Our Ancient Hardware Choking on the Age of Wonders
We carry within us the same eyes, ears, and brains as our ancestors. The same eyes of peasants who once spent their days in the fields, bent their backs to soil, with little access to finery or luxury beyond their low societal standing.
Yet, we need to realize we also have the same brain as this common person who found awe in harvest, in the turning of the seasons, in cathedral songs rising toward the heavens.
Their emotions and thoughts beat within us still. Their hunger, their fear, their yearning for story.
And yet, look around us now.
We live among knowledge that emperors could not hoard in their greatest libraries, miracles that prophets could not summon in their wildest visions. We project voices and images pulled from the air, fly across oceans swifter than falcons, eat fruit out of season as though paradise had returned.
We exists as peasants in a carnival built for gods.
But what have we done with this offering? We gorge without tasting, rush without seeing, hoard without questioning. Our abundance risks numbing us. Marvels pile upon marvels until wonder and meaning collapses into background noise.
If even an endless stream of beauty and music is taken for granted, what else can make us feel?
Abundance, without meaning, becomes anaesthetic.
Acceleration is the Bias of Miracles
The world urges us forward. Faster, newer, more. Technology accelerates and our ancient minds cheer it on, wired as they are to chase novelty and comfort.
But speed is not wisdom. The flood of miracles does not mean the soul is enriched. To run ever-faster through marvels is to become drunk on sparks, mistaking its momentary light for a fire.
We must learn the deeper law: awe is a spark, but we crave the true warmth of meaning and understanding.
Awe without pause is squandered. Awe that is slowed and allowed to catch, that is what becomes wisdom, a compass, a deep flame in a person’s soul.
The Practice of Harnessing Awe
What is required, then? To create space where we can do the work of allowing the sparks of awe to turn into the fire of meaning.
Time, so the marvel can sink beneath the surface of attention.
Silence, so the echoes of wonder can be heard.
Community, so stories are shared and woven.
Embodiment, so wonder is given form through ritual, art, and retelling.
Contrast, so that deprivation sharpens the taste of miracle.
This is the practice of harnessing awe.
It is not in rushing but in using the alchemy of stillness that miracles transmute into marrow. Sparks rushed fade after a burst of light, but sparks allowed to catch become a blazing bonfire.
The Work of Discernment
To marvel is the birthright of children.
To discern and act is the burden of adults.
To integrate both is the task of free beings.
Marvel awakens us to possibility. Discernment teaches us which paths lead to flourishing and which to ruin.
To live with only awe is to be dazzled and lost. To live with only discernment is to become cold and closed.
We must be both child and elderly. True evolution requires awe, discernment, and action together.
The Danger of the Internet Age Lies in Anaesthetic Abundance
Let us name the danger clearly: if we do not resist the bias to accelerate, if we do not give awe its time to transcend into something more, our abundance will drug us.
We will have more than any peasant dreamed, but we will feel less.
We will know more than any king recorded, but we will understand less.
We will travel wider than Columbus, but we will experience only one perspective nonetheless.
This is how humanity may stagnate even amidst miracles. Unlike the past, not by scarcity, but by abundance passing us by, unprocessed.
A Call to Shape our Collective Story
But there is another path.
If wonder is slowed into meaning, meaning becomes a compass. And with that compass, marvels are no longer background noise but reveal patterns and coordinates for action.
With meaning, we choose how to stand, where to move, what to create.
Then we are no longer cavemen dazzled by miracles, numbed by excess. We become players in evolution. Participants, not bystanders. Agents, not spectators.
This is the call: to make meaning of abundance, to claim our agency, to step consciously into the unfolding story of humanity.
Why this Sanctuary Exists
This space, this writing, this site, they exists as sanctuary for doing that work.
Not a feed to scroll, not a quick taste of novelty. A slower place. A place where I attempt to kindle a fire out of the sparks of wonder.
Here, we tend to a slowly growing fire instead of jumping onto the next bright spark.
Here, We resist the anaesthetic of speed. We let each individual point of abundance ripen into understanding. We write long, we read slow, we give ourselves permission to be transformed.
I am glad you are here.
Because only through meaning can we decide how to live, where to stand, what to build in this age of marvels.
And I cannot do it alone.
Welcome, Neanderthal, to the Carnival of Miracles
We live in a carnival of miracles. Our brains are still that of a neanderthal.
Will you gorge and grow numb?
Or will you slow, and let awe and wonder scar you into wisdom?
This is the choice before us.
This is the purpose of this sanctuary.
This is where our collective evolution begins.