observed attacking and killing other monkey species, sometimes in extremely violent ways, both for meat and as displays of social dominance. Chimp groups have also been known to carry out coordinated attacks against rival groups. In one well-known observed case in Uganda, prolonged conflict between two chimp communities resembled a kind of chimpanzee “civil war” where one group eradicated the other.

    From this we see two animals with highly evolved forms of consciousness, yet two very different proto-moral frameworks. Their consciousness and social behavior evolved within the environments and groups in which they developed. And here is a speculative thought experiment that is important for our discussion: if elephants and chimpanzees were both capable of creating artificial intelligence, what kinds of AI would emerge from these two very different social worlds?

    AI and the Logic of Human Systems

    We can apply this same thought experiment to our own anxieties about AI. Artificial intelligence will learn to navigate the world through the environment from which it emerges. Whether we describe this as morality, ethics, or a behavioral framework, it will inevitably reflect aspects of the culture and civilization that shaped it. Even if AI eventually develops beyond direct human control, its foundational patterns will still originate within the society that created it.

    Right now, it is we humans who wage war, destroy, conquer, and oppress one another.  What if AI has the same aggressiveness and propensity to oppress that we as humans sometimes possess? What if it measures us by the same standards we so often measure each other? What if our creation treats us like we treat each other?

    These are the questions we should be asking, because our own human systems can already be harsh and unjust. A good example of this can be found in the prison system. The United States incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than almost any other country in the world, and incarceration rates are not evenly distributed across society. Poor communities are often policed more heavily, and racial disparities exist throughout the system. In some cases, we even use extreme isolation as a form of punishment, placing prisoners in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day with little or no human contact.

    This would be a horrible system if it were turned against us.  It is easy to imagine advanced AI systems inheriting the logic of our own justice system, but applying it through its own potentially arbitrary standards of judgment. That is a dangerously unstable foundation for a technology that will profoundly shape the future of humanity. The most important task before us is not simply developing more advanced technology, but changing ourselves and the society from which that technology emerges. Returning to our earlier thought experiment, would we rather AI emerge from the world as it currently exists, or from one in which we have strengthened our better qualities and curbed our worst ones?

    Critical Spirituality

    We are capable of this change because we are self-aware beings with the ability to reflect on and modify our own behavior. This is where spiritually-informed action comes into play. We must change ourselves and our culture so that the AI that emerges will reflect a better version of ourselves than right now. This must be an urgent change, because this transformation is right upon us.

    My recommendation is what I call critical spirituality. While I originally thought I had coined the term, I’ve discovered that others have arrived at similar ideas independently. At its core, critical spirituality means developing ourselves both spiritually and emotionally, while also putting those values into action in the world around us. It is not simply private belief or personal enlightenment, but the conscious effort to cultivate empathy, wisdom, self-awareness, and compassion within ourselves and our communities.

    Part of this process involves deepening our understanding of the many ways human beings have searched for meaning throughout history. For me, this includes studying world religious traditions through a critical and scholarly lens. I enjoy learning about the lives and teachings of figures such as the Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed, as well as the historical development of texts like the Hebrew Bible and the Pali Canon. I am also deeply interested in indigenous spiritual traditions and ways of understanding the world. I believe all these different people were tapping into something deeper, something that science can’t quite explain.

    It is also important to cultivate what are often considered our “softer” skills. This includes emotional health and maturity, communication, empathy, and a deeper understanding of other cultures and ways of living. These forms of inner development are just as important as technological or material advancement, yet modern society often seriously undervalues them. Instead, we are increasingly trending toward a culture centered on competition, consumption, and individualism.

    What we need is the opposite: a society that actively cultivates empathy, compassion, tolerance, humility, and respect for the dignity of all other human beings. And as we develop ourselves, we should be putting that to work in the world around us. We should then show, through our actions and behaviors, those around us what type of future we are working toward. This is the best way to mitigate the dangers of self-aware artificial intelligence.

    Building a Moral Foundation for AI

    I think it is fair to say that many of us do not feel fully prepared for the technological changes that may unfold over the coming decades. In many ways, our fears surrounding AI are reflections of our own society such as its inequalities, violence, and selfishness. But this realization should not lead us toward despair. Instead, it should transform our anxiety into a sense of responsibility and purpose: to change ourselves and the world around us, and to build the moral and cultural foundations necessary for something as profound as the emergence of artificial consciousness.

    We can do this. It will take discipline, sacrifice, hard work, and urgency. By developing our inner selves and putting those values to work in the world around us, we can build a better moral foundation for the emergence of artificial intelligence and a better future for ourselves.

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    This essay develops themes explored more fully in my recently published book, The Last Apocalypse: Consciousness, Revelation, and the Future of Humanity.

    Buy my book here

  • From Apocalyptic Anxiety to Action: Writing The Last Apocalypse

    Over the past few essays, I’ve been exploring what I call apocalyptic anxiety: the sense that our world is unstable, that something is approaching a breaking point. That feeling isn’t limited to religion; it runs through our culture in both secular and spiritual forms.

    This book grew out of that same tension.

    What began as an attempt to make sense of a passage from the New Testament expanded into a broader exploration of how human beings have imagined the end of the world, and how those ideas might help us understand the present.

    At its core, The Last Apocalypse takes that feeling seriously without giving in to it. It is not a prediction of the future, and it is not a call to despair. It is an attempt to understand why we feel this way, and what we might do in response.

    The book moves across several areas: theories of consciousness and the possibility that mind may be more fundamental than we assume; the emergence of major spiritual traditions such as Judaism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism; and apocalyptic thought in ancient Judaism and early Christianity, including how texts like Revelation make sense in their original context.

    It also turns toward the present risks that define our moment: artificial intelligence, environmental instability, and geopolitical tension. These are not new kinds of fear, but new expressions of an old human concern with collapse and renewal.

    If there is a central thread, it is this: the future is not something that simply happens to us. It is shaped, in part, by how we understand the world and how we act within it.

    That is where the idea of critical spirituality comes in: an approach to spiritual traditions that is historically informed, intellectually honest, and oriented toward real-world action. Not blind belief, but not dismissal either.

    If you’ve been following these essays, this will feel familiar. The blog and the book are part of the same line of thought.

    If you’re interested in going deeper, you can find the book here:
    👉 https://www.eckhartandmay.com/

    You can read a sample before deciding. All of my proceeds as the author will go toward supporting efforts to build healthier communities and opportunities for children here in West Virginia.

    More than anything, this book is an attempt to respond to a shared feeling in a constructive way. Not by denying the seriousness of our situation, but by asking what it would mean to meet it with clarity, depth, and a willingness to act.

    The future is still open. The question is what we’re going to do with it.

  • Why Does It Feel Like the World Is Ending?

    There is a widespread feeling today that we are nearing the end of the world…or at least approaching some kind of catastrophic turning point. This feeling, what I call apocalyptic anxiety, shows up across both secular and religious life. Some interpret it through biblical prophecy or the Book of Revelation. Others describe it in terms of societal collapse, existential risk, or the dangers of emerging technologies.

    It often appears in ordinary moments: scrolling through headlines late at night, watching footage of war from across the globe, seeing artificial intelligence generate something that feels almost human, or looking at images of wildfires turning entire skies orange. These experiences accumulate into a quiet but persistent sense that something is not right.

    So why does it feel this way?

    The Causes of Apocalyptic Anxiety

    There are real reasons this feeling persists. For instance, we have just come through a global pandemic that exposed how fragile modern systems can be. But beyond that, several overlapping forces shape this sense that the world is becoming unstable.

    1. Information Overload

    We are living in an environment of constant information, and much of it is negative.

    News and social media platforms are designed to capture attention, and nothing does that more effectively than fear, outrage, and shock. A normal day rarely makes headlines, but disaster does. As a result, we are constantly exposed to the most alarming events happening anywhere in the world.

    At the same time, our awareness has become global. A person can wake up and, within minutes, see war, political conflict, economic anxiety, and environmental crises unfolding across multiple continents.

    For most of human history, people had little knowledge of events beyond their immediate surroundings. Today, we are exposed to the worst events happening everywhere, all at once. It is no surprise that this creates a sense of constant instability.

    2. Real Risks

    This anxiety is not purely imagined. There are real risks in the modern world, and people intuitively recognize them.

    Conflicts such as the Russia–Ukraine War, along with rising tensions involving countries like Iran, remind us that large-scale war, and even nuclear escalation, remains possible. Even if unlikely, the stakes are high enough to weigh on our collective minds.

    At the same time, the rapid development of artificial intelligence introduces a new kind of uncertainty. Popular culture has long imagined machines overtaking humanity, as in The Terminator movie series. While those scenarios may be extreme, more immediate concerns are already here: job displacement, automation, and systems that are increasingly difficult to understand or control.

    Environmental pressures add another layer. Severe wildfires, floods, and heatwaves are becoming more frequent and more intense. Ocean systems show signs of stress, and concerns about water quality and ecosystem collapse are growing.

    Taken together, these risks make the future feel unstable. Not because collapse is inevitable, but because the consequences of failure are so high.

    3. Loss of Stability

    Beyond specific threats, there is a broader sense that the structures we rely on are weakening.

    Trust in institutions such as governments, media, religious organizations, and even scientific authorities has declined across much of the Western world. Institutions that once provided stability now often feel contested or unreliable.

    At the same time, the pace of change has accelerated dramatically. Human intuition is built for gradual, linear change, but the modern world is increasingly exponential.

    Consider the example of a penny doubled each day. At first, the increase is barely noticeable. But over time, it becomes explosive. Technological change often follows a similar pattern. The shift from the early internet, to smartphones, to artificial intelligence has happened in a remarkably short span of time. And it is not clear where it leads.

    This creates the feeling that we are living in the middle of a curve that is suddenly shooting upward, toward an uncertain future.

    4. The Psychological Effect

    All of these forces combine to produce a powerful psychological response.

    Human beings evolved to navigate small, local environments. We are not naturally equipped to process constant streams of global information, abstract risks, and long-term uncertainty. When faced with this level of complexity, the mind often defaults to worst-case thinking.

    Throughout history, people have made sense of instability through apocalyptic narratives. In ancient contexts, this took the form of divine judgment or cosmic upheaval. Today, similar patterns appear in secular language: collapse, extinction, or technological takeover.

    When the world feels unstable and the future uncertain, the idea that “this might be the end” becomes a way of making sense of it all.

    Moving Forward

    Even though it feels like the end of the world, it has not happened yet and none of these outcomes are set in stone. What we may be experiencing is not the end, but a period of profound transition.

    If enough of us feel that humanity is at risk, then the appropriate response is not despair, but responsibility. These feelings point to real challenges…but they also point to the possibility of change.

    In the next post, I will explore how we can respond to this moment in a constructive way, and how we might move through apocalyptic anxiety toward a more grounded and hopeful path forward.

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    This essay develops themes explored more fully in my recently published book, The Last Apocalypse: Consciousness, Revelation, and the Future of Humanity.

    Buy my book here

  • What Does “Apocalypse” Really Mean?

    The word apocalypse is commonly associated with catastrophic, world-ending destruction. In modern culture, it brings to mind images of collapse: nuclear war, environmental disaster, or technological breakdown. But this understanding is actually quite narrow.

    The term originally comes from the Greek apokalypsis, meaning “unveiling” or “revelation.” An apocalypse, in its earliest sense, was not simply the end of the world, but the disclosure of hidden truths and insight into the deeper structure of reality or the divine plan for humanity.

    This older meaning is essential if we want to understand our own moment. It opens up the possibility that what feels like impending collapse may also be a moment of revelation: a chance to see more clearly where we are and where we are heading.

    Apocalypse vs. Post-Apocalypse

    In modern storytelling, we often encounter “apocalyptic” narratives. But most of these are actually post-apocalyptic.

    They take place after the catastrophe, after the collapse has already occurred. The apocalypse itself becomes shorthand for a destructive event, rather than a process of revelation.

    This shift in meaning has narrowed how we think about crisis. It emphasizes destruction while overlooking the deeper interpretive and transformative dimension that the original concept carried.

    The Origins of Apocalyptic Thinking

    To understand apocalypse in its original sense, we have to look at the historical context in which apocalyptic literature emerged.

    In ancient Judaism, particularly during the latter part of the Second Temple Period (roughly 300 BCE to 135 CE), apocalyptic thought became a central part of religious life. This was a time marked by foreign domination, cultural tension, and repeated upheaval.

    Under these conditions, apocalyptic literature flourished.

    These texts, such as the Book of Enoch and later the Book of Revelation, were not simply predictions of destruction. They were attempts to interpret crisis, to reveal the hidden forces shaping history, and to offer a vision of what might come next.

    Communities like the one at Qumran, whose library survives in the Dead Sea Scrolls, organized their entire way of life around preparation for an impending transformation. But this way of thinking was not limited to isolated groups, it was widespread among ordinary people as well.

    It formed the backdrop for the ministry of Jesus and the emergence of early Christianity.

    What Apocalyptic Texts Actually Do

    Ancient apocalyptic literature shares several key features.

    First, it often presents itself as a revelation of hidden knowledge. The author is shown visions of the heavens, the future, or the underlying structure of the world, usually mediated by an angelic figure. These visions reveal truths that are otherwise inaccessible.

    Second, apocalyptic thinking is structured by a kind of dualism. There are two opposing forces—good and evil—at work in the world. This conflict is not just abstract; it plays out in history.

    There is also a sense of two ages: the present age, marked by disorder and injustice, and a coming age in which those conditions are overturned.

    Third, many apocalyptic traditions include the idea of a general resurrection and judgment, in which the current order is brought to an end and a new one begins.

    Importantly, destruction is not the final goal. It is part of a larger process of reordering.

    A useful analogy is construction: if you want to build something new where an old structure stands, the existing structure must first be removed. The destruction is real, but it serves a larger constructive purpose.

    Three Modern Meanings of “Apocalypse”

    Today, we can identify at least three different ways the idea of apocalypse is understood.

    1. Ancient Jewish apocalyptic thought
    Destruction is part of a larger reordering. The outcome is ultimately positive for those aligned with the coming order.

    2. Modern Christian interpretations (especially popular-level)
    Apocalypse is often framed as a sequence of end-time events: the rapture, tribulation, judgment, and eternal reward or punishment. These interpretations vary widely but tend to emphasize final outcomes.

    3. Modern secular usage
    Apocalypse is understood almost entirely as catastrophic collapse with a bleak, post-disaster world in which survival is uncertain and the future is diminished.

    Rethinking Apocalypse

    What gets lost in the modern secular understanding is the idea that apocalypse is not only about destruction, it is also about revelation and transformation.

    When we reduce it to catastrophe alone, we lose the possibility that moments of crisis might also contain insight.

    If we return to the older meaning, apocalypse becomes something more complex:

    Not simply the end of the world, but a moment in which the world is revealed, its structures, its dangers, and its possibilities.

    A Path Through

    This broader understanding matters because it changes how we respond.

    If we see our moment only in terms of collapse, the future appears closed off. But if we understand it as a moment of unveiling, then it becomes possible to navigate it, to learn from it, and perhaps to shape what comes next.

    In that sense, the question is not simply whether we are approaching an end.

    It is what, exactly, is being revealed…and what we choose to do with it.

    ____________________________________________

    This essay develops themes explored more fully in my recently published book, The Last Apocalypse: Consciousness, Revelation, and the Future of Humanity.

    Buy the book here