I’ve suddenly had this weird realization. I started listening to several of the Dan Brown novels on symbology. I started with his latest, called Secret of Secrets and have moved backwards to The Lost Symbol. The book is Dan Brown’s third Robert Langdon novel, set in Washington D.C. over a single night. The central mystery revolves around Freemasonry and the legend of an “Ancient Mystery” – secret wisdom supposedly hidden in Washington D.C. by the Founding Fathers. The climax reveals that the “Ancient Mystery” isn’t a physical treasure or supernatural power, but rather the realization that humans have untapped potential within themselves – essentially a message about human enlightenment and the divinity within humanity. The novel ends with themes about science and spirituality converging, and the power of the human mind. What I enjoy about Dan Brown is that I feel like I learn a lot about religion and spirituality in a context that is engaging and not pedantic.
What this has done is filled my head with many questions about the human condition and spirituality, all at a time when I feel that for one reason or another, humankind is moving away from enlightenment and more towards its baser instincts of survival and dominance. The natural world seems to be prevailing over the spiritual world, something that history tells us happens at regular intervals. This tension between our animal nature and spiritual aspirations is one of humanity’s defining struggles – we’re caught between the biological imperatives that evolved us and the transcendent yearnings that seem to elevate us beyond mere survival. The “nature side” is undeniable. We’re driven by hunger, reproduction, status competition, tribal allegiance, and self-preservation. Our brains evolved to prioritize immediate threats and rewards like the rustling in the bushes, the scarcity of food sources, the potential for good mates. Much of our behavior, even in modern contexts, reflects these ancient drives. Corporate ladder-climbing mirrors dominance hierarchies, conspicuous consumption signals fitness, and our political tribalism echoes the us-versus-them mentality that kept early humans alive. Neuroscience shows how dopamine circuits hijack our decision-making, how fear responses bypass rational thought, how we rationalize choices made by unconscious processes. Meanwhile, the “spiritual pull”, though, is equally real and universal across cultures. Humans create art that serves no survival function, sacrifice themselves for abstract ideals, develop elaborate cosmologies to explain existence, and persistently ask “why” rather than just “how.” We build cathedrals, compose symphonies, meditate for enlightenment, and die for causes. This drive toward meaning, transcendence, and connection to something larger seems to contradict pure evolutionary logic, and yet it persists.
It is sometimes said that the vacillation between these two itself might be what defines us as human beings, and it is certainly at the root of most religion. But religions don’t just reflect this struggle, they systematically attempts to resolve it, or at least provide a framework for managing it. At their core, religions typically do three things with this tension. First, they acknowledge both drives as real. Most religious traditions don’t deny our animal nature. They’re quite explicit about temptation, appetite, ego, and our baser instincts. Christianity has sin, Buddhism has craving and attachment, Islam has nafs (the lower self). They recognize we’re pulled toward immediate gratification, tribalism, and selfishness. Second, they hierarchically order them. Religions almost universally place the spiritual above the natural, but they don’t typically demand complete suppression of nature. Instead, they provide rules and practices to channel natural drives toward spiritual ends. Sexual desire becomes sanctified in marriage, aggression becomes righteous defense of the faith, self-interest becomes enlightened through compassion. The natural isn’t eliminated but subordinated and redirected. Third, they offer a resolution narrative. Most religions promise that the struggle itself can be transcended through enlightenment, salvation, union with God, nirvana. The struggle is presented as temporary, a stage in human development toward something higher. This is enormously appealing because it suggests the exhausting vacillation can eventually end.
But religions themselves often vacillate in how they handle this tension. Christianity alone spans from cloistered contemplatives renouncing all physical pleasure to megachurch pastors with private jets arguing that wealth indicates God’s favor. Buddhism ranges from austere forest monks to elaborate Tibetan rituals. Cynics like my friend Steve would say religions are just elaborate justifications for our nature while claiming spiritual authority. Perhaps tribal instincts dressed as divine mandate, dominance hierarchies legitimized as God’s order, reproductive strategies sanctified as marriage. There’s truth there since religions have certainly been used to rationalize natural drives. But the believer’s view would say religions are genuine responses to authentic spiritual reality. They feel that the reason this tension exists across all cultures is because both the material and spiritual realms are real, and religion is humanity’s attempt to navigate between them with divine guidance. My observation is that religions persist and succeed to the extent they productively manage rather than fully resolve the tension. Religions that lean too hard toward pure spirituality (denying all physical needs, extreme asceticism) tend to die out or remain tiny. Those that become purely about worldly success lose their transcendent appeal. The successful ones maintain the dynamic tension to “be in the world but not of it”.
We humans are not consistently on one side of this range or the other, but swing between them based on circumstances and choice. A person might spend their morning in cutthroat business negotiations (pure competitive nature) then volunteer at a soup kitchen that evening (spiritual compassion). Societies oscillate too. There are periods of hedonism and materialism that alternate with religious revivals and idealistic movements. It is hard not to acknowledge that we have currently swung strongly towards the natural versus spiritual side of the range. Donald Trump may be the incarnation of that non-spiritual side of the societal spectrum.
Meanwhile…back at the ranch…as my story yesterday highlighted, I am spending a lot of time thinking about AI and how that phenomenon is transforming human existence. There is no more fundamental relationship in the struggle for survival than the one between income and labor and that is what is beginning to get attacked by AI. Income protection and social protection are fundamental to why people gather in groups, form governance structures and develop religions. The link between AI and democratic governance is clear, but so is the link between AI and organized religion. The AI debate is certainly economic and political, but it is increasingly becoming social…and here’s the thing that many might miss…the three are inextricably joined. That which is economic drive the political. That which is political drives the social. And that which is social pushes equally into both the economic and the political.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) meets annually at this time of year in Davos, Switzerland. It is an international organization and annual gathering where global political leaders, business executives, economists, celebrities, and journalists meet to discuss major world issues. The formal agenda covers topics like economic policy, climate change, technological disruption, geopolitical risks, and global health, essentially the big-picture challenges facing the world. Populists and nationalists see it as unelected global elites deciding policy that affects ordinary people without democratic input. The left criticizes it as billionaires and corporations greenwashing their activities while perpetuating inequality. Conspiracy theorists view it as a shadowy world government. Even some mainstream critics argue it’s performative with lots of talk about sustainability and inclusion from people flying in on private jets.
The World Economic Forum just released a survey of its participants, who deemed inequality a major risk. It expressed the view that this inequality fuels “other global risks as the social contract between citizens and government falters.” Strangely enough, there is at least one billionaire who is attending Davos who has said he’s happy to pay the newly proposed and highly controversial California wealth tax. That billionaire is Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company and the leader of the AI charge. His reasons may sound mundane since he is quoted as saying, “We chose to live in Silicon Valley. Whatever taxes they would like to apply, so be it”, but I would like to think that he has thought beyond that soundbite and is finding reason to be focused on the inequality risk inherent in AI development.
This and my Dan Brown spirituality reading causes me to wonder if AI might prove to be the new battleground between nature and spirituality. If that is the case, we had all better get prepared for mankind’s newest religion of AI. Think about it. AI is becoming ubiquitous. AI is “other-worldly” and transcendent. And yet, AI is truly resident in all of us and is a derivative of man’s soul. I await the first church of AI.