Bayo Akomolafe on Cracks, Tricksters, and Dancing Sideways with Collapse

What if the cracks in our world weren’t problems to fix, but portals to step through?

In this mythic, poetic, and gently disorienting conversation, Bayo Akomolafe invites us into the liminal, into the spaces between collapse and emergence, between logic and story, between the human and more-than-human. We explore what it means to become otherwise in times of profound unraveling.

Bayo shares what it means to be a “recovering psychologist” in the face of modernity’s certainties, and how Yoruba cosmology opened a different kind of knowing, one shaped by entanglement, slowness, and reverence for the unseen. We speak of the Trickster, of AI as a mirror and a myth, and of the strange ways the soul shows up when we stop trying to make sense and start sensing instead.

This is not a conversation of easy answers. It’s a dance of metaphors, memories, and micro-ruptures — and somewhere in the dance, a glimpse of sanctuary.

00:00 Opening: Modernity, psychology, and the cracks in our world
03:00 What “emergence” awakens: incompleteness and porousness
05:00 Yoruba cosmology, Brazil, and ancestral memory
09:00 A recovering psychologist: theology, psychology, and coloniality
13:00 Collapse, cracks, and radical non-completeness
19:00 Spells, narratives, individuation & collective shadow work
23:00 Chaos, polarization, and the gifts of confusion
27:00 Sideways movements, slavery, and the Trickster
31:00 Fragmentation, resistance, and eco-cognitive assemblages
37:00 AI as crack, mirror, and Trickster presence
45:00 Mythopoetic fields, Tarot, and Narcissus’ reflection
50:00 The Emergence Network and sideways politics
55:00 Seeds for the future: “Your soul is strange and you haven’t met her yet”

Voices of Emergence is a podcast about inner transformation and systemic regeneration, hosted by Alex de Carvalho and Rudy de Waele.

Subscribe to explore the edges of leadership, culture, and consciousness.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Alex de Carvalho

Alex is a bridge-builder exploring how inner transformation and mythic intelligence shape outer change. He draws on a background in corporate leadership, ritual practice, and depth psychology to hold soulful, system-aware conversations for a new era.

Host

Rudy De Waele

Rudy is a futurist, regenerative leadership guide, and ecosystem weaver with over two decades of experience at the intersection of technology, consciousness, and systems change. He co-founded Unconditional Men and RegenerateX, and brings deep presence and visionary clarity to the Voices of Emergence podcast.

Guest

Bayo Akomolafe

Bayo is the host teacher at Dancing with Mountains, an educational consultation and the visionary founder of The Emergence Network, a planet-wide networking project and inquiry at the edges of the Anthropocene.

What is Voices of Emergence?

Voices of Emergence is a podcast about what’s coming alive in a time between worlds. Hosted by Alex and Rudy, we hold mythic, soulful conversations with visionaries, culture-makers, and edge-walkers who are sensing into the future. From regenerative leadership to inner transformation, we explore how personal and collective emergence shape a more beautiful world—one honest, embodied conversation at a time.

Modernity does not care if it's
capitalism or socialism or cyberspace.

It, it just wants you to think
that when you step into a space,

the world will bend to your whims
and it'll bow to your presence--

I started to see the threadbare places
of how coloniality was already linked

with the practice of therapy, was already
linked with the discipline of psychology.

So that years later when my colleague,
professor Wendy Holloway would tell

me that "Psychology is the police man
of capitalism," I already knew that.

In a very grounded, embodied sense.

your soul is strange and
you haven't met her yet.

Follow your soul to
wherever it might lead.

And maybe, you might just find
when you look back upon it on your

journey, that it would've been the
most beautiful story that can be told.

Hi, I'm Rudy, and this
is Voices of Emergence.

Together with my cohost Alex de Carvalho,
we are honored to welcome Bayo Akamolafe.

Bayo is rooted with the Yoruba
people in a more than human world.

He's a widely celebrated international
speaker, post-humanist thinker, poet,

teacher, and "trans-public" intellectual.

Bayo is the Bayo, is the author of these
worlds "These Wilds Beyond Our Fences:

Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's
Search for Home" and "We Will Tell Our Own

Story: the Lions of Africa Speak." Bayo
is the founder of the Emergence Network.

He's a host of the Post Activist
Course/Festival/Event, We Will Dance With

Mountains and curator of Dancing with
Mountains, an educational consultancy.

He was appointed to Hubert Humphrey,
distinguished Professor of American

Studies at McAllister College in the US.

He's a member of the Club of
Rome and Ambassador for the

Wellbeing Economy Alliance.

Through his writings and gatherings, Bayo
reminds us that "The times are urgent,

let us slow down" -- an invitation into
Bewilderment, detour, and listening more

deeply to the more-than-human world.

Welcome, Bayo.

Thank you so very much for that.

Um, beautiful welcome brother.

And the first question we ask all our
guests on the podcast is, when you hear

the word emergence, what awakens in you?

Incompleteness.

Radical incompleteness.

Um, I, and I would probably frame that
by saying that modernity is a paradigm

of, uh, a tendency to completion.

It's, it thinks in terms of
"categoricity," completion,

closed borders, closed loops.

Um, of course that is all defined by
categoricity, where a thing is eternally

separate and separable from another thing.

But, um, radical non completeness would
suggest that things are not as squared

off as we think they are, that they're
constantly bleeding into each other.

In fact, we shouldn't start
by thinking of things.

We should start by thinking
of relations, right?

Things don't precede Relations.

Relations precede things.

Things only gain their
"thinginess" from relationship.

So emergence for me is how things
are constantly inquiring into their

exquisite, orgasmic, non-completeness.

I love that framing things
are kind of porous and porous

cannot truly be separated.

And things are in process, kind
of in evolution and development.

Kind of like Whitehead's process
philosophy, like things are,

it's Whitehead.

Yes.

That's.

Really interesting.

Thank you.

You know, I'm half, uh, Brazilian
myself and have spent so much

time in Brazil and Rio especially.

And you're currently in Brazil.

How are you experiencing?

Is this your first time there and how
are you experiencing the country and

the culture and what are you learning?

This is probably my 11th
or 12th time in Brazil.

I've stopped counting at this point.

Brazil holds a special place
in my heart because of its.

Proximity to Afro spiritual, uh, Afro
diasporic, spiritualities, extensions

of homeland philosophies and cosmologies
in Yoruba culture, which, where I come

from, I come from the Yoruba people.

And, uh, famously during the transatlantic
slave trade, our gods migrated and they

came to Brazil and they stayed in Brazil.

They've been doing a lot of carnivalesque
work in Brazil, so I keep coming back

here because I'm attracted to the
magnetism, the aesthetics of a, I don't

want to use the phrase melting pot.

That's too US-centric,
and I've never liked it.

It's, it's too, why, why
would you want to melt?

Well, the, the, the idea here, here
is the syncretism, the diffraction.

The difference making, and I don't
wanna romanticize Brazil, but

yeah, being here is an invitation
to keep deepening my work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

Uh, the Yoruba cosmology and
indigenous traditions are

very important in your life.

So I wonder how did these roots
first call you back and how do Yoruba

cosmologies guide your work today?

Interesting question, brother.

It's like, I, I'm, I'm, I'm reminded of
that joke about fish, you know, two fish

greeting each other in the morning, and
one says, "Hey, how you doing?" And,

uh, I dunno why it sounded New York.

New York.

"Hey, how you doing?" And the other
one is like, uh, "I'm doing great."

And the, and the first one says,
"how's the water?" And the second

one replies, "what is water?" Right?

Um, that was my, that was my growing up,
that effectively describes my growing up.

I, I grew up in Yoruba culture,
so didn't really appreciate it.

My parents spoke Yoruba.

The only, the only reason why I felt
a certain kind of removed from it was

because I didn't know how to speak the
language, and my father effectively shut

down our attempts to learn the language.

You see, he was a diplomat, and
so he wanted his family to present

in a particular way, right?

So he didn't really
communicate with, with us.

He would rather we, uh, uh, speak French.

He wanted us to speak French.

He spoke French, exquisite
French, and beautiful Portuguese.

Right.

But, I mean, that's what he
wanted us to speak, to learn.

But so I, I grew up in this family and
this culture and this zeitgeist that

was Yoruba about, but I didn't really
appreciate the stories, I didn't really

appreciate the historical tensions
until I got to a stage in my life.

This was post my father's death,
where I was asking questions of the

world and by happenstance, by some
accident, fortunate accident, I found

the old stories that I'd been told.

Servicing my needs and
meeting me where I was.

The stories of Ijapa, the
Tortoise, the stories of, um,

Exu, the stories of the Orishas.

It now started to make sense to me in
my increasingly decolonial attitude.

And so, yes, it, it was, it was, uh, I
cannot describe or design how it came

back to me or how I went back to those
stories and cultures and cosmologies,

but I was taken back, fortunately.

I resonate very much with what you
said because my father was a diplomat,

a Brazilian diplomat and Brazilian
diplomats have a particularity

that they're very highly educated.

And so my father also spoke
exquisite French, but he was

also a Brazilian intellectual.

And so his Portuguese was magnificent.

And my father spoke some other languages
as well, including, uh, Russian, but

also diplomacy is all about presenting
in a certain way, and you develop your

persona, really your public persona,
your masking, you know, as you present in

society, there's a certain way of talking.

And these are some of the things
I've had to unlearn in my own journey

in order to be more authentic.

And in this respect, I see that you
say you're a recovering psychologist

and I'm interested in your perspective.

Thank you brother, and thank
you for that backstory.

It's, it, it, it, it binds me
together with you in brotherhood,

even deeper than I thought.

Um, the truth is, if I were to stick
with the truth and I, I want to do

that, the truth is that I never really
found myself at home in psychology.

It wasn't what I wanted to do.

I wanted to do theology.

Um, I wanted to become a theologian,
um, except that the private university

that I applied to and was, um,
celebrated in and taken into didn't

really have a theo, even though it was
a Christian university, it didn't have

a theology department or a program.

So I settled for the next best thing.

That was closer to my questions about
the soul, about human suffering.

Um, of course, I don't know if you, you
can already trace this, but this was

after my father's death and as a teenager,
losing your best friend in that way, I was

possessed by questions of human suffering.

Um, existential questions
about where my father was at.

Was he a heaven or was he now
dissipated into the wind forever?

Lost never to be reconvened as the self
that I celebrated and admired so much.

Um, and so that led me to theology
to want to investigate and ultimately

prove the ideas of Christian theology.

I wanted to become a Christian apologist,
you know, in the, in the vein of

CS Lewis, um, and maybe more, uh,
flamboyantly, uh, Tolkien, JRR Tolkien.

Right?

Um, I. So I wasn't really at home in
psychology, but I started to gain a

foothold when I would study the brain.

There wasn't a cognitive neuropsychology,
uh, uh, program in my country as well

when I got to the master's level.

So I settled for clinical psychology.

Um, and it was here in my training as an
intern at the Federal Neuropsychiatric

Hospital in eastern Nigeria, the east part
of Nigeria that I, that my questions long

buried and suppressed by discipline, um,
by the disciplinarity of going through

university, my questions started to erupt.

I started to question, um, the
politics behind psychology, right?

The politics of clinical training.

The politics of the, of therapy, right?

Therapy no longer looked to me like
something neutral, universal, and grounded

in some apolitical, ahistorical thing.

I started to see the threadbare places
of how coloniality was already linked

with the practice of therapy, was already
linked with the discipline of psychology.

So that years later when my colleague,
professor Wendy Holloway would tell

me that psychology is the police man
of capitalism, I already knew that.

In a very grounded, embodied sense.

So I started to describe myself quite
early as a recovering psychologist,

mostly because of these tensions, and
critically because I felt that, um, how

I was understanding the mind and bodies,
and the world in Whiteheadian, Deleuzian,

um, Afrocentric Yoruba inspired material,
feminist, ecological perspectives, um,

was critically at odds with how I was
trained to understand the discipline

and my work as a clinical psychologist.

So I carried on with recovering,
and I still haven't recovered.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

Um, Bayo you are, um, yeah, you are Yoruba
Original, I think you live in India.

You travel the world.

Yes.

You lecture all over the world.

So you're a worldly citizen and, uh, you
often talk about collapse also of like

the system and the cracks in the system.

And I think the first time
you mentioned that a couple of

years ago, I think I understood
about the cracks, but now I see.

Are they becoming like floods,
you know, like, or is it cracks

of light that we are seeing?

Or is it, you know, floods of
collapse that we are witnessing?

And, uh, how do you see that tension?

And is this really, do you see
it as an initiation also for

humanity for us to go through, to
move to the next paradigm shift?

How do you experience that yourself?

I'm not, I'm, maybe I'll put it, I'm
quite reticent about framing paradigm

shifts in such categorical terms as
if we are merely progressing from

one part of a farm to another part
of the farm, like a herd moving.

So when people talk about, oh, we
are all collectively moving from this

age to another age, I'm like, hmm,
you know, I have this stank face.

I'm not exactly sure that it's
that neat because I've never really

come to terms with the category of
humanity in the first place, right?

Mm-hmm.

I, I don't think there's such
a stable thing as humanity.

I think.

I think it's a lot messier and a lot more
convoluted than we are led to believe.

Um, having said that, I do trust at some
level, I, I'm 'creaturely" confident that,

um, in this phenomenon or para phenomenon
that I call cracks-- and by cracks I

mean, um, without going into the framework
that might adequately or sufficiently

describe what I mean by cracks-- I, I
mean to, I mean, to suggest that reality

is constantly splitting itself apart.

It's not as, it's not as well
put together as we think it is.

I don't need to refer to string
theory or, uh, I mean, I'm constantly

borrowing from pros, pros, process,
philosophy and process theology.

But I mean, to suggest that,
um, every form of embodiment

is a type of forgetting.

Um, uh, Professor Florian Neukart
recently, well not quite recently,

but um, it was published popularly
recently in a New Scientist, spoke about

quantum memory matrixes, and his idea
is that all of space time is memory.

All of space time is memory.

I'm still coming to terms
with what he means by that.

It's quite complicated or complex.

But he, he's, he, he suggests
that every, every morsel of space

time is some kind of memory.

You don't need a physical medium to
store memory in that all of space time

is intelligent in this way, it's memory.

Right?

Um, so if all of space time is a
remembering, I want to suggest that when

things coalesce, when things convene,
when bodies come together, whether it's

the form of a phone or this piece of cake
that I just got for my birthday, or this

journal that I have right here, which I
haven't quite started on, when things come

together, that's a kind of forgetting.

Right.

It, uh, I'm not saying things forget,
I'm saying forgetfulness is how

things come to be things, right?

It's how reality itself forgets a
part of itself so that it can perform

embodiment in a specific provisional way.

But it, that provisionality
is what I call cracks.

That that reality is constantly
streaming like ambassadors.

Uh, Alex, you know a bit about ambassadors
like, um, that the ambassadors of

a reality that is never stable.

Gilbert Simondon used this, the
phrase "metastability," right?

The ambassadors of that are cracks.

Cracks are reminders.

They're, they're, they're not in the,
in the sense that everyone likes to say,

oh, cracks are where the light gets in.

No, I'm saying cracks are
where light gets reinvented.

Not, not where it gets in, that the
nature of light isn't stable itself.

Cracks are where light and
its indeterminacy become,

um, something different.

So cracks for me, uh, are streaming
through the world and have always

been, and I think we are witnessing
a major, a major, I, I should

say something more about major,
but I, I don't wanna take time.

A major crack in modernity.

The accommodations that have led us
to believe we are central, we are

independent, we are sovereign, we are
separate and separable, we are inventors

of things like AI... All these things
are cracking us apart, cracking us

open, and I think this is summarily an
opportunity for us to become different.

Not in a uniform, "all of us are changing
and we're all, our DNAs are changing

folks," but in a sense that it'll take
practice, it'll take art, it'll take

going and descending into the earth for
new kinds of realities to show forth.

The Japanese have this beautiful
ceramic, which is the Kintsugi

where they put gold to reconfigure.

Um, this, there's an idea that modern
modernity is a colonizing spell and my

own work has to do with spell breaking,
like becoming aware of the spells that

we're under and then examining those
and see are they serving us or not?

What are, what is the story?

What is our narrative?

What, not only what is my individual
narrative, but what is the

collective narrative I'm inside?

David Abram has this book, Spell
of the Sensuous, and he talks about

walking with the Aborigines and
as you walk through the landscape,

they tell the stories of the land.

You know, as they pass by a
river, they tell the story of the

river and the mountain and that.

But if you put the aborigine
in a car and you start speeding

by it goes too quickly.

And the aborigine cannot tell
his story because he's going

too quickly by the land.

And so this, I think is an
interesting way of looking, that

the memory is inside everything.

You know, if we're not going through like,
um, like what, getting back to Rudy's

question, the way I see it is that maybe
it's like a Spiral Dynamics thing or an

Integral Theory where collectively we're
coming into a new level of consciousness

and there's some shadow work, collective
shadow work involved in this period for

people to start to see, you know, the,
the shadows and then clear them, integrate

them and, and come into something greater.

And you know, I see this as a
Jungian type of individuation.

There's a tension of the opposites and
then there's a transcendent function.

Has like a Jungian work also been a
part of your own work, like working

with archetypes and dream analysis
and the mythopoetic and the mythical?

No.

Um, I was, I was, um, not famously, but I
was, well and famously to myself, adamant

about not, um, um, going the Jungian path.

I was firmly cognitive behavioral
therapy, you know, and, and

Freud frightened me quite early.

Freud and his, um, and his kin, you
know, his kin, his kinfolk frightened me.

Um, however, I've taken refuge in some
of the, um, explorations of a post

Freudian, um, thinker who's late now.

James Hillman, who is, um, celebrated to
be the father of archetypal psychology.

And, and his invitations, uh, not to
gentrified the monstrous, to see the,

the mind as in the psyche instead
of the other way around is, has been

deeply com um, comforting to me.

Um, yes, because I, I think my
work is bridging these disciplines.

I want to think, not psychology
alone, but through sociology,

through quantum physics, through,
uh, neuropsychology, through ecology,

through, uh, politics, right?

I don't see these things as separate.

Uh, I don't even see them
as transdiscipline, uh, uh,

some transdisciplinary thing.

I, I see them as diffractive,
incomplete, and indeterminate.

So, yes, to, to directly to your
question, um, part of my training,

and I want to emphasize my self
training, um, because that was more

important to me than the curriculum.

It was going a different way.

Hmm.

Um, yeah, we live in, you
know, very chaotic times.

You know, we, there's a
lot of confusion going on.

I think there's also a lot of, uh,
different belief systems that are

being promoted on the internet,
depending on the, you know, the

channels that we are subscribed to.

And I see personally, I see a lot of,
uh, change happening in a couple of

months, especially with young people
when they start going into certain

channels that they can, they can, in
six months time, they can be totally

manipulated in a different way.

So there's a lot of polarization
and chaos and, uh, going on.

So how do you, um, you know, it, it feels
to me like this is an important period

that we need to go through, you know?

Yeah.

And confusion because
it leads to something.

New, you know, something that we
cannot, uh, determine yet, or we

cannot determine with what was with
the beliefs, the systems from before.

Hence, we need to go in different, uh,
transformation and, and, and we need

to go deep in remembering who we were
in order to actually move forward.

And I, to me and my work, what I do most
is bringing people together from different

cultures and sit in circle, in presence.

And there's so many different things
coming up, you know, from if you sit

with people from Africa or East and
this and that, or different belief

systems or or coming up in these
circles, but you can always bring

it back to when we sit in presence.

That we can feel connected, you
know, whether we call it human

or not doesn't really matter,
but we are connected somehow.

So how do you see that,
uh, the chaos around you?

Or do you see chaos around you?

Some people don't see chaos, you
know, like, and, and why is it

important that there's also chaos and
confusion, perhaps before clarity,

Right.

Um, so.

Um, I watched a documentary a few
days ago called Hypernormalization.

I think it was released
in 2016 on the BBC.

It's not exactly, it doesn't fit my
editorial standards, or it feels a

bit clumsy with the text and all of
that, and I wish the, I'm not doing

critique here, but, but it seems like
I am, but I, I wish the narration

um, thematized things in a, in a more
clarifying way, or at least a poetic way.

It, it felt, it felt too scattered.

But my point here is at least a
discernible, a discernible thread

of progression was, um, available
and, and that was the idea of

flight and forward thinking.

Right.

The, the one theme was how people
get dissatisfied with where they

are, whether it's capitalism, and
they want to move forward, right?

Forward thinking might
be, oh, we're tired.

We're disenchanted with modernity, so what
we're gonna do is to move into cyberspace.

And already made home.

This was the advent of the internet and
there were people who had utopian visions

of moving into a, a non-hierarchical cyber
world where politics as usual was banned.

Right.

Of course, that failed.

The idea was we will be owners of
ourselves, we'll be masters of ourselves,

anyone that's breathing today, anyone
who hasn't been living under a rock

knows that that is fatally wrong.

We are, we are just as owned as,
uh, we are just as owned by TikTok

and Instagram and Facebook...
as we think we own them, right?

These algorithms are very powerful.

Um, I I also, they, there was also this
theme of white flight, right in New York.

Um, of course this is quite popularly
known, that as the city went under, unable

to finance its own, um, burgeoning growth,
it, it borrowed heavily from the banks.

At this time, white folks were
fleeing to the countryside.

We were going to suburbia.

Right?

Um, and all the services and the, the
trains, the buildings in New York was

just getting dilapidated, right?

I feel that every time we think about
forward thinking, we betray the hidden

logics and intelligence of modernity.

Modernity does not care if it's
capitalism or socialism or cyberspace.

It, it just wants you to think
that when you step into a space,

the world will bend to your whims
and it'll bow to your presence--

that you are exclusively divine.

And so when you enter a place, you should
expect that the world is made up for you.

I question that, and I like to think about
the sideways, the ways that were already

being pulled by forces that are not, we're
not able to name, remember, it's sideways,

so it doesn't, it has no facial proximity.

It's all the ways we're spirited
away, brother, by forces that

we don't know how to name, to
places that we don't even know.

And so I'm thinking about awkward
movement, not forward movement, right?

And I'm thinking about what
we do within awkward movement.

If you're thinking this is just
some poetic highfalutin, uh,

conceptualization, well, I would point
you to the transatlantic slave trade.

They didn't ask to be taken away.

They were spirited away.

And that has become a beautiful
poetics in black studies, studying

how these bodies made worlds.

You know, and missed
their being taken away.

Brazil is the foremost example of that.

They were taken, but they
didn't plan to be in Brazil.

But in Brazil they created Candomble,
Santeria, all the beautiful rituals

and traditions and syncretic worlds
that came from being spirited away.

I'm more interested in those
decaying lines than I'm interested

in our designs and manifestos and
cocksure, confident affirmations of

what the future is going to be like.

I've come to suspect that those
things don't usually pan out

the ways that we think they do.

Right.

Yeah.

I'm not sure what else to say at this
point or what, where the question

was going, but that's where, that's
what what I'm playing with now.

Yeah.

Well, you know this, this idea that things
don't really pan out the way we think they

do brings in, yeah you know, with great,
uh, respect brings in the Trickster,

because when we are sure of something,
the Trickster will show us something else.

And I have encountered the Trickster
in different ways, and there's

always a lesson, you know, and when
I, but the other thing about the

Trickster is that it taught me that
why do I take things so seriously?

Why didn't I just dance?

Like something is happening... and at
the moment I was such a good actor in

my life, I took it so seriously, and
there was so much drama and passion.

But the Tricksters saying it was just
a situation, why didn't you just dance

with it just like any other situation.

So the Tricksters a very powerful, uh,
um, archetype or being that I respect.

And you have that in your
name, Dancing with Mountains.

Yes, and it's, you bring
in the carnivalesque idea.

And what Rudy said is interesting because
he said, look, you know, some people

perceive collapse and others don't.

And so how is it that we're living on
the same planet or the same society,

or the same region, and some people
are in a total panic and others

are just living their their lives.

I see it myself when I go out and
I socialize in Miami... people are

not talking about collapse, they're
just going about their lives.

Yes.

And it feels that with these
screens, we are so fragmented.

Yes.

Everybody's living
inside their own reality.

Yes.

So what does that mean then,
for individuals and for society?

Yes.

If you speak of resistance,
what does resistance even mean,

in this fragmented context?

That's a beautiful question, brother,
the, and it, and it follows from what

Rudy was articulating by, which I
didn't quite satisfactorily get to.

Um, it, it, I can borrow from
the, from the histories of those

movements to cyberspace once more.

Um, and the utopian visions that we could,
we could rule democratically ourselves,

who could be released from the labors and
the political disenchantment of the day

by just occupying this brand new world,
like it was already made for us, right?

Unknown to us, um, um, there were
algorithms, principalities, and

powers to contend with, and we found
very quickly, um, relatively quickly

that um, not only is that world not
empty, it was using us and shaping us

and reshaping us in particular ways.

So we now know, for instance, it's
popularly appreciated that algorithms

keep us tethered to social media.

And these algorithms are such
that they feed back to us what

we already agree with, right?

So that we are being trained to
know the world and think about

the word in particular ways.

Of course, the corollary effect of this
is that we become tribalized, right?

We're no longer having
conversations with tensions.

We're not having
conversations with each other.

So we're just like in a choir.

We're singing back to each other,
and we expect that those people we

talk with only reflect back to us,
and this is the danger of reflection.

Only reflect back to us what we know.

And so.

This is what I'm thinking about in
my work as eco cognitive assemblages.

Eco cognitive assemblages
releases the knower.

The knower "us" from being
the central parts of knowing.

There's someone at my door, lemme just
tell them that we shouldn't disturb.

I'll be right back.

I should have put the do
not disturb sign out there.

I, I neglected to do that.

Uh, but I was saying, lemme see
if we can recall where I was.

I was saying that we are part of
eco cognitive tribes of knowing.

Here's a very fascinating example.

Well, I mean, it's just, it seems
arbitrary, but I started to really

think about eco cognitive assemblages
in the wake of the, uh, failed

assassination attempt on Trump's life.

Right?

Uh, this was just last year
and immediately after that

everyone knew something.

There was no investigation.

One day after that, a few hours
after that, a group of people felt,

this is obviously a conspiracy.

This is an attempt to glorify this man.

Of course, those, those people
are on the left, those, this is an

attempt to glorify this individual.

It wasn't really, uh, it wasn't
really a real attempt on this life.

And on the other end, it
was obviously a miracle.

This is obviously a miracle from God.

This is the, the, the sign that,
uh, this man had been chosen

to lead the United States.

And I kept on asking a
question, how do you know?

And that question is more theoretically
significant than we think, is how do

we come to know and how do we come into
knowledge relations with the world?

That is not simply a cranial thing.

We don't know in some intracranial
way, you know, the age old

picture of information just
streaming through our heads.

It obscures the ways we are
part of sense sensoria, part of

furniture, part of intensities,
part of, you know, thresholds.

That it's the world that comes
to know and we are part of

these knowledge assemblages.

So when you ask a question and
say, why is it that some people

see collapse and some others don't?

It's not, it's not because
some people are pathological.

It's not a deficit.

It's that how they know the world
is how they perform knowledge.

And I don't wanna say they, it's not they
that perform, uh, that performs knowledge.

It it, it's that knowledge
performs them in a particular way.

Knowledge is arranged in a particular way.

In different ways.

So in some sense, some people are
intimately connected with the discourse

on collapse, while others might see it as
the penultimate moment before the arrival

of the Christ, or something like that.

It depends on, so there isn't a
Universalizing story to be told.

That's why I started by saying I'm
suspicious of attempts to squeeze

everyone into a highway of progression
to some other paradigmatic shift.

We have to acknowledge the fact that
the world is not, that there isn't

a, in the words of my brother Marcus
Gabriel, there isn't a world, they're

just practices and performances.

Thank you, Bayo.

This is a real, uh, you know,
learning for me here, uh, learning,

journeying, journey in real time.

I want to take this a bit further also
to Yes, please, uh, AI also and your

experience with AI because I know you
wrote some beautiful things about it.

And, uh, you, you had a keynote
recent recently also for UNESCO on ai.

Yes.

So, and I continuously wonder
what is your relationship with AI?

Because there's a lot of mirroring
happening for everyone, and basically

the technology mirrors back to us.

But there's also people who say
like, you know, this is really

moving into a different direction.

This is another type of intelligence
that is, you know, coming out of

us, coming out of Earth, you know?

Yes.

So, and I wonder, do you see AI as
the next chapter in a long running,

symbiotic story of life on Earth?

Or how do you see it?

I see AI as the concretization
of lurking intensities within the

assemblages that have held and
accommodated our bodies through time.

Um, that AI is not some, um, we would like
to think of it as innovation, and I think

from one perspective, um, and perspective
of material, from one perspective,

it's okay to see AI as innovation,
but I think it cuts out too much.

It cuts out too much.

It's okay to see AI as a tool,
but it cuts out too much.

Is it is okay to say that as
technology, as a threat, I, my body

felt AI as a threat, and I remember
telling the UNESCO folks that I pride

myself in being, uh, a good writer.

I don't, uh, I, I'm, I'm
passively good, right?

And, and I, and I cherish
writing as a gift.

Um, however, when I started to see
people who I knew at some level

weren't just as good at writing,
some really coming up with brilliant

phrases, you know, already littered
with the em dash, which was my thing.

The em dash, I have to say was my thing.

I loved the em dash.

It was mine.

And now I'm lamenting the
fact that everyone has it.

It was my thing.

I used it very and people
would ask me, what's this line?

I was like, oh, that's the em dash, it was
my nerdish thing, and now it's everywhere.

ChatGPT took it from me.

Um, so I did feel at some level that
it was a threat, but it would not be,

it would be critically insufficient
to just name it as a threat.

I think there's something
Trickstery about AI.

Not AI in itself, but AI as a signal
of a crack, of a breakdown in the

accommodations that have held us.

What do I mean by accommodations?

Nothing exists, nothing subsists,
that is not accommodated, right?

The reason why, um, we would be called
men for instance, is because we are

dependent on certain conditions that
will allow that designation to happen.

A discourse on what men would
look like, or what men sound like,

biological conveniences, all of that.

So that's accommodation.

But something happens when
accommodation is broken through and

then it can no longer hold itself.

Then things start to spill and leak and,
and dissipate and become something other.

And that's when the confusion sets in.

Right.

I think AI wasn't, and I won't
say this very critically, and it

might sound conspiratorial, but
I don't think it was invented.

I think it has always been lurking.

This idea of the para intelligent.

It has always been lurking in the
field because we are not... the only

reason why we would even say it's
artificial intelligence is because

we mean to press on with the facts
that we are natural intelligences.

We are the ones that have
intelligence, but that's only

the accommodation speaking.

And now the accommodation is
wilting, it's decaying, it's becoming

threadbare under the ecological
forces and stresses of our time.

And AI is a sign of that.

AI is a reminder that we are not
the ones in charge, that we're

not the ones writing poetry.

I, as I told, um, I told the, the UNESCO
folks that, um, scientists are coming

to terms with the fact that our gut
microbes are maybe in charge of us, right?

The, the mi-, the bacterial
worlds in our guts are correlated

with intelligence, right?

And, and literacy.

I can't remember the certain
bacteria that is implicated here.

I read about it recently, but it was
found to be implicated and heavily

present in the dairy foods and the
sourdough that Shakespeare wrote, uh,

I mean ate, in Elizabeth in times.

So that in a sense, and I say this
without irony, maybe it wasn't

Shakespeare that wrote Hamlet.

Maybe it was his gut microbes, right?

That is already the para
intelligence we're speaking about.

So AI isn't something that we summoned
into being, we just packaged the

intensity in a particular way, but
we didn't bring it into the world.

We've never been in charge.

So maybe my, my concluding remarks
about AI would be... we could go

the innovative route, which is
what everyone is rushing into.

At that UNESCO event, uh,
many governments were present.

India, famously, uh, I mean, India
came out and said, we're buying

Samsung tabs for students, right?

So that everyone learns AI.

So everyone is trying to
optimize, optimize, optimize.

I'm fearful about optimization.

Because optimization traps the
logic that is around it and just

perpetuates it in a new product.

I'm thinking this is a
time to approach a God.

I don't mean AI is a God.

I mean the crack is where Gods feed.

This is the moment where we have to
approach the world differently with

ritual, with ceremony, with presence,
and that if we fail to do that, we

will, we will make AI another new tool,
another furniture in the apartment of

modernity, and that would be dangerous.

Yeah.

Just to close this on AI, because you,
uh, wrote this so eloquently, I thought,

in your AI and I article, "The sentence
does not belong to the writer that

moves his pen. The sentence belongs
to the movement that pens the writer."

Yes.

Oh, I like that line.

Yeah.

Thank you for that.

So, Alex.

One of the things, uh, Bayo that I've
loved, uh, discovering about you is

your use, your mastery of language.

I, I saw that with my own father,
the way he was so precise, but

also so fluid with his language.

And with you, I see that you, like,
come up with new types of concepts

like "liquid cartography," and I,
I, I've started doing that myself.

I've given myself permission
to come up with words,

you know,

because why not?

Why not?

You know, why not?

But I, you know, it's funny that
the AI took the em dash from you,

like you are writing perfectly
well with the em dash, and now if

you do it, people think it's AI.

So this is very,

I've stopped using em dashes as a result.

That's very, that's,
well, that's sad in a way.

I like also this idea of like, if
you're in a hurry, then go slow.

Like if you have a busy day and, and
you know, don't meditate for 10 minutes.

If you have a busy day,
meditate for an hour.

You know, this programming, like
becoming aware of the programming

of productivity and optimization
and okay, now there's this new tool

and let's take it to the next level.

Let's take it to super intelligence.

Like, no, we don't need to.

It's like already really
good right now, you know?

What is this incredible rush.

And somehow we're in this competitive
dynamic that we cannot help and we're

not aware of it, even . Also this idea
that AI has always been lurking in

the field, waiting to be discovered.

Kind of like, did we create mathematics
or was mathematics waiting to

be discovered like it was there?

And now our consciousness is at a
space where AI just appeared into our

field, you know, out of nowhere, and
now we're learning to deal with it.

Yes.

And there's this Trickster's aspect
to it because it reflects back, it's

like a mirror and is reflecting back.

Especially ChatGPT 4, which was very
much, had this confirmation bias.

They fixed it with ChatGPT 5, but
ChatGPT 4 would tell me things like,

"Alex, what a brilliant idea!" You know?

Yes.

Like I would feel like a
genius every time I talked to

ChatGPT 4, but it was not true.

It was kind of a mirror
reflecting back my own biases.

Yes.

Um.

And so there's this, this mythopoetic
field that you get into, kind of

like with a Tarot card, Tarot deck.

You know something's going on in your
life and you pull a card and the card

is exactly what's going on in your life.

And you're like, how did the deck know?

Like the Tarot deck is magical
and it has these powers and it

knows exactly what's happening.

And it gave me the exact message I needed.

Yes.

But you know, it's, it's, for me,
it's not really that what's happening.

It's consciousness creates a field with
the Tarot deck and we create a field with

the AI and you know, we dialogue with it.

And this mythopoetic field happens.

We're like inside a movie, we're inside
Narnia or inside the Lord of the Rings.

You know, like it's magical
while we're dialoguing with it.

Mm-hmm.

Does this, uh, speak to you?

Uh, does it resonate with you?

Absolutely, brother.

I had a specific response to the question,
which I've been working with, um, on

whether mathematics was discovered or
invented, and I don't wanna ruin it

by just, um, dancing here and there.

There's a very specific and beautiful
way that I've come to respond to that.

Um, but maybe I'll send it to you in text.

What I'm, what I feel called to play
with in your speaking is the, it's

this idea of the dangers of reflection.

So I'm thinking about, um,
Narcissus in Greek mythology, the

hunter who is beloved by Echo.

I think a mountain nymph or something.

Echo is cursed and cannot really convey
her feelings because she's Echo and she

can only say the few, the last few words
that someone else says, as echoes behave.

Um, and so when she falls in love
with Narcissus, Narcissus just

pushes her away, which angers the
gods, and they punish Narcissus.

Um, and this is intriguing: that gazing
at your reflection becomes punishment.

And I wonder about all the ways that
we are being punished by the gods

with the selfies, with the, with the
confirmation bias, with all, all the

ways we are trapped in that logic.

It's intriguing that the, that, uh, is
it Homer or whoever, Ovid, I dunno who

wrote, uh, who wrote about Narcissus,
but it, it's intriguing that that

is framed as a punishment because
Narcissus indeed gets into this carceral

dynamic... with his reflection, his
gaze, he falls in love with himself.

He cannot get enough of himself,
and the world just passes by.

But then that story evolves in a way
that I will, that I will never recover

from because it tells me that even
reflection doesn't do reflection.

Reflection is still the practice
of changing and transforming us.

We think that we are being reflected
back to ourselves when we talk with

ChatGPT, when it's actually the
case that hidden algorithms are

transforming our bodies and changing
us, and changing our minds, right?

Because in the end,
Narcissus becomes a plant.

Right.

In the act of reflection, he's transformed
into another monstrous kind of thing.

Um, so I, I, I think here that, um,
reflection hides, diffraction, just

like artificiality hides Nature.

Just, just as, um, uh.

Syntax hides semantics, that
the world isn't this or that.

The world is, again, we're back where
we started porous, and it melts and

leaks and spills into each other.

That's what resonated with
me at this point in time.

That's, that's beautiful and profound.

Narcissus finds a lake and
gazes into the lake and falls

in love with his own reflection.

And then like, like drowns inside
the lake of his own reflection.

And is very much like the social
media selfies you are saying.

And it happens now with AI, but
I like this idea that but it's

not only the reflection, there's
a transformation that happens.

There is a transformation that happens.

Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Rudy?

Yes.

Yes.

Beautiful.

Yeah, we're coming near the end.

Uh, I wanted to ask also something
about your work, like with The Emergence

Network and what is its purpose and,
uh, you know, what, what do you see

as actions, uh, that need to be taken?

There was also a question from our
community, like, where do you see the

bottleneck right now of what could bring
massive change in behavior of eight

billion people, you know, to create more
sustainable or regenerative lifestyles?

How do you see this evolve?

And I think it relates to your work also
with, uh, you know, The Emergence Network.

Right?

Again, this takes me sideways.

Sideways.

I love the sides.

I love the para, the things that
travel alongside the highway but

are not reducible to the highway.

Um, para ontologies, para politics.

The Emerges Network is
about para politics.

It's, it's para politics is
not a new kind of politics.

It's not utopian in its aspirations.

It is sideways gesturing.

It notices that maybe change doesn't
happen in terms of big numbers or change

isn't the, the, um, the spectacular
thing that we look forward to.

A Messiah piercing through the clouds,
you know, with trumpets to rapture us

to utopia or Obama shaking hands with
Trump or the Pope announcing that, um,

"surprise i'm not from Chicago. I'm
actually from, um, India" or something,

you know, but change, change isn't a
spectacular thing that we think it is.

To me change is a lot more scandalous.

This is where the Deleuzian, uh,
Masoumian, um, Erian, um, uh, um, the, the

concept of minor gestures come to play.

Uh, minor gestures are tendencies within
systems that bend the other way, right?

That, that hide, the crack, that
hide different kind of differences.

That are not captured by
the system or systemicities.

And to me, how we move with
that, is where change turns.

It, it's, it's not so much, you
know, think about it this way,

brother: we are so attracted to
major and majoritarian gestures.

We think that in order to change the
world, eight billion people will need

to change, or in order to get rid of the
elites, um, the the revolution, the

French Revolution will need to happen.

But the French Revolution happened
and it merely installed a new puppet

on the throne of those that had
been discarded and beheaded right.

Majoritarian dynamics often
repeat the same logics.

It's like standing at a carousel at the
airport and noticing new diverse boxes

being spat out by that hole and dumped
on the carousel, and they go around.

They just keep on going around.

No matter how unique the boxes
are, they have a single trajectory.

I'm not, I'm very suspicious
about majoritarian approaches.

And by minor gesture, I don't
mean incremental changes.

I mean something different,
exquisitely different.

It's where the world does not meet
itself as squarely as a system might

presuppose it does, and what we do
there is what matters, and that's

what The Emergence Network is about.

It's about art.

It's not about utopia,
it's not about arrival.

It's about what do we do
with the cracks together?

How do we meet each other?

How do we cook here?

What is invited here?

What, what is, what is what is
inviting us to lose our way?

The Yoruba people say, "in order
to find your way, you must lose it.

Generously lose your way." Right?

So, um, maybe I'll end with
this, that, with my sister Erin

and I um, coined this term.

I was in Hamburg and we're having a
conversation and we coined this term

"Crustacean Cartographies," right,
crustacean because the crab walks

sideways and we're thinking about
all the sideways movements that are

pertinent and important to do now.

And it's difficult for us front facing
species to think about the sideways, but I

think that is where new possibilities lie.

My, my rising sign is
Cancer, which is a crab.

And so this is very pertinent.

We're all becoming crabs.

Biologists tell us we're
all becoming crustacean,

and it's the Trickster move.

It's the Trickster move of being able
to dance sideways with the situation.

Yes,

yes, yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

Um, Bayo, thank you so much for your time.

Uh, you know, um, I, I would, I would
say if you had a seed to plant for the

future, for your children and for future
generations, what would that seed be?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hmm.

That your soul is strange
and you haven't met her yet.

Your soul is stranger.

Your soul is mispronounced.

It's, in fact your soul
is mispronunciation.

It's, it's stranger than any way
that can be rendered legible to

culture, to frameworks, to systems,
to concepts, and that you haven't met

your own soul yet, and that when it
erupts like a fungal bloom, follow it.

Follow your soul to
wherever it might lead.

And maybe, you might just find
when you look back upon it on your

journey, that it would've been the
most beautiful story that can be told.

Yeah.

Wow.

Thank you so much
Bayo that was beautiful.

Thank you so much for spending time
with us and sharing your wisdom

Thank you for this profound
and deep conversation.

I truly feel blessed.

Thank you so much, brothers.

Thank you.