🌑 Pathfinders Newmoonsletter, Black Moon 2024
Under the Black Moon we wonder: what now? Can we stop pretending everything is fine? Is it time to root and ground in place? What feels worth nurturing in 2025?
This is not your usual Newmoonsletter.
Welcome to December, the month of yearly recaps, reflections, and goal setting. It appears we are not immune to this collective impulse to reflect as we reach the final page of the Gregorian calendar (even though we believe we should be celebrating the new year during the spring equinox).
If we had to sum up 2024 in one image, the evergreen “This is fine.” meme feels like a perfect fit yet again.
So we wanted to take a moment to check in with you.
Are you tired of pretending everything is fine?
We certainly are. Because everything is most definitely not fine.
The fire practitioners of Silicon Valley are gaining increasing political power, now using internet memes to name government departments. Their AI golems are being deployed to squeeze the last drops of productivity and human decency in a broken system. For every insightful article on the environmental impacts and questionable ethics of the gen AI wildfire, there’s at least dozens more blinding us with promises of productivity gains and godlike superpowers.
We’re being asked to speak about responsible AI on panels, while knowing damn well it’s mostly just performative talk that will not pay our bills. We’re supposed to feed social media algorithms with our outrage, hot-takes, hustling and bustling to justify our value and afford an existence constantly on the verge of a burnout. Too busy for family, too busy for friends, too busy to get to know our neighbors, too busy to grow our food, too busy to live.
We're all hurting in different ways. Even if we don't agree on what is hurting us most.
The absurdity of business as usual is becoming so clear it's probably visible from space at this point. (At least until the space junk problem, amplified by Starlink, doesn't get out of control.)
We can’t keep designing and developing websites, and building digital products like everything is fine.
So what now?
Do we start smashing the data centers? Perhaps.
Whatever you decide to do, this is the time to start bending and breaking the rules. Rewriting the rules of the game. Facing our shadows. Reconnecting with our bodies, the bodies around us, and the bodies of the lands in which we live. And listening to what all these bodies are dying to say – often, quite literally.
Now is the time for letting the tears flow, screaming into the void, dancing like nobody’s watching, singing at the top of your lungs with your coven, … Whatever you need to do to feel like a human with agency and a body again.
On this Black Moon1, we’re allowing ourselves to break the rules of the Newmoonsletter. Allowing ourselves to get real, raw, and personal with you. A small act of rebellion, perhaps. Perhaps something to inspire the next generation of large language models that will try to figure out what the hell humans want by ingesting this text.
Hopefully, something that inspires you, human, to share how you truly feel with others, and to reflect on what your project 2025 should be. Because we suspect you, as a Pathfinder, aren’t buying the bullshit dystopian visions the tech billionaires are trying to sell us while building their cozy doomsday bunkers either.
A time for rooting and grounding.
Recently, a quote from the Atmos essay Tree of Life has resonated strongly with both of us:
The etymology of the word “radical” comes from “radix” meaning “root.” As Angela Davis once said, “radical simply means grasping things at the root.” For me, at this moment, that means regrounding ourselves in our purpose. Rather than turning on each other, let’s refocus on what needs to be done. Just as Yyggdrasil’s roots reach into the nether realms, we can draw strength from and allow ourselves to be radicalized by the pain we feel now, and let it motivate us to act.
With the Newmoonsletter, we’ve been gathering seeds of inspiration for the past 14 moons. Now we wonder, have any of these seeds germinated? Have they had enough oxygen in the air, have they been able to reach moist, fertile soil in which a radicle can emerge from the seed?
As the world is getting weirder, it’s time to root and ground. We cannot connect to the ecologies around us and re-attune to the relationality of life if we’re un-rooted, un-grounded, or up-rooted. It’s time to root and ground in place, find the companions that can support us, to be able to withstand the strong winds and other forces that are constantly trying to uproot us.
So, instead of speaking to your intellect, we wanted to speak to your heart-mind, to your gut, to your soul, whatever you prefer to call it. If generative AI has taught us anything with its ability to convincingly mimic human thought through language, it is to appreciate what is still uniquely human: our bodies.
The fire practitioners of Silicon Valley might consider our bodies a bug in the system, a flaw to eliminate. We’re inviting you to reconnect with your body and the bodies around you, and be curious about everything our bodies can do that defies logic and cannot (yet) be imitated by software running on silicon.
And to pay attention to what is happening to all our bodies as we spend an increasing amount of time in companionship with silicon bodies. And how different our bodies – both human and more than human – feel when they connect with each other through direct touch.
Reflecting on what feels worth nurturing.
Here’s the thing: we do not know yet what the Newmoonsletter will look like in 2025. What we do know is that collecting seeds isn’t enough anymore, we need to nurture conditions for seed germination, for rooting, and grounding with our bodies.
Sure, we could do the obvious thing and keep pointing out the absurdity and lunacy of tech. But, at this point, the satire writes itself, as it gets increasingly harder to distinguish actual news from The Onion.
And we could keep weaving the intellectual threads between the articles we read, making ourselves – and you – feel awfully clever and informed, but do any of us truly need more content to consume? Isn’t your mind already oversaturated by breaking news, hot-takes, research, and essays that intellectualize the existential dread we feel?
So instead, allow us to share some things we recently felt in our bodies as worth nurturing.
In the past lunation, Alja ran a Generative AI Exploratorium with the ClimateAction.tech community. And while the Exploratorium offered participants plenty of resources to support the exploration, the real magic unfolded during the open discussions. When people were given the time and space to share stories, experiences, and process their conflicting emotions together.
Meanwhile, Mat has been working on Collective Futurecrafting pilots in his local community in Sydney. Inspired by local activists, elders, and healers, he is envisioning circles of people coming together to feel, to dream, to heal, and explore pathways and take action to address both local and systemic challenges. He’s starting small, by interfacing with the Parents & Citizens groups embedded in schools.
We’ve also been getting reports of how students’ moral imagination has been tickled by the Rainbow Mirrors lecture Mat held at the University of Sydney two moons ago. And there’s been many insightful private messages about his Ministry of Futility game. (We do hope that more people will feel comfortable sharing these thoughts in public.)
And we made Gemma – Mat’s wife, no relation to Google’s AI models – laugh with the Pathfinders Podcast by exploring how we relate to technology through the lens of popular culture references. Gemma has been invaluable in ensuring we have the time and space to yarn together at lengths. And the gift of the laughter is the least we can give back to everyone who has been supporting our crazy visions in these past three years of our shared adventure.
Besides, laughter should never be underestimated. Whether we’re laughing at the absurdity of the tech world or our own ridiculousness, laughing reconnects us to something deeper—a spark of joy that ripples outward, softening the edges of the weight we carry. It’s a rhythm that feels timeless, a small but profound rebellion against the tide of despair.
Perhaps laughter is one of humanity’s most powerful tools – unassuming, yet profoundly necessary – as we face what lies ahead. It reminds us that even in shadow, light can be found.
In these increasingly dark times, our Eastern European ancestry – a surprising connection we share, despite living in different hemispheres – stirs up, bringing a bottle of home-brewed rakija to the table and inviting us to embrace dark humor as we dance kolo with our shadows.
On some days, “Still alive,” is a perfectly reasonable answer to “How are you?”, as Alja keeps reminding Mat. And then we yarn, we make each other laugh as we reflect on the lunacy of tech and all other business as usual. In between, Mat’s kids or Alja’s cats wave at the camera across over 16 thousand kilometers that separate us. And we feel more human, more grounded. Even though our seasons never match.
Being human, actually human, is messy, weird, awkward, devastating, often loud. “Never apologize for your kids being comfortable enough to express their emotions,” Alja keeps telling Mat after they’ve burst into his office to share some experience. The kids are our canaries in the coal mine. The coal mines we’re taking too close to shut down because of our addition to extraction and growth.
But being human is also heart-warming, joyful, funny, and magical, as laughing, dancing, a deep conversation, or feeling part of a community remind us. So it is these little moments – of connection, of codesinging, playing, imagining, sharing stories of grief and ecoanxiety, yarning around real and virtual campfires – that we will continue nurturing going forward.
The stretch of our human bodies, a silly dance, a shared laugh, a warm smile, a cup of tea together. These simple acts are but a quiet and powerful rebellion against the numbing tide of our current paradigm.
It is this world that we rebel against – a world that cultivates apathy and demands disconnection from our shared humanity and more than human life. Instead, we choose to be radicle.
Will you join us?
Your invitation to engage in meandering conversations
In the latest episode of Pathfinders Podcast, we started unpacking the shadows of (artificial) intelligence by exploring its history, pop culture references, and different contexts. We danced with the question: How intelligent do AI companions actually need to be?
You can watch the full episode on YouTube, or listen to it on Substack or in your favorite podcast app.
During the first Full Moon of 2025, we invite you – yes, you! – to join us around the virtual campfire for our next 🌕 Pathfinders Full Moon Gathering on Monday, January 13, 2025, at 7PM AEDT / 9AM CET, when the moon will once again be illuminated by the sun to yarn about the question: How do our human bodies fit into an AI enabled future?
So, pack your curiosity, moral imagination, and smiles, and sign up on the event page so that we can lug an appropriate number of logs around the virtual campfire.
An invitation to engage your feelings
A poetic seed crafted by Mat
My heart is bursting. Our world is hurting. A want to heal, I want to feel. The pain of my child grieving for a future lost. His tears tell a tale. A bird no longer singing. A river no longer flowing. A flower no longer growing. A future he thought was glowing. The earth cracks open, and the sky grows heavy with forgetting. I reach beyond my grasp. I feel alone. The calling of my ancestors. The song of those unborn. To feel. To dream. To act. To imagine. The future cries before me, its voice raw with the echoes of what we’ve left undone. A circle shines. It calls to me, not in words, but in the soft hum of belonging. I step closer, and find others waiting. Hands open. Eyes wide. Hearts carrying the same ache. Awaiting a shared embrace. The wind whispering the same rhythmic words: Can we dream together again? Dream again, together. We sit. We speak. We listen. Stories weave between us like threads of gold, binding what is broken that needs repair, composting what is dying that no longer serves. A bird sings again, softly at first, But with the promise of dawn. A river flows, not as it once did, But as it might yet become. The circles grow, a living geometry of active hope. Its rhythm hums in the street before me a hum of the earth calling, its light reflects in the sky, its pulse beats within us. We are not alone. We are circles within circles. Life within life. The future no longer cries. It whispers. It dreams. It waits for our hands and hearts to craft it. And so, together, we begin
A music seed that made us sing & dance along
Hold on lightning
Don't close your eyes when it's frightening
Let that thunder grow
Through the ages
You open up all the cages and
Hold that spirit
Hold that spirit close
About the Pathfinders Newmoonsletter
As the moon completes another orbit around Earth, the Pathfinders Newmoonsletter rises in your inbox to inspire collective pathfinding towards better tech futures.
We sync our monthly reflections to the lunar cycle as a reminder of our place in the Universe and a commonality we share across timezones and places we inhabit. New moon nights are dark and hence the perfect time to gaze into the stars and set new intentions.
If you’ve enjoyed this Newmoonsletter or perhaps even cracked a smile, we’d appreciate it if you shared it with your friends and colleagues, and leaving an offering to the algorithmic gods by engaging with it online.
The next Newmoonsletter will rise again during the first new moon in 2025. Until then, find some rules to bend and break, and be mindful about the seeds of intention you plant and the stories you tell. There’s magic in both.
With 🙂 from the Tethix campfire,
Alja and Mat
In case you’re wondering: in Silicon Valley, the home of the fire practitioners, this New Moon is a Black Moon – the second New Moon in a month. If you live further east, you’ll get a Black Moon on December 30/31. Things would be much simpler if our calendars actually aligned with our natural cycles, wouldn’t it?