Welcome to Sapient Lodge
In the future, corporate training programs get weird(er), and weirdness gets commodified.
(Note: This is a short story inspired by real signals of change observed in the present).
/story
The Director of the firm looked more Bali-expat influencer than top-tier management consultant. Back in London, she was a pant-suited people and capability manager. Today, she wore a beige linen dress and no shoes. Her sun bleached hair was tied up with intentional carelessness. She spoke with a slow, rehearsed lilt that sounded as if it were lifted from one of those mindfulness apps I had downloaded and deleted a few years ago before the free trial period ended. ‘For the next twelve weeks of your stay here at Sapient Lodge, your hands will not touch a single electronic device, your eyes will behold no screens, your smart pendants will be locked in a safe, and you will not hear a single synthetic voice.’ I saw Toby Dulles on the far side of the circle. He sat cross-legged on the grass like the rest of us, but more erect. Toby’s eyes latched onto the Director, tracking her diligently as she spoke, his head was craning forward, bobbing earnestly. He would have rolled onto his back and presented his soft underbelly to her if the occasion had allowed such a display. ‘Many of your former colleagues won’t be so lucky. Like the eighty million others around the world in the last few years, the only shallow question to occupy their minds was “what will be left for me to do?”. That’s why they are not here today.’ I knew some of the not so “lucky” ones. I had kept in touch with Meera since she was “released to pursue other opportunities”. It was a little unfair of the firm, really. You encourage someone to “innovate” and give them a target to maximise the automation of their own work, then after they’ve successfully encoded themselves into firm-owned algorithms that produce good enough outputs for a fraction of their salary, you shunt them out the door. ‘But you, my fellow sapiens. You are still here today because you asked a different question, a better question. And we at the firm noticed. While the thinking machines encroached on white collar jobs like yours everywhere, you asked: “what untapped and unique human capacities might we expand into?”. I nudged Rafael Alvarado's arm with my elbow. ‘Check out Toby’, I whispered, ‘He loves this shit.’ Rafael shot me an incredulous look, his eyes anxiously darting back to the Director, a sharp hiss escaping through clenched teeth. He didn’t even allow himself a stolen glance at Toby. The Director turned on her heel and locked her eyes on mine, her brow lowered. ‘You…’, she said, holding my gaze for two seconds too long. I froze and, to my horror, I felt an apology slide up my throat, but the Director broke her gaze before the words reached my lips and she continued speaking. A gushing relief filled my chest. ‘All of you. You’re here to journey together to a new frontier, to discover the depths of human potential, to hone those capacities that separate you from thinking machines’. She stopped, inhaled, and tilted her head. ‘Well, what separates you for now, at least’. Polite laughter erupted among her cross-legged disciples. ‘Our firm prides itself on being at the bleeding edge. We’re in the trenches of the polycrisis, working hand in glove with those determined to solve the wicked problems that define our age. Governments, NGOs and companies everywhere have come to us for decades with high expectations that we’ll provide sound data and evidence and business cases for best-fit solutions. They have sought our help to chart a course into a prosperous future. They’ve needed navigators. And we gave them navigators.’ Perhaps it was the embarrassment of a near miss fogging up my judgment, but I found myself trying to tamp down the inner cynic. The truth is, her mix of corporate wankery and wellness guru vibes unsettled me, yet I couldn’t quite pin down my feelings about it. The fact that this so-called ‘wisdom sequestration retreat’ even existed could either be a green shoot pushing up through a crack the machines hadn’t yet smothered, or it might be just another layer in the process of sealing off those last few cracks. ‘But navigators are no longer what our clients need. The machines can do that for them now. Today, they need something from us that no bundle of silicone chips can provide. They need something that is in short supply. They need wisdom. They need sages, shamans, magicians, and seers. They need those who have mastered the breadth and depth of human capacities, that synthesise the head and the heart, who can find insight at the intersection of knowledge, experience, and the intuition that comes with the 11 million bits of information your whole body processes in every second.’ The Director stopped pacing and clasped her hands together in a long and very obviously performative silence. ‘An American philosopher of the polycrisis said last decade that “if we are gaining the power of gods, then without wisdom of gods, we will self-destruct.”† And he was right. There has never been a more urgent time. And that is our firm’s call to action. That is why our generous leaders have funded us to be here to train with the world’s leading wisdom teachers. During the three months of your sequestration, in the presence of these mountains, you’ll work with biohackers who will help you optimise your body. You’ll learn from cognitive and noetic scientists about the mind and boost your powers of metacognition, and unlock other deeper powers you didn’t know you had. You’ll be immersed in the emerging science of collaborative intelligence with some of world’s leading experts. You’ll level-up your interpersonal discernment with circling facilitators and transcontextual guides. You’ll be under the tutelage of shamans, transcendental meditators, psychonautical guides, shadow workers, and indigenous knowledge holders. All of this so that neither human nor machine will have supremacy, but that you will be optimised for a level of human-machine symbiosis the world has not yet seen. And you’ll emerge from this initiation as a new breed of consultant, ready to help our clients confront the polycrisis.’ The Director turned slowly to survey our faces. The sun was rising above the forested mountain behind her and blinded me for a moment and I squinted and looked away. Looking up again, her arms were outstretched beside her, palms toward the sky. ‘Welcome to Sapient Lodge’, she said.
†Credit: Daniel Schmachtenberger
/signals
The phrase ‘the wisdom gap’ has appeared in public discourse in the past decade, and was brought to a wider audience in 2022 by The Center for Humane Technology as a way of describing the “gap between the rising interconnected complexity of our problems and our ability to make sense of it all” (also see their popular AI Dilemma presentation). They argue that the scope of the world’s challenges, they content, from the rise of artificial intelligence, to climate-induced migration to global financial fragility, is growing more complex, while our ability to comprehend these challenges and respond accordingly lags behind.
Interest in the notion of ‘the wisdom gap’ has since steadily grown in recent years, and has begun appearing in business leadership literature, such as in Forbes where wisdom was juxtaposed with mere intelligence as a means to produce “supercharge teams”, "improved decision making”, and build resilient organisational cultures, or in the Project Management Institute’s Digital Transformation Playbook (see page 99).
The market for wisdom-focused leadership training is emerging. In 2018, former Airbnb head of Global Hospitality and Strategy, Chip Conley founded The Modern Elder Academy, which offers “customized retreats and immersive experiences for corporate teams and other private groups that celebrate the convergence of wisdom and curiosity.”
The Atlantic published at article in August 2024 titled The Metacognition Revolution, arguing that AI, if used well, can potentially enhance metacognition, helping students better understand and reflect on their own thinking processes. In the article, Ben Kornell, managing partner of the Common Sense Growth Fund and co-host of the EdTech Insiders podcast is cited as reinforcing this point: “In a world where AI can generate content at the push of a button, the real value lies in understanding how to direct that process, how to critically evaluate the output, and how to refine one’s own thinking based on those interactions.”
Australia’s Commonwealth Science & Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) contends that “humans and machines work better together than either can alone”, but that certain skills will be required to do this effectively. To that end, CSIRO founded the Collaborative intelligence Future Science Platform, which aims to develop the science needed to facilitate this collaboration, combining human creativity, adaptability, and values with narrower but powerful artificial intelligence (AI).
In May 2024, Microsoft researchers published a paper showing how generative AI systems imposed high demands on users for metacognition, the the psychological ability to monitor, reflect critically on, and consciously augment one’s thoughts and behaviour. The study suggested that to most effectively with AI systems, a high degree of metacognitive monitoring and control is required.
Silicon Valley elites are reportedly taking ketamine and attending psychedelic parties to bolster their focus and creativity. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2023 that entrepreneurs including Tesla’s Elon Musk and Google co-founder Sergey Brin are part of a drug movement that proponents hope will expand minds, enhance lives and produce business breakthroughs.
In early 2024, Fortune Well reported that business leaders, such as Felix Van de Sand (CEO of Munich-based digital agency COBE), were using shaman-guided ayahuasca experiences to confront personal fears and patterns that impact their professional lives. Some business leaders are reportedly bringing their colleagues to these retreats, believing that shared psychedelic experiences can strengthen team bonds, improve creativity, and boost leadership qualities.
Enthea, a provider of insurance plans for psychedelic healthcare, gives employers the option of offering psychedelic-assisted therapy as a workplace benefit. The company reports that employers who offer psychedelic-assisted therapy as part of health coverage can expect a positive impact on productivity from employees, a reduction in medical expenses, increased employee retention and reduced turnover.
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