By: Michael Youngblood, Co-founder, Unsettled
Technology and AI are behind an almost unavoidable drive to aloneness.
Aloneness, per se, isn’t bad. Finding solitude—for example, on an overnight backpacking trip or during a five-hour break from distractions—is paradoxically key to answering deeply relevant and personal questions in our lives.
Solitude is a powerful precondition for creating a vision in your life and ultimately feeling a sense of autonomy in who you can become.
The thing with technology, though, is that it pushes us to separate from other people—so it can capture more of your attention.
Its goal? Capture your attention at any cost.
The cost? Your attention. And today, with AI the cost is higher: your independent thought. Your connection to others. A vision for your life that you created by listening deeply to what you want.
Isn’t independent thought what gives us a sense of autonomy? And isn’t this what’s at stake every time we ask AI to think for us?
So here we are: Separated from others, yet not alone enough to think for ourselves—avoiding some of the most important questions in life:
- How will you spend your time?
- What’s important to you?
- What direction do you want to head in for your next chapter?
Your Response
When was the last time you sat alone, uninterrupted, for a few hours—just to watch daylight change to dusk as crickets sang and fireflies danced?
Maybe you remember an evening not so long ago. But didn’t you do this almost nightly as a child? Didn’t your ancestors do this for generations? Isn’t it the most human thing to do since we walked out of Africa?
That’s what’s changing.
Today is like the early days of the Industrial Revolution, but instead of polluting the rivers, forests, and oceans, our mental health is at risk.
There’s always an unintended consequence behind the next great technology. It just seems higher this time.
The good news? Our individual outcomes are not predetermined, even if society at large is tending in obvious directions.
Whatever path you take to build the life you want, it will likely require reclaiming your attention from technology as well as:
- human connection in trusted circles
- time and space for prolonged attention with your own independent thoughts
- Courage to at least ask, and maybe answer, life’s greatest questions
This is why Unsettled proudly exists.
Our experiences draw from conversation-based rituals in cultures held together by something other than technology.
Each of our experiences create moments of aloneness—away from tech, and moments of togetherness, in conversation with others who are also struggling to find their way in this complicated world.
It’s how we feel human: by seeing ourselves in others, ‘Ubuntu’ as our South African friends say.
This is why we’re going to Basque Country, sailing Tahiti, and returning to Bali: to create moments where you can feel what it’s like to be human again.
Whether you join us or not, we simply ask that you find ways to answer for yourself: How will you respond to tech’s obsession to replace independent thinking with your next AI prompt?
Unsettled is a global community for those who live and work differently.
Growth | Meaning | Adventure
