Episode 254: Cory Allen

Yeah.

Well, I'm glad that you noticed the spine aspect.

Thank you for that, and thank you for just all the kind words.

It came about because I think that creatively I look inside myself and what I'm experiencing and what is building.

I notice that certain feelings and realizations start to germinate over the course of weeks and months and then sometimes years.

And then because I'm a curious fellow, I also look at the waves that are moving through culture, and having a large social media following gives you an interesting insight into that because you can see how people are responding to things, what language people are using, and see some patterns of kind of where certain sectors of culture are at.

And I tend to get curious about where I'm at and what I'm feeling and where people are at in general and how those things are connected, and that's usually where a lot of the writing comes from.

In this case, I started feeling myself several years ago just exhausted and I think existentially fatigued with where we are right now as people.

And by that I mean the clamping down of our attentions, the harvesting of our energy, the removal of our sense of self because we're all getting pulled into this machinery of monochromatic spiritual numbness, is I guess the best way I can put it.

It's like everything is so algorithmic and charged by the fuel of our attention.

And so to trigger our attention, the people who are in charge of these platforms and just kind of the digital world and news cycles and everything that's controlling our lives right now are pulling every lever to keep us engaged.

And that can look like exploiting our fear, exploiting our dreams, exploiting our lack of self-worth, our need to compare ourselves, exploiting our outrage, manipulating our values, putting us up against other people with polarizing values so that we become angry and need to vindicate our view of the world.

And then if you add the way that the logistics of being human have also been absorbed into the same machinery, you have everything in your life from shopping to just, you know, dealing with bills to you name it, is all coming through your device.

My Ultra Human ring that I love a lot-

Mm-hmm

... which is new, has me now, in some twist of irony, getting outside more.

It tells me, "Go, go for a walk right now.

It's the golden hour," and I go.

So to your point, there is this insane connection to the device.

I'm learning how to choose very carefully what parts I'm connecting to, but you're one thousand percent on the money, and I just know that your book is gonna help us deal with it-

Mm

... and mitigate it.

Thank you.

Yes.

I am a co-owner of a company called Pulse, which has created the first mindfulness smart ring, and it is basically a ring that vibrates very gently and has a bunch of different modes that you can use.