As I scroll social media, I often encounter messaging from people who identify as witches, Taoists, Buddhists, pagans, and others whose traditions are rooted in deep sensitivity to energy, consciousness, nature, and the unseen forces that shape our lives. It got me wondering: how would someone who truly embodied these traditions in a more traditional sense react to social media itself? After all, social media is hardly a neutral environment. Its energies are complex, its incentives are...

I open social media and am immediately confronted by a profound contradiction. If we want softer language, we can call it misalignment. Example of "hating data centers" while actively participating in data centers I see witches, pagans, Taoists, people preaching sovereignty, matriarchy, decolonization, rewilding, Earth connection, anti-capitalism, and more life-affirming ways delivering messages through one of the most extractive, attention-harvesting systems ever created. The contradiction...

What does our society's definition of success fulfill in our lives? A sense of belonging, value, validation, visibility, appreciation and comforts that we are not getting in our lives in a more authentic, life-affirming, relational, and reciprocal way. If we slowed down enough to be present, if we were able to work through the general discomfort of just being, we'd find that not only do we not need some of these things but perhaps we already have them in a simpler but more rewarding sense....